Yue had always thought she was a simple girl with simple needs. Obedient, kind and resourceful, with a heart as big as the moon itself and eyes that held the ocean in its waves.
Throughout all her life she had followed her father's every wish and command with a light smile and doting eyes, as if she had never wanted anything for herself; had no dream but to lead her people, carry her family's legacy with the man her father would arrange for her to marry but…
Her eyes slid to the side and traced lazily along their guests, the long lost Avatar seemingly risen from the grave from which he had been hiding, Tribe siblings from the South, rowdy and loud with bickering. She giggled, palm raising daintily to cover her mouth as the sister bent her brother's soup into his face with a frustrated huff. Her gaze trailed past them to the girl so very different and so very new to her. From the Earth Kingdom, part of the Islands to be precise, she believed.
The strange girl had hair like burning embers, the warmth of a fire in her locks a stark contrast to her own snowy crystal-spun strands; her skin was pale and unblemished, her lips a light shade of pink, slightly burnt from the soup she now sipped at cautiously. But what captured Yue the most about this girl she had never seen before were her eyes, almond shaped and slanted, the gray of this girl's eyes gave her the impression of a storm on the horizon. She held a confidence in her iron gaze that oozed into her body, the slightly smirking tilt of her mouth, the crook of her elbow resting comfortably on the table. She was golden, and she knew.
This girl felt dangerous to her, not in the way Yue feared for her safety, but in the way that her heart seemed to want to shed the statute regality of her image. She wet her lips.
Yue had never desired anything before, never thought to want something for herself. But something about this stranger from a far away land made her crave breaking, shattering under the pressure and blossoming into something raw and new.
She felt the rumblings of loud, chest bellied laughter by her ear and jumped as an arm was slung unceremoniously around her shoulders from behind. As a princess should, she recovered quickly, shadowing over her surprise as her father pressed closer to her and bellied out another slightly drunken chuckle.
The girl's gaze quickly shot over at the ruckus, as if trained to seek out danger. Yue could do nothing but stare into the depths of her irises, entrapped by the wistful trails of dark blue seeping through gray as if pooling deeper. The girl raised a sleek eyebrow at her and the small smirk coating her lips spread until it showed teeth. Beneath the thick, drooping sleeves of her coat Yue's fingers curled in on themselves, long nails digging crescents into her palms, and she resisted the temptation to cave.
The girl's eyes turned devilish and teasing, and before she could think her tongue darted out, licking her lips sensually. Yue couldn't breathe, her heart stuttered in her chest, beating haltingly and bringing her blood to a slow broil.
That night she locked herself in her room and, in a fit of frustration, threw her comb against the wall, breathing heavily as she dug the whale bone brush from the wall and smoothed a slim hand over the cracks it left behind. That night she vowed that just this once she might allow herself to be selfish.