fulselden

Both written for

31_days . First one Fire Nation; second one Air Nomads.

THE BORDER BETWEEN RISING AND FALLING

Day/Theme: September 9: 'The border between rising and falling'
Series: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Characters: Zuko, Azula
Rating/Warnings: PG; vaaague sexual tension between siblings.

Two objective points are relevant: it reflects light efficiently; that is, it is bright, indeed dazzling; moreover, it does not tarnish (oxidize); it is unchanging through time, incorruptible.

Colin Renfrew, ‘Varna and the Emergence of Wealth in Prehistoric Europe’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp.141-69, (p. 149).

The palace, it seems to Zuko, has shrunk down and settled in the time he was away, like sea-warped wood. From outside, from Mai’s window, it looks just the same, the high wall, the sharp red roofs, towers stacking up against the sky. But inside it is empty in new places; things have moved around. They have kept some of his old things, the stuff he needs for ceremonies, but everything smells of camphor and cedar.

When he gets to the training ground, Azula is waiting for him. She is moving through an opening kata, left punch step back short kick pivot swing back, beginner’s moves.

“What are you doing here, Azula?” he asks, marching out into the ground still in his silks.

“What does it look like, Zuzu? I’m here to spar.”

“I don’t need to practise with you,” he says flatly, starts to turn.

She smiles, kindly.

“What you mean to say, Zuko, is that you don’t need my help.”

“But,” she says, “you do.”

Her eyes flick upward. Through the dark lattice-work of the upper gallery, something moves.

He cannot help it, he sucks in his breath. His good eye widens.

“Oh, honestly,” says Azula.

“It’s not him. It’s Li and Lo. But of course they expect a good show, Zuko.”

She moves closer to him, her breath coming past him, her voice in his bad ear, abrupt and refracted as though heard underwater.

“After all, they’ve heard all about how you killed the Avatar.”

He stands still, his mouth stiff.

“Fine.”

He clenches his fists.

Azula puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t be long changing,” she says. “I haven’t got all day, you know.”

When he is five and she is nearly four, they do their breathing exercises together in the long light training hall, the sun coming in wavy and dappled off the pond outside. They sit side by side, a row of candles in front of them, in and out, in and out. They are meant to breathe together; it is good discipline, although the servants kneeling behind them do not keep time. In the warmth, the mat slippery under him, Zuko’s eyes droop; his head is too heavy, too big, his hands too wide, the ache of his morning training dropping away. He jerks awake. The flames in front of Azula are moving, in and out, higher and higher. Her face is still. Behind them, the servants rustle and whisper. A door slides shut as someone leaves to spread the news. For the next five months, before Zuko makes the candles rise and waver, she is the heir.

He loses, of course, coming down on a lick of her flame a moment too soon, the ground under him suddenly smooth and slick with heat, his footing gone. He thumps down on one knee, catches himself on the heel of his hand. Gets up, bows, hand over fist.

“Thank you.” It is customary to say it.

Azula bows back.

“My pleasure, brother.”

The wide dark sweat stains on her clothes are already wicking away into white rings of salt, her skin pale and matte as always, as if she is denser than most people, made of some different stuff.

Zuko steadies his breathing, in and out. Servants are hurrying out to repair the grounds, to fill in the gouges and hollows in the close-packed dirt, to sand down the grey patches of char on the hardwood railings.

Azula smirks at him.

“Don’t look so down, Zuzu. I think you made a very convincing showing, personally.”

She waves a hand towards the gallery.

“They’ll have nothing to tell Father.”

Zuko glares at her, opens his mouth. Closes it. Stamps off to change.

Later, walking back through the lower halls, he thinks of what he should have said. It is so perfect and cutting, it rests on the back of his tongue like a slide of steel. He sees Azula, at the end of a corridor, her hands clasped behind her, talking to someone standing out of sight; she must already have seen him, he knows.

By the time he reaches her, his reflection following him, slipping in and out as he passes shiny dark red pillars, the air thick and still this far inside the palace, she is alone. He comes up to her, pauses for breath.

“Oh, Zuko,” she says, “did you need something?”

Familiar, close and constant as an old burn, she rests her hand on the back of his neck.

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DRAGONBERRY

Theme: 'nourish your own ruthlessness'
Series: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Characters: Aang, Gyatso
Rating/Warnings: G

When Aang was ten years old, slurping his way through a bowl of thukpa, squishing thick rags of noodle against the roof of his mouth, he nearly swallowed a dragonberry. For a dizzying moment he felt something hard scrape against his tongue, twist and spike against his teeth. Then he breathed out as hard as he could and the berry shot out of his mouth along with a thin spray of broth, half-chewed noodles, and shreds of greenery. It skidded to a halt about ten feet away, black and shiny against the stone of the courtyard.

“Aaaang!”

Lobsang and Rinchen and the others scooted away from him. Lobsang picked a length of noodle delicately off his front.

“Pretty impressive,” he said.

Behind him, the berry rattled across the flagstones.

Aang wiped his mouth and approached it gingerly. He gave it an experimental poke with his staff.

Lobsang rolled his eyes.

“Oh, come on, Aang.”

He reached over to pick it up. And the dragonberry exploded in a spray of fine scarlet filaments, fleshy red tendrils, shoots of yellow from the centre. Lobsang jerked his hand back, but it kept moving, twitching its way across the pavement. Aang tipped out the rest of his broth and slammed his bowl down over it. It scuttered around inside. He grinned.

“It’s like a baby spider crab!”

“Um, Aang? What is it?” Dorje, one of the new arrivals from the Eastern Air Temple, was still hanging back, twiddling his fingers together.

Aang, busy sliding a tray across under the upturned bowl, wished not for the first time that people would understand that his master’s tattoos, still tight and fresh and prone to catching him by surprise out of the corner of his eye, as if bits of him were very cold or underwater, did not make him an expert on anything other than airbending. But still.

“It’s either a weird kind of flower, or a new pet,” he announced, presenting his tray-bowl arrangement to the world, little scrabbling sounds coming from inside. “Gyatso will know!”

“What would have happened if you’d swallowed it?” someone asked.

“Well,” said Aang, “I didn’t.”

Lobsang, preparing to drop a piece of noodle down his back, suddenly looked thoughtful.

Gyatso was perched up under the wind wheels on the southern cliff-face, still as a statue apart from his fingers telling his beads. Neat cakes of bison-dung lined the cliff-side, drying in the long afternoon sun, ready for winter fuel. Appa, big enough now to carry two people with ease, cocked an eye at them, huffed a breath.

Above Gyatso, the wheels creaked gently, tattered lengths of cloth and paper streaming out as they turned, letting the worries and cares bought by pilgrims to the temple fly away into the high air.

“... and then it started moving around like it was alive and I put a bowl over it and here it is,” Aang finished, and presented the tray to Gyatso like an offering. Gyatso, too, looked thoughtful.

“I think I’ve heard of something like this. It’s called a dragonberry.”

“What is it?” Lobsang asked, prodding at the bowl.

“A message, I suspect,” said Gyatso, half under his breath. He shook his head, smiled.

“I think I would file it under ‘new pet’, myself. You’ll need to keep it somewhere closed off. And it likes meat, I’m afraid, so we may have to come to an arrangement with one of the people who sell food to the visitors.”

“Sure!” Aang paused. “Dragonberry? That sounds Fire Nation-y.”

Gyatso nodded, bowed his head. Rose to his feet.

“Boys. I have to pay a quick visit to the kitchens. Don’t let it out until I get back!”

And he was gone over the edge of the cliff, glider in hand.

Aang and Lobsang looked at each other, shrugged. Appa flopped his tail out, sending the wind-wheels whirring.

Gyatso came back that evening with, Aang noticed, a tear in his sleeve.

They arranged the dragonberry in a box of its own, fluffed up and, as far as they could tell, happy enough, feelers licking at some scraps of pigchicken meat from a helpful food vendor down at the pilgrim’s camp.

“I’m not sure how long they live, Aang. So don’t be surprised if it doesn’t make it, yes?”

“Ok.” Aang looked up at Gyatso. “What do you think it was doing in my soup, anyway?”

“Nothing permanent, young master airbender,” said Gyatso, eyes crinkling. He paused.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, how about a trip to Omashu in the next few days? Your friend with the funny hair would be happy to see you.”

“Sounds pretty good,” said Aang.

He curled himself up into bed, wondering what Gyatso had meant by his not-an-answer.

In the night, he dreamed of dragonberries, great feathery clouds of them, bouncing down the spires and cliffs of the temple, piling in deep red drifts around the meditation hall, falling from the sky like snow.