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⁂
They say that the stars are balls of fire.
You watch her all the time, somewhat transfixed as her fingers skim across the springy grass. They shoot up, the fingertips glazed with droplets of dew. She absentmindedly shakes them from her hand and continues to look at the sky above, its shadowy folds littered with those shining spheres of flame.
This is the moment when it crosses you—that she is just like fire in its purest, most awesome form.
Fire is always changing, always moving, and so amazingly volatile. It can burn up to become a roaring blaze that mows everything down in its path, or it can sputter weakly in the bitter air, the last embers wasting away in the presence of a blast of a winter storm.
Fire is beautiful, is stunning, is hypnotizing. The dancing streams of red and orange ribbons always flicker erratically in the air, its aura of warmth driving away the howling cold of the frosty night air, heating a pair of frozen hands that are bitten with the frostbite of hopelessness. It is a constant reminder of everything that you love.
Fire is exceedingly dangerous, horribly hot-headed, a force to be reckoned with, yet still flawed. It burns through every single thing, not even sparing a single microbe. It charges recklessly through the landscape, heedless of everything in its path. It is the fuse of everything explosive—mostly, at least. But even the strongest flames can be weakened by water.
Fire is everything.
And she is a wild card. She is everything compacted into one person. Unfortunately unpredictable at times, when the tiniest, most innocent remark can set her off in a flying rage; unpredictable, like the ocean blue from which she came from, like when the water is flat and smooth as a sheet of azure glass, like when the water is rearing up and over you, intent on crashing down on you and obliterating, annihilating you from sheer existence; unpredictable, like dancing flames.
Cold, that it seems at times that she has become utterly closed off from the world and its problems; cold, like the winter blizzard that catches you out of nowhere while you're walking home from Narook's one day, like when the howling wind shoots sharp bits of dirty ice from all directions; cold, like the icy fire that rips down your nerves when you stick your hand in a snow drift for too long.
Aggressive, sometimes like a thug spoiling for a good fight; aggressive, like a rabid moose lion kept pent up in a small cage for too long, like when that moose lions bares its curved incisors at you and snaps with a single-minded intention that's to slice your fingers off; aggressive, like a roaring wall of flames that seeks to burn down anything and everything in its path.
Caring, the one who will give you a shoulder to cry on when you're going through a tough time; caring, working wonders to a broken soul, like the elixir of life to a dying being; caring, like the soft crackling of flames as you huddle closer to it for warmth on a chilly evening.
Scared, trapped in a quagmire of lies, pain, and death, comparable to that one face in the murky bog fighting to retain its identity of self; scared, that lone figure running along the barren wasteland of infinity, like she is constantly running away from the grim face of death—of Amon,, because she doesn't want to suffer a horrible fate at his hands; scared, like fire when it cowers in the face of a roaring hurricane, yet afraid to put out its last embers.
And flawed—sometimes, her bright aura fooling anyone and everyone around her; flawed, her personality blazing with confidence and arrogance, the light of excessive pride; flawed, her attitude sending hot flames shooting in every direction, strong and haughty glow around her.
Fire.
She's a part of so many things—the Avatar of the entirety of the population in the Four Nations; the Avatar to the hundreds of people she will meet and the millions that she will not.
"Bolin?"
You're startled—you hadn't seen her giving you a questioning look for the past thirty seconds. "Oh! Um, yeah...hey, Korra."
She raises a questioning eyebrow at you: "Why were you looking at me like that?"
You immediately blink and avert your gaze, dropping your head to survey the shadowed green grass below your feet instead. "I was looking at you?"
"Yep. With really big and really moony eyes. Oh—and you were also drooling. That's it!" She smirks, the left corner of her lip quirking up a little more than the right as she indiscreetly nods at the globule of cold spittle rolling off the corner of your mouth.
You self-consciously use your sleeve to wipe it away, having no better thing to use at the moment. "Well," you meekly scrabble for words in an attempt to explain yourself, "I was thinking about how much you are like fire."
Only Korra would laugh at that.
"Really? Fire?" She tilts her head, strands of her thick, dark brown hair falling down in front of her face. "Even more so than water?" And at this she widens her enormous blue eyes at you owlishly, the cheesy smirk still slapped disarmingly across her face. The flat blue orbs reflect the cool light of the moon above, turning them into shifting pools of quicksilver.
"I mean...um...I'm fairly sure there was a point when I compared you to the ocean...?"
After this incredibly pitiful statement, you give up and instead offer her one of your charming smiles.
Her smirk grows even larger. "I hope you don't think that that's going to have any effect on me."
"Really? Why shouldn't I? Because I have to be very careful not to smile when I'm driving."
"You mean, when Asami's driving you."
"Yeah, that—because my smile"—you point at your quivering grin, the muscles in your cheeks starting to ache from overuse—"tends to blind incoming traffic."
"Uh huh." The smirk turns arrogant.
"Oh, come on, Korra, give me some credit here..."
"Well, if you give me some parchment and a brush and some ink I'll write credit onto the paper and make sure to give it to you."
You attempt to flatter her: "I mean, why else would I be smiling at you? You're funny and smart and buff and gorgeous, you know. I think that—I mean, those are just things that make you who you are. And being, er, being fiery is one of them. Because, you know, you are funny and smart and buff and fiery—and seriously, you're really, really gorgeous."
A puff of muffled laughter comes spurting out past her lips at your flirtatious remark. "Oh-kay."
"It's true!"
"But I knew that already," she smugly responds, before grinning even more devilishly to add, "That's why you love me, yeah?"
Your smile only widens.
And the stars twinkle above you, those balls of fire hanging in the night sky, their light stabbing downwards toward the earth both of you are laying upon—because that's just that.
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