4. One Step forward, Two steps Back (1/2)

this chapter took a little longer then i thought, but good news is that next chapter we meet an unnamed side character from the show and maybe a main character.

chapter 4: one step forward, two steps back

vidya took a deep, calming

eath, before walking into the blacksmiths.

there was only one in the whole town, which was something vidya thought was odd. it was a port town that had a very active mine, and was a growing town. there was new people all the time, mostly refugees from the war. li-an never wanted to talk about it, but vidya did learn from cheng and zei that shan hai was one of the last free towns in this area.

because of the mountain range that surrounds the town and the small gulf that surrounded rest of the town, it was very easy to defend. then with people like cheng who was willing to fight the fire nation whenever they got too close, people felt like this town was safe. vidya doesn't think that, but where else could these people go? omashu was in the middle of a huge mountain range, and ba sing se was passed a dessert meaning that finding a boat is the only way most people could get there.

but vidya wasn't here to stop the war or to solve the referees problem (though it wasn't too much of a problem since so many people leave to fight). vidya was ignoring all that to do something kinda selfish. being out of school but too young to get a job was boring. vidya decided she couldn't just try to teach herself airbending for the rest of her life, she needed to do something with progress that she could see. that was ultimately pushed her to try building some of her 'inventions', and for that she needs raw metal and a place to modify it.

she thought about going to the mines, but vidya wouldn't be able to do anything with unprocessed metal. vidya could have checked a smither, but vidya knew very little about metal works, so blacksmith seemed like the best option. at the very least she could ask them for help.

"um, hello?" vidya said as soon as she opened the door.

a puff of heat greeted vidya as she entered the small hut that from the outside looked to be two houses that were connected. inside was just one large room with a furnace with flames leaping up and a burly woman pounding a sword looking stick.

vidya closed the door behind her and waited for the woman to finish. there was weapons all along the wall, but the more vidya looked the more she noticed there was more normal stuff as well. lots of nails and bolts, and stuff that vidya assumes goes on boats (maybe i could look into that) then there was a lot of farming equipments that vidya first thought were weapons.

"i told jin that it would be two days. come back tomorrow." the women said without stopping, scaring vidya enough that she almost knocked over the polearms she was next to.

"sorry... um... ma'am, but i'm not here because of jin. i was hoping to talk to you about something, but it can wait until you're done." vidya said as she straightened the weapons, making them look just like how she found them.

"if you want to talk then stay till i'm done. otherwise i'll just move onto my next project."

with a sizzle, the hot metal stick was shoved into a bucket of water, and vidya got a good look at the woman. she had a nasty burn along her neck that looked like a deformed hand, and scars littering her face. besides that, there was some grey hair sneaking out of the scarf she had keeping her hair out of her face, but vidya got the feeling that the woman wasn't that old.

my first mom started going grey when she was 20, could be the same for her.

"go fetch me some more coals from out back why don't you."

vidya looked at the woman for a moment, before decided she really didn't have anything better to do. vidya filled a pail with a huge pile of coal that was just lying against the house like a stack of firewood. then carried it back in and placed it into the furnace were the rest of the coal was.

"thanks kid."

for the next hour vidya waited, sometimes fetching the woman a tool or more fuel for the fire (staying a safe distance away from the fire). there was a few times that vidya thought about leaving, since she didn't even know what she wanted, and probably didn't have enough money to buy anything.

but what else can an almost 10 year old kid do? it wasn't like she had any friends.

"ok i'm done here. what's your name kid?" the woman said as she wiped her hands on her apron.

"vidya, who are you?" vidya said before cringing at how rude that sounded.

"ha, you came here looking for an apprenticeship and you don't even know my name?" the woman laughed.

"i didn't come here for an apprenticeship. i just wanted to... buy some stuff for a thing i'm making."

"yes, 'things and stuff'. there is a lot of that here. but are you sure you don't want to work here? you're cheng's kid right? i heard that you got kicked out of school for speaking your mind. you've probably been pretty bored."

"ah, i guess? but i don't... i don't know anything about this." vidya said waving over the workshop.

"that's the whole point of an internship kid. i get a unpaid helper, and you get experience. why don't you talk to your parents, and i'll even let you build your 'thing' here for free."

"o-kay?" vidya said, very confused by this turn of events.

but hey, free stuff.

"nice. now get going kid. i got shit to do." the woman said as she ushered vidya out of the building.

it was only when the door closed with vidya back outside, did she realize the woman never told vidya her name.

"we're almost there!" zei said, almost tripping once more as they walked up the mountain.

"that's cool, but you still haven't told me what we are doing... or even where." vidya said as she repositioned the backpack on her shoulder.

"visiting granma vidya's tomb, though i guess she would have been your great grandma. she always told told us story about flying people, and i always thought it was because she was a teenager when the war started. however, since you're an airbender, that means that someone in our family has to have been an air nomad!"

"it could have been someone from da's side of the family." vidya pointed out, only for zei to vigorously shake his head.

"no, no. cheng's whole family has been earthbenders for the past three generations. i mean, it is possible, but highly unlikely. then with our side of the family, granma vidya was the only one who wasn't born in shan hai." zei explained.

"okay, that makes sense... but why are we going to her grave?"

"i want to measure her skull size. one of my old professes had a theory that you can predict if someone can bend based of the shape of their skull. she mainly focuses on earthbenders, being from ba sing se, but the similar also held true for the few waterbenders that live there."

"so you want to dig up our granny's grave... to measure her skull size... and see if she skull was the same shape as mine, thereby also making her an airbender?" vidya said with a blank expression as they continued hiking, finally at the top of the hill they were climbing.

they were high enough that they could see the whole village. vidya wasn't sure what other villages looked like, but at least hers was very similar to what she remembered from the show. all the building in the main part of town had green roofs shingles in that style that reminded her of the forbidden city (she visited china the summer before she died). then as you go out into the farm areas, there was less houses, and the houses there were more what vidya would call a hut. vidya couldn't see her house from where they were, as it was outside of the main village but not where the farm lands start.

"yes, but we don't have to dig her up, she was placed in an above ground coffin like the rest of our family!"

"we are still robbing a grave."