"'Cause I can!" she says. "Waterbending's fun. Shifu Hayaka says at the rate I'm learning I can get out of basic exercises and into healing inside a month." She caps her water bottle. "Which'll be potentially useful."

"Okay, well, as long as you don't do the same thing when you get to earthbending," he says wryly. "Or fire. Please do not hit me in the face with fire because you can."

"Noooo," denies Beila. "I am a playful fun Avatar! I'm very nice."

"Okay," says Dao. "You're a nice playful fun mean Avatar."

"I'm not mean," laughs Beila.

Dao giggles.

"Seriously, I'm gonna solve people's spirit problems and avert natural disasters and, I dunno, build a giant bridge across the ocean, and work with scientists to figure out what makes bending work. I'm gonna be awesome and everyone'll love me." She chews her lip. "I'm reasonably popular now, but it's for no reason, which kind of bothers me."

"That would bother me too!" says Dao. "It seems like it would be - really weird."

"It's like how there's still technically an Earth Monarchy," suggests Beila, shrugging. "Like, the politics of the entire world are all folded into the United Republic of Nations and the Earth Queen only ever does anything ceremonial anymore, but you can bet if she gets married it's on the news, if she gets pregnant it's on the news for weeks. Avatars regardless of what we do are a focus point for everyone's gossipy attention. I mean, I get it, it's just - I'm going to do awesome stuff, I feel like everyone could stand to wait a few more months till there's something to talk about besides what color I painted my bedroom and what my favorite subject in school is?"

He nods. "Yeah, I see what you mean. Well, I guess it also means that when you do start doing awesome stuff, you'll have plenty of attention already?" he offers.

"Yeah, I suppose. On some level I'm concerned that the questions about where I get my hair cut and whether I'm showing too much favoritism to Republic City by not going to the North Pole for my waterbending training will ever be completely replaced with 'so how did you go about designing that awesome bridge, huh?'"

"Bridge across the ocean," he muses. "How would you do it?"

"Spirits, I don't know, that's an earthbending-slash-architectural question," laughs Beila. "I'd get help, that's how, I'd talk to some people who know bridges and by then I would know rocks and we would do bridge-rock-things to figure it out."

"Well, you better make sure you know your stuff by the time you're getting interviewed on it," laughs Dao.

"Yeah, no kidding, that would be embarrassing - 'So, Avatar Beila, how do you plan to build the proposed bridge?' 'With... rocks?'" she says.

"Big rocks," Dao says solemnly.

"Super big rocks, probably from the ocean floor," agrees Beila, nodding sagely.

"Sounds press-ready to me," he says, totally failing to keep a straight face.

"Future Avatars -" Beila makes a slight face, that has only just occurred to her - "will say 'super big rocks' the way everyone since Korra announces that they look forward to serving you."

"...Is there a problem with future Avatars?"

"I have to die first," Beila points out. "Not looking forward to that."

"Well, sure, but it happens to everybody," says Dao. "And then you get to, like, hang around in the spirit world and tell them how to handle their rocks, or something. Don't you?"

"Yeah, I do, but, like, then I miss everything except for a handful of special occasions once Random Water Tribe Boy is running the show. I suppose it's comforting that I will still exist, but I don't think the spirits of past Avatars are - fully conscious, or I'd expect them to have more effects on things. They can do some stuff, but, like, Avatar Meixing wrote a lot about the landscape of the spirit world and it didn't look like the previous incarnations were all hanging out someplace having fun. My impression is that they pretty much sleep and lend emergency power and advice and then sleep again. Maybe I'll ask them when I figure out how to talk to them."