"Ghost Dance" by Dr. Abraxas 2012-02-05
It was an eve at spring; the sun, already consumed by the range, filled the sky with its gasp of daylight. An eerie glow - then - shade emerged like a root from the foothills to colonize the grassland. It was cool though dry and suddenly there came a chill which oozed into the cabin.
Zuko, at the doorway, was shocked by the change. As if born anew, then and there, he ached with confusion. Until the mind, gradually, regained its sense of time and space.
"I didn't want to bother you," said Aang. Seated at the firepit, the monk stirred the stew... "It looked like you were waiting."
"Waiting - who could I be waiting?"
Zuko sighed - and returned to vigil - it was too, too late to wait...
The cabin they shared that night, a hut where rustlers used to encamp, stood as remnant to the fallen Sozin homestead.
The monk poured stew into bowls - what had been vegetation was transformed into a meal.
The figure leaned and watched that foreigner wave a hand as if to command their food to cool.
"It is not what you expected to find?" he asked.
He replied: "your letter omitted detail - among many, many things..."
"Yes - about your friend, that Indian - I did not know what to say."
Aang spread arms over bowls atop the table to grace with silence their supper.
"Your sister was ended by the fire she started."
"Azula was a madman trapped within the body of a girl."
It had been a week since Zuko returned. Yet months and months since Azula's breakdown leaked eastward. Along the way to Colorado print (and rumor) about the tragedy filled the gaps that the monk left unstated. And then there was the furor surging through the natives of Dakota. And then there was the savagery echoing out of the army.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
He replied: "I donno..."
The doorway swung out of its frame ... it was only wind.
Aang and Zuko faced the hatch: the sky was pitch and sparkled with stars that slowly, slowly came into focus.
Zuko stood to grasp at the wood of the frame, to shut that doorway.
"It's what I learned about the army," he stated just as he gazed, again, outside and noticed something. Something like a fire at the foothills. "You think he could have been a part of it?"
"Ghost Dance? Hard to say. It started north. Northwest. It spread - mostly to the plain. The southern tribe were not believers... And, anyway, I told you Sokka vanished soon after you left."
Zuko grasped the doorframe as if to shut it...
"They sent me away because I loved Sokka."
Aang blinked, dropping the spoon from his face to his bowl - it was not a shock, to be sure, there had been rumors...
"I surmised you two were friends."
"More. More. You take confessions, padre?" The figure smiled a true, sustained expression and not that shadow of happiness. "How can I forget the taste of that kiss? Or the scent of that raw, human skin? - like, like spring. The feel of our warmth, naked, body to body? Never! A thousand miles. A thousand years. That would not be enough to yearn my Sokka! Maybe ... it is not the sort of stuff to say to a monk but I wanted you to know, Aang... We made love that eve when our fathers discovered us..."
Aang looked away.
Zuko shut his eyes as he thought of Sokka. That face! Eyes, like sky, with a gaze impossible to replicate. Even to the gods it was a feat unequalled... That smile so wont to shine at the comings and goings of those intimacies they stole. A tear squeezed through his lid and traced across his cheek - still scarred by the beating - as it dropped to wet the earth.
He relived a fragment of their passion...
A fire at the teepee. Furs. Clothes. Strewn about where they were flung. And Sokka, emerging through the clutter like a flower budding out of those deerskins. And Zuko leaning into the Indian kissing, smearing - with lips - those patches of paint, white and black, as he followed contours to neck, to chest ... to that paradise of delight awaiting between Sokka's thighs...
"All that kept me latched to this world was that I'd meet Sokka again."
The fire at the foothills flickered as it suggested movement.
The monk approached the doorway - it was then that he noticed an odor like fresh spring water.
"Listen - this is not the first or the last. We meet, all of us, we intersect across lifetimes, again and again. Different times... Different spaces... Or, did you think, in a universe as infinite, that we would be imprisoned to a single world - a single existence? Zuko, forget about the religion of simple man. There are places were the mind with its science cannot penetrate. And a vastness about creation that we cannot dream of. Love," Aang took Zuko by the hand, "it exists and endures."
Beyond the cabin the land was dusted by moonlight. It was quiet - at peace. Cleansed ironically through the fire of Azula's rage. With the family's collapse, the cattle and the men vanished too as if swallowed by the earth, swept by the water. Neither to be seen nor heard of again.
"Where are you going?" Aang asked.
Replied Zuko: "Just a walk."
The monk blinked as Zuko joined the night. At the distance flashed a fire - its flame caught at mid-step. It vanished into air. And, as he turned to retreat, he caught enshadowed traces of footsteps. A pair - side by side. Then smiled as the windswept the effect away into oblivion.
Zuko did not return.
END