InsaneJournal

For the last twenty minutes, Korra had been sitting here in her meditative state, studying the energy of this sleeping cow. It wasn't like anything she had experience with, but she could clearly see that the cow did have it's own life energy and there was a tether that stretched off to something that clearly wasn't on this plane of existence. Which made it strange - like a rope of light attached to thin air after a certain distance. She'd promised Ronan that she would try and help and that's what she was going to do.

Her first attempt didn't go as well as she would have liked it to. Ronan had initially asked if she could sever the connection to this dead person, and the first thing she noticed was that trying to remove the tether started causing the cow's life energy to flicker and fade, so she'd left it in place and had been trying to poke around a bit. Thankfully, she had the experience of restoring bending to every bender in Republic City who had lost it to Amon, so she was the closest thing to a master that they'd find, but she still felt a bit lost in how to handle all of this.

Which is what led to her current experiment. She drew on her experience in the spirit world, bending the energy of the spirit vines in order to release Jinora and the others that had been trapped. Focusing her will further, she created an astral projection - a manifestation of her spiritual self and in that form, she grabbed hold of the tether. And it worked! Sort of. She was able to pull it free from whatever it had been connected to, but there was a new problem. It needed to be connected to something. She briefly considered seeing if she could tether the cow to itself, but the risk of some kind of feedback loop worried her.

She noticed, though, that Ronan's life energy was sparking nearby. As if like energy recognized like. So, with nothing better springing to mind, and wielding what amounted to a spiritual firehose, she approached Ronan and paused. Would he be okay with this? While he might be able to see her astral projection, he wouldn't see what she was holding or what she was doing with it. And she couldn't really communicate with him. And if she dropped out of this to go over the plan, she might not be able to do it again. So, with no other apparent option, she attached the tether to Ronan. And in doing so, she suddenly saw dozens of other tethers connected to him, all around the Barns, if not the land itself. Was that good? Bad? He was practically glowing with energy and she quickly dropped out of the astral, returned to herself, and got up to make sure he was okay.

It wasn’t that long ago that Ronan would’ve chosen driving his car into a tree over dealing with any kind of new age-y spiritual shit. For someone born with magic in his blood, he’d been stubbornly against things he couldn’t see with his own eyes. He wasn’t exactly swimming in trust these days either, but he was at least open to trying to take someone’s word about the things that weren’t for him to know.

That didn’t mean he was fucking patient about it. He paced for the first ten minutes. Then when it occurred to him that it probably wasn’t helping the spiritual vibe or whatever, he perched on a barrel nearby instead. He took out his helpless energy on the straps on his wrist, chewing idly until something in the barn changed. He couldn’t see what she was doing, but he felt it like electrical energy raising all the hairs on his body at once.

Jerking to his feet, he looked to the sleeping cow and watched as she lifted her heavy head to let out a quiet little moo. Ronan crouched down beside her and pressed his hand to her head. She felt like one of his dreams now.

“What the fuck,” he whispered.

Korra looked at her hands, like she wasn't entirely sure she did the right thing. "I'm sorry. I couldn't sever the connection without- I don't think the cow would have survived. So I just redirected it to you. You have the same energy as the tether. It's hard to explain?" It was the best she could offer. He didn't seem harmed by what she did, at least. And he didn't seem changed. So she had something to take heart in. She'd probably need Jinora to explain the spiritual stuff to him, but that could wait. Korra kind of had a history of doing things without knowing all the details of how.

“No, no, it’s fine. It…makes sense. The old connection was to my dad.” Ronan’s frown eased as the cow struggled to get her feet underneath her. He couldn’t help the joyful laugh that tumbled out of him. “Easy, girl. You’ve been napping for fucking forever.”

The cow settled back down a bit, deciding to nibble on the hay nearby instead. He wasn’t sure any of the dream cows would be able to walk alright after so many years not moving. Weeks of cow physical therapy flashed in front of his eyes but he shook it off to glance over at Korra. His gaze was appraising. Respectful in a well, fuck, you’re a surprise kind of a way.

“Can you do…whatever you did with the rest?” he asked.

That brightened her up considerably. Okay, she was a bit disheartened to hear his father was dead, but the joy he seemed to radiate was something to get a little caught up in. While she wasn't a cow expert, she could tell they must've been asleep for a really long time. She didn't even want to know how they could survive indefinitely like that, but then again she'd seen plenty of hard-to-explain things before, so it wasn't too out of the ordinary. But she nodded at his question.

"Yeah, I think I can," though she left off the now that I know what I'm doing part. With that, she sat back down into a meditative position and, this time, shifted to the avatar state. Her eyes flew open, glowing brilliantly white as air rushed around her as he projected a visible astral form - which then split into two. Then those split into two more each, and again, until there were enough blue astral Korras to approach each animal. And then each of those Korras grabbed the tether and pulled it gently away from the nothingness it was attached to before bringing them, one at a time, to 'connect' to Ronan. She held onto the state long enough to make sure it didn't overload him or cause any problems, but once it was done, she returned to herself and… just sat there for a moment. That wasn't something she'd tried before, so it was a little tiring.

Ronan didn’t expect it to be so easy. He’d agreed to this assuming she’d give him some wishy washy reasoning why it couldn’t be done and he’d be back at square one. Now he was standing up next to the first cow she’d woken up and watching her eyes light up like a fucking lighthouse.

“Well that’s eerie as shit,” he mumbled. The cows in the barn started to shuffle and moo as they woke up. He still couldn’t see what Korra was really doing, but feeling the power of it grow and each new connection zing through him was plenty. The feeling in his chest was bittersweet. He clenched his jaw to keep it from spilling out. When the last cow woke, he turned back to Korra and lifted his hands. “You still in there, Spiritwhisperer? Saying thank you while you’re all zoned out probably won’t count.”

Korra sat there for a brief second, thinking that she needed to talk to Aang and see if maybe he was feeling the same thing she was. That there was more strength in the Avatar state, maybe because it was like Raava was here twice. But that also worried her because there needed to be balance. Would that mean there'd be two- no, she couldn't dwell on that. Not when she'd succeeded at something on the first try. Snapping out of her reverie, she hopped to her feet and turned a smile on Ronan.

"I'm all right! Sorry, that kind of thing can take a lot out of you. Did you see all those Astral Projections? Pretty amazing, right? Oh! But you? You're still okay? That was a lot at once."

“Saw your eyeballs go supernova.” Ronan spread his hands in front of his face in an explosive gesture. There was a chance that word would mean nothing to her, hence the dumb hands. “And I felt--” He didn’t know how to put that part into words. He looked to the stirring cows in the barn and then down at the one next to him who was lifting her head to nibble at his jeans.

“I could feel their energy...I don’t know. Plugging in? Like i’m a fucking surge protector.” He made a dismissive gesture. It didn’t matter. She’d done the thing he’d tried to do for years. It didn’t set them free - it wouldn’t help Matthew - but it was more than he’d really hoped for. Ronan rubbed a hand over his face and smiled, helpless to do anything else.

“Thank you,” he said.

She almost responded with something about it being no problem and just being part of being the Avatar, but she stopped herself. This place was full of people with amazing abilities and powers and responsibilities. She both felt finally free of shouldering everything for everyone while simultaneously largely feeling unnecessary. It was a weird position to find herself in, so it felt really nice to be able to help someone out. Especially if it meant helping these poor animals that hadn't done anything to deserve endless sleep.

And while she didn't know what a surge protector was, she at least understood the gist of what he was saying but since he brushed it away, she just smiled at his thanks. "Happy to help, Ronan. I'm glad I was able to make a positive change." She spared a warm glance to all of the cows and turned back to Ronan. "And maybe this means more ice cream?"

“There will be a fuckton more ice cream,” Ronan snorted. The cow chewing on his jeans climbed up a little closer to standing and licked his hand with her big, weird tongue. He made a face. It might’ve been a more convincing face if he didn’t give her head a gentle scritch but you win some, you lose some. It occurred to him that they hadn’t eaten in years and it probably wasn’t helping matters. His gaze tracked over all the cows for a calculating moment.

“I need to get them rounded up and see if they can handle walking out to a pasture. And I need to tell my brother.” He looked at her and squinted. “Do you uh, need another minute? I’m not kicking you out if you’re zapped of energy and shit now.”

Korra quirked an eyebrow and patted her hands against her thighs, absent-mindedly realizing they were a little damp with sweat from when she was concentrating so hard. Offering a soft smile, she padded towards the door and stretched before opening it to step out. "You mean you'd kick me out otherwise? I'm good. It looks like you're going to have your hands full with getting these cows back into shape. I'm not good for that, so it's probably better I get out of your hair."

With a final wave, Korra exited the barn and let the door close behind her, feeling a bit of a spring in her step for having successfully helped someone, even if she still wasn't sure how she managed it. Another day in the life of the Avatar.