Tales of the Tea Shop
Avatar Aang's Modest Proposal
"Do you think Shaggy and Scooby Doo abuse drugs?" Azula had a 'Scooby-Doo' comic book as she sat with Karo at the Pai Sho table. Karo read an Earth Kingdom history textbook and wished to take advantage of a quiet Friday evening at the tea shop to catch up on his reading. Azula made this somewhat difficult. The cold damp late winter weather made the tea shop a popular hang out for many kinds of people and Iroh kept himself busy. At the moment he sat with two elderly ladies and chatted about 'the way things used to be during the war' which as expected were terrible and involved starving to death in winter and eating the bark of maple trees.
"What?" Karo curled his eyebrows in confusion. "The hippie dude and the dog? I think you have read more into that comic than the authors intended. They wrote it for ten year olds."
"Well Shaggy is always hungry and what are Scooby Snacks anyway? Sounds like a major case of the munchies. Shaggy sees ghosts and acts paranoid all of the time." Azula placed the comic down and tapped it. "Drug test time for Shaggy and Scooby if you ask me."
"Inform the publisher to make it corporate policy for fictional characters." Karo shook his head slightly and returned to reading his book not sure what else to say.
"Don't you think a comic can have a subtext? Perhaps Scooby Doo makes social commentary." Azula continued tapping the comic book.
"Hey guys." Katara sat down at the table and placed a saffron colored paper in front of her. "I got a letter from Aang and he says he will visit us next weekend but what I found weird is that he says he has a 'Modest Proposal' he wants to discuss with his friends."
"He wants to surprise us – I see no good in that." Azula read the letter which said nothing which offered any detail. "Nothing about starving children – so it would appear that he has something to tell us."
"Starving children?" Katara now had the chance to hear Azula make no sense.
"A satirical essay called 'A Modest Proposal' suggested farming the children of the poor to provide food for the rich." Azula explained calmly. "Have ten kids, sell seven for food and pocket the money. I have heard children are easy to make."
"Eww!" Katara stared at Azula as if scolding her but realized that never did any good. "Anyway that doesn't sound like Aang."
"Maybe he wants to ask us to join the Air Nomads?" Karo suggested as a possible solution to the puzzle but he had to admit he had no clues and like anything sent by a the karma person or the Universe as a message it had the irritating property of vagueness. "Where do Air Nomads come from? Now don't say 'from a mommy and a daddy Air Nomad who love each other very much' or something similar."
"When civilizations fell apart in the Avatar Realm people did much what they did anywhere else – paid fewer taxes, lived a hair-shirt existence and learned to raise turnips and sheep. A few feared what could happen if knowledge of the past got lost or what might happen when the farmers began to build ships and decided raping and pillaging offered more chances to make money." Azula began her expostulation on another one of her bleak and rather gloomy social theories. "They headed to remote places with books and scrolls and set up shop in monasteries. They lived in high spaces for protection and met the sky bison and learned air bending. No one could figure out how they did this – sky bison could not speak – but perhaps it had to do with the process of evolution. Imagine an initiation where the Air Nomads would shove new members off cliffs – air benders could fly and the rest died when they struck the ground at high speed. As time went by the air benders became skilled and powerful. They did what they did in monasteries – lead dull lives and perfected air bending."
* * *
Next Saturday morning proved cold and rainy. Azula clung to her sheets and listened to the rain run off the roof. Avatar Aang had promised to arrive that morning and she had a completely indifferent attitude to the news. She had nothing against Aang but knew she had nothing in common with him either. He had a deep set of moral convictions that guided his life and made him see the good in all people. He could find the positives in a Category Five Hurricane as it washed a city away – it left nice cheap real estate for anyone brave enough or foolhardy enough to rebuild. He balanced the four elements and kept peace between the four nations and Azula did not think his 'Modest Proposal' involved her. She hoped it didn't involve yet another public function or heavy lifting. She had once almost killed him and yet he never held a grudge. A pacifist, forgiving, loving human meant that he could not be trusted.
A squishy thump rang through the cold damp of Azula's room. She heard a knock on the front door of the cottage a moment later.
"Hello Azula." Azula heard a familiar voice. "It's Aang. May I come in because it's raining out here."
"Hold onto your arrow." Azula slipped out of bed and into slippers and pushed a heap of messy papers to one side. She opened the door and saw Aang with his glider and behind him neatly parked between the guest cottage and the garden shed was Appa. Momo rushed in and curled up on Azula's bed hoping to exploit some of her left over body warmth.
"Hello." Aang entered the cottage and Azula fetched him a dull yellow towel. "I suppose you have wondered why I came here."
"Let me make tea." Azula sounded grumpy and she placed a kettle on a small dark blue colored gas camping stove she kept beside her desk. "Wonder is a higher mental function which in my case don't kick in before eleven in the morning."
"I have come here to talk about my 'Modest Proposal'." Aang watched Azula sit at the desk and tap her fingers as she waited for the water to boil.
"I have no recipes for boiled baby if you wanted to ask." Azula poured the water into her mug and didn't offer any of it to Aang. Aang picked out a delicate silver necklace with blue gems from his bag – Azula recognized it as a betrothal necklace and she breathed in to deliver the 'I'm a lesbian and it won't work' lecture. "I suppose that literary reference is lost on you. I see you have a Water Tribe betrothal necklace, I'm Fire Nation – lesbian, Sokka already got hitched. I imagine you are gunning for Katara."
"Yes." Aang smiled happily. Azula had a few ruder words for that kind of grin.
"Can I have some tea please?" Aang saw Azula sip her tea and grimace. He reached for a cup and saw it had some kind of greenish hair.
"Don't use the mug with the mold. Here!" Azula poured pencils onto the desk out of a mug and handed it to Aang. "Not equipped for guests."
"I love Katara. She has a beauty and grace I have never seen in any other woman." Aang sipped the tea and regretted it. "Should the tea be this kind of dark gray?"
"I think you should ask if it should eat into the desk." Azula poured a small amount of the tea on the desk and the varnish began to peel. "And what if Katara says no?"
"You have to have an upbeat optimistic attitude toward these things." Aang decided that the mix of pencil shavings and tea might upset his stomach. "She could say yes and we could get married."
"The optimist believes that this is the best of all worlds. The pessimist fears that this is all to true." Azula sat in her night gown in her desk chair and wished Aang would get to the point. "And what if she wants ten kids and sits at home all day eating seal jerky? Water Tribe women get chunky you know."
"I love Katara and why not have a large family so we can rebuild the Air Nomads?" Aang placed the cup down. "When does Uncle Iroh open the tea shop?"
"Ten." Azula felt the depressing dreariness of the fall rains and the damp room soaked into her bones. "Why did you drop in on me?"
"The tea shop was closed." Aang hesitated for a moment. "I arrived at eight in the morning and the rain soaked me and I felt cold. I didn't think you'd mind."
"I need my sleep. Iroh gets up early and you can find him in the back." Azula called Aang a few nasty things under her breath then politely frog marched him by his collar to the back door of the tea shop and used her key to open the door and shoved him through. Uncle Iroh had begun sweeping out the back room with a corn broom preparing the tea shop for the coming day and found the sudden appearance of the Avatar startling. Aang came flying through the door with Azula behind him looking very irritated with him, the rain and - as usual for her - with life. She called Aang 'with due respect – an inconsiderate bastard' and slammed the door shut. Azula stomped back to her cottage in the rain and cleaned her feet and dried her hair then tried to get back to sleep. She thought 'eight in the morning sucks' and 'Aang the Avatar badly needs neutering' and the more vile 'I need to put his head on a pike as a warning to anyone who would dare wake me up before ten.' Momo chattered in his sleep and twitched his legs as he lay curled up next to Azula and that did not help her sleep either.
* * *
Azula sat across from Karo with her face in a graphic novel about Earth explorers bound for Mars on their advanced space craft and her gold hair decoration sticking in the air. Even at two in the afternoon she could not completely wake up and the latest cup of tea had not kicked in.
"Didn't sleep well?" Karo asked quietly.
"You saw Appa in the back yard." Azula mumbled without looking up. "Aang knocked at my door at eight in the morning."
"Oh...I wanted to ask if that gold hair decoration is real gold." Karo changed the subject.
"That amount of gold would weigh a ton – just a steel spike with gold plating." Azula muttered as she rested her head. "Talk about a pointless question."
"I am talking to the hair decoration while you have your face on the large black and white inked fold out drawing of a space ship with exploded diagrams of each compartment." Karo jumped when Aang appeared from behind soaking wet and very depressed.
"What's new?" Aang sat down with his wet saffron robes making a squish.
"So far the ship has only traveled halfway to Mars." Azula cracked her shoulder and closed the thick graphic novel. "And I have a crick in my neck."
"I have read that one. I can tell you how it ends." Karo picked up the thick black and white graphic novel.
"Don't! I'm rooting for the predatory Martians." Azula scowled.
Aang did not 'get' Science Fiction but then again he had missed a hundred years of history. Writers of 'speculative fiction' began to write in the reign of Lord Sozin of different types of futures – propagandist utopias and horrific worlds. The graphic novel made a perfect vehicle to distribute the popular stories and generations of Fire Nation fans grew up reading such stories. Fire Nation writers had thought about lunar travel computers, life on other planets and often time paradoxes. Science Fiction began to gain a following outside of the Fire Nation and now bookstores sold it everywhere and some of the authors became immensely rich.
"Katara said she doesn't want to get married right now." Aang blurted out with a depressing tone which fit the mood of the rainy day perfectly. "She told me that she has so much to do and she didn't feel ready for marriage."
"Good night." Azula lay her head on the book. "Wake me up when something happens I didn't expect or predict."
"Do you have any dry clothes?" Karo asked very politely. "If you have a broken heart it adds to your misery if your Air Nomad boxers are riding up into your good and plenty."
"I will go change." Aang turned to Azula. "May I use the cottage."
"Go ahead." Azula waved her hand as she lay on the table.
* * *
"How do you feel?" Karo asked the freshly dressed Avatar Aang as he returned a half hour later. "If it makes you feel any better I consider it an honor to have met the Avatar."
"He really does feel honored to meet you." Azula had taken a short nap and three cups of tea had refreshed her mind and spirit. "You have met him before Karo and so how many times will you have the urge to say that?"
"I feel like I have had my heart smashed." Aang sighed heavily and sat down. Iroh bowed and politely offered him tea and explained that he felt honored to have him as a visitor. Momo made a weak attempt to chatter and sound joyful but it failed.
"You will find your true love in time." Iroh said in what Azula took as a halfhearted attempt to raise his spirits. "Katara cares deeply about you."
"She treats me like dirt and I've seen her slug guys who offended her and so you know what she acts like when she hates people." Azula explained as she played with a deck of cards. "Listen to my Uncle – he could write his own advice column. Many is the time when I have like complete and utter crap and he has said something wise and profound."
"Do I help?" Uncle Iroh poked his head between Azula and Karo.
"No! I still feel like complete and utter crap but that doesn't mean you haven't said anything wise or profound." Azula tapped her fingers on the deck of cards. "I just choose to ignore most of it."
"I hope I taught you hope!" Iroh squeezed Aang's shoulder. "Hold together Aang and see what fate has in store for you."
"We will all end up dead. In fact this will be the century we will die." Azula dealt cards out to Karo while he prepared the cribbage board. "I have nothing to say but roughly translating for my uncle that means 'you have to wait' or 'it could get worse but only if we have a gas explosion in the kitchen'. You must have planned this for months and shelled out lots of money for that necklace?"
"Yeah....I did." Aang hung his head as Karo counted his cards and moved his peg. "I remember when she taught me water bending she had this beautiful white bathing suit and she would hold my hands to show me the right positions and I blushed and felt so happy."
"As the Avatar you have a rather pathetic side." Azula moved a couple of cards hoping it would improve things. "You can use all four elements and have great power. You could have any woman you desire and the first one you ask told you she wasn't ready? I wish I had that problem! Look at me – you see an old lady with a pet lizard and a dusty house that smells like lizard urine."
"What will happen to me?" Karo had no idea how to comfort a depressed person and a depressed Avatar struck him as magnitudes more difficult and potentially much more dangerous.
"Who do you think will clean up the lizard urine?" Azula replied from behind her cards.
* * *
"I heard a flute." Karo sat at his desk while Azula quizzed him on the part of the Calculus text they had to master for class on Monday morning. They had made these Sunday evening study sessions an important part of their weekend routine and Azula had begun to explain the Rule of Quotients.
"I got nothing." Azula cupped her hand to her good ear. She sat on her bed with her notes around her and concentrated on the material. Azula for all her faults had a mind that came to grips with mathematics with some ease. Karo had a harder time but he managed to keep his marks acceptable.
"I have a stalker!" Katara stood at the door which was open and announced that in a rather excited voice to Karo and Azula. "I saw Aang in the chestnut tree outside the house and he's singing love ballads."
"I have to see this!" Azula rushed to the window and could see Aang in the dim light of the streetlamp playing the flute. The chestnut tree had lost all of its larger les determined leaves large leaves and he could make out the color of Aang's orange and yellow robes in the dim light. He sat balanced in the middle of the point where the main branches parted – a full ten meters above the street. She climbed on the desk and opened the window and the cold damp fall air filled the room, she picked up the heavy black metal stapler from Karo's desk and stuck her head out. "I didn't know you could rhyme those two dirty words together. Do I win anything if I hit him with the stapler?"
"Close the window before we all freeze." Karo shivered and rubbed his shoulders. Almost as if to add to the farce the phone rang downstairs and Karo's mother answered it.
"Karo do you know who has gone up the chestnut tree with the flute?" Lady Zhao yelled a few moments later.
"Close the window." Karo pulled the stapler out of Azula's hand and she closed the window.
"Karo!!" Lady Zhao yelled again."Our neighbor called and wants to know why we have someone up that tree singing rude songs."
"I can't explain any of this." Karo yelled back down the stairs to her mother. "I see someone in the tree but swear I have no idea what is going on."
"I will talk to him." Azula shoved past Karo and Katara. "He needs to listen to reason."
"I feel so humiliated." Katara sat on Karo's bed and wondered what Azula meant by 'reason'. She expected a flash of lightning and did not know if Azula intended to make Aang see reason or set the tree on fire under him and make him play the flute insanely fast.
"Avatar Boy!" Azula kicked the chestnut tree in such a way that a shower of dried out chestnuts struck Aang in the middle of the fifteenth verse of a forty five verse long love poem. She kicked the tree a second time to make her point even more clearly. "At ten in the evening you should have better things to do than serenading the neighborhood. What are you – some kind of pathetic feral cat? Have you come completely unglued? Lady Zhao got a call about the noise."
"I thought I would fight to win Katara's heart." Aang flew down on his glider and Azula held out her hand.
"Give me that flute!" Aang handed her the flute and she turned it to ash in a single flare of bright blue flame. "Katara, Karo and I have to study.....get your horny butt in the house."
"I didn't mean to disturb anyone." Aang walked in the direction Azula led him as she gripped his collar.
"Singing about dreaming to conceive babies with a Water Tribe beauty and playing a wooden flute in a tree wouldn't disturb people?" Azula hated stupid actions but she had hoped the Avatar as the leader of the world could not have a nervous breakdown because of a woman.
"You heard that?" Aang decided to shut up. He had let his passions rule his reason and so passing through the industrial strength grinder of Azula's sarcasm came as no surprise.
"It must be just above freezing out here." Azula let go of the Air Nomad as she opened the front door. "Lady Zhao....may I introduce Aang who wanted to serenade Katara from the tree in front of the house. The Air Nomads traditionally express their love by singing from trees and that makes me rather thankful we have so few of them."
"Do you want to talk to Katara?" Azula spoke quietly to Aang as they walked upstairs together.
"Hey Aang." Karo smiled briefly and then looked at Katara who had her hands on her hips and looked willing if not ready to kill.
"The two of you need to talk." Azula stood next to Karo and then pointed at Aang. "Start singing and you're dead meat. I will place your decapitated head on a branch of that tree to prevent other would be suitors."
"Let's go." Azula poked Karo.
"It's ten at night on a Sunday evening and freezing." Karo protested. "Go where?"
"Come!" Azula pulled Karo close and whispered. "Have you considered the possibility that a tour of the basement might offer. The boiler, pipes and the wonder of what makes a modern townhouse keep us all comfortable."
"What the hell is happening?" Karo followed Azula down the stairs. "Aang serenades Katara. Katara tells us about this and gets upset. You frog march Aang into the house and now you leave them in my room for a tour of the basement? You have started to eat Scooby Snacks haven't you?"
"Keep quiet." Azula walked through the kitchen and then through the small door down a steep staircase that led to the basement.
"A ThermoKing GasMatic Boiler – Oooh." Karo said sarcastically. "Going to show me how to light the pilot light."
"Shhh!" Azula led her friend to the clay vent pipe that happened to run past Karo's room on the inside wall and lead to the roof. "Put your ear against that pipe."
"The red clay pipe?" Karo placed his ear against it. "So very much about our friendship makes no sense to me. I hear Katara and Aang talking."
* * *
"Aang." Katara pleaded. "Stop and listen. I didn't say that one day we couldn't think about getting married but I have never had a chance to do what I wished to do. Azula makes jokes about Water Tribe women being hicks and she has a point. When my mother died I had to keep my family together and we lived in poverty. My dad loved my brother and me but he had to go to war and I had to keep our family together. I didn't have a chance to be a girl. I couldn't do things I wanted to do like attend school and learn about the world. I have a chance to enjoy my life – learn new things – I have a few good friends I can have good times with. You met Karo."
"Are you having a thing with him?" Aang asked quietly and with a hint of desperation.
"Aang...Karo is gay." Katara sighed (although Karo didn't hear that) and continued. "Karo came from the Fire Nation and can fire bend but he's a good friend and a very sweet man. I have even learned to get along with Azula in a way. Once I get married I will find myself......"
"The pipe went dead." Karo told Azula. "Mom has decided to take a shower."
"Karo and Katara?" Azula smiled wickedly. "Ooh she could have some really good times with you."
"Oh dear God no." Karo felt himself yanked back upstairs by his collar and had begun to think collars existed on Fire Nation clothes to allow Azula to yank him places without any explanation. He found himself asked by Azula to knock on his door.
"We decided to let you have some privacy." Azula lied – a plain bald lie but Azula had a talent for shaving lies – but then added some hint of truth. "Have you two decided to wait?"
"Yes." Katara announced sadly. "I need time to decide these things."
"I would hate to have to meddle in your affairs but Aang woke me up with his idiotic plan." Azula had her arms crossed. Karo sighed with the kind of relief that came from the feeling a conflict had resolved itself. "It was all Karo's idea to get Aang and have you talk."
"What?" Karo stood next to Azula and slapped her arm.
Azula made her way home with Aang while Karo and Katara prepared for the day ahead and retired for the night. Iroh gave the guestroom on the second floor of his tea house over to Aang and made certain Appa had the best food and insisted on taking no money for his services.
"Can I ask you something?" Aang sounded dejected and lost. "You regret nearly killing me at the Underground City? I have long wanted to ask you that."
"Right now? No." Azula kicked a stick. "You woke me up at eight yesterday morning on a cold Saturday morning and made a complete toss-pot of yourself but I don't suppose yelling at you does any good."
"I mean when you saw me in that gorgeous underground city." Aang shuffled his feet. "Do you regret what you did?"
"I had a dream." Azula walked slowly under the streetlight and watched her breath form a cloud. "I dreamed that the Fire Nation would win the war and in order to fulfill my dream I had to kill you as a matter of duty and honor. All dreams are delusions, dreams of love, revenge and dreams of understanding the meaning of life but we have them as humans. They keep us going."
"Katara said you never say what you mean." Aang held onto his glider. "She has a point."
"I had a delusion. That I held onto the delusion for so long remains my burden and no regret can change what I did." Azula had no emotion on her face. "You have your delusions – you love Katara and think she is the most beautiful woman in all the realm. You really would joyfully make her with child?"
"Of course – I love her." Aang blushed and smiled. "As my wife...."
"I have the idea." Azula patted Aang's shoulder. "What will you do now?"
"I have no idea." Aang shrugged as they turned into the gateway that lead to the back of the tea shop. "Sokka and Suki married and have a happy life together and I hoped Katara wanted that with me."
"Lonely at the top?" Azula conjectured as she fumbled with her keys to the cottage. Appa growled a long infrasonic greeting as he saw Aang. "I can relate. I went nuts when I had absolute power. I didn't have the bad taste to serenade a water tribe girl from a tree with a flute but I did banish lots of servants."
"Come in?" Azula pushed the door open and Aang followed her in without an invitation. She intended to convey a fair degree of sarcasm since kicking him (her second choice) might get her on his bad side.
"No one speaks their mind to me but you do." Aang sat down on the office chair next to Azula's desk after pushing a heap of mail offers for free books off of it. "Why?"
"You haven't commanded my respect. People see you and see the Avatar – the man who defeated my father and who forms the bridge between our realm and the spirit realm." Azula picked up a cluster of yellow manilla envelopes and placed them on her desk where they promptly slid off and fell to the floor. In Azula's mind that meant cleaning was impossible and she left them on the floor. "I don't find you objectionable as a person but as the Avatar I find you weak and I doubt the spirit realm."
"Oh..." Aang knew better than to ask about what she thought about his singing.
"You knew this." Azula raised her eyebrow and gathers a pile of socks off the floor and put them in the gray sack she used to run her clothes off to the laundry. "You have the weakness of someone pressed into a harsh fate before you had grown up. Join the club – we have a lot in common except that I tried to commit homicide several times."
"How bleak." Aang sifted through pages of Azula's notes but could make no sense of any of it.
"I could have it all wrong but I figure the chances of making any sense of life prove so slim why waste my effort on it." Azula picked up a pair of boxers and stuffed it into the bag. "Kind of like taking socks to the laundry – one goes missing and never comes back. It makes more sense to buy a new set of socks than to search the city for the lost sock."
"Again I really don't understand what that means." Aang looked perplexed but he had come to tap Azula's bluntness for useful things.
"We invent the meaning we find in life." Azula placed the bag of laundry near the door as a reminder to take it in. "Now go think about this weekend and how not to abuse chestnut trees and have a good night's sleep."
"I never dreamed I would speak to you one on one – we have always been enemies." Aang bowed and smiled but judged that Azula in her tired state would decide to kick him if he hugged her. "Good night."
* * *
"Thank you for making Monday Morning Calculus more miserable than it already is." Azula began the Pai Sho game with Karo while Iroh brought them a fresh pot of steaming tea.
"What did he do?" Iroh asked as he dealt out the cups and proudly showed Azula and Karo his new Earth kingdom themed tea pots. Karo seemed impressed with the bright green leaves and the brightly colored glazes that depicted fruit of all kinds. Azula yawned and waited for her tea to cool.
"Our professor stammers which means that you have to wait for him to get some inertia going or he stops and the next five minutes of the lecture make no sense to any human lifeforms. Karo kept asking questions." Azula had not seen Aang yet – which seemed like a good sign. It rained that morning and then remained cloudy with low lying dark clouds covering the city. "Actually a lot of the plank heads including that ditsy blond in the back kept asking questions. I get the impression you make calculus far to difficult than it needs to be."
"Would you rather have Katara in the class." Karo made his move and seemed to offer that as some reassurance.
"Water Tribe citizens don't count past five." Azula put her hand against her cheek. "Anything above five is 'some' and anything above ten is 'many'.
"You must have had that dream again." Karo had no intentions of taking calculus again and yet he had to survive the class without too much damage to his grades. Azula had the sick and perverse mind that understood complex mathematics and this explained my he never won any games with her. "You have that 'Seattle' dream and you wake up not knowing what it could mean and it makes you cranky."
"I work on something called an operating system for a huge company. I have no idea what that does except it seems to make complicated machines quit suddenly." Azula made a loud sigh and decided things for the day couldn't get worse – then Aang walked in with a new flute and seemed happy.
"I have a plan." Aang sat down and placed the flute on the chair beside him. "Azula told me I could have any woman I want so I have decided to ask another woman to marry me."
"Oh dear Lord." Karo blundered his piece across the Pai Sho table. He wondered how low Aang would go and whether to expect his next move to consist of an ill planned and poorly executed attempt to cut off his ear and propose to a hooker with the severed ear as a betrothal gift.
"I didn't mean that you had to go on the pull just now! Uh...quit looking at me!" Azula spoke loudly.
"I thought I would present you with this hairpiece." Aang opened a gray metal case covered in velvet and inside sitting in red silk sat a gold hairpiece of the style Karo and Azula wore. "Will you accept my offer of marriage?"
"Oh..." Azula fell backwards off the chair. Iroh rushed over and helped her to her feet as she struggled for a course of action. Azula's thought patterns ran along these lines 'I could kill the measly bastard and keep the hair decoration' or 'I could marry him and get anything I want' to 'But ewww' and 'Oh dear this goes way beyond what I have ever had to deal with' and back to 'I could kill him'.
"Azula can't marry you." Karo spoke quietly and slowly. "Nice hair decoration though."
"Please come with me but stay downwind since I can smell your manhood from here." Azula stood up and picked up the flute. She soundly smacked Aang over the head and handed it back to him with it then frog marched him out the back door. "I may have something. Karo I need your help in case I have made some miscalculation and my efforts make Aang even more screwed up. Follow me to the cottage."
"Can I introduce you to Ty Lee." Azula pulled a cardboard banker's box out from under her bed. "Much like you she has a kind heart but look at this picture she gave me. She had it made for my birthday this year."
"She leaves nothing to the imagination." Karo stated the obvious.
"I know but that tiny pink bikini and that cute smile makes me happy." Azula giggled. "The boxes under my bed contain my stable of women."
"Do you mean to tell me you hide your porn stash under your bed?" Karo had not noticed Aang eying the picture carefully.
"Most people do." Azula held out another portrait of Ty Lee in full Kyoshi dress for Aang. "She is a Kyoshi Warrior."
"She had the same eye color as me." Aang said in awe. "Oh she looks so beautiful."
"You mean everyone?" Karo looked panicked. "What if my mom knows this and finds my porn stash?"
"You can keep the picture and we can get in touch with Ty Lee if you want." Azula patted the Avatar on the back. "Can I keep the hair piece?"
"Of course."
"I don't have to marry you?" Azula eyed Aang carefully.
"Of course not." Aang looked at both pictures. "I can keep this?"
"Sure." Azula cracked a smile. "I have several copies of the one of her in her suggestive pink bikinis – it helps with the loneliness."
* * *
"Sometimes you drive me nuts!" Around suppertime Katara showed up at the tea shop. "And yet sometimes in your odd way you have the sweetest heart of anyone I know."
"You have lost me." Azula had a wonton between two chopsticks and she bit gently out of it. "I half expected you to kill me for something like attempting to set up your future husband Aang up with Ty Lee."
"You did a very sweet thing for poor Aang." Katara smiled broadly.
"He offered to marry me – I figured he had become deranged. I thought of a mercy killing but normal society does not approve of that." Azula nibbled at the wonton. Katara sat beside her and gave her a warm kiss and hug and Azula dropped the wonton onto the floor. "Karo had suggested to me I lucked out because he didn't cut off his ear and offer it to me."
"He has become lonely with his duties." Katara stated the obvious in order to avoid an explanation of the allusion to severed ears as betrothal gifts. She went on to say something that flatly contradicted her rejection of his proposal. "I want him to enjoy his life and be happy."
"I sent him off with Karo to sent a message to Kyoshi Island. I figured Karo has the tact to make it sound 'civilized'. Ty Lee makes a good match for the Avatar since they have insufferably happy personalities." Azula closed her eyes and enjoyed Katara's warmth and not too objectionable smell which reminder her of the pleasant smell just before a cooling rain on a hot day. Azula handed Katara the gray metal jewelery box and opened it. "He proposed to me with this hair decoration. You do not want me marrying the Avatar – the bridge between both realms and master of the Four Elements and I hate men."
"You realize you have thought of the feelings and hopes of someone else for the first time in your life." Katara squeezed Azula once again.
"Don't tell anyone. I have a reputation to uphold." Azula realized a good deal of the things that made her jealous of Katara – her beautiful looks and vibrant body – did a good deal for her on close contact.
"Telegraph sent and acknowledged." Karo held an umbrella over his head and Aang's. "Ty Lee will visit Ba Sing Se in two weeks."
"She called the prospect of dating me thrilling." Aang held up the telegram. "It took four hours to finally get a reply so she replied quickly. That sounds good."
"Katara can I move a few boxes into your room for a while." Karo watched as Katara let go of Azula and looked at him.
"I know about your collection of soft core porn, Karo." Katara sat up straight.
"How did you know about my collection of bare chested men?" Karo looked astonished and then grew silent and blushed.
"I have been seeing a few of the 'Men of the Fire Department' and 'Ember Island Men' behind your back." Katara blushed and Azula and Aang looked at both of them.
* * *
The next Monday a fierce wind blew up from the North and made arriving at Calculus class a pain since the transit system ran late. Karo found his hair even more disordered and quickly straightened it out while Azula put head on his shoulder to take a nap and kept poking him with her new hair decoration as they rode the train. She did not do eight in the morning on a Monday very well and proved less adept at a cold clear and windy Monday morning. They arrived at class late but the professor had left a large note in yellow chalk on the blackboard explaining a family emergency had prevented him from teaching but that the make up lecture would take place – conveniently – next Saturday.
"A cold wind on a Monday morning says tea and fried whatever to me." Karo announced but Azula had her head on the desk.
"I know the men of Ember Island put out their calendar to raise money to keep their surfing beach free of sharks." Azula sat up and yawned. "Why do fire fighters pose in their trunks for a calendar?"
"Cancer research." Karo answered. "Come on we need food. I ate a stale biscuit this morning as I ran after you."
"And you buy the fire fighter calendar because you think curing leukemia proves worth while?"
"I always have good motives." Karo had a strange and mischievous twinkle in his eye.
"Why did you set up Aang with that bombshell of an Kyoshi Warrior?" Karo had felt some relief that the solution resolved itself when Azula intervened. Aang had left to visit King Bumi for important advice but planned to return on that Saturday to meet Ty Lee.
"I have nothing but good motives in my heart." Azula stood up and pushed Karo ahead of her. "And having the Avatar owe me one if this works out might set me up with a nice chunk of the Earth Kingdom I could rule with wisdom and kindness."
"Yes...okay." Karo pushed the heavy wooden door to the lecture theater open.
"Do you know what a metastasizing melanoma is?" Azula followed Karo down the hall toward the cafeteria and asked the question as if administering a quiz to elementary school students.
"Something big?" Karo asked.
"Yeah....you buy the fire fighters calendars because you are a closet oncologist."
Katara found Azula and Karo a few minutes later sitting at the far end of the drafty cafeteria hall. Someone in the Physical Plant department had decorated the entire hall in autumn themed garlands which blew lazily in the drafts the ill fitting tall windows let into the building. Katara knew from the huge plume of steam out of the chimney at the top of the building that the heating system had begun to struggle to keep up.
"Hey that lemur has a Katara growing out of its butt." Azula saw Momo sitting patiently on Katara's shoulder.
"Har!" Katara sat down. "Momo got strung out from traveling and so I decided to take care of him while Aang visited King Bumi in Omashu."
"Momo start singing love ballads from a streetlamp to the poodle monkey next door?" Azula grimaced instinctively when she smelled the odor of Karo's fried fish sticks.
"He is a lot of fun but a bundle of energy." Karo took the effort to explain as he tried to figure out whether anyone intended fried fish sticks as a finger food. "Not a single vase in our house has gone unmolested."
"Will Ty Lee and Aang work as a couple?" Katara asked as if she had doubts. She knew a relationship needed testing, trial and like a submarine – a shakedown cruise to work out if anyone had carelessly forgotten a crucial weld.
"Aang suffers from loneliness and so does Ty Lee." Azula waved her potato wedge in the air. "He came to me because he knew I was lonely – but he miscalculated on what I need to feel whole. Still if this works he owes me and I can use that. Aang can help redeem my honor with the Fire Lord."