The world around the yard stitched its edges back together and didn't bother to do it neatly. The avatar's light had breathed for a second and then given us back our names like a small miracle. But miracles are thin where scars are thick.

  Peko stood in front of the group he led,ragged, exhausted, carrying the smell of ash and worry like a cloak, and the people looked at me with a new sort of calculation.

  Suspicion emptied just enough to make room for guarded hope. I could see it in the way their shoulders uncurled a fraction and in the way a child plucked courage like a new toy.

  But recognition does not erase consequencs.

  "Are you hurt?" he asked, voice small because the world had stolen his megaphone

  "Worse," I said. "I'm tired."I would have laughed if I wasn't tired at that joke.

  He barked a laugh that sounded like a pistol firing blanks. Then he signaled, and a band of figures righted themselves slowly to come forward ,medics, scavengers, men with woven shields and women with scarves that were more armor than fashion.

  They worked without a lot of noise, patching, binding, passing cups of something that tasted like sugar and medicine.

  I let them for a moment. The dragon-spark in my veins settled into a slow warmth, like something healing me from the inside out.

  Bruises lightened. Lines on my palms softened. A cut at my temple shrank until it was only a smear under the muck. Healing was a quiet, ungrudging thing inside me now. It didn't make anything right; it only made surviving less ugly.

  Peko watched the whole thing, his jaw clenched. The avatar's green glow still hummed faintly in his eyes as if the image of it burned there. He was a leader because people followed him, but he was human because his chest kept pulling in air like someone waiting for the next blow.

  "You shouldn't be here," he said finally, softer.

  "I know." My voice surprised me. It had a new honesty, a hollowed patience.

  "Then why are you here?"

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "I was trying to look for the reason too."

  His face folded then, a map of a thousand small decisions. "Are you okay?"

  "That doesn't matter." I looked around, at the mush land and people. "Not right now."

  Silence like a hand closed around both of us.

  He tightened his fingers, then did something the old me would never have expected, he laughed once, then took a breath and pushed the laugh into a bark of command.

  "Take him to shelter. Get him dry. Then....we decide."

  They moved me. They used a blanket that smelled like straw and kindness. Someone fashioned a splint for my ankle. Someone else held a lamp that smelled like oil and cinnamon.

  It was clumsy, but it was shelter; it was human, and that was enough to make me dizzy with gratitude.

  I lay back on the pallet they made and watched Peko as he walked along the edge of the group, checking, ordering, calculating. He moved like a man who kept his people in his pockets: careful, everyday small checks with the tenderness of someone who knew there were not enough hands to go around.

  A boy crawled in and sat at my feet. He had an arm like a tree branch and eyes like glinting glass. He regarded me with the kind of suspicion a kid should reserve for strangers handing out sweets.

  I gave him a nod and he nodded back, a pact of two tired animals.

  "You should be careful," he whispered as he jumped back to his feet.

  "I will be," I said. The words tasted honest.

  There was a sound from outside like a gong. A few people bowed their heads. Peko moved faster. He returned with a face carved from decision.

  "The green avatar is more than image," he said quietly when he crouched down beside me. "It stands for the old guard. It is how we call our histories back into shape. But to make it move, we pay a price."

  "What price?" I breathed.

  He looked away like staring might make the price harder to say. "It costs what you give it. Your blood. Your silence. The thing that makes you whole is what it asks for."

  "It wasn't as intense back when we were kids." I looked at his expression.

  "We are no longer kids." His face didn't betray his emotions.

  He was saying the thing all leaders say differently: to save the many you must betray some part of yourself. The avatar was a big machine of faith ,massive, impossible, that answered to those who could gift it something meaningful.

  "You made me fight you for a reason," I said suddenly, as if talking could keep me from falling into the pool of memory again. "You needed me to remember."

  He blinked. "And you?"

  "I just fought back because everything has been trying to kill me for some time" I said.

  His hands unclenched.

  "What... are you going to do?" He asks.

  "I assume these people are in a pinch, alongside you. So first of all, we all get out to somewhere safe."

  Peko blinks. Then looks down. "It's not that simple-"

  "I'm not expecting it to be."

  Peko sighs. Then looks back at me.

  A smile on his dirty face, and ruoughed white fur.

  "You helped me before, too. Still same, huh,nobita?"

  "You did as well, so we're even on that. And you need to help me here, so we're even on that too."

  He quiets, his eyes getting a bit more intense. His stare hangs on there.

  "No. I take it back." He speaks, "you have definitely changed."