Misguided

Writer's Note: Written for Marikunin, who wanted something with an Avatar and animals.

Misguided

Every Avatar before her seemed to show some sort of affinity for animal guides. The more she studied, the more Kyoshi realised that it seemed to be some sort of requirement for being the Avatar; without an animal guide, the Avatar seemed incomplete, as if part of them was missing.

But Kyoshi couldn't even think of such an idea for too long. For her, it wasn't possible for her to have an animal partner. She had already had one.

When she was younger, just into her teens, she had found a small infant cat-bird, one barely out of its baby feathers. She looked up and saw that there was a nest overhead, but from the looks of it, the mother and the remaining kits had already dismissed the fallen one as dead. Kyoshi scooped up the kit in her shirt and took it home.

Her father was surprised to see his only daughter come home with an animal in her hands. She hadn't shown much of a nurturing side before, but when he started to ask, her eyes filled with tears, and she snarled, "It's not dead yet!" He nodded, and watched as his dirt-covered tomboy carefully made a cradle of discarded rags within a small wooden box.

For weeks, the box was Kyoshi's prayer altar. She would crouch beside it, sometimes feeding the kit some warmed milk, other times holding it close while she changed the soiled bedding. For weeks she kept this vigil, until one day she looked into the box and found it empty. Panicked, she ran around looking for her kit, only to look up by chance and find it chirping meekly from one of the rafters overhead, looking terrified that it had managed to fly.

"Looks like your kit has become a cat-bird," her father said wryly, as Kyoshi danced in circles beneath it trying to lure it down.

She named the kit Pancake, after the only solid food that it - she - would eat. Pretty soon, the young cat-bird became quite at home within the small house, sleeping in Kyoshi's room while perched upon her bed's headboard, or joining her on her daily excursions into caves and abandoned mines, perched upon her shoulder with her sharp paw-claws.

For almost a year they were always together, Kyoshi and Pancake, Pancake and Kyoshi. It didn't take long for the locals of the village to get used to this strange site of girl and cat-bird.

But one day, Pancake suddenly jumped from her shoulder and leapt into the sky. With panic, Kyoshi reached out to grab her, but her hands were too slow. She caught sight of another cat-bird, with brighter colouring, and with a duet of purrs and meowing, the two birds flew off and out of sight.

It broke Kyoshi's heart.

"She was always wild," her father told her softly, as she wept within his arms. "She stayed for a bit, but her home was out there."

After that, she could never give her heart to another animal, and for a while she had trouble giving her heart to another person. How could she, when other hearts seemed so fickle when it came to her love?

She was the only Avatar in noted history to live her life without an animal partner.