“Come on, Korra. There’s more to see,” the spirit beamed as she transformed back from a little squirrel into her centaur-like ghost form. Before I even had a chance to say more to the others, she grabbed my hand and dragged me away.

Seriously, I needed to explain to them what was going on, or at least tell them something to stop looking at me like they were. Though each in their own way, Deckard, Lightfeather, and Lord Wigram looked at me with utter disbelief and bewilderment. They had no idea what to make of me.

Was I the lucky girl who got the World Tree’s attention, a fool frolicking around, or a menace? There was so much in their eyes and even more in the eyes of the soldiers.

Only Pipsqueak, though still in shock, her little heart beating so fast that I could hear it, was glad that the spirit was going away after having a laugh at her expense. 

Yet the little rascal, despite the state she was in, managed to get her wits together and threw me a look, asking if her treasure hidden with me was safe. I almost burst out laughing when she did that. Sadly, all I had time to do was to give her a reassuring wink before the spirit of the World Tree dragged me too far, and I lost them behind her roots. A wink, a gesture I was aware she might not fully understand.

Hell, I was confused myself, and didn’t quite understand what was going on. I mean, why me? Why the heck did the spirit of the World Tree drag me along? Sure, I was aware of the otherworldly shit and even somehow accepted that it was me who helped her gain awareness, still...wasn’t Esu the one who spent decades, quite possibly centuries, at her trunk?

“Too thoughtful,” the spirit frowned as we made our way over to the other mossbears. “Look at them. So many to meet.”

She was right about the first part. I was too lost in my thoughts, though I wasn’t so sure about the latter. Yes, there were a lot of mossbears, but...

“Hi, I am me, and who are you?”

I almost facepalmed myself when she asked the young mossbear the same question as the humans. Well, almost the same one. She asked in the language of mossbears by snarling, growling, baring her teeth, and putting intent behind her words. Alas, for all her effort and enthusiasm, I knew where it would lead...to her disappointment.

“Korra, they’re like me,....” she whimpered, saddened by the finding. “They have no names.”

“Yeah, I know. Only Esu has a name.”

“Why? They’re stronger than the ones by the water. Even the little one had a strong name.”

At first, it was cute. Now her cluelessness gave me pause. “You’ve been growing here for many...cycles. Haven’t you seen a number of mossbears in that time? Or humans, for that matter?”

“I was sleeping. You remember during your sleep?” she quizzed, genuinely curious.

Damn it. She got me. It was a little more complicated with all the changes to my body, but being in that dungeon among the screaming slaves taught me to ignore a lot of things while I slept. That’s why I was able to pass out in the room next to the brothel during its business hours and remember nothing in the morning. So...

“No,” I shook my head. “I barely remember my dreams.”

“Dreams? What are dreams, Korra?”

Damn it, how do you explain that? Did the trees even dream? However, I did my best to explain the wonder taking place in our minds during the night.

“Oh, then the time before my awakening was like a dream for me. There, but hard to recall,” the spirit said, tapping her head. The gesture made me wonder where she’d picked it up since she’d basically been dreaming up until now and how her mind actually worked. Trees didn’t exactly have brains as such. Or were the World Trees different?

“Many cycles have passed, boring cycles with nothing to remember. Many mossbears in my dreams, humans too. They are different, yet the same. Then why don’t they have names?”

“Humans are more different than you think. Don’t you have a connection to the other World Trees, access to their knowledge?” Deckard mentioned something like that.

“They won’t share until I have a name,” the spirit groaned, frustrated with that fact, but then her eyes lit up. “It’s more fun to explore on my own, anyway,” she said as if it were a matter of course, and I was silly for not knowing. “Even more fun with you, you know.”

Without going deeper into the issue, I gave up, and I dove back into the process of explaining, this time, the naming difference between humans and beasts to the best of my knowledge and understanding. The way she listened, spellbound by what I was saying, gave me jitters. Actually, I found it nerve-wracking. What if I said something that wasn’t true and she found out later? Game over for Korra Grey!

Sure, exaggeration. Yet I couldn’t help feeling like one false move could end my life while joy and playfulness rampaged through my body in the presence of the spirit. Let me tell you, it was damn confusing.

Just like she was, or the World Tree was if you like. Who knows how old this seedling was, yet she acted like a little child. Even now, knowing what I had told her, she was bouncing among the mossbears, trying to get to know them, regardless of their strength. Whether they liked it or not, both adults and mother mossbears were struck by her irresistible gaiety.

However, none of them showed nothing more than respect toward her.

“There’s still more, Korra,” the spirit said as she manifested right in front of my face again, giggling like a fool when she scared the shit out of me a second time. 

Knowing she would try a prank like this again, I did the best I could, straining my senses to their limits. To no avail, though. It was like she wasn’t there at all. Either my skill level was too low and my perception too limited, or her ethereal form was something completely off, like some kind of projection directed into my mind.

“Still more,” the spirit raised her ethereal voice and poked me in the cheek when I fell back into thought.

“More of what? To see? Where? Who?” I blurted out the questions, looking around. She greeted everyone present, whether they were beasts or men. “You want to go deeper into the woods?”

“No, silly Korra. Up.” She pointed up above her.

Even though my eyes went to the glowing, streaming clusters of purple flowers, I knew she wasn’t talking about them. After all, they were her flowers, as much a part of her as the crown above us. No, with dread welling up in the pit of my stomach, I had to face the fact that she meant the sky above the treetops and intended to meet the northern eagles and proud Miros. 

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go alone.”

“Why alone? More fun with  more people.”

“I, I am not able to fly,” I said, fluttering my wings to make her understand. “I can’t follow you up there.”

“I can help,” she piped as if it wasn’t a big deal and grabbed my hand. The moment she did, I lost my breath as her energy coursed through my body. It was...it didn’t feel right. I was able to tell that much. As if something foreign was seeping into my body, changing it, threatening to take over. But to compare it to a mind mage attack on my mind would be unfair to the spirit of the World Tree.

Mind mage attack was brutal and crude. This, despite how overwhelming, was gentle. In fact, to the point that my body didn’t resist at all. Weird, huh? Lord Wigram claimed that human and beast mana did not mix well together and was shocked to find out that mossbears were able to heal people. Namely, Aspen and me. In my case, he credited it to my newly acquired ancestry. See where I’m going with this?

Were there any plants in the mix that was my body? 

Nah, bullshit. 

As unsettling as that thought was, I shoved it away. Dungreen may have been a proper lunatic, but either he wasn’t that crazy or saw it as impossible because the only thing he talked  about was human-beast hybrids. Never the specifics, though.

“Oh, there...” the spirit chirped as her eyes lit up with excitement. I, on the other hand, broke out in a cold sweat as a sharp pain shot through my lower back.

“W-what a-are you doing?” I stuttered out, trying to fight the pain.

“Helping.”

“I-I’m not so sure...”

“Just a moment...a moment no longer than a bee sits on a flower...and...done.” 

At once, all the pain was gone. It was as if her energy broke through some kind of blockage in my flesh and ran through my body in full force, most of it into my wings. For a second there, I expected them to grow. They didn’t, not really. What unfolded in length were my wing feathers. Or I should say, they got a kind of ethereal extension. With that purplish soul-like appearance of my feathers, my wingspan reached almost twice its original length. It was so surreal, like in some kind of dream.

“See, it wasn’t hard. You can fly now, Korra.”

Was it really that simple? “Are...are you sure?” I asked, trying my wings. There was no difference in the movement itself, as far as I could tell. However, the feedback from them was completely different, thrown off by the foreign manna coursing through my body and forming the ethereal feathers. Just a few flaps and I could tell they were lighter, with an incomparably greater lift. Hell, I was lighter despite [Behemoth] among my skills.

“This is awesome.”

“Right? Come then,” the spirit urged me, nudging me with her tail, before spreading her wings and taking to the air in one mighty flap.

“What are you waiting for, Korra?”

For how old she was, she was pretty impatient.

“Give me a second. I’ve never done this before.” 

Seriously, despite the fact that I’ve tried countless times, I’ve never flown all by myself. Someone throwing me in the air simply didn’t count. This whole experience was new to me.

“Never did I,” the spirit proclaimed, not realizing how her sheer bluntness and the ease with which she could fly despite her inexperience were hurting my beast pride. “It’s easy. Come on, Korra.”

When did our roles reverse? Fuck this! I took a deep breath, crouched down, and pushed off the ground with a mighty flap of my wings. Surprisingly, once airborne, some of my so far dormant beast instincts kicked in, and I started flapping my wings in the rhythm necessary to keep me floating three or four meters above the ground.

“See, easy,” the spirit chimed. That giggling of hers kept me from going into shock at what I was doing, and instead, I started laughing like a fool, but a flying fool. One of the dreams I found after coming to Eleaden has come true, and none of my fears of the first flight unfolded. I didn’t fall like a rock back to the ground face first, nor did I have trouble with the balance due to poor wing placement. Sage, my trusty tail, served as a fine counterweight, holding me up in the right direction.

Was the hovering in place the only thing I was capable of doing, though?

Hell no! I felt...no I knew I could do more, felt freer than ever before. Let’s see...

Shifting my weight, moving my wings and tail as my instincts were telling me to, I veered to the right. Giving it another try, I shifted back, and before I knew it, I was circling the giggling spirit. Sure, it wasn’t the graceful flight of born fliers, jerky, erratic, but one that filled me with a joy bursting from my chest in uncontrollable laughter.

“Come, more to see,” said the spirit, having fun with my antics as I considered flying over the humans to show off in front of Deckard and see Lord Wigram’s face upon witnessing me flying. Sadly, this petty little notion had to wait. The spirit was getting impatient and wanted to see more. She was looking forward to meeting the northern eagles and Zeew.

Unlike my expectation, she did not head under her crown to the edge to fly around it but straight up into the branches as if she were a seasoned flier I knew she wasn’t. She was as much an amateur as I was when it came to flying. That was unless trees naturally knew how to fly in her original world. Weird notion, yet totally possible.

Not wanting to lose her, I flapped my wings and took off after her, plunging into the crown of the World Tree. Prepared for a hell of a ride, I was pleasantly surprised when I found a corridor wide enough for easy flying among the branches of the World Tree. They simply moved away in front of the spirit, giving her space.

Or I should say, she was making room for me.

After all, as the spirit of the World Tree, she didn’t have to make a pass through her own crown and could just appear above it. The easy way that anyone would take if they were in her shoes. Not her, though. There was no fun in that. And she loved to have her fair share of joy, actually preferred not to have it alone, as I learned.

The more the merrier.

But as she broke out of her own crown, her giggles abruptly ceased. 

For a moment there, I thought she was facing Zeew and the northern eagles already, eyeing them curiously as she did with humans and mossbears. So far, she has seemed easy to impress. My thoughts turned out to be on the right track, yet far from the truth.

Following in her trail, I broke the surface of the World Tree’s crown and fell silent, just like her. It wasn’t the northern eagles that made me speechless, nor proud Miros. It was the cloudless night sky over Esulmor. Sparkling with a thousand stars, one of which could have been the Sun I knew, and graced with two moons of Eleaden, the blue one shining in full force, the sky was a sight to behold. Simply breathtaking.

And even more so with the dawning awareness of where I was. With my feet firmly on the ground, such a sight would keep me spellbound for sure. So high up above the ground, where I got by my own power, actually flying, the sigh of the night sky took my breath away, making me speechless.

“Abomination...” screeched one of the eagles behind us, ruining this magical moment for me. Their remark wasn’t directed at my appearance. It never bothered the northern eagles. Nor was it directed at my shared ancestry with them. What the beast had trouble swallowing was that I was flying, or to be more precise, that I was flying with the help of others. 

“Why so rude to Korra?” the spirit asked curiously, without any hint of malice in her ethereal voice.

Zeew appeared more mindful and hit the eagle with her presence, warning her kind against further such insinuations. “Don’t mind that one, great spirit of tree. That was pride of our kin speaking.”

Wow. Did I hear that right? The mighty Miros saying something like that was quite unexpected. I would have thought that their pride would not allow them to bow their heads, let alone admit that it was their shortcoming.

Somewhat expectedly, the spirit didn’t quite grasp the implications of that like I did and just cocked her head. “Pride?”

“Pride in our ability to take to skies,” explained Zeew. “It is disgrace to fly only with help of others and not on your own.”

Understanding dawned on the spirit, and she didn’t take it well, turning to me with tears welling up in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to disgrace you, Korra.”

Seeing the eyes of the mighty Miros over the distress of the spirit was priceless. I actually had to stop myself from grinning like a fool lest the spirit get me wrong. Disgrace, a word I wasn’t sure she understood properly. Still, I needed to set the record straight.

“That’s them. I am me,” I said, slowly getting used to the World Tree’s language. “Your help made me feel joy.”

Hearing that, her eyes lit up. “Same, but different.”

“Yeah, kind of...,” I nodded, glancing at Zeew and back. “Honestly, your help allowed me to understand their pride better.” The truth and nothing else. Being up here, free as I was, I could understand why they looked down on those limited to walking on the ground. 

“Pride...” the spirit tried the word again. “How does pride feel, Korra?”

“Well...” I stammered, taken aback by her question? How the fuck do you describe something like that? 

“I think she could explain it better.” I did my best to shift the responsibility of explaining to the mighty Miros. “You know you haven’t introduced yourself to her yet...?”

Before I even had a chance to finish, the spirit fluttered her wings in delighted realization and moved closer to Zeew. “Hi, I am me. You?”

The shift in spirit’s mood threw Miros off guard, yet she was quick to recover. “I am Zeew, great spirit of tree. Pride fills my chest at being in your presence and witnessing your awakening.”

“Pride, is it pride to be grateful for a cloudless sky?” the spirit mused aloud before flying over to the two northern eagles and introducing herself to them. One still visibly beaten, both confused by her playful manner. The two didn’t hold her attention for long, though.

“They’re nameless, like me, Korra.”

“Weak to have a name,” Miros remarked to her kin.

“I was weak, too,” the spirit beamed, reminiscing of times past while looking off into the distance. “Now awake, and the others are looking for my name. They didn’t name one for many cycles, excited.” She paused, slumping her shoulders. “Too slow, though. I want to have a name like you Korra, like you Zeew.”

Feathers of Miros gained a tinge of purple as she puffed up proudly when the spirit mentioned her name. “It’s going to be great name, one to be proud of.”

“Oh, you think I know pride with a name?”

Please, not that. I mean, having a bit of pride wasn’t a bad thing, but the idea of her turning into a proud tree along the lines of Miros and northern eagles didn’t appeal to me. I loved this World Tree for what she was, carefree and playful. That struck me as a rarity both here and on Earth.

In the end, curiosity about pride got the better of the spirit, and Zeew was forced to tell her about it. In fact, she didn’t seem to mind and, instead, reveled in the World Tree’s attention.

I, on the other hand, was enjoying my newfound ability to fly and was determined to make the best of it while I could, sure it wasn’t a permanent thing. Twists and turns, hoops and dives. I tested my speed and reached heights never before known to me while I screamed my lungs out in joy. All on my own, so to speak. 

The only nuisance to my delight was the two northern eagles giving me disgusted looks.

I was just making a long arc around them in a bit of provocation when my ears twitched over the words of the spirit. “...what about when I can name my Guardians? Do I know pride then?”

“Didn’t you favor one already?” Zeew inquired, puzzled, shooting me a look.

Nirrvash

So... perhaps a tad unexpectedly, Korra got a taste of flight. Even if the chapter wasn't fully focused on that, what do you say? Good? Bad? A bit of both?