Kya: Healer of the Air Nomads
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This song reminds me of Kya so much. The entire score is incredible but this one in particular really invokes so many profound things.
For Kya, it makes me think about how she's a child of such a deep and hopeful sort of love. She was born during a time of peace but into a legacy of a people who were lost, who'd been totally wiped out. The strongest connection she had to them was her family. And herself.
Growing up with no notion of what it was like to live in a world full of Air Nomads, she still had to feel their absence so completely. All of the time. And yet had no idea how she could possibly fit within her culture or people who were simply gone anyway. Particularly as she wasn't an airbender.
I know Kya loves who she is and loves her element. She loves both parts of where she comes from and how that makes her who she is. But I think that she would always wish that she could ever inherently belong as an Air Nomad. Even as she fears she never can.
We know that Kya has always held what her father taught her about their people close to her. That she lives by their philosophies and values them. Kya embodies the spirit of an Air Nomad so intrinsically, I feel. She exists so naturally in the world. She's kind and caring. Free-loving and joyful. She's spiritually attuned but also attuned to the world around her.
Yet despite all that, Kya isn't seen as an Air Nomad. Because she's a waterbender. A healer. Because even in a world where her people still thrived, she'd likely only ever be able to pledge herself as an acolyte. No matter if she's innately of them or not.
In her world, the reality is that the Air Nomads are gone. That her father was the last one. Until her and her brothers were born and then he got to share all of what he treasured and loved with them. All that he remembered and restored. Just as we know he set out to do with the acolytes he garnered. He found people whose purpose aligned with his. His will to preserve his people's culture and attempt to recover all he could.
Aang realized that even though his people were gone, they could live on in their values. That their values were who they were and what mattered most. Even in the absence of airbenders, or maybe especially in that case. Because even though it was core part of their culture, their airbending wasn't all they were. The Air Nomads, as a people, made an impact on the world. And I think he would see so much of who his people were in his daughter.
The world is attempting to heal after the genocide and war. And that is the world Kya and her brothers live in. It's a time of rebuilding and hope, innovation and change. Yet it's also a time of mourning in a way. And uncertainty in the aftermath.
It would be so difficult for Kya to ever know how to fit within the legacy of her people. When the bulk of it for much of her life is the slow arduous piecing of it back together despite the glaring most important part unable to ever be returned. The painstaking reconstruction and preservation of her culture that she, by principle and precedent, won't ever belong to anyway.
No matter how connected to her heritage she feels. No matter how invested in that legacy. Or the practices and philosophy and values of her people.
Kya doesn't fit the traditional image of an Air Nomad because she's not an airbender and her people are gone. She's an Air Nomad in a world still struggling to heal from that loss. Still recovering from and reeling from it even.
Kya isn't going to be exactly what her people used to be because the world isn't how it used to be either. But that doesn't mean she isn't one of them. And it doesn't mean they aren't important to her. That she doesn't grieve their loss or love her culture or wish that somehow things could be different. Same as her father does. Same as her brothers do.
There has to be so much about Kya's people and culture that she holds so close to her. That means the world to her. That she feels connected to and lifted up by. And I think she would carry it with her everywhere she goes. Move forward with it. I think she would see every hollow place there and see how so much is changing so starkly around it. Hope that something's shifting subtly there within it. Wonder what that transformation could even ever be. For her or anyone else.
Kya is a healer. She invokes tangible and critical change. For the better. She saves lives, cares for others, brings ailing things back into balance. She would only ever want to do the same for her culture, her lost people, and for the future of the wounded world. One that she hopes will ever get to see both restored to it. And that she might get to see that through herself somehow. That she might ever get to feel like she belongs within everything that has always mattered so much to her. That she could be a healer of both of her peoples and the world.
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