Author's Note:

So, the description for Grief is Personal is "Mai loses her mother. Zuko is there for her." A silly thought hit me and since I have writer's block I wrote it down to kill time and get the grey matter going.

I slay me.

Seriously though, I don't know if I am funny or not. I laugh at my own jokes and laugh harder when they turn out to be duds.

PLEASE tell me if I should stay away from comedy!

Give it to me straight people! I can take it!


Mai stomped around the royal suite, looking here and there, muttering under her breath. Finally, in a fit of frustration, she uttered, "Damn! She was here just a moment ago!"

Burning with curiosity, and previously too fearful to ask, Zuko queried, "Who was here?"

"My mother! I put her down here a moment ago and she isn't here anymore!" To make her more manageable, Mai's mother was magically shrunk down into a pocket size version. (Yeah things like that can happen. Shush. I'm telling the story.) "She can't just have walked away!"

Zuko, having absorbed some of Uncle Iroh's wisdom through osmosis, prudently remained silent, even though he was thinking to himself, Uh? Yeah! She could of. He knew his wife was packing and he didn't fancy providing her a target for practice. Still, a snigger escaped him, for from within the depths of his mind, a nagging voice spoke out to him. "A Fire Lord would not look dignified with holes in him, Mai. Be a good little girl and remember not to turn him into a pin cushion."

NOW, as we all know, the universe loves to pick on Zuko. Really, it does. Remember? In the beginning, there was . . . light. (Huh? Oh yeah, right. Okay, I'll speed things up a bit. Take two.) In the beginning there was this happy little prince and the universe watched him with keen interest and quickly grew bored. So, it gave him an overachieving, ungrateful, sister with delusions of god-hood. (My story.) Then, if it wasn't enough that she was driven by schadenfreude . . . (What does that mean? It means pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.) AND was a prodigy, the universe decided that he didn't need his mother and so took her away. Who wants a cry-baby prince anyhow? Then for shits and giggles, the universe also decided to turn his once seemingly okay father ('cause Zuko sorta remembers it that way) into a sadistic bastard. THEN . . . .

(But I digress. So, where were we? Oh yeah! He sniggered. Oh, foolish, foolish Fire Lord! Have you taken leave of your senses?)

"What? What's so funny about losing my mother?"

(Warning Will Robinson, I mean Zuko. Warning!)

Mai, arms akimbo and sporting more attitude than Tyler Perry's Madea, glared at her husband.

(WHOA! Maybe that is how Mai shrunk her mother!)

"Nothing dear," squeaked her suitably chastised husband, as he s-l-o-w-l-y side-stepped out of her crosshairs.

Just then Momo streaked by the hapless Fire Lord and made for the door. In his furry little hands was an itty-bitty teensie-weensie woman shrieking, "Help me! Help me!" (Private Fire thinks of The Fly and shakes her head free of the thought.)

(I have no suitable ending. I have writer's block, remember?)