300 word drabble: Flaw in the System

Written for avatar_500 prompt #63, Between.

Summary: Her shoulders aren't ready for the weight of the world.

Flaw in the System

She ran through the grass, her glider opening to take in the wind.  It pulled upward, stretching her arms above her head, and lifting her up off the ground.  The woman who had been watching her out of sight through a window above turned away and ducked behind a wall.  "We can't keep letting her get out like this."

"Yangchen is a spirited child.  The closer we hem her in, the more she will try to escape."
 
"You think I don't know that, Amala?"  She rubbed her temple with one hand.  "But I'm trying to keep her alive.  If we could just tell her what she is-"

Amala's lips turned up wryly.  "You think she would understand?"

The child playing below dove towards the ground and pulled up sharply, just before impact, giggling wildly as the grass skimmed her toes, stomach, and nose as she glided.  The other nun shook her head as if she were trying to shake a way an insect that had flown into her face.  "There should be a better way.  The Avatar before her is dead.  She is what we're left with.  It will be years until she is any use, and the whole world knows it."

"So for a few short decades, we are called upon to keep the peace ourselves."  Amala didn't blink.  "How dreadful."

Nam Kha sighed and saw in her mind's eye, the changing map, as a thousand small wars in the Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes, and Fire Nation let city-states swallow their neighbors whole, in the name of unity, and in the absence of anyone to stop them.  "If every tinpot tyrant and petty warlord weren't just waiting-"

There was a loud thud outside the window, as the girl managed to collide with a small rise in the grass.  "Ow..."