Work Text:
Prologue The Ashes
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The sand was hot.
Azula ran across it anyway.
Her foot sank into the surface before she could pull it free again. Her sandals dangled from one hand, forgotten until they struck her knee with each step.
The beach stretched endlessly in both directions, white sand and blue water beneath a sky so large it seemed to swallow everything beneath it. The sea glittered in the afternoon sun until looking directly at it made her eyes ache.
The waves were impossible.
They rolled toward shore in neat, orderly lines and then broke all the rules the moment they arrived. More than once she stood just beyond their reach, certain she had judged the distance correctly, only for cold water to rush around her ankles and send her stumbling backward through wet sand.
Laughter followed from somewhere behind her, carried lightly over the sound of the surf. The wind smelled of salt and something cooking farther up the beach. Seabirds drifted overhead, white shapes turning lazily in the bright air. One of them landed nearby, folding its wings and standing so still that for a moment it seemed willing to be caught. Azula approached with great care.
The gull watched her. She watched the gull.
Then the bird burst upward in a flurry of white feathers and left her staring at the empty place it had been.
Everything seemed enormous: the sea, the cliffs, the ships anchored beyond the bay, the adults moving in and out of the sunlight as though they belonged to a larger world.
Her father stood near the shoreline, dark against the brightness of the water. The wind tugged at his robes. The waves approached him again and again before sliding back into the sea, and from a distance he appeared as immovable as the rocks farther down the coast.
Her mother sat beneath a striped canopy with a book resting open in her lap. Every few pages the wind caught the corner and she pressed it flat again. The sunlight filtered through the fabric overhead, casting shifting bands of red and gold across the sand.
Nearby, Zuko was busy with some project of his own. Wet sand covered his hands and forearms. A crooked shape rose before him collapsed, and rose again. Whatever disaster overtook it never seemed sufficient reason to stop.
The afternoon drifted onward beneath a cloudless sky. The tide crept higher. Shadows lengthened across the beach. The heat left the sand by slow degrees, and the sunlight softened until the whole sea seemed to turn to glimmering gold.
A hand brushed sand from her shoulder. Someone called from farther up the shore.
The gulls wheeled overhead while the waves continued their endless advance and retreat pulling at the beach, smoothing it, leaving it changed and unchanged at once.
The sea remained where it had always been.The beach remained where it had always been.
The sky deepened into orange. And for a little while longer, so did everything else.