Avatar: Legend Of The Lián Jué Zhě
A Sense8 AU, Part 1: How It Started
Summary: The comet is nearing once more and the balance of the world won’t survive another blow. The spirits are desperate, but the Avatar is no closer to either emerging from or dying in his iceberge, and so the spirits create a solution the best they can. They bound the souls of several children from across the world, and hoped they could do together what the Avatar had failed to do twice over now: stop the inbalance of the world.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
Okay so it starts about 80 AG. The world is in turmoil, the human world is so out of balance it’s greatly affecting the spirit world. Humans are begging for help, but no individual spirit has the power to do more than help here and there. The avatar shows no signs of either emerging from, or dying in, the iceberg he’s encased himself in nearly a century ago, and Sozin’s comet is approaching once more, an event the Fire Nation will no doubt use to deal another deadly blow to the balance of their world.
The spirits have tried creating a new avatar, but there’s no one like Raava. No one who is as pure, no one as powerful, no one willing to die themself. And even if there were, the lion turtles have made it clear they will not grant all four bending powers to another single mortal again. If they want an avatar, they can wait for the one they have.
But they don’t have the time. Tui and La have tried to guide the iceberg toward the shore of the Southern Water tribe, but it’s slow going, as if the iceberg and the child within resist them. It remains firmly submerged, miles out to sea. They have to do something now, neither the mortals’ world, nor the Spirits’ can take another blow.
It’s the Spirit of the Banyan Tree that comes up with the idea. She’s a young spirit by immortal standards, younger than the avatar cycle, but only just. Her Swamp had been present on the mortal plain for almost as long as the mortal plain had been separate from the Spirit world, and almost as soon as they could, humans had begun taking refuge within her branches. She’s watched her community shift and change and grow with her and with one another for a thousand millennia. Many had found enlightenment beneath her tree, and her latest guardian, Huu, is no exception.
Huu is a kind and simple soul, who’s learned to use the spiritual life flowing within her swamp from all its connected roots, to find his people when they’re lost, to shift about the pathways to guide unwelcome visitors out. He’s as connected to her as she is to every life within her branches, and she wonders why the other mortals couldn’t, just, be connected that way. That would certainly stop them from fighting each other.
And so she proudly presents this idea before the other spirits, suggesting one child for each of the nations, saying she can mingle their four souls before birth, so that no matter where they go, they will always be together, they will share their joys, and sorrows, learn from one another’s failures. They will learn great empathy for others unlike themselves, and hopefully learn a way to fulfill the destiny the Avatar has abandoned.
Most spirits celebrate this idea, overjoyed to finally have a viable solution to the worlds’ great problem.
One spirit however, vehemently declares her objections before any further plans can be made. The Mother of Faces prides herself on practically being the creator of individuality, and she cannot stand the idea of any people, no matter how small the number, having their chances for developing their own unique selves disrupted. She argues that they can’t learn anything from each other, if they’re all learning all the perspectives at once as they grow with each other and learn from their teachers all at once. She insisted they’ll compartmentalize so many conflicting ideologies being shoved at them from birth. They won’t want to fight for the betterment of the world, they’ll simply accept it for the confusing mess it is. They won’t have differing perspectives on anything, because they will have all lived each other’s perspective together. It would never work, she insists.
