Tales of the Tea Shop
The Palace of Azula
Karo heard a large team of heavy drought animals outside of the tea shop. The electric utility had decided to wire the neighborhood for power and had begun work in the alley next to the tea shop early that morning by erecting wooden utility poles. Karo saw a huge A frame crane made of pieces of logs with large ropes slung over it and he heard the sounds of men trying to pull a large pole into position. With the snort of a large animal and a loud creak the pole slipped into the hole dug for it. He stood in front of Azula's little cottage and noticed that Iroh for some unfathomable reason had planted hemp around the cottage and in six weeks the plants had grown into strange leafy monsters that stood taller than him.
"Hello Azula?" Karo spoke quietly and knocked on the heavy door.
"Do you know the electric company started work at seven in the morning?" Azula opened the door and Karo jumped back. Karo had made certain he showed up at Azula's just before lunch so he didn't wake her up. Azula still had her night robe and she had not showered or fixed up her hair. "Seven in the morning!!"
"Sorry....maybe I should come back later?" Karo tried to make himself look inoffensive and small by partly hiding behind the hemp plant.
"I won't sleep now." Azula growled. "I may as well do something."
"Why did your uncle grow all this hemp?" Karo entered the messy cottage taking care to step only where Azula took steps.
"My uncle does a good many odd things." Azula closed her bathroom door as Karo sat at the desk.
"If you keep growing hemp you may attract folk musicians." Karo muttered.
"Maybe my uncle wants to rig a ship." Azula had long found Iroh a baffling person and long ago gave up trying to understand his folksy and eccentric ways because many of the things he did made no sense and if she asked Iroh for an explanation – he gave one that made no sense. She finally decided to let his odd behavior slide and ignore the complaints of the neighbors.
"Make yourself at home while I take a shower." Azula closed the door to the bathroom and Karo sat at the desk and began to read the latest issue of Science Digest. He ignored the noise of struggling animals and crunching wood as the workers erected the creosote soaked pine poles.
Snap!
Crack!
Crunch!
Crash!
Karo had never faced combat in the War and during the occupation of Ba Sing Se he had remained quiet and hidden until the day of liberation. He had never battled the cunning telegraph pole and he never trained to fight the transformer or the glass insulator. The top of a telegraph pole smashed through the roof helped by the added weight of three gray steel covered transformers. Karo leaped back and jumped out the window as the pole crushed the desk. He landed on his back in a heap of hemp leaves and saw electrical utility workers, Uncle Iroh and Azula in her pink bunny slippers and red night robe running to his aid.
"Who sliced my house in half with a pole?" Azula shouted threateningly at a fat bearded man with a pot belly and fishing themed suspenders holding up bright yellow trousers. He had a shovel at the ready in case he needed to dig anyone out. The fact that Karo lay in a heap of ripe smelling hemp did not strike her as a priority. Iroh helped the shocked Karo to his feet and helped clean off the hemp leaves from his clothes.
"One of the ropes slipped." The pot bellied man explained.
"I thought maybe some graceless way of bumping off a Fire Nation princess." Azula gingerly walked around the glass that now lay all over her floor from the smashed insulators. She walked with the look that Karo knew meant a raccoon or a human could wind up dead, electrocuted or decapitated.
* * *
"The gas company turned off the gas and the electric utility promised to rebuild the cottage." Iroh announced after a full three hours of negotiating with the workers, their supervisors and the various executives that wanted to sell electrical power to the various citizens of the city. Iroh had smoothed over many hard feelings between Azula and the power company and in the end the electric utility agreed to pay for the damages. Azula could not use the cottage and had to enlist Karo's help to sift through her belongings and rescue them. She transferred her books and other things she did not immediately need into boxes and placed them in the garden cottage while she packed a few boxes of the necessaries and took them into the back room of the tea shop.
"Uncle Iroh let you stay in the spare room on the second floor so you won't suffer." Karo said reassuringly as he lifted a box of Azula's books. The electric company had removed the pole, the broken glass and loose wire very quickly and with a polite air that seemed to say 'please don't sue'. "And you will end up with a new cottage."
"Can I build a huge pagoda that towers over the city?" Azula opened the door to the garden shed and Karo grunted as he dropped the last box of books on the floor. "With grapple guns?"
"Within by-law limits of course." Karo clapped his hands together. He had a hankering for take out Komodo chicken. It was late afternoon and they had worked hard to clear out the old cottage so the insurance adjusters and power company knobs could calculate out how much to shell out for a new cottage, repairs to the fence and quite possibly a bribe to prevent a lawsuit. He felt entitled to a fried meal with his choice of sauces. "Keep the cottage neat, small and in good taste because you know that people in the surrounding blocks of flats have already complained of Iroh gardening in his loin cloth and sandals."
"Let's get some food." Azula walked to the back door of the tea shop to find Katara preparing for the evening shift and enthusiastically cooking something Water Tribe and deadly judging from the funk the 'soup' gave off. Karo had grown used to this. He had tasted 'five flavor' soup and concluded one flavor came from one of the active ingredients in cough syrup while the other four probably required petroleum distillation. He had tasted a boiled Water Tribe cabbage dish due to extreme naivete. He assumed that since he had no problem with raw cabbage in a nice salad that he would have no problem. He tasted the boiled cabbage Katara had prepared with select Water Tribe ingredients and never went near cabbage – boiled or raw – for a month. Katara had found the Water Tribe meat market and on her first visit she bought enough seal meat to make seal jerky for a month. Lady Zhao had to call in a cleaner to remove the smell from the drapes. Katara could cook and cook well but the sort of virtues such as fresh flavor, texture and not eating endangered marine mammals did not exist in Water Tribe cuisine. The Water Tribe hardly had a nearby grocery store or market and these virtues in vittles took a back seat to organic or nearly so, not fatally toxic and the ability to retain freshness for three months at sea.
"You can try my dolphin sweet meat soup." Katara stirred the large cauldron. "We used to have this on long cold nights to keep us warm."
"Should we actually eat the more intelligent social mammals?" Azula put her hand over her mouth. She assumed that by 'long nights' Katara meant the four to six months of darkness in winter that took hold at the polar regions. "And by sweet meats you mean the nasty bits of the dolphin like the pancreas and thyroid?"
"Testicles." Katara stirred the pot calmly. "You fry them in some butter and then add them to the soup."
"Dolphin ghoulies." Karo did not look well. "I will have to take to wearing a codpiece around you."
* * *
A week had passed since the electric company had obliterated the cottage and in that time a large hole had appeared in the back yard of the tea shop. In that hole Azula inspected the cinder blacks that had begun to form a wall on the concrete footings the workers had laid the day after the cottage got obliterated. Karo had his hands around a fresh cup of tea and despite the late morning sunshine he fell into the meter deep hole the contractor had dug out to make the foundation breaking the cup of tea and feeling quite humiliated.
"Where did this come from?" Karo found himself looking at the joists of the floor and resting on his back in soft pea gravel. "I think your cottage has it out to kill me."
"You have to be careful on a work site." A friendly looking man muscular man in gray overalls and a tan shirt helped Karo to his feet. "Are you okay?"
"I don't know....any nails or joist hangers sticking out of the back of my head?" Karo sat up and felt the back of his head and found nothing sticking out. Azula did not hide her amusement at the sight of Karo plunging down into the incomplete crawl space but then again his awkwardness proved charming in a way. Karo could fire bend and belonged to a family related to hers and yet while elegant on a small scale he quickly became dangerous when he tried anything on a large scale. He could shoot fire bolts but just not at the target he intended. Many shrubs had fallen victim to his lousy aim.
"You a good contractor?" Azula yanked Karo out of the pit as the carpenter lifted him gently by the back of his fancy robes.
"I come from a long line of carpenters who take pride in making it right the first time." The contractor ran his hand over the short reddish stubble of his hair. "When I finish this cottage you will find it warm in the winter and cool in the summer."
"Very well." Azula ran her hand over a palette of tan colored bricks sitting near the garden shed – a color which suited the neighborhood – Iroh and the contractor had given some thought to making the cottage an asset to the tea shop. The carpenter went back to the task of starting the frame walls.
Azula and Karo spent all afternoon in the second story guest bedroom at the tea shop. Iroh kept things impossibly clean and Azula had discovered she had packed away some books she wished to read but she felt too lazy to dig them out. Karo found the room charming with the red carpet and nice dark brown hardwood floor. It had a nice four poster bed made of the same dark wood as the floor and looked perfect for impressing guests. Both of them passed the afternoon watching carpenters erect the frame walls, finish the floor joists and then place a yellow fabric tarp over their work as they left for the evening. Karo found it impressive that not a single one of the four carpenters hit their fingers – something he found unavoidable with the use of hammers.
* * *
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Whack!
Azula woke up to a team of construction workers hauling roof trusses onto the top plate. Saws and drills worked at making wood take triangular shapes while hammers banged the properly measured pieces together. She looked out the window and growled at the small brass faced alarm clock which had large black numbers that read eight in the morning. With the frame of the cottage in place the carpenters had now begun work on nailing the siding in place and did so with great speed, skill and noise.
Karo took to planting himself on a chair and watching the action out of the back kitchen window. For a gay man, watching burly guys with hammers amounted to free and fine entertainment. Azula found him in the kitchen sitting in his chair with a set of binoculars after she had dressed and prepared for the coming day.
"We have hired a gay guy to decorate." Azula sipped a cup of tea and patted her friend on his shoulder.
"One of those classy gay men with money and influence who can decorate or a flaming gay, 'can't believe I woke up next to that' gay guys." Karo placed the binoculars on the window ledge. "Transvestite perhaps?"
"Wishful thinking." Azula looked over her nails.
"If you must know I have the duty – sanctioned by Uncle Iroh – to make certain the contractors build to code." Karo pressed the binoculars to the window. "Use the right nails and follow fire codes."
"You fell into the hole dug for the foundation yesterday." Azula reminded Karo.
"You do want the cottage built to meet your needs." Karo had often gone to the local Nickelodeon but the silent films on offer did not cater to his tastes because family entertainment had to leave to the imagination many of the adult themes that a nearly twenty year old fellow found so interesting. It also cost him five silver to watch a silent film – the construction sight came with sound and the odd piece of cosmic comedy such as the handsome young framer being struck in the head with a board. Karo found it ample entertainment.
"Why is Katara out there?" Azula snapped up the binoculars from Karo. Katara strolled out confidently dressed in her blue summer 'Water Tribe' clothes which happened to show off her curves.
"For the same reason the local Nickelodeon never shows films with a gay subtext – this is a family tea shop." Karo grumbled as he watched Katara struck up an animated conversation with the cute framer Karo had a crush on. "We all want stories about true love just not the kind between the son of an admiral and that tall guy with nice abs. So Katara gets to go out and play with the young men."
"Then explain me." Azula adjusted the binoculars.
"You had Ty Lee and Mai to play with." Karo explained. "But of course they won't talk about the obvious lesbian subtext between three women warriors crossing the Earth Kingdom on lizards fighting to find the Avatar."
"I think we have one Water Tribe woman with a date." Azula snickered as she watched her strike up a conversation with a young man.
"No justice in this or any other world." Karo began pacing the room. "Don't you think I have charm, grace and charm."
"You fell into a hole yesterday." Azula sat in the chair and put her feet up on the window ledge. "Katara has that Water Tribe charm – her booty."
"That comes from the consumption of marine mammals and their private parts." Karo pouted.
* * *
"Call me narrow minded but I really can live a complete and happy life without eating dolphin testicles." Karo sat with his binoculars in his lap and watched Katara puttering around the tea shop kitchen making preparations for a Water Tribe meal. He assumed it had to do with some cute guy she had met on the construction site earlier that day.
"You leading a happy life now?" Katara asked. Steam rose from the frying pan as the manhood of several dolphins bubbled in a delicate butter and herb sauce. The kitchen had filled with a disgusting and to Karo – painful smell – as Katara cooked. Katara had considered it a great stroke of good fortune to find a market that catered to Water Tribe tastes. Karo had considered it even better fortune that he had not grown up in the Water Tribe.
"Well no." Karo turned his binoculars to watch more of the contractor goodness. "But I think that comes out of something in my childhood and not from the lack of dolphin family jewels."
"Mmm! Mmm! Dolphin just like mother used to make." Azula wandered in the kitchen and looked in the pan which held the brownish purple meat she recognized as dolphin sweetmeat. She considered it supreme good fortune she had never grown up as a member of the Water Tribe since she had a raging allergy to anything fish related. "Feeling inadequate yet Karo?"
"I keep wondering how many high pitched dolphins roam our oceans." Karo put his binoculars down. "Who came up with this dish? Did some hunter kill a dolphin and decide – well we have eaten all the other nasty bits why not drop this in butter and cook it? I had considered it a hard and fast rule that one should not consume anything ripped out of the scrotum of a large mammal."
"Can you see Uichi?" Katara asked Karo. "I'm preparing him a fine Water Tribe meal as part of our date."
"Which one is that then?" Karo looked to Katara.
"The tall guy with the wheelbarrow full of bricks." Katara tapped the glass.
"He looks buff." Azula looked out the window at the young man with short blond hair and a tan hauling bricks with no shirt on.
"Indeed." Karo whispered.
"Indeed." Katara sliced and diced a red onion and added it to the wok. "Don't you and Azula have other plans? Perhaps you could take in a movie or go shopping?"
"Scared we will sabotage your date?" Azula took the binoculars from Karo and continued to peep as the construction workers began to build the brick wall. "Karo don't you want to see if this guy will eat dolphin goodies."
"Okay Karo." Katara knew the workers had noticed Karo watching them and had to politely explain it away as 'her friend wanting to become a building inspector'. She had to plan quickly. "Karo? I will pay you to eat some of this fine Water Tribe cuisine."
"How much?" Azula leaned in and inspected the contents of the frying pan.
"I will by you a month of tickets for you and Azula to go to the local Nickelodeon." Katara teased. "You won't have to sit by the window and watch burly men."
"Karo calls it the Nickelodeon for gay guys." Azula crossed her arms. "Go for it! Chow down monkey boy!"
"Monkey boy?" Karo approached the frying pan.
"We get a month of free movies." Azula reminded Karo.
"Eww!" Karo winced and braced himself. "Okay serve it up."
"Way to go champion!" Azula patted Karo on the back as he barfed up on the stoop just outside of the back door of the tea shop. He had chewed, swallowed and turned green like a hobo with a bad liver strung out on grain alcohol.
"I know why dolphins live in the water." Karo gasped between dry heaves. "They became marine mammals so they wouldn't have to wash their genitals with their tongue."
"Is he alright?" Uichi came over.
"You will go on a date with a cute Water Tribe girl." Azula said as she helped Karo to his feet. "Before you choose to do this...have you eaten dolphin privates?"
"Of course." Uichi said. "My mother's side of the family comes from the Northern Water Tribe. Katara promised to cook me her family recipe for dolphin sweetmeats."
* * *
Katara returned home from her date after a fine movie and having received heaps of praise for her cooking skills. Karo sat at the Zhao dining room table playing cards with Azula and eating a can of chocolate frosting in the hopes the sugar would rid his mouth of the taste of dolphin sweetmeats. All the best Water Tribe food had an aftertaste and Azula concluded that it helped morale if during a famine one could still taste their last good meal.
"I can still taste the dolphin." Karo complained as Katara entered the dining room. "At least you could have warned me that it tasted like burning rubber and camphor. I could use that to keep moths away from my silk boxers!"
"You did eat them so I bought you two Nickelodeon passes for the next month." Katara presented Azula and Karo with movie coupons. Karo made a squeamish face as he began to taste the dolphin again and wondered if the movie tickets made up for the disgusting repast.
"They came back up and I get ill when I remember the rubbery and chewy texture." Karo put down his frosting and it became obvious to Katara that Azula had hung around with Karo playing poker and waiting to hear all the juicy gossip about Katara's date with Uichi. A bright gas light bathed the table, cards and fire gummies in a mellow light.
"And the pain for the dolphin." Azula snickered.
"Please." Karo raised his hand hoping the conversation would change.
"Any news on when I can move into the cottage again?" Azula and Karo played poker with fire gummies with the different shades of gummie having a fixed value. Azula raised Karo's bet of three red fire gummies and Karo grimaced again. Katara didn't understand poker but Azula usually won most of the stock of fire gummies which she would use to make strange three dimensional models with toothpicks.
"They will take a week." Katara poured herself a glass of juice and sat at the table. "Uichi's father has a motto – make it right the first time."
"Ha!" Azula tossed her cards on the table when Karo folded. "You mean it can take several attempts to build a guest cottage? After the long march of civilization we can still foul up the business of putting wood together?"
"I have a motto." Karo looked at Azula's inferior hand. "You can't tell when Azula's bluffing."
"Uh huh." Katara did a dainty twirl and sat down in a chair as Karo shuffled the cards. She had a self satisfied grin as she did so. "Did I tell you that Uichi Junior stands to inherit a sizable family business when his father retires?"
"Uichi Junior?" Azula raised her eyebrows.
"Uichi Senior is the older guy who shaves his head and owns the contracting business." Katara smiled.
"So you found someone you could really spend your life with and who will have a secure future?" Azula sorted her cards and chucked a black fire gummie into the pot. "Did he eat the dolphin sweetmeat?"
"He told me it was his favorite food." Katara sat down next to Azula.
"So as a wedding gift we get him a drum of ipecac and a straw?" Karo raised the bet.
* * *
Azula decided not to head back to the tea shop and fell asleep on the couch as she pondered how much money she could earn if the young Uichi Junior wanted to use murder to advance to head of the family business. She woke up with a wedgie as she had worn her day clothes and to an argument between Lady Zhao who could never speak quietly and Karo who wanted to watch the 'Gay Nickelodeon' and see the burly manly men built the cottage.
"Katara has a new friend and she needs help shopping." Lady Zhao shouted from the kitchen. "I said you would go with her to pick up all the supplies she needs."
"All right mom." Karo shrugged and walked to the front door with Katara then turned and looked at Azula relaxing on the couch. "Do you want to come along?"
"I slept in my clothes and I badly need to hit the shower so once I have had some tea I will head back to the tea shop, take a shower and put on some fresh clothes." Azula yawned and then sat up slowly.
Katara took Karo to a Water Tribe grocery store and she tried to give Karo a quick lesson in Water Tribe cuisine. The Water Tribe grocery inhabited an old building that had once been a lumber mill. It had a high timber framed roof supported by huge wooden beams painted white. Inside the large building countless small stalls sold Water Tribe goodies to the public – mainly the Water Tribe expatriate community.
"It says these pink things are giant squid eggs?" Karo shrank back from the display which had trays of pink golf ball sized leathery round 'eggs' packed in ice. "Does the term 'giant' apply to the squid, the eggs or both?"
Katara merely smiled as the distracted Karo banged his head against one of the heavy timbers that held up the building. Karo lacked all of the features Katara had come to fear from citizens of the Fire Nation. Katara had long known that Karo had bad depth perception and fell into holes, walked into poles and could not understand how these odd features popped up out of nowhere. Karo seemed the least likely candidate as the son of the feared Admiral Zhao who had almost destroyed the entire Northern Water Tribe. On the other hand she reasoned, he did have a healthy dislike of Water Tribe cuisine since he appeared quite pale when she took him over to watch a poor walrus being skinned.
"Can we go now?" Karo felt his stomach turn.
"As a little girl I helped my mom and Gran Gran sew seal and walrus skins together to make boots and clothes." Katara smiled and patted Karo on the back to signal him to move ahead.
"Doesn't the poor walrus badly need his skin to keep his innards in?" Karo walked past an elderly lady in fine Water Tribe robes knitting white furs together to make the ruff of a traditional coat. "What did we come here to get?"
* * *
"Giant squid eggs in a delicate walrus milk sauce?" Azula sat at the Pai Sho table with a book in her lap. Karo and Katara returned from the Water Tribe market with some recognizable things which included a cabbage and tomatoes. Azula speculated the stuff wrapped in butcher's paper might turn even her stomach – which meant Karo would have to taste it first. Katara placed a large jar of pink balls in brine on the Pai Sho board.
"The milk came from a seal cow but otherwise yes." Katara grinned with the pleasure of having a comeback for a snide remark from Azula. "And the dinner is for Uichi and me to enjoy. I can imagine you two can find something fried and in a paper box."
"You saved me the trouble of worming out of this social occasion." Azula said calmly over the sound of hammers, breaking bricks and men yelling at each other as they put together the brick walls of the cottage.
"I should say hello to Uichi." Katara walked into the kitchen of the tea shop to put her ingredients away.
"Don't fall into any holes." Azula placed her book on the table. Karo and Azula followed her out to the back of the tea shop because Azula liked to snoop. The cottage had brick walls but no windows, door or roof.
"Can't promise anything but I will make an attempt." Karo didn't fall into a hole but tripped over a cinder block. Azula shook her head as she helped him up to his feet.
"You have no depth perception do you?" Katara looked into Karo's eyes and moved her finger back and forth. Karo held onto the persistent belief that Katara intended to poke him in the face and looked very nervous.
"None to speak of." Karo had the optometrist tell him he might need glasses and not to drive a carriage so nothing Katara said came as news to him.
"Hello Katara." Uichi Junior had a masonry hammer in his left hand and he greeted Katara with a gentle peck on the cheek. "You should warn your odd little friend that a construction site can be dangerous if you don't know what you are doing."
"Which odd little friend?" Katara had a look of genuine confusion. "Azula or Karo? They both are a little off."
"Me?" Off?" Karo stammered then tripped over the wooden handle of a shovel.
"You have the attention span of a hummingbird and lets face it – you can act a bit ditzy." Azula caught her friend before his nose hit the ground by grabbing the back of his collar. Katara giggled lightly as Karo recovered his dignity. Karo looked slightly insulted but he recovered his composure quickly enough.
"I will go and prepare our Water Tribe dinner." Katara smiled at Uichi and walked back to the kitchen. Azula looked up and realized it was just two in the afternoon which meant that something Katara had to prepare took a long time.
* * *
"Your friend Azula told me you had eaten dolphin testicles – a Water Tribe delicacy." Karo stared out of the window of his doctor's office as the doctor examined him carefully. Karo had his blood pressure checked, his heart checked and various aspects of his balance and vision checked. Azula had found his habit of constantly bashing his head against things undignified and annoying. When he fell down flat on the floor of a fried food franchise after tripping over a bright yellow wooden 'Caution Wet Floor' sign she decided to bring him in to the family doctor to make sure he didn't have a brain hemorrhage or lead poisoning.
"I threw those up all over the back yard of the tea shop." Karo breathed in and out as the physician instructed. "So Doctor Fong.....what has gone wrong with me?"
"Nothing too serious." The good doctor stroked his white beard. Doctor Fong had come from the Fire Nation and he had served the Zhao family since Karo could remember. A tall man with a monk's fringe of white hair – Karo could not remember ever seeing the doctor with a head of hair or anything other than his trademark white beard. "You lack the male essence to tolerate dolphin sweet meats. You lack the virile maleness found among the Water Tribesmen."
"Ah! Abuse?" Karo had never known Doctor Fong to harbor insults. "Do you insult me because we have a universal medical plan in Ba Sing Se and they have failed to fully reimburse you for some patients?"
"No insult my boy." The doctor patted his back. "You didn't grow up eating those exotic foods. Those dolphin sweetmeats come packed with the essence of the dolphin and all of his potency. You simply can't absorb that all at once. Think of the dolphin as full of chi."
"That isn't helping." Karo reminded the doctor.
"You will recover in a few days." The doctor decided not to pursue the conversation or try to explain that Karo at a little under fifty kilograms just could not take so much male dolphin-ness or male chi at once. All the explanations came out insulting, pornographic sounding or both. The doctor handed Karo a pamphlet and ushered him out of the door.
"I am sorry for insulting your manhood." The doctor said as he took the next patient file from his receptionist.
"Oh Insulted manhood? Do tell." Azula put a severely backdated issue of Earth Kingdom Digest down on the dull brown looking side table in the waiting room.
"Dolphin sweetmeats." Karo handed Azula the pamphlet. "Never mind."
"So You Will Eat Water Tribe Cuisine?" Azula walked down the stairs from the second floor to the lobby tailing behind Karo as she read the title of the pamphlet. "Dolphin sweetmeats can cause problems by elevating the hormone levels in some men and cause symptoms such as dizziness, vertigo and swollen genitals and sore nipples. Some doctors believe the strong dolphin chi can adversely affect young men not accustomed to such power."
"Yes!" Karo looked at Azula as they walked out on the street. "I wondered why everything you mentioned would suddenly choose to ache."
"Too much contractor – y hotness?" Azula held onto the back of Karo's collar since he still walked as if slightly drunk. "So can your nipples can predict blizzards? The human body is an ever unfolding mystery or some other crap like that."
"Giant squid eggs can cause excess leg hair and symptoms of pregnancy in women." Azula kept reading the pamphlet.
"That would explain why Katara always clogs the bathroom sink with hair." Karo felt Azula deftly steer him around a sandwich sign outside a pub that advertised red ale on sale. "We do have a month of free movies."
* * *
"Has Karo recovered yet?" Katara stood at he front door and asked Azula. She sat on the couch as Karo lay on his back and slept with a House MD graphic novel on his chest.
"Do you know it is ten in the evening young lady?" Azula placed a furniture catalog down. She had let Karo rest and happily looked at the Festive House Furniture Company catalog trying to find the right combination of massive and yet understated Fire Nation grace.
"Karo has not recovered yet." Karo announced weakly and wondered whether he had begun to leave his body and hence begun to feel the need to refer to himself in the third person. "I can stand but I keep thinking the room has begun to capsize."
"He still can't eat solid food yet." Azula pointed to the glass sundae cups on the table. "His mom has kept him going with fruit smoothies. Have you poisoned Uichi with your culinary skills at cooking entrails?"
"No!" Katara gently felt Karo's forehead. "His grandparents live in the Northern Water Tribe and so he grew up on their food. Our bodies have adjusted to our food but I keep forgetting that Karo has a delicate stomach."
"We got a free month at the movies." Azula placed the catalog down. "If he dies I get two months of movies. Of course I wouldn't be able to make off color comments about the acting and I would miss Karo's cutting fashion criticism."
"I have to take it easy for a day or so." Karo lay back and crossed his arms. "I've begun to run out of stuff to read already."
"Why not reread the Chronicles of Narnia books collecting dust on your bookshelf?" Azula suggested in a less than helpful manner.
"I am not kidding! I keep telling you that Chronicles of Narnia or any badly written allegory gives me gall stones." Karo pleaded as he tossed the House MD graphic novel on the coffee table. "Sure the House MD graphic novels have the same basic formula and always involve the ingenious and badly shaven doctor with a bum leg abusing patients and yet curing obscure diseases only one in a million people have a chance of getting. Still it doesn't contain a hidden lesson about salvation."
"Karo....pick a bedroom set that will look nice in the cottage and yet says 'me'." Azula tossed the furniture catalog toward Karo who barely caught it. "Something imposing and Fire Nation red."
"We still have the drill sitting outside the wall of Ba Sing Se. We could scavenge parts off of it and give the cottage that nice, dark Fire Nation machine shop look." Karo leafed through the catalog for a wardrobe and bed that could meet with Azula's approval while not offending his more refined, less industrial tastes.
"The old cottage saw a lot of history – a hundred years old or more. I will miss it." Azula put her feet up on the coffee table. "Of course the gas heater gave off carbon monoxide so if I didn't leave a window open I'd die. Any pencil dropped on the floor rolled to the washroom and I learned that you can have too many raccoons in your crawl space."
"Have you found this Uichi Junior fellow trustworthy?" Karo asked meekly.
"You worried about me Karo?" Katara blew at kiss at Karo. "I'm a big girl who can take care of herself."
"I wondered because your record with guys has never – I should shut up." Karo blushed a deep red. "Oh! The Regency Mahogany Princess bedroom suite looks good."
"Nice social save there." Azula leaned over and looked at the catalog. "I would like a four poster bed but the wardrobe and desk look nice. I like the regal looking dragon themed gold rugs."
* * *
"Some assembly required my freckled ass!" Karo grumbled as he tried to break open a crate with a crowbar and failed. He stood in the backyard trying to break into a wooden crate taller than he was. The new cottage did indeed prove a comfortable and well built. As a guest cottage, it managed to look larger and more impressive than it actually was. The old olive green carpet had now become a dark red finely finished hardwood floor. The walls had a equally Fire Nation just red enough to look red but not so red as to look awful. Karo approved of the color and thought the white trim set things off nicely. It needed furniture which the Festive House Furniture Company had dutifully delivered to Uncle Iroh in several large crates in the backyard the day after Azula had placed the order on Karo's advisement. "Shouldn't the 'This End Up' arrow point up?"
"Have you heard of something called a screwdriver?" Katara walked into the backyard to see Karo with a crowbar looking very unhappy as Azula 'supervised'. She handed him a toolbox she had borrowed from Lady Zhao. Lady Zhao had suggested that Katara might help Azula and Karo if she took them some tools. Lady Zhao further suggested that leaving Azula and Karo with a crowbar and crate could result in something vastly destructive or even apocalyptic. Katara had visions of Karo decapitating himself in some odd way with a crowbar or Azula unleashing lightning attacks on the crates. Katara had heard Azula discuss mini black holes and something in the back of her mind suggested Azula might conjure one in frustration.
"Which one do we need to open these behemoths?" Karo dropped the crowbar and looked at the selection of tool like implements. "The one with the cross do hickey? The square do hickey or the line do hickey?"
"Such a handyman." Katara examined the crates. "Square do hickey."
With the aid of a large metal screwdriver Karo had managed to open the crate while Azula watched from the comfort of a nearby shady tree. Inside he found the skeleton of a large red finished dresser stuffed with straw and the drawers wrapped in blue fabric.
"We have officially reached a functional impasse." Karo announced as he walked under the tree and stood next to Katara. "Unless you think I have hidden my muscles under my Fire Nation vest I can't possibly move this stuff into the cottage. Even all three of us would end up breaking ourselves."
"I have brought a solution." Katara waled into the tea shop and returned with Uichi Junior and stood next to Azula. "He agreed to help you set up your college if you agree to pay him."
"He can have Karo." Azula brushed Karo's clothes off. "He's neat and oh so very cute if you like that sort of thing."
"I don't." Uichi said calmly.
"Did you just try pimping me!?" Karo scowled at Azula and looked at the rugged Uichi. "He looks rough! Don't you care for my welfare?"
"Well how much did you make working for you dad?" Azula totally ignored Karo's complaints.
"He paid me two gold an hour but you can hire me for one gold because this won't take long." Uichi had his arm around Katara. "I have promised to take Katara out to a nice Water Tribe restaurant tonight for dinner and dancing – no seal clubbing comments please. Katara cautioned me about you two and your hang up on such things."
"Okay Azula and Karo – I mean both of you – will undo the crates and then you can tell me where to place everything." Uichi took charge immediately. Uichi proved a skilled Earth Bender and could move large heavy wooden pieces of furniture with precision and grace if not without a dull series of thumps. He surfed the dresser and wardrobe into place as if they weighed nothing at all.
Karo did most of the work, Azula handled the complaining and Uichi found them both insufferable as manual labor. He managed to carry the desk into the cottage using very fine earth bending. Azula followed behind him and instructed him where she wanted to place it. Karo worked on the second crate but Azula had to undo the top screws since Karo couldn't reach that high. Uichi took the bed in and quickly had it set up with the mattress and box spring ready to go. This level of efficiency in manual labor did not find its match in Karo or Azula who stripped screws and got into fights over which way the screwdriver turned and in Karo's case nearly ended up with a screwdriver in his brain because one slipped out of Azula's hand.
"At last we have finished." Uichi announced proudly. "See what Earth Kingdom strength can accomplish."
"Nice!" Karo looked into the finished cottage which unlike the old cottage used brick siding and properly cut lumber. Karo had grown used to the drafty stone cottage but it did let bugs and rats in. Azula could smell the scent of fresh paint and she carefully stepped inside. Both the front and back windows were open to allow the paint fumes to vent and Azula noticed that the windows had screening to keep out bugs and they remained open without the book holding them up.
"Okay Karo – pay him." Azula walked around the cottage inspecting the details. She examined the fine fit of the new cottage, the fact that unlike the previous heater which exhausted through a leaky steel pipe this time the small heater had a proper chimney.
"Pay him what?" Karo sat on the unmade bed.
"Give the man one gold and maybe a silver for his time." Azula walked in the new bathroom which had a pink marble floor to go with the light red bathtub and toilet. She had a proper vanity this time too – finished in a nice red stain with brass taps and a white basin. "You know I'm good for it."
"Well....here you go." Karo reached into his vest and paid Uichi.
"Can I ask you a question – Keiko?" Uichi said cautiously. "Why were you watching us through binoculars?"
"I had the job of quality control – making sure the construction process proceeded properly." Karo tried to conviningly lie. "And it's Karo."
"What's a brick tie?" Uichi asked slyly.
"Umm....a piece of formal wear for a brick?" Karo had the feeling he had been cornered.
* * *
"How many of your House MD graphics novels can I borrow?" Azula began to sort through her things, file her clothes in her odd way and bring her books back into the cottage. Unlike the old cottage, this new cottage had useful space to store things in a dry crawl space. Azula had the latest electric light and if she so decided and Iroh approved, she had the wiring for a telephone. She was very pleased.
"Studying House MD graphic novels because you think I have some rare and bizarre deadly parasite because I ate dolphin genitals?" Karo placed a box of books on the bed. "I feel fine – better than the last few days."
"I know your problem." Azula looked up from the wardrobe as she placed her clothes in the bottom drawer. "I didn't need graphics novels about eccentric doctors to figure it out."
"Okay my good friend Azula what do you diagnose me with?" Karo sounded – oddly for him – a trifle irritated.
"You have no health issues but you hate the fact you are gay." Azula folded her umpteenth night gown and put it away. She spoke with some certainty and decisiveness. "What would make the loyal wife of a well placed Admiral of the Fire Nation Navy leave and endure the hardships of living in Ba Sing Se as a refugee? She loved her son but knew from an early age that he had a delicate nature and didn't like 'guy things' like playing war. Admiral Zhao would never have accepted this."
"We don't mention such things." Karo sat on the bed. "You can borrow my House MD novels."
"Katara probably has this all figured out." Azula said. "I have to deal with clues, evidence from watching you and put everything together. She can use her powers as a water bender to tell. She can heal with her powers and if I remember my intelligence about her she may have the power to reach in and sense the energies from living things. She might have sensed your lack of confidence and your deeply troubled thoughts about who you are."
"She has not said anything to me." Karo leafed through a book without looking at it in any way.
"She has no reason to humiliate you." Azula slapped her thighs as she stood up.
"Do you?" Karo asked Azula.
"Not in the least." Azula looked out the window at the newly rebuilt garden as the late afternoon sun cut long shadows in the tree. "I suppose I had some questions about your nature."
"Those questions answered?" Karo put the book down.
"We need to practice your fire bending forms." Azula squeezed Karo's shoulder. "You have great promise but you need that confidence. When I can teach you confidence, how to use your own strengths and fully tap your power you will have a skill your father would envy."