A woman with dark flowing hair and long burgundy robes brushed past in the narrow hallway. Korra's heart pounded wildly in her chest as she glimpsed the ghost of a shy smile. Stopping in her tracks, she turned to gaze at her passerby with captivated interest. The woman in the robes continued walking down the torch-lit corridor with her head angled ever so slightly downward and hands demurely clasped in front of her. Korra watched her continue along and finally disappear around the corner. She remained in place, with only the flickering lights and the distant quacking of turtle ducks to keep her company. The warm night hovered encouragingly around her. She found the urge to follow the woman nearly impossible to resist.
Korra gazed wistfully down the corridor, still firmly planted in the same spot. The light summer wind twisted through her own floor length robes as she wondered at the fleeting encounter.
Though she had never met the woman before there was something oddly familiar about her. For instance, Korra was fairly certain that the woman had light amber eyes which lit up whenever she smiled. And that when she laughed and threw her head back her hair would cascade like waves of mercury down her back. Or that her cheeks would flush a gentle plum the split second before they would kiss. The last thing Korra would see before closing her eyes to kiss her bride would be a young Fire Lord to her left smiling though with a somewhat solemn gleam in his eyes.
An especially loud turtle duck quack brought her back to the present moment. She glanced around self-consciously, smoothed her robes, and squared her shoulders. It was time to get moving. A young man of her station must do everything possible to maintain a dignified image-especially one so well acquainted with the crown prince of the Fire Nation. She continued down the corridor to attend to whatever business was at hand.
Korra was again arrested mid stride by the sudden jarring realization that she had just thought of herself as a young man. And she certainly wasn't on a first name basis with any Fire Lords to the best of her knowledge (General Iroh, though noble, was a soldier, after all). And pining for that mesmerizing woman…really? Well, that was surely something she didn't want Tenzin to know about. She scratched her head, without noticing its arrangement in a high and rather masculine bun instead of her usual wolftails, and gazed out into the night at the gazebo by the pond. Fireflies rhythmically glowed in the night and a nearby owl hooted ominously.
Before too long a darker, more ethereal blackness began to slowly swallow the scene in front of her. The fires from the torches dimmed and Korra felt herself slipping away. It had been nice seeing the woman, whoever she was. Korra drifted off into a cocoon of unknowing feeling warm and content. This state was only slightly disrupted when the sound of an erupting volcano began rumbling in her ears while a lone red dragon drifted through the sky.
