Ursa Alone
Prologue: The Funeral
It was snowing.
The gray clouds that had lingered all morning slowly peppered the ground with soft flakes that melted in seconds. It never snowed in the Fire Nation. But today was special.
"You were mother of Shichi…"
The snow nestled in the hair of the white-robbed mourners, melted down faces to join their tears. A large crowd gathered around the colorless mausoleum, their bright white clothes obscuring the snow on their shoulders. In the center of the mourners stood a man whose head towered above all the others; his face might have been kind once but his eyes betrayed a smoldering resentment that made you look away, pretend you hadn't noticed. To complete his image of formidability, he wore full military armor, the bright crimson standing out among the pale faces dressed in white. If you looked closely, you would see his clammy fist clenched around the little hand of a very small girl, dressed in white like all the others.
"Grandmother of Ursa…"
Unlike them, she was not crying, and she was not afraid of the man in red. She wasn't even watching her grandmother's burial. She had her face upturned, watching the white snow that would never again come to the Fire Nation.
"We lay you to rest."
She blinked the snow from her eyelashes. Was it over already?
The man dropped her hand. He moved to the head of the mausoleum and looked upon the beautiful old woman's face one last time. Many of the mourners would later swear they had seen one lone tear threaten to fall from his eyes, but many more would claim it was a trick of the light, for in the very next moment, General Shichi of the Fire Nation set his mother's corpse ablaze and never looked back.