"Except our loves at this noon stay, / We shall new shadows make the other way."
-- John Donne, "A Lecture Upon the Shadow"


Prince Iroh's assault on Ba Sing Se, simple in concept, is complex nearly to madness in execution. The farther he advances, the longer and more vulnerable his supply lines. From the colonies he commandeers food and men, but their arms, and the engines to breach the Impenetrable City's walls, he requisitions from the factories of the homeland.

These Ozai oversees, tireless and exacting. The general praises his brother's work in every dispatch, but Ozai scorns a quartermaster's laurels. He begs leave to "inspect" the front and fulminates, privily but explosively, when rebuffed. Ursa soothes him, hiding her unease in sympathy.

oOoOoOo

Lu Ten comes home, riding courier for his father, and is fĂȘted in his place. His gallantry soon has the court at his feet, men vying for his notice and women for his favor. "I think, nephew," Ozai chaffs him at table one evening, "you have slain more ladies with your eyes than earthbenders with your sword."

"Not true," Lu Ten retorts, his ready smile glittering down the board, "though I admit that in the company of ladies I prefer to sheathe my sword."

Amid the hilarity and gasps of mock outrage, Ursa hears her husband's chuckle, late and false.

oOoOoOo

The wounded are tended in the field and sent to convalesce in the colonies; only the broken and the dead return across the sea. Ursa showers largesse upon the royal hospitals, visiting often to cheer the staff and their charges (and to keep the administrators honest). She encourages boys little older than Zuko to take their first steps on clever metal prosthetics -- endures the ravings of men once as masterful as Ozai, minds shattered by combat.

Returning, she kneels at the household shrine and prays for a swift end to the campaign.

(And who knows? Perhaps her prayers are heard.)