mini LOK ficlets #2.2: brothers from the school of hard knocks 

Another one of the ficlets. This is in concept only because I’m lazy and I have an essay due in a few hours.

I lied. I got into it. Here it is. 

2b. The One with Mako’s Feelings
Mako starts learning meditation from the Air Acolytes because it relaxes him and helps take his mind off things, and it eases his more traumatic memories. They lose their depth and become flat, two-dimensional; easy to roll up and store without derailing himself. Until one day, the face of the man who killed his parents disappears from his memories, and this snarls on his thoughts like a burr in a wool scarf… and the more he meditates, the more the details disappear. The man’s firebending stance, once so clearly imprinted in his mind, changes each time he thinks about it, and the assertion in his parents’ expressions - they’re going to fight, so he can live - bleeds off like runny paint, leaving only surprise and aching vulnerability. The man’s words, each sound sharper than the point of a knife,  blend into meaningless syllables, nonsense that drips onto his clarity of thought, breaking through it like water through paper… and finally he goes hunting.

He catches up with the answer in the Republic City newspaper archives, the 16th page of a tattered newspaper from ten years ago.

Child kills parents, orphans self and brother in firebending accident

He sinks cross-legged to the floor of the library and puts his fists together, closes his eyes, begins humming a mantra. Peace will not come to you. You must go to peace. Peace will not come to you. You must go to peace.

But the librarians  are at a loss as to what to tell the young man who has been sobbing inconsolably for the past two hours in the newspaper stacks.