Omoni introduced me to the LJ community Maiko100, so I'm going to give all of the prompts a try! This one was for Prompt #23: Hair.


It was too short. It was ugly. Mai wanted to get one of her knives and hack it all off to save herself the embarrassment of being seen with it. She felt like a poodle-monkey, cut and primped in a way no self-respecting person could actually admire.

"Your hair is atrocious. You wouldn't want the other nobles to think your father has a tramp for a daughter, would you?" her mother had said in response to her protests. "Be reasonable and hold still."

Mai did as she was told, sat still as her mother meticulously snipped away at her head as if carving a lifeless pumpkin. She didn't even say anything when she looked in the mirror and stared in horror at what had been done.

"There. Now you look like a real nobleman's daughter."

She never wanted to leave the house again.

Later that day, her humiliation was confirmed through her friends.

"Got a little carried away with your knives, Mai?" the young princess mocked while Ty Lee hid her laughter behind her hands.

Mai held her tongue, but shame and irritation bubbled beneath her silence.

It was when it came time to playing hide-and-seek—Mai being it, as usual—that she accidentally bumped into Zuko on her way down the hall of the palace.

She stammered her apologies and silently wished she were an earthbender so as to sink into the earth and disappear. He was the last person she wanted to see her ugly hair.

For several moments they said nothing, standing there with small blushes on their cheeks and looking at anything but each other. She would have walked away were it not for the feeling she had that the boy had something he wanted to say…

The prince rubbed the back of his neck, the flush on his face increasing as he looked at the ceiling and muttered words she couldn't make out.

"What?" She quirked her head at him.

He looked at her, then, his face scrunching up in frustration and growing redder, hands clenching. "I said I like your hair," he snapped, then flung himself around and stormed down the hall.

And suddenly she no longer felt ugly.