Avatar:The Meeting

"Let this be my first piece of advice to you, Kyoshi. [...] There's a thousand generations of past lives in the Avatar cycle. You could spend a thousand years talking to us, and you still wouldn't know how best to guide the world. This is what you must forgo, Kyoshi, the easy answers. You must give up your desire for someone to tell you your choices were correct in the end."

— Yangchen urges Kyoshi to make peace with her decisions.

Template:Chapter infobox"The Meeting" is the twenty-seventh chapter of The Shadow of Kyoshi.

Overview

Kyoshi pays her respects to Yun, then has a heart-to-heart with Yangchen.

Synopsis

Atop a hill overlooking Yokoya, Kyoshi kneels before Yun's grave to inscribe an epitaph. Though she tries to engrave the marker with Yun's personal history using her earthbending and fans, their shared birth year, commoner background, and the notion of using her own Avatar calendar as a date of death is too much for Kyoshi to bear. The Avatar carves Yun's name and birthplace onto the grave, leaving an empty space as if her friend still had a destiny still waiting to be written. Addressing Rangi, who stayed behind with her after the rest of their friends left, Kyoshi questions her actions as the Avatar, and how history will judge her for killing Yun after she failed to save him. Though Rangi admits she cannot tell what the future will bring, she promises to support Kyoshi, kissing her girlfriend before she heads down the mountain.

Now alone, and after pondering how to say goodbye, Kyoshi states aloud that she wishes Yun could have been the Avatar if it could not be her. Upon her declaration, a gust of wind and a chirping sound draws her attention to a beast that resembles a falconfox with glowing green eyes, who pokes its nose out of a bush. The docile animal approaches Kyoshi, and after she lets it lick her hand, it directs her through the forest into a clearing; at its center rests a small pond lined with stones. Figuring Kuruk must have sent the fox to her as a guide to a spiritual site, Kyoshi closes her eyes and begins meditating atop a nearby rock slab, quickly entering the Spirit World.

Upon sensing another presence in front of her, she greets Kuruk, joking that she would rather not relive his experience of swimming in the pond, only for a woman's voice to quizzically respond to her. Opening her eyes, Kyoshi reacts in horror as an Air Nomad woman resembling deceased mother sits in front of her. After Kyoshi questions how Jesa could be here, the still confused woman queries just who Kyoshi thinks she is. Composing herself for a moment, and analyzing the woman's appearance, Kyoshi realizes that the person before her is Avatar Yangchen's spirit. The similarities and mannerisms the two Air Nomad women share proves once again too much for Kyoshi, who breaks down in tears while Yangchen embraces and comforts her.

After taking a moment to collect herself, and giving thanks that Yangchen was the past live to console her as opposed to a rigid one like Szeto, Kyoshi explains to the Air Avatar that she had always wanted to get her advice on how to be a proper Avatar. After Yangchen asks why she did not ask Kuruk for such guidance, Kyoshi begins to retort with how the Water Avatar only spent his time in battle with dark spirits, but stops herself, not wanting to impugn Kuruk or his actions. Reading Kyoshi's thoughts, Yangchen asks her to ponder why so many spirits in Kuruk's era were unbalanced. Kyoshi recounts that Kuruk would not tell her during their last meeting in the Spirit World, and that she assumed he had provoked them somehow. Yangchen, however, claims responsibility for it. As the Avatar, Yangchen explains her focus was centered on aiding the development of the four nations' inhabitants. When humanity's expansion inevitably encroached on the territories of spirits like the Heartwalker of Yaoping Mountain, the phoenix-eels near the underground caves of Ma'inka Island, or General Old Iron, Yangchen ultimately sided with humans in the ensuing conflicts more often than not. Though Yangchen attempted to ensure humans would respect the spirits' concerns and remain in balance with the natural world, many of those humans would break such commitments in the future. This in turn caused those spirits to become wrathful and dark in Kuruk's time.

Kyoshi tries to deny Yangchen's culpability, stating it was not her fault, but Yangchen iterates her error in giving the four nations everything they desired, and how balance can only be achieved by the active decision to not selfishly take from others. She gives her sympathies and due to Kuruk for taking on his duties and her legacy alone, and confides that she would have taken very different actions in her life if she had known the pain she would cause her successor.

As Kyoshi mulls over these revelations, Yangchen senses her disappointment and stress on her lack of a clear course of action as the Avatar. Yangchen impresses on Kyoshi not to look to the thousands of generations of past lives for vindication of her actions, and that she will have to forgo looking for such easy answers to her problems. Though Kyoshi feels she does not fully understand, she commits to persevering nonetheless, much to Yangchen's approval.

By Yangchen's will, the area around the two women begins to change, heralding Kyoshi's impending return to the physical world. In spite of Yangchen's lesson on being self-reliant, Kyoshi herself is mollified by her experience, no longer feeling as alone as she had. Before she completely disappears, however, Yangchen delivers a stern demand for Kyoshi to replace the clay turtle Avatar relic she broke at the beginning of her adventures, reminding her that the next Air Nomad Avatar is only two reincarnations away in the Avatar Cycle.

Now returned to the clearing in the forest, Kyoshi takes stock of the changes her first meeting with Yangchen, and other more recent experiences, have had on her as the Avatar. She hopes that there will be a point in her life where dealing with her responsibilities will become easier, likening such a future self to carved stone. As she stands up from her meditation spot, she notices her animal guide resting nearby, waiting for her. Realizing the creature is actually a spirit, Kyoshi requests that it guide her back to her friends. Together, both spirit and Avatar head down the slope of the mountain, with Kyoshi making the effort, step by step, to be careful along the path set before her.

Production notes

Series continuity

• After initially mistaking Yangchen for her mother, Kyoshi recalls how people's faces are less unique than they realize, a fact Zoryu exploits in "Shapes of Life and Death" to fool the Fire Nation nobility with an impostor of Yun.
• Whilst discussing some of the incidents in which she sided with humans over Spirit World, Yangchen mentions the phoenix-eels from the underground caverns of Ma'inka Island and General Old Iron, the same spirits seen in "Lost Friends" and The Rift, respectively.
• Yangchen reminds Kyoshi to replace the clay turtle Avatar relic she broke in "The Decision", a task she properly carries out, as evidenced by Aang's successful identification of the new relic in "The Storm".

Character revelations

• Kyoshi's animal guide is revealed to be a Knowledge Seeker.