Hana woke up earlier than the rest of her family. Considering that the crack of dawn was the latest anyone in her family ever woke up, this was really saying something. She could still see the dying glimmer of the stars while she went out, dressed in brown breeches and a dark green tunic that, when combined, matched exactly the color of her eyes.

She had forgotten her shoes on purpose, and so her bare feet sank into the damp earth with a subtle and somewhat comedic squelch as the pressure of her steps made the water rise. On the other hand, she had forgotten to tidy her hair on accident, and her dark brown tresses were matted and unsymmetrically lumped where her head had pressed and rubbed against her pillow. All in all, 5’9” stature, lumpy hair, and shoeless working attire combined, she struck quite an interesting figure while she surveyed the landscape of her farm.

She assumed that, to the rich folk she had heard stories about, or to the girls in the village that liked to pretend they were rich, her family’s farm would be a place that would be difficult to bring into focus. The farm would be a backdrop, a supporting tree and cloud painted behind the otherwise much more important and scenic city, or in this case, little village. To Hana however, the village was simply a smudge on the horizon, and she loved the clean smell of her farm.

Her fingers splayed out, palms forward in a most un-aerodynamic fashion while she walked. They slightly bent the tomato plants to her left and briefly lifted the low hanging leaves of the plum blossom trees to her right. She thought for a moment about the wonderful smell of her farm, and how her mother had told her that you could tell how healthy a farm was by the way it smelled. Hana’s Grandfather had told her horror stories about rancid smelling farms, and Hana could tell by the leers and wisecracks of the girls in town (who clearly didn’t realize that the farms were the basis of the livelihood in Makapu) that they had somehow gotten into their heads that all farms smelled that way.

But this was far from the truth. After hearing her mother’s concise explanation, Hana had began to study how every process and chore on her family farm was designed to correspond with nature. One example was Hana’s shepherding of the wooly and moo-sows every day. They couldn’t just be left out in a fenced off area to graze, because they would soon eat until the land was barren and dead- Hana had seen it happen on some of her neighbor’s more unsuccessful farms.

Worse still, the manure left by the animals would begin to smell when it collected in large amounts and was left unturned. In the wild, herd animals like moo-sows and bull-antelopes circulate across an entire valley before coming back to the same area, and they are always closely followed by the birds that pick worms out of the manure and turn it over with their scratching feet. Likewise, the pigs were led to new pastures every single day, and the pickens followed close behind, that way everything smelled sweet and fresh the way a wild forest always does. Oh yes, only once you go against nature do you get rancid unhealthy smells. Hana’s family had got farming down to a science, and that was just the way she liked it.

She kept walking for nearly a mile before finally stopping and making an about face on her heels. While she struck one solidly foot against the ground, she felt like she had triggered a sort of lever system in the earth that, in turn, sent up an earthen bench for her to sit on. She hadn’t come here to ponder how much she loved the farm. In fact, she had wanted some peace and quiet to think about why she should leave.

The girl, the woman some might say, was completely unprepared to leave. But after fifteen years of dreaming about traveling to Ba Sing Se, she was growing frustrated with her indecision. Her thoughts trekked an all-too-familiar set of road and she pushed her feet into the ground until they were nearly buried. The sun rose behind her and she vaguely noticed how the world turned a lighter shade of gray. By this time, Hana’s thoughts had stuck on the only step forward she had ever really considered going through with. And with that, she stood. She sprinted towards her house, and while scribbled a quick note to her mother her earthbent bench finally crumbled. She could hear her parents muted movements in their room, but put the letter underneath the sugar jar and ran out before they could see her. The note said:

“Moma,
Im takeing your advise and Im going to stop thinking so mutch. If I pac my bags youll no what happened, but of corse I wont tell you egsactly what she said.
Love,
Hana”

It meant she was going into town, lumpy hair and all, to see her Great Aunt Wu.