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Chapter Text

 

It had been a full year since the last time Mai had been in Omashu, and a lot had changed since then:

Azula had recruited her and Ty Lee for some excitement, and the three of them had ridden across the Earth Kingdom to search for Zuko, as well as hunt for the Avatar.

Zuko had helped Azula kill the Avatar so he could return home from his banishment, and Mai had returned to the Fire Nation with him and Azula.

Only a few months after his return, Zuko had turned on his family and broken up with her, in order to join the Avatar (who wasn’t dead after all.)

Crazy King Bumi had taken back his city and kicked Mai’s parents out so hard, they ran clear back to the Fire Nation.

Mai herself had turned on Azula to save Zuko, and then Ty Lee had turned on Azula to save Mai; the two of them had spent over a month in jail as a result.

Azula had gone crackers, nearly killing Zuko in the process, and been put in an insane asylum.

Zuko had been crowned Firelord and declared the war over.

Mai had been released from jail, gotten back together with Zuko and been all-but-officially recognized as the future Royal Consort, to her parents’ delight.

Ty Lee had left Mai and the Fire Nation behind again, this time to join the Kyoshi Warriors.

 

A lot of other stuff had happened, but those were the important events as far as Mai was concerned.

 

Yes, there had been a lot of changes, but one thing hadn’t changed; the city of Omashu was still boring. 

 

Dull brown everywhere, with splashes of drab green.  Delivery chutes with stone bins zipping down them at regular intervals.  Peasants going to market or coming back from market or going to work or whatever they did in the course of their miserable daily lives. Government officials scurrying here and there, all thinking they were important people doing important things when most of the time the world would get along just fine without them.  Booorrrriiinnng.  And Mai was stuck here with absolutely nothing to do except sharpen her weapons, practice her already perfect aim and watch the insanely boring world go by.

 

For at least the hundredth time she wondered why she’d come here to Omashu in the spring, for what had been optimistically named the First Annual World Peace Summit.  She could have stayed back in the Fire Nation, where she at least had the servants well-trained enough to know when she didn’t want to be bothered.  But Zuko had asked her to come along, so she’d come.  Besides, it had gotten her away from her parents, which was always a cause for mild rejoicing.

 

About a week after the Day of Black Sun, Mai had been home sulking on the couch, trying to get over the way Zuko had abruptly broken up with her and telling herself that things couldn’t get much worse, when she’d heard a commotion at the front door… and realized that yes, things could indeed get worse.  That’s when she’d found out that Bumi had kicked all the Fire Nation, including her parents, out of Omashu, and they’d naturally returned to their home in the Fire Nation capital.

 

Since coming back to the Fire Nation with Azula and Zuko, Mai had discovered she relished having the family home basically all to herself.  No overbearing mother watching her and just waiting for the chance to criticize her for the slightest flaw in her poise; no diplomat father constantly reminding her that everything she did reflected on the family honor (they had even tried to forbid her knife-throwing, until Azula had given it her royal endorsement); no bratty little brother shrieking the place down (how come her parents never shoved him into a closet until he stopped crying?). 

 

There’d been far fewer servants than normal, too; just a few housemaids to do the cleaning and laundry, a cook for the kitchen and a single maidservant for her daily toilette.  With so few people around, she’d had so much time to herself, freedom to do so much… a freedom she’d barely started exploring before they’d come back and taken over, and her life had instantly reverted back to the way it had been before Omashu had been conquered and colonized.

 

She’d wanted to scream at her mother, I once spent the whole day barefoot!  I actually spent half an hour considering a whole new hairstyle!  I went on a picnic with Zuko without a chaperone! She’d wanted to scream at her father, I bought food from a street vendor—and ate it with my bare hands instead of chopsticks! I let Zuko bring some of his servants into our home and fetch delicacies like fruit tarts with rose petals!

She’d wanted to scream to them both, Zuko and I snuggled on that couch, right in front of the servants!  And two nights before he ran off to join the Avatar, we had sex in my bedroom!  It was awkward and painful and messy and nothing like Ty Lee’s romantic stories, but I’m not your precious and oh-so-honorable virgin anymore!

 

But of course she hadn’t said any of that, let alone screamed it.  She’d just gone back to being their dutiful daughter, bored stiff and heart-aching and hating every minute of it, until the hawk-message had arrived from her uncle the prison warden, telling her who’d just shown up at the Boiling Rock.

 

Rebelling against Azula and everyone else to save Zuko had been… such an incredible rush, so freeing, that she almost wouldn’t have minded dying afterwards.  It had been the high point of her entire existence up to that day, doing something that no one had expected of her, and doing it to save the life of the only boy she’d ever loved!  She’d faced down Azula with her usual monotone, because old habits die hard, but inside she’d been almost gibbering incredulously, I DID IT!  I DID IT! I DID IT!

 

Prison, afterwards… that hadn’t been interesting at all. She and Ty Lee had shared a cell at the Boiling Rock for only one day before being shipped to other prisons back inside the Fire Nation.  Mai’s uncle had quietly pulled some strings for her sake, getting Mai herself assigned to a prison with a warden who owed him for some unnamed favor. It must have been a large favor, because Mai’s cell had been clean and insect-free, her bed had been reasonably comfortable, and she had never been harassed by other prisoners or the prison guards. Compared to the tiny closet her parents used to lock her into for hours on end when she’d misbehaved as a child, it was almost a paradise. But they’d taken all her blades away, and given her absolutely nothing to do; she’d been bored out of her mind, so much that she wouldn’t even have minded seeing her family again.  

 

Mai knew her time in prison could have been a lot worse; she hadn’t been put through any of the horrible things she’d heard about that routinely happened to female prisoners. She still wondered what had happened to Ty Lee during that month of imprisonment—why had Ty Lee joined the Kyoshi Warriors, becoming one of a group of women who all looked alike, when she’d spent years trying to make herself stand out from her six lookalike sisters?  What had happened to her, to make her decide it would be a good idea to become part of another matched set?—but Ty Lee had never talked about it, and finally Mai had decided that what’s done is done, and at least they were both out of prison now.

 

But while her parents had been so thrilled to see her on the newly crowned Firelord’s arm that they’d forgiven her for all the scandal she’d recently caused the family, that hadn’t meant that she was free to do whatever she pleased now.  Ohhh, far from it.  When she’d just been the girlfriend of the formerly banished prince (who had been welcomed home but not yet officially reinstated as the heir to the throne), life had been easy.  But now that she was in the running—in fact, the sole contender—to be the next Royal Consort, she was under close scrutiny practically every moment she was awake… and probably even while she was asleep, too.  The future Royal Consort had to be the model of propriety at all times, which meant chaperones had to be present to ensure her reputation was impeccable, and not damaged in any way after her recent (ahem) incident.  And with Azula in an insane asylum and Ty Lee gone to Kyoshi Island, Mai couldn’t get away with calling them her chaperones anymore.

 

Walks with Zuko?  Chaperoned by her new attendant, Lady Dang.  Dinners with Zuko?  Chaperoned by her mother.  The last picnic with Zuko?  Chaperoned, and what’s worse, her mother had brought Tom-Tom along on the picnic too; that had been such a horrible mood-killer that Zuko hadn’t suggested another picnic since then.  The visit to Ba Sing Se via airship, to celebrate the reopening of the Jasmine Dragon?  Chaperoned by her father.  They had managed to sneak in some time alone (with some kissing and cuddling) on that trip, because her father had gotten so ‘airsick’ that he’d stayed in his cabin most of the time. And he’d still been feeling queasy enough to stay in bed during the actual reopening celebration, after Zuko had pointed out that his uncle would obviously be there to prevent any impropriety.  But after the party, her father had adjusted to air travel enough to be an active chaperone on the way back, which had put an end to the kissing and cuddling on dates once more.

 

And what’s worse, Mai almost never saw Zuko outside of those carefully scheduled dates.  Being the Firelord and steering the country away from war was taking up all his time, nearly every waking moment of his day.  There were always documents to review and sign, relief efforts to organize, meetings with nobles and meetings with petitioners and…  She was willing to bet that the Avatar and his waterbending girlfriend, who came by the capital frequently on their sky bison to report on what they’d seen and done in the colonies, saw Zuko more than she did. 

 

Things would get better after they were married, right?  She’d thought that over and over in the last few months, even though Zuko hadn’t actually, officially proposed to her yet.  She knew it was nearly inevitable, and after they were married, she wouldn’t need a chaperone and an appointment to see her own husband.  Things would get better then…

 

But now she wasn’t so sure.  The trip by airship to Omashu had taken only two days, and for her chaperone Mai had been accompanied by Lady Dang (her parents had flat-out refused to return to Omashu, after what had happened to them there.) Zuko had brought his secretary, three messenger hawks and a foot-tall stack of documents that needed reviewing and signing before being sent back to the nobles that Zuko had left temporarily in charge while he attended the summit. Mai had hoped to get in some time alone with her boyfriend during the trip, but he’d spent most of it buried under paperwork and when he was with her, Lady Dang was right there watching them like a hawk.  For the evening they’d spent in transit, she’d sat and held hands with Zuko in the airship’s lounge while some crewmen had played music for them.  She’d wished that she could do more to comfort Zuko, who still looked so drawn and exhausted from all the work he’d been doing, and she’d whispered under cover of the singing, “It will be better after we’re married.”

 

“Agni, I hope so,” Zuko had whispered back tiredly.  “I’m so looking forward to having help running the country; someone I can trust administering at least a few programs for me.  I’m going to go blind from all the reports I’ve been reading…”

 

Um.  What?

Help running the country.  Administering programs.  Reading reports for him.

He thought she was going to help with his paperwork?!

That definitely wasn’t what she’d been thinking. She loved Zuko, but offhand, she couldn’t think of anything more dull and boring than governmental paperwork.

 

Right there in the airship lounge, with Lady Dang and all the crewmen looking at them both, hadn’t been the right time to confront him and start straightening out each other’s ideas of what their married life would be like.  And they hadn’t had any time alone for talking since then; the next day Zuko had spent hours doing paperwork again, dealing with everything that he could before arriving in Omashu.  The only break he’d allowed himself had been when the Avatar and his Water Tribe friends had shown up and flown alongside the airship, hallooing and gaily calling out for Zuko.  Ignoring his crew’s anxious stares and gasps, Zuko had leaped out from the gondola onto the sky bison to talk with his friends for a while, before coming back aboard just in time for their arrival in Omashu.

 

But on her own, Mai had thought over Zuko’s words and assumptions, and decided that his plans for what she’d do after they were married were actually reasonable. Depressing, but reasonable.  If he needed help from someone he could trust implicitly, well, Mai was really his only choice.  His uncle had chosen to stay in Ba Sing Se with his silly little tea shop, and his foreigner friends visited but they were never around long enough to really help him out, and even if they were, they were foreigners.  No foreigner could ever really be welcome in the Fire Nation; Mai was sure that whatever they did to try to help would be rejected by the nobility, just for that reason.

 

The thought of spending the rest of her days reviewing endless paperwork—not even the exciting adventure stories she’d sometimes snuck into the palace library to read; instead they’d be trade agreements or crop reports or something equally boring—had Mai contemplating, just for a moment, running away to join Ty Lee on Kyoshi Island.  But really, what else would there be to do with her life as the Royal Consort?  Even ordering servants around got boring after a while. She could throw parties—in fact, she knew that would be expected of her too—but standing around listening to music played too slow to be at all interesting, and to nobles jockeying for status and royal favor or tossing polite and thinly veiled insults at each other, was hardly much better. 

 

Besides, if she really was able to take care of some of Zuko’s daily workload for him, then he’d be able to spend more time with her in the evenings.  That would make reading through mind-numbingly boring reports more than worth it.

 

Once they’d reached Omashu, when they’d disembarked from the airship they’d been greeted by that crazy old king Bumi, wearing the most hideous purple-and-green outfit Mai had ever seen.  They’d been shown to their rooms in the palace, gotten settled in, and attended an informal dinner with the king and the Avatar; the official state dinner wouldn’t be until tomorrow, when the rest of the delegates from the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes arrived.

 

The dinner had become mildly interesting when that crazy old king had decided to get into a food fight with the Avatar.  Everything had been served on ceramic plates, and King Bumi had started using earthbending to fling them in the Avatar’s direction; that equally crazy kid had grinned and started using airbending and earthbending to stop them in midair and fling them back. Zuko had just groaned and covered his eyes, just as the waterbender had been doing while her brother had yelped in dismay about how they were wasting good food. Mai had admitted to herself that a food fight was hardly suitable for even an informal dinner… but at least it was a change from the usual boring dinners.

 

But when a plate full of gravy-soaked dumplings had started veering in her direction, Mai had decided that was enough.  She liked the dress she was wearing, and had no desire to see it splattered with gravy.  She’d flung a dagger that hit the plate just at the right angle to make it flip up and backwards, sending the gravy spattering in a different direction.  Then she’d slowly and carefully lowered her arm when a dozen spears and at least a dozen hovering boulders had all been aimed straight at her by Bumi’s guards.

 

Zuko had immediately stood up with great deliberation and an appropriately fierce glare at the guards, fists smoldering as he’d growled, “She meant no harm to King Bumi or to anyone else at this table.  The dagger was aimed exactly at what it struck, the plate that might have hit her; she acted in self-defense.”

 

“Yeah, it’s okay, really!” the Avatar had said, also rising to his feet with a placating gesture.  “I’ve seen Mai throw lots of sharp objects, and trust me, if she’d been meaning to hit Bumi she would have!”

 

And King Bumi hadn’t seemed scared or alarmed at all; if anything, he’d seemed delighted by her move.  “Oh, really?” he’d inquired with a snaggletoothed grin.  “Let’s see how good Lady Mai is, then.  Think fast!” as he’d flung his hands out, and every single plate had gone flying off the table, most of them in different directions.

 

Finally, a little excitement!  Mai had sprung to her feet already firing, sending out every dagger, shuriken and senbon in her sleeves and wrist launchers, and hit all but two of the plates while they were either still rising in midair or just starting to fall; then she’d spun and kicked out to send two blades from her left ankle launcher flying, and split the last two plates before they hit the ground.

 

Of course, by the time the last few broken plates had hit the ground, everyone at the table had been splattered with the food that had been on those plates, Mai included.  But she’d found she really didn’t mind that much after all; the mess had been worth it. 

 

But that had been yesterday, and there hadn’t been any excitement at all since then.  Now Mai was bored, bored, bored again, staring out a window at the brown and green cityscape while wishing that the first day of the First Annual World Peace Summit was over already, so Zuko could come out and spend time with her again.  The problem was, the first meeting had officially convened less than an hour ago…

 

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“Y-you want me to leave?”  There was no mistaking the shock and hurt in Aang’s expression as he stared at Bumi, literally his oldest friend, and wondered what he’d just done wrong to make Bumi want to get rid of him.

 

“That’s right.  Now go on, shoo, find someplace else to be for a while,” Bumi said, flapping those gnarled brown hands at him like he was a pig-chicken crowding too close to the feed bucket.  “But you can leave your girlfriend here in your place.”

 

Ordinarily, Aang would have jumped for joy at the chance to leave a meeting as stuffy and boring as this one… at almost any political meeting at all, really. But he had to ask, “But… why?  What did I do wrong?”

 

“Nothing, yet… but we have a problem with you, Aang.  You’re far too nice, and particularly far too nice to the Firelord,” as Bumi pointed to where Zuko was sitting just a few feet away, looking just as shocked as Aang felt.  “Twice since we started this meeting, you’ve given your support to his ideas for restitution for some of the damage the Fire Nation did during the war.”

 

“Yes, because they’re good ideas!”

 

“As it happens, they are good ideas.  But that doesn’t change the fact that the Avatar is officially supporting the Firelord!” Bumi looked indignant. “How can the rest of us tear him to ribbons in revenge for what his nation did to ours, if you’re right here defending your firebending teacher?”

 

Chief Arnook, who had been sipping from his teacup as Bumi spoke, did the world’s biggest spit-take and sprayed tea all across his table and his closest aide. Every other delegate in the room reacted with shock at Bumi’s words as well… a few of them, with also somewhat guilty expressions, as if Bumi had only voiced exactly what they’d been thinking.

 

Aang gave everyone The Frown; he’d practiced it in a mirror, and it was the closest he could come to the expression Katara used to give him when he’d been slacking off on his waterbending practice.  “If that’s how most of you feel, then I should definitely stay right here.  This is supposed to be a Peace Summit, not a return to war!  Revenge is never the right answer!”

 

Chief Hakoda stood up with dignity and declared, “King Bumi does not speak for all the delegates; certainly not for the Southern Water Tribe.  My people were decimated during the war, but I did not come here seeking revenge.  I actually took up arms in battle, unlike many of the people in this room,” as his gaze coolly swept over them all, “and I know better than most that wreaking vengeance only leads to more deaths on both sides, instead of peace.”

 

Several people looked uncomfortable at the chief’s words, a few even giving him covert glares of resentment at the pointed reminder that they had never even come close to a battlefield, letting commoners do their fighting for them, and would have no real response if they were outright accused of cowardice.  Zuko stood up and gave a short bow of respect to Hakoda, saying quietly, “Wise words, from a wise ruler of men.” Hakoda gave a short bow in return.

 

Then Zuko turned to Aang and said with resolve, “But King Bumi was right, in that you can’t defend me to everyone just because I’m your friend and your firebending teacher.  The Avatar is the Balance between the nations; favoring any one of them over the others will upset the balance, when we’re still working on restoring it.”

 

“Which is why you should leave, Aang,” Bumi put in again.  “You have the admirable habit of sticking up for your friends, but that will only get in the way of progress here. Let young Zuko take his lumps for his country; he looks man enough to handle it.  But your girlfriend Katara can stay here and be your eyes and ears for all the meetings; she can report to you later on the proceedings, and how well or poorly your fiery friend was treated in your absence.”

 

Katara stood up and nodded acknowledgment of Bumi’s words, then turned to Aang and said reassuringly, “It will be all right, Aang.  I can speak up on your behalf if they start getting too nasty with Zuko.”

 

One of the Earth Kingdom officials from Ba Sing Se gave a quiet but clearly scornful snort and muttered to his neighbor, “Giving a mere girl the right to represent the Avatar, and speak in an international summit?”

 

His words weren’t quiet enough. Katara flushed and opened her mouth in indignation, but before she could say anything the elder sitting between Chiefs Arnook and Hakoda stood up. Master Pakku gave the official a literally icy glare as he growled, “That ‘mere girl’ is a waterbending master and warrior in her own right!  If you have an issue with my former student, I’ll be happy to address it with you in any arena of your choosing.  Not that I expect you to actually take me up on that, with your hands that have probably never lifted anything more dangerous than chopsticks to stuff your face with…”

 

Now it was the official’s turn to flush red, but instead of speaking up for himself he shrank back in the face of outright challenge.  Bumi said with a dismissive wave, “Oh, don’t mind him; he’s one of those idiots that keep forgetting that Avatar Kyoshi was a woman.”

 

“And so was Avatar Yangchen, the previous Air Nomad Avatar,” Aang felt compelled to add.  Still reluctant, but seeing the sense behind Zuko’s words, Aang picked up his staff and prepared to leave, saying, “I trust you will listen to Katara, and remember that Zuko is nothing like his father, Firelord Ozai.  He turned against Ozai and fought at my side for peace! And if not for his warning of Ozai’s plans and his training me in firebending, most of the Earth Kingdom would have been burned to the ground on the day of Sozin’s Comet.”

 

“That’s something worth reminding everyone of from time to time,” Bumi agreed. “Anyway, off you go, Aang.  But since I know you’ll hang around Omashu anyway to get reports from Lady Katara on how the summit is progressing, I’ve thought of a task for you, to keep you occupied.  Do you think you’re up to it?”

 

Aang paused and gave Bumi a wary look.  “You’re not going to encase one of my friends in rock candy again, are you?”

 

“Oh, I never try the same trick twice,” Bumi said with a grin.  “No, no tricks at all this time; just a task that I’ve heard others say is impossible.  But if anyone can think of a way to do it, I’m sure you can!”

 

“Well… let’s hear it.” Aang decided that if nothing else, Bumi’s idea for a task would at least keep him from getting bored, waiting around all day for Katara to get out of the summit meeting.

 

“Lady Mai of the Fire Nation is one of the gloomiest and most perpetually bored people I’ve seen in all my one hundred and fourteen years.  Avatar Aang, your challenge is to make her laugh out loud.”

 

Zuko made a noise like he was choking on his own tongue, drawing all eyes in his direction; he blushed a little, but told everyone, “I’ve known Mai since childhood, and never—ever—heard her actually laugh out loud; usually it’s an accomplishment just to get her to smile!”

 

“So what makes her smile?” Aang asked curiously.

 

“Ah-ah-ah, no cheating by getting tips from her boyfriend,” Bumi said, waggling a finger at him.  “And don’t forget Momo!  Just to make your task more challenging, you’ll need to keep Momo with you at all times.”

 

That requirement brought a smile to Aang’s face. He hadn’t been too happy about leaving Momo with Appa instead of bringing him into the summit meeting, but Katara had quietly but firmly insisted. She’d said that Momo’s habit of scampering across tables and grabbing at things like people’s refreshments and ink brushes would be disruptive and not appreciated by all the adults; evidently the lemur had gotten her into a little trouble with the Earth King’s generals back in Ba Sing Se by doing just that. “Okay; I’ll do it.  Wish me luck, Zuko!”

 

“Good luck… you’re going to need it,” Zuko muttered behind him as he turned and almost skipped out of the room, finding himself looking forward to the challenge.  What Zuko didn’t know was that Air Nomads were famous for having a great sense of humor!  He had tons more jokes to tell than just the ones Zuko had already heard! As he left, he heard Zuko say, “Now, on to the issue of Gaipan…”

 

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The issue with Gaipan, an Earth Kingdom village that had a Fire Nation garrison stationed there, was that it had been nearly wiped off the map by a flood just over a year ago.  It had never been a full-fledged colony, just a stop for supply trains moving through on their way to the warfront, though important enough that a garrison had been stationed there. The woods around the village had been filled with rebels that had frequently harassed the supply trains; the garrison had provided armed escort through the worst areas and occasionally captured or killed a few rebels, but had never been able to completely eliminate them.  Then the nearby dam had been blown up and the village flooded, and the Earth Kingdom claimed the Fire Nation Army had done it and was responsible for all damages.

 

Zuko had prepared arguments against the charges, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to say a word.  Katara had jumped to her feet and denounced the charges, proclaiming loudly that the rebels in the area—led by Jet, of course; that hate-filled idiot was causing trouble for him even after his death—had blown up the dam, determined to flood the valley and kill everyone in it just to get rid of the Fire Nation soldiers.  “How can you actually make up those charges with a straight face?” she demanded of the Earth Kingdom bureaucrat who had brought them up.  “Everyone knows they’re lies, and Jet blew up the dam—it was even in that stupid play, ‘The Boy in the Iceberg’!”

 

The bureaucrat glared at her, angry that his attempts to gouge even more money out of the Fire Nation had fallen through and even angrier to be called a liar to his face, the more so because it was true. Then he acquired a nasty smirk on his face, as he said slyly, “So are you saying that the play is entirely truthful?  Including how this Jet character claimed to flood the village for your sake? Or perhaps the later scene where you and the Firelord had moments of intimacy in the caverns beneath Ba Sing Se…”

 

Zuko winced, while Katara flushed scarlet.  After a few long and painful seconds in which the temperature of the room dropped at least twenty degrees, she ground out, “No, that later scene was not at all accurate. And I never considered that bloodthirsty madman Jet my boyfriend! That play is riddled with flaws and errors, as any member of the Avatar’s group will tell you.  You have, perhaps, heard that Lady Toph Bei Fong is in fact female?  I mentioned the play only to illustrate the sheer short-sighted idiocy of making false charges of damages done by the Fire Nation, when witnesses to the flood are present in the room!  If my brother Sokka were here, he’d tell you what he told me and Aang later that day; how the Fire Nation soldiers actually saved lives with their swift and orderly evacuation of the villagers!  Tell me, sir, are you disappointed that no peasants died that day, preventing you from adding charges of massacre to your list?”

 

Shown in front of everybody to be short-sighted and idiotic, and now facing the implied accusation that he actually cared nothing for the lives of those villagers, and was only after more money… Yep, that bureaucrat had just made himself a bad enemy.  More than one, judging by the way Hakoda and Pakku were glaring at him; he was probably starting to regret attending the summit at all.  But Zuko was actually a little grateful for the man’s greed and stupidity, because when the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe delegates were at odds with each other, it took a little of the pressure off of him and his nation.  He was determined to make reparations and restore the Fire Nation’s standing in a world of peace instead of war, but so far it had proven even more difficult than he’d thought it would.

 

But that’s what this peace summit was all about, and it was time for him earn some statesman points.  “Then if the issue of Gaipan is resolved, let no more be said of it,” he said magnanimously. “Instead, let us move on to other issues…”

 

Katara almost-but-not-quite pouted at him, for verbally stepping between her and her prey.  The bureaucrat gave him a sullen look, unwilling to be grateful to his enemy for saving him from her wrath.

 

Just after the issue of Taku was brought up, Bumi abruptly declared a short recess to the meeting, even though they’d been talking for barely an hour so far. Servants immediately started bringing trays of refreshments in, and setting them on long tables to the side of the room.  Surprised but grateful, Zuko got up and headed for the table with trays of sliced mangoes and other fruits.

 

Katara headed towards the food as well, and he changed course to meet up with her along the way.  “Where’s Sokka?” he asked her with some concern. The Water Tribe warrior had been at the informal dinner with them yesterday, but today he was notably absent from the table that the Water Tribe delegates were sitting at. “Is he sick?”

 

He hoped it was just a temporary illness (probably caused by eating too much), and not some family dispute that had resulted in Hakoda ordering his son to leave and not come back.  Zuko liked and respected Hakoda, and he knew now that most families weren’t nearly as dysfunctional as his had been, but sometimes he couldn’t help worrying.

 

“He’s fine; he’s just with Toph at her new metalbending academy,” Katara reassured him.  “It’s about three hours’ flight from here, and Aang took him there after dinner last night.  Toph will come up here with him in two weeks, when the summit’s over.” 

 

She won’t be here for the summit after all?” Zuko asked, disappointed.  He’d been wistfully wishing that she’d show up too, making her usual dramatic stomping entrance into the summit, and claim a seat for herself. It wasn’t just that he highly valued her ability to sort truth from lies; Team Avatar hadn’t had a full reunion since their last get-together in the Jasmine Dragon, right after the war.

 

Katara shook her head.  “Not while the delegate from Gaoling is here,” as she turned her head to indicate with her chin a middle-aged man dressed in expensive silks. “That’s Lao Bei Fong; Toph’s father.”

 

“Oh.” Zuko winced, remembering the letter from Katara that had described Toph’s reunion with her parents.  To say it ‘had not gone well’ would be like saying his last Agni Kai had not gone well. By Katara’s report, no one had been seriously injured, but the quakes had been felt all throughout Gaoling. 

 

“Yeah,” Katara agreed wryly. “Toph was all ready to come up here anyway for another confrontation, but Aang and I talked her out of it because their feud would probably end up disrupting this summit, after everything we did to help organize it.”

 

They reached the food tables as she finished, and ran into Chang, one of Bumi’s cabinet ministers. Chang cleared his throat as he was handed a bowlful of sliced fruit by a server, and said, “Esteemed Firelord… If King Bumi has displeased you with his announcement…”

 

“What, for the short recess?” as Zuko gestured at the food. “I wasn’t expecting one to be declared so early, but I’m hardly displeased.” Maybe Bumi had called for it because he’d skipped breakfast that morning; Zuko had only managed to wolf down a few bites of his own breakfast, busy with his preparations for the first summit meeting.

 

“Er, no, I meant… the task that he set the Avatar.  To spend time attempting to please your, ah, companion, the Lady Mai.”

 

Zuko blinked at him a few times… and then he started sniggering.  Katara asked curiously, “What’s funny?”

 

“Oh, you’ll love this,” he snickered, still trying not to laugh out loud.  “Minister Chang seems to be worried that Aang will end up stealing Mai away from me.”

 

Katara stared in shock for a split-second before she burst out laughing.  “Not likely! Wow, that idea’s almost as crazy as Bumi! …Uh, no offense,” as she blushed, realizing one of Bumi’s own people was present.

 

Minister Chang politely said that no offense was taken… and he might have actually meant it, given Chang had seen plenty of Bumi’s frequent antics over the years.  But still, Zuko stepped in to extricate Katara from further embarrassment and hand her a dish of mangoes, which he knew she liked.

 

Heading back to his seat a few minutes later, Zuko was still marveling that anyone would come up with the idea of Aang seducing Mai away from his side.  In the first place, Mai was just a few months younger than Zuko while Aang was only thirteen years old; he was far too young for her to be interested in him as a boyfriend.  In the second place, Aang had been raised by monks; Zuko wasn’t sure Aang even knew where babies came from, let alone the finer points of seducing nobly-born ladies of the Fire Nation. And finally, as near as Zuko could tell, they had absolutely nothing in common. 

 

It wasn’t just that Aang was always smiling and laughing, while Mai didn’t laugh at all and hardly ever smiled. Mai liked to play with daggers and other lethally sharp throwing weapons, and was always ready to show her uncanny accuracy to any opponent, while Aang preferred a staff when he had to fight at all.  Frankly, Aang would rather dodge and run than fight in just about any conflict!  Also, he was concerned about every living thing, even had a monkish vow to not eat meat. He was just about the opposite of Mai, who enjoyed a good steak almost as much as fire flakes and who had once admitted out loud that she hardly cared about anything or anyone but Zuko.

 

Zuko shook his head again and snorted at the thought of Aang seducing Mai away from him.  Really, how crazy was that?

 

To be continued

 

Chapter Text

 

Mai sighed heavily, standing out on the balcony and looking out over Omashu while trying to tune out Lady Dang’s droning voice. Dang was sitting on the lounge inside the room, doing embroidery, and talking again about how advantageous her marriage to Zuko would be for her parents.  As if Mai really cared about helping the social standing of the people who just never understood her the way Zuko did, who thought her main job in life was to look pretty and sit still in public, like a fancy doll on a shelf.  Oh, the joys of being a nobleman’s daughter…

 

She’d never say so to Zuko, because she knew he would take it the wrong way, but sometimes Mai actually missed having Azula around. She didn’t miss the casual cruelties or that expectation of instant compliance to whatever the princess wanted, but at least Azula always had something dangerous or exciting going on for Mai to get involved in, whether it was hunting the Avatar or fighting Kyoshi Warriors or overthrowing Ba Sing Se from within.  In fact, if it weren’t for that visit to her family home over a decade ago, when the little princess had sweetly informed Mai’s parents that she’d picked Mai for a companion precisely because of her growing skill with projectile weapons, her parents would probably have continued punishing Mai for her knife-throwing hobby, instead of buying her more blades and sheaths for wearing them under her clothes.  Mai really owed a lot to Azula…

 

And she really needed to think of something else, before she started thinking about going to visit Azula in the insane asylum again when she got back home.  She’d gone there just once, and it had been so wrenching—seeing the slovenly, uncontrollable madwoman Azula had become, hearing the princess’s screeching curses at her betrayal and oaths to give her a protracted and painful death—that Mai had instantly decided to never do that again.  There were some things actually worse than boredom.

 

Oh spirits no. Now Lady Dang was talking about the inevitability of her father becoming a member of the High Council, one of the Firelord’s most trusted advisors.  Which would mean Mai would be seeing her father in the palace nearly every day for the rest of her life.  And her mother would surely find reasons to be there as well; she’d never escape them again…  To Koh’s Lair with that idea!  She’d have to privately tell Zuko that he absolutely should never invite her father to become a council member, no matter what was expected of him once they were in-laws.  Surely appointing Mai’s father to the governorship of another remote outpost would be enough of an honor to satisfy the obligation?

 

“Hi, Mai!”

 

Mai had been so lost in thoughts of future gloom and doom that she hadn’t actually noticed the Avatar approaching on his glider, until he greeted her while dropping to a neat landing beside her on the balcony.  She was so startled that she came within milliseconds of throwing a brace of stilettos, and starting the Avatar Cycle all over again.  She blurted out, “What are you doing here?”

 

She immediately regretted the outburst when Lady Dang pointedly cleared her throat in disapproval, before saying in that simpering tone Mai had grown to loathe, “Avatar, we are most honored by your presence… and perhaps somewhat perplexed, as well.”  The lady-in-waiting put her embroidery aside and walked mincingly out to the balcony to join them, adding, “Have the summit talks concluded for the day already? If so, when may we expect-ah-ah-ahhchooo!”  

 

Mai switched her surprised stare from the Avatar to her attendant, who began sneezing up a storm.  What had set Lady Dang off like that?  The Avatar had the same question, asking bluntly, “What’s wrong with her?”

 

Mai figured it out when she heard the chittering, just before the Avatar’s pet lemur poked his big-eared head out from behind the Avatar’s bald and tattooed cranium. “Lady Dang is allergic to most furry creatures,” Mai informed him. “Including your pet, apparently.”

 

“Oh.  I guess we should leave and go somewhere else, then,” the Avatar shrugged.  “How about to a restaurant?  I’m kind-of hungry; Katara kept me so busy with stuff about the summit talks this morning that I really didn’t have much for breakfast.”

 

Mai blinked at him for a moment, trying to think of what was behind the offer, then said carefully, “I’m flattered by the invitation.  I’m also confused; why aren’t you at the summit meeting?”

 

The Avatar frowned, an expression that didn’t sit well on his features.  “Bumi asked me to leave, because I was defending Zuko too much.  Zuko agreed with it, too; he said that as the Avatar and the Balance between the nations, I’m supposed to be fair and impartial to everybody, so I can’t favor one nation over the others just because I’m friends with their new ruler.” Then he gave her an earnest look that was probably meant to be reassuring, as he added, “It’s okay, though; I left Katara in my place, and she’ll speak up if they start getting too nasty towards Zuko. And I’m pretty sure her dad Hakoda will back her up; he likes Zuko too.  So, do you have a favorite restaurant here?  If not, I know this great place up by Bumi’s castle! It--”

 

“Ava—ah, ahhchoo! (sniff) Avatar, please pardon my rudeness in interrupting,” Lady Dang said tersely, wiping her already reddened nose while warily eyeing the lemur, “but would you please dispose of your pet before we leave to go anywhere? One of our guards would surely be happy to take him to your quarters.”

 

The Avatar gave her a half-worried, half-annoyed frown. “Sorry, but I have to keep Momo with me at all times; Bumi insisted.  But you don’t have to come along; in fact, pardon my rudeness, but I only invited Mai out, not both of you.”

 

“That—ahhchoo!  That would be highly inappropriate.  I am the Lady Mai’s attendant and chaperone!  I must be present, in order to ensure propriety is respected at—ahhchoo!”

 

Mai rolled her eyes; that woman was so stubborn in her insistence on propriety that she sometimes wondered if there were earthbenders in her ancestry. “Lady Dang, just stay here. That’s an order, from the future Royal Consort.”

 

“But--”

 

“You don’t have anything to worry about regarding propriety.  In the first place, the Avatar is too young to try anything like what you’re thinking of; just look at him! His voice hasn’t even changed!” Mai said with a dismissive wave in his direction. The Avatar squawked in indignation, but Mai wasn’t done yet and she rode right over his half-formed protests. “In the second place, he was raised by monks.  You know, that whole ‘we have no worldly concerns’ attitude… You might as well say I’m not safe in the presence of the High Fire Sage!” The Avatar stopped squawking and looked thoughtful for a second. “And in the third place, he’s the Avatar. Bender of all four elements, and the one who brought down the previous Firelord. If he wanted to make trouble, do you really think that just your presence would stop him?”

 

“What ‘trouble’ are you talking about?” the Avatar asked indignantly. “I’m just talking about getting something to eat!  How is that making trouble?”

 

“It isn’t,” Mai said with another roll of her eyes. “So come on, let’s go before she sneezes herself into a bloody nose.” And with that, she took the Avatar by the elbow and led him firmly across the room to the door, taking silent glee in the way her unwanted attendant was backpedaling to stay far away for once.

 

Once they were in the hallway, the Avatar said pointedly, “I’m not a child anymore, you know.  My voice hasn’t changed yet, yeah, but Zuko told me himself that doesn’t happen to some guys until later; his voice changed during his banishment, when he was fourteen. And I’m going to turn fourteen in just a few more weeks!”

 

Mai just gave him a look of Very Unimpressed. “Are you really trying to argue that I need a chaperone to be around you after all? Or suggesting that I should compare your physique to Zuko’s?” As she’d figured, that shut him up fast, with a slight flush of either anger or embarrassment on his cheeks. “If not, then just lead the way to that restaurant you mentioned.” She’d had breakfast, but it had been so meager with its ‘ladylike’ portions that she was already hungry again.

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

Yup, this was going to be a challenge all right.  How was he going to make Mai laugh out loud, when she already made him want to grit his teeth?  Aang sort-of wished he hadn’t taken up Bumi’s challenge… But if he hadn’t, he’d still be hanging around Omashu anyway, waiting to get Katara’s reports on what happened in the summit meetings. And maybe it would make Zuko smile more, if he knew his girlfriend wasn’t just sitting around being bored waiting for him; it’d be one less thing for Sifu Hotman to feel guilty about.

 

So they headed up towards the city center and the restaurant Aang had in mind for eating at, one that had a pretty good vegetarian menu.  Along the way, he told Mai at least half a dozen jokes and riddles, but she just rolled her eyes at all of them.  Even his very best joke about the village baker and the hog-monkey, the one that had once made his old friend Kuzon laugh so hard he’d almost peed his pants!  

 

Finally they arrived at the restaurant, and he gave up on joke-telling in favor of just eating.  The restaurant made really good vegetable tempura and yakisoba; Mai evidently thought so too, because she ate just as much as Aang did.  After they finished, the restaurant owner made the usual speech about how it was such an honor to serve the Avatar that he wouldn’t think of asking for payment—which was really good to hear this time, because Aang had forgotten until that moment that Katara still had all their money with her, and it would have been really embarrassing to have to ask Mai if she could pay for their food.

 

After they left the restaurant, he asked Mai, “So, what do you want to do today?”

 

“Not die of boredom,” was all Mai said in a flat tone that suggested she was already halfway dead from it. 

 

Aang frowned at the implied insult.  Then he decided that fine, if she didn’t want to do anything, then he sure did!   Something that he’d been wanting to do since they’d arrived late yesterday morning, but Katara had said there was too much work to do to prepare for the summit and besides, she’d done it once already and once in a lifetime was enough for her.  “Okay then; we’re going up there,” as he pointed further up the city slope, at a mail chute station.  “I do this every time I come to Omashu.”

 

Mai just shrugged and went along with him, evidently deciding that she had nothing better to do so she might as well.  Just to make conversation, he asked as they trudged up the stairs to the mail station, “Did you ever do this when your father was the governor here?”

 

“All the time,” she said with another roll of her eyes.  She sounded like it had been a chore for her, instead of something really fun!  Aang just didn’t understand Mai at all. But he was determined to enjoy himself anyway, even if she didn’t.  This would be the first real, genuine fun he’d had in months; quelling the riots in the colonies and keeping the peace between the nations took up nearly every minute of his day, every day of every month!  Almost every time he’d wanted to just relax and do something fun with Katara, like ride wild hog-monkeys or hopping llamas, she’d regretfully pointed out all the things he needed to do and the important people they needed to see.  About the only fun thing she’d agree to make time for was making ice-sculptures or shapes with other elements during their bending practice every day.  Which was fun, yeah, but it was also kind-of work, and sometimes he just wanted some fun.

 

They reached the mail station, and Aang cheerfully greeted the earthbender working there.  He was in luck; this government worker was one he’d met before, when he’d come back to Omashu right after waking up in this century, so he already knew what Aang was there for and that the Avatar had official permission from King Bumi to do it whenever he visited.  The earthbender just bowed to him and earthbent an empty delivery bin into the chute for him, with no questions asked. 

 

Aang hopped into the bin, then courteously held his hand out for Mai to climb in too, but instead of climbing in behind him she was hanging back while giving him a weird look. She asked, “What are you doing?”

 

“What does it look like?” he retorted.  “I thought you said you’d done this lots of times before!”

 

“I dropped off official documents from my father’s office and picked up mail for him, yes.  But I never had to climb into the bins themselves to get anything!”

 

Aang grinned, as he remembered exactly what Bumi had said to him all those years ago.  “Look around you, Mai; what do you see?”

 

She looked around, then right back at him with an ever-so-slightly irritated expression as she said, “Omashu’s earthbending mail and package delivery system.”

 

His tone was conspiratorial as he leaned towards her.  “Instead of seeing what they want you to see, you have to open your brain to the possibilities.  This, Mai,” as he spread his hands to indicate not just the mail station but all of Omashu, “is the world’s greatest super slide!”

 

And for the first time since he’d met her back during the war, Mai’s face showed a real, unmistakable expression; her mouth fell open as she stared first at him, and then at the mail chute system again, in outright astonishment.  After a second or two of silence she murmured half to herself, “Hardly proper behavior…”

 

He grinned even wider as he stage-whispered to her, “I won’t tell your chaperone if you won’t!”

 

And after another second or two, Mai showed another expression: a growing and downright mischievous grin.  “You’re on,” she said bluntly as she climbed into the bin behind him.  And with just a little push of his earthbending, they were off and sliding down the chute, their bin picking up speed with every second.  Hanging onto his clothes with tiny black hands, Momo chattered with excitement.

 

“Woo-hooo!  Hey, stick your arms up like this, and it’s even more fun!” Aang called back over his shoulder as he threw his hands up into the air, feeling the wind rushing past his palms.  Since he was an airbender, that sensation always felt to him like an invitation to play, but Bumi had sworn it made the ride more fun even for non-airbenders.  

 

He glimpsed over his shoulder to see Mai throwing her arms into the air—and the wind pushing her sleeves up to reveal the bracers of stilettos and throwing stars she kept strapped to her wrists and forearms.  The sight made him a little uncomfortable, so he quickly faced forward and determinedly shouted again, “Woo-hooo!” 

 

Yup, even now that he was a fully realized Avatar, this was still pretty fun!  Aang cherished that thought and vowed to savor every second of this ride.  They sailed down faster and faster, till they were going almost as fast as Appa in a full dive. Then they approached the first junction where two chutes came together, and Aang glanced to the other chute off to their left.

 

Oh, no… His stomach twisted as he realized that yup, there was another bin in that chute right across from them and yup, it was carrying a rack of spears just like that time last year and yup, it was going to hit the junction right after they did and see, this was proof that Sokka wasn’t the only one the universe liked to torment!  He knew how protective Sifu Hotman was of his friends and loved ones; Zuko would totally skin him alive if he put the Firelord’s future Royal Consort in danger!

 

But he reminded himself that now that he was a master earthbender as well as a master airbender; this would be easy to take care of, with no danger to Mai at all.  He reached out with his earthbending to slow the other bin way down, so it wouldn’t hit the junction until long after they did and stay far back from them until the end of the slide.

 

And then he could almost hear Toph’s voice in his head, with that familiar sarcastic bite as she told him, You’re an earthbender now, Twinkletoes, but you’re a long way from being a master at it.  Because he hadn’t properly adjusted his earthbending for the high speeds they were traveling at, and when he tried to slow the other bin down it just sort-of crashed instead, and then there were huge chunks of stone bin and spears flying everywhere, including straight at them!  “Duck!” he shouted as he couched low in the bin, reaching back to yank Mai down with him.

 

Spears and jagged shards of rock whistled over their heads, and after a couple seconds Aang figured that it was safe to sit up again   Just in time to see that the biggest chunk of the exploded bin had landed right in the middle of the junction ahead, to damage the chute and block the slide!  If they hit that blockage, going at this speed… Zuko was going to skin him and boil him alive!

 

“Hang on tight!” Aang shouted as he gripped the sides of the bin and heaved upwards with every scrap of earthbending energy he could muster at a moment’s notice.  Their bin sailed up out of the chute and over the blockage, just barely; Aang heard the awful scrape of stone on stone as the bottom of the bin slid across it.  Then he dropped them back into the bin on the other side of the blockage, but not as smoothly as he’d hoped.  The jarring impact as they scraped the side of the chute made him lose his grip, both with hands and earthbending, and then suddenly he was sprawled backwards in Mai’s lap and looking upside-down at her face—

 

And she was laughing.  Her mouth was open and her eyes were sparkling and he heard even over the crunches and rumbles of the stone chute her joyous “Hahahahahaa!” It was no ladylike tinkling giggle, but a loud, braying laugh that even an ox-donkey would admire. 

 

He’d done it!  He’d made her laugh out loud! 

 

Then suddenly the bin they were in abruptly slowed to a shuddering stop at a mail station, and he heard an angry man’s voice saying, “This is an official mail chute!  Do you realize how much trouble you’re in, interfering with the official governmental delivery system in Omashu?  You’ll be cooling your heels in jail for--” Aang hurriedly sat up from where he’s still been lying with his head in Mai’s lap, and the earthbending official at the mail station stopped cold when he saw Aang’s airbending arrows and realized who he was dealing with.  “A thousand pardons, Avatar!”

 

Mai almost bounced out of the bin onto the station deck, looking a lot like her friend Ty Lee for a moment as she grinned from ear to ear.  “Let’s do that again!”

 

“Um, sorry, we can’t; I promised Bumi that I’d only do it once per visit,” Aang said sheepishly.  He guessed that sometimes the fun really did disrupt official business, like this time when they’d have to send somebody up there to fix the chutes.

 

Mai’s grin vanished, and she looked so disappointed for a second… and then even the disappointment vanished, leaving just that expressionless mask in place.  But suddenly it almost hurt him to see it there, after seeing her laughing and so alive and—“But I know something we can do that’s even better!”

 

The words just sort-of jumped out of his mouth without thinking, but he couldn’t take them back; she was giving him, through that bored mask of hers, a faintly hopeful look as she drawled, “Such as…?”

 

Come on, I’ll show you!” And he led her through the city to the royal stables that Appa was staying in.

 

When they went into the stables, Mai hung way back at first, giving Appa a look of distaste.  A look that Appa returned with interest, and a warning rumble; sky bison had long memories, and Appa probably remembered all the times Mai had thrown sharp pointy objects in his direction, back during the war.  “C’mon, Appa, it’s okay; she’s a friend now!  Really!” as Aang gave his best buddy a cajoling scratching behind one massive ear.  “She’s Zuko’s girlfriend now, and you like Sifu Hotman, right?”

 

He gave Mai a few cabbages to feed Appa, to help persuade him that she could ride on his back. While they were getting better acquainted, he saddled the bison and got one of the stable hands to bring him twelve feet of rope.  He coiled the rope up and tied one end to one side of the saddle, and then invited Mai to climb on up.  She took his extended hand and let him help her up Appa’s side into the saddle, but then looked at the coiled rope with a subtle frown of disapproval.  “I know for a fact that you usually don’t make your passengers were safety ropes.”

 

“That’s for later,” Aang tossed over his shoulder as he bounded forward to his usual place between Appa’s horns. As soon as he had the reins in hand he said with a grin, “Appa, yip-yip!”

 

Appa lowed his assent as he rose into the air, a nice gradual spiral upwards to a few hundred or so above the highest point in Omashu.  Aang kept glancing back over his shoulder as they ascended, seeing how Mai was handling her first sky bison flight; she had a tight grip on the rim of the saddle for the first two hundred feet, but after that she relaxed and let go for a few minutes, only to grasp the side again as she leaned out over Appa to look at Omashu spreading out below them.  “It is nice to see such a view without gondola glass in the way,” she commented, while brushing a wind-tugged lock of hair back into place.

 

“Appa’s way better than an airship,” Aang agreed as he floated back from the reins to the saddle.  “He’s faster and he can outmaneuver them any day of the week!  And there are a few things Appa can do that no fancy balloon can, no matter what tricks the Mechanist thinks up.  Time to tie up,” as he passed the rope around Mai’s waist, tying the stay-in-place knot that Monk Gyatso had taught him long ago, before tying the other end to the far side of the saddle.  He answered her subtle frown with a cheery, “It’s not because you’re not an airbender; it’s because you’re in the saddle and you can’t hang on the same way!” 

 

Once she was tied so she couldn’t fall out, he took off his shoes and stuffed them inside a carrysack, told both Mai and Momo to get really good grips on the rim of the saddle, and then bounded back to Appa’s head.  He lay down spread-eagled with his legs wrapped partway around Appa’s massive neck, digging his toes deep into the sky bison’s wiry undercoat, and grabbing handfuls of Appa’s fur to anchor his upper half.  Then he shouted gleefully, “Appa, yip-yaroo!  Yip-yaroo, buddy!” 

 

Appa stiffened in surprise at first; it had been a really long time—over a hundred years!—since he’d called out that command.  He’d asked Katara and Sokka if they’d like to try sky bison stunt-flying one time soon after waking up in this century, but Katara had looked a little sick just thinking about it, and Sokka had said no so emphatically that he’d never brought it up again.   It was a real shame, because a ‘yip-yaroo’ was the start of probably the most thrilling ride in the whole world!  When he repeated the command, Appa gave a bellow of pure joy, and promptly flipped over on his side.

 

They did one-two-three barrel rolls in as many seconds before Appa leveled out again, snorting with exertion and excitement. Aang strained his ears to hear what was going on back in the saddle, and heard Mai’s shriek of surprise turn into delighted laughter.  Grinning while still hugging his buddy with all his might, Aang called out, “Yip-yahee!”  Appa roared in response, before executing a perfect loop-the-loop!

 

After Appa leveled out again, Aang sat up and turned around to look back at Mai in the saddle as he asked, “So, whaddaya think?”

 

Momo was clinging to the saddle rim with all four limbs and even his tail, his ears flat against his head in distress. Mai’s normally perfect hair looked like a rat-crow’s nest, her fancy robes were all askew… and she was grinning from ear to ear, looking even happier and more excited than she’d looked after the mail chute ride.  “Do it again!”

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

They had hours of fun up in the sky, and it was late afternoon by the time they returned to the royal stables, almost time for dinner.  As soon as they landed, Aang hopped off to get Appa an entire bushel of apples as a treat, and he came back just in time to see Mai petting the sky bison right on his huge nose while saying with utter sincerity, “Thank you for helping make this the best day I’ve ever had in my life!”

 

Appa rumbled happily in response, and his mouth opened—and Aang hurriedly tossed a few apples inside, to give him something else to do before he could actually lick Mai from head to toe.  He didn’t mind the occasional big lick, but given how much his other friends hated being coated in sky bison saliva, he didn’t want to risk Mai’s Best Day Ever ending on a bad note.

 

They’d both missed lunch while having fun with Appa, but neither had even noticed until they walked past a noodles stand on the way, and their stomachs rumbled like sky bison in response to the savory odors wafting from the stall.  “My treat this time,” Mai said simply, and bought them both bowls of noodles on the spot.

 

They slurped up the noodles with gusto, until Mai slurped a little too hard and one noodle flipped up to stick right on the end of her nose.  She instantly froze, and her cheeks began to turn bright red in sheer embarrassment. 

 

Aang had been about to point and laugh at her, like he would have if Toph had done it or any of the boys he’d grown up with, but he remembered how badly Katara took it the last time he’d laughed at her looking silly. (She’d stomped off in a huff, and even after he’d apologized she hadn’t spoken to him for hours!) So instead he took a big slurp of his noodles, while wiggling his pinkies in a discreet airbending maneuver.  The sudden airburst he’d whipped up whooshed right over the bowl of noodles, and flipped a ropy cluster of them up to slap onto his nose, so far up that they probably came close to his forehead arrow.  Then he grinned past the noodles at her, inviting her to laugh.

 

And she did; not a big laugh out loud like she’d been doing while up in the sky, but a quick giggle of amusement. She gave a little smile and her embarrassed blush faded, even as she discreetly wiped the noodle off her nose with a finger.  Aang was about to do even more clowning around with his noodles, but saw over Mai’s shoulder how the noodle stand’s owner was frowning at them both; that guy sure wasn’t amused.  Rather than wait for that sourpuss say something mean and remind Mai that she was supposed to be embarrassed, he quickly downed the rest of his bowlful and she did the same.

 

As they walked back to the palace wing that most of the delegates were staying in, Aang said hopefully, “This summit is supposed to last another two weeks; do you want to come have fun with me again tomorrow?”

 

“Definitely,” Mai said without any hesitation at all, as a smile started forming on her face again.  But then she paused, and the smile faded as she added, “Assuming Zuko is okay with it.  Sometimes he gets jealous if other guys even talk to me.”

 

Aang frowned.  “What, you think he’d think I’m trying to steal you away from him or something?  That’s silly; he knows I already have Katara!” But when Mai didn’t immediately look convinced, he said, “Tell you what, I’ll go talk to him and let him know; he won’t get jealous that way.” 

 

Aang hid a grin as he planned out exactly what he’d say to Sifu Hotman, just in case Mai was right and her boyfriend was the stupidly jealous type. He’d remind Zuko of the challenge Bumi gave him, to make Mai laugh, before letting him know that they were going out again tomorrow.  He wouldn’t say anything about having already won the challenge; that Mai had laughed out loud plenty of times that day.  If Zuko just assumed that Aang was still trying to win Bumi’s challenge and that was the only reason they were going out again, well, that would be kind-of his fault for not asking about it, right?

 

 

To be continued…

 

Chapter Text

 

Katara was just sitting down to dinner with Chief Arnook, Gran-Pakku and her father when Hakoda looked at her and said with concern, “Is everything all right, Katara?  You’re frowning…”

 

“Everything’s fine, Dad,” Katara said almost automatically.  “I’m just wondering where Aang is, that’s all.  This is the second time he’s missed dinner this week.”  With the long days she’d been putting in, representing the Avatar at the World Peace Summit, breakfast and dinnertime were the only times they had to be together. 

 

Since King Bumi had asked five days ago for Aang to absent himself from the peace talks, and said that Katara could stand in his stead, Katara had faithfully reported to Aang all the issues that had come up and how the delegates had responded to them.  She made sure he knew about every time she’d had to step in to defend Zuko and the Fire Nation from Earth Kingdom delegates more interested in taking vicious revenge on them than in restoring balance to the world. 

 

For the next three days after the announcement, Bumi had started each session with a reminder to all the delegates present that Lady Katara spoke for the Avatar, not for the Southern Water Tribe. And she’d made what she thought was a really good speech that first day, soon after Aang had left; a speech about how no matter how much people wanted revenge, restoring the balance was more important, and any revenge that interfered with that goal was flat-out wrong.

 

She’d started by using Aang himself as an example; if anyone deserved revenge for wrongs done to their nation, surely there was no argument that Aang deserved it first and most, after all his people were massacred!  Aang was the sole surviving Air Nomad, and Katara could testify how much he missed his people, but he sought no revenge for them. Instead he’d set all his pain aside, to work with the very great-grandson of the man who’d ordered their slaughter, to end the war and restore balance to the world.

 

Then she’d moved on to her own grievance against the Fire Nation; about the raid that had killed her mother in cold blood.  And she’d told them all about how when Zuko had sought to join Team Avatar, she’d seen him as representative of the monsters who had killed her mother as well as the teen who had chased her and Aang all over the world, and hated him… but she’d still worked alongside him to train the Avatar, because it had been the right thing to do and the best hope for restoring balance to the world.

 

Zuko had gone still during her speech, keeping his eyes downcast; the very image of a penitent man hoping to make amends for himself and his nation.  Only at one point had he made a soft sound, like a stifled snort, while Katara had talked about working with him to train Aang.  (But fortunately for them both, he’d done the smart thing and kept his mouth shut about all the times she’d served him only burnt scraps for dinner and generally treated him like slush, up until the day she’d finally forgiven him; that wouldn’t have helped the peace talks at all.)

 

She’d thought it was a good speech, and her father, Gran-Pakku and King Bumi had all applauded her for it, but the other delegates hadn’t been so impressed. As she’d reported to Aang each evening, she still had to step in on a frequent basis, when Earth Kingdom officials made demands of the Fire Nation that were clearly motivated by taking revenge instead of reparations.

 

She’d even told Aang, though hesitantly, about how she’d had to gently rebuke Chief Arnook when it had become evident he wanted revenge on the Fire Nation for the Siege of the North and Princess Yue’s death/conversion into the Moon Spirit.  Chief Arnook hadn’t spoken to her for the rest of that day and part of the next, until her father had taken Arnook aside for a quiet talk.

 

Afterwards Arnook had come up to her with an apology, and admittance that he’d been too focused on his grief and pain to see that the Fire Nation had ultimately taken much greater losses, when the Avatar had merged with the Ocean Spirit to drown the entire invasion fleet.  He’d admitted that since the Ocean Spirit had already exacted a great and terrible revenge, he had no business seeking more, and he would take his cue from her and Hakoda and focus more on doing what he could to restore balance to the world.

 

Katara had told Aang about Arnook’s apology at dinner last night, but left out the reminder of all the thousands of people he’d killed while possessed by the Ocean Spirit. (The one time he’d had a reminder of that, seeing a memorial to the troops lost in that invasion while they’d been visiting a Fire Nation colony, he’d freaked out and flown off on his glider, and Katara hadn’t seen him for the rest of the day.)

 

Tonight Katara had been looking forward to telling Aang about how the Earth Kingdom delegates were treating her with respect now, and considering Zuko’s suggestions for how his country could make reparations (often with labor from demilitarized troops, who had no civilian jobs waiting for them back home) instead of rejecting them outright. But Aang still hadn’t come back from that day’s outing with Mai, so finally Katara had accepted her father’s invitation to join him and Chief Arnook for dinner.

 

“Is he still busy trying to make some Fire Nation girl laugh out loud?” Arnook asked idly as he gestured for a bowlful of stewed sea prunes, which King Bumi had imported especially for the Water Tribe delegates.

 

“Lady Mai, Firelord Zuko’s companion,” Katara informed him.  “And yes, he is. Every morning I ask him what he has planned for while we’re meeting, and all he says is, ‘Today I’m going to make Mai laugh out loud!’ And every evening I ask him how it went, and all he says is, ‘Tomorrow I’m going to make her laugh out loud, for sure!’ ”

 

Pakku said with a snort while accepting his sea prunes, “From what I’ve heard of her, he should try torturing kitten-owlets in front of her; that should do the trick.”

 

“Gran-Pakku!” Katara said reprovingly.

 

“What?” he demanded with a raised eyebrow.  “She’s a former companion of Azula, isn’t she?  And I’ve heard far too many tales of the Mad Princess’s casual cruelties, even to her own people.”

 

“But Mai turned against that princess, to save Zuko, my son and myself when we were escaping from the Boiling Rock,” Hakoda very pointedly reminded Pakku.

 

“So she’s not entirely heartless,” Pakku said with a shrug.  “I still don’t see why the Avatar is wasting so much time on her.”

 

“Aang has endless optimism,” Katara said with a sigh as she picked up her spoon.  “If he can believe there’s good in everyone, even that monster Ozai, then it’s not surprising that he believes he can make anyone laugh if he just keeps at it, even Zuko’s girlfriend.”

 

“Girlfriend? It’s not an arranged betrothal, then?” Arnook asked with mild surprise.  “I was under the impression that the Fire Nation nobility practice that too.”

 

Katara was about to respond in the negative, then paused, thought about it and finally admitted, “I don’t think it’s arranged, but I’ve honestly never asked. But even if it is arranged, they really like each other, or at least Zuko does; he smiles at her when they hold hands, and once I even saw them hugging.” 

 

“I’ve only seen her twice, and the first time, we weren’t properly introduced,” Hakoda said wryly.  “The second time was at Zuko’s coronation.  Katara, you surely know them both better than I do, so perhaps you can tell me; what does he see in her?”

 

“Um… I really don’t know, Dad,” Katara admitted.   She knew Mai was considered beautiful by Fire Nation standards, though it was a cold beauty that she thought most men would get bored with soon enough. And considering how Mai acted so bored with everything, all the time… But maybe Mai was different in private than she was in public.

 

But talking about Zuko’s feelings for Mai felt uncomfortably like gossiping, so she changed the subject to other matters, like the rebuilding of the Southern Water Tribe.  They had a long ways to go before the village was as grand as the Northern Water Tribe’s main city, but Pakku’s waterbenders had greatly improved the main port for trading vessels and had either raised or greatly improved all their buildings.

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

In another wing of the palace, Zuko frowned as he sat down to dinner, glancing at the empty seat beside him.  Most of the week he’d eaten a quick dinner at his desk, surrounded by stacks of paperwork, but tonight he’d made a point of leaving his temporary office to have a civilized dinner with his girlfriend… only his girlfriend wasn’t there.  Her attendant, Lady Dang, had regretfully informed his servants that Lady Mai had yet to return from that day’s outing with the Avatar.

 

Zuko knew he didn’t have any real right to be irritated with Aang and Mai; after all, Mai had been forced to eat dinner with just her attendant for company for most of the week, while Zuko tried to simultaneously deal with the international issues raised in the Peace Summit and run their nation long-distance via messenger hawks.  (If only he had people back home he could really trust to run the country in his stead!  He’d finally appointed two different councilmen as co-regents, two men who cordially hated each other, counting on them to watch each other like rival dragons over a hippo-cow carcass; if nothing else, each would prevent the other from trying to seize power in his absence.)  But he was still irritated; it was hard enough to set aside any time to relax at all, let alone spend time with the girl he loved.

 

He idly wondered, as he started on his egg flower soup, whether Mai and Aang were just as irritated as he was right now.  Aang had been pulling Agni-knew-what crazy antics over the last five days, trying to make Mai laugh out loud, when Zuko counted himself successful if he could just get her to smile.  Jokes, pranks and general silliness usually had Mai rolling her eyes at the jokester and asking pointedly if he’d let her know when he was finished being an idiot.  Aang could be surprisingly patient at times, but after so many days without success…

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

“Almost there… Just a little bit more… Ready? …Go!” Aang’s soft whisper turned into a shout as he leaped out of their hiding place, Mai right beside him, to pounce on the herd moving down the trail. Bleating in panic at what they thought was a predator attack, the hopping llamas began living up to their name, bouncing everywhere as they tried to escape.

 

It was really tricky to grab and climb aboard a hopping llama, but more than worth it for the thrill of such a crazy ride!  Aang hung on to one llama’s thick neck for all he was worth as it bounced like mad, trying to buck him off, and caught a glimpse of Mai doing the same with another llama, and laughing like a hyena-seal.   

 

When the llamas crossed a stream in their panicked flight, he hollered, “Into the water, Mai!” just before he jumped off with a tremendous splash, so he wouldn’t drown the poor thing with so much extra weight on its back.

 

When Mai staggered out of the creek after him, wringing water out of her clothes, he bent a stiff breeze to dry them both off.  But the jouncing ride, the water and the blow-drying left her hair a completely tangled mess, so she called for a halt before going back to Appa to get her hair fixed again.

 

While he was waiting for her to finish combing her hair, Momo came gliding up from where he’d been waiting with Appa, chattering in greeting. But just before landing on his shoulder, the lemur’s ears perked up and he turned sharply to the left, his attention captured by something else. A second later, Aang heard it too; a piteous mewling coming from somewhere nearby, a little animal crying for help. 

 

He and Momo investigated, and after rounding a nearby boulder they found a tragic sight: the carcasses of a bearded cat and a rat-viper tangled together in death. The rat-viper’s fangs were sunk into the bearded cat’s flank, but the cat’s fangs had bitten into and broken its spine.  Most animals stayed far away from rat-vipers; the bearded cat must have fought it as a last resort… Probably to protect the tiny red-furred kitten mewling while nudging the bearded cat’s shoulder, calling pathetically for its mother; a call that she would never answer again.

 

“Awww…” Aang half-whispered.  The kitten heard them, gave a tiny hiss of fright and started to scurry off into the underbrush, but he airbent a tiny but powerful dust-devil wind to cut it off and send it tumbling back towards them.  Then he untucked the front of his tunic, grabbed it while it was still disoriented and scooped it up to bundle into the loose folds of fabric so it couldn’t claw him. 

 

“It’s okay, little guy, I won’t hurt you,” he murmured to the kitten as it mewed in fright while he was wrapping it up.  “Poor little fella… uh, little gal,” he corrected himself after a quick peek under the tail.  “I bet Katara will like you!”  And the more he thought about it, the more he thought it was a really good idea.  Katara didn’t have a pet of her own, and taking care of the kitten would give her someone new to make a fuss over. 

 

Perched on his shoulder, Momo chattered urgently and tugged on his collar; the lemur wasn’t happy about something.  Aang gave his pet a mildly annoyed look.  “Yes, Momo, I remember how well you got along with the last bearded cat we met, but this one’s just a baby! She’s not going to hurt you, and Bumi told me once that if you start raising them young, they make really good pets. She’ll get along just fine with you when she’s older.”

 

They went back to the clearing that Mai was in, just as she finished combing out her hair and stood up, cocking her head at them in curiosity.  “What have you got there? It’s noisy, whatever it is.”

 

“A bearded cat’s kitten,” Aang said, carefully showing her; the red-furred head poking out of the bundle of fabric didn’t have the distinctive beard-looking tuft of fur on its chin yet, but it would grow in eventually.  “She’s all alone; the mother died fighting a rat-viper.  I’m going to give her to Katara to raise for a pet!  We should head back soon, though; I think she’s hungry, and all there’s nothing left in the food-sack we brought today.”

 

Mai peered closely at the wailing kitten, commenting, “It probably wouldn’t have wanted rice-balls, anyway; those are tiny fangs in its mouth.  Do you think it’s weaned yet, able to eat meat?”

 

“Um.  I think so?”

 

“All right.  Wait here; I saw something scurry past while you were gone,” as Mai got up from the rock she’d been sitting on and headed purposefully off into the undergrowth.  Aang and Momo traded uneasy looks, but waited there with the kitten… and barely a minute later they heard a soft shthuk and a high-pitched squeak abruptly cut off. Momo’s ears lay flat as he let out a frightened eep, and Aang grimaced.  Moments later Mai came back into the clearing with one of her many blades in her hand, and a tiny meadow-vole’s carcass impaled on the tip.

 

“You didn’t have to go kill anything!” Aang complained as she drew near. 

 

Mai gave him a mildly disgusted look as she sat back down on the rock with her bloody trophy, dropping it in her lap as she wiped the blade clean on a sleeve before sheathing it.  “You said she’s hungry; do you want the little beast wailing all the way back to Omashu?  Just give it here, if you’re so worried about bloodstains on your pants.”

 

Aang handed over the kitten with a look of resentment, and drew back as Mai carefully held the kitten down in her lap right next to the dead meadow-vole.  The kitten got the idea right away and grabbed for the tiny carcass, sinking her itty-bitty claws into the kill to drag it closer to her jaws.  Aang shuddered and looked away, protesting, “It’s not about bloodstains! I’m a monk, and we hold all life as sacred!  We don’t even eat meat!”

 

“Except eggs,” Mai said absently, as she watched the kitten tear into and eat the dead meadow-vole, frowning in distaste at the sight but not recoiling from it.

 

“Eggs aren’t meat!” Aang snapped almost automatically.  If they were, the monks wouldn’t have made egg custard tarts or egg-flower soup for all the kids in the temples to eat while he was growing up! Monk Gyatso wouldn’t have said it was okay for him to eat all those egg-based dishes Bumi’s and Kuzon’s parents had made for them, when they were visiting while traveling the world together.

 

That made Mai stare at him in surprise.  “You’re kidding, right?”  When Aang didn’t say that he was, Mai’s look changed to one of disdain.  “And people say Zuko doesn’t think things through…”

 

“Hey!”

 

The look Mai was giving him now was almost scornful.  “Aang, birds and lizards are both made of meat.  Eggs come from birds and lizards, and in turn, new lizards and birds come from those eggs.  So how can they not be meat?  Eggs are just meat that hasn’t developed enough to be chewy yet.”

 

Aang abruptly felt so dizzy that he had to sit down right then and there. He just sat there and stared at the ground, while Momo chirped worriedly on his shoulder.  He thought about all the egg-based dishes he’d eaten in his lifetime… and all the little pig-chickens or other animals that could have come from those eggs if they’d been hatched instead of eaten.

 

After a while he whispered, “The… the monks never said…”

 

“And point out their own hypocrisy?” Mai asked bluntly.  “Of course they didn’t.”

 

“Katara… Katara never said!” Aang realized he was starting to shout, but at that moment he didn’t care.  “We’ve been traveling together for a year and a half now, and she makes Sokka put any animals he’s hunted in a sack so I won’t see them, and she always makes dishes without meat for my dinners, but she’s gathered eggs from nests for me and she never said!!” Though there’d been a few times when it seemed like she was about to say something while he was eating, but always bit her lip and said she wasn’t thinking of anything in particular whenever he asked…

 

He looked up from the ground while he was ranting, to see Mai looking back at him with what seemed like sympathy in her eyes. She said almost gently, “She probably wanted to protect you; mothers always want to protect their children from the worst.”

 

That got him rocketing to his feet, his fists clenched as he shouted, “I’m not a child!”  He might have still technically been a child when he’d first emerged from the iceberg into a war-torn world at twelve years old, but he’d experienced so much in that last year of the war, it felt more like he’d lived three years in that time! And now he was very nearly fourteen years old; definitely not a child anymore! He added emphatically, “And Katara is not my mother!”

 

Most people drew back in a hurry when the Avatar started shouting, but Mai just gave him another look of Not Impressed, completely unafraid; probably because she was used to dealing with Zuko and Azula.  “Biologically, obviously not.  But she sure acts like your mother, and don’t try to deny it; you’ve come around the palace too often and both Zuko and I have seen it happen.  Oh, she tries to be discreet about it when strangers are around, but just last week at the dinner with King Bumi, right before the food fight started I overheard her hissing at you to ‘sit up straight’ and ‘chew with your mouth closed’.”

 

He couldn’t deny that had happened, just as she said… and just like Toph had said once, back during the war.  Katara tried to be motherly with just about everybody except Mai and Zuko, but she was the most motherly around him. And like a mother or a guardian would, she’d tried to protect him from his own people’s hypocrisy… All the anger went out of him with a whoosh of breath as he slumped, suddenly depressed beyond words. 

 

A long and uncomfortable silence stretched between them before Mai said suddenly, “I’m not going to apologize for speaking the truth.  But I could have been… nicer about it, maybe. I don’t normally do ‘nice’; I leave that to Ty Lee.”

 

“Katara’s nice to people, most of the time,” Aang found himself mumbling.  And as for Aang himself… He still remembered that time Sokka told him quite seriously that he was too nice.

 

“Yeah.  But nice people have a tendency to keep things from you, tell white lies or just continually change the subject whenever you ask, because they’re sure you would get upset to hear the truth.” Mai’s lips twitched in a bitter almost-smile.  “A lot like politicians, really, but politicians’ lies are usually more for their own benefit than yours.”

 

“Jin Wei? Wei Jin? I know those guys! I mean, I really knew them! I may not look it, but I'm 112 years old. I was there a hundred years ago on the day you're talking about...”

 

That hadn’t been a ‘little white lie’, that had been a whale-sized white whopper. But he’d had a good reason for making that up; he’d been trying to bring an end to the feud between the Zhang and Gan Jin villagers!  And it had worked, too! 

 

But that hadn’t been the only time he’d told a ‘white lie’, or just changed the subject instead of telling the truth.  And sometimes it was because he hadn’t wanted people to be upset with him, for something he’d done--or hadn’t done.  “It went great with the Guru. I completely mastered the Avatar State!”  That lie had sure come back to haunt him later…

 

Sokka was right; he really was too nice, and in a way that wasn’t at all good.

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

Mai suppressed a sigh as she looked at Aang, now leaning slumped against a tree and just staring at the dirt again.  Just great… She’d ruined what could have been a genuine and possibly even great friendship, due to her habitual refusal to be the perfectly nice ‘diplomat’s wife’ that her parents wanted her to be.

 

They’d been having a wonderful outing today, starting with some more aerobatics on the way to the valley with the herd of wild hog-monkeys.  This time Aang had let her hang onto Appa’s head-fur and call out the directions for barrel rolls, loop-the-loops and steep dives with flipping turns, even if he’d still insisted on a safety rope in case she lost her grip. 

 

Then they’d found the valley that Aang had remembered from over a century ago, that still had a herd of hog-monkeys living in it.  Riding those wild beasts had been such a thrill!  She’d ended up with rips in both the left sleeve and right pant leg of her áo dai from the fight they’d put up, and she knew Lady Dang would be appalled when they got back and try to throw her outfit in the trash, but she was already planning to secretly keep it as a souvenir; something to treasure and reminisce over when she was stuck in the Fire Nation palace for the rest of her days.

 

Then on the way back they’d stopped in a wide meadow with a stream, so Appa could eat and drink his fill while they picnicked on rice balls and salad rolls.  And while they’d been there, Aang had spotted the tracks of a hopping llama and declared that they were just as much fun to ride as hog-monkeys!  So they’d followed the tracks for hours until  they spotted the elusive herd, and then dashed around and ahead to find the perfect spot for sneaking close enough to catch a couple of them and get a ride…

 

Nearly every day she spent with Aang had turned into a new Best Day Ever, and she was sorry to see it all coming to an end so soon.  But it was probably for the best; she already knew that Royal Consorts wouldn’t be allowed to do any of the activities she’d just discovered she loved doing.  Breaking off her friendship with Aang now would remove the greatest source of temptation in the future.

 

She turned her gaze from Aang to the kitten in her lap, which was still eating its fill of dead meadow-vole.  But soon enough it stopped eating, yawned and relaxed under her carefully firm grip.  “I think the kitten here is done eating; might as well go back now,” she said dully as she brushed the bloody remains of the carcass off her lap.  She pulled up a front panel of her áo dai and tucked it all around the kitten, which gave only minimal protest at the handling; evidently it had decided that any creature who fed it couldn’t be all that bad.  She stood up with the bundled kitten in her hands as Aang slowly pushed himself upright, and they trudged silently back to where they’d left Appa.

 

Night had nearly fallen by the time they got back to Omashu.  But just as they got close enough to distinguish individual buildings in the city, Aang said abruptly over his shoulder at her, “The more I think about it, Mai, the more I think you should have the kitten instead of Katara.  She already likes you, you can get fresh meat for her until she’s big enough to hunt for herself, and you should have a pet to keep you company too!” 

 

“What?  I don’t like animals!” Mai protested.

 

Aang twisted around to look pointedly first at the kitten purring in Mai’s lap, then at Mai’s hands—she’d been petting it, she realized with a blush, for at least the last fifteen minutes—and then at Mai’s face as he said firmly, “Yes, you do.”

 

“But… I’ve never had a pet before!  I can’t…”

 

“Why not?”

 

Because her parents had never let her have a pet; her father had allergies.

 

Because Azula had been cruel even as a child, and it had been dangerous for any small animals found in her vicinity.

 

Because Lady Dang was allergic to animals too.

 

After a long pause, Mai said slowly, “No good reason,” as she found a small, sly smile tugging at her lips.

 

They ended up circling the city a few times on Appa, while they worked out a story explaining why Mai simply had to adopt the kitten; something that Lady Dang wouldn’t dare object to.  After they’d worked out the details and were coming in for a landing at the royal stables, Aang said casually, “It’s too bad that Sokka’s not here; he’s good at coming up with ideas and devices.  But can you sew?”

 

“My mother made it plain that sewing is for peasants and servants,” Mai said dryly.  “What she taught me was embroidery.  Which is close to the same thing, but more decorative and less useful.  Why do you ask?”

 

“Well, maybe you can, ah, ‘embroider’ a little carry-pouch for the kitten, something like a rabbaroo’s pouch, to keep her with you until she’s big enough to keep up on her own.  It wouldn’t be fair to either the kitten or Lady Dang if we left her with your attendant the next time we go out, and I’m pretty sure she’s not tame enough yet to just be left with Appa either.” 

 

“The next time?” Mai blurted out in shock.  “You mean, you still want me to go out and have fun with you?”

 

“Well, yeah!  We’re friends, aren’t we?” as Aang gave her a truly puzzled look, as if bewildered that she might think otherwise.

 

The sheer shock of what Aang was saying must have knocked part of her brain unconscious; the part that controlled her mouth.  Because even though she knew that the smart and politic thing to do would be to simply smile and agree with him, Mai realized she was saying like an idiot, “But, today… I made you feel terrible.”

 

“You told me the truth,” Aang said somberly.  “And it was about stuff that I should have figured out for myself, if I’d just thought about it at all.  I’m still really bothered by it, yes, but blaming you for pointing out the truth would be about as unfair as blaming you for the rain when all you did was say it’s raining.  So… we’re friends?” as he looked at her hopefully.

 

Mai felt an unaccustomed warmth spreading from her chest outwards, and she just knew she was grinning like a fool, but at that moment she didn’t care as she agreed, “We’re friends.”  

 

But for some reason that just made Aang stare wide-eyed at her, almost in shock.  “Wow,” he whispered.

 

“What?” as she lost her smile, feeling self-conscious under his stare.

 

“Uh, sorry, I just—I just figured out why Zuko’s in love with you,” Aang said, looking a little embarrassed. “Because just for a second there, when you smiled like that, you were beautiful!”

 

Then he apparently realized the implied insult in what he’d just said, because he hurried to reassure her, “Not that you’re not pretty all the time!  I mean, of course you’re pretty all the time, but—and I’m not trying to make a pass at you, I’m just making an observation!  I…aauuggh!” as Aang finally gave up and flopped back onto Appa’s fur with a groan.  “Just don’t kill me, okay?  And don’t tell Zuko I said anything either, because he really will kill me!  Or just laugh at me…”

 

“Truly a fate worse than death,” Mai said with amusement.  “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to him.  But we’d better get back to the palace, before Lady Dang tells Zuko how long we’ve been gone and he starts sending out search parties.”

 

Aang agreed, and in short order they were walking back to the palace, leaving Appa with a bushel of cabbages and in the caring and capable hands of the stable master.  “So, have you decided on a name for her?” Aang asked, indicating the kitten in Mai’s hands.

 

Mai had never named a pet before in her life, but it didn’t take long for her to think about it before deciding aloud, “I’ll call her Neko.”

 

“Just ‘cat’?” Aang echoed, looking a little scandalized.  “I’d expect that from Sokka, yeah, but why just Neko?”

 

Mai shrugged.  “I’ve never raised a cat before, but I do know that no matter what you name them, they never come when you call.  So what’s the point?”

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

When they got back to the Fire Nation guests’ wing of the palace, Aang just put on a serious expression and kept his mouth shut while Mai did all the talking with Lady Dang.  She’d said earlier that after years of watching both her diplomat father and Princess Azula lie with perfectly straight faces, she was pretty sure she could tell the whopper they’d concocted better than he could and make it believable.

 

And she did, too; Aang could tell that Lady Dang really bought the story that Lady Mai had been called upon by the spirits of Oma and Shu themselves, speaking through Aang when he’d been in an Avatar trance earlier, to repent and atone for her family’s part in briefly subjugating the city of Omashu during the last year of the war. And as a sign of her atonement, she was to take in, feed and care for a helpless Earth Kingdom creature. 

 

“But… must it be a young bearded cat?” Lady Dang asked helplessly, her eyes red-rimmed and nose sniffling even though she was standing well across the room from them.  “My allergies…”

 

Mai gave an indifferent shrug.  “Well, the spirits’ original suggestion was for me to adopt an Earth Kingdom orphan child.  I’d pointed out to them that doing so might raise questions of succession after Zuko and I are married, since a man marrying a woman with children is generally assumed to adopt them as his heirs, but…”

 

“No, no, the kitten is fine!”  Lady Dang squawked in alarm, waving her hands to ward off the very suggestion.  “But… I do beg your pardon Lady Mai, but I must, with great regret, tender my resignation as your attendant.  I will be unable to fulfill my duties if I’m incapacitated by your new companion whenever I get too close.”

 

Mai was graciousness itself as she said, “Lady Dang, I completely understand.  But let us not send word back to my parents just yet of your resignation; they would not understand why, and would not be inclined to give you the good references you surely deserve.”

 

That was Aang’s cue to speak up, trying hard to be as solemn and gracious to the defeated as Mai herself was.  “I shall speak to King Bumi immediately but discreetly, and he shall see about finding you new living quarters nearby.  So far as the rest of the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation will know, you will still be Lady Mai’s faithful attendant and chaperone, until your airship returns to the Fire Nation.”

 

As it turned out, he didn’t get to see Bumi that night; he tried, but his oldest friend was in conference with somebody else and had left strict orders to not be disturbed, unless the intruder had either a shirshu or a platypus-bear with them.  Aang scratched his arrow for a second, wondering what was going on; he knew Jun the bounty hunter had a shirshu, but who would own a platypus-bear, and why would Bumi want to meet anyone owning either? Then he set that aside for later and asked the majordomo if his staff could discreetly open and prepare another suite in the Fire Nation guests’ wing, with no questions asked.

 

“Another guest suite has already been aired out and made up for the Lady Dang, for her to move into at her convenience,” the majordomo said with a bow.  Aang stared at him in surprise—he hadn’t mentioned Lady Dang by name, hadn’t even said it was a woman needing a new place to sleep!  How had they known? But when he tried to ask, the majordomo either didn’t understand the question or just deliberately sidestepped the answer, and Aang finally gave up and went back to let Lady Dang know that her new guest suite was ready.

 

 Lady Dang thanked them both before bidding Lady Mai and the Avatar a good evening and backing out of the room, still blowing her nose.  Mai and Aang waited until a good five seconds after the door closed, before exchanging gleeful high-fives.

 

To be continued…

Chapter Text

 

The next day, all of Omashu awoke to stormy weather. The skies were pouring rain, with frequent flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder as additional incentive to stay indoors.

 

Mai looked at the weather outside and sighed gloomily. So much for a day of fun with Aang… She knew without asking that he’d rather keep Appa out of this weather if there weren’t any emergencies calling for the Avatar’s attention. Driving rain might not be a problem for a sky bison, but lightning was another matter.

 

Huddled in her arms, Neko shivered in fright and tried to burrow deeper into the crook of her elbow as lightning split the sky overhead, with thunder growling right on its heels. “Ssshhh… We’re fine so long as we stay inside,” Mai told the kitten reassuringly. “I’ve seen the palace’s lightning rods, and they worked just fine in all the storms that passed through when I lived here last year.” She felt only a little silly talking so seriously to a tiny fluffball, since Aang talked to Momo and Appa all the time and they seemed to respond to him.

 

She turned in surprise when she heard a knock on the door, wondering who it could be; Zuko had already stopped by on his way to the day’s summit meeting, the palace servants had also stopped by already with breakfast, and Lady Dang would probably never stop by again so long as she feared Neko was inside. She opened the door to find Aang standing on the other side with Momo, smiling at her as he said, “Ready to try something else that’s fun?”

 

“You really want to go flying in this weather?” Mai asked in disbelief.

 

Aang shook his head. “Nuh-uh; Appa hates thunderstorms. But there are other fun things we can do right here in the palace—and right under it, too! There’s a system of caves down below, with underground streams and even waterfalls; Katara, Sokka and I saw one of them when we came here right after I woke up in this century. But before we go exploring caves, have you ever tried baking?”

 

“Baking?” Mai looked at him blankly. The only times she’d ever set foot in a kitchen in her life, were to tell the staff there what her father wanted for dinner that night. Cooking and baking were for servants, not noblewomen.

 

“Sure! It’s kind-of like making art, but it’s art that you can eat!” he said cheerfully.

 

After a short pause, Mai gave a slow smile as she said, “My mother always said I needed to learn another art form.” Her calligraphy was perfect because her tutors had accepted no less from her, and she was good at embroidery too, probably because it involved sharp needles. But her mother had despaired of her learning another form of art, something pleasing to the eye or ear that would make her a more desirable bride for royalty or a nobleman later on. Her voice was ill-suited for singing, she just could not get the knack of plucking strings to make music on a pipa or koto, and her efforts at painting were better not spoken of. Her mother had said repeatedly that calligraphy and embroidery simply weren’t enough; that in order to ‘compete’ with the other daughters of noble houses for good husbands (as if Mai really wanted to, but her wishes had never mattered in that regard) she needed to master a third form of art…

 

Mother would have a fit if she found out that for her third art form, Mai had ‘mastered the art’ of baking. A fit that she’d have to work hard to suppress when she found out that the Avatar himself had been Mai’s tutor!

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

At the summit, Zuko took another deep breath, willing his hands to stay calmly folded in his lap, and wished that he hadn't eaten breakfast that morning. He'd choked down a few bites earlier, knowing he needed to keep his strength up, but with the way his guts were roiling now he feared that breakfast was about to make a repeat appearance, right on the table in front of him.

 

At the start of the summit meeting, one of Bumi's ministers (a man who apparently tried to compensate for his king's unpredictable antics by organizing everything else in sight) had given everyone copies of the general agenda, what topics of interest were to be covered and on what day they would be discussed. Nearly all the delegates had appreciated the agenda's organization, being able to see when their grievances would be aired and their demands discussed.

 

Upon reading the agenda for the first time, Zuko had appreciated the scheduled discussions very much, because he'd already known most of what the Earth Kingdom's and Water Tribes' demands would be, thanks to his talks with Aang and Katara on their frequent visits to the capital. He'd known ahead of time, and so prepared to meet as many of the other nations' demands as could be allowed without sacrificing his own countrymen's wellbeing to any serious extent. The first few days of the summit had been filled with his making concession after concession to the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes, while still putting up enough resistance to make it clear that he and his people would not be walked all over.

 

Reparations for damages done to Ba Sing Se during the occupation? He'd negotiated with them to have that paid partially in gold, and partially in labor provided by his nation's soldiers, many of them engineers and architects and the rest of them at least having strong backs and arms (and no civilian jobs waiting for them back home; far better to pay them to fix what they'd wrecked than to see them going hungry and rioting in the streets.) Once an agreement had been reached on the number of men and amount of gold he would provide, he'd sent hawk-messages to the appropriate generals before having a heavy chest full of gold brought in and dropped right in front of the ministers from Ba Sing Se.

 

Withdrawal of the garrisons in Gaipan, Hsing Tao, Jushu and in twenty-four other places across the Earth Kingdom? The ministers should check their messages; that had already been done by the time the summit had convened. Withdrawal of all Fire Nation troops and civilians from the three newest colonies, those established within the last five years? Zuko had laid out the reports from the colony governors and military leaders in charge of the withdrawal; the last barge of civilians with their belongings had just left port to return to the Fire Nation, where a new administration designed to help them resettle had been established.

 

There had been some resistance to evacuation in those newest colonies, some hotheads who had declared they'd rather burn all the fields and buildings down to scorched earth than give it back to the Earth Kingdom. But that had been dealt with, the resistance neutralized and the lands vacated. Zuko had said, very seriously with just a hint of a smile peeking out, that the Earth Kingdom had better send in some farmers soon, before all the winter wheat that had been planted before evacuation was lost to weeds and wild foragers.    

 

Zuko had dug in his heels on some matters of reparation, such as the reparations demanded for Gaipan, and reparations for the failed invasion of the Northern Water Tribe. He was very glad Aang hadn't been present for that session, and even more glad that Katara had almost apologetically supported him, when he'd said grimly that he had reliable reports that the Northern Water Tribe had already scavenged plenty of metal, coal and other materials from the dozens of capsized and sunken ships lost in that disastrous venture; ships plundered for all that could be cut free and hauled away, while the bodies of thousands of dead Fire Nation sailors and soldiers were just sunk in deeper waters--or callously used for leopard-shark bait!--instead of returned for honorable cremation.

 

Zuko had declared that he would not pay the Northern Water Tribe a single copper coin in addition to all the plunder they'd taken, until after they acknowledged the Fire Nation's far greater losses from that catastrophic event and returned the bodies of his people. Chief Arnook still wasn't speaking to him after that, but somebody--maybe Katara, maybe Chief Hakoda --must have spoken to him after the day's session had ended, because the Northern Water Tribe chief had at least dropped some of his blatant hostility afterwards.

 

In blatant contrast to his dealing with Chief Arnook, Zuko had not only paid in full the minor amount that Hakoda had asked for in reparations, to help the Southern Water Tribe rebuild, he'd urged the chief to accept far more than that; two shiploads of material goods that, after months of exchanging letters with Sokka, he was sure they could use to rebuild their nation to its former greatness and possibly beyond.     And if anyone accused him of favoring the Southern Water Tribe just because he had friends from there... well, they might be right, but that wasn't the only reason he'd given them more than they'd actually asked for.

 

But today, what he was about to say would probably turn to ashes any goodwill he'd managed to generate for himself and his people with the other world leaders and diplomats. So he took slow and deep breaths, told his stomach to behave itself, kept his hands calmly folded, and waited for Bumi's minister to finish his little speech he gave at the start of each session. The wording of the speech varied from day to day, but the essence was the same: a general reminder to everyone of the importance of restoring peace and balance to the world, followed by specific reminders of the topics for that day's agenda.

 

Finally but still too soon, Minister Bian finished with, "...by a separate committee. Now then, if all the scribes are ready," as he nodded to where the official scribes were poised and waiting with their chalk slates and other materials for taking notes, to be turned into official recordings of the session afterwards, "We shall begin with the next series of evacuations of the Fire Nation colonies."

 

Zuko had already noted that one of Minister Bian's less pleasing habits was repeating common knowledge and even the most recent events for the record (the delegates' private opinions as to why, differed between a compulsive disorder brought on by too much association with Bumi, and Bian having a secret grudge against the poor scribes that had to record everything.) And sure enough, the next words out of Bian's mouth were "Let the record show that it had been previously agreed upon, in messages exchanged between the Firelord, the Avatar, and His Majesty the Earth King, for the colonies to be evacuated and land returned to the Earth Kingdom in reverse order of their colonization, as the newest colonies had the least number of people to resettle in their native land and fewer institutions to dismantle."

 

After glancing at the scribes already hard at work, Bian continued with a distinctly smug tone to his voice, "Let the record also show that the Fire Nation's last two conquests and attempts at colonization before the end of the war, the Earth Kingdom cities of Omashu and Ba Sing Se, were restored to Earth Kingdom sovereignty even before the current Firelord's coronation; Omashu being freed single-handedly from the old Fire Nation regime's tyranny by the supreme efforts of our own City-King, His Highness King Bumi," as he bowed low towards where his sovereign was seated."

 

Bumi gave one of those snorting cackles that never failed to make Zuko wince a little, as he declared, "Most fun I've had in years!"

 

"After them, the three recently established Fire Nation colonies of Gouzen, Mugoi and Hakanai, so named after they were built upon the ravaged remains of the Earth Kingdom cities of Xin Nian, Xhǐ Wang and Judu, were scheduled to be evacuated. Let the record show that Firelord Zuko brought with him records to prove, and Earth Kingdom couriers have independently verified, that those three cities have now been evacuated of all Fire Nation soldiers and citizens, and the land restored to Earth Kingdom rule."

 

For Agni's sake, get on with it, Zuko silently screamed behind his teeth, while forcing his expression to remain blandly pleasant, or as pleasant as a face like his could get anyway.

 

"Let the record also show that for a period spanning two decades, between eight and twenty-nine years ago, no Earth Kingdom cities of significant size were conquered. However, twenty-nine years ago--"

 

--Firelord Azulon chose to temporarily halt advances in territory in order to consolidate the gains of the last five decades, stamping out the scattered embers of unrest that still threatened the colonies, the memory of Zuko's old tutor helpfully supplied. Zuko suppressed a twitch and slammed that door shut in his mind, before the old man could start expounding on the methods of consolidation and at what point Azulon had decided the Fire Nation was ready to take on the walls of Ba Sing Se again.

 

"--the colonies of Kouritsu and Jitsumu were established, both in the same year. Firelord Zuko," Minister Bian said, looking straight at him--and smiling. A genuinely friendly smile, too, as he said, "since you have already proven yourself and your administration as models of efficiency, in completely evacuating the three aforementioned colonies in less than six months..."

 

Oh Agni, he was being complimented. Very nearly the first time anybody besides Katara had smiled at him and complimented him since the start of this damn summit... Why couldn't Bian have been this nice to him yesterday?! Not today, not moments before he had to make his announcement!

 

"...you may have already come up with a schedule and timetable for evacuation of the next two colonies," Bian continued with that smile. "If so, would you please share that schedule with the rest of the delegates?"

 

This is it. Zuko took a deep breath, slowly stood up, and said clearly, "I do not have a schedule or timetable for evacuating the colonies of Kouritsu and Jitsumu..."

 

As expected, Bian's smile quickly faded away.

 

Zuko continued, "Because those colonies will not be evacuated. Nor will any other colonies that have been in place for more than thirty years."

 

The hall erupted in noise, as most of the delegates jumped to their feet and began shouting, but Zuko took all his uncle's lessons on breathing control--useful for more than firebending--and pitched his voice to cut through the chaos and carry throughout the hall: "Most of the troops that were pulled back from the scattered garrisons have been redeployed to the older colonies, to defend their city walls and people from attack if that proves necessary. But I would urge the other nations to accept my oath and guarantee that those colonies will expand no further into Earth Kingdom territory, and simply leave them be."

 

There was a lot more shouting, including Katara crying out in betrayal, "Zuko, how could you?! We trusted you!" But he couldn't listen to those words now, and didn't dare turn to see her expression; he couldn't afford to let her have even the slightest chance to fracture his resolve. His people were depending on him to hold the line, to protect them as a sovereign ruler must!

 

One of the delegates from Ba Sing Se pulled a dagger out of his robes and started brandishing it, to Zuko's complete lack of surprise; one of the primary rules of the summit was 'No Weapons Allowed', but after years spent around Mai and other warriors, he'd spotted the telltale signs of concealed weapons on at least six people in the last three sessions. But one dagger being wielded so clumsily (no technique at all, Master Piandao wouldn't even bother to look at him, he might as well be wielding chopsticks) was of far less concern to Zuko than the benders he'd also spotted in the last few days:

 

Pakku was on his feet and scowling, but keeping his hands down flat on the table; angry but not offering threat at the moment. Katara (don'tdon'tdon'tlookatherface) was on her feet as well, and with one hand at her hip where her waterskin normally rested, but it must have been left in her suite in accordance with the 'no weapons' policy. Not that it would have stopped her from making use of all the water in pitchers and vases around the room, but she wasn't making any waterbending gestures right now (thank Agni.)

 

Bumi--definitely the most powerful earthbender in the room, and the most unpredictable-- was frowning, but looking more thoughtful than angry, and glancing more at the other Earth Kingdom delegates than at the Fire Nation's table (thank you even more, Agni). Lord Zuni from Paman was scowling, but keeping his seat and his hands tucked in his sleeves. That assistant to Lao Bei Fong--Zuko still didn't know his name, just that he moved like an earthbender--was poised to defend his master, but not to attack; he wouldn't make the first move.   That just left Xan Pho--

 

And the carved stone statue of Avatar Kyoshi that was already rising up from where it had been standing in the northwest corner of the room, and was now soaring as directed by Xan Pho's clenched fist, straight at Zuko's table. Damn.

 

The statue was too big to dodge easily, and even if he scrambled out of the way in time, his loyal aides would still be in the line of impact. Zuko sprang to his feet, preparing to blast it back, praying it would be seen as a purely defensive move but knowing in his sinking heart that it would be seen as 'typical firebender aggression' instead--

 

But suddenly the statue stopped in midair, and then swung around to head straight for the Ba Sing Se table where Xan Pho was standing, now with a shocked look on his face. Avatar Kyoshi's form slammed down to stand right in front of the table, that coldly beautiful face staring down at the delegates--and then with a sharp rumble of stone moving, the statue's arm swung out to whack the unruly earthbender over the head with a fan.   Even from across the room, Zuko could see Xan Pho's eyes cross before he collapsed back in his seat.

 

Then Avatar Kyoshi's stone face swiveled to glare down at the dagger-wielder. The man at first stared back upwards with the look of a squirrel-rabbit facing a hungry spider-snake, and then stared down at the dagger in his hand as if wondering how that had gotten there, before dropping it to the table with a clatter and backing halfway to the nearest door.

 

"Naughty, Naughty," Bumi tsked as he stood up, shucking off his robe as he did so, and everyone was abruptly reminded of just how Bumi had reclaimed his city from the Fire Nation in less than an hour.. and how he'd risen to the throne of Omashu in the first place. The fingers were gnarled and the head was balding and liver-spotted, but the rest of Bumi's body was still as powerfully muscled as a warrior in his prime of life. Not that muscles impressed Zuko all that much, not after seeing small and fragile-looking Toph in action, but he felt the ripples of raw chi spreading through the atmosphere and somehow knew, in the same way that he knew Agni's position in the sky, that Bumi had seized control of every stone and pebble and speck of dust in his entire castle. The King of Omashu would not allow his home to be used by any other earthbender for ill intent.

 

"We agreed before starting these meetings: no fighting," Bumi chided them all, and that quiet reminder was somehow terrifying.

 

After a moment of letting dead silence reign, Bumi continued, "I think some of the cranky kids in this room need a time-out. Today's session is over; we'll reconvene tomorrow at the usual time."

 

Nobody argued with his decision. Certainly not Zuko, who gave Bumi a deep bow of respect and gratitude for stopping the fight, before silently gesturing to his still-petrified aides to gather their wits and their things together.

 

Then Bumi cackled and added, "But for those people who just don't want to leave yet, let's have a game of charades!"

 

Nobody stayed for charades, either.

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

Down in the kitchen, Momo and Neko hadn’t been very happy at first, being stuck in a big stone box riddled with air holes. But the head chef had flat-out refused to let the animals roam free in his domain, even after Aang had played the Avatar card on him; the head chef had just glared at him while declaring that a true head chef feared no one, not even the Spirits themselves.   Neko wasn’t old enough or tame enough to be left on her own in Mai’s suite, and Momo had to stay with Aang as per King Bumi’s challenge, so making the giant stone box with a hundred finger-sized air holes and putting both pets in it was the best compromise they could come up with.

 

Both Neko and Momo had protested the confinement, but they’d put in a pile of assorted fresh fruits for Momo and a dish of slivered beef for Neko, and Aang had used more earthbending to scoot the giant box over to a spot close by the ovens. With plenty of food in their bellies and warmed by the heat from the ovens, pretty soon the lemur and kitten were curled up on a bed of towels together, fast asleep. “I knew they’d become friends,” Aang said with satisfaction as he looked in on them.

 

Mai looked in too, and gave a small but real smile before turning back to the mess of mixing bowls and ingredients scattered all over the counters. "So what's the next step?"

 

"Now they're ready to be put in the oven to bake!" And Aang showed her how to put the cakes on a baker's paddle and put them into the oven without getting burned. Then he flipped over the small hourglass the head chef had loaned them and declared, "Thirty minutes, and they'll be ready to pull out and eat. In the meantime, let's clean up the mess we made."

 

Mai arched a delicate eyebrow at that; weren't there kitchen servants for that sort of thing? But then she remembered Aang telling her that the Air Nomads of old hadn't had servants, so Aang was used to cleaning up after himself, or at least having Katara clean up after him. Well, she'd certainly dealt with worse things than a few dirty bowls and cooking utensils, while on the road with Azula and Ty Lee hunting the Avatar.

 

Cleaning up the mess they'd made in the kitchen turned out to be less tedious than she'd thought it would be, with the two of them working together. Aang even made the cleanup fun for a few moments, by using his airbending to gather up the spilled flour and make cloudy shapes with it in midair, like a tiny dancing Appa, before swirling it back into the canister.

 

When the cakes were ready to come out of the oven, Aang used his airbending again to fluff them up even higher, making them delightfully airy concoctions that looked as good as they smelled; Mai had to discreetly check to make sure she wasn't actually drooling. But to her surprise, Aang just looked wistful and sad instead of eager to eat. When she asked him if something was wrong, he said, "I'm just remembering the one who taught me how to bake these; Monk Gyatso."

 

And then he started going on and on about some Air Nomad monk that he'd known a hundred years ago.  Mai rolled her eyes and was about to interrupt that she'd asked if something was wrong with the cakes, not if he felt like telling his life's story, when something he said made her stop and stare. "Wait. Say that again? You... threw food at the temple elders?"

 

Aang's grin had a definite tinge of nostalgia to it. "Yup! We hit each one square in the face with a cake. And since they were fruit-filled cakes, the scent brought the lemurs out of the trees to jump on them and start licking their faces! Gyatso and I laughed so hard, my sides were still hurting a half-hour later..."

 

"You. Threw food. At temple elders," she repeated slowly. "Made laughingstocks of them... and you didn't get burned to a crisp for it. Or blown off a cliff, or whatever."

 

"Of course not! They weren't hurt by the cakes or the lemurs, just surprised, that's all," Aang said, giving her a disbelieving look like she was the one talking of impossibilities instead.

 

"So... so long as no one was hurt, as in physically hurt, it was okay to play jokes and pranks on people, even on your elders? Am I understanding you correctly? ...Or are you playing a joke on me right now?" Mai added suspiciously.

 

"Nuh-uh!" Aang said instantly, hands raised as if to ward off the very thought. "No playing jokes on friends from the Fire Nation until we've known each other at least a year. That rule's been passed been passed down among Air Nomads for generations."

 

She cocked an eyebrow at him, somehow feeling a little insulted. "There were special rules for treating people from my nation?"

 

"Just that one, really," Aang said almost apologetically. "Because so many Fire Nation folks are prideful, and hot-tempered, and... no offense, but some of you really can't take a joke."

 

Mai had to admit that, when compared to easy-going Aang, many of the people she knew back home could be considered prideful and hot-tempered. And the very fact that Aang's culture said it was okay to make laughingstocks out of anyone, so long as they weren't hurt, meant that they were a lot more easy-going as a whole than her own culture.

 

...Had been a lot more easy-going, she mentally amended, remembering how sad Aang had looked a few minutes ago, and the shadow of sadness that still remained in his eyes. While she refused to turn into another Zuko and feel guilty over something her ancestors had done decades before she'd been born, she knew too well that Aang was the last of his kind, because all the other airbenders had all been slaughtered by the Fire Nation over a century ago.

 

While she refused to feel guilty over it, she had already thought it was a shame that there weren't any more sky bison like Appa around, because it would be great if they could have one in the royal stables for Mai to ride sometimes. But now, for the first time, thinking about an entire culture of people who laughed a lot and played jokes on each other, and laughed even when the joke was on them... for the first time, she thought that the world was genuinely poorer for the loss of the Air Nomads.

 

Then Aang picked up a kitchen knife and pointed to the nearest cake, saying cheerfully, “Anyway, let’s have one cake here while they’re still warm, and take the rest with us for snacks while we’re exploring the caves!”

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

Out of deference to both King Bumi and her peacemaking boyfriend, Katara did some waterbending in her quarters while counting up to a full thousand, and then back down again. But once she was sure she had her temper firmly under control, she strapped her waterskin back in its accustomed place and marched out of there, straight to the Fire Nation delegates' wing.

She turned the corner to see Zuko’s guards standing in front of his suite, halfway down the hall. There were four guards altogether, double the number that Katara had learned was customary for guarding a single suite; Zuko was clearly expecting trouble. As well he should be! she thought as her fingers unconsciously flexed.

 

But the guards saw her in nearly the same instant she saw them, and the quartet traded swift glances among themselves before one of them stepped forward, their squad leader according to the extra insignia on his collar. After not-very-discreetly checking behind her to make sure she wasn’t leading an army of waterbenders against them, the guard gave her a deep bow of respect while saying, “Master Katara, the Firelord greets you and bids you to enter as you will.”

 

She probably should have been relieved and even gratified at the welcome, but instead she felt an additional flash of irritation at their complete lack of resistance. How dared they just…!

 

Okay, so she hadn’t calmed down completely, she admitted to herself. And it would be wrong to pick a fight with them just because she was still upset and angry with their sovereign. She gave a curt nod to acknowledge their greeting, and then walked through the door they held open for her, her head high but her hand hanging deliberately low, away from the waterskin at her waist.

 

She found Zuko inside the suite, sitting at a table that held a fancy tea set carefully placed in the center, and a sizeable stack of official-looking scrolls piled to one side. She could tell by the wisps of steam that the tea had been made some time ago, probably the moment Zuko had returned from the summit meeting, but the teacups were still untouched. Instead of the tea, Zuko was devoting attention to the open scroll lying across his lap, while a finger marked his place in another scroll partially unrolled in front of him. But the moment she crossed the threshold, Zuko looked up and saw her, and hurriedly tossed the scrolls aside as he scrambled to his feet.

 

“Welcome, Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe,” he formally intoned as he bowed to her, a deep bow of respect. As he straightened up, he gestured towards the tea set as he asked, “Would you care to take tea with me?”

 

No, she was not in the mood for this kind of whaleshit. “I would care to hear an explanation from you, Zuko,” she said through gritted teeth. “You can stuff your precious political protocol right back where it came from, and tell me why you decided to betray us again!”

 

Zuko sighed and slumped in response, the Firelord becoming a stressed and tired-looking teenager again. “I’ll try to explain, but please, just sit down, Katara,” he said as he practically collapsed back into his seat. He flicked a finger at the teapot as he added, “You and I both know that’s just more water you can use against me, anyway. But I really don’t want to fight with you, not right now… Please, sit?”

 

After another moment of glaring at him in silent warning, she sat down on the cushion across from his, in grudging acceptance of the invitation to tea. He picked up the teapot and cradled it in his hands for a few seconds, the wisps of steam from the spout growing as he reheated it, and then he poured tea for them both. “I know you see this as a betrayal, but technically it isn’t,” he said with an apologetic expression as he set a teacup in front of her. “If you’ll think back to those first talks, back in Ba Sing Se, I never outright agreed to what Aang and the Earth King proposed; I never talked about more than dismantling the most recently established colonies, and the garrisons.”

 

Katara frowned as she thought back to that day in the Earth King’s throne room, just a few weeks after the end of the war; the first and so far the only time that the Firelord and Earth King had ever met face-to-face.

 

The Earth King and his pet bear had been found in the wilderness by White Lotus agents just two days after the Comet’s passing, and had been restored to the throne by the Masters themselves in a ceremony held on the same day that Zuko had been crowned in the Fire Nation. The two monarchs taking their thrones on the same day, both having been brought there through joint efforts made by people of different nations, would be an important symbol for a new era of peace and the restoration of balance to the world… or so General Iroh had said in the hawk-message he’d sent, apologetically explaining why he wouldn’t be present at his own nephew’s coronation.

 

As soon as Zuko had been able to find a regent he could trust to not usurp the throne the moment his back was turned, he’d come with his girlfriend and the rest of Team Avatar to Ba Sing Se, to see his uncle again and to meet with the Earth King for preliminary peace talks. The impromptu tea party in the restored Jasmine Dragon had been relaxed and delightfully happy, following a meeting with the Earth King that had been positively inspiring… or so Katara had thought at the time.

 

True, the meeting had gotten off to an awkward start when King Kuei, looking at a map of the world that showed all the colonies that the Fire Nation has established within the Earth Kingdom's old borders, said that his people saw them as a scar on the face of the world... and then almost fell over himself apologizing to Zuko and swearing he hadn't meant anything personal. But Zuko had waved away the other monarch's embarrassment with a small smile, saying he wasn't offended, and it was indeed an apt metaphor.

 

Then Zuko had reached up with a fingertip to lightly brush against the scar on his face as he said solemnly, “A full century of war has inflicted many scars, on the world and on the people of every nation. Some of those scars can never be fully healed,” as he’d turned to look regretfully at Aang, who lowered his head to stare at the floor for a few moments, pain and sorrow written all over his face.

 

For a moment, wrapped up in the suddenly invoked but extremely unwelcome memory of the only time she had ever touched that scar, Katara hadn’t understood why Zuko was looking at Aang and why the Avatar was looking so sad. She’d never told anyone that while she and Zuko had been imprisoned together under Ba Sing Se, she had offered to try to heal his scar with water from the Spirit Oasis, but they had been interrupted before she could actually attempt it. She’d been sure Zuko would never tell anyone either, given all the horrible things he’d done afterwards, but had Zuko actually told Aang their shared secret? Was Aang actually sad that the spirits’ water had been used to save his life instead? But without the Avatar, the—

 

And then Katara had figured it out, and felt a little ashamed that it had taken her so long. It wasn’t about Zuko’s face at all; he and Aang had obviously been thinking about the Air Nomad culture, and all the airbenders who had been slaughtered a hundred years ago.

 

While Katara had still been silently berating herself for being so slow on the uptake, Zuko had turned to Kuei again to say, “But I have vowed to do everything I can to heal what can be healed, and restore balance to the world.”

 

“I am very glad to hear that,” Kuei had said with a smile. “So let us do what we can together to heal the scars left on the Earth Kingdom… starting with the largest of all,” as he’d gestured at the map on the wall.

 

Zuko had stared at the map in silence for a few moments, while Aang banished his glum expression and said cheerfully, “Yeah, returning all the colonies to the Earth Kingdom would go a long ways towards putting things back the way they used to be, and restoring balance to the world!”

 

“But it’s much easier said than done, to dismantle a colony and return the people of that colony to the Fire Nation,” Zuko had said slowly, rubbing under his chin in thought. “And… and in addition to the colonies, there are dozens of garrisons of troops stationed here and there across the Earth Kingdom. A few of those garrisons were shut down and the troops pulled back before the war’s end, by generals who wanted to spare their troops from being slaughtered along with everyone else by my fa—by Firelord Ozai’s insanity, when he attempted to burn the entire Earth Kingdom to ashes. But only a few garrisons, probably because there was only so much the generals could hide from Ozai’s spy network.”

 

Zuko had turned from the map to face Kuei again as he’d finished, “My first act after defeating Azula and claiming the throne was to order all troops to stand down and stop fighting, and to withdraw from the front lines to the nearest garrison or naval base to await further orders. But I haven’t done more than that yet; my first meeting with all the generals and admirals, to begin coordinating their return home, isn’t until next week. I’d bet that, even more than the colonies and the civilians living there, your people would welcome the removal of all those garrisons and the Fire Nation soldiers still walking in their midst.” And both Kuei and Aang had agreed emphatically.

 

Then they’d started discussing how to set about removing those troops and returning them to Fire Nation soil, or at least to the older colonies close to the Fire Nation for the meantime. Aang had volunteered to help out, flying to all the garrisons to ensure that the soldiers withdrew peacefully, and to ensure that revenge-minded Earth Kingdom folks didn’t attack them while they were withdrawing. And it had gone without saying that he’d have company on that mission; the day after the tea party at the Jasmine Dragon, Katara—now officially Aang’s girlfriend, sealed with a kiss on the tea shop’s terrace—and Sokka had climbed aboard Appa, and set out with Aang and a map provided by Zuko to the furthest troop garrison, to convey the Firelord’s personal message to the garrison’s commander and begin the troop withdrawals.   Zuko went home to the Fire Nation by airship instead, after promising that he’d do his best to have at least the three colonies of Gouzen, Mugoi and Hakanai vacated and returned to Earth Kingdom control within six months.

 

Dragging her mind back to the present, Katara frowned at Zuko sitting across the table and accused him, “When Kuei asked about removing them all, you distracted us by talking about the troop garrisons instead. You sneaky son of a leopard-shark, you never had any intention of giving up the older colonies!”

 

“No, I did not,” he said levelly, returning her stare without flinching. “And since you apparently still haven’t figured out why? Ask yourself this, Katara: is it justice to punish a little boy, to burn him or beat him black and blue, for a crime that his father committed?”

 

“What?! Of course it isn’t!”

 

“But what if his father’s dead already, so the boy is the only one left to punish for the crime? Suppose the boy is an adult instead, even with a family of his own to support, though still innocent of his father’s crime. Would it satisfy justice to punish him, under those circumstances? Would that restore balance?” The last words were said bitingly, clearly mocking the concept that they had all sworn dedication to only a few months ago.

 

Katara leaped to her feet and stood over him angrily. “Zuko, what are you getting at?! Stop talking in riddles, and tell me why you’re refusing to turn over those colonies!”

 

Zuko didn’t rise to his feet to oppose her, but she noticed his weight shifting; if she started getting violent, he’d be on his feet and firebending in an instant. “I am telling you why! Katara, the oldest colonies have belonged to the Fire Nation for generations. Entire families have been born there, lived there their entire lives, and even died there after having children of their own born on that same soil!   I know you guys went from island to island in the Fire Nation during the last few months of the war, but didn’t you ever visit any of the colonies?”

 

Katara stepped back a pace without meaning to, as she said hesitantly, “We did, once, on our way to the North Pole. I can't remember the colony's name now, but they were celebrating a… I think they called it a ‘Fire Days’ festival. There were people wearing masks and costumes, street vendors offering fire flakes and other spicy foods, puppet shows and firebending displays…”

 

A corner of Zuko’s mouth tugged upwards slightly in the ghost of a smile as he said, “Sounds like fun. Your timing was lucky; the vendors seem to reserve the best fire flakes just for selling at those festivals.”

 

She slowly sat back down at the table as she asked, “You’ve visited the colonies?”

 

He gave her an impatient look in response. “Of course I have. Katara, you know I was banished, unable to set foot within the Fire Nation’s traditional borders. And I had a ship full of men that needed feeding and clothing, and engines that needed fuel and other supplies to maintain them. Where would I have gotten most of the supplies we needed, if not at the colonies?”

 

“Mm.” Katara kept her lips firmly clamped over the first response that came to mind, one that she knew Zuko would take offense at. She knew him well enough by now to know that back during the war, when he and his crew had invaded Water Tribe villages and Earth Kingdom towns, he’d been strictly hunting for the Avatar, not raiding to steal rice and other supplies.

 

“Okay, yes, we went to military bases for supplies at least half the time,” he admitted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But if a colony was closer, Uncle Iroh would insist we go there instead, so the crew could enjoy some shore leave while we restocked or underwent repairs. Especially if there was a festival of some sort going on at the time. I could never prove it, but I’m pretty sure he and the cook were conspiring together, because we always seemed to run low on rice or out of some essential spice just as we were passing a colony, and often just as some festival was underway or ready to begin.”

 

He stared down into his teacup. “I never went to those festivals; I always claimed to be too busy training to be ready to confront the Avatar, but the truth was that I was too ashamed to be seen, and have kids and total strangers staring at my scar. But Uncle would always go, and he would always bring me back some fire flakes or peanut crackle. And while waiting for him to come back, I’d look out the porthole and sometimes I’d see children playing on the docks, laughing and having fun, until their mothers called them home to dinner. I’d call them ‘stupid peasants’ and tell myself that even in my state of exile, I was so much better than them, but…” His voice trailed off into embarrassed silence.

 

Impulsively, she reached across the table to lay her hand on the wrist of his hand holding the teacup. Startled, he looked up to meet her eyes, and she hoped he could see there the compassion she had for him; the message that now a few of those ‘stupid peasants’ were good friends of his, and he didn’t have to be alone anymore.

 

He gave her a shy, embarrassed smile of thanks, and then cleared his throat and sat up straight again. “So anyway, yes, I’ve been to about half of the colonies; all the older ones like Yu Dao and Kaitaku, that are on the coastline. I admit that I’m not nearly as familiar with them as I am with the capitol or Ember Island, but I’ve been to them and I’ve seen the people living there, at home. And after having been suddenly torn away from my own home and everything I’d ever known, I’m not going to do that to thousands of people who’ve done nothing wrong, didn’t even speak out of turn; they just happened to be born in a place that their ancestors conquered!”

 

“Innocent of the crimes their fathers committed,” she murmured, finally understanding.

 

“I already took the homes away from hundreds of people in the three newest colonies, but all but the very youngest children there originally came from the older colonies or the home islands, and were able to go back to familiar places; it shouldn’t take much for them to feel at home again. But that’s it,” as he set the teacup down with a thump, to stare at her grimly. “I’m done with deliberately inflicting so much misery on my own people, yanking them out of their homes and livelihoods, just to make the Earth Kingdom happy. I don’t want to fight with you and Aang on this, Katara, but as the Firelord I have a responsibility to my people, to rule them fairly.   And what the Earth Kingdom wants, would not be justice for them.”

 

She nodded slowly. “I get it now… but I don’t think the Earth Kingdom’s going to see it that way at all. I might not even be able to persuade my father and the rest of the Water Tribes’ representatives to agree with me and support your decision.”

 

Zuko slowly sighed and nodded. “I know.”

 

After several long moments of silently staring into their teacups, Katara looked up to ask, “Zuko… what will you do if the Earth Kingdom decides to try to take the colonies back by force?”

 

Her friend looked miserable. “The troops who were pulled back and stationed there have been instructed to use only the minimum amount of force necessary to defend themselves and the colonists.”

 

She hated doing it, but she had to ask, “But what will you do if… if this restarts the war?”

 

Zuko buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know, Katara. I just don’t know…”

 

 

To be Continued

 

 

(Yes, it may take many more months for the next chapter, because RL is insanely busy for me right now; I’ve become a working single parent while trying to get a rundown old home spruced up and ready for sale. But I know how this story will end and what it will take to get there, and I’m determined to see it finished; this story WILL be continued! ~KYT)

Chapter Text

Deep inside the mountain that Omashu had been built on, Aang found himself stifling a yawn as he and Mai walked up a long tunnel, heading back towards the palace. Since they’d woken up to stormy weather, they’d spent the morning baking fruit-filled cakes in the palace kitchen and the next several hours exploring the caves under the city instead of the surrounding countryside, and only turned back when the cakes and other food in their supplies had all been eaten. “Wow, I’m more tired than I thought I was,” Aang commented as they progressed steadily upward, following the trail he’d marked on the way down using earthbending. “I wonder what time it is?”

 

Holding the lantern to light their way, Mai gave Aang a raised eyebrow as she asked, “Can’t you tell with your firebending? Zuko always knows what time it is, by feeling where the sun is in the sky.”

 

“Actually, I never learned how to do that,” Aang admitted with mild embarrassment. “By the time Zuko became my firebending teacher, we had so little time left to defeat Ozai that we had to focus on using firebending for combat. And since then, well, I’ve been too busy with peacekeeping to learn more firebending, you know?”

 

“Zuko has certainly been too busy to teach you, anyway,” Mai commented with a mild frown.

 

For the last couple of hours Mai had been training her new pet kitten Neko to ride on her shoulder like Momo, instead of in the ‘rabbarroo pouch’ she’d sewn onto the front of her travel robe. Now Neko abruptly hopped down from her perch to scamper over to the side of the tunnel, and started scratching at the stone tunnel floor. “Potty break time,” Aang said matter-of-factly as he used earthbending to break up a patch of stone into loose dirt so Neko could dig a hole in it.

 

“It is nice to have a pet already potty-trained,” Mai commented with a small smile as they waited for Neko to do her business. “I remember that summer Azula decided she wanted a weasel-hawk for a pet. That lasted only three days before it pooped down her back while riding on her shoulder, and she set it on fire.”

 

“…On fire? Wait, she killed her own pet, just for making a mistake like that?” Aang blurted out, appalled.

 

Mai looked at him sidelong. “Azula killed all of her and Zuko’s pets, one way or another, but she usually claimed it was an accident or framed one of the servants for it. That was the only time she was blatant about killing a pet, probably because she was angry at the moment. But that was the last time her mother got pets for either of them.”

 

Aang had to shake his head at that before declaring, “Look, I’ve been biting my tongue on this for weeks, but now I’ve just got to ask you: Why were you ever friends with her, if she was so cruel even as a child?”

 

The look Mai gave him was almost pitying, as if he really should have known the answer already. “Aang, you know I’m a politician’s daughter. How much choice do you think I had in the matter? My parents looked over the list of enrolled students and told me who I was and wasn’t allowed to be friends with even before I first set foot in the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. And as soon as Princess Azula showed an interest in me, they practically gift-wrapped me for her.”

 

“Oh…” Aang shook his head again, thinking once more that he really was glad he’d been raised by monks instead of by his biological parents, the same way all Air Nomad children had been raised. As far as he could tell, it was just a more sensible way to raise children, who’d be happier overall as a result; most of his friends had miserable childhoods, because of the way their parents had raised them. Sokka and Katara had done well with their father Hakoda, but all you had to do was just say the word ‘mother’ around Katara and she’d start grabbing for her necklace and looking like she might cry.

 

“It wasn’t all bad,” Mai admitted as she pushed up a sleeve just enough to reveal a few of her many blades. “Once Azula told them why she was interested in me, for my hobby of knife-throwing, my parents stopped punishing me every time I even looked at a blade, and started encouraging me in it instead. I started getting new blades, holsters and launchers for them for my birthdays and festival gifts; believe me, I appreciated those a lot more than everything else, the bottles of sickly-sweet perfume and fancy dresses that were too tight and heavy to even breathe in.”

 

After Neko had finished her business and scampered back for Mai to pick her up, they continued walking up the tunnel towards the palace cellars, but a few minutes later Momo perked his ears forward and chittered; he heard something coming the other way. And sure enough, in another minute they saw the glow of another lantern in the darkness, and soon they saw who was carrying it. “Bumi!” Aang said in pleased surprise, which turned quickly to worry. “Is everything okay with the summit?”

 

“Oh, it’s going pretty much as I’d expected,” Bumi said offhandedly. “How was your day of spelunking? And by the way, thank you for the orangicot-filled cake you left for me; I haven’t had one quite as light and tasty as that since we were kids together!”

 

“The secret technique involves airbending,” Aang said with a grin. “And we had a great time exploring down here; thanks for suggesting it this morning! But what brings you down here? Did you need one of us for something?”

 

“I’m afraid so, Aang. I’ve just received a report from one of the towns to the east; the village of Sàn Mèn seems to be having spirit troubles. Would you investigate as quickly as you can? The village should be about two hours’ flight away, on Appa.”

 

“Sure! First thing in the morning?” Aang asked, while stifling a yawn.

 

But Bumi frowned at his response. “Aang, according to my reports one man is dead so far, and two more may be dying. I’d much rather you went there as soon as possible. My servants have already prepared Appa for a journey, and I’m sure Sàn Mèn’s village mayor Jiě Mè-er will give you lodgings for the night.”

 

“Oh, you didn’t say it was deadly spirit troubles! Of course, I’ll leave right away!” Aang said hastily.

 

“Good. I’ll make you a tunnel straight to the stables; I know where they are from here,” Bumi said just before he pivoted to the left and stomped, and a section of stone wall jumped backwards in response.

 

Earthbending was loud, especially in such an enclosed space, but Aang could still hear Mai say firmly, “I’m coming with you!”

 

Aang turned to her in dismay, ready to warn her that this was dangerous work… And then remembered just who he was talking to. Mai had been one of the three girls that Sokka had dubbed ‘the Dangerous Ladies’, who had chased him all over the Earth Kingdom. She'd gone up against an angry Katara without flinching, even gone up against Toph in battle, and had finally faced down Azula for Zuko’s sake. She would probably regard somebody warning her that a situation could be dangerous, the same way Aang would regard somebody warning him that it was windy outside.

 

And as for facing spirits without bending, Aang still remembered the loud wham! and the way Wah Shi Tong’s enormous eyes had crossed before he’d toppled over, while Sokka shouted at him, “That’s called Sokka Style. Learn it!” He could almost feel the Southern Water Tribe teen looking over his shoulder now, and meaningfully tapping his boomerang against his palm while waiting to hear what Aang had to say.

 

So ultimately, all Aang said was, “Okay, let’s go.” Glancing over his shoulder at them while making the new tunnel, Bumi gave one of his snorting cackles but made no objection to her coming along.

 

Twenty minutes later Bumi made an exit in the tunnel and they climbed out right in front of Appa’s stall in the palace stables. “You’ll find a map showing the location of Sàn Mèn already in the saddle,” Bumi told them in a near-whisper, staying inside the tunnel mouth and out of sight to anyone else in the stable. “Good luck, Aang! And good luck, Lady Mai!” and with that, he closed the tunnel and disappeared.

 

Mai frowned at the spot where the tunnel mouth had been, and asked quietly, “Does it strike you as odd that he basically snuck us in here?”

 

“He probably doesn’t want us to wake Flopsy,” Aang whispered to her, pointing over to where the massive gorilla-goat was sleeping in his own stall nearby. “And he wants us to hurry, so come on, you check what supplies they gave us while I check to make sure they put Appa’s saddle on right.”

 

Appa grunted softly when they woke him up, but understood Aang’s shushing gestures and made no more sound than that while they checked his saddle and the supplies that had been packed in it, and then quietly opened the stable doors. The massive sky bison almost tiptoed out, to stand in the courtyard under a dark blue sky heavy with dusk. “At least it’s stopped raining; it’s no fun flying in stormy weather,” Aang commented as they quickly climbed aboard. As soon as Mai and Neko were settled in the saddle, Aang said quietly, “Appa, yip-yip!” The sky bison soundlessly surged upwards, and they were aloft and away.

 

They were about two hundred feet up when Mai commented while looking back, “There’s someone running out of the palace towards the stables… make that three someones, and they’re all waving at us.”

 

“Bumi knows where we’re going, I’m sure he’s told our friends, and Zuko can send a messenger hawk after us if it’s really urgent,” Aang shrugged as he steered Appa eastwards, towards where the town Sàn Mèn was marked on the map.

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

“Avatar!” “Avatar Aang!” “Avatar, come back! We need you!” the Earth Kingdom delegates all shouted as they ran, but the Avatar’s sky bison did not turn back towards them.

 

“Smother it!” the Ba Sing Se delegate Xan Pho cursed, as the sky bison’s silhouette dwindled and became lost in the darkening sky. “How did he get past everyone out there searching for him?”

 

Right after Bumi had dismissed that day’s summit rather than let violence break out over Firelord Zuko’s tyrannical announcement, delegates from all around the Earth Kingdom had marched into the city-king’s audience chamber and demanded that the Avatar be found and brought back into the summit process immediately. The Avatar was supposedly good friends with the Firelord, but given that his girlfriend Master Katara had been just as shocked and outraged as they were by the announcement, surely the Avatar had not known of the Firelord’s plan to keep the lands his ancestors had stolen! They needed the Avatar’s righteous wrath to be brought against that cursed firebender, now that he’d proven himself to be no better than his monstrous father, to force him to give back what rightfully belonged to the Earth Kingdom!

 

For once the crazed city-king had been in a serious mood, listening to them with a thoughtful frown. “You’re quite right, gentlemen; the Avatar needs to be appraised of how the summit is progressing. I’ll see to it personally… but first, we must find him.” He demanded of his majordomo whether the Avatar’s mount was still in the stables, and when the servant bowed and said that it was, Bumi said firmly, “Then we’re in luck; he’s still somewhere in the city. There’s no need to send messenger birds to all points of the compass.”

 

Bumi stood up from his throne as he announced, “Gentlemen, I will send out couriers to seek him out and invite him back, and I encourage you to do so as well if you have the men to spare. BUT!” as the aged but powerful earthbender scowled at them all, “The only thing your men are permitted to say is that we request the Avatar’s presence in the palace! I will not have this city torn apart by riots, started by rumors of what the Firelord intends! Not when there is still a chance that the Avatar can resolve this without any violence. If I hear about so much as one scuffle started by just one man running about with loose lips…”

 

The delegates had promised to keep their lips sealed about the true nature of the emergency, at least until the Avatar was found. Once he’d woken up from being knocked out, Xan Pho had winced while feeling the lump on his head but agreed with the other delegates from Ba Sing Se; rioting citizens wouldn’t help the situation at all. Not when the only firebenders handy for rioters to vent their wrath against, were inside the same palace the delegates were stuck in!

 

So they’d sent every servant and staff member they could spare out into the city, telling them to be on the lookout for the Avatar but to only say that his presence was requested in the palace. But now, after hours of searching and so many people coming back empty-handed, the Avatar had returned to the palace—only to take off on his sky bison without saying a word! If Xan Pho hadn’t been looking out the window at the stables at just the right moment, they wouldn’t have even known of his departure!

 

“Is he avoiding us?” Xan Pho growled as the group of delegates turned and trudged back towards their guest suites.

 

“I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve never trusted that airbender,” delegate Lao Bei Fong grumbled, but everyone automatically discounted his opinion; they all knew he was prejudiced against the Avatar because of what had happened with his daughter, Toph the Metalbender.

 

“Maybe he’s gone down to the colonies, to start personally forcing their gates open,” someone suggested hopefully.

 

“Not likely,” Xan Pho snorted. “Didn’t you notice he was heading east? There are no colonies to the east of here!”

 

“Enough,” Lord Zuni said firmly. “Such speculating won’t do us any good. All we can do at the moment is hope he returns to us soon. And in the meantime, we can work with his waterbending girlfriend, to try to force the Firelord to give an accounting of himself…”

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

The village of Sàn Mèn was right where the map said it would be, and even though night had long since fallen by the time they arrived, the village mayor Jiě Mè-er didn’t grumble (out loud) about being woken up and finding them lodgings for the rest of the night. In the morning, Jiě told them over the breakfast he provided, “We’re grateful that you came, Avatar; we’ve been dealing with this problem ourselves for nearly a hundred and forty years, according to the stories passed down by our ancestors, but it’s always bad when ignorant outsiders who don’t know our history blunder in and start breaking the rules. I shudder to think what would have happened if our village had ever been occupied by Fire Nation troops… Er, no offense, Lady Mai,” he added hastily.

 

“None taken,” Mai said dryly. Last night Aang had introduced her to the mayor with something close to the same story that they’d fed Lady Dang in order to justify adopting Neko; that she had been charged by the spirits to help atone for her nation’s misdeeds during the war, by assisting the Avatar in his duties for a while. She’d still gotten wary looks from the mayor and his family, but they weren’t being overtly hostile to her, even when Aang wasn’t in the room.

 

“Tell us about this spirit trouble,” Aang urged the mayor. “Bumi didn’t say you’ve been having problems for a hundred and forty years! So the man that died according to his reports, wasn’t the first victim?”

 

“Hardly,” the mayor snorted. “According to the stories, eight people died in the first two years after the spirit showed up, before we figured out its rules! The mayor at that time sent a message to Avatar Roku, asking him for help, but he never came,” Jiě added with a disapproving frown.

 

“A hundred forty years ago… I think at the time he might have been too busy dealing with Fire Lord Sozin’s first attempt to colonize the Earth Kingdom,” Aang mused, looking grave. “Roku told me about that in one of my trips to the spirit world last year.”

 

The mayor didn’t look particularly mollified by that, but let it go in favor of telling them the village’s story:

 

On hundred forty years ago, in a peach tree orchard belonging to the village's wealthiest landowner, the written characters for the word ‘mine’ suddenly appeared on the tree bearing the most fruit. The orchard owner scowled at the apparent prank and ordered his servants to scrub the word off, but the word had not been painted on; instead, it had apparently been burned into the tree’s bark.

 

Three weeks later, the peaches were ripe for harvesting. The orchard owner had all the trees harvested, including the tree that had been marked, and the peaches were sold at the market. But suddenly people throughout the village began falling horribly ill after eating peaches, and the orchard owner himself, as well as the worker that had harvested that tree, died while clutching their stomachs, as if they’d eaten poison.

 

Then the word ‘mine’ appeared in the dirt in front of a melon patch belonging to a poor widow woman living on the other side of the village. That woman had never learned to read, so she ignored the sign, harvested a melon for her family’s dinner—and they all fell terribly ill as well, with the woman herself dying in agony.

 

“It’s been that way ever since; all year long, for every crop we harvest, the spirit we’ve come to call Dú Hài –the Poisoner--claims one portion of the crop for itself. Anyone who eats what the spirit has claimed gets horribly sick, and if they actually saw the sign but ignored it, they’re guaranteed to die from it. All we can do is look for the characters ‘mine’ before harvesting anything, and if it appears, we let the fruit from that tree or plants in that patch rot and die untouched,” the mayor said gravely. “Even animals that eat the claimed crop will get sick for a day or two.”

 

“That’s terrible!” Aang exclaimed, his eyes wide. “Is there no way to appease the spirit, or persuade it to leave a crop alone?”

 

“None that we’ve ever found, and we've tried plenty over the decades. But we’ve learned to minimize the damage somewhat, by planting rows of any plant far apart with other crops between them, so the spirit will claim only one row instead of somebody’s entire crop. And Dú Hài never picks the same tree or vegetable patch twice in a row; a fruit tree that it claims in one year will be safe to eat from the next year. Which is why a hundred thirty-five years ago, the mayor back then decreed that since the spirit was plaguing the entire village, the entire village would pull together to survive and adapt. Anyone whose crop has been claimed calls in others to witness the mark, and then everyone else who’s planted that same crop in their own fields will give the afflicted owner a small portion of their harvest, to help make up for their loss."

 

"So you're all helping each other out, sharing the burden; that's really admirable," Aang told him.

 

"Sustained disaster relief, on a local scale," Mai commented. And then said somewhat defensively in response to the startled looks Aang and Jiě gave her, "What? The Firelord uses terms like that all the time."

"I see. Well, thank you for your kind words," the mayor said courteously. "But as I said earlier, while we've learned how to live with the problem, outsiders who don't know our history or the rules are another matter. Two weeks ago a small group of traveling merchants came though; a tinsmith, a spice merchant and a dye trader. They came up the north road, which runs right past Fu-Han's fields, and the tinsmith decided to help himself and his friends to just a handful of Fu-Han's razzleberries. Unfortunately for them, it was from the razzleberry bush that Dú Hài had claimed two weeks before; we don't know whether the tinsmith saw the mark left on the dirt in front of the bush or not, but Dú Hài didn't care. By the time they reached our village square, all three of them were sick, and the man who'd actually picked the handful of berries was dead by nightfall. While they were recovering, the tinsmith's companions said he'd been born in Omashu, so I sent word there of his demise... and now here you are."

 

"Here we are, and we'll do what we can to fix the problem," Aang said with a firm nod. "But I hope that even after Dú Hài leaves your crops alone, your village keeps the tradition of helping each other out when trouble comes to anyone; that sets a good example for the rest of the Earth Kingdom and the entire world."

 

Yes, the sentiment was very nice, Ty Lee would probably gush about the mayor's pretty pink aura or whatever, but Mai preferred to focus on more practical concerns. "What does this Dú Hài look like?" she asked. "Has anyone ever seen it actually poison the food it claims? Or eat it, for that matter?"

 

Jiě shook his head. "We know it takes the crops eventually, though often not until they're overripe to the point of rotting or gone to seed, but it always seems to happen when no one is watching. The records include stories from people who swore they saw it eating a crop it had claimed, but none of their descriptions match each other; they've described everything from a pure white spider-snake to an elephant-rat to a saber-toothed mooselion with a serpent's tail. And at least two of the people who've claimed to have seen it later admitted that they hadn't, and they'd only been seeking attention. So I can't give you any other information on Dú Hài that's worth even a clipped copper coin."

 

Aang nodded a grim acknowledgment of the mayor's words before asking, "Would you take us to the spirit-claimed razzleberry bush, please?"

 

Jiě stood up as he agreed, "I will, and I'll take you to Yaozu's strawberry patch as well; Dú Hài's mark appeared in front of a row of his plants just two days ago."

 

They went to first the razzleberries, then the strawberries, and clearly saw the two characters for the word 'mine' branded into the dirt in front of each. After calling out loudly for the spirit Dú Hài to show itself (which didn't work, naturally), Aang sank into a lotus position and meditated for several minutes, while Mai sharpened her blades, petted Neko and kept Momo from touching the strawberries.

 

When Aang finally opened his eyes, his expression was troubled. "I can sense it nearby... but not actually, physically nearby."

 

"Meaning...?" Mai drawled.

 

"It's here, but not in this world; it's at roughly the same spot in the Spirit World. Which means I've got to go to the Spirit World to confront it."

 

"So how are you going to do that?"

 

"It's easiest if I can find a place with an established connection to the Spirit World; usually a shrine dedicated to one of the greater spirits. I've learned and grown into my power enough that I can send my spirit out and to the Spirit World from anywhere, but the more energy I have to exert to get there, the less I'll have for actually confronting Dú Hài." Aang turned to the mayor and asked, "Is there a shrine to a powerful spirit nearby?"

 

Jiě took on an odd expression, a combination of cynicism and defensiveness. "When your village is being continually plagued by one evil spirit, shrines to other spirits that do nothing to stop or dissuade it tend to be neglected and left to the weeds. ...However, there is a traveler's shrine to Guanyin at the very start of the pass through the mountains, about a half-hour's walk west from here; whenever I've gone that way, I've noticed that the shrine is always well maintained and filled with dozens of written prayers."

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

One short flight on Appa later, and the sky bison was curling protectively around the small traveler's shrine they'd found, which was indeed looking very well-maintained for a roadside shrine; the shrine's statue was free of dust or debris, as was the incense holder in front of it, and tiny scrolls of paper containing travelers' written prayers were inserted into every single crack in the small rock wall behind the shrine. The small statue of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, seemed to be smiling serenely at them from her pedestal; Aang looked around and smiled as well as he said, "This is definitely the right place; I haven't felt this much spiritual energy since the last time I visited an Air Temple's inner sanctum. Crossing over should be as easy as rice!"

 

"So, what now?" Mai asked.

 

"Now I meditate again, but this time going deep inside myself and sending my spirit to the Spirit World to confront Dú Hài. While I'm in the Spirit World, my body will be completely helpless, and I won't be aware of anything that happens to it. So keep any travelers that come along from poking me with a stick or something, okay?" as Aang sat down with his staff in his lap and started to assume the lotus position again...

 

Only to be stopped by Mai's hand on his shoulder and pointed glare. "Excuse me? You're planning on just leaving me behind while you confront a clearly malicious spirit?"

 

Aang stared at her in surprise, though he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised after all. Katara had never objected to staying behind and just guarding his body whenever he had to go to the Spirit World, but Mai was most definitely not Katara. "Um... Well, guarding my body is kind-of important..."

 

Mai jerked her thumb at Appa, who had already placed his massive body between the shrine and the road. She didn't have to point out that if she'd stayed behind in Omashu, he probably wouldn't have had more than Appa to keep an eye on things anyway. "Besides, guard from who? Before we set down you made a point of circling the area from on high, looking for bandits or other potential trouble, and we didn't see anyone or anything bigger than a fox-deer. The only caravan we saw headed this way through the pass is still so far off that they won't be here until after nightfall. So if you really think I've got nothing better to do than just watch you sit there while your spirit is elsewhere, which sounds just as boring as watching paint dry..."

 

"Okay, okay!" Aang said defensively. "Look, the thing is, I've never tried to take someone else with me to the Spirit World before!"

 

"Then there's a first time for everything, right?"

 

"Yeah, but the Spirit World is dangerous! There's no bending of elements when you're over there; even I can't bend anything!"

 

Mai drawled, "Oh, how terrible." Then, while Aang was still mentally kicking himself, she gave him a hard stare as she added, "It sounds to me like you need a non-bending warrior with you over there."

 

Aang sighed in defeat, and gestured for her to sit down in front of him. "All right, I'll try it; try taking you with me. But I'm not guaranteeing anything, okay?"

 

"I didn't ask for any guarantees," Mai retorted as she gracefully sank into a lotus position opposite Aang. "So how do we do this?"

 

"Here, take my hands; physical contact might help, or at least it can't hurt," Aang said as he reached forward and linked hands with her. "Now, close your eyes, and listen for the sounds of my breathing. Just try to let your mind go blank, except for matching your breathing to mine. I'll do the rest, or at least I'll try my best to do the rest..."

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

The Spirit World was interesting. The sky kept shifting colors on them, the landscape looked like a warped mirror version of that area of the Earth Kingdom that they'd come from, and Mai kept getting glimpses of creatures she'd never seen before, as well as see-through versions of animals she knew that Aang told her were the spirits of animals who'd died in their world. "What about the spirits of people who've died?" she asked as they walked quickly across the bizarre landscape, headed for the area that Aang thought would correspond to Sàn Mèn.

 

"They usually don't stay here very long; after they're judged by their nation's patron spirits, they generally go back to reincarnate in the mortal world with whole new lives," Aang informed her, his right hand grasping nervously and uselessly at thin air. When they'd crossed over into the Spirit World, Aang had been a little dismayed to realize that his staff hadn't appeared with them. He'd explained that if he didn't remember to consciously visualize himself with it while crossing over, it wouldn't appear with him when he did, no matter how much he wished for it afterwards. "The only ones who stick around for a while are the restless, spirits too troubled by what they did or what happened to them in their mortal lives to be ready for reincarnation, and past Avatars."

 

"Avatars don't reincarnate? But I thought that reincarnation was a major part of being the Avatar?" Mai asked curiously, while dodging a translucent-looking cat-rabbit that scampered across their path.

 

"It's a little hard to explain... There's two parts of me, really; Avatar Spirit and Aang-spirit. I started out as just Aang, but when Avatar Roku died just before I was born, the Avatar Spirit chose to reincarnate in my body and become part of me. When I die, the Avatar-spirit will reincarnate in someone of Water to begin the Avatar Cycle anew, while the Aang-spirit will come here to the Spirit World. I'll become a spiritual advisor to the next Avatar, and a source of bending power and ability to draw on when he or she goes into the Avatar State, just like Avatars Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, Yangchen and the rest are to me."

 

"Are you expecting to meet with any of the past Avatars while we're here?" Mai asked, frowning a little at the thought of meeting Avatar Roku. She had been taught all her life that Roku had been a traitor to the Fire Nation, doing al he could to thwart Firelord Sozin's great plans for the nation and the world because he hadn't wanted anyone to become as powerful and influential worldwide as the Avatar himself. She suspected now that the textbooks and teachers who'd told her that had been passing on blatant lies that had been concocted by Sozin and his political toadies, but she still had no desire to meet him, even if Zuko had told her privately that he was actually related to Roku on his mother's side.

 

"Probably not; I usually have to seek them out if I want to meet with them for advice. I may need their advice later, for the best way to deal with this Dú Hài spirit, but I want to at least find him and talk with him first. Maybe just talking with him, and finding out what he really wants, will be enough to get him to leave the village alone," Aang said hopefully.

 

Mai stared at Aang in mild disbelief. "Do you seriously think that? After the mayor of Sàn Mèn told you that they've been plagued by this spirit for a hundred forty years, and nothing they've tried has been able to appease it?" She couldn't tell if that was sheer optimism or sheer egotism talking, and said so to his face.

 

Aang flushed dull red as he protested, "I was able to persuade the Hei Bai spirit to stop rampaging through a village and trapping its residents in the Spirit World, just by talking to it! It's always better to at least try to resolve issues without violence at first."

 

After silently considering that Aang did have a lot more experience in dealing with spirits than her, Mai finally shrugged, “So long as it doesn’t attack us on sight, might as well try asking nicely.” And they kept on walking in the direction of the village, or where the village would be in their world.

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

The good news was, the Dú Hài spirit didn’t attack them on sight…

 

It waited until just after Aang introduced himself as the Avatar.

 

But as soon as he said that the village of Sàn Mèn wanted it to leave their crops alone, the Dú Hài spirit—which looked like a giant white viper-rat, grown to the size of a moose-lion, and given a stinging scorpion’s tail to boot—gave a sneering laugh that perfectly conveyed how little it cared for the needs of mortals, and whipped that lethal-looking tail out at them.

 

Yelping, Aang dodged back and to the left, out of the path of that vicious barb, while trying to push Mai back as well—

 

But she was already leaping to the right, while flinging her left arm up and out. Swift and sleek shadows sprung from beneath her sleeve and hissed through the air, to become a trio of black shuriken that all embedded themselves one-two-three in the spirit’s tail, in a neat row just below the bulbous tip—and very nearly severed it.

 

Dú Hài screamed, a horrible and ear-shattering sound of agony and rage as its tail whipped back and forth in the air, the poisonous tip now dripping ichor while dangling by mere scraps of white chitinous flesh. Mai just smirked in response as she flipped a pair of stiletto daggers out of their holsters and up into her hands, poised and ready to throw.

 

Snarling its fury, Dú Hài leaped straight for them, its jaws open wide to show foot-long fangs that, if it was anything like a real viper-rat, packed a venom even more lethal than the scorpion tail. Aang frantically backpedalled again, wishing that he’d tried to find Roku first before confronting Dú Hài; Roku’s dragon Fang would have been great for fighting this creature! Or at least that he’d remembered to visualize his staff with him when he’d crossed over; he needed a weapon!

 

But Mai had somehow brought all her weapons with her, and was making good use of them. She flung one dagger straight into those gaping jaws, hitting Dú Hài right on target and sinking deep into the roof of its mouth. That probably would have killed any mortal beast, but not this spirit; however, it did make Dú Hài flinch away instead of actually chomping on either of them. And as it flinched, Mai flung the dagger in her other hand right at the dangling scorpion-tail tip, completely severing it.

 

And then as Dú Hài galloped past them, Mai leaped onto the spirit’s back and grabbed fistfuls of its fur, and began riding it the same way they’d ridden the wild hog-monkeys a few days ago! The Poisoner screeched with fury and began throwing itself this way and that, trying to shake her off; it even threw itself sideways at a nearby tree, trying to scrape her off with it, but she scrambled to the other side of its wide back just in time, and all Dú Hài managed to do was send the tree crashing down instead.

 

Aang ran over to the downed tree and grabbed a broken-off branch for an improvised weapon, the biggest and heaviest one that he was sure he could still swing. It came in handy barely a minute later, when Dú Hài stopped trying to throw Mai off in favor of going after him again. Realizing what the spirit had in mind, the exultant look on Mai's face changed to one of alarm, but having to use both hands and her legs to hold onto the Poisoner's back meant she couldn't use her weapons to stop Dú Hài's charge. Aang stood his ground for as long as he dared, before dodging to one side at the last second; as he barely squeaked past the huge snapping jaws, he swung the branch and the spirit got a mess of twigs and leaves in its left eye.

 

Momentarily blinded in that eye, the spirit stopped galloping about and shook its head violently, stopping in its tracks for just one second... but that second was all Mai needed to aim and fire. Her left arm shot out and down, and two wrist-arrows shot out from her sleeve to impale Dú Hài's left front paw, pinning it to the ground. The Poisoner shrieked again and jerked that paw upwards, trying to free it--and Mai leaned far to the right, and did the same to his right front paw. Then she held one dagger, the biggest one Aang had ever seen her wield, forward and out to the right where it was in Dú Hài's field of vision, pointing the blade towards that gigantic pupil. And she growled in a voice filled with raw menace (sounding almost like Katara when she'd just had enough), "Stop right now, or lose your eye forever."

 

Dú Hài stopped in its tracks, trembling with fury. And for the first time since the fight began, they heard it speak human words... but they were not at all good ones. "Kkkiiiiilllll yooouuu! Kkiilll youuu aaallll! Kkiillll whollle villlaaage!"

 

An ice-cold boulder settled in Aang's guts, as he realized that the Poisoner meant every word.

 

Then that icy cold traveled back up his spine, into his brain... and his voice, as he picked up the tree branch again. "No, you won't. Open your mouth, Dú Hài." And when the giant viper-rat just sneered at him, he said grimly, "Open your mouth, or I'll order Mai to gouge your eye out right now." Looking just as grim as he was feeling, Mai brought the dagger a few inches closer in... and Dú Hài opened his mouth with a hate-filled hiss.

 

The hiss became a scream when Aang swung the tree branch as hard as he could, and deliberately knocked the left fang out of its socket. Then he did the same for the right.

 

Dú Hài wailed in agony, while Mai jumped off its back and walked about collecting the blades that she'd used in combat, meticulously wiping each one on her sleeve before tucking it away beneath her clothing again. When she'd collected all but the four short arrows that were pinning the spirit's front paws to the ground, she came to stand by Aang, her face expressionless. And when the spirit's wails finally died down to whimpers, Aang ordered coldly, "You will leave this village and all other humans alone from now on. If I ever hear of you plaguing people like that again, we'll come back... and you won't survive it."

 

Then Aang and Mai each took a paw, and yanked the arrows out so Dú Hài could limp away, groaning with pain at each step. They stood there and watched it go while Mai cleaned the arrows and put them away, and only when Aang was sure Dú Hài was out of earshot did he say quietly, "I really want to throw up right now."

 

"Not on my clothes, or my shoes," Mai immediately retorted. Then her tone softened. "But if you really need to do it, I won't tell anybody. ...It's probably a good thing that being deliberately violent, even when necessary, makes you feel ill; it means you're a good person inside."

 

"Thanks. Let's go back," he said dully, and they turned and started walking back towards where they'd crossed over to the Spirit World.

 

As they walked, Mai asked, "Will its fangs or tail-barb ever grow back?"

 

"I honestly don't know, but if they do, it won't be any time in the next century. And even if they do grow back, it's going to remember what we did and that we could do it again, so the village of Sàn Mèn should be safe from now on." Then Aang looked sideways at his companion and asked, "What you did, though... how did you do it?"

 

"Hm?" Mai looked at him in puzzlement, not understanding the question.

 

"I told you, I have to make a conscious effort to visualize my staff, or it doesn't cross over with me; I couldn't do it this time because I had to focus on bringing you with me. But I didn't even think to warn you about that, so how did you bring your weapons to the Spirit World with you?"

 

"I just did, that's all," Mai said with a shrug. "Don't ask me about spiritual business; that's your..." her voice trailed off, and then she cocked her head and smiled a little. "Actually, maybe I do know how, sort-of. You didn't bring your staff, but you brought your clothes over with you, right?"

 

Aang automatically glanced down at his outfit of traditional Air Nomad clothing as he said with mild surprise, "Yeah, that's true; I never have to think about that, it just happens." And now that he really thought about it, he remembered that for one trip to the Spirit World last year, the Summer Solstice visit where he'd gone to talk with Avatar Roku about how the war had started, he'd arrived there wearing these same clothes even though his physical body had been wearing Fire Nation attire at the time. "I guess... I guess I just think of these clothes as part of me." And he didn't really feel that way about his staff, which had been made for him by the Mechanist; it was great, but it just wasn't the same as the staff he'd lost, which had been given to him by Monk Gyatso.

 

"Mm-hm. Well, I regard my blades the same way," Mai told him with that same small smile. "I wear them all the time, and have for years, so they're as much a part of my self-image as my clothes are. I'd feel naked without them!"

 

"Oh. ...Oh, hey, is that the grove where we crossed over?" Aang said suddenly, pointing ahead of them, and while Mai looked ahead to where he was pointing he deliberately slowed down for a moment, to end up walking right behind her. While mentally cursing the fact that traditional Air Nomad clothing included thin cotton pants of bright yellow, which did absolutely nothing to hide certain physical problems... such as what was apt to happen to adolescent boys when pretty girls started talking about being naked! Then he started thinking about the most disgusting things he could think of, to make the problem go away before Mai looked back at him and noticed after all. Sokka's socks, think of Sokka's smelly socks...!

 

.

 

tbc

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Text

 

Tui and La, give me strength, Katara prayed just before entering the grand hall where the international peace summit was about to convene for the day. She already knew going in that this was not going to be a good session:

 

She hadn’t been able to talk to Aang at all before the meeting, to relay to him the news that Zuko refused to evacuate the remaining Fire Nation colonies, as well as his valid reasons for that refusal. She hadn’t seen Aang since early yesterday morning, when they’d had breakfast together in their guest wing’s dining hall, before the session when the Firelord had made his announcement. After talking with Zuko and discovering his reasons for refusing to forcibly evacuate all those families, to punish children for crimes their ancestors had committed, she’d gone into town to look for the Avatar herself and hopefully talk to him before anyone else could

 

But she hadn’t found him anywhere, though she’d been sure he was in Omashu because Appa was still in the royal stable. She’d checked every bakery and sweets shop she could find, and sent word through every station in Omashu’s earthbending mail delivery system, but nobody had seen him all day. Then when she’d finally trudged back to the palace after night had fallen, she’d found out that while she’d been out looking for him, Aang and Mai had come back from spirits-knew-where, taken Appa out of the stables and left the city entirely!

 

She’d also found out from the palace staff that when the Earth Kingdom representatives couldn’t find the Avatar, they’d started looking for her instead. Katara was ashamed to admit that she’d ignored all the messages left for her and just stayed in her room, hoping desperately that Aang would be back from wherever he’d gone in time for breakfast, so they could talk… but he’d never shown.

 

This wasn’t fair! At first she’d been proud to represent the Avatar at the summit, but it had become obvious over the last few days that most of the Earth Kingdom representatives didn’t really respect her, didn’t see her as capable of standing in for the Balance between Nations; all they saw when they looked at her was a waterbending girl. She needed Aang here, talking to them; they respected the Avatar himself, at least for his power to bend all four elements! But now she’d have to try to come up with and negotiate some sort of compromise between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom over the fate of those colonies, all by herself…

 

But then, it hadn’t been fair for Katara to have to take on her mother’s duties all by herself when she’d still been a child. Life wasn’t fair most of the time, was it? Not until people worked together to make things fair for everyone. Recognizing that truth and acting on it, was what separated adults from whining children. Katara took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and walked into the summit assembly.

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

She was right; it was very, very far from a good session.

 

Even before they’d officially started, the atmosphere in the room had been so tense, so charged and foreboding; the last time Katara had felt the air like that had been at the Agni Kai, just before Azula had bent lightning right at her. She found herself scanning the room for firebenders who were capable of generating lightning, but Azula was still locked up in an asylum according to Zuko, Iroh was far away in Ba Sing Se, and Ozai’s power had been stripped from him. The only firebender here was Zuko, and he wasn’t the threat today… all the Earth Kingdom people glaring at him, they were making the atmosphere so foreboding. Zuko was just sitting at his table, his back straight and head unbowed but carefully focused on the papers in his hands.

 

Bumi’s minister Bian called the meeting to order, but before he could even begin to recap the previous day’s session and discuss that day’s agenda, the Earth Kingdom people were on their feet and shouting for Zuko to explain himself, to recant what he said, to answer for his crimes, etc. etc. After their shouting went on for over a minute and Minister Bian gave up trying to talk over them, Firelord stood up… very slowly and carefully, to show it was not a move to attack.

 

Then—maybe he hadn’t really meant to do it, perhaps it had been subconscious on his part—Zuko glanced at Katara. Like hawkgulls watching fishermen at the docks, the Earth Kingdom representatives followed his gaze to her—and then they started shouting at her instead! “Where is the Avatar? Why did you send him away last night?” “What does the Avatar have to say about the Firelord’s perfidy?”

 

She recoiled from their shouts at first—and felt ashamed of herself for it; then she straightened her spine and stiffened her shoulders again. She said firmly and clearly, “I did not send the Avatar away from Omashu. I ask you to remember that the Avatar is more than the Balance between the Nations; he is also the Bridge between our world and the Spirit World. Even during the War, he was more than once called upon to deal with spirits, and even called away by spirits. His whereabouts are currently unknown, but I ask you to trust that he is on a mission of great importance, and that he will return to the summit when he is able.”

 

She’d practiced that speech at least three times before leaving her guest quarters that morning, and was both proud and a little ashamed of it. Not one word of it was a lie, but all together it implied that Aang was away dealing with something more important than the summit, trying to mitigate or prevent some spirit-related catastrophe, when she really had no idea what he was doing right now. All she could do was hope that he really would return soon, and that her little speech wouldn’t come swimming back to bite her in the blubber.

 

Then she launched into the speech she’d worked on much harder and longer than her excuse for Aang’s absence, late into the night and again when she woke from her troubled sleep before dawn; not because she wanted to technically avoid lying, but because this was important. “While the Avatar is currently occupied with other matters, as his representative at this summit, I can assure you that he will take the issue of the Fire Nation colonies very seriously… but he also has high regard for Justice. And the
Avatar understands very well, the difference between justice and revenge. Justice is what is needed to restore peace and the balance of the world, while vengeance will upset the balance further and return us to war. Do all you delegates present here at this summit, understand the difference between vengeance, and justice?”

 

She paused, giving them time to think about the difference between the two concepts, and hoping against hope that one of the delegates would stand up and start pontificating on vengeance and justice, and perhaps lead the assembly to the right conclusion about the colonies without her having to say another word.

 

Unfortunately, her prayers weren’t answered. Toph’s father, the representative from Gaoling, frowned at her and said for everyone to hear, “Don’t think to lecture men who are far older and wiser than you, girl. If you have nothing useful to say, then let us return to calling the Firelord to account for his actions, and for his heinous greed in keeping land that does not belong to his nation!” as he turned his glare back on Zuko.

 

“But I do have something useful to say,” Katara said firmly and quickly, before Zuko could speak up. “Evacuating the older colonies, those that have been present for generations, would not be justice for the families living there now; the children and even their parents who have known no other home all their lives, and would stand to lose everything they have ever known if evacuated by force.” She saw both her father and Chief Arnook look first startled, and then thoughtful, and she knew her words had reached them. Encouraged, she continued, “We must consider--”

 

“What?!” shouted one of the delegates from Ba Sing Se; the one who’d almost started a fight by bending Avatar Kyoshi’s statue at Zuko yesterday. “You side with the Firelord now, instead of the Avatar? Changing your tune to please whoever’s present and powerful; you’re no better than a whore! The Firelord’s whore!”

 

For a moment, Katara could only stare at him, too shocked and hurt to even think of a response. He’d called her a--?!

 

Zuko had quietly sat down while she’d been talking, letting her have the floor, but now he surged to his feet with his fists clenched. “How dare you talk that way to Master Katara?! She is not just a great waterbending master, but a woman of impeccable character!”

 

But his jumping to her defense wasn’t helping at all; it only reinforced in the Earth Kingdom delegates’ minds the connection between them, and made it sordid and ugly; as ugly as the mutters she could hear from their tables: “Whore…” “Firelord’s whore…”

 

But all those mutters were abruptly silenced by the roaring surge of water, drawn from every vase and pitcher in the room, that knocked the first Earth Kingdom delegate flat on his back just before slapping gags of ice over the mouths of the rest of them. And Katara hadn’t done it; still speechless, she turned to see Master Pakku on his feet, his age-lined face livid as he snarled, “No one says that about my student and granddaughter!”

 

“And my daughter!” her father growled, angrier than Katara could ever remember seeing him before, as he vaulted clean over his table and began stalking towards the Ba Sing Se table. He was unarmed as per the summit rules, and a nonbender, but only a fool would say he wasn’t dangerous. “The next person to say even One. Single. Word about Katara will get my--” And then he got cut off, by the chest-high wall that abruptly rose up out of the floor in front of him, just before King Bumi popped up out of the floor right behind him.

 

“Chief Hakoda, my apologies, but I must remind you of our agreement to refrain from violence in these chambers,” Bumi said formally and very seriously, as he laid a hand on her father’s shoulder. Hakoda scowled, but turned to the city-king and gave a short nod of agreement, so Bumi turned to the Water Tribes’ table and said, “Master Pakku, withdraw your ice, please.” Pakku also frowned but complied.

 

The century-old king of the city stood tall in the middle of the room, giving the entire assembly a look of disapproval as he declared, still uncharacteristically solemn, “It’s plain to see that just one day wasn’t enough to cool some people’s tempers. So I declare today’s session is also at an end; we will reconvene tomorrow at the usual time.”

 

Bumi’s utter lack of his usual snaggletooth grin and snorting laughter must have unnerved the Earth Kingdom delegates even more than it bothered Katara, because no one protested; they just quietly gathered their papers, with many uncertain or suspicious looks at the aged ruler, and silently left the chamber.

 

Zuko gave Katara a look of distressed apology, probably feeling sorry he’d dragged her into this mess. But before he could come over and say anything, both her father and Gran-Pakku came over to her table and basically hustled her out the nearest door, casting red-hot glares over their shoulders at the Earth Kingdom delegates all the while.

 

Once they were alone in the passageway leading to the wing with the Water Tribes’ guest rooms, Hakoda turned to his daughter and said quietly, “Katara, you don’t have to attend tomorrow’s session; if you’d like to take a day off to--”

 

“To do what; to hide?” Katara cut him off, glaring and clenching her fists. “To let those—those bigoted, hate-filled idiots think they’ve shamed me?! To just let them win, and think that--that vicious name-calling is all they have to do to shut down anyone they don’t want to listen to? I’m going back in there tomorrow, Dad, no matter what!”

 

“That’s the spirit!” Pakku said approvingly. “Your grandmother would be proud of you.”

 

Hakoda sighed, looking rueful. “You’re right; I’m sorry for suggesting it. I just… you’re shaking, seal-pup, and your hands are colder than ice.”

 

“I know,” Katara muttered as she looked down, ashamed of herself for her reaction. She’d survived sea battles, erupting volcanoes, battles with spirits like Wah Shi Tong… She’d even faced down Azula, for spirits’ sake! Why was she letting a room full of hateful old men get to her?!

 

“I need to go do some bending,” she finally said decisively. Waterbending always cleared her head, and helped her focus.

 

“Need a sparring partner, granddaughter?” Pakku asked, his brow furrowed with concern.

 

“Thanks, but I’m going to ask if I can get a couple of palace guards to serve as sparring partners; I think facing off against earthbenders might help right now.” Her dad gave a grim smile while nodding his understanding, as Katara kept to herself the thought that it was almost a shame that they didn’t allow physical violence in the summit meeting. Taking on all those Earth Kingdom delegates and collectively beating the slush out of them, would make her feel a lot better.

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

 

The palace majordomo took her to the captain of the palace guard, who took a quick poll of his troops and found a few earthbenders who’d always been curious about what it would be like to battle a waterbender. The guard captain gave Katara four volunteers for sparring with, and an hour in their training arena.

 

After half an hour of hard bending, Katara finally felt that she’d vented enough, and called a halt to the sparring session. The four veteran guardsmen didn’t complain about the early ending to their session; they were too busy trying to be stoic and not complain about all the damage that one teenaged girl had done to them. Katara somewhat sheepishly apologized for being so hard on them, and healed all their bruises, strains, etc. before heading back to her guest suite.

 

Soon after she returned and got cleaned up from her bending session, she had a visitor; to her surprise, it was King Bumi himself. “Greetings, your majesty! Er, did I hurt one of your guardsmen more than I’d thought when I was sparring with them? I healed everything they admitted to…”

 

“Eh, no, they needed some toughening up,” the king said with a wave of his hand. “First, Katara, I’d like to apologize on behalf of my countrymen, for the way they treated you today… Though I can’t actually apologize for them, as technically the Ba Sing Se delegates are not my people. But you can be sure the Earth King will hear about their behavior.”

 

“Well, thank you for at least wanting to apologize for them,” Katara said wryly. “Hopefully they’ll be better behaved tomorrow.” Though she privately doubted it.

 

“But the second reason I’m here is to ask you to pass something on to Aang, when he returns from wherever he is. You see, since Aang and I are old friends, I’ve been checking on what could perhaps be done to restore the Air Nomad nation. Obviously we need a lot more airbenders,” as he gave her a suggestive wink and leer (which were even more disturbing than normal, coming from such an old man!) “but we also need to restore their culture; it’s not just bending ability that makes a nation, after all.”

 

Katara nodded agreement, thinking of all the traditions of the Southern Water Tribe that had nothing to do with waterbending. Bumi continued, “So I’d thought about asking among my own people for volunteers, who are willing to move to one of the old Air Temples and swear to an entirely different way of life; to live as Air Nomads and eventually help teach young airbenders to become Air Nomads. But before asking for volunteers, I need to be able to tell them just what they were volunteering for.”

 

The aged king then held up a satchel of scrolls as he continued, “So I dictated to my scribes everything I could remember of what Aang told me about life at the Air Temples. And then I had my people do more research on customs that Aang hadn’t told me about, or that he might not even have known about, since he was still a child before the start of the war. They searched our own city libraries for scrolls on Air Nomad culture, and we sent off to the University of Ba Sing Se for more information, since they boast of having the biggest library in the world.”

 

“It’s not actually the biggest, but it’s the biggest one that people can still get into,” Katara interjected wryly, thinking of Wah Shi Tong’s library, as she accepted the satchel of scrolls. “Thank you for doing so much on Aang’s behalf, and I’m sure Aang will thank you too when he returns!”

 

But after handing them over, Bumi tapped the satchel with a gnarled old finger, a frown wrinkling his face even more than usual. “The thing is… I’m not sure that some of these scrolls are accurate. They were all accompanied by the usual courier’s seal verifying that the scrolls weren’t tampered with en route, the scribes’ oaths for completely accurate line-for-line copying of the original text, and the original scholars’ oaths that they personally verified what they wrote about. But Aang never talked to me about several of the customs described on these scrolls from the Ba Sing Se University’s library, and some of their contents are… Well, perhaps you’d rather read them for yourself,” Bumi sighed. “But when Aang returns, show him the scrolls and ask him which of them are true, and which scroll is a complete quicksand of a lie.”

 

And with that, the aged king turned and left, while Katara rubbed her chin and pondered the satchel of scrolls in her hand. She knew a few Air Nomad customs, just from traveling with Aang for a year and a half, but there was a lot she didn’t know about his culture. But if Bumi thought that some of these scrolls were full of lies, then she probably shouldn’t look at any of them before Aang came back to verify them…

 

…Oh, who did she think she was fooling? Bumi’s words had made her curious, she didn’t have anything else to do today after the summit session had ended so early, and she had no idea when Aang was coming back; it was time to start reading! Katara got herself a drink of water, settled into a comfortable chair, and pulled a scroll out of the satchel.

 

The first scroll was one that King Bumi had dictated to a palace scribe, filled with his own reminiscences of childhood visits from Aang and his guardian, Monk Gyatso. Considering the hijinks that Bumi and Aang got into whenever they were together, Katara wasn’t surprised to read that the scroll was mostly about the pranks and jokes that Air Nomads liked to play on each other and their friends in other nations. There was also a description of airball, the game that Katara remembered seeing an arena for at the Southern Air Temple.

 

The next scroll was from Ba Sing University, judging by the seals on the casing. The summary on the case was that it was the second of two scrolls written by Professor Xang, a Foreign Cultures scholar, concerning his time at the Eastern Air Temple during their weeklong Spring Equinox festival, 206 years ago.

 

The scroll started on the last day of the festival, and Professor Xang gave a beautiful description of the closing ceremony that the Air Nomad monks and nuns had held; he even included a transcription of the lyrics to their song about spring turning to summer, babies beginning their journey to childhood, and children beginning their journey to adulthood. Katara couldn’t help smiling when she read about the ceremony’s finale:

 

Xang wrote “All the guardians who had brought children to the temple for choosing their sky bison companions, were given large and multicolored leather bundles, which I was told were ‘saddles for beginning riders’. The saddles proved to be much smaller than those worn by the mature bison as well as more colorfully dyed, and they included a pair of extremely long rope leads. Then all the children who had been brought to the temple for choosing came out, each one carrying a small straw basket adorned with flowers and containing exactly four apples. I was told that the children had spent all morning making the baskets, with the aid of the Eastern Air Temple’s resident nuns. The baskets were set at the feet of their monk and nun guardians, next to the saddles.

 

“Then the abbess of the temple blew a great horn, and the great mother bison of the local herd came gliding down out of the clouds, with their calves clustered around them. Once they landed in the clearing, the mothers gave each of their calves a lick on the forehead, and then nudged them towards the children who had chosen them as companions on the second day of the festival. The children greeted them with glad cries, while hugging as much of their already large bodies as could be managed.

 

“Then the eldest nun of the temple, an aged woman named Dagmola, gestured to the massive set of wind chimes that hung by the entrance to the temple, and airbent a breeze through them to play a particular sequence of notes that I recognized from the song that all the adults had sung earlier; the notes for the verse about children beginning their journeys to adulthood. When the sequence finished, the guardians picked up the saddles, while the children picked up the baskets of apples and fed them to their new companions. The sky bison calves happily ate them, baskets and all, while the children petted them and while their guardians strapped the saddles onto their backs. Then each child was picked up and set into the beginner’s saddle, buckled into place with straps, and given a sack that I was told contained a small waterskin and some nuts for snacks on the journey. Then the long rope leads were tied to the saddles of the guardians’ adult sky bison, who had been patiently waiting for them.

 

“The aged Dagmola created another breeze that played a new series of notes on the chimes, which matched the notes sung during the verse about babies beginning their journey to childhood. And with that note, the Zephyrs from yesterday’s ceremony were brought out in large padded baskets that I realized were cleverly designed infant carriers, and handed to their assigned guardians.”

 

“Zephyrs?” Katara said aloud, puzzling over the word. Didn’t that mean a small breeze? Then she realized from the rest of the sentence that it must have been an Air Nomad nickname for their infant children; aww, how sweet! Just as Water Tribe families sometimes called their young children seal-puppies. The Air Nomad babies must have been brought to the temple for some ceremonial blessing, like the one that Water Tribes had for their babies; each family brought their infant to a tribal gathering when they were two months old, to be formally blessed by the chief and welcomed into the community. Katara smiled again and continued reading Professor Xang’s words:

 

“The guardians leaped up into the saddles of their own mounts and carefully secured the baskets there, and then nodded to the Eastern Air Temple’s leading nun. She blew her horn one final time, and with many calls of ‘Yip yip!’ ringing the clearing, all the sky bison rose into the air, the children laughing and shouting atop their new mounts, and departed for their respective temples.

 

“That concluded the Eastern Air Temple’s Spring Equinox Festival. It was time for me to depart as well; I thanked Abbess Jetsunma for granting me the privilege of attending their festival, and gathered my notes and luggage to depart. The abbess had already arranged for me to be given a ride back to Ba Sing Se with a middle-aged nun named Kamala and her mount Amma. But to my surprise, I had a fellow passenger in Amma’s saddle; a five-year-old girl named Kailan.

 

“Kailan said little to me, seeming very sad and clutching a cloth toy lemur to her chest, while a satchel containing her few belongings sat at her feet. Kamala explained to me very briefly that she was being taken to an orphanage in Ba Sing Se, the orphanage run by the Abbey of Oma with whom they had a longstanding arrangement for such matters, because Kailan had failed all their tests for airbending ability.”

 

“What?!” Katara gasped aloud, nearly dropping the scroll in shock. A girl had been kicked out of the Air Temple, disowned by her parents, just because she couldn’t airbend?!

 

Four months ago, after checking in at the Fire Nation capital to see how Zuko was doing and tell him how the evacuation of the first three colonies was going, at Sokka’s request they swung by Master Piandao’s estate for a visit. Sokka wanted to see how his sword-master was doing, and then explain to the master how he’d lost his Space Sword in the Air Fleet Battle and to ask if there was enough Space Metal left from the meteorite to make another sword.

 

Master Piandao had cordially welcomed them in for tea, and told Sokka that he’d already heard from Iroh what had happened to Sokka’s sword, and he believed that there was just enough metal left. Then during the visit and the forge work, the conversation had somehow turned to families and fathers, and for some reason—Katara couldn’t remember why now—Sokka had asked his master about his fondest memory of his father. Piandao had responded, “I don’t have many memories of him at all, but I suppose the fondest one would be when he gave me a small set of toy soldiers for my third birthday.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry; did your father die when you were a child?” Katara had asked in concern.

 

Piandao had replied matter-of-factly, “Oh no, he lived until I was thirty-seven years old. But when I was six years old, my parents sent me to an orphanage in Shu Jing, because they couldn’t bear the shame of having a nonbender child; they were both firebenders, you see.”

 

Sokka’s squawk of outrage would have outdone an entire flock of hawkgulls, but Katara’s hadn’t been much quieter. Yes, bending was a great gift from the spirits, but what parents would be so hard-hearted, so evil, as to shame and abandon their child just for not having been given that gift?!

 

Piandao had calmed them down and assured them that being sent to the orphanage had turned out to be far better for him than he’d thought as a child, that he was a far better man now than he would have been if he’d stayed with his parents. But Katara had privately decided that Piandao’s parents’ cruelty had been another symptom of the—the disease of aggression and firebending-is-superior attitude that the Fire Lords had been spreading for over a hundred years. Zuko sure had his work cut out for him, fixing all the things that were wrong with the Fire Nation. Only the Fire Nation had such emotionally damaged people that they would abandon a child just for being a nonbender…

 

But according to this scroll, they weren’t the only nation after all. Some of the Air Nomads had done it too?!

 

Well, people like Hahn of the Northern Water Tribe and Long Feng of the Earth Kingdom had proven that bad people could be found in any nation. And perhaps like Master Piandao, little Kailan had ended up having a better life far away from her unloving parents than she would ever have had with them; at least, Katara hoped so.

 

It was still a shame, though, that she had ended up going to an orphanage in the Earth Kingdom rather than being adopted by another Air Nomad family. In the Water Tribes, if a family ended up with too many mouths to feed and care for during the lean months, the chief was almost always able to find another family willing to adopt one of the children for their own.

 

There wasn’t much more to that scroll, just Professor Xang noting that Kamala intended to conduct airbending tests among the orphans at the Abbey of Oma after she turned Kailan over to them, and then a description of what the Earth Kingdom landscape had looked from high in the sky on the journey back to Ba Sing Se. Katara finished reading the scroll, rolled it back up and put it in its protective casing, and then rummaged through the satchel for another scroll by that same professor. The heading of the scroll had said it was the second of two, so the first scroll must have covered the first few days of the Spring Equinox Festival…

 

She found the right scroll after only a little searching, opened it and settled back to read some more. She was right, the scroll started with Professor Xang’s arrival by trader caravan at the Eastern Air Temple just a day before the festival was to start. He had been welcomed by Abbess Jetsunma as an observer and promised full access to their festival, after swearing an oath that he would strictly observe and not interrupt anything, for any reason.

 

Professor Xang had recorded the many events of the festival: First, a welcoming feast for the visitors from the other Air Temples and all around the globe. The professor had noted that while the female visitors came in all ages, the male visitors were all children between the ages of seven and nine, and their elderly guardians; there were no monks between the ages of ten and fifty. When he’d asked why the other monks from all the ages in between had not come to the festival, the abbess had told him simply that it wasn’t appropriate for them to visit at this time; male children between ten and sixteen years of age did not visit the nuns at all, and monks of sixteen and beyond would visit during the Solstice festivals.

 

The day after the welcoming feast, there had been a sky bison choosing ceremony, where the children who’d been gathered from all the Air Temples were invited to choose their lifelong companions from sky bison calves that had just been weaned and were ready to leave their mothers. Katara smiled while reading about the antics of the sky bison calves, trying to imagine their gentle giant Appa being so small and cute… well, perhaps not small, as the professor said the calves were already the height of the average man. But still, the thought of a smaller and saddle-less Appa doing barrel rolls in the sky and sneaking into a storeroom to gorge himself silly on apples was endearing.

 

Professor Xang had noted that there were in addition to mothers with infant children, there were several heavily pregnant Air Nomad women present in the Eastern Air Temple, and both pregnant and nursing women were referred to as ‘bearers’ by the monks and the older nuns. Three bearers had given birth during the week of the Equinox festival; the professor had not asked to witness the births (there were evidently limits to what he would do for the sake of knowledge), but he’d noted that a quartet of nuns had played music on flutes and drums continuously during the hardest part of labor.

 

The head musician had explained to the professor that their playing gave the birthing women a rhythm to focus on, to aid in the birthing process. The music also helped to mask any noises of pain made by the bearers themselves, that might disturb the serenity of the temples. Katara thought back to the three births she had helped her grandmother midwife back before Aang had come out of the iceberg, and little Hope that she’d helped bring into the world on the journey to Ba Sing Se, and thought that playing music during the birth might actually be a very good idea. She’d have to include that in the letter she was already writing to Gran-Gran, for Gran-Pakku to take back home with him.

 

Then Professor Xang wrote about an event that took place on the sixth day of the festival, the day before the end; the abbess had declared the Sending of the Zephyrs. The children were all sent out to play with their new bison friends, and the abbess had suggested the professor should go watch the children, but he’d reminded her of her promise to let him observe everything. She’d finally agreed, on the condition that the professor stay in the background and make neither sound nor gesture to call attention to himself until after the ceremony was over.

 

After the professor had once more given his solemn oath to strictly observe, and tucked himself into a corner to watch, a small gong was sounded and several women filed into the room, all carrying babies that looked to be about a year old. When the children’s names and destination temples were called out by the abbess, the women handed the children over to the monks and nuns from the destination temple. Most of the mothers simply handed their infants over, gave them one last affectionate brushing of hair or kiss on the cheek, and then turned away.

 

But one mother, a very young nun named Bayarmaa, at first refused to hand her infant son over to the monks of the Northern Air Temple. She’d been visibly reluctant to join the lineup of bearers in the first place, and when her son Anil’s name was called, she first hesitated, and then tried to run from the room still holding her baby. But two older nuns who’d clearly been expecting trouble blocked her from leaving.

 

The two older nuns and the abbess first took Bayarmaa over to a far corner, talking in words too low for the professor to hear, while all the other monks and nuns in the room tried very hard to occupy themselves with other matters and not listen in. Then the abbess finally gave the young mother a small flask of something to drink; when Bayarmaa tried to refuse the drink, they insisted, one of the older nuns almost pouring it down her throat. Bayarmaa stayed in the corner with her son, while the abbess went back to calling out the names of the other infants and their destinations.

 

Ten minutes later, the abbess once more called out Anil’s name and his destination, the Northern Air Temple. This time one of the older nuns who had stayed in the corner with Bayarmaa reached down, plucked the baby from her arms and walked him over to where the monk was waiting. With a glassy-eyed stare from whatever drug they’d given her, Bayarmaa watched them take her son without further objection or struggle.

 

Professor Xang had tried hard to keep a scholarly detachment from what he’d witnessed, but from the words he wrote on the scroll Katara could easily discern the dismay verging on horror that he’d felt just then, bound by his scholarly oath to not intervene; the dismay verging on horror that she felt herself, just from reading his words. How could they just take that woman’s baby away from her?! And how could those other women… How could they…

 

It all had to be a lie! It had to be—anti-Air Nomad propaganda, that Fire Lord Sozin had somehow snuck into the university’s library by using spies or something! It had to be a lie! Katara almost ripped the scroll to shreds on the spot, but caught herself at the last second. There was a lot of other cultural information on the scroll, and there was a good chance that at least some of it was true; she’d learned the hard way over the last year of the war and in dealing with politicians since then, that the really skilled liars mixed their lies in with truths to make them more believable.

 

Rather than destroy the scrolls now and risk losing important information for rebuilding a lost culture, she would wait for Aang to come back, just as King Bumi had said earlier. Aang would read the scrolls himself, and then he could tell both her and Bumi how much of this information was true, and how much was just a big hateful lie…

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

On the way back from Sàn Mèn, Mai had suggested to Aang that they detour to that valley a little north of their route and ride the hog-monkeys again, since riding them had been such fun a few days ago. The sky was clear with a few breezes, great riding weather, and Mai thought maybe a little distraction would help Aang's mood; he was still feeling just a little sick inside from what he’d done to the Dú Hài spirit a few hours ago, to stop him from poisoning people’s crops.

 

Aang had agreed that he could use a distraction, so they'd made the detour... but that turned out to be a mistake, sort-of. Limping back to where Appa was waiting, Mai said ruefully, "I think they remembered us from the first time."

 

"Yeah," Aang agreed, gingerly testing his right arm to be sure it was still working okay; he was sure he'd be showing a lot of bruises by the time they got back to Omashu. "This time they sure seemed ready for strange people grabbing them and trying to ride them; they put up one heckuva fight."

 

"But no bones broken, right?" as she gave him another concerned glance.

 

"Right," as he gave her a thumbs-up in return.

 

"And how's your head?" she asked as they walked up Appa's tail into the saddle.

 

"Huh? I'm fine; when I got knocked against the tree it only got my arm and right side, not my head. Is your head okay?"

 

Mai smiled at him, a wry and kind-of secret smile, before saying, "I'm fine, it's mostly just my left leg. I'll be staying off the tatami mats for a few days, but that's it."

 

"You should come see Katara when we get back, and let her heal it," Aang suggested while picking up the reins. It wasn't until they'd left the valley and were heading straight for Omashu again that he realized what Mai had really been asking about, when she'd mentioned his head; she'd been asking if he was in a better mood now than he had been before. And he was; if nothing else, those raging hog-monkeys had definitely gotten his mind off their trip to the Spirit World!  

 

He kept that reasonably good mood for the rest of the trip back, but his bruises were really aching by the time they reached Omashu that evening, and Aang was really looking forward to Katara giving him a water-healing session. It was nearly all that was on his mind as he said goodnight to Appa in the stables, and Mai at the entrance to the Fire Nation guest wing; she said that she should check in on Zuko first and see what he'd been up to for the last two days, and then maybe see Katara in the morning. But the look Aang saw on Katara’s face as soon as he stepped into the parlor of their two-bedroom suite told him that something really bad had happened, that was a lot more important than a few bruises. “What happened to make you so upset?” he blurted out for a greeting.

 

“Never mind what happened to me, where have you been?!” Katara demanded. And then before he could tell her about Sàn Mèn and going to the Spirit World, she went on, “Never mind, you can tell me later, but right now I need you to read this!” as she shoved a scroll in his face.

 

The scroll had Ba Sing Se seals on it, and for a second Aang’s heart dropped straight down to his feet, knotting up his guts along the way. Spirits, had the Earth King actually gone and declared war on the Fire Nation now, in revenge for all the damage that the other nation been done during their war of conquest?! Plenty of colonists and Fire Nation generals had sworn that’s what he would do next, but Aang had always reassured them that King Kuei was a nice man, who would never dream of doing such a terrible thing…

 

But it wasn’t a proclamation from the Earth King at all; instead it was a scroll from Ba Sing Se University. A history scroll, about his people! Aang read it eagerly, and felt an aching nostalgia over the scholar’s description of the Spring Equinox festival. He’d chosen Appa at the Spring Equinox festival he’d attended after he turned seven years old, and they’d been together ever since…

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

Trying to get her mind off that Equinox Festival, Katara had read all the other scrolls in the satchel, and found lots of innocuous information. One scroll had been full of recipes for a typical Air Nomad diet, listing some of their favorite vegetarian dishes and drinks. Another scroll had given descriptions of the festivals for each of the four great winds, which were all nice enough; they featured some ceremonial skits and lots of food, music and dancing, like many of the festivals in her tribe. Another scroll had described some of the beautiful art and music that could be made with airbending; from using precise gusts of wind to play melodies on wind chimes and wind harps, to creating flowing, moving pictures in the air using colored smoke.

 

But then she’d read another scholar’s account from 150 years ago, of his conversation with two teenaged Air Nomad boys on a midsummer day. Two boys who were still flushed and excited from their first Summer Solstice festival that they’d attended a few days before, and who had gladly told him all about it…

 

‘Seeding’! That scroll claimed that the men of the Air Nomads went to the Eastern and Western Temples during the Solstice ceremonies to breed with the women there, like they were no better than female tiger-seals in season, and then left them! Flying off without a care in the world for the children they’d just sired! That scroll absolutely had to be a lie, because no culture would ever tolerate such behavior! Any man of the Water Tribes who did that, would be hunted down by the girl’s family and gutted like a fish!

 

Katara had been pacing her suite for hours since then, unable to focus on anything in her agitation. She still wanted to freeze that scroll inside a block of the very coldest ice she could manage and then shatter it, scroll and all. And she would, right after Aang got to look at it and see what sort of hateful lies Firelord Sozin had been spreading about his people; it would probably hurt him, but he deserved to know about the propaganda Sozin had spread to try to justify genocide.

 

Then Aang finally came back, and Katara immediately shoved the first scroll about the Spring Equinox festival at him, to get his verdict about how much of it was truthful and how much was sheer lie. After he confirmed the lies, then she’d tell him about where he could find the other scroll, which had landed behind the couch when she’d thrown it across the room. Aang could probably fish it out easily with an airbent wind; Katara knew that if she touched it again, it would be to destroy it.

 

She focused on Aang’s expression as he read through the scroll; after a few minutes he glanced up, noticed her watching him and asked, “This is just about a Spring Equinox festival; how could this make you or anyone so upset?”

 

“Have you finished it yet?” she demanded.

 

“Not yet; I’m only up to the fourth day, and this guy describing the music they played for the bearers giving birth.”

 

The word ‘bearers’ sent a jolt of alarm through her, but Katara only said grimly, “Keep reading.”

 

Aang gave her a wary, worried look, but kept reading. And just two minutes later, he saw it; she could tell by the sad frown on his face. Thank Tui, it really was a lie, she thought with relief, before saying aloud, “Bumi brought that and some other scrolls here so you could verify them; tell is which parts of each scroll are true and which are lies.”

 

“Well, this particular festival happened almost a century before I was born, and I’ve never even heard of any of the people that were mentioned by name, so I can’t guarantee what really happened and what didn’t,” Aang said thoughtfully as he rolled the scroll up and put it back in its case. “But everything this professor described up through the fifth day of the festival seemed accurate enough; it matches what I can remember from my own journey to the Eastern Air Temple with Monk Gyatso, when I got Appa The sixth day, though…” he shook his head.

 

Feeling a little calmer now that she knew the scrolls really did have some lies scattered through them, Katara was about to apologize for her rude behavior when he’d walked in the door earlier and ask if he’d eaten yet, when Aang spoke again. “I was outside with the other kids during the Sending of the Zephyrs ceremony, but Gyatso told me about it afterwards, when he showed me the Zephyr we’d be taking home with us. And no Air Nomad bearer would ever behave as selfishly as that Bayarmaa did.”

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

Now that he’d finished reading the first scroll, Aang figured he would ask Katara to heal his bruises and then ask if she wanted to have dinner with him, before reading any more scrolls. But just as he said, “Would you mind hea--” he was interrupted by Katara nearly screaming, “Selfishly?!”

 

Eeep! He hadn’t seen Katara this mad since before Zuko had changed his ways! Backing up a couple of steps, Aang replied nervously, “Well, yeah!” What had gotten into her?!

 

“And how was she selfish?!” Katara demanded, stomping towards him. And for a second Aang could only stare at her, surprised and appalled; couldn’t Katara tell? Wasn’t it obvious?! Bayarmaa’s baby Anil had been a boy!

 

All the boys went to either the Northern or Southern Air Temples to be raised, while the girls went to the Eastern or Western Air Temples; that’s the way it had always been! For Anil to stay with his bearer at the Eastern Air Temple, would mean that he’d grow up the only boy in the whole place. He’d be surrounded by girls, yeah, but there’d be nobody else around for doing boy stuff! Nobody to have peeing-for-distance contests with, or teach him how to airbend your farts after eating broccoli-kale, or any of the other stuff that boy Air Nomads did but girls didn’t… That sounded like a pretty boring and lonely childhood in Aang’s opinion, and it had been selfish of Bayarmaa to be willing to deprive her baby of so much fun growing up, just because she wanted to keep him with her.

 

But before he could even begin to explain all that, Katara stomped even closer to him while shouting, “And I suppose you think the men were being generous when they went to the nun’s temples for the Solstice festivals?!”

 

“Wait, what?! I’ve never been to a Solstice festival! I wasn’t old enough to go to one, before I went in the ice!”

 

But that fact didn’t stop Katara at all. “But do you know what went on at those festivals? The ‘seeding’?!”

 

“Well, yeah, but--”

 

“That’s disgusting! And cruel, to treat all your women that way!”

 

Aang was sore, he was hungry, and now his girlfriend was attacking his people; he’d had enough! He scowled and shouted back, “It is not cruel!”

 

00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00

 

How could Aang possibly be defending such horrible behavior?! But now he was shouting at her, “If any nuns don’t want to participate, all they have to do is leave the temple!”

 

“Oh, so they have to leave their own homes if they want to avoid being raided with the rest?” as she glared at him. Gran-Gran had never wanted to talk about it, but Hama had told her what had happened to the women in the Fire Nation raids. Waterbender women were captured and taken away, like she had eventually been captured. But nonbender women had been raped and left bleeding in the snow, for the other women to find and comfort if they could. And then the tribe’s healers would grind up some of their precious stores of coil-tree bark, to make into the tea that prevented pregnancy and ensure that no unwanted fire-babies were born the next year…

 

But Aang bellowed back at her, “It’s not like that! The nuns are there willingly! They let the men seed them and leave, and then they--”

 

“That’s what whores do, Aang!” as Katara found herself actually shaking with rage. After what the Earth Kingdom delegates had said about her that morning… She didn’t even realize what she was doing until the vases of flowers nearby shattered and the water arced across the room, to become ice-spears hovering between them and pointing at Aang as she shouted, “I’ll never be anyone’s whore!”

 

Aang scowled and whipped his hand out, and an airbending slice shattered the ice spears. But even as she reformed them, he grabbed his staff and headed straight for the balcony, shouting over his shoulder, “I’m leaving! I’d rather stay with the hog-monkeys than with you right now!”

 

“Good riddance!” she shouted after him. And it wasn’t until after he’d slammed the balcony doors behind him and glided away that Katara realized what had happened—or what hadn’t happened—and slapped her palm to her forehead. “Idiot! Katara, you’re an idiot!”

 

She’d been so caught up in those scrolls and their argument, she’d forgotten to tell him about Zuko’s determination to retain all the older Fire Nation colonies, for the sake of the families there!

 

To be continued