I initially considered using my Mother Tongue (first language) as the mermaidmen's lingo but decided I rather like the mysterious quality of whatever Ty Lee says to be experienced by myself as well.

To anyone wondering, most of the installments in this collection are merely spur of the moment kind of thing. Nothing serious. So there might be no Part Three. But I believe I ended things enough for the imagination to work. I might continue it if I were inspired enough though.

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The Little Mermaid AU (Continuation)

Azula's first memory of her is when the uncomfortable surface of the sand seeps into her drenched skin, each grain sticking into her wet hair. She sputters, thrashes and almost chokes herself in her panic. She remembers lightning, treacherous waves and such a deadly downpour. The ship wavered, collapsed in the fury of nature. The rest of the crew vanished from sight as Azula feebly held on her own consciousness.

She remembers water, dark, dark water closing in on her as the cramps settled on her limbs. She was drowning, struggling, dying. And suddenly there was a flash of pink and Princess Azula of the Fire Nation was gone.

But wakefulness does not give her the emptiness an afterlife should feel. Pain shoots up on her side, recalling idly on how a broken plank got her in her descent. Azula groans, grumbles, almost screams. But the sight of gray, curious, very wide eyes stops her on her tracks. The grinning, excited pretty face is too close and in a moment, Azula would feel the arms straddling her, the moist, scaly skin brushing hers and the musky scent of the sea seizing her senses. Her clothes are in tatters, the Fire Nation garb unrecognizable and she feels every bit of the strange woman pressed to her, hears her own heartbeat synchronize against her own.

There is deafening silence as they held each other's gazes. Then the girl with the elaborate braids prattles on something unintelligible, touches Azula's face, inspects her thoroughly and the Princess is snapped from the trance.

Pink fish tail is what the creature has for two feet, fins glittering in the sunlight and shiny from the water droplets glinting. A pair of sea shells covers her breasts, her midriff bare. Long braided hair is haphazardly thrown in one side, exposing her perfectly tanned neck. The fish-girl grins and in horror, Azula pushes her away.

Ungracefully, the creature rolls back, stunned. She stares at Azula with her perfect lips agape, crossing her perfect arms and glaring at her with her perfect, protuberant eyes. "Kinshati apurabi kimenoki." She spits back like a petulant child squinting at the more than disconcerted princess, looking at her in reproach as if she is an ungrateful… peasant child.

"Kurabi saidoru kanpeki." She continues with a sulk that Azula can only label as undignified, her lips still curled. Then she sighs, taking a deep breath as she directs her attention to Azula's hurting middle. Her forehead creased, raising her hands to point at the bleeding. Azula winces self-consciously. 'Kamoku hareshi kinosu." The girl says… earnestly.

"Did you save me?' Azula ventures, cutting the creature's stream of babble of some obscure language she has no idea about.

The girl smiles again, inches closer to touch the girl's trembling leg (which when Azula noticed, she futilely tried to suppress) and replies in clear enthusiasm. "Yah!" As if she understood what Azula said.

"So can you help me more then?" Azula risks further, warily observing the bright, pink dopey-looking fish girl. She figures that she must be in some sort of a deserted island or one that is not very populated. The shores are devoid of any fishing boats, the sand itself untamed with huge chunks of rock weathered from age-old corals. She wonders what happened to her crew, what the mainland have deduced from her failed voyage, if there are any survivors to live with the tale. She wonders how long she was gone, how long has this fish-girl stared at her in her sleep. How long since she ate? As though on cue, her stomach churned. "I need to get a new ship, a new crew. I need to go back to the mainland and ask Father to allow me another resource to apprehend my brother. I need to get my honor back. Can you help me with that, fish-girl?"

The successive demands is lost to the poor fish-woman however and she looks dumbly at the haughty princess, cocking her head in confusion. At another time when she is clearheaded and not shipwrecked, Azula would have been subtle in her commands. But as it stands, she is none of the above.

"Ty Lee?" The girl's bewildered tone signified that it is a hesitant question. Or a confirmation. Azula's head hurts too much to make sense of the nuances. "Ah! Ty Lee! Ty Lee. Uh… uh,.. my… my name. Dats mai neym! Ty Lee."

What the-? "I'm sorry.. what?"

"My name." she pursues more coherently, waving her hands. "My name! Ty Lee!"

"I do not care about your name, you little…. I need—" But the girl's wide-eyed look make Azula recognize that this stupid fish has no mental capacity to acquire a new boat and enslave a crew even if they somehow manage to establish some kind of communication. She struggles to remember anything that prepared her for this. A mermaid. Right. Like her mother always said. Half-fish, half-human singing half-naked under the half-moon. She just did not expect they could be half-wits as well. "Never mind."

The girl waits expectantly as if Azula should be saying something more.

She frowns. 'What?"

"Name?" the mermaid named Ty Lee blurted, flashing Azula all of her teeth. Pearly white. Azula looks away. "Your… uh ney.. name!"

"Azula." She grits out, trying to prop herself up further. Ty Lee drags herself closer and the Princess can tell how much of an effort that took but before injured, starving Azula can slink away, the mermaid's surprisingly strong arms are helping her sit up fully. Her skin is cool against her feverish ones and Azula finds herself leaning on the fish girl as the mermaid runs fingers on her hair.

The Princess stomach's grumbles.

Ty Lee offers her seaweed.

….

.

.

After forcing herself to swallow that horrendous greenish… thing one more time, Fish-girl, er… Ty Lee introduces her to fellow humans by pointing at a group of people marching with lanterns and straw bundles. The mermaid calls their attention, screaming the most recognizable cry for attention. "Hey!" And true enough, a man's head turns towards the shores, murmurs of voices until they reach an impasse and the same man approaches them… her.

Ty Lee has vanished.

"Are you okay, miss?" he questions and Azula is relieved to hear that this man speaks her language at least. Fire Nation too. So she was drifted west. Good.

There is no trace of Ty Lee as the villagers help her up to her feet and she does not ask. Shipwreck victims are quite susceptible to delirium, she hears the town healer say who was more than glad to attend to her when Azula informed them that she was royalty. But she does not trust what she insisted to be a mere product of hunger's silly tricks. She has been under the wing of the Fire Nation's biggest authority in academics. "The human mind cannot conjure faces. When you dreamed of a person, it is a certainty that you have seen them at one point."

Ty Lee was too… pretty to be a product of imagination. And she would never forget such a face, if she met her somewhere already.

But she has more important things to do. Azula comes home and forgets about the pink-tailed woman who saved her life.

.

"What do you think Koh would want in exchange for a pair of legs?"

The chorus of answers responded by all (all seventy-eight of them!) of her friends is something that Ty Lee does not want to hear.

"Your face!"

She winces. "But how would she even recognize me if it is so?" she moaned, gurgling bubbles on the water. Azula got a good look on her face and it was what Ty Lee held on in dreamy nights that she imagined being reunited with the human that had invaded her thoughts for so long. Several seasons had already passed and Ty Lee had visited the island she left Azula in as much as she could, in hopes that the beautiful creature would be there, waiting for her. Even though she did not seem like the type to say thank you in human-speak.

But so far, there had been no such luck.

Azula…

And then the curveball of her otherwise monotonous search for "the human she fancied" (as one of the sharks had phrased it, wise bastards), came when she overheard the fishermen talk about a "Princess Azula" who had gone missing. The humans spoke of her like she was caught in their nets… dead too. Needless to say, Ty Lee is worried.

And desperate. She had pondered about going to Koh before. But the horror stories whispered around by her other sisters had made take a step back and optimistically look forward to the idea that maybe, just maybe, Azula would not mind a friend of another species, being her savior and all. But Azula is missing. And it seems like the only way she could be found is if someone really looks for her.

"Would he change my face to something horrible or just completely steal it away in exchange for you know… a favor?" She asks her sister, not the nicest but she was frank enough not to sugarcoat stuff- later that night. Ty Woo has her hair tied in the same braid as hers for approaching a month already. Ty Lee contemplates on changing hair styles to differentiate herself. Yup. She was kind of worried that Azula would see one of her sisters and mistake them for her.

"Let's just say you would give 'blank face' a whole new literal sense." Ty Woo cocks her head. "That is a joke. Laugh."

She does not.

She decides then that the Koh thing would be a last, last, last resort.

"I believe he had a mother though." The smartest of her sisters cuts in, as she swims to settle beside them. "Mother of Faces or something. They said she should be somewhere in the island of Hiraa. Who knows?" Her face creased. "Why do you want to know, Ty Lee-ah, hmmmm?" Gasp of realization. "Don't tell me, sister. Do you have some sort of request? You know, it's forbidden, right?"

Well, rising up to the surface and saving pretty shipwrecked humans and secretly kissing those soft, red lips while she was asleep is not exactly the definition of a law-abiding mermaid either.

Ty Lee does not tell them, like she never tells them things but she thanks her sisters with an uncharacteristic kiss on the cheek anyway. She does not look back.

She knows now where to go.

….