Lu Ten drummed his fingers on the golden-embellished, dark wood table before the chaise lounge, a small ten-year-old boy, with his intelligent golden eyes trained on the door opposite him, as if he were trying to will it open. "I don't get it. My mom's in there, and my dad's in there. Why can't I go in?" he tilted his head in curiosity, his voice hinting at indignant confusion.

Young Prince Ozai, who despite popular misconception, liked children, was sat next to his nephew, with his princess bride, Ursa at his side, their nine-month-old son in her arms. "There are a lot of things in there you probably will not want to see. It's for your own protection." The young prince told his nephew, before giving a dirty kind of smirk that his wife batted him on the arm for.

"Ozai." She warned, as she bit back a laugh. Her husband was young, yes, but he was a father now and fathers didn't make jokes like that; especially Princes and possible heirs to thrones. She wondered if Ozai would ever realize that being a father meant he had to grow up.

"What?"

"Hey, Uncle Ozai." Lu Ten frowned as if in very important thought, perhaps figuring out how to rule the world with a toilet brush. He had an active imagination that often ran away with him, and it had been the reason he and his friend Mushi had spent yesterday running around with blankets and playing 'Catch The Avatar', a popular children's game where you tried to catch your opponent in a 'net' while they tried to catch you. It involved a lot of hiding and ambushing.

"Yes." Ozai answered calmly, stately, also eyeing the door into his brother's quarters where muffled yelling was seeping out.

"I don't think Grandpa likes my mom." Lu Ten gave a disappointed sigh. "I don't know why. Do you?" the little boy turned his head to look at his uncle, and in the background, his Aunt. His eyes settled on his cousin, Zuko, and he involuntarily gave a tiny smile. The infant was staring at Lu Ten with a kind of curiosity no child had ever matched, except of course, Lu Ten himself, with his questions.

Ursa gave her husband a grave look, bouncing her well-dressed son on her knee. Beyond the little boy's knowledge, his mother had once been a commoner that Prince Iroh had become enchanted with. Princess Asuka, who Ursa's daughter would later be named after, had been little more than a farmer's daughter, though now was the subject of a bedtime story told throughout the nation of the common girl who helped an injured, traveling prince back to health and would then become Fire Lady. Little girls loved the story.

Inside Prince Iroh's quarters, he held his swaddled newborn daughter with a proud, downward-directed smile at her. He held the baby carefully, and looked up as the midwives, three of them, tended to his wife. He stepped toward her with the child in his arms. "Asuka." He voiced her name calmly, his eyes carefully settled on hers. "Look at our beautiful daughter." He felt a lump of happiness in his throat.

She gave a low moan of discomfort. "She's lovely." She managed, raising a hand and touching the white swaddling. She pushed the swaddling down to free the infant's arms; she didn't particularly like the traditional practice of swaddling. Iroh used a lone pinky to help the infant's arms from the cloth, and what he saw nearly made him drop the child.

A pink lotus was marked in the child's tiny palm, with black vines squirming up and around her middle finger like a ring, meeting between the fingers, more vines passing the space between her thumb and forefinger, and on the other side of her hand, then following up her arm on both sides. The black vines were home to green leaves painted as if in parchment. It was as if she were tattooed. The same marks were on her other arm and hand, and Iroh suspected they went down her spine too, and down her legs. Another lotus was found at the base of her neck.

"I'm sure I don't understand." Iroh held his daughter up again, his hand supporting her small head. His eyes trained on his wife again.

Asuka looked into her husband's golden eyes, also confused. She suddenly gave a groan of pain and fell to the bed. Her shaky hands clutched her middle and she squeezed her eyes shut, exclaiming out grunts and groans of agony. Her fingers twisted knots into the fabric of her nightgown and she tugged her knees up as if to press on the pain splitting through her body.

"Asuka!" Iroh yelled. He looked to the midwives. Two were running toward his wife in alarm, and another was heading for the door as a brisk pace. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the vial in her hand. The thick, heavy curtains split apart and the midwife grabbed the door and pulled it open through the drapes. Outside the door, Prince Ozai, Princess Ursa and the two little princes were sat on the lounge before the door.

The midwife did a double take, before darting to one side, away. She was a royal midwife; nobody questioned her pace for the possibility she was going to get something for the struggling princess. The guards that flanked the chaise lounge merely exchanged glances of suspicion, readying themselves to chase her.

"Stop her!" Iroh raced to the door as fast as he could with his child in his arms.

As the guards tripped over one another in their heavy, lavish armor; the stuff Fire Lord Azulon insisted on, the old fool, both Princes Ozai and Lu Ten jumped to their feet and took off after the woman with the vial of amber liquid. As he ran, Ozai caught sight of his nephew's hard-set face as he darted after the woman. The child was fast, and keeping up with the older prince, who was beginning to feel his age of twenty-six had become forty-six.

Ozai grabbed hold of the woman's arm and skidded to a halt, forcing her against a wall and pulling her hands behind her back as she struggled. He looked across the embellished walls for something to secure her wrists, but couldn't find anything.

"Here you go, Uncle Ozai!" Lu Ten grinned, self-pleased, removing the black ribbon of his thick topknot. His hair fell to his shoulders as she outstretched the ribbon to his uncle.

Ozai couldn't help but smile at the boy as he bound the woman's wrists and herded her toward the guards. Somewhere a ways off, Ozai heard his brother weeping for his wife, and Lu Ten took off from his side after the sobs.

Ozai paced back and forth as his brother sat on his bed, leant forward on his knees, his head in his hands. Fire Lord Azulon was unimpressed with the happenings of the past four hours, and soon they knew they would both be called into his throne room. The death of Princess Asuka had managed to escape the palace, and the arrest of the assassin. They had released a statement to the people, but the question the world now asked; had the child been born before her mother's death?

Every four seconds, Prince Ozai would peer into the crib in which his niece lay moaning for food, thin from not having had nourishment since the womb, and paler than was noble. The maids were taking Zuko for a stroll through the gardens before naptime; it seemed to make him drowsy, and so his crib was available. She had a thin coat of midnight black hair on her head, and golden eyes that followed her uncle as if waiting for him to feed her. He would only look for a second, trying to sum up the markings on her arms. She was no longer swaddled, and had been draped by a baby blanket, but had pushed it away so it only covered her from the waist down.

"Could she be the Avatar?" Ozai thought aloud, after hours of silence between brothers.

"Perhaps, though it is unlikely; the previous avatar, Roku, was of the Fire Nation. The next was of the Air Nomads, and if our genocide killed him, then the avatar would be Water Tribe, and still have another to go before the cycle returns to our nation." Iroh thought aloud bitterly.

Ozai gave a small grunt of displeasure. "To call the actions our ancestors such a thing is less than noble of you, brother."

"Forgive me, my mind seems to be mixed up with the drama and tragedies of the day. The words of the assassin are still running amok in my head." He removed his face from his hands and looked up to his brother. "One cannot help but speculate whether she tells the truth."

Ozai just grunted again.

"Would you put it below Azulon to have my wife murdered?" Iroh bellowed harshly. "She was simple commoner trash as far as he is concerned." He growled out brokenly.

Ozai looked down to his niece again, this time not glancing away. "Do not raise your voice to me. I am not your enemy." He reached for the infant to turn her arm, so as to see if the markings were on the other side.

The infant gripped his pinky in both tiny hands. She struggled to keep it in her grip, but she eventually managed to get it into her mouth, hoping that some kind of nourishment would come from it. Ozai managed a tiny smile. He looked up at the sound of his brother's voice, leaving his pinky to the child. "I must decide what to do with her." Iroh was looking at the crib. "Her destiny is entwined with the spirits."

"Unless she is fed soon, no destiny will come of her." Ozai exhaled thoughtfully, using one of the free fingers on the hand in her possession to touch the child's soft cheek.

"You're right." Iroh stood up, and still had to look up to his brother. It had once bothered him how Ozai, younger than him by ten years, just as Lu Ten and Zuko, was taller than him, but now it was just a thing like any other, that Iroh found amusing. "But we cannot risk anyone else knowing of her existence."

"Ursa. My wife would gladly donate food to the child." Ozai widened his eyes in thought. Why had he not thought of it yet? His chest puffed a little at his wonderful idea.

"That is a good idea. I will send for her." Iroh nodded, approaching the crib and looking at his daughter. He smiled briefly at the sight of her hungrily sucking on her uncle's pinky. "I would have liked for her to befriend your son." He thought aloud.

There was a knock on the door that awoke both princes up and startled the child, though she didn't cry. She just gripped her uncle's pinky a little tighter and raised her eyebrows. Iroh went to the door and opened it. Ursa swept in with an armful of scrolls, not bothering to ask Iroh for permission to enter.

"I researched what you asked." She looked tiredly around. "The great library, there was nothing at all on such things. The closest I found was the origin of Airbender ritual tattoos." She gave her brother-in-law a grave look. "But I took the liberty of visiting the dragon bone catacombs. I found these scrolls." She emptied her arms to let the scrolls fall to the lavish red sheets. "I'm still unsure whether it is a curse or a blessing."

"Whether what is a curse or blessing? What is happening to my child?" Iroh snapped sharply.

"Three hundred years ago, a similar thing happened in the Earth Kingdom; a child was born with sand roses on his palms, hands and feet, and their thorny vines across his limbs. He was deemed to be able to draw power the same way as the original Earthbenders; the badger-moles. I took the liberty of doing some more research and it links up to the history of the zephyr child."

Ozai turned his head to listen. Iroh nodded thoughtfully. "The boy born with hurricane symbols and air currents marked on his body." He spoke wistfully.

"Hold your ostrich-horses; do you mean to say this infant will be able to bend like a dragon?" Ozai looked to his brother in astonishment.

Iroh gave a curt nod.

"But why call it a zephyr child? Why not a typhoon bender, or an Air-man or -woman? Surely such power deserves a name more fitting than 'child'!"

Iroh looked to his sister-in-law.

Ursa frowned. "The power consumed both boys on their twentieth birthdays. They entered a state not unlike the avatar state and tore themselves apart with their own elements."

Prince Iroh had had but one request to the sun-tribe chief, whose young bride had not wanted to take in the child, though the chief himself, had seen something extraordinary in the lotus markings on her body. Iroh had wanted the baby's name to be Ryah, half for Ryu, the spirit dragon, and half for his mother, Ilah. The chief had agreed, though he called the girl 'Blossom' from time to time, as a fatherly pet name. Zuma, who could not produce children herself, had hated the girl.

As far as she knew, this outsider child would take her place as leader of the tribe after chief Akirou took his place among the spirits.

Ryah, the forgotten princess, grew to become healthy, strong and slender, her main attribute her bending, and her unfailing accuracy. In her spare time, she had hunted with bow and arrow, alone, until Akirou had protectively prohibited her from leaving the forgotten city without a bodyguard. Her relationship with Akirou took a turn for the worse, and things deteriorated from there.

By age thirteen, she knew she was different by the way the other girls in her study sessions looked at her.

Their eyes were harsh, unforgiving, and hateful.

The study sessions hadn't been enough for Ryah. The others learnt by listening to tales told by the elders, but Ryah had begged until her adoptive father had given in and allowed her access to the vast libraries under the great golden ruins of their people. No sooner had she been given this right to knowledge than had she begun to research herself, and other children like her. She found nothing.

From that day, Ryah had been Zen. She hadn't taken one side or another in an argument, or looked at an object or situation from one side alone. She had been the wise observer, who solved problems created by closed-mindedness. Still, the other girls had never liked her. She thought once it was because of her marks, or because of her place ascending to lead their people.

Ryah flickered fire like a snake between her fingers in boredom; perhaps that was another reason the girls hated her; she was a master firebender at age thirteen, as Akirou himself, and the elders had taught her from the age of five to the age of eight. Afterwards, she had been allowed to train with a young dragon Akirou had given her as her tenth birthday present. A hazy purple flying serpent she had named 'Mizu'. The name had just seemed to fit.

A thirteen-year-old Ryah, with porcelain skin, midnight black hair to her waist and golden eyes, longed to hunt alone again, whether or not it would further strain her relationship with her father. With a bow and arrow on her back, and twine sandals on her feet, she made a hasty escape from their civilization and marched through the jungle, eyes scanning the wilderness for her prey. Her favorite meat was boarcupine, scorched and slow-roasted on an open flame. Maybe she could get one of those, bring it back and have her only friend, a quiet woman who had joined them three years prior, running from something, roast it the way she liked it.

Ryah grabbed hold of a tree and hoisted herself up to a lower branch. Once firmly settled atop it, she climbed to the next, and the next, until she was high enough that a boarcupine wouldn't see her, as they had trouble looking up. She drew out her bow and an arrow, slid them into position and waited. In silence, she awaited her prey to wander into her view. An hour passed.

She was beginning to drift to sleep when she heard a twig snap. She jerked her head up and peered into the clearing below the tree. A wolflion was stalking into the clearing, hunting for something, just as Ryah was. She drew back her arrow again and aimed for its neck, narrowing her eyes at the beast. She released her arrow, and it sped through the air in a straight line, before piercing through the animal's shoulder and taking it to the ground.

"Yes!" Ryah whispered happily, putting her bow back into the holster on her back. She gripped the branch below her and slid down to the ground with a crunching of leaves. She took four cautious steps toward her kill, picking up a stick on the ground as she moved. She prodded the fallen animal in the undercarriage. With a vicious snarl, the wolflion leapt to life, up on its hind feet with claws bared, teeth showing and an arrow sticking out of its side. "Ah!" Ryah yelled, falling back in surprise.

The animal dropped back onto its front feet and took two ill-intentioned steps toward Ryah. Ryah pushed at the ground with her feet, moving backwards, away from it. The wolflion raised one claw and tilted its head up to the sky, howling to the high sun that it had made a kill. Wolflions were mainly fire nation beasts, known for their fondness of the sun the way a polar wolf was known for its fondness of the moon. Ryah froze in terror, tears welling up in her eyes. She was going to die at the young age of thirteen.

A paranormal explosion of earth threw the beast into the air several feet, allowing it to flip onto its back and break its neck as it landed back on the ground. It let out a cry of agony, before it fell into darkness. Ryah realized she was panting, sweating to the point that her thick gold armbands were beginning to slide down her arms. She steadied her breaths at the sight of the dead animal.

"Are you alright?" someone called out, and Ryah could make out a boy her age running toward her. He was wearing a green and black tunic with full-length trousers the same green. He was from the earth kingdom; it was undisputable. He had a medium complexion that matched her studies of Airbenders, and had a head of short brown hair.

Ryah nodded, standing and dusting herself off. "Did you do that?" she asked carefully. "Are you an earthbender?"

The boy nodded. "Yup. I'm Nikko." He put his hand out for her to shake. "At your service. Whoa! Cool tattoos!" he pointed at her arm.

"I'm Ryah." She smiled thankfully, taking and shaking his hand. Nobody had ever said her marks were cool before. "What are you doing out here?"

"What do you mean? I live out here! Come on, I'll show you!" he grabbed the hand she was using to shake his and began running away from her, with her dragged along.

Ryah followed him through the brush and greens to an old redwood tree with a wooden tree house twenty feet up, a rope ladder trailing down the tree. She stared up in awe at it. How could someone his size have built such a great tree house? Her men barely managed to put up a tree-situated hunting ledge, all working together.

"You built that?" she gasped in amazement. "On your own?"

Nikko grinned proudly. "I built it on the ground and then I used my earthbending to get it up into the tree. Come on, I've got tea and jerky." He offered, moving toward the rope ladder. "I even managed to make some sushi with the fish in this lake a few miles away."

Ryah's stomach growled at the thought of jerky, but she politely refused. "No thanks. So … what, your parents live up there with you?" she asked curiously.

Nikko turned around and shook his head solemnly. "No. I ran away from home and just … set up here. It's easier, you know? Without people telling you what to do and making fun of you …"

"Why did people make fun of you?" Ryah tilted her head in confusion.

Nikko pushed up his sleeves and held his hands out to her with a distressed look on his face. Ryah's eyes widened; the boy had marks on his arms just the same as her! Not the same marks, but panda lilies on his hands, with the same black and green vines climbing both sides of his arm. Nikko pulled a face. "I was born with these stupid flowers on me! They called me 'flower boy'!" He scoffed angrily.

Ryah held out her arms. "These aren't tattoos. I was born with these just like you." She smiled happily. "The other girls call me all sorts of weird names because of them, but I like them. Lotuses." She turned her hands and looked into her palms proudly.

Nikko felt a little better. "Where do you live?"

Ryah made a face. "I live in the sun-tribe. I don't think you know about us, though."

"Sure I do. You guys hunt me all the time!" Nikko chirped honestly.

Ryah laughed and took another look at Nikko, who had light grey eyes that seemed to be inspecting her the same.

She could see this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

"Uncle." A fourteen-year-old Zuko walked into his uncle's chambers on his war ship. He looked over his shoulder and saw his uncle shirtless, looking for a clean undershirt to go beneath his robes and armor. He assumed his uncle had just had a much-needed wash. He turned back to the desk and looked over the map on it. "We've checked all the air temples. Its time we move to the water tribes to find the avatar." He insisted thoughtfully.

"You may be right, Nephew." Iroh stood straight and abandoned the search for a clean undershirt, walking toward his nephew at the desk. "And perhaps you could try a delicacy of the water tribes; blubbered seal jerky." He suggested amiably.

"That sounds disgusting." Zuko answered sharply, his eyes jumping to the mark on his uncle's upper arm, usually hidden by his robes. A white lotus flower. "What is that?" he peered at it.

Iroh looked at his own arm, and then to his nephew with a short frown. "It is a tattoo." He answered plainly.

"Why do you have a tattoo?" Zuko raised his good eyebrow.

"Because young men do strange things under the influence of good rice wine." Iroh replied bluntly. He recalled that night, the night after he had given Ryah to Akirou. He had been drunk, his brother had been drinking with him, and they had had the court body artist complete an elaborate lotus flower on Iroh's arm, and for some reason, Ursa's name on one cheek of Ozai's flank, but that was another story.

Zuko wasn't buying his uncle's simplicity. He was never this cold in conversation. "Lotuses are important to you." He stated simply.

"Yes."

"May I ask why?" he requested as politely as he could.

Iroh looked away. "Perhaps when you are older."

A/N: this is just the prologue of an idea that has sat in my head for a few months now. Everyone's done a fic where something different happened at the western air temple, so I wanted to do something like that. Review for the next chapter!