action;

[bookbending]

[This weekend, Jinora is an adult. The airbender has the distinctive blue arrow tattoos given to those who master the art and she's at least a decade older than she normally is. Regardless, most who know her would be able to recognize her. It's peculiar; she aged physically and mentally overnight, but her memory hasn't changed at all.

That mystery isn't the one she's concerned with. Sunday afternoon finds her on the beach, contemplating the relationships between the various bending arts. Jinora's brain seems to have aged along with her body. She feels more insightful, more capable of drawing her own conclusions rather than repeating what her father has taught her. She has every intention of using this greater insight to the fullest. As a ten year-old, she had been struggling with what she had been taught about bending, suspecting that she was missing something significant. Now her thoughts seem freer and clearer.

Jinora may also be avoiding a four year-old Korra. Getting her thoughts straight with a little Avatar present was all but impossible. She hasn't wandered far, though.

Occupied as she is, Jinora's paying little attention to her surroundings, eyes focused on the rhythmic movement of the ocean waves.]


[ooc: Action only, please! (Look, she doesn't get the network.)]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's cool. They're still nowhere near as weird as Contractors. Compared to the frigid stillness of his counterparts, this is an anodyne change. ]

[ Hei's hands sift idly through the sand, even as his eyebrows rise and his mouth quirks. ] That's surprising. Finding answers more easily, I mean. Most people at this age seem to live their adulthood in a state of perpetual confusion. A secondary Lost Generation. At least, that's been my observation back home. [ But of course her homeworld is nothing like his. Even then, there are always individual differences to take into account. ]

[ His eyes follow her finger to the tattoo. The look he gives her is both puzzled and courteously absorbed. ] So... the tattoo is like a symbol for something?

[bookbending]

Maybe it's because I'm cursed. Maybe things will become more confusing when I have a chance to live through the years I've skipped. [She sounds cheerful enough. Evidently, possible confusion is not a great worry.]

Airbenders get their tattoos once they become masters. I haven't mastered all thirty-six tiers of airbending yet.

[mortemscintilla]

[ A wistful smile. ] Somehow, I doubt you'll be as bad as the others. [ As if he really means that, and is willing to speak in absolutes when nothing about anything is absolute. But Li is endowed with a hopeless good faith that Hei has been weaned never to share. ]

Oh. [ His gaze carefully sweeps over the tattoo again. ] So you're an air-bending master for the weekend. [ That explains the zen. His hands gently pull the sand before him into a little hill, patting and reshaping like a child in a sandbox. Good-naturedly, he adds, ] I'm sure you'll master them all, though. Even as a little girl, you seem extremely patient. It's not a quality too many people have.

[bookbending]

I wouldn't bet on that.

[She's fairly zen as a ten year-old, too. That has been turned up to eleven and coupled with extremely powerful airbending abilities--powerful enough to take Hei on, perhaps, although instigating fights isn't in her nature.] For the weekend, and I will. Grandfather Aang became an airbending master when he was only fourteen.

[Jinora doesn't comment on the patience. That's not something she learned for the sake of airbending. After her wild siblings were born, it became a necessity.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Just as well. Belligerence isn't a trait Hei looks highly upon -- although he admits there are moments where his temper, more cold simmer than hot sparks, erupts and gets the better of him. At least (so far) the City is feeding it with very few triggers. ]

Aang...? [ His fingers are splayed across the mound of sand; he's made tiny indents (it's not a house but a war-fortress of startling accuracy). At the familiar name however, he pauses, eyes round. ] I heard Korra mention him. So your grandfather was the, um, previous Avatar?

[bookbending]

[She wouldn't know what a war-fortress looks like, made of sand or not. The Li facade has not slipped.]

Yes. Grandfather Aang died a long time ago... he was reincarnated in Korra. [wistfully] I wish I could have met him.

[mortemscintilla]

I see. [ Reincarnation, qi, manipulating the elements -- despite the surrealism of his own world, these facts are too close to magic for Hei to take seriously. (It's like inviting him to a literature seminar; it's all pretty but superfluous and ultimately makes his eyes glaze.) ]

[ He builds two turrets on the fortress. The activity isn't playful; just a telltale tic of excess energy. He can always tell bystanders he's a WOW fan. More uncertainly, he adds, ]

Isn't it, um, strange? Knowing Korra's the reincarnated version of your grandfather, while she does stuff like, well, scream at people and blow raspberries?

[bookbending]

[It's nothing like magic to Jinora: it's simply the way the world is. She discusses it with the same seriousness with which she would discuss the workings of the weather or the way plants grow.

The question makes her smile, but she shakes her head.] Korra isn't Aang. The Avatar is the embodiment of the spirit of the world, so think of the spirit as an endless thread and each Avatar as a bead on that thread. Each bead is its own entity.

[mortemscintilla]

Oh. That makes more sense. [ The tiny fortress at the base of his feet is almost finished. Neat and precise rather than childlike, as if 'Li' did this all the time as a boy. He surveys it with a brief moment's satisfaction -- then flattens it into a mess of sand and ruin. ] So. Um... [ The glance he shoots her is full of nervous curiosity. ] What happened to Korra? Bolin -- when he was here -- told me the Avatar is the master of all four elements. But he said Amon took most of them away from her.

..... So. Did Amon -- ? [ He makes a motion of scissors with his hand, to demonstrate a cut thread. ]

[bookbending]

[Jinora has no problem dismissing Li's actions as messing around or a nervous habit. {Although there's something about him. She's more aware of the energies around her, flowing through everything and everyone, and there's a discordance where Li is concerned. It's nothing for the airbender to be suspicious of. Any internal conflict can leave its mark on the world.}]

Amon took away her ability to bend everything but air--the one element that she has little innate affinity for. He must have used energybending. I've read about it, but no one knows very much on the subject.

[She doesn't hurry with a response to Li's question. These aren't things that get talked about in her world.]

No; the Avatar cycle can only be broken in one way, and this isn't it. Amon severed Korra's connection to three of the four elements, but she's still the Avatar. [And now we enter the realm of hopeful thinking.] I believe she'll get her bending back somehow.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Discordance might be an understatement, but despite the edge of calculation in Hei's questions, he maintains that puppy-dog look, all big eyes and pursed mouth. In the sand mound, he draws a long line with his thumb, the absent beginnings of a carbine or an AK47. Realizes what he's doing, and reshapes it into a fishing pole without missing a beat. ]

[ But Jinora's info has gotten the gears in his head turning. ]

Air, huh? [ He tilts his head, a rueful smile on his lips. ] She doesn't have a very airy disposition, come to think of it.

[ He notes the hesitation and tucks it away on instinct. Focuses a half-beat more on the words Can only be broken one way, but doesn't press that topic. Not yet. ] I'm sure she will. This is a place where anything can happen.

[bookbending]

[Airbenders are far from psychic (all the better for Hei). Discordance aside, there's nothing about Li that would arouse suspicion. Jinora's only suspicion where he's concerned is that Li plays dumb; he showed her once that he's not all puppy eyes and clumsy awkwardness. There might be a decent brain in his head.]

No, she doesn't. Benders' behavior tend to reflect their elements, and Korra's natural element is water.

[Jinora will keep feeding Li information. As someone who likes gathering information herself, she's more than happy to give it to others.] Not just here.