She appears to have landed on the floor of a clearing in a sparse deciduous forest. A blue jay flies overhead. The sun filters through the trees at a low angle from over thataway, so it's either early morning or late afternoon.

As she's looking around, a creature emerges from a clump of trees, twenty or thirty feet away. It has a body like a deer's, but a head like a cat's, with luxurious ear tufts similar to a lynx. It looks at her and meows.

Well.

She pages Alex, without much hope. She pages Michael, with exponentially less hope. She pets her dog.

"Hey, weird... cat-deer-thing. I guessing you don't speak English?"

It meows again, flicks its little deer tail nervously, and bounds off. So that's probably a no.

Well. That's great.

She - probably shouldn't immediately leave this area, if Alex might be able to get her back from here and only here, so she'll just.... try climbing a tree. See if she can see what else is around here.

Mostly looks to be more trees. They get denser toward the sun, sparser away from it.

A little whirling breeze spins up in front of her, rustling the leaves and whipping the thinner branches from side to side. There's a glimmer of light sparkling inside it, dancing in circles so fast it almost looks like a jittering loop.

"What's English?" it asks in a high piping voice.

She startles a little. Only a little.

"It's the language I'm speaking. Comes from a place called England."

The jittering light bounces from side to side, stirring the air with its passage. "Where's that?"

"Other side of the world from where I come from. Might be even further from here, I'm not very sure where we are."

"I know what all the sides of the world look like!" says the breeze. "I've been all over it! And I've never ever ever ever ever heard English before!" It twirls in tight loops for a moment before returning to its usual erratic bouncing course. "You're new!!"

"I guess I am."

"That's so exciting!!" It loops again. "What's your name? You have a name, right? Humans do that."

"Sure. I'm Karen. D'you have a name?"

"Nope!" Bouncebouncebounce. "Or if I did I've forgotten it. I'm not very important and people mostly don't talk to me. Or even know I'm there." Its cheerful chatter slows down a little as it progresses through this recitation, and its light grows dimmer; but then it brightens again, and bounces a few more times. "But now I've met you! Hi!"

"Hi. Um - do you have any idea where we are?"

"We're in the Earth Kingdom!"

"OK. Great." That's - ok, some kind of portal to another dimension, solid, that happens sometimes. She sighs. She considers mentioning that she's kind of hesitant to leave this spot, on the grounds that Alex might have a harder time finding her if she does, but given how excited the - glimmer? - is, she feels like she should maybe keep this concern closer to her chest than that.

"I guess I'm gonna need food at some point. If I'm stuck here. Does whatever you are eat food?"

"Nope!" it says, brightly. "I'm a spirit. Spirits don't need food like humans and other living creatures do. What do humans eat? Oh! I remember you don't eat grass!! Is that right?"

"That is correct, I do not eat grass. I'm more of a, like, fruit and nuts and cooked meat sort of person."

"Well, there's fruits and nuts in this forest. I think. There's fruits and nuts in forests sometimes. It might be the wrong season? I don't remember what season it is. And there probably isn't any cooked meat here. That only shows up in villages and camps usually."

"A village would be good. Not that I have any valid money to buy stuff, and they probably don't speak English, but - maybe we can work something out." 

"I'm very sure they don't speak English!" it confirms. "Is that a problem, though? Why?"

"Well - normally, if you run into someone who doesn't speak any of the same languages that you do, it means you can't understand each other. So it might be hard to say anything to them."

"Oh!"

It spins slower for a few seconds, thinking.

Then it says, "I can help!!"

"Really? How?"

"Well, I can understand you and talk to you even though I've never heard your language before and don't really even understand what a language is. But you can't do that and you don't think humans usually can. So it must be a special power I have as a spirit. So I can share it with you and then you'll have it and you can talk to people and ask them to give you cooked meat!" It bounces up and down rapidly, jittering a little from side to side along the way. "I know how to share powers! I did it once!"

"OK. That sounds great! It - doesn't have any side effects or anything?"

"What's a side effect?"

"Um, a side effect is something that happens as a result of doing something else, but isn't the specific thing you meant to do. Like, if the thing you meant to do was let me understand everyone's languages, and then it also made me forget my name or turn blue or something, that'd be a side effect. Where I come from magic pretty commonly has weird side effects."

"Oh," says the spirit. "No. Weird bad things happen when a spirit shares all of themselves with a human, but it's fine if it's just one thing, and not very much of a spirit."

"Oh." She frowns. This is a terrible idea probably. She should probably not randomly merge with weird spirits she found in forests in other dimensions.

Her stomach rumbles.

"Yeah, OK. Let's do it."

"Okay!"

The spirit does another little loop, rustling the leaves vigorously, and the tiny mote of light lands on her nose. There's a feeling sort of like a jolt of static electricity, and also not very much like that at all, and then nothing seems very different afterward, but when she hears the spirit's voice it's now on the inside of her head.

You can try talking to that person over there who's staring at you! it suggests. Oh, never mind, they went away.

(Aw. She misses Alex maybe two percent less.)

"Who? Where?"

I don't know, I only saw them right before I shared with you. They were over to the east of us, where there's more trees.

"Mmm."

She hops down out of the tree and frowns at the spot where she landed.

"Can you find this place again, if we leave it to look for a village?"

Yes! Probably. I think. I could find it on my own but I don't know how to navigate for a human and it's probably much more complicated since you're so slow and you can't fly and stuff.

"Oh. Well, remember it, OK? And maybe check over here every now and then, if it's no trouble for you. 'Cause someone else could come looking for me, and if that happens we wanna make sure we know right away."

She carves a K into her tree, just to make sure that if she does make it back here she'll be able to know she's back.

I'll remember! it promises. And I might come back and check. But I don't know if I'd be able to find you again, and I want you to be able to talk to people!

"Makes sense. Speaking of talking to people - "

She kneels in front of Wishbone. "How you holding up?"

He whines.

The magic interprets this as: I've had about enough magic for this week. And I want to go home. And I want you to carry me to civilization while I continue whining about various aspects of our present situation, assuming civilization is even a thing that can be found here.

"That's rough, buddy."

She scoops him up. 

"All right. Um - glimmer thing - can I call you Glimmer? I think people're mostly easier to interact with if they have names - d'you know which way we walk to get to something resembling civilization?"

I guess you can call me that if you want. I'm not really familiar with this area... maybe try going east?

"I have absolutely no idea which way east is."

Oh. It's the direction with more trees and sun.

"Cool. Thanks, Glimmer."

She'll just walk east then. And try not to think too much about whether leaving her current spot is making it impossible for Alex to find her later.

There are more trees, and then there are less trees, and then there's a little ravine, and then there is a medium amount of trees, and then there is a village. By this point the sun is high overhead.

The village seems quiet. There's a small child playing in front of a house, but when she sees Karen she drops the smooth stone she's been rolling back and forth between her hands and darts inside.

Sigh.

Does it have anything resembling a shop where one might buy something to eat?

Well, not obviously. There are buildings but not enough signage to distinguish houses from shops if indeed any of them are shops.

When she's been peering around for a minute or so, an old woman with a cane emerges from one of the buildings and makes her way slowly toward Karen.

"Hello," she says, in a completely foreign language which Karen nevertheless understands perfectly. "You look lost."

"Yep! Got separated from my friends in the woods back there, and now I'm super turned around. I should probably try to find them, but first I'm pretty worried about, like, obtaining food and stuff."

The experience of spirit-assisted speaking is weird, because she's still forming words in English the way she normally would, but she can also hear and feel herself articulating the same message in the strange language she doesn't actually know, and understand the meaning of the words just as well as she would if someone else were saying them.

"Hmm," says the old woman. "Those are interesting clothes you're wearing."

(She herself is dressed in a vaguely preindustrial-Asia sort of style, and all in drab shades of green and brown.)

"Yeaaah," she says, glancing down at her own navy hoodie and jeans. "I'm not from around here."

"It's not wise to stand out, these days," she says. "Why don't you come inside and have something to eat? I can spare you one meal without asking anything in return."

"That would be very kind of you, thank you." She kind of feels like she should be bowing, but she doesn't actually know if they do that here.

She considers setting Wishbone down outside, but isn't actually confident that she'll remember to bring food out for him later, so... he can just stay with her, that's sort of rude but she's pretty sure she needs to make sure her whole party eats.

So the old woman leads her into the house. It's a very small house; there seems to be at least a separate bedroom, but the kitchen and dining area and sitting area and front room are all the same room. She gets out a chipped brown earthenware bowl and heaps it full of tasty-looking noodles from a simmering pot, then offers it to Karen accompanied by a pair of chopsticks.

"Thank you very much," she says brightly. She bows her head very briefly and silently thanks God, too, mostly out of habit. 

Luckily she used to use chopsticks whenever she visited her grandparents as a kid, so she's able to avoid looking like a complete and total dumbass while she eats. 

The old woman smiles.

While Karen eats, she putters around tidying the room, straightening things out, tending to the pot of noodles. As Karen nears the end of the bowl, the old woman finally sits down across from her at the table.

"You seem like a nice young lady," she says. "But there are those who would be suspicious of someone who dresses so strangely. For my peace of mind, would you accept a few sets of clothing? I can't give them away, but there are a few repairs I need to do around the house that could use a second pair of hands. If you help me with those, I'll consider it a fair trade."

"Sure. I don't know anything about repairing things, but I do have hands."

This is honestly kind of a lot to be given out of the blue, but she's pretty sure some people are just nice people.

(And some people are secretly serial killers. More than baseline, where she comes from. Could go either way.)

"I'm sure we'll manage. Perhaps you'll even learn something."

So once Karen finishes her noodles, the old woman leads her around the house and directs her in accomplishing various tasks. This window shutter needs to be re-hung, like so; these gardening tools have come a little loose and their handles need re-tightening, like so; this cabinet hinge is squeaky and needs to be oiled by someone capable of standing steadily on a chair to reach it; this old broken chair needs to be taken apart so the pieces can be reused or traded away or used as firewood; this high shelf should be taken off the wall, since the old woman can't reach it anymore...

There's a full afternoon of accumulated work, most of it small and inconsequential by itself, but all of it the sort of thing that's good to get done when you have a chance. At the end of it, the old woman presents her with three sets of clothes in her approximate size: one simple dress, two pants-and-tunic outfits, appropriate undergarments for each, and a pair of old wooden sandals.

"They used to belong to my daughter, before she was arrested by the Fire Nation," she says. "Better to see that they go to someone who has need of them than to let them sit on a shelf for another ten years or sell them to a passing trader, I think. And we don't get many traders passing through here anyway. You can have her old hunting bag, too, to carry your strange things in."

"Thank you very much. I'll do my best to take good care of them. Can I borrow your room to change?"

"Yes, of course."

She'll just do that, then, and hopefully come out looking something more like a normal person. She loads the rest of the clothes up in her bag.

There's obviously no extra room in the house, and she doesn't have the means to pay for a roof over her head tonight, so she should probably be moving on. 

"Thanks for everything! Um - do you know which way I should be going if I want to get to a bigger town where I can maybe find a job and stuff?"

"The nearest larger town is to the north," she says, "but I'm not sure how much luck you'll have finding a job there. Things have been... difficult lately." She sighs. "I'd advise you to go where the invading army isn't, but I'm not sure there's anywhere like that left, except for the great walled cities. And you won't make it from here to Omashu on one bowl of noodles. The capital's even farther."

"Well. I'll manage somehow. What I really need is a bow, but if there aren't any around I guess I'll figure something else out."

"I hope so," she says. "Good luck."

"Mhm!"

And she heads off north. 

"Hey Glimmer?" she asks, when she's well out of earshot of anyone in the village. "You know anything about the Fire Nation?"

Well, I know they're the elemental nation of fire, says the spirit, helpfully. They come from a chain of volcanic islands to the west. It's really pretty there.

"I see. Are they the people invading?"

I guess so? I don't really understand what invading is.

"Invading's when you take an army and use it to take over a bunch of land that wasn't yours before."

Oh. That doesn't sound very nice!

"It's usually not."

I guess sometimes people do things that aren't nice.

"Kind of a known trait of people, honestly."

She sleeps in a tree and tells Wishbone to keep watch. Worst that can happen is that she falls. She'll figure out food in the morning. Right now she just needs to - sleep, and not lose her head, and make sure she's not running on empty. 

She really hopes Alex is looking for her. He's definitely looking for her. He's probably kicking Father Michael's furniture again while they research portal spells right now. Or something.

In the morning she moves on, keeping her eyes out for animals to kill or berries to collect.

There's a berry bush over there. The berries are small and hard and bright red, and offer no guarantees about whether or not they're toxic to humans.

She picks a bunch of them and stores them in her bag, then walks for a few more hours and waits to see if her hands swell up or anything. If they don't, she can go through the rest of the poison-testing process - lick one berry and wait several hours, eat one berry and wait several hours, and only then eat the rest of the berries.

She keeps her eyes out for anything else edible in the mean time.

Nothing, nothing, more no—

Something behind her makes a truly indescribable noise.

Moments later, a creature emerges from a thick stand of trees, behind her and to the left. It's bigger than it has any right to be, and looks like if it got hit by a truck the truck would be the one to regret the encounter. It swings its head around to peer at Karen, gronking suspiciously.

She immediately drops Wishbone and draws her knife, then stills.

This is... meat. Meat is good for survival and stuff. Getting ripped open by sharp teeth is bad for it, though.

It's very large. But she's very strong. And she's going to be in worse shape the longer she goes without anything substantive to eat.

She bites her lip and focuses on her breathing and decides to watch it for another few moments, to see if she can get a better sense of her odds of taking it down with just a knife.

Gronk. Huff. Huff.

The creature decides to relieve her of this dilemma by charging.

Well, then they'll fight!

She scoops Wishbone up and jumps out of the way in one fluid motion, drops Wishbone and tells him to run, and turns around to bury her knife in the creature's neck. Hopefully it's got arteries and stuff there.

Its thick neck turns out to be bulked out significantly by a ruff of stiff wiry hair, which absorbs most of the blow. Her knife scratches it but doesn't hit anything vital. It shakes its head and lunges, making angry Chewbacca noises.

Well, frick. She tries to dodge again, doesn't quite make it, and gets knocked off her feet.

She gets up and goes for its underbelly. It she can cut a big gash in one of its inner thighs or something then maybe it'll bleed to death.

The fur of the underbelly is softer, and her knife bites deep. It rakes her with its claws before it goes down, but it does go down.

She clutches her wound for a second, then parts the fur at its throat and finishes killing it as cleanly as she can.

Now she has approximately five times her weight in extradimensional moose meat. She probably won't need to worry about food for a while, assuming she can find a way to preserve and carry it.

She sits on the ground and leans against the moose-thing and suddenly feels the need to fight the urge to cry. 

She doesn't want to be here. She doesn't wanna have to try to figure out how to try to dry her kill out, just because she knows basic things like general poison-testing doesn't mean that she knows how to properly smoke meat so it turns into jerky. She doesn't wanna have to try to figure out how to tan the moose-thing hide so she doesn't feel wasteful, or figure out what you're supposed to do with moose-thing bones, or figure out how you cut a moose-thing up without making a mess of everything in the first place.

Wishbone trots over and snuggles her.

Very impressive. I feel very safe.

"Thanks." Pat pat pat. "Be super helpful if you could gather wood for a fire."

After a long couple minutes, she gets up, takes most of her clothes off to keep them from getting more blood on them, and sets to work trying to skin her moose-thing. She doesn't know what she's doing. It's messy. There's definitely a lot of meat, though, and even if she can't figure out preservation, she at least knows how to spear chunks of it and cook it over a fire.

Nothing bothers her while she's making a mess of the moose, nor while she's cooking and eating it afterward.

Then there will be nothing to distract her from her own incompetence. She wishes she'd paid more attention to, like, Oregon Trail memoirs, or how the kid does things in My Side Of The Mountain, or asked someone at superhero camp survival class about this situation, or something.

She eats as much as she can, and gives Wishbone as much as he wants, which is a lot for someone so small, honestly. She's not super sure how turning moose-thing meat into moose-thing jerky works, and isn't even sure she has a good enough idea how to do it to take a stab in the right direction, but she figures she's gotta try to make good use of what she has. She cuts some strips of moose-thing hide and uses them to hang some meat from a tree, then starts a second fire underneath it, aiming for something low and slow-burning. Maybe this'll cause dehydration. Maybe it'll ruin everything. Who knows.

Aiming to make a wooden rack to hold stuff high over a fire is a lot more frustrating. Stuff keeps breaking or falling apart as she works on it. She's not exactly afraid of dying in the next little while here, but she feels pretty stupid. 

She does manage to keep her moose-thing hide pretty close to whole in the process of removing it from the animal. She scrapes it off pretty well, but she's not sure how to tan it, and it'll probably start rotting at some point if it doesn't get preserved somehow. Maybe someone in town will know what to do with it, if she can get that far before her stuff rots. 

She works late into the night without feeling like anything she's doing has been unambiguously a good idea. At least she can have more meat for dinner. Could be worse. Theoretically.

(She misses Alex. Alex would know what to do with the moose-thing.)

In the morning she eats some now-slightly-suspicious cooked meat, packs up the scraped moose hide and teeth and a few bones and some suspicious-looking not-really-much-like-proper-jerky stuff, puts on some non-bloodstained clothes, and heads out. Be cool if she could keep the antlers, but they're big and hard to carry, and she has bigger problems. She leaves the rest of the body behind and sets the fastest pace she can sustainably manage. (This is pretty fast. The main limiting factor is the forest getting in the way, so she can't hit her normal running speeds.)

There's a lot of forest. It's hard to go in a straight line when the terrain is this rough and overgrown, but at least the trees stay sparse enough that there's still the sun to navigate by, mostly. And if she gets turned around, she can ask her spirit friend to point the way north; its sense of direction seems to be completely absolute.

A little before noon, when the sun is too high to guide her, she finally emerges from the trees. There's a hill directly ahead, and when she crests it, she can see down a long slope to a small town surrounded by low earthen walls. Honestly it might still be small enough to qualify as a village, but it is bigger than the last place.

Good enough. She heads into the village and looks for anything resembling a general store.

There are a few people out on the street; they universally give her distrustful looks and edge away as she approaches.

...except for the small child, of indeterminate age and gender, wearing an adult-size tunic whose sleeves extend well past the ends of their little arms, who runs up to her and says, "Hi! I'm Fen! What's your name?"

"I'm Karen! I just got here."

"Kaaaaaren. That's a nice name! Have you seen my mom? She's tall and pretty and she wears green and she has a shiny pebble necklace!"

"I don't think I have!"

"Oh." The kid slouches a little, disappointed. "Sorry to bother you. —Hey, is that a saber-tooth moose-lion hide?!"

"Um - I think so. It had saber teeth and antlers, so."

"Coooooool. You gotta show it to Bao! C'mon!"

The kid grabs her hand and pulls, trying to lead her along the street.

She'll follow, then. Easier than trying to figure out what to do with this stuff by herself.

She is hauled along the street and around a corner and up to the door of a small shabby house, where the kid finally lets go of her to bang on the door and yell, "Bao! Bao! This girl with a funny name found a whole entire saber-tooth moose-lion hide!!!"

The door opens.

A man peers out, medium-tall and wiry, with greying hair and a short bristly beard. "Eh? Come on, Fen, not another of your... oh!" His eyes go wide at the sight of Karen's bundle. "Amazing! How on earth did you come by that?"

" - lucky find, I guess," she says, after a half-second pause. Not like they can see the claw marks now that she's changed clothes. "Found a dead one on the side of the road and figured the hide was maybe valuable. I dunno how to tan it or anything, though, I was really hoping there'd be someone in town with a better sense of what to do with it than me."

"Well, I'd be happy to buy it off you. Did you find the antlers too? Those are worth even more in some places. Here, pass it over so I can check the condition. I'll give you three silver for it if it's any good."

"Bao!" The kid stamps their foot. "Don't rip off the weird stranger!"

"...all right, three and ten, but only if it's all usable. Three flat if I have to take it apart and throw some out."

The kid nods firmly, finding this an acceptable price.

"Didn't think to grab the antlers," she says, but she isn't really very disappointed with herself. "Three and ten sounds good." She unfolds her find.

The man inspects the hide, declares it of acceptable quality, and fetches her payment: three loose coins, and ten darker ones looped onto a short length of string. Each coin is round with a square hole through the middle, and fairly light.

"If you found it close by, it might be worth your time to go back and look for them," he says. "I've seen those go for ten silver a pair. Not around here, admittedly; that was back when I still traveled to Omashu a few times a year."

"I dunno. Maybe. It was a ways back, and I don't have a cart or anything. I guess I also don't have a lot of money."

"Sorry, I can't help you there. I used to go out on hunting trips myself, but that was years ago. My leg can't take it now."

"Awwwwwww," groans Fen. "But I really wanna see some saber-tooth moose-lion antlers! And how about the teeth?"

"The teeth aren't worth too much but they're not hard to transport, either," says Bao.

"They're COOL-LOOKING," says Fen.

"Cool-looking teeth won't put food in your belly."

Fen grins triumphantly. "They do if you're a saber-tooth moose-lion!!"

She has the teeth; she's not interested in selling them. Gotta have something to add to her drawer of battle trophies when she gets home.

"Maybe I will go back. Haven't really got anything better to do, I guess. About how much would you buy them for if I did manage to bring them back, d'you think?"

"I could afford five silver, in the hope of passing them on to a traveling trader the next time I see one. Maybe five and thirty if they're especially big."

"I reeeeeeally wanna see 'em," says Fen, clasping their hands together in front of them and making big pleading eyes. "If you bring back the antlers you can stay with me in my house when you get back! I'm sure Mom won't mind. I'll even show you my rock collection! Some of them are sparkly!"

....she is fond of having a roof over her head.

"All right. I'll see if I can find 'em again. Tomorrow, though, they're too far back to make it there and back again today. This place have anywhere to buy food?"

Bao starts to say, "Well, you could..."

...and then Fen interrupts, bouncing excitedly. "Take me fishing take me fishing take me fishing!!! I'll show you to the river and everything! I've got my own fishing rod! Pleeeeease?"

"Fen, you know it's dangerous to go that far from town..."

"I'm sure I'll be safe with Karen! She PROBABLY fought a saber-tooth moose-lion ALL BY HERSELF," declares Fen. "If the scary soldiers come she can BEAT THEM UP."

"I do not think she did that," says Bao, facepalming.

"Yeah, I'd love to, but I don't think I can fight a bunch of soldiers any more than you can." Or, well, she does, but not reliably, not without getting people killed, and she really hates getting people killed. And she doesn't know how they're armed. "And I wouldn't wanna get in trouble with your parents or anything."

"Mom wouldn't mind!" says Fen. "I really miss fishing!"

"Maybe another time," says Bao. "For now, why don't you show Karen to Auntie Jin's house? I hear she's making dumplings this afternoon, and you know what happens if you get there in time to help."

"FREE DUMPLINGS!!!" the child exclaims, and grabs Karen's hand again. "C'mon c'mon c'mon!"

- well, it's food.

She follows.

Fen leads her all the way across town and knocks on another door. As soon as it begins to swing open, they're already excitedly saying, "Hi Auntie Jin! Bao said you're making dumplings! Can I help? This is Karen she's really neat and probably fought a saber-tooth moose-lion!"

The door finishes opening. The woman on the other side looks older than Bao but younger than the old lady from the village, and has a very gentle smile. "Hello, Fen. It's nice to meet you, Karen. Come on in; I was just getting started. Would you like a cup of tea while we work?"

"Yeah!" says Fen.

"Yes, thank you."

She does not, actually, particularly like tea, but she feels like it's nicer not to refuse, and it's not like she has a ton of fluids in her system right now. Not exactly in a place with hot and cold running water.

"Right this way."

The kitchen is not super spacious but it's plenty big enough for two adults and a child. Auntie Jin pours three cups of tea, which is subtly-flavoured enough that it's mostly just slightly pleasant-smelling warm water, and sets about helping Fen roll up their sleeves; then the two of them settle into an obviously-practiced dumpling-making routine, with Fen enthusiastically including Karen in everything and trying to teach her three things at once about how to help, and Auntie Jin stepping in where necessary to restore order and make things more comprehensible.

That's - good. It's tiring but it's good. If she can focus on this then she doesn't need to focus on anything else.

(She may not be very focused. She's trying.)

Nobody has any complaints, and the dumplings turn out okay. They're very tasty dumplings.

Awesome. She is successfully stalling on the starvation front.

"This was very good, thank you."

"You're very welcome," smiles Auntie Jin. "Teaching young folks to cook is one of life's great pleasures. And what better reward for a job well done than a tasty meal you made yourself?"

"There really aren't many better things in life."

Not right now, anyway.

"So! Fen. Is there, like, an inn around here? Anywhere else a person can stay the night?"

"I dunno," says Fen. "I guess you could stay at my house. But I'm not showing you my rock collection until I see an antler!"

Auntie Jin blinks, mildly confused; but then she says, "That might be the best offer you'll get. I'm afraid we haven't had a proper inn here in quite some time."

"Easily beats sleeping outside. I'll take it."

Fen gives Karen a somewhat exaggerated suspicious look, like you might do if you weren't sure how to look suspiciously at someone but felt that the situation called for it anyway. Auntie Jin laughs behind her hand, and then Fen giggles too. "C'mon, I'll show you my house!"

Karen follows!

Some of the houses they pass have lamps lit against the coming night, but most are dark.

The house Fen brings her to is small, although not that much smaller than its neighbours, and surprisingly tidy for a place implicitly belonging to an unsupervised ten-year-old. Fen conducts an abbreviated tour: there is a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a shed out back containing a somewhat more sophisticated toilet than one might naively expect in a remote medieval village. Karen gets to sleep in the living room, on an efficiently assembled pile of blankets.

Cool. Cool cool cool. She thanks Fen and settles down for the night cuddling her dog. 

Hey Glimmer? Uh, I dunno if you can hear me, this is what I'd do to talk to my telepath friend, does it work with you?

Yes! Hello!

Oh, cool. 

I miss my friends. Did you ever have friends?

I don't really remember, the spirit admits. I haven't talked to anyone—properly talked not just startled them and watched them run away—in a really long time.

I'm sorry. That's tough.

I have a bunch of friends back home. I didn't use to, but - well, we do a lot of hard stuff, but we always tackle it together, and that makes it a lot easier.

Anyway. I hope they find me soon.

I hope so too. You sound sad about not having them.

Yeah, I am. I still have Wishbone here, and I have you, I guess, and that's neat, but - I just really wish Alex were here.

Maybe they'll find you, the spirit says encouragingly. I don't really know how, but I don't know a lot of things.

Yeah. Me neither. I'm sure they're working on it.

She pets her dog and mutters a prayer under her breath and goes to sleep.

In the morning, she awakens to the smell of breakfast, which Fen is making. It appears to be... some sort of soup. It's not going to win any awards, but it's edible.

She'll take edible.

"Welp. I guess I should go back and find those antlers."

"Good luck!" says Fen, bouncing.

Mrrrgh, doing things.

It's not that she minds doing things, exactly, it's that she feels like there's probably something important happening back home, and maybe she should be working harder on finding a way back, but she doesn't really know how she'd start on that, so she's off doing fetch quests instead.

She does her best to head back the way she came, leaning on Glimmer for navigation.

The spirit is reasonably helpful.

The saber-tooth moose-lion's remains have been fairly well picked over by this point, but the skull is still there, antlers and all.

Awesome. Great. She'll just carry these back to the village.

She arrives just as the sun is beginning to dip behind the treeline to the west.

There appears to be some sort of commotion in the village. Raised voices, armoured figures looming menacingly in the street.

Huh. She really should have figured out whether she had enough money for a bow before she left, that was stupid. She sets the skull and her dog down by a tree and quietly ducks behind a building, trying to see if she can get a closer look.

Do you know what this is?

No, the spirit says worriedly. I think those people in the fancy armour are from the Fire Nation, though.

There's a flare of light from up ahead, like someone just lit a torch. A voice cries out in fear.

"HEY!" yells another voice, this one recognizably Fen's. "Quit being such a bully!"

Gasps of alarm. Someone says, "Fen, no—"

Dangit, dangit, dangit - she should have been more prepared -

She sprints in Fen's direction, quickly and at least outwardly calmly. This is dumb. This is a dumb situation. 

She rounds a corner and tries to take in whatever's happening in, like, as little time as humanly possible.

There's a stranger there, a young man who doesn't look far from Karen's age, with a dramatic burn scar nearly covering one eye. His armour is similar in style to the other Fire Nation soldiers, but seems fancier still. Blades of fire hover at his fingertips, and his stance is that of a competent martial artist in an unfamiliar style. He's looking down at Fen with impatient contempt, good eye slightly narrowed, scarred one half-closed but alert.

Fen, holding a short branch in both hands the way someone who has never seen a sword in their life might hold a sword, plants their feet firmly and scowls up at him without a discernible sign of fear. The branch is crooked and has leaves on it.

Uh huh. 

So they have other kinds of magic here. Burn victim could have pretty much anything up his sleeve. Besides the army. She's never taken on an army before, but she doesn't like her chances.

"Fen," she says, with as much authority in her voice as she can muster, "drop it."

"NO," says Fen.

The scarred boy makes an irritated noise, flicking his fingers to dismiss the gathered flames. "Out of my way, kid."

"YOU get out of MY way," Fen says stubbornly.

"I don't have time for this."

A nearby soldier takes a half-step forward. "Sir," he says, and that's as far as he gets; the scarred boy glances sharply at him, and he shuts up and stands back immediately.

Mrrgh. She scans again, trying to count the number of soldiers in the area. She casually steps towards Fen, trying to give off the impression of someone too absent-minded to think that anyone might target her.

"Fen, your mother wouldn't want you to get yourself killed for no reason."

There's maybe a half-dozen close enough to be semi-immediate threats, and a few more in sight. Villagers huddle nervously in the street and against their houses, watching the unfolding scene. It's not completely clear who Fen is defending; there are several people nearby who they could have stepped in front of before Karen arrived.

"Yeah well SHE'S not HERE," says Fen. "And THIS guy was BULLYING MY FRIENDS."

"All I want to know," says the scarred boy, with an air of thin and dwindling patience, "is where to find the Avatar. Tell me that, and nobody needs to get hurt."

"The Avatar's not here EITHER!"

She wrests the branch out of Fen's hand with one hand and firmly grabs their shoulder with the other, so they can't run off or rush any of the soldiers.

"I'm sure he's nicer if you don't wave sticks in his face," she says, despite being sure of no such thing.

That assertion actually gets a slight smile out of the scarred boy.

"PROBABLY NOT," says Fen, glaring. "He's MEAN and you should BEAT HIM UP."

The scarred boy raises his eyebrow—he's only got the one—in a mildly skeptical expression. "Should she?" Skepticism shifts to interest; he looks more directly at Karen. "And how do you expect her to manage that?"

She actually really wants to find out whether she can beat all of these people up without resorting to killing any of them.

She really really wants none of these helpful civilians to get themselves killed.

"I'd rather not test it."

"I bet you can take him," says Fen, with wholly unsupported confidence.

"Is that so..." The scarred boy's ever-present frown takes on a more thoughtful cast. He's looking intently at Karen now. His eyes are a strikingly pretty shade of golden yellow. "Maybe the Avatar isn't so far away after all."

"Wait, what??" says Fen, bewildered.

"I wouldn't know."

Do you know what the Avatar is?

Of course! says the spirit. The Avatar is the bridge between the human and spirit worlds, and master of the four elements. I saw them once a long time ago! They looked busy so I didn't try to say hi.

The scarred boy thinks for a moment longer, then nods decisively.

"Let go of the kid," he says to Karen. "You're coming with me."

Mrrgh.

She probably can't take all of the soldiers in the town, especially if there are more she can't see. It'll be harder to get away if she gives them more control of the situation, but maybe she can put some distance between them and the village before she makes a break for it. 

"All right," she says, shrugging. "Can you go right home, Fen?"

Fen scowls. "NO. I'm NOT letting the scary soldiers take you. If you won't fight them, I WILL."

They grab for the branch.

She tosses the branch away and kneels to look Fen in the eye.

"Listen. Fen. I'm gonna be fine. The best thing you can do for me right now is go on home and make sure you're still in one piece when your mom gets home. OK? Can you do that for me? Please?"

Fen's scowl wavers—steadies—wavers again—and then they burst into tears and cling to Karen's arm with all their strength. "You can't just LET them TAKE you!!! You CAN'T!!! I w-won't let you!!!!!"

She hugs Fen tight.

"Shhhh. I'm not the person they're looking for anyway. They'll let me go in a few days and it'll be fine. I just don't wanna have to be worrying about you during that time, OK?"

Fen is crying too hard to respond to this line of argument.

"Ugh," the scarred boy mutters under his breath. "Enough of this." He nods to the closest pair of soldiers. "Separate them. Don't hurt the kid more than you have to."

The soldiers begin prying Fen off of Karen. They're not especially gentle about it but do avoid causing major injury.

She lets them.

She stands and regards the scarred boy evenly.

He looks back at her for a moment, then turns to Fen, who is currently doing an excellent impression of a passionately furious bobcat and requiring the full strength of both soldiers to restrain.

"Kid," he says sharply. This has no effect. "Fen. Look at me."

The frantic struggles begin to slow.

"Do you know what happens when you pick a fight you can't win?"

Fen subsides further, looks up at him, and slowly shakes their head.

The scarred boy points at his face.

Fen's eyes go wide.

"If your friend isn't the Avatar and doesn't know where to find them, or tells me everything she does know, I'll let her go. I promise you that on my honour as a prince of the Fire Nation."

A few of the soldiers shift their weight slightly, as though shocked by this declaration but too disciplined to react more overtly. The villagers, already cowering, cower harder.

Fen nods slowly. "Okay," they whisper, their voice hoarse from crying. "Okay."

The soldiers let go. Fen sits down in the middle of the street and hugs their knees and sniffles.

She doesn't react, other than to mentally adjust her opinion of the scarred kid up somewhat and note that oh, hey, prince, apparently.

Hey. Do you remember where we left Wishbone? Are you able to tell him what's happening without anyone noticing?

Yes but I can't talk to him without going there and I don't want to leave you alone because what if the scary firebender says something important while I'm gone and you don't understand??? And people might see me if I went out in front of everybody. I'm not really sure how easy it is for people to see me.

Right, yeah, OK. Just keeping track of my options. We'll let him know whenever it seems like nobody's likely to say anything important, I guess.

The scarred kid flicks a glance at Karen and jerks his head in a beckoning motion, then turns and walks away, obviously expecting her to follow him. Soldiers fall in around her.

Well, then she'll follow, continuing to look as unconcerned and harmless as she can. She thinks she's doing OK at it.

They walk. Out of the village and along the road to the west.

No one seems very inclined to make conversation.

How much time would you have to be away for to go tell Wishbone?

I'm not sure... I'm not very good at time.

...maybe we'll wait until they go to sleep.

Okay.

Walking continues.

Eventually they reach a river, and turn to follow it downstream. Some distance along, there is a boat. The boat lowers a ramp, and the prince ascends, with his soldiers escorting Karen behind him.

She sighs. It's gonna be a lot harder to escape on her own once they're on a boat. River's not as bad as an ocean, though. Maybe she can jump off and scramble up one of the riverbanks. She still really shouldn't risk it. But if she leaves on her own, she can't go back to the village, and that'll make Fen sad. This isn't that important but it's kind of important. A little.

She's curious.

She follows them onto the ship.

Once everyone is aboard, they retract the ramp.

The prince turns to Karen and frowns his thoughtful frown.

"You don't look much like the Avatar," he acknowledges. "But I can't imagine who else would be this calm, standing where you are."

She shrugs. "You swore on your honor."

That and she can probably outrun them, if she can launch herself off the boat and if none of them have, like, horses. Amphibious-horse-things. Amphibious horses might be sort of a problem.

He snorts, a strange mix of amusement and—something else. Anger? Despair? Loss? Some flavour of old pain, all its sharp edges long since worn away.

"Is there anyone over the age of twelve who still believes in the Fire Nation's honour?"

This question makes the nearby soldiers distinctly uncomfortable.

Well, that probably rests on cultural context she doesn't have.

"You sound sort of like you do."

His frown deepens, but he doesn't contradict her.

"Are you the Avatar?"

"Nah."

"Know anything about a rumour that a strange girl about your age was seen airbending in the forest near here?"

"No."

Anything I did that could have been mistaken for - what even is airbending?

Airbending is controlling air, like firebenders control fire and waterbenders control water and earthbenders control earth. The spirit's mental voice sounds doubtful when it adds, I don't think I've seen you do anything that looked like airbending...

"Why does that kid think you can fight me?"

"Found a saber-tooth-moose-lion corpse while I was traveling. Took the hide and sold it. Fen got it into his head that I killed it myself."

He frowns at her in silence for a few long seconds, then shakes his head.

"I don't believe you."

Damn.

She shrugs. "He's really not great at judging what a fight you can win looks like."

"I said I'd let you go if you told me everything." He shifts his stance slightly, into something a little less relaxed and more aggressive. "I didn't say anything about what I'd do if you lied to me."

She can run either way. She can outrun anyone, and she can lay low if she has to - cut her hair, hang out in forests, trek further than anyone would expect her to. And he's not going to ask about whether she's the slayer, or whether she's from another dimension. He's not gonna ask about anything important.

She's still kinda curious what happens from here. 

"I ran into a saber-tooth-moose-lion on the way to Fen's village. I'd never seen one before. Figured maybe it was gonna kill me, but I managed to cut an artery and kill it first. Fen has no way of knowing this, and I suspect that if I told anyone else they wouldn't believe it, but if you really wanna know, that's what happened."

...he studies her for a moment. His frown this time looks... frustrated.

"It doesn't make sense," he says, almost more to himself than her. "The way you tried to protect the kid—the way you took me at my word—you dress like an Earth Kingdom peasant but you're not, are you."

Shrug.

Kind of is one now.

"You're... but it doesn't make sense that you're the Avatar... but it doesn't make sense that you're not the Avatar..."

His frown slowly deepens. Then it clears a little, momentarily, into a look of realization.

"But there's one thing I know you can't lie about," he says, and abruptly lunges forward with a quick punch that sends a jet of orange-red flame blasting directly toward her face.

She ducks into a crouch, very quickly, operating way more on instinct than conscious choice.

Well. I guess that's firebending?

A second fire blast follows, tracking her to the deck as the first one passes harmlessly over her head.

She springs sideways, dodging again.

(This is dumb. This is dumb and she should be getting away now that there are fireball spells involved.)

She changes direction when she next hits the ground, then sweeps a leg under him in an attempt to knock him off his feet.

He rolls over the sweep and pops up again with another fire blast, this one aimed slightly to her left—either a mistake, or an attempt to force her to dodge in a specific direction.

Nah, not playing. If she catches on fire, well, she's about to jump into the river anyway.

She punches him, square in the solar plexus, with a level of force that's calibrated for fighting vampires and Quendi. He'll be lucky to get away with a broken rib.

The force of the blow sends him flying; he lands heavily against the railing that circles the deck, and has to take a moment to catch his breath, snarling silently with pain and anger. The soldiers stationed along the railing shift to ready stances, but for some reason none of them attack.

(She does not, in fact, catch on fire; the flames are uncomfortably hot, but dissipate without touching her.)

Huh. In any case, she's feeling kind of like she's overstayed her welcome at this point.

She charges for the railing.

The soldiers start to move, probably into simultaneous fire blasts—but then they stop, abruptly, and instead stand aside to let her pass.

She gives up on trying to formulate a mildly cutting remark about his honor. Maybe this sort of arguably counts as letting her go.

She dives as far as she can away from the ship and swims for the shore.

(It's fine fine fine fine, the shore is right over there, she's not gonna drown.)

He stands at the railing to watch her go, but doesn't chase her or send his men after her.

When she climbs out of the river, she looks back at him, briefly, and then heads off towards the forest. She doesn't run until there are enough trees between him and her that she can't be seen. No sense in letting him know about how fast she travels over land.

Firebending is much scarier up close, the spirit comments once they're out of sight of the boat.

"Didn't even burn me to a crisp. I guess he's not very old, though. Probably scarier in the hands of someone who has a better idea what they're doing."

If that's true I think I don't want to see a better firebender than that.

"Sorry. Thanks for sticking with me."

I want you to be able to talk to people, and if I went away you couldn't.

"Yeah. I think that would have gone a lot worse without the talking."

She stares up at the sky through the trees. There're stars. 

"If I settle down for the night, can you go find Wishbone and lead him here?"

I think so.

"That would be really helpful."

Okay, I'll go.

"Thanks."

She climbs a tree and mopes. She still hasn't eaten dinner, the meat in her pack is getting really suspicious, and everything in the world is deeply unfair.

She sleeps.

The spirit successfully retrieves her dog and settles back into place before she wakes up.

She rises with the sun.

"Everything is TERRIBLE."

Wishbone whines tiredly.

Well, you're still in one piece. I was honestly pretty worried you wouldn't be, before the spirit came and got me.

"Sorry."

She sighs heavily.

"I guess we're back to finding food. And a bow, my imaginary Alex is really insistent that I gotta get my hands on a bow before the next time something concerning happens. At least we have more than zero money now. Any idea where the closest settlement besides Fen's village is, Glimmer?"

I'm sorry, I don't really know.

Sigh.

"Well, the river's big enough that it might have settlements along it, but it also has prince burn victim, so following it downsteam is maybe kind of dumb. We could head upstream and you can look around and come find us if you see anything townlike?"

But what if he finds you while I'm not there? the spirit says worriedly.

"If I see any steamships I'll lay low. It'd just be super lame to starve to death because we were scared of him, y'know?"

I guess so. Okay. I'll look.

The spirit emerges, a tiny flicker of light in the air in front of Karen's face, and swirls away on the breeze.

"Welp. Guess we're on our own for now. Hopefully that doesn't come back to bite us."

Whine.

"We'll be fine. Probably."

They head upstream.

Meanwhile, back on the steamship, someone is practicing firebending forms on the deck. He has been going over the same movements since the sun first peeked over the horizon, and by this point no one else on the boat dares join him up there for longer than it takes to poke one's head out of a hatch and verify that he hasn't yet stopped.

Eventually a small canoe paddles up the river towards the larger boat. One of the passengers calls up.

"Zuko! I had begun to worry you had left us behind entirely!"

He doesn't respond, unless you count launching a fire blast over the railing, but he was about to do that anyway; the flow of the sequence carries him all the way across the deck and back, and he doesn't acknowledge Iroh's presence at all the whole time.

Not a great sign. Also inconvenient because Iroh and the soldier he's with can't actually board the ship from down here unless someone sends a ladder down.

"...anyone else up there?"

Apparently not.

He finishes the entire sequence, stops to catch his breath, and then hauls out the ladder by himself rather than summon one of the crew to do it.

They pay the person who's been paddling the canoe, and then they board the ship.

"I take it it didn't go well?"

"I found the strange girl the rumours were about. She's not the Avatar. I don't know what she is. She doesn't fight like anyone I've ever seen, I don't think she's a bender at all, but her fist hits as hard as an earthbender's boulder." He gestures at his midsection, which is developing a spectacular bruise. "I was fully armoured and she knocked me halfway across the deck with one punch."

"Did she break her hand doing it?"

He shakes his head. "Jumped in the river and swam away. Uninjured. It doesn't make sense," he says, angrily, as though this stranger's unprecedented superhuman abilities personally offend him.

"Well, the world is full of many strange things, Prince Zuko."

"It shouldn't be!" His hands tighten angrily on the railing. "I don't understand! Why were there rumours of her airbending? She's not an airbender! She's something completely different and I want to know what!"

"I don't know. There certainly are powerful warriors who are not benders in this world, though I don't know how many have fists like stone. Have you eaten yet today?"

He scowls. (That's a no.)

"I will make some breakfast. It's so much harder to solve the great mysteries of the world without eating breakfast."

He scowls again, but this time there's an edge of suppressed humour to it, which in his current mood is probably the closest available thing to a smile.

"Fine," he says, in his it's-annoying-how-you-keep-being-right voice.

Breakfast it is. Maybe if he makes something tasty he can get his nephew to remember to eat in the future.

At the moment he can't even get his nephew to stop scowling. Zuko is staring at the food like he wants to beat it up until it tells him its secrets.

Abruptly, halfway through the meal, he says, "—There was some stupid kid in the village who tried to fight me when I was asking after the girl."

"How did that go?"

"The girl appeared and tried to make the kid stop, but the kid refused to back down until I promised I'd let the girl go as long as she told me everything and wasn't the Avatar. I—wasn't expecting the girl to believe that promise, but she did, or seemed to. Don't know if she still does. It was the strangest thing about her before I saw her fight, that she wasn't afraid of me. I don't—" He shakes his head sharply. His voice gets very quiet, like he's making a shameful admission. "I didn't... want to hurt them."

He smiles. "I'm glad. The fire nation has bred more than enough ill will already."

His scowl deepens. "That's not—ugh."

"I am glad that you have good intuitions in this area. An occupying soldier should have no love of using violence against those who are too weak to defend themselves."

"Why not? What good could there possibly be in—?" He can't seem to find an end to the sentence; he shakes his head instead.

"True strength," he says, after thoughtfully sipping his tea, "is not merely a question of destroying everyone who challenges you. It is a question of remaining true to yourself and your own values, even under circumstances where a lesser man might not."

"...you say that like it makes what I did last night not weakness."

"I cannot tell you which of your values should be most important to you. But I don't think that the ability to walk away from reckless children without harming them is a weakness."

He stares angrily at his half-finished breakfast.

"I shouldn't—feel like this," he says, more to himself than his uncle. "I shouldn't—"

He shakes his head, jumps to his feet, and abandons his food to go practice firebending some more.

He sighs. He decides to finish his breakfast rather than leaving it to follow his nephew.

Karen has had no breakfast. Or dinner. Or discussions with helpful mentor types. 

Her stomach rumbles. 

"I wish I knew how to spearfish," she says, idly. "I wish I knew how to make spears. Or bows. Or traps. I bet bows and traps are harder. Maybe if we just got, like, a decent branch, and whittled the end into a point, and rammed it into the fish really hard?"

Whine.

"M'sorry, boy." 

A while later she has a makeshift wooden spear, has managed to make herself even hungrier by trying to stab things, and has zero fish.

A breeze with a hint of a sparkle in it swirls down the river, skimming over the water, and leaps up to spin in little circles in front of Karen.

"There's a town up ahead but it's kind of far away, I'm not sure you can get there before dark. I didn't find any closer ones except the one you came from."

"Well, that's something. I wish we could go back, it'd mean a lot to Fen, but I don't know what Mr. Fire Punches is gonna do and I really don't wanna get the village in trouble for harboring fugitives. Does the forest end at any point between here and the other village? I can travel way faster over grassland."

"Um - there's more forest and then less forest and then more forest again. But not no forest."

She scoops up her dog and tries to ignore the gnawing in her stomach. 

"Well. We'll travel as fast as we can manage. I think I've scared off all the fish around here anyway. If it looks like we're not gonna reach it by dusk, we can try fishing again, I guess."

She is so so so so mad at herself for not focusing more on survival skills that she could not reasonably have ever expected herself to need in this quantity. But she heads out.

The spirit settles invisibly back into place.

She travels as fast as she can manage. She's somewhat slower when she's hungry and miserable. They're not at anything village-like by dusk, so she puts a plastic baggy from her pocket over a leaf in the hope that it'll release water (stupid stupid stupid, should have bought a metal container off of Fen when she had the chance, now she doesn't have anything safe to boil water in, stupid), and settles down to try spearfishing again for as long as she has light.

She catches one fish. It's not very big. She cooks it and gives half of it to Wishbone and is still really hungry afterwards.

Around dusk, a steamship comes upriver.

Lovely. She puts her fire out with handfuls of dirt and hides in the forest, covered and low to the ground but close enough to see the ship as it passes her.

Same ship?

Same ship. Same prince, standing at the railing, gazing moodily out into the forest. He doesn't appear to spot her.

She hates this whole stupid dimension. (Not really. Fen and Glimmer are in this dimension and Fen and Glimmer are fine. Well, Glimmer's probably fine, anyway.)

He's probably headed for the same town we are.

I guess so, the spirit agrees. Are you still going to go there?

Think I gotta, I'm not remotely confident that I can catch enough fish to stay alive out here. How big was the village, is it gonna be possible for both of us to be there at the same time without directly running into each other?

I guess? it says doubtfully. I think there's room for that but I don't really know how easy it is for humans to avoid each other if they want to.

Sigh. I guess we'll just have to risk it. We've gotta be running a serious calorie deficit at this point.

She lets the steamship pass and, once again, sleeps in a tree. At dawn she takes a few more stabs at spearfishing, fails again, and decides to go ahead and try to make it to the town.

The town is, as promised, bigger than the last one, enough so that she and the prince could avoid each other if they were both trying pretty hard.

He's not trying very hard at all, though. He's standing by one end of the town's small but extant market, glowering at the middle distance while his soldiers buy food.

(The scar is much more obvious with his helmet off. It looks... bad. Bad enough that you might reasonably wonder if he still even has sight in that eye.)

She's so hungry.

OK. Survival rules of three. You can survive three minutes without air, three hours without shelter if the weather is bad, three days without water, and three weeks without food, if you have all of the other things. The weather's not terrible, although it's getting pretty cold at night, so she'll have to figure something out on that front soon. That means her real first priority should be finding something to boil water in, not securing access to food, and that she technically has another day on that front even though her plastic baggy is just this side of empty. If she doesn't think of something better, she can steal a container later tonight. And then return it before dawn and figure something else out.

She watches the stupid fire prince and his stupid adequate food supplies from the forest.

The stupid fire prince directs his soldiers to carry his stupid adequate food supplies back to the boat, and follows them there. The town is now princeless.

Score! She can now engage in CAPITALISM.

She waits a few more minutes in the underbrush to be sure that he's not immediately coming back, then takes her money to the other end of the market, just in case he told the people on his side of the market about whatever he even thinks is happening at this point.

Anything resembling food or fireproof containers?

Many things resembling food, and several things resembling fireproof containers, including this exquisitely beautiful teapot that is way beyond the reach of her budget.

Karen does not require exquisitely beautiful teapots. She also doesn't technically require food right this second, if she can manage to think with her brain and not her stomach for a second here. She definitely wants a container - something cheap but strong - and then she asks someone whether they know if anyone sells bows or arrows in this town. Or maybe just, like, has a bow that they might be willing to sell her.

The first person she asks has no idea. If she keeps asking, though, she can get as far as someone who thinks he knows a hunter who might be willing to part with one.

Probably a better long-term investment than spending all of her money on food right this second. She'll talk to the guy before she spends anything else, even though she really suspects she doesn't have enough right now.

The vendor says that when his granddaughter comes back in a few minutes he can send her to show Karen to the hunter's house.

She thanks him and idly looks around at the other market stalls to see if there's anything likely to be useful.

Someone else arrives before the granddaughter does.

His helmet is still off. He still looks unreasonably grumpy. He's leading a much older man in comparably fancy armor toward the teapot stall.

"It is beautiful," says the older man, upon seeing the teapot. "You have a discerning eye."

WHY IS EVERYTHING TERRIBLE.

"I'll actually just be back in a minute," she tells the vendor.

The prince scowls, like he's annoyed by the idea that he might be good at identifying beautiful teapots.

He looks around, spots Karen—makes no particular attempt to conceal that he's seen her; his blink of recognition is obvious and unsuppressed—goes right back to scowling at nothing in particular, making no move to interact with her in any way.

She stops herself from sprinting blindly back into the forest. She's ready to if it seems like a good idea. She goes back to waiting for the granddaughter, occasionally glancing warily at the stupid fire prince and his stupid teapot that's probably worth, like - she doesn't know how many meals, exactly, but a lot more than she's had in the past three days.

Iroh buys the teapot.

"That girl's over there," he mentions to Iroh as the vendor is wrapping the teapot in paper and packing it into a box. He sounds annoyed about it but at the moment he seems to be annoyed about pretty much everything in the world.

He looks, notes that she's seen them, makes a thoughtful sound, and returns to looking at his teapot.

"Are you going to say anything to her?"

"What would I say???"

"I don't know that you should say anything. I'm just noticing that you don't seem to be letting this go."

He scowls at the ground. "I don't like it when things don't make sense!!"

"Well. I have found that peaceful conversations with great warriors are often more informative than battles. Of course, attacking people does complicate things."

He continues scowling at the ground for a moment; then, for a change, he scowls at the sky, at his uncle, and finally at Karen.

And then, very much with the stance of a sulky teenager rather than a powerful warrior, he walks over to her and asks—or possibly demands— "Why does nothing about you make any sense???"

The vendor she spoke with earlier is quietly alarmed.

" - well I dunno, man, I'm not exactly an expert on your deal, either."

(She still kind of wants to run into the forest, but she's pretty sure he can't have notified his people, and if it's just him she'll be able to outrun him. And hey, no fire punches yet.)

His frown now looks more confused than annoyed, which... may qualify as some form of progress?

"What is there to know about me? I'm a prince of the Fire Nation."

(Now the vendor is substantially more alarmed.)

"You tell me, man, you're the one out here arresting random people and then blasting fire at them."

"I wanted to see you fight. But then that didn't make sense either."

"In civilized societies, people handle that by being like, 'hey, wanna spar? where did you learn to fight?' and not by randomly punching people in the face - while surrounded by soldiers, mind you! - and seeing what they do."

He shakes his head impatiently. "Fighting for show is different. Wouldn't tell me the same things."

"Well, did you learn anything of particular use to you this way?"

"I learned you're not the Avatar. And that instead you're something else that makes no sense."

"Astute observation, there, Watson."

"Now you're making no sense on purpose," he declares, astutely.

She gestures vaguely, annoyed. "Possibly. But I was having a really terrible day before you blasted fire at me, and I've been busy having progressively more terrible days since then, so if you're going to talk to me about how annoyed you are then you might have to put up with a little bit of confusing sarcasm."

"Fine," he says, crossing his arms and glaring. (The vendor has by this point left the stall entirely and snuck away.)

The vendor leaving is probably not literally the worst thing that has ever happened, but it really feels like it. It takes kind of a lot of effort to avoid just crying out about the unfairness of everything that has happened in the past week.

"I'll fight you again if you pay me. Somewhere else, since you're scaring people here. And also share your supplies, since sparring with someone who hasn't eaten in two days is pretty much a waste of everyone's time."

"...Why haven't you eaten in two days??"

"It turns out the forest is not just crawling with saber-tooth-moose-lions."

"..."

He turns back to Iroh.

"Uncle, I want to feed the weird girl."

He seems a little surprised at this outcome, but he smiles. "I am sure we have more than enough food on board the ship for a guest."

"Good."

He looks vaguely uncomfortable, in the way of someone who is pretty sure he's doing something wrong but can't quite figure out what and isn't interested in finding out lest he end up having to stop doing it.

Karen is honestly also kind of uncomfortable about this! Following prince burn victim onto his ship again absolutely seems like the sort of thing that has, like, a forty percent chance of going pretty terribly for her!

Her stomach rumbles.

"Well. I suppose I don't have any obviously pressing engagements."

"Come back to the ship, then," he says, uncomfortably. "I won't attack you again. There wouldn't be any point."

"All right, but if you do, I'm gonna be super unimpressed," she says, as if this is anything in the way of an incentive at all.

She whistles to her dog.

Wishbone trots up behind her and glares suspiciously at Zuko.

He nods, as though this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. "That's fair."

She's not in the mood to laugh, but she smiles a little. A very little.

She follows him back to his ship, mentally tracking her escape routes more out of habit than out of anticipation of using them this time.

The escape routes are much more open this time on account of there aren't a dozen soldiers hanging around watching her.

The prince continues looking vaguely uncomfortable.

"I'm Karen. By the way. Since you haven't asked."

"My name is Zuko." He sounds... less uncomfortable, with this one, more... sad? It is not clear why he is sad about his own name.

"S'a good name."

She scoops her dog up, mostly for want of something else to do.

...he blinks. "I'm not sure I've heard anyone say that before," he says, momentarily surprised out of his discomfort.

She shrugs. "I mean I dunno what it means, or anything, but it's a good set of syllables."

"It can mean a lot of things. My father says 'rage', my mother said 'loved one'. My sister says 'failure' but she's just being a pain."

"Huh. I dunno if mine means anything. Probably does. Couldn't tell you what, though."

Not without the internet, which she is slowly losing hope of ever using again.

"I guess most people probably don't know what their names mean, unless they're named after flowers or something where it's obvious."

"Yeah. I don't really know how it is other places, but where I'm from all the names are like, filtered through lots of archaic languages so you have no idea what any of them originally meant anymore. I mean I'm sure someone knows, but it's - not really very important, in the end, as long as people have something to call you that isn't completely terrible."

"It's like that in the Fire Nation too."

"Cool. Never been there. But maybe names are just like that everywhere."

"...where are you from," he asks, without any particular hope of an answer.

"I don't think you'd've heard of it," she says, and that is obviously a dodge but she doesn't really care.

He makes a frustrated sound. "There are only three countries in the world! Five I guess if you count the Southern Water Tribe separately and still count the Air Nomads even though Grandfather killed them all!"

She smiles despite herself, and despite the fact that part of her is furiously noting down the fact that her new friend is definitely personally connected to some kind of large-scale genocidal regime. Also that he might have, like, slightly questionable geography knowledge, she's really pretty unclear on the tech level in play here.

"Stupid little town in a place called California. It's very far away and I miss it more than food. Although that's, y'know, probably subject to change depending on how much longer food goes between visits."

"...I don't want you to starve," he says. "You're annoying but... not annoying as a person, and... anyway I don't want you dead. Uncle—" He looks around. His uncle is not there. "—oh. He probably went to find you food. I guess."

"Sounds good. I'm sorry for the general annoyingness of my circumstances, I promise I am usually only, like, forty percent as mysterious as I am right now."

Wishbone whines at her. She pets him. "Food'll be here soon, boy. You've been a real trooper."

"...are you secretly a spirit? I guess California doesn't sound like the sort of thing spirits would name a place. I guess I don't really know what spirits name places actually. I guess I also don't know if spirits can lie. But if you're not from anywhere in this world, and you have mysterious powers that don't make any sense..."

"I dunno. Can spirits punch people?"

"It's... not really what they're known for," he acknowledges.

Shrug. "I guess probably not, then. Although you never know. In my experience ancient legends are usually, like, eighty percent true, but that still leaves twenty percent complete randomness. I would suggest things I might be, but I'm really not up on the local...... anything."

"You're not the Avatar and you're not a bender and you're not a normal human without any special powers and you're not a spirit and that's sort of... all of the things... you could possibly be. So I guess you're impossible."

"Honestly not an unfair assessment."

He makes a sound that might possibly represent some form of amusement. The most lackluster imaginable 'heh'.

"Okay, impossible girl."

Well, this is a better reaction than some things. Certainly preferable to fire blasts.

Iroh returns a little while later with news that the ship's cook has prepared his special dumplings, which Iroh claims are beyond compare. 

That sounds like food, which means it's something that Karen is in favor of.

She follows him back to the mess hall, bringing Wishbone with her. She has no actual intention of asking anyone for permission to bring her dog anywhere, at least not when he's gone two days on as little food as she has.

No one comments on her dog.

The dumplings are really good.

Zuko turns out to have a broad repertoire of vaguely uncomfortable faces.

Pff.

She feeds Wishbone pieces of meat from her meal. Also eats meat herself. She's normally trying to be vegetarian these days but she's really hungry and probably this world doesn't have any factory farms full of screaming pigs anyway. She's not actually sure whether being the slayer gives her magic calories or not, but today, at least, she eats like it doesn't.

"So what exactly is this ship... doing. In general. Presumably you're not actually out here looking to arrest impossible people."

"...I'm looking for the Avatar. Do they know about the Avatar in California?"

"Nah. Well, probably not, California has a lot going on. I recall hearing something about someone who can bend all of the elements. Why're you looking for them?"

"...it's a long story."

He reflects on this statement for a moment.

"I was banished from the Fire Nation and I'm not allowed to come back until I find him. Or her, I guess. Because they're probably the only person who can stop us from conquering the world and nobody's seen them in a hundred years and we're pretty sure they're not dead so they have to be hiding somewhere and if I can find them and arrest them then—well, then there won't be anyone left to get in our way."

"Huh."

She eats a few more dumplings.

"Why're you conquering the world?"

He pauses.

"...I don't really know. I guess... why not conquer the world, if you can? Wouldn't it be... I don't know. I can't really imagine not wanting to."

She sighs.

"Lotta bad things happen, when people set out to conquer the world. Obviously you got your thousands or millions of deaths, and you got your extreme loss of wealth and property and production as a result of extremely protracted war damaging everything society's built up for itself, and if you manage to mostly succeed then actually governing it all is kind of a nightmare, given the distances involved. But I guess there technically exist worse reasons than 'it was there'."

"...Grandfather never seemed to worry about how to govern it all. Father doesn't either."

She shrugs. "Well, I'm not up on local geopolitics. Maybe they know something I don't. Governing a whole world sounds rough, though, especially if most of it hates you. Which, uh, not up on local geopolitics, but you don't seem super popular around these parts."

"Well, we are trying to conquer the world. It makes sense that the world isn't happy about that."

Another shrug. And more dumplings, they're really good.

"So I guess the part where you actually conquer the world must be going super well, huh? If the Avatar is the only thing that could plausibly stop you."

"Slower than Father likes, I think."

"How long have you been at war?"

"A century."

"Long time."

She's been trying to figure out whether she should be deducting as many points from the Fire Nation as she deducts from ancient Rome or as many points as she deducts from WWII Germany and Japan for the whole taking over the world thing. It occurs to her now that they might be England, and characterizing a centuries-long quest to conquer and colonize as much of the world as possible as a single war.

She has sort of mixed feelings about England. This is probably appropriate or something.

"What're you gonna do with the world when you win it?"

"Don't know. Rule it, I guess. But it won't be mine anyway. Father's going to leave everything to Azula. He likes her better."