Read Ardent Flame to gather context. Otherwise, dive right in and hope you can butterfly.

Bryke owns Avatar: The Last Aibender. This is fun.

Critique as wanted.

Idyll Threats

For eight summers it grew. Even beneath the cold shadow of beneficent doubt - hope - it grew. Like a stomach of bitter jagged gastropods, she had ignored it, allowed it to juggle and roll about within her as it gestated.

To the breaking point.

To hatch.

To seed.

It grew and there was no going back, no amends to be made save the swift blind journey of cathartic vehemence.

But before the crusade, one stop.

Off the train, wind caught her stringy black tresses. He never made direct mention of it, as was his divertive ilk, but she knew he liked long hair. To think, he would never tell her in some oblique offhanded comment. She would never hear those words.

In slavering mouthfuls came the noon barking. Wares flew from hand to unwashed hand flew spit-shined, tarnished, embroidered, lacy, half-finished, putrefied, vintage, racy, tasty with a side of unexpected relief, obtuse, hand-carved, silver oak sheet fine lattice textile dry honeyed wheat and summer dust. Some were worth it. Others were even paid for. And the woman with the black hair, a doleful force, glided through the market mobs of Xidezhen. Despite her relatively light steps, precarious plates were brought to crash as she passed by, hot and dry with a spool of steel thread twanging in the small of her back like a stressed dulcimer.

Passed the hairdresser. Through the market. There.

Some minutes before:

A crumpled ballad unfolded from the creases of a blind bard behind a hefty ten-string Shunxi. It struck her curious, the howling vagabond who played the part elegantly. His desperate vagrancy sang from every part of him and some parts that surrounded him. Walking past made one's joints ache with the prospect of age. Even his instrument felt vintage overtaking its pegs and ribs, though it would never betray that feeling to the passive listeners.

While grandpa Ozai dozed precariously in a creaky chair at the back of the house and Aimi, merry with the heat of the day, busied herself over her ancient iron cookware (something with meat in it, for a change), a mother and son listened to the rhapsodist half-a-block down.

"He's not really blind," stated the seven year-old Zhen, unshakably sure of himself.

His mother asked, "How do you know that?"

"Because of his sign." The boy pointed to the sign resting before the musician's yawning instrument case. The board was splinted and dingy, but the calligraphy was impeccable, if a little crowded:

Never the joy of a surprise visit from yourself. Honest bother of your own constant company. Give to the strange and feel their joy.

"Perhaps someone wrote it for him," postulated Zhen's mother.

"But why wouldn't they help him more than just taking dictation?"

The mother slit her eyes with regard for this question. "Do you really think he needs help?"

The wrinkled bard's broken caterwaul slid sporadically flat and sharp, as if scrambling for purchase of the key.

"Yes and no," Zhen concluded. "I think it's an act. More than just the performance."

Mother smiled slightly. "You should go and ask. Ascertain the truth."

"I don't need to. I can tell."

"Can you really? At a glance, you truly know that man?"

"More fun to imagine who he is. He could be anyone: an assassin or a fugitive or an old mad king."

"And how will you ever truly know if you do not ask?"

"He wouldn't tell me. He can't tell anyone. Otherwise they would find him, and he doesn't want to be found. That's why he's like that."

The two of them became a silent audience once more, sitting on the porch, drinking in the sun and song. The woman pulled her layers in tighter. It was hot, but not hot enough for her taste. It had been a cold eight years. For her anyway.

Zhen rose after a few refrains. "I'm going to get my pad and inks."

"To practice your characters."

"Well… does he count as a character?"

She smirked at her son and conveyed an allowing blink.

The song of suicidal sacrifice in an ancient war continued and she half-listened until a presence made itself known and stopped at the foot of the steps up to her.

It was a woman: stringy dark hair and steeled green eyes. What this woman said, stirred something in the mother, stirred a lifetime up from the oblivion silt of nearly a decade gone by.

There. Now.

"Azula."

The former Fire Nation Princess, Phoenix's Harlot, and former master Firebender balked. As she made her way to the edge of the deck, she realized who it was that had turned up on her doorstep.

It was Nuan. It was Qilaq's friend.

Both names stirred fresher memories in her. Vivid memories. The final days of that old life.

"Where is he?" Nuan demanded without raising her childlike voice. In spite of the precocious nature of her timbre, it was powerful.

"Who…?" Azula asked as she tried to rally. She managed a cool mien almost instantly, but the inner shock continued to storm inside her. Then it struck her. "The Avatar is gone. He has been for some years now. Do you really think he'd waste his life watch-dogging me when there are so many other worthy problems to attend?"

A hush between them before the Earthbender laughed once, noticing Azula's homely state not unlike an empty burgundy robe, faded, hung and forgotten in the corner.

"Don't worry your banty neck," assured Nuan in spite of her vindictive edge. "I'm not here for you, though I don't think anyone would be poorer for the loss."

Azula almost took a step forward, but restrained herself, opting to remain as passive as possible for the sake of all in the home behind her. "I think my son might disagree, you doing away with his only parent."

"Hmph. Playing the only parent defense, huh?" Nuan adopted a superior smile. "I figure I'd be doing your bastard a solid."

With little more than a slight shrug, all the muscles beneath Azula's calm skin rolled taught, twisted with wrath like a thousand thousand catapults bent near breaking and entirely ablaze. Passed the seething, the calculating part of her mind panicked at the prospect of battling a bender, especially a soldier, retired or not. Azula had no more will over the flame, but then it occurred to her that most were unaware of that, even if they were aware of who she was beneath her modern alias. She could play the part. She would only need the prospect of her reputable fury. It was enough.

Even beneath the folds of clothing, Nuan warily observed her foe's sub-dermal tension. She hocked a detersive snort - a mannerism adopted from years under her young master's tutelage. Even if the Firebender was still on top of her game, Nuan had a few surprises that not even a seasoned witch like her would see coming. However, the Metalbender knew only rumors and half-drunk tales of the Fire Princess in combat.

Dire rumors.

And at such intimate range to use her new, hardly-tested wire?

"Mom? Who's…?" he paused, understanding that non-heat, that smokeless flame, which occasionally radiated from his mother. "What's wrong?" He was a smart boy. Strangers were sparse and anyone - strange or familiar - giving his mom that look meant something serious has happened.

Or is about to happen.

"Go back inside," Azula austerely instructed, adding: "I'm taking care of it."

Zhen did as was demanded of him, and there was more ringing quiet accompanied by the plucking of the nearby "blind" minstrel.

Azula had been searching for her old voice. That tone that once came so easily to her was rotting somewhere in her, but it was there. She only needed to find it, and quick! Now! Now is the time!

"Speak ill of my son again, and I'll make a noose from your spine and hang your boned carcass in the square."

PiTAANG! knelled ten Shunxi strings as they snapped in unison under an angry force.

Azula felt her porch move a centimeter to the left. Aimi cursed the slight distraction that caused her to overexert her flip and fling half the pan of pulled komodo-chicken onto the floor. She swore she heard something fall to the ground in the backroom. The once prodigious Firebender remained far more stolid than the building and its foundation.

"Why the Avatar?"

Nuan let the Earth from her telekinetic grip and sighed, much like her old (young) self.

"You know why."

"No. I really don't."

"Uh huh… look, I don't expect you to tell me, now, after all these years. Anywho, I don't need or want your help. I just thought I'd warn you. Get it out of the way. Get you out of my way. If I ever see you again, I'll peel you like a banana. Then I might kill you." the Metalbender darkled further. "If I'm feeling nice."

Azula made no move to respond, violently or otherwise.

"I probably could have gotten him back from you… but… the Avatar…" Nuan thrummed. "He took Qilaq from me forever."

Nuan said no more and glided away, back into the market mob. Back into roaming obscurity.

The old musician was still grasping at his broken strings, cursing a god for each in ten languages. Either that or it was all just gibbering, senseless mania. A passerby threw a coin.

Aimi stepped out, half-full frying pan still gripped and steaming in her thin hand. She addressed her housemate on the porch, whom from she perceived a thick miasma of apprehension. "Shila?

"…"

"Who was that?"

"…"

"Is everything alright?"

"…"

"Shila?"

Zhen stepped around Aimi. He wanted to lay a comforting hand on his tense mother, but, for the first time in his life, feared her touch. "Mom?"

Azula invoked five words and as they passed hot into the air, she saw the leagues ahead. The fringes. The old ghosts. The dead. All ahead.

"I've got someone to hunt."