tushanshu_logs | As your feet, they touch the ground

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Entry tags:

As your feet, they touch the ground

Characters: Korra (

alphatar), Open
Date: June 9th, Late evening
Location: Brazen Turtle (Center of Keeliai)
Situation: Doing her job
Warnings/Rating: N/A

With the recent bombings and need for the kedan to have safe housing in the foreigner’s former suites, business at the Brazen Turtle has taken a dip. Food isn’t easy to come by, though the bar managed to get enough to serve its patrons. As barback, Korra’s tending to the bar since the drinks don’t need too much stocking.

Overhead is the scale model of the Starship Enterprise she had gotten Jim for Christmas and it has her attention when there’s little to no customers. At a simple, sullen command it flies sporadically or circles over the bar where she’s at. Depending on her mood, something that’s she’s distracting herself from by wiping down the bar, even if it doesn't need it.

The ship's lights and occasional sounds are soft, but poignant as always.

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Korra was drying off the clean glasses she had brought in from the back, placing them under the bar once dried and she had to stop when she saw him. There weren’t too many people that had a subtle, yet strong presence like the Blue Lantern did.

"Hey! Saint Walker. You here for food, drinks, or both?" She was thankful he wasn’t there on Lantern business; she had her fill of disasters on the turtle, and she gestured to one of the stools. "Gotta admit, I never thought I’d see you here." Korra resumed cleaning the glasses as she waited to see if she should rouse the chef in back or not. The glasses caught the glow of the strings of hanging lanterns overhead.

"Neither," he replied, though he did seat himself on the stool that Korra beckoned towards. "I had seated myself nearer to the back, with a friend - and it seems that upon his absence, I have run into another!"

There were many words to describe war, awful, terrible, bloody words, but at this time, the most apt was a deceptively simple one: busy. There was much to do, as there always was, and he hadn't had the time to seek out as many people as he wished to in these trying times. If he had, he would have sought Korra out sooner than now to see how she was doing, both with the new pressures imposed upon Keeliai as a whole, and upon her specifically.

"How have you been?"

Even with her natural exuberance, Korra had a difficult time answering his question, so she decided to buy that time by getting a tall glass and filling it with water. "I’ve been better." After it was filled she pushed the drink over to him, a thin layer of broken ice forming atop the water as she did so.

"A lot of friends have returned home. I don’t know if it has anything to do with that thing in the palace or not." He was easy to talk to, and Korra even poured a glass of water for herself. "How about you?"

Saint Walker accepted the glass of water with a word of thanks and wrapped both hands around it as he listened. "I have been keeping busy," he said simply, the most accurate description he could think of. He couldn't call himself unhappy, but seeing the hardships that they all had to suffer through was far from a pleasant experience.

Luckily for him, doing his duty was the natural reaction, something that he would do no matter what planet or what universe he found himself on, but he knew that not everyone had dedicated themselves to a purpose as single-mindedly as he had, and that not everyone was so used to being alone.

He couldn't say that he was sorry that some of their kind were being sent back home, back to where they belonged, but that put others, like Korra, in a tricky spot. "It is always hard to lose the ones you care for, whatever the cause," he said, voice gentle.

"Yeah, it is. And I don’t think I’ll ever see one of them ever again." Korra hated admitting it; she should be stronger than that. She took a deep drink from her water in an attempt to wash down the doleful tone of her voice. More than enough of her time was spent dealing with their absences when she was by herself and Naga.

"What do you do when that happens?" Then she paused for a moment before adding: “Has that happened to you?”

"Not here, no. But elsewhere..." Saint Walker paused, pensively rolling his glass of water between his palms. All of his confidants are long since dead; the only ones who know of the tragedy that has struck his life are Mogo and possibly Aya, given her thirst for knowledge. His past is no secret, but it so happens that others are seldom as fond of prying as Saint Walker himself is.

"Only the truly young and the truly alone can boast that they have lived a life wholly without loss. I have left my youth behind me, and I am deeply thankful to not have lived a solitary life. So yes, Korra, it has."

He tilted his head towards her. "What I have chosen to do is to find new purpose, to hold onto hope. It is not easy to find this path, and to follow it is not an easy task, but it is a goal well worth achieving. And know, my friend, that it is not a path that you will be forced to tread alone."

How he's even able to say it with poise that the Avatar should have, something she's sorely lacking in, made her feel just a bit ashamed of how she had been treating it. For all she knew, he lost just as much as she did and more; possibly without ever being able to see them again.

She rubbed her thumb through the condensation of her glass until a drop dribbled down her thumb, and Korra took a brief glance up at the small Enterprise starship above her.

"How can I start?" Korra looked back down to Saint Walker and furrowed her brow. There was a fine line between fooling/distracting herself and actually having hope. Something she knew she had lost recently, and denied that she had up until that question left her mouth.

But she tried to force a smirk on her face. "Meditation?" Asked with a slightly snarky inflection.

"Why, do you tire of it already?" Saint Walker asked, a hint of laughter in his voice. "It does indeed help, but it is only one of many ways to do what must be done. However you may achieve it, a unification of your spirit and your body is essential. Too often, the two battle against each other."

He had seen it before in himself and in others. When he had been tempted to abandon the strength of his spirit in favour of the fleeting vindication of revenge, Mogo had been there to remind him of what truly mattered. It was only fitting that he should provide guidance to other lost souls struggling to find their way.

"But meditation does very little if you know not what to focus on. What I ask of you - and what you must ask of yourself - is what truly matters to you. This is not something born of what others have told you, or what you have attempted to try yourself. Or," he continued, glancing pointedly down at his ring finger before returning his gaze to Korra's, "the responsibilities that have been thrust upon you."

Korra wasn't a stranger to meditation, and she could do it if she needed to. It was the wanting to that mainly got in her way and Saint made it seem like the most essential thing that would help with what's been plaguing her lately.

"That's what I need to focus on though." She set the glass aside so she could learn onto the bar, her arms crossed with her elbow in the small pool from the circle of water left behind from her drink. "Being the Avatar is what matters the most to me, and it's what I'm going to need when the time comes to punch Mister M's face out of the palace."

Her own eyes moved from his blue ring to her pocket where her green power ring was. "Maybe with some help from those responsibilities if you're there to give it that extra kick."

"And I will indeed be there, if it is in my power to do so."

Saint Walker enjoyed the same boost of power - albeit on a lesser level - that the Green Lanterns did in their presence. It was a distinct possibility that they would be instrumental in ending the war they had been abruptly pushed into. That was besides the point, however; physical, external conflict, was simpler in many ways than internal strife.

"In that case, you already know what you must focus on. The question that remains is simple: why? Why is being the Avatar important to you?"

And Korra excelled at dealing with physical conflict, which left her with a weakness for grasping things on a more personal, spiritual level.

"Because, the Avatar's the only person who can keep balance in the world. Konryu may not be my world, but I am the Avatar and I'll keep doing what I'm supposed to do. Too many people need help that they can only get from me; well, me and other foreigners. It's important to me because people are important."

Saint Walker hadn't been looking for a correct answer - none existed, not truly - but he would be a liar if he said that he wasn't pleased with what Korra came up with. "Then you are following the path that some would call the most difficult of all. I must admit that I do not quite agree with them," he said with a gentle smile.

"When all else seems lost, Korra, that is a desire that I would advise you to hang onto. You wish to help people, and that is well within your power - not your power as a Green Lantern, and not your power as the Avatar, as important as it may be, but in your power as a person, as important as the rest."

That kind of advice, the level of wisdom, is something Korra sorely missed and she gives a small smile, supported by the similarity between Saint Walker and Tenzin.

"Connecting with myself, just Korra, was pretty hard. But I think I get what you mean." Then she purses her lips and gives him a somewhat goofy, thoughtful look.

"...You mean like inner strength, not having your spiritual self become as big as a building, right?"

"That is not quite what I meant, no," Saint Walker said with a quiet chuckle.

"But what that does sound like is a story," he said, levity in his voice. They could very well continue on their conversation at a later date, but everyone - even him - needed some light conversation here and there. He merely had to trust in Korra's judgment, and that Korra would indeed trust him enough to come to him when she felt her spirit flagging.

Korra laughed.

"Maybe I can tell it to you some time, or even show you. You'd probably know more about it than me." She placed her hands on her water as her laughter died down, leaving her with a fading smile. "Thanks. I think I just needed to tell someone about what's been going on. Keeping it all in doesn't really work out that great."

"I would like that very much."

In truth, he would like to hear much of Korra's world; any world with such a heavy focus on the spiritual rather than the physical was of interest to him, an interest that only expanded once he took into account that it was Korra's home.

"I am more than happy to listen, Korra, always. When you feel alone, the best thing you can do is talk to someone." He tilted his head, smiling. "Even if we can do no more than listen, I find that there is no better way to remind yourself of what you still have."

She tried to maintain the smile, but it was gone.

"But it's starting to feel like I'm reminding myself what I could lose. Everything I try to hold on to just leaves. I'm even starting to think the Air Nomad thing of leaving behind all your worldly possessions might be worth looking into." She meant it as a joke, but Korra did place a little thought into after she said it. Did that include people too? She'd have to ask Aang.

"Ah, but people are not your possessions," Saint Walker gently corrected her. He was well aware of the practice of asceticism. He had practiced it in some small degree back on his home planet, preferring to keep his possessions to a minimum, but in recent years, he simply found that he did not re-accumulate all that had been lost.

"Sometimes, we lose people," he said, as blunt as ever as he glanced up at the model hanging from the ceiling. "It is such a painful thing, and yet we continue to reach out to them, new and old. It is impossible not to; even one living in absolute solitude is connected to more people than they may wish to admit."

Letting out a sigh through her nose, Korra unwillingly relaxed her posture and drawled a heavy. "Yeeeah, I know. Guess having the closest thing to home on the turtle was more of a privilege, huh?"

But the rest didn't get lost on her, Korra could tell where he was looking. Part of her wanted to make the ship fly around more, but hanging in the air where it was fit for now.

"...you know, I think Asti's a perfect example of that." She's been fond of the turtle since she arrived, so Saint gave her an additional form of support without meaning too.

"Asti?" Saint Walker frowned slightly in thought, trying to recall if the name seemed familiar. After living in relative solitude for so long, he often found the sheer amount of people on the Turtle to be somewhat overwhelming, and he would be the first to admit that he knew relatively few of the people who surrounded him.

"Who might that be?"

Korra mouth shrunk. That was a good time for her to get some of that water to wash her foot down with. She had always assumed foreigners knew that, and it wasn't the first time it happened.

One day she'll learn.

"Asti is the turtle himself, Tu Vishan. Sometimes he talks to us in our dreams, but it's been a while since he did that."

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As your feet, they touch the ground

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