Some of it's just transcendental, some of it's just really dumb

[Avatar] Your Right Arm

gaisce@gmail.com — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:07:15 GMT

Title: Your Right Arm
Series: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Spoilers/warning: spoilers for Boiling Rock
Wordcount: 100
Summary: The armor takes longer to remove tonight and Azula knows something is terribly wrong.

The armor takes longer to remove tonight and Azula knows something is terribly wrong.

A dozen royal physicians have examined her, but none saw beneath the black and gold shielding. She wouldn’t let them. So they repeat their mantra. “There is no permanent damage, you have nothing to fear.”

Azula extends her right arm and makes a fist. She practices the forms for summoning lightning. Perfunctory. Perfected. Halfway through she reaches out to her side and finds nothing there. Her arm trembles.

There is only one explanation. The physicians are all lying to her and she cannot trust anyone now.

[Marvel/Disney] Not Quite Charmed

gaisce@gmail.com — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:43:43 GMT

Title: Not Quite Charmed
Series: X-Men (Gambit, specifically)/The Princess and the Frog
Spoilers/warnings: "Heart of Thieves" for Gambit's backstory. Hell if I know if I got anything wrong from a movie I haven't seen yet.
Wordcount:975
Summary: Written for the Marvel/Disney meme. Gambit charming a Disney princess and her prince getting mad.

New Orleans was a sleepy city, but not the way people of busy metropolises like New York or Los Angeles knew of sleep. For all its silence and lulling calm there was a thrum of awareness in the muggy air. A world best known through half-lidded eyes, whose voice could be heard in sated breathing. And not always what it seemed, if only because all its many potentials were kept secret the way a sleeping lover can never answer the questions by the one still awake without disrupting the moment.

And some times it would not even hold the pretense of sleep, exploding in revelry and excess. Months stirring slow preparations for Mardi Gras to bring out the fantasies through paper mache and colored beads. Time for the krewes to set to work, the bakers to stir their kitchens, and the lowest of the gutter dwellers to feel like royalty if only for a moment if they decided to step out to the alleyways of the carnival’s celebrations.

For the young Thieves’ Guild initiate, Remy LeBeau, it was the best time to be home. He was seventeen and reckless, so the slow burn of the cigarette matched the feeling in his chest as he climbed over balconies in the Garden District, eager for spoils but moreso for the chase. His confidence so assured, he didn’t care if he was seen by the glow of ash tumbling down in gutters and smoke lifting through wind vanes. However, at the start of the new villa he found himself pausing with mouth open and the cigarette tumbling down onto the tar roof.

Out on the upper balcony a princess leaned against the balustrade, her dress and crown shining brighter than the starry sky that served as her background. To his trained eye he already knew the jewelry wasn’t worth stealing. It was too glassy, too ethereal to be real diamonds but high quality of something else made him vault over the nearest chimney just to be closer.

She was beautiful, he noticed; far outstripping the gown and tiara when he could see her face and the soft dusk light upon her skin. Then, with no further thought, Remy leapt down onto the railing, his hands clasping the wrought iron and looking much like a frog the way he crouched.

“Don’t be alarmed, chere. I jus’ came to stargaze. F’r a minute I thought one fell outta de sky, but den I find you here instead. Simple mistake, non?”

While she gasped and retreated at his landing, his words made her halt. Not into the swooning lovelorn form he was hoping for, but a wry look on her face that meant he might still be on the railing, but she hadn’t closed windows on him yet.

“Stargazing, huh?”

“I ‘ppreciate beauty au naturale.”

“Not that kind,” she replied with a warning glance and he smiled. Remy loved to flirt with ladies who had a spirit to them. It was a kind of energy like the kinetic charge that he could slip into cards, but easily attributed to women’s natural allure instead of a mutant gene.

There was a faint tumble from inside her room, and for a moment Remy thought he was discovered. An angry maid, or worse—father—coming up the stairs, but the light never turned on and the room lay untouched. For a long minute all he could hear was the buzz of fireflies and an oddly misplaced croaking of a frog.

His gaze lingered there, on the stuffed animals and the wallpaper of castles and flower canopies that made her seem a little more wide eyed and innocent in the way she waited for him to speak his business. “Am I keepin’ you from de court, highness?”

“No, I was just...waiting for someone.”

“Prince charmin’?” Remy smiled and slid to balcony’s planks. The thought of diamonds entirely gone from his mind as he studied her face then swept into a gallant bow. “Remy’s no prince, but f’r someone like you he can be de most charmin’.”

But she wouldn’t be swayed so easily. “Are you a thief? Because the only people out on rooftops are thieves, chimney sweeps, and fools like me who should know better.”

“If bein’ a fool means company wit’ you I am absolutemonte a fool. But I swear on my guild, de only thing I want t’ steal from you is a kiss.”

The girl laughed, as soft and sweet as she looked, but obviously a part of a joke Remy wasn’t privy to when she stifled her mouth with a gloved hand. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I’m not flattered but—”

An indignant rabbit came from inside her quarters, and Remy’s eyes might have been deceiving him but a frog was currently clambering on the edge of her bedpost and looking very accusatory at him.

“—my someone may want that kiss first.”

“No surprise, chere,” Remy said. He knew from his time at the Tithing and the stories Henri told him, some things in New Orleans had secrets you never wanted to know. “If de dance card is full, I’ll jus’ put my name in later. You take care, hear?”

“Tiana,” she said simply. For a moment Remy thought she meant one of the fairies from the Shakespeare plays, like she was calling for them. But when he caught her turning back to the doorway he realized how well it fit.

“Dat’s a beautiful name.”

Remy would have lingered longer to see Tatiana vanish through the French lace of her curtains but a small webbed foot shut the door so fast he didn’t have a chance to do anything except feel his bangs brush against his face from the force of its closing. Clearly, he had to make a note for guard frogs in his future jewelry runs.

[Princess Tutu] Weltschmerz

gaisce@gmail.com — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:27:39 GMT

Title: Weltschmerz
Series: Princess Tutu
Spoilers/warnings: Permanently unfinished first chapter of a story set after the finale.
Wordcount: 3,205
Summary: Life is happy, if not idyllic, for those who brought an ending to "The Prince and the Raven." Until Drosselmeyer's works go missing and the story's origins come back to haunt them.

“1. The true world — attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it. (The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, ‘I, Plato, am the truth.’)”
-Frederick Nietzche, “How the ‘True World’ at Last Became a Fable”

Books were fragile bindings. The pages could be dog-eared, torn, subject to fire turning the parchment to ash, or water turning the ink into stains. Easily lost, easily found; passed along and down the ages. That was the price for their purpose. In order to contain the vast substance within them they had to be paper thin. And the endlessness of their words made it easy for the stories to stray from their message.

It was late, and the Gold Crown Academy Library was quiet. Its keepers had long retired to their homes, and even the stray bats had found other perches. Yet, suddenly, there was a rustling—of papers or something else. A small flame sprang out of the darkness. Its glow illuminated every corner, far beyond the reach of any normal match. The spark danced in the still room, almost as if delighting in its newfound existence. Then, without even a murmur, it dropped to the ground.

There was nothing left except for the intake of air, like a breath escaping. Then the fire began to race along the stacks. Devouring its own path, it spread out in tendrils and began to claw at the books in its frenzied movement. An elemental whirling dervish that spun and spun until it would collapse from exhausting itself. And the books, fragile as they were, crumbled and turned in on themselves as they were devoured.

“Sacrifices must be made...”

Outside, the distant rumble of thunder signaled an impending storm. The rain would come soon enough to wash down on the town. And the flames were already tearing at the wooden terraces of the library’s roof in their self-destructive frenzy, becoming their own undoing to let the rain in. As storm clouds covered the starry sky and streets in darkness, leaving them deserted of anyone who would notice such a spectacle.

Soon, raindrops began to fall as black feathers scattered onto the cobblestones.

The downpour fell heavily against wooden planks of the Eleki Troupe’s caravan. Rue could hear the rain’s muffled thrum as she worked on her stretches. Slowly, she gripped one foot with both hands until her hold was absolute, then moved to the other leg, repeating the process. It was her way of waiting. Mytho was outside with Paulo and Gil, reining in the horses while she was left with the others to try and keep busy.

The other ballerinas of the troupe took advantage of the rain’s delay to relax and chat with each other. They let themselves be swayed by the wild rocking of the wagons. Rue occasionally glanced at them when the wheels hit a muddy spot and there was a particularly jarring motion, as if to see if any would fall. But beyond that, it was like they were miles apart in the small space.

“Are you nervous about the debut?”

“Yes! Do you think you’ll remember everything?”

“Lucky! Getting to dance with him!”

The ballerinas always asked these questions in breathless anticipation whenever they changed programs. But the girls did not clamor for Rue’s attention. It wasn’t because Rue was particularly distant. She had softened since the story’s end, and some of them even found her approachable in quiet moments when the others had scattered. But she was still far from being friends with them, especially those close to Rosalind.

Rosalind was the uncontested prima donna of the Eleki troupe before Rue appeared with Mytho one day, on a rainy day much like this one. The two came asking for shelter because they had no where else to turn to so far from their home, and the troupe leader, Paulamoni, accepted them. They stayed on at first because of pity, with Mytho taking on the most strenuous and unsavory tasks to repay their benefactors. But within months Rue’s talent shone and she was cast as Aurora, while Mytho became a welcome addition for his dancing and quiet willingness to help the other stagehands.

But where Mytho found hospitality among them, Rue saw competition. They all envied this stranger for appearing out of nowhere and onto the center stage, outshining them in her ballet and keeping Mytho’s attention on her. None were more jealous than Rosalind, who had become a bitter rival because of their similar roles, and the older girl felt usurped. The unspoken enmity only grew as Rue remained aloof from Rosalind’s attempts to exert her superiority, and the way Rue, in turn, made sure everyone knew Mytho was hers unquestionably.

The lead was given to Rosalind in the newest production, Swan Lake. She saw it as a sign that Rue’s brief tenure in the spotlight would end. But Rue had other things on her mind during auditions that took her away from their petty competition. After so long, they were finally returning to Gold Crown Town. Yet the closer they drew to its familiar walls the more distant Mytho had become, as if a great burden was beginning to form on his shoulders.

And, really, Rue did not want to fight for dual role of Odette and Odile anymore.

“I’m not nervous in the least,” Rosalind announced louder than was necessary. “After all, I earned the part, didn’t I?”

One of the girls murmured, “But dancing the pas de deux with Mytho, I would be nervous—”

“Mytho is a perfect Siegfried. He’ll make sure Rosalind’s performance is flawless,” Rue said off-handedly. The hidden barb left to be uncovered by Rosalind’s own insecurities. That she needed him to cover up her flaws.

“It’s so kind of you to practice with him, even if you’re just the understudy,” Rosalind shot back sweetly.

“We’re partners, after all.” Her red eyes glinted with self-satisfaction. “That doesn’t change.”

The wagons began to slow and Paulomoni entered to check up on them. She moved with the grace of her years as a former prima donna, and all of them quieted in deference to her. Even so, she always made sure she was close to those in the troupe. And she reacted as if she didn’t notice the change in their behavior, shaking the rain off of her shawl before moving to where Rue was stretching.

The other girls reluctantly began their own warm ups, returning their chatter in low tones. They did not want their instructor to see them standing idle while she was in front of them. Even though Paulomoni never chastised them harshly, the mere thought of her disapproval was enough motivation. Rosalind turned her back on Rue and began to instruct the other girls on their arm stretches.

“Good morning,” Rue said without looking the instructor in the eye.

“Did you sleep well?”

“It was just fine. Why do you ask?”

“I thought you would be looking forward to today. Coming home. I know if I were in your position I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink.” She knelt beside Rue. “Gold Crown is where you said you and Mytho were from, isn’t it?”

“Yes, we...grew up there.”

“You know, it’s funny. I remembered Gold Crown is where I finally chose to stop playing Aurora and pursue this dream. But whenever I try to remember what finally gave me the courage to decide it slips away from me.” Paulamoni turned to her and smiled wistfully. “Like Aurora herself, choosing to leave her slumber behind to meet her prince, it seems my memory was swept away by the waking world.”

Rue remembered quite well. It was one of last days of her own kind of dream, back when she could only see herself as Rue, and not as a daughter and pawn of the monster raven, or Mytho’s princess. But the story had been rewritten and the memories of everyone who witnessed their struggles unfold had been erased. Paulomoni’s own memories of Mytho’s screams as he rediscovered fear and her fondness for Duck’s awkward dance had vanished. Even the memory of Rue herself would have been swept away, although she wondered if she would have made a memorable impression regardless.

“Well! Perhaps when we return I’ll finally remember what it is,” the director mused. “After all, it’s easier to recall memories when you go back to the place where they were made, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Rue said noncommittally.

“It might be different for you, seeing as you spent your whole life there before you joined us.”

“It does color one’s perception...” Rue said as she stood up to meet Mytho, who had just opened the door. “When you’ve always lived close to something.”

The three men had finally found a clearing to rest the team and check for any damages the rain may have caused. Paulo and Gil awkwardly shuffled in behind Mytho, as if part of a procession. Even though the older men lacked the constant composure that was innate in the prince’s stride they were still graceful as befitting men in a ballet troupe. And though Mytho was the lowest in rank among them, there was no question in the way they moved that he still retained something higher and otherworldly about his demeanor.

Paulo gave Rue and Paulomoni a friendly wave before sneezing. “In time for breakfast I hope?”

Rue glanced back at Paulomoni, and tried to show her a faint smile that came more from Mytho’s appearance than any reassurance she felt.

“Rue,” Mytho greeted with a faint smile as he made his way over to her. “Good news. The wagons are an hour’s distance from Gold Crown’s gates. Fifteen minutes for a single rider on horseback.”

“Are you going scouting?”

“Of course. I need to make sure the roads aren’t washed away.”

Rue hated the times he went scouting. Those times were just like before, when he would leave her behind in the castle to fight monsters, where he wouldn’t be with her. It was his duty as a prince, she had come to accept that. But there was always a part of Rue that felt unsatisfied with sharing him with the world. She could feel it lurking within, quieted only temporarily when Mytho whispered he loved her before departing out into the darkness.

“I’ll come with you.”

Mytho blinked; his expression of calm bewilderment over Rue’s feelings was something that remained even after all their time together. “It is only a short distance, I will return after I reach the gates.”

Rue didn’t know how to explain herself. It didn’t matter the distance or the time, she just felt a growing overwhelming desperation that he was drifting apart from her even when he came back. She didn’t want to simply stay behind and wait for him.

Paulo came up and clapped Mytho on the back. “I think she’s feeling a little homesick, Mytho. Why don’t you both go ahead of us? If the roads are clear you can just head on to your families. We’ll know all’s well since you two can take care of yourselves in your own backyard. And we won’t need the horse back until the opening, so that gives you three days to visit.”

“What about the preparation before opening day?” Rosalind spoke up. “Mytho is the male lead!”

Rue was about to shoot back an unkind remark when Paulo continued. “I think we’re prepared enough, we can afford to let them go. Isn’t that right, Gil, Paulomoni?”

Gil, the wiry stage manager, hunched his shoulders and shivered from the clinging wetness. Rue could never distance him from the image of an eel, slinking and curling up in strange places. “I suppose. As long as they remember to feed the horse well.”

Paulomoni smiled at the couple. “We’ll try to manage without you for a little while, my wayward sprites.”

“You heard them,” Rue said in a voice that resounded with her old imperious way of speaking to him. The girls parted for her as she moved to the back to collect her change of clothes and a riding cloak.

It wasn’t long before Rue had Mytho by the arm, and made sure to walk beside him as they went to unhitch one of the horses for their journey. They had changed since the time where he was heartless, where her arm tightly wound around his, guiding him forward under the illusion that he was doing anything more than following her in perfect step. Now it was for his reasons that they traveled. He had prepared a place for her, the pack of food and her clothing, his doing. He even chose the horse—a cream colored sorrel. It wasn’t a white steed, but it was fast and inconspicuous compared to him carrying her off on a column of rose petals.

Nevertheless, Rue couldn’t help stepping ahead of him, pulling him forward as if spurred on by some anxious, nebulous fear. She still preferred to be alone with him, away from the troupe and before the obligations of returning to Gold Crown rose up and surrounded them.

He gave the sorrel a reassuring pat before swinging up on the stirrup and mounting. “Are you that anxious to see Tutu and Fakir?”

Rue looked down, thankful that the hood covered her eyes. “I’m anxious to ride out of this storm.”

Mytho said nothing more as he extended his hand to her. Because he left his cloak’s hood off she could see the way Mytho bowed his head to keep the rain out of his eyes, even if it still looked like he could be crying. Expressions were always awkwardly transient on the prince’s face. It seemed to be something left over from the countless years he spent without a heart and felt nothing.

“Well?” he asked her, soft and undemanding.

Rue slid her hand in his, like she always did before they danced. But this time Mytho wrapped his fingers around hers and used that as leverage to help pull her up in front of him. Like the beginning of their dance, he drew her close to him by wrapping his arms around her waist. They fit well together, her shoulder blades resting against the curve of his chest and her temple resting against his set of his jaw. Even though Rue disliked riding and having to rely on the balance of a beast, she felt perfectly safe leaning against him.

“It will be soon,” Mytho said to her as he spurred the horse on. “Fakir will give us a clear sky when we meet again.”

Rue rested her head in the hollow of his neck and closed her eyes. “All right.”

Indeed, Fakir’s first waking thought was a hazy curiosity to hear the clap of thunder of an oncoming storm he never recalled writing. The slow rumbled died away as awareness came to him. Intrinsic and habitual reminders telling him it was not his doing, as he was sleeping in his bed instead of over the desk as he was wont to do in the middle of a story.

Fakir sat up like a shot to look out at the window. The dawn’s grey was a darker shade from the clouds’ thick cover and he could feel the chill as he threw off the blankets to dress.

‘That’s strange,’ he thought. ‘There were no signs of rain in weeks and suddenly a storm—Duck!’

He had always warned her of rain when they came up in his stories. It was part of his reasoning for letting her read so many of them. As a duck who still held human feelings and an aggravating tendency to get underfoot, he had to give her some idea what to be careful of. Fakir learned early on that she would not quietly resign herself to the peace of the lake and his adjoining cottage. The same rash devotion she had for others did not vanish with Princess Tutu, and whenever possible she would try and see how the lives of everyone else continued without the story. So all Fakir could do would be to caution her of what he could control—although it was never much—and hope she would listen.

Even if at times it felt like he was just telling his stories to try and share with her the life she had given up years ago.

Shoving away the thought, Fakir made a grab for his boots, having finished dressing in his winter gear. He would go to the lake first and see if she was all right. Then head over to the library to see if Autor had neglected to mention anything about a storm in his rounds of polite conversation and his long winded explanations of environmental cues for setting a scene. Fakir wondered if perhaps he was being overly cautious now, but something electrified and unreal was in the air, and it only set his suspicions more on edge.

A heavy thump on his door interrupted his thoughts and he swung it open. “What is it?” he barked, before he even saw who was on the other side.

Autor stood on his doorstep, looking bedraggled and frantic. “Fakir! The library, there was a fire in the night!”

Fakir wordlessly ushered him inside, watching as his distant relative pulled off his glasses to wipe off the raindrops and stare him.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Autor cried, as much helpless in his ignorance as the loss of his beloved books. “There was a blaze in the west wing. The rain stopped it before it tore the whole building down but, oh! The books! I couldn’t bear to count how many we lost, and the ones that haven’t completely burned are soaked!”

“I had a feeling this rain wasn’t natural,” Fakir murmured solemnly.

“Rain? Forget the rain, there was a fire! Someone deliberately and with malice of forethought set fire to the library!”

“I need to get to the lake and see if she’s all right,” Fakir said, cutting him off. And Autor didn’t need to hear more to know of whom he was speaking.

“She is a duck! They’re water fowl,” Autor snipped testily. “Of course she’ll be all right, but the books—!”

“I’ll go with you after I find Duck,” Fakir snapped, using the cold steel of a voice that had once defied their ancestor.

Autor knew that it would pointless to argue with him when it concerned Duck, so great was his devotion to her. So he decided he might as well follow after, twisting awkwardly on a heel to catch up to Fakir. “I can’t believe you. A few inches of rain in the pond is the least of our concerns with all the other strange...happenings...”

Whatever chastisement Autor was preparing to say died in his throat as soon as Fakir flung open the door. For there on Fakir’s doorstep stood Rue, both pale and dark against the grey stormy sky.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, trying to conceal how startled she was to find Fakir immediately before her. “Weren’t you expecting us?”

[Avatar] Flint and Spark, part 1

gaisce@gmail.com — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:46:29 GMT

Title: Flint and Spark (1/?)
Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Spoilers/warnings: Set after the finale, all canon events are fair game (and some of the comics but that's more pick and choose).
Wordcount: 8,765
Summary: Five years after Sozin's comet a tenuous balance is on the brink of collapse and ready to send the nations back to war. Toph can stop the conspiracy, but with her only help being the manipulative exile, Princess Azula, her enemies may not be the biggest problem.

“We’re lost.”

“Will you stop saying that?” Toph said through gritted teeth. “It gets old fast.”

Concealed chains made a muffled clanking noise, which only seemed to add to the jeers of her companion. “I will, once you admit it’s true. Following you is ridiculous, what with obvious problem of the blind leading the shackled.”

“Prison issued. Which is exactly why they didn’t give you the directions, Little Miss Trustworthy,” she retorted as she let the wave of earth that was carrying them settle back to level ground.

Despite traveling nonstop for the last couple of hours, all it took to rejuvenate Toph was the chance to stretch her legs. Each footstep reconnected her to the miles of earth thrumming beneath her. Their tremors served as far better conversation than the snide remarks she had been forced to endure from her unwilling companion. And even though the blind earthbender did not need to look directly at her fellow traveler to “see” how her so-called was holding up, she was glad for the opportunity to turn and face the other girl.

Azula, exiled princess of the Fire Nation, was not someone you willingly kept near your unguarded back. Even when bound in heavy iron chains.

Toph kicked her heel against the ground and two pillars of rock rose up and fastened Azula’s feet to where she stood. “Rest stop. Hope the scenery’s nice where you are because you’ll be there for a while.”

“Is this really necessary? I already told you I wasn’t going to bother escaping.” she snapped, trying to manage a way to kneel comfortably while both her ankles were encased in rock. “What’s there to escape to in this dustbowl?”

“Maybe I just think it’s what you deserve for being such a backseat bender.”

At the mention of bending Azula grew tense, preferring instead to lean over in a crouching position. Toph could hear the rustle of her long sleeves as Azula adjusted her arms so the cloth draped over the chains. The earthbender did not turn to her movements, but her hands flexed in anticipation, ready to bring up a rock shield as an instinctive defense.

“In that case get me some water,” Azula said, more to the ground than Toph herself.

“I’m not your weasel-gopher,” Toph scoffed. “If you’re thirsty you can wait until we get to the meeting point.”

“If you won’t let me get it myself I guess that makes you the only one qualified to fetch. Besides, you won’t even tell me how far we are from this point you keep not talking about. It could be days’ worth of journeying for all you let on.”

“Trust me, if I had to ferry you longer than a day I wouldn’t have let you get off the ship without a gag.”

Azula brought her manacles down at the rock restraining her, an ugly scraping noise as she chipped off a chunk of stone around her ankles. “Oh, trusting you is the best part of this little expedition.”

“That makes one of us.”

The sound of iron on stone came again as Azula brought her fists down. Then again, not letting the faint tremors finish before she struck a second blow.

Toph crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side to listen. “You’ll break your hands before you get out of there.”

“I’m not looking to break free.” She struck as she spoke. This time a piece as large as the span of an inch fell from the mount.

“No? That’s great, Princess. You’re just throwing a royal fit.”

“Don’t you have something you need to be doing? Rubbing off the top layer of filth? Resting? It’s probably very exhausting, being this much of an aggravating—”

Toph held up a hand to silence her. Surprisingly, the other girl quieted as soon as she noticed her expression.

During their trip, Toph went out of her way to avoid stumbling into any unsuspecting travelers. The exiled princess was the last person she wanted for company, and she was even less inclined to explain the reasons why. So Toph chose unmarked paths that were further inland and with rougher terrain, as far away from the trade routes as possible. But now she could feel faint vibrations against her bare feet, overwhelming the noise of prairie dog-toads digging their tunnels and wren-sparrows calling for their mates.

At first she thought to ignore the sounds, believing it to be merchants who strayed from the main roads from misread maps or poorly chosen guides. Yet the tremors grew more and more hurried the closer they came. Then they echoed and multiplied, extending from all directions until they overlapped the pace of the first steady beat, almost as if they were overtaking the others.

Toph shook her head disgustedly, knowing too well what that sound meant. “Great. Robbers.”

Azula quirked an eyebrow when she heard the mirth in Toph’s voice. It seemed misplaced until she saw a familiar smirk, the kind she felt, a very long time ago, when a battle was reaching its pitch. And realized the meaning was the same—anticipation. “...you’re not seriously going.”

“I’m seriously going. Messing up your day is just the fun part.”

Her gold eyes scanned the horizon. “They would have to be miles away. If you stop to help every peasant in need, I’m surprised you ever get anything done.”

“Just because you don’t care about what happens to some ‘peasants’ doesn’t mean I’m going to stand by and let them get trampled on.”

“What about your priorities? I thought we had to make good time to get to our destination. This isn’t the time for you to go sightseeing.”

“Sorry, Princess, but you rank under them. I’ll make this quick though.” Toph spread her feet into a wider stance. Turning back toward Azula she made a farewell wave, simultaneously calling up another slate of rock to replace the part she had chipped away. “Stay out of trouble while I’m gone.”

“Don’t you dare leave me here!” Azula cried after her, the demands giving way to a frustrated shout. “Earthender! Did you hear me? Earthbender! —Toph!”

It had been a while since she could remember being so dead set on picking a fight. While time could not mellow Toph’s rebellious spirit, it became harder to instigate when there was no reason to rebel. No need to prove herself ever since the war ended. The world acknowledged her role and afforded her the respect of her position. She was the Avatar’s earthbending master, the first to discover metalbending, the Blind Bandit, the savior of the Earth Kingdom. No one could take that from her, or dreamed of trying. The places she traveled welcomed her as a hero, bought her drinks and begged for stories up until she set off again.

But with peace settling through the lands like a long forgotten comfort to those afflicted by the siege, she found there was no permanent place for her. Even Xin Fu’s Earth Rumble tournaments lost many of their fans to the surge of artisan and trade schools that grew in the wake of their reclaimed prosperity. The Earth Kingdom’s citizens were a stalwart people and had endured over a hundred years of battle, but they were tired of conflict and exhausted from war. It was not unreasonable that they would turn to other trades besides fighting.

Toph would never get sick of it. She knew that as fact and set in stone.

It did not mean that she was never needed, only that it was barely worth flexing her muscles over. Warm up stuff, breaking up the fights and the monotony. Whatever discontents and rebellions that rose up presented less of a challenge than meeting her own expectations. And any conflict serious enough to need the Avatar’s intervention was almost always resolved before she got word of it. Not that her friends didn’t welcome her with open arms, but when the battle was over so was her part in it.

Diplomacy was never her strong suit. Even with her talent for finding liars, there was an incomprehensible nature to the business. The indirect methods, the inevitable compromises all made her feel out of place. She was the type to dig in her heels and not settle for anything less than what she thought was fair. The mere thought of a peace talk meeting was enough to make her restless, itching to go somewhere else.

Still, all things considered, she never before needed the stress relief that came from putting up with her majesty, the exiled princess of asylums and would-be world conquerors. Any excuse to get away from her snide commentary was better than nothing. And nothing is exactly what she would do if she stayed, since she promised to escort Azula and not give her a well-deserved butt kicking. But if other people needed her, she was obligated to help. And if that motivation happened to include some skull busting, who was she to turn it down?

Toph cracked her knuckles. Oh yeah, this was going to be cathartic do-gooding.

When she arrived on the scene an ambush was already in progress. It was hard to make out from all the dust kicked up and the animals skittering in panic, but one caravan wagon was overturned by the telltale creak of a wheel spinning uselessly in the air. The remaining carts were surrounded by four bandits on foot—earthbenders of course, the axels impaled by stalagmites was proof enough. At the edge of the scene, six riders on ostrich-horse mounts trampled about as they closed in on their quarry.

The members of the overturned cart had already been caught up in the melee, merchants lingering where they fell as if the broken heap of wood could still afford them protection. Toph could hear their heartbeats hammering faster than everyone else. She knew it would be hard to distinguish everyone when she got in the thick of it and the adrenaline took over, with fear making all their movements hurried and reckless.

She could not afford the time to memorize each of the people caught up in the fight. So Toph’s backup strategy was simple, incapacitate everyone and let the traders sort themselves out. It usually worked since the ones she defended were never stupid or ungrateful enough to pick a fight with her. Bar brawls were a different matter.

“Surrender peacefully and I won’t have to beat the snot out of you,” she announced as she strode into the battlefield. That way, they could never say she did not warn them about an easy way out.

The nearest foot-soldier guffawed. From the faint whistling sound he made when inhaling, Toph guessed he was already missing some teeth. “Look what they sent for a cavalry!”

“Pay attention to the job,” one of the riders, most likely the leader, snapped. He started circling away, signaling them to close ranks on her. “We have a schedule to keep.”

“Are you kidding? That’s the Blind Bandit!” said another robber to the right of the whistler.

She grinned. “Finally! A little respect—”

“If we clobber her we’ll be infamous!”

“—neeeeevermind,” Toph said, blowing the bangs from her eyes.

She huffed. In the time it took to exhale the ground shuddered open with a groan, as if mimicking her exasperation. Spreading her feet into a low stance, Toph pushed jagged rocks outward to trip the nearest footmen. Their laughter was replaced the scraping of their heavily armored boots as they tried to keep themselves standing.

And the earthbender smirked under the shadow of her hair to hear it. The grunts of surprise meant she got their attention, Toph’s cue to push the advance.

Although it was not necessary for her to face forward to “see” what she was doing, the heavy bearing of her earthbending echoed the movements of her body’s follow through as she twisted her arms toward them to send an explosion of stalagmites barreling out at full force. The whistling one cut his breath short and brought his splitting maul to bear, slamming it down against Toph’s stone. It made her jaw twitch as the heavy reverberations of his weapon collided against hers. The tremors clouded up her perception, but she ignored them, gritting her teeth against the feedback. It was not the first strike thrown at her, and not one she would take without a return shot. Her outstretched hand twisted, yanking down the mingled earth and collapsing it with her gesture. The ground fell out from under him.

He went down just as the second bandit pole vaulted into the space between them. With an ease deceptive of his stocky build, the pole in his hands shot out and struck her knuckles. Toph managed to dodge, pulling her fist back in a block, but it still surprised her. Highway bandits were not the type for coordinated attacks. Especially ones that meant training with a variety of weapon styles.

The robber did not wait for her to catch her breath. He twisted the lacquered staff in his wrists and with each turn of his hand the wooden edge shot out fast as an arrow, aiming for Toph’s chest and arms. The first two hit, once on the collarbone and one a glancing shot where her sleeve ended. She didn’t have the time to bring up a proper rock shield so she waited for him to lunge at her before digging her heel into the ground. A channel of dirt wrapped around his back foot and sent him tumbling underneath his center of balance.

He collapsed like the earth beneath him. The grip on his staff loosened and Toph took added pleasure in smacking it away from his hands with another column of stone, letting the weapon pinwheel out into the air and land far out of his reach.

“Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I need a walking stick. But you will if you try that again,” Toph jeered. Her fist extended to the remaining bandits in a challenging taunt. “What’s the matter? Is that all you got?”

Despite the bravado, things were not going as well as she initially hoped. Pain burned under her skin, its warm flecks stinging her collarbone but still comforting in the heat of moment. The bruises would hurt more when she had time to rest. Thankfully, there were other things to distract her until then.

It had been a while since someone landed a good hit on her. And Toph hated to admit it, but they slipped through her defenses because she was not ready for this fight. Her mind still divided in its worries over the threat she left behind. This skirmish here was supposed to be simple, but too many things were off. And even in the open terrain of the trading route she felt as if she had accidentally stepped into a patch of uneven ground, fighting her way uphill to finish things.

One of the merchants shouted in alarm as the riders swooped in to flank their fallen conspirators and keep Toph from getting between them and their hopes of plunder. Using her injured arm she willed up an earth slope to keep the ostrich horses from rushing the wagons. Her good arm swung in an arc to shove back the remaining foot soldier just as he unhooked his halberd.

Toph’s mind was spinning through possibilities. If she could keep them separate, track the earthbenders of the group and take them out quick, this would go down smoother. Faster. And for a brief second she wondered how Azula was doing.

The Blind Bandit fought enough to know the ones on foot were not her biggest concern even if they were earthbenders. Riders were two creatures melded together in her senses, unpredictable and further from the ground she used to see. And once the leader saw her rush to their defense he kept the other five in a holding formation, trying to pick at their prey. She did not have to look at his face to know he was waiting for a moment to descend on them en masse.

The two left standing rushed together to break Toph’s wall. One she had already shoved rebounding back with the halberd gone from his hands. Their arms motioned in sync like pinwheels from the same win, grinding the heavy slates back into the ground. Riders were dangerous, but the traders were the reason she was fighting. The ones left by the wagon gave her no place to move except in their defense.

Ignoring finesse, Toph ripped apart at the gravel and threw it at the two bandits. Her aim was better than sight when she could read the tensions of their muscles and knew just where to strike to collapse them under their own weight. The two earthbenders were caught off guard and she could hear their grunts as she pelted them to tripping over the battle scarred ground.

Without turning Toph made sure to repeat the gesture at the two she had previously sunk and who were trying to regain their bearings. One dodged, his gauntlets knocking away the stray pieces even as he stumbled. But Toph heard a satisfying wheeze as her main target, the whistler with the splitting maul, fell backwards. A good guess was she knocked out two teeth at least.

Toph cracked her knuckles. “How’s that for infamy?”

It was not just for show. Any distraction her bragging earned could put her between the wagon bound victims and their assailants. And if she played it loud enough and coupled with her reputation they could let the doubt seep in. Hopefully make retreating seem like a good idea.

However, her effective blockade seemed only to make them tighten rank and coordinate. The leader raised his arm, Toph could not sense the specific gesture from the shifting of the ostrich-horse’s hindquarters and the way he balanced in the saddle. But she did not need to see it to know it meant trouble. Suddenly the other five reached for their packs. The heavy clack of weights striking against each other was followed by a cycling roar as she could hear them swinging the objects over their heads like bolos.

On instinct she brought her fist to her face defensively, the stone walls left by the two bandits closing ranks, one rising up to defend her and the other curving over the traders like a half-formed dome. However, Toph was too busy reinforcing the traders’ wall that she did not have the attention for her own. Just as the earthbenders doubled back to keep whatever one handed attack she launched at the riders, their bolos were already sailing over her.

She could hear the horrified shouts of one of the merchants, or a merchant’s son—not old enough for his voice to deepen, yell at her, “Look out!”

A part of her bristled to hear someone giving her that advice again. What part of the Blind Bandit was so hard to comprehend? But even though she knew they were coming, it did not help when there was no way to doge five all at once.

Toph fell to her knees as the heavy netting overwhelmed her. Resisting the urge to claw at her restraints she listened for their movements. She managed to keep the bolos from sweeping her feet by kicking ripples in the ground. If they tried to sweep her she would have no trouble launching the weighted nets back at them with her bending.

But no further attack came.

As if on cue, the four earthbenders simultaneously launched themselves onto the backs of one of their cohort’s ostrich-horses. And without even a parting shot the leader and his group retreated into the wilderness.

“That was weird,” she muttered to nobody in particular.

With a disgruntled flick of her wrists, each of the weights tethering the netting sailed up into the air in perfect timing. To emphasize her disgust for their parting trick she shoved a large boulder into the air to give the netting something to wrap around before she sent it sailing off in the direction the bandits had retreated. Part of her really wanted to go after them, but she knew leaving would mean abandoning the merchants and—as much as she did not want to deal with it—keep her from going back to check on Azula.

With a frown she turned to where the traders had huddled under the shadow of her rock wall. At least she could make sure they were all okay. “They’re gone. You can come out now.”

As soon as she disposed of the dome a few came rushing out to greet her as if she had just given them their first glimpse of daylight.

“You saved us!” cried one. Presumably the head of the caravan since he was the fattest as well as the richest of the merchants if she based it on how many coins he carried under his belt.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Toph grinned. “World’s greatest earthbender and butt kicker of bandits.”

“But didn’t one of them call you the Blind Bandit…?” came the tremulous voice of the young boy who called out to her earlier.

“Yeah, because I rob jerks of their dignity,” Toph explained, not wanting to get into the history of Earth Rumble monikers when she had things to do and crazy people to supervise. “Look, I appreciate the thanks and I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got to get going.”

“Wait please! Can’t you at least help us mend our cart axel,” asked another. “None of us have the tools for fixing it, and it would take us hours to turn it on its right side again.”

Toph paused, listening to the tremble in his voice. He sure sounded spooked, even after the heartbeats of the rest of the group had settled into something that was not indicative of impending heart attacks. But she could not blame him for asking, it’s not like she wanted to go back and leave them.

She tilted her head in consideration before nodding. “Sure. Gimme five minutes.”

After all, what was five minutes more to someone like Azula who had spent the last five years stuck in the same place?

Azula had been waiting far longer than Toph’s estimation. The disgraced princess lost count of the days a long time ago, but she knew it started before they imprisoned her in that sunless cell and locked her away from the world. Maybe it was when Fire Lord Ozai told her to stay behind. She heard the words, knew how intractable he was, but part of her never stopped expecting him to change his mind. A spoiled princess used to getting her way made for a willful consciousness and there the thought remained. The little girl dressed up in her father’s robes and standing guard at the borderlands waiting for his return.

Or it could have started when she came back from the Boiling Rock. The evening she paced alone in her room, clawing and tugging at her clothes as if it could rend the disappointment from her body. All the while she grew more and more frustrated at the sluggish response of her movements, her fingers fumbling with clasps and arms getting tangled up in the robes. It was not until the armor lay in a scattered pile at her feet that she realized she was not used to doing this by herself, anticipating an interruption that would never come again.

The last suggestion was a harried whisper she never allowed herself to consider, to even finish thinking. It started when she fell. She was impatient and unprepared when she charged her brother, pushed too much and the explosion of both their attacks sent them both over the edge of the war balloon. His friends caught him immediately. While she waited for something to reach for as the nothingness tumbled past her, all her fears pressing down on her faster than gravity. It was just like those nightmares, the helpless falling sensation where you’d wake up right before hitting the ground. Only she never reached that far, and Azula wondered if it meant she was still trapped. Her stricken mind still waiting to hit rock bottom.

She brought the chains down to break off another bit of stone, banishing the thought away with her hands. The first day out of her cell and it was spent either in the bowels of a ship or buried in the castoff dirt of her escort’s earthbending. Azula had no delusions that this was anything like real freedom, but with the open horizon in her sights all the cautious surveying seemed so unimportant now. Let the earthbender think she was wasting her energy on useless revolt by chipping away at her restraints. It was better than standing around and doing nothing.

When Toph returned, Azula managed to strip part of stone down to cuffs that bound her ankles. The exile stood up and dusted her hands, not bothering to disguise what she had been doing. In fact, she had a certain swagger to her stance, despite still being trapped in place.

“Huh,” was all Toph said. “Good thing those jerks were easy or you might’ve gotten a whole foot out.”

Azula resisted the urge to kick against the stone and demonstrate how soon she could have managed. It didn’t matter anyway as Toph merely waved her hand and suddenly there was nothing except for the ground beneath her feet.

“In that case, you should have let me come with you. Easier to manage when you’re actually around to keep an eye out—but I guess that’s not your style.”

“I can handle myself without worrying about you of all people covering my back.”

“Next time I’ll just escape and say you left me off on my own,” the exiled princess continued in a flat, clinical tone. “Who could blame me when my prison keeper abandons me without water, food, and no guarantee of return? It’s a matter of personal survival.”

“Pfft, bet you’re real good at that,” Toph snorted as a new wave of pain settled in her collarbone. A tug of raw nerves had gone from novelty to racking soreness quicker than she expected. The sensation stayed with her as she gathered up their supplies, and thankfully it was not bad enough for Azula to notice. “But even if you prove I can’t leave you alone—and oh man you are proving it—it’d be like carrying a millstone into a fight. You’re in chains. And if you weren’t, you wouldn’t help me anyway.”

“If it helped to get this finished faster,” Azula said, almost sounding offended, “I might.”

“Lucky for both of us, I don’t need it.”

Chain links scratched and grew taut as Azula twisted her wrists against them. She did not say anything, but Toph could feel the glare of her eyes burning resentment on her back. Almost as if anger might make her capable of firebending in spite the chi-blocking restraints.

Ignoring the ominous silence and the ache in her arms, Toph twisted her hands into the air and the earth to propelled them forward. “Hey, if you really wanted to help you’d offer to carry the packs, Princess. But you didn’t, so why don’t you just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

They continued without exchanging another word. And under any other circumstances Toph would have enjoyed the lack of conversation. It was funny, really. She was practically begging for silence when they first started out, Azula offering nothing except for subtle questions about their destination and less than subtle taunts about everything else. But now she was completely unresponsive, where even the jibe about the packs went unanswered. And that aggravating, dangerous presence became nothing but a heavy weight that dragged behind her as Toph guided them over the terrain.

It was driving her crazy.

Without the princess’s personality getting in the way, there was nothing to distract Toph from worrying over the other problems. Obviously, being the sole guard for Azula was a difficult task, even for the world’s greatest earthbender. However, it surprised her to recognize what she resented most about her passenger was the one thing that was not actually Azula’s fault. Despite being a master firebender and one of their most dogged pursuers during the war, the older girl contributed nothing to hastening their journey while in chains. And although she was capable of keeping up, letting her have control of a fast mount or even the ability to travel under her own power would be practically inviting escape, so it simply wasn’t an option.

Someone who could not pull their own weight was everything the self-sufficient earthbender hated dealing with. Yet if she were the one stuck with nothing else to do, nowhere to go on her own, and generally being treated like an ineffectual waste of space, Toph knew she would be furious as well. And she recognized that anger in the tension of Azula’s clenched fist. It made her wish this part would be over soon, so she would not be the only one dealing with the prisoner. That way, they would be free of each other and could go on to other tasks where they could both do something useful. All she had to do was endure it a little longer.

“We’re here,” Toph announced once she deposited Azula back on solid ground.

It was an obvious statement, given the fact that they had set down on the only landmark for miles around, but Toph felt the need to say something. She wanted those words to be a signal for others to appear, for their greetings to fill up the quiet and the lingering tension between them. But no one came and so she was left with Azula’s wordless disdain as she surveyed their surroundings.

Their final stop turned out to be nothing more than a small farm in the shadow of the foothills. Koala-sheep skittered in a panicked greeting, bleating at their arrival and kicking dust from their fenced in area. Their pen served as a boundary for the garden that curved past the ridge with a water silo marking the boundary of the farm, while the house itself was carved out of a mound that marked the start of the ground swell. Its unusual shape came from how the natural rock formations defined its craggy front walls.

Toph could look past the deceptive appearance to see the extensive tunnel network below it. The burrows were an older style of Earth Kingdom architecture, dating back hundreds of years when people sought to emulate the badger moles in as many ways as possible. Practically speaking, it also made a perfect safe house since the house blended in with the mountainside seamlessly to escape notice. Unless someone was specifically looking for it, which was precisely why Toph had no trouble shoving past the door and ushering her companion inside.

“How quaint,” the exile muttered under her breath.

Toph reached out to the nearby table and ran her fingers against the countertop. The granite was sanded to a fine, even finish, obviously the work of a master craftsman. She could also feel the faint engraving of a lotus blossom in the southwest corner, so small it was about the size of a pai sho tile. It was something most people would never see in the dim light of the room, and like all symbols that marked the Order of the White Lotus, its unobtrusive nature made it all the more significant.

This was a safe house for travelers in the Earth Kingdom. And the fact that there was a white lotus marking near the entryway announced that anyone who could find this place was already considered under their protection. While many of the society’s outposts also served as regular establishments such as taverns, merchant stores, or a variety of other trade shops, places specifically meant for White Lotus business were rare and heavily guarded secrets within their network.

The man whose home served as their meeting place was called Roi Se. He was a shepherd by trade, although his importance within the Order of the White Lotus was due to his mapmaking skills rather than his stock of koala-sheep. Iroh mentioned that his adventures to chart the terrain for the Earth Kingdom resistance made an interesting story, and suggested she ask Roi Se to tell her about the next time she visited. It was one of the few details she remembered in the blur of introductions, back when the old general and King Bumi were busy persuading the wayward earthbender meet as many of their comrades as possible.

Most arranged social gatherings left a sour impression on her anyway, but last summer she was particularly obstinate. A trip to the Wu Long forest ended abruptly and with a heated argument over how unreachable she became, both physically and otherwise. Katara explained that it was because they worried about her. Worried for her, to be precise. Toph relented enough to let them parade her about to guests and dignitaries so they could sleep better at night knowing she had connections. But her pride stung at the idea that she needed to rely on acquaintances to remind her of her place in the world.

To Toph, there was no difference between Aang wandering off to chat with a magical talking lion-turtle and her stomping into the forest for training. And though there might not be a difference in the act itself, apparently there was a difference with her. Everyone else had settled into neat little groupings. Young couples exploring their relationships and families reunited at last. Reunions Toph was a part of and yet not directly involved. And she could not blame them for their concern since they spent most of their lives worrying how everything could be ripped away. Peace, to them, meant a comfortable nearness.

Settling down.

But Toph was different. Before the war, her life was sheltered—suffocating. She needed to wander and sometimes, no matter how much she loved her friends, she needed to be away from them.

Roi Se was an acquaintance, and reminder that being alone did not mean isolation. He was a solitary type of person, as expected from someone who lived miles away from any village with only koala-sheep to keep him company. But he was also one of the old secret keepers in the Order, and his absence in their meetings did not remove his usefulness. When she heard that his place was the rendezvous, she realized how important its secrecy should be kept. It was the reason she accepted escorting Azula between the nations by herself, and kept her on guard so they would not be discovered. And it was why the prolonged quiet did nothing except raise her wariness.

“Something’s wrong.”

“More than one thing,” Azula said quietly as she cast a glance about the room.

Of course the crazy prisoner would decide to keep quiet until the worst possible moment, she thought. But even if it was a flippant remark Azula said nothing more, lingering near the window and waiting. If she was contemplating running, Toph figured that keeping her near the doorway would still be better than letting her wander inside the dens before she figured out what was amiss. And considering how the tunnels were designed, all twists and narrow pathways, Toph doubted the other girl was going to argue about taking the lead.

There were no vibrations except for the herd outside and Azula’s faint shifting. Being blind, Toph did not bother with the lamps as she began exploring. With each tread of her feet she could feel the hollowed out tunnels, the dead ends and secret chambers, but no sign of a living soul within. It was only until she held still and poured all her concentration into her earthbending senses that she managed to feel a slight shift of dirt coming from an adjoining room. Briefly she wondered if this was the result of something spilling, especially if it came from a wash room and Roi Se had to leave in a hurry. A knocked over stew pot or bathwater leaking.

Then Toph froze mid-step, her body seizing up in recoil.

Already suspecting the worst, the Fire Nation exile attempted to see what was causing her companion’s sudden halt. It had to be serious to get under the earthbender’s thick skin. And since Toph was blind it had to be something she felt, Azula reasoned, looking down at the ground to confirm her suspicions.

Even from the distance, she found it all too easily. A pool of red was already seeping into the dirt, slick and full of dire warnings.

She briefly considered mentioning how it was fresh enough to catch the light, what little there was anyway. But by the expression on the blind girl’s face she already knew. Even as the Toph’s bare feet retreated from its edge, dragging her heels guiltily.

“Are there others?”

“Shut up,” Toph growled, and the firebender did not know if it was simply out of disgust or if she was trying to listen for more vibrations or any other sign of the intruders. Either way, she decided it was better to keep quiet.

After a long silence Toph swallowed to clear her throat. Because of nausea or grief, it was hard to tell. They both were the kind to twist hard in a stomach with nowhere else to release the feeling.

“There’s no one else.”

Azula did not ask for clarification on what that meant. But she took a step toward the younger girl and could see her silhouette tense up in response. “Earthbender...”

Toph grit her teeth, touching the walls as if they could explain the fight to her. Or perhaps to keep her steady. “He was alone. It was a group against one old man. He wasn’t even a fighter and they...”

“There was nothing you could have done,” Azula finished. And the way she said it sounded more like a condemnation than an attempt at consoling her, but Toph shook it off. She knew it felt that way no matter what and—help or hinder—Azula’s words were not responsible for the heaviness settling in her stomach. Just her guilt.

“I should have.”

“Maybe if you didn’t stop to play hero,” Azula said evenly, but whatever she meant by it was brushed away as easily as she shrugged. It was an economical movement, not careless at all. “We could’ve arrived early and we would have been just in time for them to ambush us as well. Of course, if you listened to me he might still be alive, but that would mean admitting I was right. And those peasants wouldn’t have noticed their poor luck, depending on how thugs dealt with merchants who make them work for their stolen goods.”

Her tone was cold and without sympathy. At first, all Toph wanted to do was break her jaw and make her shut up, but there was a certain chilling assurance to them. The way they cut to the marrow and shoved back the tumble of could have and should have. And hating her for it gave Toph a focus for what to do next. She had to get Azula into the custody of the Order of the White Lotus, and she had to warn them about this attack. Whether or not the two were related—and once again Toph wished she could accurately tell when Azula was lying—she could not ignore the fact that things were already put in motion and she was lagging behind.

Shaking her head, Toph sucked in a ragged breath and tried to get her bearings. She would catch up, but there were priorities. “We take care of him first.”

“Disgusting,” Azula murmured to the dust lingering in Roi Se’s garden.

“Shut up,” said Toph in a voice as hard as steel. She had not bothered arguing with Azula about it, instead setting to work by opening up a grave in the adjacent garden and finding a tapestry to wrap the body. “We’re burying him.”

“It’s a disgusting custom to throw dirt over a body and simply leave it to rot...”

“We’re burying him and that’s final.”

Azula’s feet shifted defensively, the overspill disrupting the garden’s soil and putting imperceptible pressure on the roots that only Toph could sense. But then the former princess never seemed to be mindful of what she stepped on to get where she was going. “He’s gone now, what does it matter?”

“Because he deserves this.”

“I’m sure if he were alive he’d appreciate us scattering the ashes of his murderers instead of tidying up his garden.”

Toph shoved past her. “You’re wrong. That’s not what he’d want. Now help me carry him.”

Azula paused for a moment, then half-turned and stopped again. “How well did you know this person?”

“Better than you.”

She snorted. “How unspecific.”

“We weren’t exactly pen pals, alright? But he was a good guy who was going to help you in case you forgot why you’re out of your cage.”

“Did he know I was coming or were you the only one pleasantly surprised by the details of this mission?” Azula asked, her fingers smoothing out the creases in the tapestry but not enough to touch what lay beneath it.

“He knew,” Toph said tersely. For a moment she looked as if she would say more but closed her mouth when she thought better of it. Without waiting for Azula to grab hold, or really expecting her to help, she wrapped her arms around the body’s torso and lifted it from the ground.

It was—he was heavy, Toph thought, trying to keep her balance and grip the cloth in a respectful manner. She could have simply used her earthbending to do the whole job, but felt it would be disgraceful. If she was unable to reach Roi Se in time to save his life, then the least she could do would be to carry him to a proper resting place with her own two hands. And she was so caught up that she had momentarily forgotten her prisoner, her entire reason for being there, as she carried the body toward the grave. Only when she felt the weight lift and could hear the noise of cloth and chains moving after her, did she remember the other girl. She held her breath as they walked through the garden, as if that would keep Azula from speaking too. It was the only part of their journey made in peaceable silence.

It was only a few steps before Toph was walking on the freshly upturned soil, moving around the opening so she could place his body gently inside the grave. She knelt and flinched at the sensation that followed as Azula’s robes brush against her wounded shoulder. It did not hurt, but it surprised her. It was strange to feel the other girl leaning over alongside her, their heads bowed in mutual concentration that would have kept them from reading each other’s expressions if Toph could not already sense it. But there was no need to see her face, given the incongruity of their actions. The former princess of the Fire Nation and her hated enemy, kneeling in the dirt with her to bury a man she had never known and Toph had known all too little.

And as soon as the body was on the ground she felt Azula pull away, scrubbing at her hands. Her whole body was radiating scorn. Toph remained, her hand resting on his chest as if to protect him from her startled movement. Now that he was in place she closed her eyes and willed the earth to cover the body. When she opened them again, Toph hoped whatever spirit or afterlife that existed would accept him the way the earth did. And she hoped his spirit would forgive her easier than she could forgive herself.

“We have to put some distance between us and this place,” Azula said right on the heels of a respectful silence, “as soon as possible.”

Toph stood, not bothering to brush off the dirt of the grave. “I know.”

“So remove my chains.”

“Excuse me?” she snorted, the sheer audacity breaking all solemnity of the moment. “For a second there I thought you were talking crazy.”

“They slow me down, we both know it. And if someone manages to overtake us or word gets out about his murder faster than we can travel don’t you think I’ll look a little conspicuous with these?” She held them up for inspection, not bothering to conceal the loud rattling the cuffs made.

“No way.”

Azula took a step forward. “You’re going to end up risking both of our lives because you’re afraid I’ll slip out of your grasp?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Toph said evenly. “But that doesn’t mean I’d trust you.”

Suddenly, the plaintive gesture became a weapon, the chain looping around the earthbender’s arm and twisting to make the iron pull her hands tightly behind her. Azula’s face was close enough that her breath could move the loose strands of Toph’s hair. But even closer was a three inch piece of slate, sharpened like a blade and pressed along the underside of her jaw by the prisoner’s steady shackled hand.

“What does this tell you?” Azula asked slowly.

Toph didn’t dare swallow but kept her voice steady. “That you’ve got a bigger chip on shoulder than up your sleeve.”

For a tense moment nothing happened. There were a dozen ways to disarm and incapacitate the firebender before she could try to draw blood but—even though she really wanted to—Toph held herself back. If Azula was seriously attempting to kill her she would have gone for the throat already, quick and without preamble. Toph was confident enough to believe she would not have succeeded, but she might have done enough damage to make it hard to go on alone.

“It should tell you that if I really wanted to escape into the wilderness of the Earth Kingdom I wouldn’t let you get in my way. I’d been watching—there were times where you were much more vulnerable than this when I could have struck.”

Toph clenched her teeth, thinking of Azula stooping over, shoulder to shoulder with her as they laid Roi Se’s body into the makeshift grave. And she silently had to admit, she let her guard down that time. “Here’s a hint. Threats aren’t the way to get people trust you. Ever. I’m sure Mai gave you the message before.”

The point of the weapon touched Toph’s cheek briefly, hesitating. Then Azula withdrew, releasing her arm and the lingering menace. “It’s not about trust. I’m proving to you that you can believe me. That you need to believe me, otherwise we’ll both fail.”

“Believe you, got it.” Toph nodded. Then turned around and slugged Azula in the stomach, sending the prisoner reeling. “Did anyone ever tell you that you are seriously messed up?!”

To Azula’s credit she did not collapse but came close to doubling over. Azula coughed through gritted teeth, trying to steady herself. “What else am I supposed to do?” She coughed again. “Saying ‘please’ doesn’t work when you clearly have no manners.”

“I know how to act polite, but I’m not wasting it on you. Stop acting like you get a say in this. The only reason you’re still not rotting in an asylum is because Twinkletoes thought you deserved a chance. And you’re blowing it.”

“The only reason they let me out is because I commanded the Dai Li once. I’m useful and you’re desperate!” Azula snapped venomously. “This is about what’s necessary. I know if it was about what you wanted, or my brother wanted, I would be back there and you’d never let me out. But if we stay here and argue we’ll be caught. And I don’t want to trade a Fire Nation cell for an Earth Kingdom prison.”

It was hard to admit that part of that made sense in a sick and twisted way. Shaking her head in disbelief, she reached for Azula’s hands, easily crushing the slate shard into dust. Then with a flick of her fingers she wrenched the chain from her manacles, the links clattering into her waiting hand until all that was left was Azula’s iron gauntlets.

“You’re right,” Toph said after a moment, crushing the metal and warping it until she could twine it around her own wrist as a plain-looking bracelet. “It’s not about what I want, but it’s not what you want either. So stop standing around and follow me.”

“And the rest?” Azula prompted.

“Don’t push it, Princess,” she grunted, kicking off the chain that bound Azula’s ankles with her bare foot. That one she left in the dirt, as if waiting for the firebender to pick it up if she dared. “You don’t need your firebending to move.”

The girl inhaled as if to say more, or recuperate from Toph’s punch, but held off. “Fine. Let’s get out of here. This place is depressing.”

Despite her insistence to leave as soon as possible, Azula took the opportunity to ransack supplies from Roi Se’s home. He had no need of them now, she explained as Toph waited with crossed arms and a disapproving scowl. The earthbender did not have to scurry about in order to make use of the time left to them. With only a few careful gestures she buried any evidence of the Order of the White Lotus. The one she took special care to remove was the white lotus symbol on the table, wiping it away with her palm as she left. She also took special care to make sure nothing Azula packed was a weapon that she would later use against her.

When they finally got moving, twilight was settling in. The darkness did not bother Toph; it was the same as daylight to her. And the cold did not bother Azula because she could raise her body heat even if the manacles prevented her from firebending. Nevertheless, they did not travel for very long and when they made camp both were eager to spend the night unconscious to its splendor.

Toph extended her arms out at adjoining points and two solid rock slabs rose up for her tent. She turned to where Azula was sulking by their supply sacks and called up another tent right beside her. To Toph’s disappointment, Azula was either too accustomed to sudden gestures of earthbending or too tired to be surprised.

“Sleep time, Princess Psycho,” the earthbender called and jutted a thumb toward the tent entrance. “Go get some beauty rest or whatever it is you do.”

“I’m sleeping outside,” Azula responded in a tired voice.

Toph thought it would have been nice if she could at least go to bed without this problem, dumping Azula in a rock cage with enough air holes to breathe until she could worry about her in the morning. But of course even the most minor things would have to cause her companion to start another argument.

“No, I think you’re supposed to say ‘Thank you, Toph. Because all I have is a bedroll I stole, so you giving me shelter even after I’ve been an annoying pain in your butt the whole time you’ve known me is real generous of you.’”

“If you want to tie me to a stake to make you feel more secure about me running away then do it, but I’ve been in an underground prison for five years. I’m not going to willingly crawl back into another just because you’re promising to let me out in the morning.”

Toph thought about repeating her threat. How the slightest movement would alert her to an escape and she would drag her back in reinforced and very uncomfortable ill-fitted chains if the princess tried anything. But something in Azula’s mannerisms kept her from pushing.

“It’s a disgusting custom to throw dirt over a body and simply leave it to rot...”

Toph sighed and headed to the shelter of her tent. No, she would not let her guard down again. But she would not antagonize the former princess of the Fire Nation either. So instead the blind girl closed her eyes, opting for sleep, knowing that this day was exhausting and the next one held no promise to be any better. “Suit yourself, Sparky.”

[Kung Fu Panda] With a Little Seasoning

gaisce@gmail.com — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:58:39 GMT

Title: With a Little Seasoning
Series: Kung Fu Panda
Spoilers/warnings: ...does vague Viper/Po teasing count as a warning?
Wordcount: 2,510
Summary: Po doesn’t know how to live up to expectations, especially when they can change.
Author’s Note: I claim mental amnesty for this idea from finals. Since Kung Fu Panda was the only thing I was watching for a lot of it.

Even though the Dragon Warrior could theoretically attain perfect understanding with the universe, Po felt pretty clueless most of the time. And not in the zen parable of knowing that not everything may be known kind of way. No, he was still working on the little things like realizing, yes, he actually managed to become a kung fu master. And, no, it was not a dream, he actually spent every day starting at the break of dawn training with the legendary warriors, the Furious Five.

That was one way of knowing it was for real, because his dreams would never make Po get up before ten in the morning.

It was weird. Really awesomely weird, but he was still surprised each time he woke up and remembered everything that happened before. Being chosen, training with Shifu, defeating Tai Lung...everything he did came from memory and not from his imagination, not like all the countless stories he told before.

So when Master Shifu finally granted him a vacation in order for Po to help his father for the upcoming Lantern Festival, the erstwhile Dragon Warrior returned to his old room with the worry that he would somehow stop being the Dragon Warrior if he wasn’t surrounded by proof that things were different. If he could not see the evidence that he had changed.

It was probably an illusory conceit or something, but Po didn’t even know what that meant so even if he was in the middle of an identity conundrum he kept it simple by sticking with the clear and obvious signals as things came to him.

Like his appetite.

The tried and true method of motivation. Sure he apparently could survive months from a drop of dew and the meaty things or whatever it was that sustained the divine plan of the universe (and it’s not like the universe was skinny right? It being constantly expanding...) but his body didn’t know that, and his stomach was a lot louder than the silent response of inner peace.

Besides, Po thought, how could you ever attain inner peace when your insides were obviously not peaceful?

That was the best part of returning to his dad’s place, waking up to the smell of noodles being cooked broth. Even the clattering of dishes had a hunger inducing affect. Even if it wasn’t his dream to wait tables at a noodle shop, he could still do it with his eyes closed.

Which was probably half the reason he stumbled into the edge of a table only to find that Viper was sitting at the newly available table and she was staring at him in something like mild concern.

“Po? Are you all right?” she asked, her emerald body uncoiling to inspect him.

“Yeah, I’m fine just...” he laughed and made a half-hearted karate chop. “Snuck up on me there.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Po set down the empty noodle bowls on a nearby counter, not trusting himself to balance them all when there was multitasking to be done. Like talking and balancing. That is talking to one of the Furious Five, while balancing in an apron. A dirty apron that he last used to clean up the snot from a kid who started crying when he realized the happy noodle bowl didn’t come with a toy.

Oh yeah, he was so far from scoring cool points with her.

“Sooooo why are you here?”

“Your invitation to ‘hang out’,” Viper said, using Po’s inflection to make it sound casual.

“What? Me? Now?” Po gaped, looking around to see if the others were around to clarify that it was really something less like fun and more like “extra training” in roundabout Shifu-language. “Uh...so where are the others?”

In the brief time it took her tongue to flick in and out, Viper almost looked embarrassed. “I’m going to participate in the ribbon dancing ceremony later tonight, so Master let me have the day off. My training schedule was the only one that coincided with yours.”

“Oh, that’s...” Po started out with a sigh, sounding a little crestfallen until he noticed the careful look in Viper’s eyes. “Um, that’s not so bad! It’s not bad at all! I was just—just wondering how many bowls to bring out. It’s on the house, of course. For being, you know, awesome and stuff.”

“To be honest...” And there was that careful look again. She had to be testing him for something. “I came because I loved your cooking. So if this is where you learned from your father it would be a great honor to dine here.”

“Ahaha wow, are you kidding? No the honor’s all mine! I mean, my dad’s. Mine and my dads and the noodles that are worthy enough to be eaten by a member of the Furious Five and—” Po stopped when he saw the curious look she was giving him. “I went a little far with the noodle honor didn’t I?”

Viper laughed. “It’s better to be too respectful than not enough.”

“Yeah that, I’ll—I’ll be right back. Just give me a minute to get the order ready,” he stumbled, both in words and over his feet, getting back to the kitchen.

It was weird, he thought. Just when he was finally getting to a point of normal co-existence with the rest of them, where he stopped getting lost only to end up in Crane’s room, Monkey forgiving him for stealing his almond cookies, and Mantis not killing him with acupuncture or Tigress finally looking like maybe she didn’t want to kill him for just existing—take away that environment and he was back to being the stumbling fanboy who served noodles for a living.

“Dad, I got four orders for table eight and a special one for table two.”

Po’s father was currently mixing the broth, but he paused to give his son a knowing look. “A special order, Po?”

“Yeah, it’s for my friend, Viper—” he paused, wondering if that was too presumptuous of him to say, even if she was the friendliest of the Five. “My, uh, co-worker? Professional acquaintance? One step down from drinking buddy. Non-alcoholic.” He paused, noting that his father’s expression didn’t change. “You know, one of the Furious Five, Dad.”

“The ones whose action figures you keep on your windowsill, I remember! Oh I can’t count the times I looked in on you standing on one leg and making those ‘hiyah’ noises, I thought you were coughing up a furball at first!”

“Could you maybe keep that part quiet, please?”

“One of the illustrious Furious Five, here in my noodle shop, and you were thinking ahead for celebrity endorsement!” Po’s Father continued, clapping his wingtips in excitement. “Oh I knew you had a mind for noodles. Even if you decided to pursue your kung fu training, you can’t deny your upbringing.”

“I’m not denying anything I just want to impress her with your secret ingredient noodle soup. And maybe the dumplings that aren’t stale...”

“What do you take me for, Po? Only the best for my son’s friend...did you say ‘she’?”

There was a slyness in his tone that even Po couldn’t quite ignore. The panda huffed a little, saying, “Yeah? Viper is a girl, Dad, she has…lipstick and, like, flowers behind her—that place where ears would be.”

“I see,” said Po’s Father. “Then I will make her my super special secret ingredient soup!”

“But isn’t the secret ingredient that there is no secret ingredient?”

“Of course, that’s what everyone else gets and the secret no one but you and I know. But I will let you in on another one, Po. Something can be special because you believe it is so, but that does not mean you cannot add to it or change it for fear of losing that specialness.”

Po blinked, a confused look spreading across the dark circles of his eyes. “So what you’re telling me is you actually have a secret ingredient, only that it’s not really your secret ingredient because you don’t use it you just keep it on hand for when you feel like doing something else?”

“I told you I had many wild ideas when I was younger,” the old mallard said before taking a bowl and turning so Po couldn’t see what he was placing in on it. “Just because I gave up my dream of a tofu restaurant doesn’t mean I don’t carry some part of it with me. Now give her this meal and make sure to get whatever good things she says in writing! We want that endorsement hung by the gate’s arch...”

Next thing Po knew there was a small bowl shoved into his paws that smelled and looked just like the thousands of other noodle bowls he served. He edged back out to the courtyard where Viper was still sitting and slid it towards her tentatively, almost afraid she would know there was a difference. And, in knowing, unravel the whole talk he had with his father, everything from his insecurities in his status as the Dragon Warrior to the action figure comment. Like seeing into someone’s soul except instead of tea leaves it was green onion fragments or something.

“Here you go. One order of super special secret ingredient noodle soup,” then, remembering himself brought out a wrapped bun. “And a dumpling on the house.”

He hoped that dumpling was from the fresher batch, at least.

Viper wound her tail around the soup spoon and gave it an experimental taste. A small hiss of approval thrummed in her throat and she smiled. “This is wonderful, Po.”

“Really?” he asked, knowing it was true but part of him liked hearing her compliment his dad’s efforts.

“Yes, I can see why your dad wanted your help with the shop this weekend. With everyone coming to celebrate the festival, you’ll be swamped with customers. These noodle bowls are delicious and convenient for hungry tourists.”

“That’s because his has an actual secret ingredient.”

Viper’s tongue flicked out in consideration. “That’s true. And, please don’t take this as offense to your father’s skill, but I doubt I could tell the difference between yours and his. They’re both very delicious.”

“Yeah but...” Po fumbled for words, “But he’s—his actually has stuff in it. Mystical secret ingredient good tasting stuff.”

“Compared to the cooking at the Jade Palace it’s almost decadent. I only wanted to say that yours was equally impressive. In fact, I would say my personal taste preferred yours.” She bowed her head slightly, looking away. “Not that I could speak critically of such things, it is only a small observation.”

Po, for lack of a better response spun around and immediately shot his dad an accusing look, mouthing ‘what did you put in there?’ to him. When the cook shrugged he cupped his hands into a bowl and pointed, only to find his father studiously ignoring him.

“Po?” Viper’s voice pulled him back to face him. She was staring at him with a small amount of concern.

“Viper! Sorry, little miscommunication there. Trying to make sure nothing blows up behind the counter, you know? A watchful warrior is always watchful!”

“I’ve been keeping you, haven’t I?”

“Noooooooo, no! You’re fine! I’m just...okay, it’s one thing when I’m over in your guys’ turf cooking up dinner and impersonating Shifu with that noodle ‘stache. It’s another when one of you magically appear where I grew up and I feel like I have to somehow explain myself. Or something.”

The warrior snake straightened herself so she was staring level with Po’s eyes. “There’s nothing to feel ‘weird’ or shameful about how you were raised. I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”

“It’s not you!” Po grimaced. He felt like banging his head against a table for being so awkward and bad at explaining himself, but the last time that happened he ended up covered in sticky bun crumbs so he refrained. “It’s me. I feel weird because you all have these awesome stories of why you became kung fu masters and I just sort of fell into it.”

“I remember, I was there that day when those fireworks blasted you in front of Master Oogway.”

Po laughed, a little sheepish for how he sounded. “When it comes down to it, I guess I was afraid you guys would judge me. Because I sure don’t act like the amazing Dragon Warrior when I’m here.”

“All of us dedicated our lives to fighting, but fighting is not all our life. It’s good to find balance in other things, to appreciate simple pleasures. Look at Tai Lung—his dedication to the art did nothing to help make him a better person. That’s why you were able to beat him, Po.”

The panda blinked to hear her words. He was still so unused to compliments about his abilities (except for those victory cheers at the all you can eat contests) it took him a while to process. “You really think so?”

She smiled, with closed lips but it reached her eyes and made even the cold blooded reptile look warm for a moment. “I’m sure of it. If it makes you feel less out of place, you can come and watch my ribbon dancing at the festival tonight. Then we can judge each other.”

“Oh boy, I would love to!” Po exclaimed. “The coming part, not the judging—I mean, I’m sure if I judged you then you’d be a ten. A number higher than ten, you’d be awesome.”

Viper uncoiled from holding the bowl and spoon to slither across the table toward Po. From behind one of her flowers she pulled out a coin from her tail and dropped it in one paw. If he didn’t know better, which he should have what with the kung fu master heightened senses yadda yadda, he could have sworn her tongue flicked near the trim of his cheek before she moved past him.

“It’s a date then. I’ll see you tonight, Po. Thanks for the meal.”

“You’re welcome!” Po responded, waving after her. “See you!”

He must have been staring after her for longer than he thought, because when he finally came back to himself Po’s father was waiting expectantly at his side.

“That secret ingredient really helped, didn’t it?”

Po paused, debating how to explain Viper’s strange response. “She said they tasted almost the same. Whatever it was, maybe you should make a stronger dose.”

“Oh, I didn’t put anything in I don’t normally put in the special ingredient bowls.”

“You—but you just told me that you actually had a secret ingredient!”

“I do. But why ruin a good formula.” Po’s father said, casting a sly look over to his son. “And, besides, why add something new when she was coming for other things. It’s just as good to say it’s special when the special not what I put in it but what you bring to it.”

“...Dad, you have got to stop messing with me like that.”

[Avatar] An Act Too Often Neglected

gaisce@gmail.com — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:50:45 GMT

Title: An Act Too Often Neglected
Series: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Spoilers/warnings: Post-series Fire Nation royalty family issues
Wordcount: 1,332
Day/Theme: from 31_days March 4th—you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed
Summary: When Zuko became Fire Lord he inherited more than just the throne.

It was quite strange and somewhat sad that he would learn this lesson now and not then. For when Zuko took on the responsibility for ruling so very much, only then did he begin to see the importance of the very small things, the singular things, that his uncle spent so much time showing him.

In the Earth Kingdom when he stopped to look at a flower he did not think of that flower. He thought of his destiny and the road that lay before him, in which the flower only occupied a space.

In the Fire Nation when he stopped to look back on his life he did not think of each moment. He thought of his greatest failures, his deepest dreams, and not the time in between. He forgot the good deeds and imperfections that were all insignificant except when gathered and measured together.

So when he gazed out upon the faces that came to his coronation, he tried to look at each of them. Zuko knew he could not memorize each face and soon they would be like the hundred thousands of other faces his subjects wore. He knew he could never understand them each as a person, but he could remember. Then he could remind himself, in comparison to the world they were all so small.

And the most surprising, the strangest thing of all, was in learning this Zuko saw Azula for the first time.

When he could only notice the bigger things, his little sister took great delight in eclipsing his vision. They stood with elbows and knees brushed side by side, each in the other’s shadows. Each trying to outdistance the other and affording only a glance out of the corner of their eyes, because it was all they could spare with sights set on greater goals. But the first time he stood with the world finally set right before him she was small, not even equal to his size. And smaller still when he turned away from her crying huddled form.

The scar on his stomach finally stopped hurting when he decided to visit her. It was the only answer he found comforting when he made his decision and everyone else watched him go. He could not explain to them why he needed to see her, only that he needed to do something.

But when he visited there was nothing to do. She would not even look at him, no matter what he said. So his demands and pleas went nowhere. And he could only wait until his time had finished and he had to leave.

“We are sorry,” said the ones attending to her. “Do not be discouraged, she sees us all the same way. It was good that you tried.”

“I am coming back,” said Zuko, undeterred. If he could save something as great as the world, a little sister would not be impossible.

“If you’re sure,” they said quietly, “then come back.”

“What should I do then?” Zuko asked the physicians.

“You must be patient,” they said, “Above all, be patient. Come next week at the same time of the same day. So she will know when to see you.”

“What if she doesn’t want to see me?”

“If you come at the same time she will anticipate it, whether she chooses to speak with you or not. It’s when she remembers. She needs to remember.”

Zuko nodded, although he did not need to nod, he was the Fire Lord after all. But it was a small thing and he was grateful. And he came back the next week on the appointed day and hour.

Azula said nothing and acted if he was not there at all. In that time Zuko started and stopped short of a thousand things to say to her, but none of them were right. The happy memories of their childhood had been burnt beyond recognition. His triumphs would only serve to wound her more. His failures would only bolster her resentment of their positions. He could not lie or make up stories.

He left again. And returned. He left and returned. He waited, and she did not speak a word.

He was the Fire Lord. He had a hundred thousand important things to do, more tasks than he had subjects, but he was sure. And one day when he wondered aloud in the state of his affairs, Azula turned to look at him.

“You’re an idiot,” she said plainly.

Zuko, who had not given up hope, but the expectation of conversation, stared back. “What?”

“You’re an idiot to waste your time on so many little things. A clerk would know where to send your letters if you used the right seal. An admiral would not need an announced personal inspection when he sees you in council more often than you would see him. And I am tired of listening to you.”

She turned away and acted as if nothing was different, even when Zuko thanked her before leaving.

It was dangerous, he knew. He could not tell her anything important, or anything meaningful, but he remembered when she brought him back from Ba Sing Se and he was three years out of step. He asked her everything. And it was such a small trifle that she answered him.

With his knees on a stone floor and his hands in his lap, Zuko began to talk. He asked her for her opinion on the skilled court painters, which peach tree bloomed earliest in the northern gardens, which of the captains knew about Earth Kingdom customs, and who knew the fastest route from the palace gates to the ports.

Azula did not respond to more than a few. Whether or not she could answer him, she never let on. More often than not lips pursed as if to hold something back, hesitating between a truth or a lie. For Azula did lie to him at times, sometimes outrageous ones and sometimes quiet ones that took him many weeks to later uncover. But each time he returned at the same day and same hour to ask more questions. And each time he saw a little thing she would do, tuck a stray bang behind her ear, a shift when she could not hide her restlessness.

Then one day, when the answers he had gathered started to balance out the many questions he had yet to ask, Ozai escaped.

It was a crisis. The first great upheaval in Zuko’s young reign. But without his firebending the old Fire Lord had no real power. And with each year of peace the old supporters forgot Ozai’s ways a little more. Until Zuko had him subdued and returned to prison again.

When he came back to visit his sister, he had not seen her for three months. The physicians told him she had not said anything about his absence. Nor had she said anything about their father. All she murmured was nonsense, the color of wax seals and the taste of peaches. Snatches of Earth Kingdom songs and her eyes looking far away beyond them where they could not reach her.

He kneeled in front of her cell, his mouth once again groping for something, anything to say to her again.

Azula spoke first. “What manners have you let slip in the court. You’re beyond late.”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said, not knowing what else to say.

She didn’t cry, but he could see the shame on her face. Not for speaking, not for listening to him to speak. Not for wanting anything that wasn’t the endless silence of her imprisonment. But that somewhere along the line she stopped expecting her father each time Zuko came to see her. And now she could not stop the feeling that tried to fill up what the emptiness left in her with this realization. When she saw her brother kneeling in front of her once again she couldn’t deny it.

She had been waiting—hoping—for him.

[Critical Literature Essay] Izumi Kyouka and the Modes of Dreaming

gaisce@gmail.com — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:21:00 GMT

Title: Izumi Kyouka and the Modes of Dreaming
Wordcount: 1,900

The writings of Izumi Kyouka are directly opposed to the naturalism movement of depicting reality as is, or ari no mama. (Inouye, 175). Instead Kyouka entwines the surreal into his work, keeping his characters drifting between the structured world of the Meiji period and uncharted territories. Despite the freedom Kyouka has to introduce elements that are completely out of place in the real world he still makes use of transitional literary devices to call attention when these supernatural aspects seep in. In “The Holy Man of Mount Kouya” and “One Day in Spring” there are instances where he suggests the characters entering altered states like one would in dreams, simply not crossing over into another world but accessing a part of their unconscious mind. Izumi Kyouka wanted to focus on the half-waking experience, saying, “I consider it a great mistake that people on the world think as though there were no other worlds outside of night and day, darkness and light. It is my belief that there is certainly a singularly subtle world of in-between outside of sensations that approach the two extremes of dusk and daybreak.” The moment of twilight is essentially a dreaming metaphor and it comes in a variety of applications but all suggest a connection to a journey between the realms of waking and dreaming. The waking realm is reality as it is imposed on the world, while those like Izumi Kyouka try to reconcile their different perceptions to the growing mandates of homogeneity and assimilation through unconscious reordering.

The prevalent literary technique Kyouka used to signify a change from reality was by portraying images symbolically linked to transition and mutability. Scenes dominated by water, darkness, and unkempt roads all signify the subject entering a place without order. The wanderer in “One Day in Spring” contemplates his dilemma of warning a farmer about a nearby snake and decides to choose by dropping his walking stick and letting the direction in which it falls decide for him. If it fell northward he would warn the old farmer, an act that would inevitably lead him to his journey to the temple, and if it fell south he would continue on his way to Kamakura (Kyouka, 73). Another example is in “The Holy Man of Mount Kouya,” where Monk Suuchou has a crisis of conscience before he follows the medicine peddler into the path obscured by the woods instead of the flooded main road (Kyouka, 30). While the wanderer’s choice was decided by chance and Monk Suuchou’s was a conscious deliberation, both passages present a growing dichotomy in the options presented to them.

Prior to the split in reality and the dream world, the narrators’ journeys seem to have no integral purpose. Their reasons for traveling are never specified beyond their destination, so for all their specificity the initial paths they begin with are incomplete and repressive until they are offered a choice. The train station scene in “The Holy Man from Mount Kouya” illustrates how apprehensive the narrator is getting off to meet the “impenetrable wall” of solicitors, which he only escapes with the aid of the monk clearing a path for him (Kyouka, 24). These scenes of structured pathways such as the train station and Western-style houses are embodiments of the Meiji period’s “civilization and enlightenment,” yet Kyouka decides to show his characters consciously, although not always willingly, moving away from that environment into the unknown in clear, decisive moments. Even when they acknowledge their journey as ill-fated, the sheer irrationality of the situation gives them cause to press on, as Monk Shuuchou declared, “If I was going to perish anyway, I thought, I might at least try to reach the shore of this vast swamp of blood and muck, to see with my own eyes a place that ordinary people couldn’t imagine in their wildest dreams (Kyouka, 37).”

In a similar vein Kyouka couples the images of roads with water enclosures, such as the flood water trickling from the cypress tree deterring the medicine peddler from the relative safety of the main road. Critics like the translator, Charles Inouye, maintain that Kyouka’s fixation with water came from the floods of his childhood and reading his mother’s kusazoushi to make the image of a rivers “an apt metaphor for the union of real and unreal (Inouye, 44).” Besides providing another obstruction that keeps the characters moving through his in-between realm, water holds natural deceptive properties. The use of rivers and darkness to obscure perception lends a sense of credibility when the characters describe the fantastic. This imagery is strongly tied to the female characters, such as Tamawaki Mio and the sorceress in the woods, who exist as the catalyst for such hallucinations in the male characters as brought about by the desire for them. Analysis that “Kyouka’s heroines...already passed through the watery barrier” makes a distinction between the two realms while still acknowledging their codependency, “surrounded but not erased by death, she is, therefore, an appropriate temptress, available to the male imagination (Inouye, 60).” Likewise the ties sleeping has with darkness and darkness has with a lack of perception are seen throughout each story. Monk Suuchou sums up the power it has on affecting his awareness with, “I suppose a dark place like that is better than daylight for strengthening one’s faith and pondering the eternal truths (Kyouka, 35)”

While Kyouka’s narrative pays close attention to how the images would signify a change in the boundaries of the world, the other main point of his work was to illustrate how the character’s perceptions were subsequently altered by such a difference. In both stories the presence of a holy man, an itinerant monk and temple priest respectively, serves to act as a guide for the reader. The holy man’s role is that of a figurehead for a spiritual and aesthetic lifestyle, symbolically predisposed to certain ideas of how he should respond to the natural world as an outsider, a view held in the Buddhist precepts of relinquishment. In essence the priest and monk work as gatekeepers to the supernatural because of their connection to a deeper spiritual consciousness when they relate their stories to the primary narrator, and it is only after their introduction that the structured modernity of the world slips away into the undefined. Ironically, both the itinerant monk and the temple priest are described as being easily mistaken for another profession, calling into question the social expectations of spirituality. In the “Holy Man of Mount Kouya,” besides calling him “humble” and “ordinary” the traveler said of the monk, “though a man of the cloth, he looked more like a poetry master or perhaps someone of even more worldly interests (Kyouka, 22).” The wanderer in “One Day in Spring” mentioned how the priest’s offering of a smoking box as reminding him of “the dormitory at Shinshuu University in Sugamo (Kyouka, 82-83).” Kyouka is careful in grounding the holy man in the real world for his introduction, sometimes to the point of misrepresentation when the narrator questions the unorthodox appearance. Nor are the holy men completely free of the trappings of the world, as shown by Monk Shuuchou’s temptation of adultery and the priest’s “obvious absorption in this story of lust and madness...[creating] an uneasiness about the reliability of the priest’s narrative (Inouye, 180).” Even in the classification of Buddhist sects they defy the stereotype, like the priest mentioning how the network of temples had eroded so his remained in isolation. The end result was showing the reality that Buddhism and honji suijaku were not actually homogeneous despite Meiji classification, and the spiritual make up of Kyouka’s Japan was just as diverse and tumultuous as his characters (Teeuwen, 46).

In both cases the priest and the monk are the catalyst for the dream world when they offer a method of shelter for their respective journeymen. However, the actual invocation of the dreaming world comes about from the narrators. Monk Suuchou takes the traveler from Wakasa to a private inn to spend the night, but it is the traveler who, “begging like a child,” asks the monk to tell him a story (Kyouka, 25). His reasoning is that it makes him uneasy “how they snuff out the candles as soon as dinner is over and order you to bed in the dim shadows of lantern light. I’m the sort who doesn’t fall asleep easily, and I can’t begin to describe the loneliness of being abandoned like that in my room (Kyouka, 23).” The impact of the in-between is even more profound in “One Day in Spring” where images of sleep and dreaming are explicitly part of the plot. In the beginning the wanderer admits he would have reconsidered telling the farmer about the snake because the response was unexpectedly alert, as opposed to his initial impression of the old man because of his “a sleepy, almost drunken expression as he calmly worked the soft ground warmed by the sun (Kyouka, 74).” Later the wanderer’s fixation with the poem Tamawaki Mio left her lover sets him on a collision course with the dream that doomed his predecessor.

“In a nap at midday
I met my beloved,
Then did I begin to believe
In the things we call dreams (Kyouka, 81).”

Basically this poem encapsulates the driving impetus in all of Izumi Kyouka’s writing. His characters go through a waking “midday” world representative of all the things expected to find in the Meiji Restoration: order, modernization, the naturalism concept of ari no mama. However, all the people in his stories slip back to a type of pre-consciousness at some point, whether they are led by desire or circumstance. Throughout their journey with the supernatural they recognize and accept how there is more to their perceptions than they previously assumed. In some cases it leads to death, like the dream lover of Tamawaki Mio committing suicide after his erotic dream of her in the temple (Kyouka, 113). In others it leads to a brink they are pulled back from, such as Monk Suuchou standing at the Husband and Wife falls but he is pulled back with the revelation of how she had ensorcelled men before him. Regardless of the morbid capacity for this realm to claim victims, all characters involved have some willing capacity to seek the twilight out. From Monk Suuchou’s guilt in adhering to his spiritual path to the ostracized members of society like the lion dancer and Tamawaki, they find themselves in the surreal because there is something in the structured modern world that cannot fill their needs. In the end Izumi Kyouka’s dreaming realm was not meant to be an entirely separate entity, but an escape path from the homogeneity of the world that might otherwise crush the inhabitants of his stories. Just as sleep and dreams replenish a working body, so does this acknowledgment of twilight keep his characters from being overrun by the orthodoxy found in their day to day living.

Works Cited

Inouye, Charles Shirou. “Water Imagery in the Work of Izumi Kyouka.” JSTOR.org. May 5, 2006. <http://www.jstor.org/view/00270741/di995100/99p0027e/>

Kyouka, Izumi. Japanese Gothic Tales. Trans. Charoles Shirou Inouye. University of Hawai‘I Press. Honolulu. 1996.

Teeuwen, Mark, and Fabio Rambelli. “Introduction: Combinatory Religion and the honji suijaku Paradigm in Pre-Modern Japan,” Buddhas and Kami in Japan: Honji Suijaku as a Combinatory Paradigmn. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. 1-53.

[Avatar] Reason #257 Why Azula Fails at Human Emotions

gaisce@gmail.com — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:11:23 GMT

Title: Reason #257 Why Azula Fails at Human Emotions
Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Spoilers/Warnings: Set five years after the finale and after another story I had. Plotless, terrible Azula/Toph.
Wordcount: 1,830
Summary: Toph thinks Azula hiding things from her is a bad sign, but maybe finding out is worse.
Author's Notes: For starsofnite because I'm shameless and she asked me. Remember when you pass the blame. She asked me.

Toph had spent most of the last five years travelling alone. She didn’t need people to protect her, and followed only her own whims when it came to directions. If she had a dream back when she was growing up it was to do whatever she pleased wherever she pleased. So to anyone concerned she was living out her ideal.

But her journey with Aang and the rest of her friends left her missing companionship. Even if they could be aggravating at times, with Katara’s mothering, Aang and Appa’s insistence on flying, Sokka’s impatience that he would refuse bathroom breaks. And sometimes Toph just needed time to be by herself.

But five years later they had all settled down amongst themselves and Toph was the only wanderer left. It made her feel just a little out of place. So when she was thrown together with another solitary person, it wasn’t that surprising to her that she might subconsciously bend to allow someone in again.

The shocking surprise is that the person ended up being Azula.

Of course it wasn’t as if they met idly one day and decided to start hanging out. At the start they were chained together out of necessity, and in Azula’s case it was literal. Only after the trials of being thrown into an inter-nation conspiracy and hunted from all ends did they realize they needed to rely on each other if they were going to survive. If they didn’t try to kill each other first, which they didn’t. Good for them and the sake of the world.

Toph didn’t know when she stopped seeing Azula as an enemy, or even a former enemy. She had enough to worry about with the Dai Li and the Northern Water Tribe mercenaries against them to meticulously plot the moment where having Azula at her back was something almost comforting. But it happened, and in the months that came after when the world was once again settled into something that resembled peace, Toph suspected she should have noticed when Azula walking beside her became an expected habit. Instead of how she was just now realizing that it was what it was and with belated understanding it had come to be that way a long time ago.

That wasn’t to say how Azula didn’t have her own cavalcade of annoyances she could inflict upon Toph. In fact, she was the only one to take aggravating her to the level of skill said of any art form. But lately the firebender had been skirting away from their verbal sparring, and randomly spending time away from her for reasons Toph couldn’t fathom. Even her breathing had become agitated, catching at times when Toph gave her a good-natured elbow to the ribs even though she never hit her hard enough to knock the wind from her.

Azula wasn’t oblivious either, and noticed Toph's patience wearing thin. It wouldn’t allow her to feign nonchalance for much longer. So one morning she sat her down by their campsite, offering what she said would explain everything.

“So what is it?” Toph asked, trying not to sound suspicious now that she finally broached the subject.

But it was Azula. The earthbender may have decided to trust her ever since they were forced to work together, but that didn’t mean she’d trust her blindly as ironic as that may be.

“It’s nothing, there's no trouble. It’s...” Azula’s voice remained steady but Toph could hear her heartbeat flutter. “I like you.”

“Huh?”

“You shouldn't need me to repeat it. I don’t mumble,” Azula responded tersely.

Toph grinned, relaxing at the answer and how it had nothing to do with the words 'I was actually planning a coup behind your back and opted to tell you now.' It may have been in Azula’s past but suspicious behavior was still suspicious, and the Fire Nation princess would never be an altruist. But by then Azula’s heartbeat had evened out to a raced whisper.

Toph tried to keep her grin from appearing smug and tried to make it seem a little friendlier. “Geez, okay. It was just a surprise to hear it. I didn’t know it was like twisting your arm to tell someone you’re friends with them. You’re not so bad yourself, Princess.”

“That’s not it.”

“What? Twisting arms is easier?”

“No, I mean. It’s not merely... I like you.”

Toph scratched her chin. “Merely what? I heard you the first time.”

“But you’re not listening. When I say ‘like’ I mean that I’ve...grown to admire you in ways I wouldn’t have expected.”

“Hey. I am pretty amazing.”

Maybe it was a bad idea to tease Azula when she was attempting to say something that wasn’t a baiting insult. And liable to get her to start a fight anyway, but Toph just couldn’t pass up opportunities like this. Especially at how the older girl’s entire body tensed in an attempt to keep her composure.

Azula didn’t disappoint, small flares escaping through her fingers as she clenched her fists. “Are you that ignorant? What I am saying is I am attracted to you!”

Toph blinked. Then gaped. “You’re...what?”

“Attracted. Drawn to. Surely you know what it means. They do have magnetic ore in the Earth Kingdom.”

“Ha ha, good joke, Azula.” But the earthbender’s smile had vanished and she didn’t look like she found it funny. “You almost had me for a second there. Is this your way of getting me to admit that I don’t hate having you around? Or testing me? Because asking me straight out is easiest. And the least painful for both of us.” She cracked her knuckles for emphasis.

“No,” Azula said, her voice growing strained. “Although you can find the situation funny, I really have been telling you the truth. You said I should be more honest with you...”

“Okay, so you’re not kidding, but—come on, Azula. You can’t mean it that way. Maybe...maybe you’re just confused. This is your first time trying to be friends with someone without trying to scare them into following you around. You're lost about it and end up comparing how you feel to some sappy deal you hear about.”

“Yes, and I thought it might be that case. I know I’m not the most understanding person when it comes to this. I'm not sappy. But I did suspect I might be subconsciously comparing my...affinity with you to what I once saw in opposition, such as Mai’s feelings for my brother or what Sokka and Suki have.”

“See? There you go.”

“But I’m fairly sure the times I’ve wanted to pin you against a wall and kiss you breathless mean my first diagnosis is correct.”

Toph didn’t know how but she managed to choke on the air she had currently been breathing. “A-Azula!”

“What? I haven’t yet, have I?”

“Yet?!”

“I’d want your permission first.”

“But I’m a girl!”

“I know that already. I've seen you bathe. And I’m acquainted with the female body, considering I have one myself.”

Toph flushed, willing herself to keep from even thinking about what that meant now. “But I like boys!”

“Yes, so?” Azula asked blithely.

“Girl. Girl liking boys. Is this a completely foreign concept to you?”

“I like boys well enough but that’s different. You’re different. And, besides, I’m much better than any boy.”

“You can’t be serious—”

“I am. I’m very powerful, who better to match the world’s greatest earthbender than the world’s greatest firebender. And if I’m not the greatest right now I will be soon enough, whether or not Uncle teaches me the advanced forms. I’m beautiful. I’m smart. And I’m royalty, higher ranked than even the Bei Fong family.”

“...and so humble too.”

“I don’t see the point in false modesty. Especially when you don’t use it yourself.”

Toph exhaled, bringing her hand up to her forehead as if she could rub out the oncoming headache this would bring. “Look, it’s not that. You can’t just pick who you want to like. It’s not as if you collect enough points or do enough good deeds so somebody suddenly turns around and has feelings for you!”

“I don’t expect you to.”

“Then all your talk about being better for me?”

“If you gave me a chance at this, I wouldn’t fail you. That’s what I meant to say.” The firebender kept her gaze low, staring at the ground under Toph’s feet. “You believed in me before and I didn’t betray your trust then.”

“This is different. This is...a whole other animal. It’s a completely different circus!”

“Funny you should mention the circus—”

“No, no. I don’t want to know! If Ty Lee told you anything or gave you any advice I’m going to put my fingers in my ears and keep them there until you stop.”

“Hmm. That would leave you unaware and vulnerable,” Azula said in a smooth voice that made the hairs on the back of Toph’s neck raise. Somehow it seemed far more sinister than when she thought it was only used to allude to torture.

“Azula!”

“I won’t!” the firebender snapped petulantly. “I may want to make you scream my name later, but not if it's because you don't want me to. I would prefer it if you asked me.” She cleared her throat. “...I wouldn’t, unless you asked me.”

Toph groaned, wondering how this could possibly be worse than what she originally worried about. And whether or not Azula having a crush on her compared to Azula wanting to crush other people in terms of a disastrous reaction.

“You’re my friend, okay? That doesn’t change, I meant it when I said it wouldn’t change, but you can’t just say things like that and...”

“I didn’t expect you to confess your undying love for me in return, if that’s what you mean.” Azula interjected. And Toph had never heard her sound so uncertain. Until she followed up with, “But I did expect you to blush, so that part is satisfying about this whole conversation at least...”

“Augh! If I didn’t think this left you wide open I’d think you were doing it just to annoy me.”

“Tempting, but I prefer the alternative.”

“That you can still annoy me and do everything else?”

“That part wouldn’t annoy you. I’d make certain of it.”

“Please stop talking,” Toph groaned, trying to keep her cheeks from heating up from the blushing Azula was causing.

“You told me to be honest.” Azula said airily. “I’m only trying to do what you asked of me.”

“...this really is some horrible elaborate scheme to get me to say it's okay if you lie to me sometimes. I just know it.”

Azula leaned forward. “I’ll let you find that out if you let me kiss you. Either way, you get me to stop talking long enough to stop being embarrassed.”

“Quit while you're behind. You are so bad at this flirting thing.”

“Is that a yes?”

“So bad at it!”