The Avatar shaves her head. She rakes a knife over her scalp and cuts off every strand of hair while it's still only stubble. Her skull is perfectly round and smooth, like the pebbles the children use to play. She's a girl, but she has no hair.

It looks grotesque. Revolting.

Ozai's hair is coarse and unkept, but it is long and dark and befitting of a woman. It doesn't hang in her eyes, not anymore. Ozai keeps her head high again.

You can endure anything. If they take away your fire, you endure the cold. If they take away your light, you endure the dark. If they strip you of your dignity, if they drag you through the mud, you close your eyes and hold your breath and endure.

For a while, she refuses to eat. It's a matter of pride. Of defiance. Her breasts shrink and sag, her hips become narrow and her cheeks hollow. She doesn't mourn her beauty as she mourns her kingdom, but she aches as it slips away from her, that as everything else.

The Phoenix Queen is a golden figure in her dreams. Sometimes she forgets they are the same person.

When the Queen comes to her even as she's awake, she knows she can't keep starving herself. The soggy vegetables in her bowl taste better than any other delicacy she's ever tasted. She eats slowly, despite her stomach crying for more. Her will is still strong. Only her body is weak.

The Avatar accompanies the traitor Ozai used to call her daughter many years ago the next time she comes to ask her endless, foolish questions about the man Ozai used to call her husband. She must have heard of the hunger strike. Ozai considers it a victory.

She is as ugly as always, in her gaudy colors and shapeless clothing, with her jarring tattoos and chunky wooden beads. Doesn't she know how barbaric, how ridiculous she looks? She is the only of her kind. Preserving their customs won't help.

Ozai has turned phrases over in her head, planned out things to say, sharp words to cut bare skin, but she ends up saying nothing.

The Avatar looks at her with bright blue eyes and purses her lips with pity. She looks at her and the person reflected in her eyes is not grotesque, not revolting, only frail, wilted and pitiable.

Ozai keeps her head high, but her chin quivers.

Her hair sticks to her cheeks.