Archive of Our Own ^beta

Kyoshi, Rangi, Melog, Catra, Adora, Glimmer and Bow sat around the banquet table in the Avatar Mansion's dining hall. Auntie Mui smiled widely as she set down a platter of steamed Squid-Eel dumplings. 

Catra sniffed the air, her ears twitched above her shaggily cropped black hair. "What are these? I've never smelled anything like it. Smells kind of like fish."

"It's Squid-Eel." Melog the Krytian/Cat-Fish-Spirit rumbled back, their white eyes glinted with a reddish hue from the paper lanterns above them. "We had them back home; I used to help my parents catch them for supper. Although we made Squid-Eel soup instead of dumplings."

"It is Squid-Eel." She confirmed and frowned as Catra's blue and yellow eyes widened.

"You can understand Melog, Kyoshi?"

"Can't everyone? Rangi?" As she asked the question, she looked down to Rangi in hope of confirmation.

The beautiful Fire Nation woman shook her head, her bronze eyes full of confusion. "No, Kyoshi, I can't understand Melog. They just sound like a cat to me, but Melog does share characteristics with a Spirit. Perhaps their people were closely linked to the Spirit World? In my home, the Fire Nation, we have Phoenixes and Dragons that are said to be part-Spirit. Although I suppose it could just be an Avatar thing.

Not really knowing what else to say, they shrugged and moved on to eating; apparently, Adora couldn't figure out how to use her chop sticks because she ended up hitting herself in the nose...twice. Catra shook her head, smiled then tore a small strip off a silk napkin and tied it around the top of Adora's chop sticks. The sight made her smile melancholically; Kelsang had done the exact same thing for her when she was little. Kelsang had helped her in a lot of ways, some of which he'd never known. She wished that she'd told him more just how much she'd loved and appreciated him. Rangi took her hand under the table and squeezed it reassuringly. So much had changed in the last few years but at least she'd always had Rangi. The rest of their meal consisted of roasted Quail-Chicken with herb sauce on a bed of noodles and a dessert of sweet taro pudding drizzled with honey.

Twilight had fallen as they made their way out into the training courtyard. Apparently, some of Yokoya's villagers were setting off some fireworks left from the harvest festival because they started exploding over the lake. There were white-and-black Badger-Moles, silver-scaled fish, a beige sack of rice and as the grand finale there was...her and Kelsang on Pengpeng?! Neutral jing aside, it was enough to make her tear up.

Distantly, she heard Adora comment. "Is that a little Kyoshi? Aww, it's so cute. Isn't it, Catra?" and Catra replied, "I suppose it's kind of cute." while Melog rumbled and wove around the Etherian pair.

Rangi smiled at her up. "You and Kelsang have done so much for Yokoya and they wanted to honour your contributions. They asked me to take your portraits to the Powder Makers and I did. Do you like it?"

"I-It's amazing, Rangi. Thank you so much." Kyoshi replied as she wiped away her tears.

It was nice being around people their own age for once. Maybe they could take the Best Friend Squad on a tour of the Earth Nation tomorrow? Perhaps they'd even find some of that magic that Adora had been talking about earlier. After all, the Spirit World was real so why couldn't magic be real too?