Korra was a whirlwind.
Even at age four, she was loud, wild, and already bending fire, water, and earth with the clumsy enthusiasm of a prodigy with no concept of limits. The elders whispered about her being the Avatar. The children avoided her during games—she scorched the snow too often. But to Kaiqok, she was… exactly as he remembered.
Only smaller. Messier. Louder.
And today, she had spotted him.
"You! Gold boy!"
Kaiqok froze.
He stood near the village's training grounds, arms crossed, having just finished manipulating a small storm cloud into a snowflake dragon for some amused toddlers. The kids clapped. Then, like a war cry, came her voice.
Korra stormed toward him in heavy boots, fists clenched, puffs of steam shooting from her nose like an angry bison.
"You think you're cool just 'cause you made a dragon outta snow?!"
Kaiqok blinked. "Um… kind of, yeah."
The toddlers snickered.
Korra scowled. "Well, I can do this!"
She stomped her foot, and the ground cracked beneath her. A pillar of earth launched upward, knocking over a snowman and almost flattening the dragon cloud Kaiqok had sculpted.
"Korra!" came a distant shout. Her father, Chief Tonraq, was running up, already apologizing. "Sorry—she's been in a mood since breakfast."
"I am not in a mood!" she yelled. "He started it!"
Tonraq sighed, nodding politely at Kaiqok. "She's… intense. Thank you for not vaporizing her."
"I was about to turn her into a ferret," Kaiqok said with a smirk. "A very loud one."
Korra puffed her cheeks. "You wanna fight, glowy boy?"
He leaned down, lowering his voice. "You sure about that? What if I am a spirit?"
Korra narrowed her eyes.
"…Are you?"
He gave a wink and whispered, "Only at night."
The little girl stood there, frozen. Then—against all odds—she burst out laughing. A wild, full-belly laugh. Tonraq blinked in surprise.
"You're weird!" she said between giggles.
Kaiqok shrugged. "Takes one to know one."
From that moment on, Korra decided they were friends. Or rivals. Or something in between.
She began following him around the village, barking questions.
"How come you glow?"
"What tribe are you from?"
"Can you make a spirit moose?"
"Do you like pickled seaweed?"
"Are you really older than me? You act like an old man."
Kaiqok answered every question with either a riddle or sarcasm. And every time, Korra seemed to like him more.
Still, he kept a careful distance. She didn't remember him. She didn't know him. She couldn't—not yet. This wasn't the Korra who had broken the Avatar cycle. This was the girl who still thought she could punch the world into submission.
But a part of him… already cared too deeply.
He watched her train with the White Lotus guards. She was raw but powerful. Wild but focused. When she waterbent, it looked like a dance. When she firebent, it was like a roar from her soul.
And she was getting stronger—fast.
One afternoon, while the sun dipped below the cliffs and the skies turned amber, Kaiqok stood alone, practicing his own bending near the ice fields. He sculpted shapes from thin air—towers made of wind, blades of crystal, orbs of pressurized sound.
Then, a snowball hit the back of his head.
He turned slowly.
Korra was grinning, two more snowballs in hand. "Gotcha."
"Really?" he said flatly. "Is this how wars start?"
She lobbed the next one. He caught it midair with chakra and tossed it back, supercharged—it exploded into golden mist just inches from her face.
"Whoa!" she laughed. "Do it again!"
She ran at him full speed, launching snow like a mini cannon.
He smiled faintly.
And so began the Great Snow War of the South.
They ran, slid, and flipped through the snowfields, flinging snowballs like bending attacks. Korra used bursts of fire to melt his cover. Kaiqok used wind to blow hers away. At some point, he transformed his chakra cloak into a giant golden hawk and dive-bombed her into a snowbank.
She shrieked with delight.
"You cheat!"
"I win," he said, brushing snow from his hood.
Korra laughed again, hands on her knees, gasping for breath. Her cheeks were flushed, her clothes soaked. "You're fun. Everyone else just tells me to calm down."
Kaiqok sat beside her on the icy ridge. "You'll get told that a lot. Especially when you grow up."
"Why?"
"Because power scares people," he said. "And you've got a lot of it."
She looked down, suddenly thoughtful. "Sometimes I don't know what to do with it all. It's like I wanna scream, and punch, and make the world listen."
He glanced at her.
"You don't have to punch the world," he said gently. "Just hold it in your hands, and choose what to shape."
Korra looked at him strangely, then nodded. "…I think I get it."
They sat in silence as the last light dipped below the cliffs.
From afar, Ayaya watched from the shadows.
"The stars have started moving," she murmured. "The balance shifts already."