Earthbender: write a story including three characters (no more, no less)
Prompts:
Triple (easy)
Peppermint (medium)
Three Blind Mice (hard)
Word count (not including author's note): 1,980
Blind Mice, Scorched Mice
She wasn't very old, Long Feng noted, but then again, she wasn't exactly young either. Maybe in her mid-twenties, a pretty thing, despite the glare in her copper eyes and the bruises on her face. She had been the only survivor of the ship they sunk from the western side of Full Moon Bay, the side controlled by the Fire Nation. Why her, how she made it out, Long Feng could never guess. But it was only hours later that two of his agents found her shivering, barely breathing body on the shores of the bay. She had broken ribs, probably from a wayward boulder, and a nasty cut on her forehead that looked potentially deadly. Long Feng almost ordered for her to be put out of her misery, but he decided against it at the last minute. After all, in all their failed attempts at reconditioning Fire Nation soldiers, they had never had a female to work with. Well, not one who was still alive.
She had healed better than Long Feng could have expected. Perhaps too well, if his three agents currently in the infirmary with severe burns were anything to go by. But it didn't matter. Soon, she'd be his...or she'd be dead. It all depended on how the next several days went.
She was strapped to the chair, her lips muffled with stone and arms locked in tight. She struggled anyway, causing even more bruises to form on her wrists and ankles, and scrapes around her mouth. She hadn't stopped struggling since she was well enough to move, and she firebent whenever her arms were free enough to do so. Long Feng wondered if rumors of what happened to war prisoners had spread, even outside the walls of Ba Sing Se. If even the Fire Nation had heard of the dreaded Lake Laogai.
She never gave them a name, not even a fake one, but that was no matter. If this worked, then she'd have a brand new name anyway. Joo Dee, perhaps. Or maybe Long Feng would make something else of her, a palace servant or something to keep his agents occupied. He knew many of them wanted to test the theory that Fire Nation whores tasted like fire. But he was getting ahead of himself. They needed to erase the girl first, before he could consider what to make of her.
Long Feng didn't stay for the work that his agents could do well on their own. If they did manage to wipe the girl without killing her, then he'd be the first to know. Besides, these things went on for hours at a time, and he simply didn't have the time to see how his pet project was turning out. There were things to attend to. A certain king and his spirits damned bear, for instance.
-0-
They tried to tell her things. All sorts of things. Over and over and over again, who she was, who she wasn't, where she belonged, where she came from. It didn't make sense. She knew who she was. Her name was Kiran, daughter of Soan and Tya, fourth division of the Fire Nation Navy. She had two brothers, and a little sister still at home, and two nieces, both adorable little girls even if she'd only ever met them once before. And no matter what these Earth Kingdom scum told her, this would always be true. It had to be true.
But the light was intoxicating. She couldn't help but follow it as it circled, around and around and around... Even when she closed her eyes, it still was there, persisting deep into her memory until all she could see was green and darkness and the light. She ached for the sun.
They kept telling her things. But she didn't believe them. Refused to believe them. Liars, the whole lot of them! Why were they even trying to take control of such a filthy place anyway? With no sun, and only dank hard walls all around, with the horrible green lights. Kiran wondered back to a time before all this, tried to recall her ship, her captain, her crew-mates. When they sparred on the deck, barefoot and sweating in the gloriously hot sun, or their talks around the fire at night while they struggled down the horrible meals their cook always made. They had this theory, that Nishan was actually a wonderful cook, he just didn't like any of them and so served them rotten food.
Or even further back, to the time when she was just a young girl, practicing her firebending with her brother, watching the other one play with his swords. Just because he didn't have that familiar flame deep within himself, didn't mean he was left behind. And her sister, her dear little sister, who loved dolls almost as much as she loved sticking needles in them. She was so weird, playing tea parties in a tree or pretending she was an airbender by jumping off the roof into the pond. She had given their mother a right good scare the first time she did that.
Kiran sighed as she remembered these things, wishing they weren't so far away, wishing she wasn't being held by these despicable people, deprived from the sun and always taken back to the same chair, every day, to be told lies and false-things. At the very least, she wished they'd end this torture and simply kill her, so that maybe then she could join her father and grandmother and her Uncle Miko.
But they didn't. And they told her the same things. And she wasn't sure how long it was, days or weeks or years, but after a while she decided to simply let their words wash over her. They could tell her whatever they wanted. They could circle that light around her for the rest of her miserable life, but she'll never give in to their mutterings, even if she did start to wonder if her name really was Kiran, if she really did have a family waiting for her back home, or if she even had a home. She must have been here for forever. Born here, reared here, and the memories she had in her head where just more things that they told her, to confuse her or try to kill her, she didn't know.
"No," she whispered, because no matter what, she couldn't believe that was true. There was a world out there. She knew it. The dying little flame in her stomach told her so, and she had to keep fighting so she tripled her efforts, even if she knew it was for nothing.
"Why do you persist in your foolish defiance?" She glared up into the green eyes of the man she had come to hate, even if she didn't remember why. His voice was so oily, just like that greasy smirk matched his greasy hair. "Your suffering would all end if you would just give in."
"Never," she spat, and she didn't even know why she was resisting, but she knew she had to, no matter what, she couldn't give up.
"I will never understand your kind," he mused, leaning forward to catch her chin. He looked at her critically, as if trying to stare straight into her and discover everything she was, or hoped to be. "How are you so stubborn? What drives you forward? Even the earth must give way under enough pressure."
She struggled from his grip, but she was too weak, and she couldn't look away. She felt so cold. The sun was no more than a distant thing. Probably more a memory made from her own imaginations. She wanted to burn, but didn't know how. But even then, she refused to let herself give up. Instead, she spat in his face, and he wrung her to the floor in disgust. "Fire Nation savage," he growled, and opened the wall as if he controlled the earth itself, and left. She was alone again.
The next day, she woke, and she was so cold, and couldn't feel anything. It was like something had gone out inside of her, something important, but she couldn't remember what it was. When they brought her to the chair, she screamed and kicked, refusing because she knew that whatever it was was stolen by them. The light, and the lies, and that's why she struggled. She hated them. All of them.
Her skin felt so cold, like ice, like the time she was patrolling along the northern border, and that just made no sense because all there was was this place, with darkness and a dank, dead smell to the air. But she was still cold, so she fought down deep within her, searching for something, anything, desperate for warmth. And she found it. A spark. Barely alive, but she coaxed it, feeling it spread, and she laughed, not caring as smoke clogged her senses because finally, after so long, she was warm. And when she began screaming from the pain, she didn't care, because there was fire, and there was ash, and her laughs rang out against her choked tears.
-0-
Long Feng sighed as walked through the palace walls. His agents had been unsuccessful, once again. The girl died just like all the other ones, skin blackened, clothes turned to ash. A pity, really. This one had lasted much longer than the other ones, a full two weeks. He almost thought it would work.
And now he had to spend the afternoon with King Kuei. To talk over 'politics' and 'the security of Ba Sing Se' and other such nonsense that the foolish boy pretending to be a man really didn't know about. He didn't know anything about ruling his city, much less the rest of the Earth Kingdom. Still, Long Feng forced a smile on his face as he sat down for tea.
"Afternoon, my king," he stated smoothly to the young man.
"Hm, thank goodness, Long Feng," Keui stated dramatically. "I just finished talking to some of the caterers for Bosco's birthday celebration. They've been having difficulty getting all the foreign cuisine I had ordered. It's been quite the issue. I've been in and out of meetings all day, reorganizing the menu and salvaging what I can."
"How dreadful," he murmured, not bothering to hide the contempt that dripped from his words. Keui, naive as he was, would never notice. "I suggest you drink some peppermint tea. It will ease the stress."
"A splendid idea!" Keui agreed, calling for the servant and ordering a pot.
"I will take a cup as well," Long Feng added, and Keui looked at him in surprise.
"Are you stressed, Long Feng?" he asked. "Is there trouble I was unaware of?"
"No, no," he assured him. "I just like the taste."
"Oh, good then. I take it Ba Sing Se is doing well then?"
Taxes have nearly tripled, Long Feng thought to himself. The Fire Nation continues to hammer at our walls, and the refugees have been getting restless. Talk of war has been sprouting up, and my agents can hardly keep them silenced. "It is," he reported as their tea arrived. He took a much needed drink, not caring if the liquid scalded his throat.
"That is good to hear," Keui said with a smile, taking careful sips of his own tea. Everything he did was careful, from the way he dressed in the morning to how he planned that stupid bear's birthday party. "What would I do without you?"
Leng Feng only nodded, and drank his tea.
This author's note is important! It has to do with the prompt!
Okay, a quick history lesson:
The nursery rhyme 'Three Blind Mice' is actually in reference to Queen Mary l, also known as Bloody Mary. The three blind mice are three noblemen who were protestant, and refused to conform to Mary's Catholic ways. So she burned them at the stake. And that's our poor firebender here. She refused to give in to the Dai Li, and she burned. And, obviously, Long Feng being more like 'Bloody Long Feng.'
As for Keui, Mary's husband was this Spanish guy, Philip ll (I think they're actually distantly related, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms). Anyway, all the important people like Parliament and stuff didn't really like that she wasn't marrying an Englishman, so they passed these laws that basically made it so that Philip couldn't do anything without Mary's consent. Making her the real one running the country. Hey, kind of like Long Feng and Keui!
Anyway, when I saw Three Blind Mice as one of the prompts, this came up into my mind.
Another quick note:
Kiran was in the fourth division of the Fire Nation Navy. Four is in unlucky number in China, because its homophonous (meaning it sounds the same but means different things) to the word 'death.' In Hong Kong, there are actually residential buildings that skip all numbers with four in it.