Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction ❯ Incarnation ❯ The Story Teller ( Chapter 2 )

Incarnation

 

This land had not known peace for a long time.

 

But it was not war that had caused the famines and deaths and worry and grief and pain and hurt and misery and desolation and-and-and…

 

It was a king.

 

It was a king so crippled inside that he had turned from good and loving to something far, far worse.

 

His people cry.

 

His advisors beg.

 

His heart shatters.

 

And so this land will not know peace for a long time.

 

---

 

As most stories in this time go, the Avatar had heard these cries and stepped in.

 

He approaches the king, telling him that his subjects would not survive if he could not. The king merely brushes him aside.

 

“I will not know happiness again,” he says. “So my people will not.”

 

Why is your heart like stone?

 

“It is the only heart I have left. My other one has broken.”

 

Who has broken it?

 

“The woman I loved had plotted against me.”

 

And so your people will suffer?

 

“I can do nothing for them.”

 

The Avatar promises to return, leaving. He must think. How could he save this king and his people?

 

The Avatar is in fact a man. He is a man as any other man would be. He is no greater and no weaker.

 

And, as men do, he had once fallen in love.

 

His wife had been a beautiful woman, one who'd told stories to ease his pain. And she had given him a daughter, just as beautiful, and she had inherited her mother's ability to tell stories, and now, as her father sits before her, worry creating furrows in his forehead, she tells him a story.

 

The Avatar stares at his daughter, so beautiful and sweet, and told tomorrow she would come with him to meet the king.

 

---

 

They meet privately, away from the eyes of the court. The Avatar brings his daughter to step before him, and she bows before the king.

 

“What is this?” he asks angrily.

 

The Avatar's daughter does not cringe beneath his bite. “My father has told me your heart is broken.”

 

The king stares at this strange girl. “That is none of your concern.”

 

“It is. I think I can heal it.”

 

He starts and turns to ask the Avatar of his daughter. But he stops and returns to the girl.

 

To her. “Stand.” To the Avatar. “Leave. I will speak to her alone.”

 

His orders are followed.

 

He studies the girl, but she keeps her head bowed.

 

“Why don't you look at me?”

 

“It is pointless,” she answers. “I cannot see your face.”

 

She lifts her head so that he can see her eyes. They are blind.

 

“I cannot see your face,” she repeats, “But I can see you. I can see your heart. I can see it needs fixing.”

 

“And what is your remedy?”

 

“I would like to tell you a story.”

 

---

 

There was, before the earth, before man, before the universe, the spirits. There were the spirits of the sky, of the earth, of all things.

 

“How were there things before the universe?”

 

The human universe. The spirits have always existed, on a different plane.

 

And of the spirits of the sky, there is the Sun Lord and the Moon Empress.

 

The Sun Lord had watched Moon Empress dance across the sky, stars illuminating her as she laughed and played in the clouds. He watched as she fell sleepy in the late of her cycle, and she would sleep in the hammock of her crescent until the whole sky turned black, nothing but stars to see by.

 

The Sun Lord knew he had fallen in love.

 

“How could he love a woman he'd never spoken to?”

 

Love is like that. You can be in love with someone's beauty, the way they move, how they dance, and know every aspect of them without having a spoken a single word.

 

“Can you love someone you've never seen?”

 

Yes.

 

The Sun Lord could never meet with the Moon Empress. As he approached her she would run, afraid of the light that would make her disappear. He could only keep chasing her, turning night into day.

 

“Why did he keep chasing her? He should've known it was pointless.”

 

But it wasn't. The Sun Lord turned to the elements, Fire and Water and Earth and Air. He requested a world where they could meet, where he could touch her and love her. He wanted to speak with her. He wanted it so she did not have to run.

 

It was impossible, they answered him. It defied nature, the balance. They could not do such a thing.

 

The Sun Lord returned to his palace.

 

Then the Moon Empress met with the elements. She too had watched the Sun Lord from where she stood, wishing he could join her in her dance. But his light would hurt her, cause her to disappear into nothing. Could they not help her?

 

The elements realized these two held true love for each other. They thought, wondering how their love could be realized.

 

“They already said there was no way.”

 

As it goes in most stories, love will find a way.

 

So the elements told the Sun Lord and Moon Empress where they would find a place to meet. Go to the place where daylight dims and turns to night, or where night begins to wake up as day, they explained. There you will be able to touch and talk.

 

They ran to dusk and found each other. They embraced, and the love between them burst out.

 

Right there they married, and right there the universe was born.

 

“Is that the end?”

 

There is no end. Each day the sun and moon chase each other across the sky. At dusk and dawn they meet until the day fades away or the stars can no longer be seen.

 

“It is dawning now.”

 

Then this story is over. I did not think I would take all night.

 

“What other stories can you tell?”

 

All of them.

 

“Can you tell another person's story?”

 

I can see inside them. I can see their story. But there are stories not meant to be told.

 

---

 

“He wants me to tell more stories.”

 

“Then you shall.”

 

“He is already healing.”

 

“You have saved him.”

 

She thinks to say it, but decides against it.

 

---

 

So the Avatar's daughter spent each night with the king, telling story after story. They were stories of love, hate, depression, happiness, warmth, cold, living, and dying. With each story the king's heart grows warmer and warmer, and he realizes he could love again.

 

He loves her.

 

She sees it before he says it. Her next story is ready.

 

---

 

There was a king. He was a good king, proud and loving to his people. He loved everyone, but he found a woman he loved with his whole heart and married her.

 

This woman, however, did not love him back. She married him because he was king. And during the day, when the king was distracted by his business, she would fall into the arms of other men.

 

And she would plot.

 

She plotted against the king, against his life. She would kill him and marry her lover. He would become king, and the old king could not interfere.

 

But the king found out about this plan. He became enraged and killed his wife's lover, then executed his wife.

 

And the king grew cold. His heart was in a thousand pieces and in its place was a stone, heavy and cold. His country suffered because of this, because he could not bring himself to be anything but ruthless, and he had learned to trust no one.

 

So another man, the Avatar came to help. He could do nothing for the king, though. Instead, it was his daughter that saved him.

 

She wove stories for him, stories her mother had told her, stories she'd told herself, stories she'd heard from other men, stories she'd read in strange objects.

 

The king began to heal. His heart grew full, and he began to smile again.

 

But as she told him these stories, her heart grew also, and she realized she loved him, and that he loved her.

 

---

 

“How does this story end?”

 

She stared at him, with eyes that could not see, but they saw all of it. They saw the love and the worry and the thoughts that he had been hurting not just himself but everyone, and his regret.

 

“However you wish.”

 

---

 

It did not matter that she had saved their people or their land or their king. It did not matter that he loved her.

 

It mattered that this king had sent their sister to her death, and so they would take a life for a life.

 

They had not expected her to jump in front of him, to protect him. She was a woman, and she was supposed to be weak.

 

But she had, and they had killed her.

 

It didn't matter, really.

 

Except the next day, the king committed suicide.

 

And the story continued on.

 

Quick Note:

This story was based off The Storyteller's Daughter. Cameron Dokey? Dokey I know is the last name. Go and read it. And all her other stories. Go!