Page 113 of The Rise of Kyoshi (Avatar, The Last Airbender)

“I’m, um, referring to a different ‘we.’” Jinpa scratched the back of his neck. “Do you play Pai Sho, by any chance?”

Kyoshi frowned at his cryptic statement and sudden tangent. “I do not,” she said. “I have no taste for the game.”

Jinpa took her declaration as the signal to leave. He bowed and left her to her solitude.

Kyoshi sighed deeply and walked over to the reflective pool, where a cushion lay at the head. She sat down in the pose Lao Ge had taught her and closed her eyes halfway, her lashes forming a curtain over her view. She’d spent much of her time at the Air Temple meditating in this spot.

It seemed wrong to call it her favorite place. “The only one where she could be at relative peace” was more apt. No one had warned her how empty it would feel to have a singular goal and see it achieved. Yun’s reappearance, his assistance, his new and utter contempt for innocent life, gnawed at her edges and kept her from sleeping.

It was cooler by the edge of the pool than the rest of the room. She knew it was from the evaporation, but today there was a downright chill. Her skin prickled with goosebumps and she shivered.

“Kyoshi,” she heard a man say.

Her eyes flew open. Where she should have seen her reflection in the water, she saw a changing outline, still of a person, but rippling between dozens of shapes, as if she’d dashed the surface of the pool.

“Kyoshi,” she heard the voice say again.

A gust of wind sent her hair flying. A shroud of mist rose from the pool. She blinked, and there was a man sitting on top of the water, facing her, mirroring her pose.

He was in his thirties and ruggedly handsome. He wore the regalia of a great Water Tribe chieftain, his dark blue furs offsetting the paleness of his eyes. His body was adorned with the trophies of a mighty hunter, the sharp teeth of beasts laced around his neck and wrists.

“Kyoshi, I need your help,” he pleaded.

She stared at the spirit of the man whom she knew was dead. The man who’d been Jianzhu and Hei-Ran and Kelsang’s friend. The man who’d been her predecessor in the Avatar cycle.

“Kuruk?”

TO BE CONTINUED . . .