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“What is it, Mom?”
Katara smiled with a knowing, mirthful look. “Ask Lin.”
Kya was puzzled. Her mother had just handed her a stone. It was a smooth, clear stone with a bubble inside it, half filled with clear water. She held it to the light. It wasn’t blue or green, like glass; it was perfectly colorless.
It was moving day: Lin from her apartment, Kya from the Island, and Katara from the South Pole. The moving company handled bringing in all the heavy furniture from Lin’s place, but it was still sweaty work moving the pieces where all three women could agree to put them.
Katara had shipped several boxes of things from down South, filled with items whose significance was known only to her. There were photographs and some of Sokka’s drawings, bits of clothing, souvenirs from every corner of the globe. Most of it went into her own space, though she was happy to hang a family portrait in the front room.
Lin carried her collection of artwork personally, not trusting it to the movers. She’d been going in and out of the house again and again, hauling awkward paintings and heavy sculptures through the front room and kitchen into a large room in the back she’d intended for a gallery.
“Lin, wanna take a break?” Kya asked, catching her on the way in as she pushed a crate on a two-wheeled cart.
“Sure…just…gimme…” she panted.
“Here, let me hel–” Kya began.
“No, I’ve got it. Just a minute.” Having paused, she’d lost her momentum, and bore down on pushing the heavy load through the front door, across the house and into the gallery.
She returned and sat down on the back gate of the moving van. “That vase is priceless,” Lin mentioned casually. “It’s been in the Beifong family for hundreds of years.”
“Vase? I’ve never seen a vase in your things.”
“Because it’s so large. I’ve had it in storage. It was first acquired by Liangxi Beifong, who lived around the same time as Avatar Szeto.”
Kya whistled appreciatively. The vase had to be nearly a thousand years old.
“Was there something you wanted to tell me?” Lin asked, now that she’d recovered her breath.
“Oh,” Kya said, slightly embarrassed. “Mom just gave this to me a little while ago. I don’t know what’s special about it, so she told me to ask you. I’m sure It’s nothing as impressive as that vase.”
Lin stood back up and came over toward Kya, curious. She lifted up the stone with the bubble in it, and the water inside caught the sunlight, sparkling brightly.
Lin’s eyes went wide.
Kya grinned. “That good, huh?”
“I… you…” she was speechless.
“Are you okay?”
“I made that. When I was five.”
“You did?”
Lin shook her head in amazement. “I’d just learned some new bending form, and I found the crystal on the beach. I don’t remember exactly why, but I used my bending to open it, put some water inside, and close it again. Mom… my mother… wasn’t very impressed with how it looked.”
“Naturally,” Kya said.
“But she did tell me I’d done well with the seam, which, if you know my mother, was rare praise.”
“I told her it was beautiful,” Katara added, approaching them. “And that’s when she asked me to give it to you.”
“Me?” Kya was surprised. “But you didn’t.”
“You were ten. I decided to wait, because I was pretty sure you wouldn’t appreciate the gesture then, especially with Lin so much younger than you.”
Kya laughed. “That was probably a good idea.”
“I kept it with me while you were traveling around the world… it was a way to keep you close. And I was so touched by how much Lin cared about you even then that I kept it.”
“But I lived with you at the South Pole for years! Were you waiting for some special occasion?”
Katara laughed. “Honestly, once you were with me again I kind of forgot about it. I found it last week while I was packing.”
“Well, it IS beautiful, Lin, and I love it.” She leaned over and kissed Lin, and then turned and hugged her mother. “Thank you.”
