Scene #6183: The Blind Leading The... Invisible?

Owner	Pose
Korra	It had not been tremendously long, in the sense of total time, since Nie Li had stunned a crowd of Concord elites with his show of Cultivation, and demoing with his Lesser Soul Crystals. But for Korra, it had been a bright spot in a sea of mundanity. Day in, day out, it was training. She had thought coming to Republic City would be filled with adventure and Avatar-ing. Mostly it was filled with a lot of vegetarian dinners and Tenzin trying to teach her like an Airbender. It made her think she just wasn't going to 'be' an Airbender. But that would mean not 'being' the Avatar, and that wasn't acceptable. So, instead, she escaped. She found the Shrine of Adversity, and treated it like the Multiversal Gold's Gym it was. A place to get away. A temple to the self. Her workout routine was involved, but afterwards, she spent time 'meditating', as she had learned how. She would find one of the broad, grassy ninja plains among the Shrine's many areas, and settle down in the grass, cross-legged, and bring her fists together. Looking 'inward' was never easy, but even if she was no spiritual prodigy by Avatar standards, she was naturally attuned to her own chakras, at least. She could feel them, and explore them, and after a long workout, towel draped around her shoulders, she found it most helpful. And so, the Avatar sat, on the grass, out in a corner of small Featureless Ninja Plain, in public... Rather than at any other spiritually useful location. Maybe she was just a gym rat at heart.
Korra	It had not been tremendously long, in the sense of total time, since Nie Li had stunned a crowd of Concord elites with his show of Cultivation, and demoing with his Lesser Soul Crystals. But for Korra, it had been a bright spot in a sea of mundanity. Day in, day out, it was training. She had thought coming to Republic City would be filled with adventure and Avatar-ing. Mostly it was filled with a lot of vegetarian dinners and Tenzin trying to teach her like an Airbender. It made her think she just wasn't going to 'be' an Airbender. But that would mean not 'being' the Avatar, and that wasn't acceptable. So, instead, she escaped. She found the Shrine of Adversity, and treated it like the Multiversal Gold's Gym it was. A place to get away. A temple to the self. Her workout routine was involved, but afterwards, she spent time 'meditating', as she had learned how. She would find one of the broad, grassy ninja plains among the Shrine's many areas, and settle down in the grass, cross-legged, and bring her fists together. Looking 'inward' was never easy, but even if she was no spiritual prodigy by Avatar standards, she was naturally attuned to her own chakras, at least. She could feel them, and explore them, and after a long workout, towel draped around her shoulders, she found it most helpful. And so, the Avatar sat, on the grass, out in a corner of small Featureless Ninja Plain, in public... Rather than at any other spiritually useful location. Maybe she was just a gym rat at heart.
Priscilla	Normally Priscilla is a pretty private person (asides from the duties of her obvious job), especially when it comes to matters even as private as personal training (likewise asides from the idea of projecting the idea she never needs to train), but having caught sight of Korra while passing through a perfectly public, well-traveled place, there are certain exceptions that can be made (or at least flimsily justified). The two of them had met only briefly before, on intriguing but socially near-useless terms, despite the fact that Staren purported to know her or someone like her, and Korra isn't exactly trying to have the place or time to herself while she is clearly focused on what the two of them had both taken away from that visit with Nie Li's bizarre crystal exam. At least it isn't poking or being overly familiar though. It's a pretty simple "Hast thou discovered something special about this particular spot, pertinent to thine training? It wouldst seemeth that thou art indeed still hard at work since then." from a close but respectful distance. "Wouldst all those I must rely on be so diligent. Albeit, Sir Almasy hath taken an especially grave seriousness to the task of training since then. I believeth thou hast impressed him." If Korra decides to stop meditating to deal with the bother, she will find that Priscilla apparently isn't there. Come on, it's not like she just walks through the front door and calls up a room every day. Imagine how insanely inconvenient that'd be, and what kind of crowd it could draw. Also cameras. Screw cameras.
Korra	Korra certainly doesn't get a good idea of Priscilla being there before the halfbreed's words, but once she talks, Korra's lips upturn, even though her eyes don't open. Her breathing 'finishes', having noticed halfway through an inhalation, deep through the nose, and finishing with a slow, purposeful exhale. Her shoulders slouch forward as she lets her arms rest against her legs, and she cracks an eye to look aorund. "Well, sure. But it's shared by every good spot for meditating: the best are either familiar to you, filled with memories that you can touch on, sort out, and then dismiss, one by one. The next best are those you prepare, maybe with a little incense or a sort of sound - like by the ocean. And, finally..." Korra's left hand slides off her thigh to pat the grass, before her fingers curl into the earth, picking up a clod of earth and squeezing it between her fingers. "Places like this. Empty. Simple. You can feel the earth, listen to the grass, find where the breeze comes from, and learn it quickly. It takes longer than a place that you can lose yourself in, but it's all the same skill." As for training, she shrugs. "It's personal training. Different than for pro bending. When I'm practicing with Mako, and Bolin - my team partners - I'm practicing just waterbending, and trying to make working as part of a squad more natural. Overcoming my normal instincts, trying to pick up new tricks; it's entirely differnet." "This is... Well, I've got my own blocks inside of me. Things to find, overcome. I know they're there - Just have to find them." She resets herself, because Priscilla is INVISIBLE, bringing her fists back together. "You're pretty sneaky, you know? Anyway, I bet Sword Guy's intense at it. He seems intense. Got that feel: 'intense'. Reminds me a lot of Mako, but with Bolin's mouth. Those kind of guys..." Korra smiles, despite herself. "Well, they're good to have at your back."
Priscilla	Following a long, exceptionally empty pause -practically dead air in the absence of Korra's words, as if Priscilla had already moved on and the Avatar had been talking to nobody the entire time- is perhaps a somewhat unexpectedly sincere, if measured, response. "Interesting. Entirely helpful to know, as well. I shalt consider such insight valuable." There is an additional break of sound, almost certainly owed to Priscilla further mulling over the most straightforward advice regarding meditation that she'd ever not expected to hear. Somewhere familiar, filled with memories . . . "Indeed he is, though his preferred place is at the front, in many senses." Priscilla finally adds, continuing to a different topic with a shift in cadence. "I understand well the order of retraining old instincts thou art used to, however not to what ends thou put this towards." A beat. "It is less fuss and commotion to be, asides. Were I not, I am certain thou wouldst be troubled with far more than a simple conversation at the moment." No apologies for the sneak here.
Korra	Korra nods, her small grin returning. "It's easy to try and push away and isolate yourself from something you know about. Do you need... tips, though?" Korra shifts, letting her fists drop into her lap as she does, to undo her lotus into a more casual cross-legged seating position. "Hmm. Yeah, that seems his type. He's got a real..." She throws a fist casually, mocking a punch as her smile grows. "Fierce sense." Her fist drops once more into her lap. "And you, you've got something too. Not like his, it's..." She snaps her fingers in her lap, extending her arms into the crevasses of her legs. "Regal? Authoritative, that!" She laughs. "Couldn't get it off my tongue. Anyway, as for retraining old instincts..." Korra hops up to her feet, immediately bringing a leg up and then down, arcing her foot through the air and into the ground. "When I'm attacked I want to bring up --" The dirt solidifies into discrete blocks around her, sloping up. "--something to block! Or --" She spins her palms and then pushes her hands down, releasing the grass-covered shields back into the area so they mostly go back where they were. With a pivot-spin on her heels, she seeps her leg through the air in a horizontal arc, a nearly 270 degree arc of flame flaring around. "-- attack back!" She hangs in the air, cranked into a Y with her leg out, holding her position and grinning towards where Priscilla's voice came from, before slowly bringing her foot in at the knee, before righting and dropping her foot back to the earth. "But that's earthbending, and firebending. When I'm training for competition, I can only use waterbending. I can't pick up Bolin's discs or spin Mako's fire - I have to just use the water, and that means I have to train much more deeply. It requires having a 'style', so when you're in it, that mindset, you react differently. It's why stances work - if you're really moving through your stances, you can use them as focuses, and train each move and motion." "Maybe it's silly, and just my problem, since only the Avatar can bend all the elements, but I think it works for others too. Like, having a weapon and not - that's two styles."
Priscilla	When Korra gets up from meditating and begins a genuine conversation (and demonstration), Priscilla finally lets the surreptitious entry drop. As slightly odd as it may be to decide to become visible when someone's eyes open, it seems excessive, and somewhat impolite, to continue making her talk to empty air. There's only a little shiver of the air as she reappears, over Korra's shoulder, outside of arm's reach. "I shalt taketh such as a compliment." she says, a little matter-of-factly to Korra's cast of her character. "Strangely enough, thou art not quite the first to sayeth such outside of, of preceding, the matter of a station as First of the Concord. I can only assumeth it due to the precepts of conduct, bearing, manners, and face once taught in days old, so frequently forgotten now." i.e. being old-fashioned. She remains quieter when Korra starts demonstrating though, ostensibly taking in what she's trying to get at, but replying first with: "I see. So this is the 'bending' I hath heard much of. I am fortunate, then, that mine first impressions of it cometh from the Avatar herself. As much as I hath been told of it before, I had not yet the opportunity to see it with mine own eyes." Even Korra can get the idea that Priscilla rarely deviates far from that tone that can only be called 'snowy' for being lighter, quieter, and less hard than what one would call 'icy', so the fact she sounds only mildly interested probably doesn't signal a real lack of it. "It is said that the more experienced the warrior, the more faithful he is to his fundamental style, as it is what hast kept him alive so far, and which he thus trusts with his life. It is not easy to step outside of such trust, and revise what thou knoweth. Even less simple is it to respond reflexively whence thou hast so many talents of reprisal available to thee. With many options, the degrees to which one is superior to the other becometh finer and finer, and requireth more and more thought whence considered consciously; anathema to real battle."
Korra	Korra laughs lightly, at ease with the frigid response out of the just-now visible form of the half-dragon. She's settled well into the persona of the instructor - or simply just genuinely excited to talk about this stuff. And, to a point, 'this sort of thing' was all she had ever known. Someone wanting to hear her talk about it was one of the first "really" Avatar things she had gotten to do. "Well, it's a good sound, if you're the boss of something." She asides, holding her arms up and lacing her fingers behind her head, resting there in a half-stretch to pace about. "Yeah. Earth and Firebending. Earthbending's been pretty consistently taught for centuries, but Firebending just recently was retrained thanks to the last Avatar, Aang. The Fire Nation, for the longest time, thought fire was an element of anger, of temper buring red hot." Loosening her fingers, she curls her finger and half-snaps, lighting a small wick of heat and flickering orange above her cupped thumb and forefinger. "But it's the heat of life itself. The vital pulse of energy, of a beating heart. They were channeling the power like a moron lifts a heavy object - all with their shoulders and elbows and knees, straining themselves in ineptitude. And a strong person can lift poorly and still get it done, but..." Korra tenses her bicep and forearm, her fingers tensing and the flickering candle becoming a whole torch-head of roaring, licking heat. "When you do it the right way, I think it's one of the strongest elements. But not the trickiest." She slacks her arm, and waves out her fingers, her torch-head falling to a candle, and then an empty ember dissipating into the air. "I think, with an experienced warrior, you're... mmm." Korra plops back down, crosslegged, left hand pressing against left knee and right hand stroking chin thoughtfully. "You know, that's true. But it's not complete. It's mixing personality and technique - and some other stuff." Korra lets her stroking hand drop, resting palm on her other knee. "So, think of it like this: when you're surprised, when you're coming at something from a cold start, that's your personality. That's your 'go to', the first thing that springs to action. When you've got a little time to mentally prepare, then you start into technique. You can have trained for decades, and become a master of a specific style of swordfighting, and then pick up some new idea and start working on adding it to your techniques! That's the same with bodies. Just because you've walked for your whole life doesn't mean you can't learn a better way of doing it. What you are - how you're built, what you were born with, you can't change that. But you can get better at it. Personality, and technique."
Priscilla	"I am well familiar with fire." says Priscilla, in a suddenly completely different tone, strangely vague and distant, but altogether warmer and more versant. "It is far from uncommon for flame to be feared --perceived as destruction incarnate, for what it may do to the unwary, unfortunate, and incautious, and thus personified as wrath and disaster. It is less so, but still hardly rare, that it represent that which elevates humanity, and longingly chased after above all else, to as many unwise ends as worthy ones." "It is least common that the eventual recognition be reached that fire is both --that life itself is inherently both consumptive and destructive, as well as unified and uplifting, able to put itself to either task with equal ease. It is wise to respect it; nay perhaps a blend of both admiration and healthy fear. I am gladdened to heareth such. The previous Avatar must hath been a particularly refined philosopher." When Korra plops back down though, she shifts the topic with a casual glide. "And so, simple muscle memory aside, if thou attribute reflex --one's first choice and instinctive action-- to personality, why is it then that thou lean so heavily upon fire and earth, resort only second to water, and so struggle with air?" she asks. Nie Li had been able to figure that much out about her.
Korra	"Avatar Aang was..." Korra's shoulders tighten up, her brow furrowing. "He did so much for the world. People respected him. Loved him. He literally saved the world. There's a big statue of him in Republic City." Her tone lights as she rights herself, air flowing through her nose, held, and then exhaled controlledly. Her brow lightens. Her shoulders slack. "He was a great man. He and I couldn't be more opposite, though. He was from the Air nation - nomads with great temples in the high mountains. They lived with herds of sky bison. The Earth kingdom is massive, and centered around a huge walled city, Ba Sing Se. The fire nations are clans, in volcanic mountains. The water tribes live with the ice, in the north and south poles. Each way of life so different, yet accustomed to their element. It's personality, that's for sure." Korra shakes her head, running a hand back and through her short hair slowly. "Avatar Aang was incredibly spiritual, and a very well-travelled and wise leader. But, and I'm just being honest, he was kind of a runt. I think air nomads don't get enough fish!" She snorts. "But anyway, I've been in just a few place my whole life, and I've spent so much of my time building up myself, training, getting prepared, that I wasn't ever forced to internalize each style, each way of doing things. I'm not like other benders." "It's a combination of mental, spiritual, and physical. I can do the motions, memorize the forms, but it's not what I feel. I could lift it with my back, but I'm supposed to able to speak to the past Avatars, and enter a powerful state. I can't do that either, yet. So there's a technique I'm missing, too. Sometimes, the insufficency is in your understanding, but others..." Korra brings her fists together, knuckles offset. "You haven't ground it out yet. So I've been doing a lot of meditation - flexing my spiritual muscles, too, by high-intesnsity bending. Trying to hit a breakthrough." "But I'm also exploring more of this big Multiverse place. More well-travelled. Expanding is like that - it's like finding a muscle by doing stretches or exercises."
Priscilla	"I wouldst ask if it is mine ears that detecteth a hint of struggling with thine legacy, but the question wouldst be rhetorical." Priscilla says, a little flatly, and with a small degree of amusement, not having expected to see someone as proud of herself as Korra take on that attitude when talking about the illustrious past of the Avatar which she lays claim to. "Indeed, there is such a thing as the 'plateau'. No matter how rigorous and comprehensive the training, experience is always a necessary tutor; not simply for putting theory into practice, but for the fact that the variety, the unexpectedness, the chaos of the real world is what tutors and tests thee more than anything else." A pause. "It is difficult, to tread from the undisputed master in a small pool, to one amongst many, expected to achieveth greater than seems immediately possible." "A method of thinking, or a spiritual connection, is especially difficult to forge from nothing, compared to training one's body. The latter is well-understood, and to seeketh physical and technical perfection is a matter of willpower, form, technique, and repetition. The former is poorly understood by most anyone, and is so integral and all-encompassing that that which must change is tantamount to a great portion of one's way of life, if not all of it. I supposeth Sir Li's 'Cultivation' wouldst amount to something close to a manual for spiritual enlightenment; perhaps appropriate to thee indeed, if thine forte is said willpower, technique, and training."
Korra	Korra gives a nervous laugh, and a little nod. "Yeah. It'd definitely be... rhetorical. Sure, I'm the Avatar, yeah, and people respect the mantle, but..." Korra's hand slides down her head to the back of her neck, hanging there. "There's a few great Avatars. And one of the best was the one just before me. The restttt..." Korra's hand slips of her neck to waggle uncertainly. "Some were fine. Some were kinda awful. So, I could be an average Avatar, but..." Finally, her hand finishes its trip into her lap. "That sucks, right?" "As for spiritual things, I think of it like testing muscles. I imagine what I do, visualize it, and then start prodding at it. Little adjustments. Feeling it out. Like trying to find every muscle in your fingers... But if someone knew every one already, then they could just tell you to move in a specific way, and you'd feel it because of the exercise. Have you ever done conditioning before? Same idea." "But, you're right. It's why I'm interested, but I'm also interested in you. You shattered that stone, but I think..." Korra flops back onto her back, tugging her gym bag over with her hands and finding the soul crystal that Nie Li had let her keep due to imprinting. "If you could get a big enough one of these, something receptive to your spiritual energy, and represent it somehow, maybe you could use it to visualize what you are doing?"
Priscilla	Asking if Priscilla has done conditioning before might feel a little silly. Going by the level of waifu inherent in that appearance, it would ostensibly seem like the only conditioning she might do is hair conditioning. "If matters of the spirit were not so indistinct, there wouldst be no need for each individual to seeketh the means by which they may comprehend them. I believeth there is no wrong way to, at least, put such feelings and instincts into context. It is, for most, no exact science." Slowly, Priscilla kneels down by where Korra has flopped in the grass, examining the crystal she'd gotten from before. "I am afraid I am no wise monk, filled with sage advice of correct living and spiritual growth. Mine own brand of enlightenment is a bloody one, informed by life and death in unequal measure. Sir Li is not one to thinketh highly of mere talent or potential." she says, with a smile that stings just a little bit. "Quite possibly. Art thou interested in the same?"
Korra	Priscilla moves over to the reclining Korra, who closes her fist around the unbalanced lotus that appears within the core of the brightly glowing crystal. "Feeling and instinct is what it comes down to for everything. You can't know without feeling. You can't use without instinct. We-" Korra cants her eyes at Priscilla, a playful smile spread to the corner of her mouth. "Actually, I don't know. Do you breathe? It looks like it, but I'm not sure it's something you learned to do to put people at ease, or something. I don't want to just make assumptions about your situation. Anyway, humans breathe. We don't need to learn it, but we feel it. If we hold our breath, we can become aware of it. You can feel the breath come in, see it with some incense in the air, and feel your lungs burn when you hold your breath. Breathing is core to a lot of meditation, too. There's a whole school of thought about breath exercises that the Air Nomads had, so I've been hearing..." Korra loosens a light groan. "A lot about breath exercises from Master Tenzin. So don't worry about sounding like a sage or guru or wise monk. Those guys meditate on what they speak on, learned it like a martial art. Poked it, prodded it, strengthened it. It's the same as anything. You can be naturally good, but the only way you get great is with hard work. They're just good at telling you their haymaker punch of philosophy. So if you've done a lot of one thing-" Korra adjusts, shrugging broadly. "-obviously, you're good at it. Is it polished? Your forms, and all that?" As for the stones, and her own desires and interests, Korra's grin finally disappears, though it had faltered around talk of 'yeah I murdered, like, a fucking ton of people'. "If this little one didn't react like yours and that other person's who blew it out, then I think it's safe to say I still need to work on roughing out my form before polishing. There's powers I should have, and don't. That's what I'm chasing."
Priscilla	It's a silly question, about breathing, but for a few moments, Priscilla looks really, deeply uncertain about it. It's like someone being asked for the very first time in their lives that if they've never been to the ocean, how do they know it's real? "Probably." she settles on. "I understandeth the comparison nonetheless. I also taketh it to mean that thou art not terribly fond of breathing exercises, recitation, sutras, and philosophy." she continues. "I hath becometh more than merely 'good at' a number of things, over so much time. It is as thou sayeth, with repetition. Other things, however, I hath scarcely thought to explore. Things that I am discovering anew. In the one hand, it is . . ." Priscilla is lost for words for a moment. "Offensive, that after becoming so skilled, I shouldst find something that is so closely adjacent to what I am so skilled at, which I hath such comparatively poor grasp of regardless. It is a feeling of it being . . . unbefitting. That it should not be. After some time with Sir Li on the subject, I admit even to feeling insult, unwarranted as it may be, at being deemed less than masterful of it." "In the other hand, these things art necessary. Vital, perhaps. It is vital that one continue to meet new things as a novice. A student. A journeying mendicant of their art. The process of meeting these new challenges and growing strong and confident and skillful over and over again, many times, refines and builds the strength and confidence and skill thou hast at thine core. Being once a novice is what maketh the mastery of the thing proof of anything; the truest demonstration of such is beginning again from the bottom and succeeding once again, showing that it is no mere fluke." "The growth is the thing that maketh one stronger in the end, and learning something easy, or from a position of existing mastery, is little growth at all. Though it is bitterly humbling, sometimes, one must expect from the very beginning that their current achievements amount to nothing, and that all they shouldst rely on is their ability to overcometh . . . though, even if I sayeth such aloud right now, it helps very little in blunting the sting." "It is difficult to shake the desire to be without flaw and for everything to cometh to thee with ease, even whence thou shouldst knoweth better." Priscilla takes a second look at the lotus. "Thou hast done so three times already, correct? Then thou shouldst hath some confidence in such a pattern, that a fourth time is essentially inevitable. I imagine the thought that it shouldst be easier, for the fact thou hast completed such a road three times before, rather than just as difficult as the first, is at least partly responsible for thine difficulty." Priscilla exercises her right to breathe weirdly by slowly exhaling a plume of oddly blue-white frost, as if it were just a reclining sigh. Trying to pay attention, she has the glittering cloud of ice --that's a little too uncannily vivid and picturesque and 'over-lit' to quite seem real-- start twirling around her outstretched palm in a flattened circle, vaguely like the way the Lotus spins in Korra's soul crystal. A teeny tiny galaxy of frost crystals. "At the very least, it is only something that thou art expected to master just now, rather than something that hast lay before thee unappreciated for so long."
Korra	Korra listens to Priscilla linger on the topic of mastery, her eyes remaining thoughtfully closed as she lays there, in the artifical sunlight of the false 'ninja plain'. "I bet that's hard to stomach, yeah. I can't say I've felt that, but I can't say I've mastered anything. Not after the things I've learned - and not about dogma and ideals, like you said. I thought I was a great firebender, but after exposing myself to Pro Bending, and a lot of innovative people all trying their hardest to go at me..." Korra's confident smirk returns for a flash, and a single eye cracks to check Priscilla's reaction. "And figure out they have to go around me - go sideways. But, still. It's not about me. And in the ring, I only can Waterbend - so I've got to change the way I think, and move, too." Korra moves to sit up, finally, resting crosslegged and opening her fingers around the crystal as Priscilla references it, letting her eyes slowly open as her shoulders slacken easily into a state of relaxation. Of just coming to her own new little realization. "I don't think there's true mastery. You can become good, great, or even peerless, but take your arm." Korra flexes her bicep lightly, clenching forearm and tensing fingers around the crystal momentarily. "I could have the strongest arm in the whole universe." She moves a hand to her shoulder, clapping the curve of her arm firmly. "But without a strong shoulder, I couldn't swing it in all the ways I can." She sits up, extending her spine and pushing out her chest. "Without a good back, I couldn't have the oomph to deliver a punch, or put my weight behind it." She rests her cupped fingers against her inner thigh, tapping with the back of her hand. "And without a firm stance, I'd never have the balance to put my back into it. The idea goes on. Parts of a whole. I could be peerless, but mastery is just expanding your scope." An encouraging look-up chases her little revelation. "So I wouldn't think that taking the next step should feel insulting to you. Wouldn't it breathe a -- heh, breathe -- new life into all your old techniques? You grow a little more, and you're not just bigger in one direction, but all directions. Progress and polish." Korra is cowed back into quiet by Priscilla's icy breath producing her ring of mist, a galaxy of snowflakes. "It's inside of me. I just need to find the part of me that is the wind, and not the earth, the fire, or the water. Spirits, that's beautiful."
Priscilla	"Thou shalt eventually." Priscilla says on the subject of Korra's mastery. "I imagine there was a time, shortly before encountering this 'pro bending', where thou felt thou didst. A time where thou felt thou had learned all there was, and had only to gradually, incrementally, improve with practice, only to be proven that there is much more than thou had considered. I suppose thou art fortunate to experience such within the context of a sport thou hast grown to love instead." She watches Korra flex biceps (and, incidentally, do punching motions) without a word, but seems very vaguely, distantly, elusively, pleased by some conclusion she's drawn. "So it is. There art many individual things that can be mastered, but there is no point at which mastering something new improves not the whole. It is the true reason why growth is likened to life, and stagnation death. Whence thou art content with perfectly refined shoulders, one shalt arise who hath refined those and their stance as well, and cast thee down." Priscilla moves her finger around in little circles, guiding the revolution of the little snow galaxy, but even as she does, it begins to decay. A bit at a time, the glimmering facets of frost, just like the stars they're compared to, begin to decay, destabilize, and then burst into tiny flickers of blue-white fire. As the two talk, the palm-sized exercise hisses, crackles, and crumbles away, becoming so much flashing, icy flame and vapour, until after several minutes, it finally goes extinct. "Such is the reason to go forth without insult. A reason for mineself to hold interest. I shalt taketh thine advice and see what it is worth. I hath the impression that this hast been helpful in some way to thee as well. If such is the case, I am gladdened."
Korra	"It was hard." Korra agrees easily and quickly, when Priscilla muses on her time pre-pro-bending time. "I hit a plateau, where training against the White Lotus - my old bodyguards, minders really, who are an order of monks - didn't help me any more. Trouncing people with orthodox talent was easy. They weren't creative. I longed for a new teacher to just tell me the magic words to get me to understand, and..." Another sigh, working from her chest out through her shoulders in a heave more emotional than previous. "Well. He didn't do that. Master Tenzin is the most skilled airbender alive, and a tremendous font of wisdom, but he's..." Korra searches visibly for her next word, her eyes flicking left right across the top of her eyelids, searchig for the word in a saccade meditation. She doesn't find what she's looking for. "Well. He's not the Avatar. He tries, though, and has helped me through some things, but I had to find it for myself. And he taught me something a little more useful generally, though not helpful until now." Leaning forward, arms resting on knees, Korra winds down, staring into Priscilla's burning galaxy with an unrestrained interest. The rather macabre ending of it leaves the Avatar unphased, taking the show as a show and thouroughly enjoying it. "Yeah. I think a few things got loosened up, and it at least helped me appreciate that teaching others can be the best way of improving yourself. I guess that's why all those dojos exist - the master learns and is exposed as well." With a start, Korra draws herself back up to her feet from her low, relaxed sitting position, an arm swiping through the air to seize the strings of her gym bag. "I'm going to hit the shower, but... I'm glad you showed up. I'm sure, if you've been around a long time, and have tons of killer tricks, even adding a little will be felt a lot."