"No, but only because you'd have to go five hundred miles to find any of them."

"I," she says, "Am very fast."

"Good for you. Don't bring any of them back here, and don't leave a trail."

"You don't want to play?"

"Do I want to trust a stranger from another world I met less than an hour ago to whisk me five hundred miles away to a battle site I don't even know the exact location of, there to piss off at least one and possibly two armies, and then be whisked back in time for dinner? No. I don't."

She laughs. "Reasonable, perhaps. Do you mind answering some of my questions about this world?"

"Fine. Let's go downstairs."

"Of course." She'll follow, then.

Down to the common room. Eliko claims a corner table.

"Ask your questions."

"Is the only magic here elemental? Can anyone use any of the elements, or are they limited to their Nations?"

"Bending only affects the elements. Fire, air, water, earth. Only the Avatar can bend more than one. Not everyone's a bender."

"What are spirits?"

"Spirits are spirits. Animated expressions of nature, or something. No one really knows."

She nods. "What's the Avatar?"

"The bridge between humans and the spirit world."

"And that allows them to use all four of your elements?"

Shrug.

"Apparently. The one running around now has only been seen using air and wind."

"Oh, there's an Avatar currently? Delightful."

"She reappeared a year ago after being gone for almost a century."

" - The same person?"

"The Avatar's reincarnations cycle through the nations and between genders. They were a female airbender when they disappeared and they're a female airbender now. There haven't been seven others since then, so yeah. Same person."

"Same age? How delightfully odd."

"Yeah. And in the meantime the Fire Nation's burned half the world, so I think most people are a little too angry to ask questions about why and how."

"Pity that."

Shrug.