Death Fury: And another thank you for your support. :)
She doesn't expect to be alone in the bed when she wakes. Usually Azula waits for her before leaving the room, even if it means laying awake for a few hours. But she is gone and her side of the bed lacks lingering body heat. The princess has been gone for some time. Zirin makes her way down the hall. "Have you seen Azula anywhere?"
"Good mornin' ta ya, Zirin."
Zirin groans, "Mornin', father. Have you seen Azula?"
"Las' I check, she were in yer room." Okon answers.
She swallows a lump in her throat, the only places she has ever seen Azula wander to these days are limited to the yard and the house. Perhaps the princess is in the garden. She hopes so. The air outside is fresh and fragrant, she can imagine that the princess would enjoy it. But she isn't in the garden, not that she can see. Zirin picks her way through clusters of firelily, orange jade, and dragon pepper. It doesn't seem as if Azula has been the garden at all. "Shit." She mutters to herself. "Where you at, Azula?" As if that would make the princess appear. She makes her way from the backyard to the front. Still no sign of her. "M'kay, its gonna be m'kay." She tries to tell herself. But the fear is creeping in, what if she was taken again? Oh Agni, what if had been taken. She wonders how she could have possibly let this happen.
She goes back inside and into Okon's workshop. "Dad, I'm goin' to town."
He looks up from his work and lifts a brow. "Town?" He lifts his magnifying goggles. "Fer what?"
"I ain't find Azula 'round the house so, I'm gonna go 'n look in town." It was a fight to keep her voice level. She peers over Okon's shoulder and sees the mechanical wings. They are coming together. The craftsmanship is splendid and they look sturdy. As of now they are scaffolds, skeletal structures of something much grander. A slew of cogs, wheels, and levers that are elaborate despite only being the basic outline of a greater whole. Zirin fears horribly, that they won't ever find their use.
"I nee'ja ta get some parts fer me while yer out. I'm runnin' outta screws."
Zirin nods, "I'll bring 'em back." With any luck she'll be bringing Azula back too, kicking and screaming if she must.
It is sill rather early in the morning and the town is relatively vacant. Most shops are still locked up tight, she supposes it's just as well, those are a few less places that she will have to search. Her first thought is to look at the food stall where she had bought Azula a peach, maybe the princess sought out another. But the stall is deserted as the streets.
"Have you seen my…" girlfriend is on the tip of her tongue but she still isn't sure where she stands with Azula right now. "My friend. She's really short, got all'a these scars on her arms 'n neck 'n stuff. Black hair…" she trails off again. "Well it were black at one point, but it's shaved now."
The man thinks over it as he assembles in jewelry stand. "I ain't seen anybody like that, miss. I feel like that's the sort of person who outta stand out."
"She does, yeah." Zirin agrees. In the same hour she finds that nearly everyone either keeps to their own business, to preoccupied with setting up shop for the day—something she's known since she was a girl—or hadn't risen early enough to have run into anyone at all.
Empty handed is the worst thing to turn up, Zirin decides. Just like the day she'd first lost Azula, she has no leads. She thinks that this time she might have less of them than the first.
.oOo.
It was a swelteringly hot day, that day. And she could hear the chirpy buzz of cicada-crickets. Azula's idea of a good way to spend the day was a walk to the volcano side. If they walked far enough they could see find an array of twisting towers of long solidified lava. It was where she had taken Azula for their first date; the stars were particularly beautiful in this area of the jungle. On that night it was Azula who had been reluctant to make the trek, she hated insects and low hanging branches, and travel by foot. But Zirin had managed to pull her out of her comfort zone. The princess, had never slept—on her own accord—under the stars before. And until that night, curled up next to Zirin, she had never enjoyed it. On that morning, a little under a year later, it was Azula who decided that they would be going to the magma mounds and Zirin would be tagging along. Always on top of things, the princess had packed a generous dinner—Zirin believed that might have been hand-picked, the princess had grown accepting of having to harvest things on her own surprisingly fond of doing so. Honestly, Zirin had come to believe that the princess was always content doing mundane tasks on her own but didn't want to risk criticism for doing the tasks of a commoner. Zirin wiped some sweat from her brow, earning herself a snide jest from Azula about not being a true firebender. Azula seemed to thrive in this kind of heat in a way that she couldn't. Zirin was thankful for the setting of the sun, however slow it was. She thought that the jungle looked at its finest under the golden hue of the retracting sun. It was when the cicadas-crickets' hum began to slow to almost quietness. Zirin was under the impression that half of them were nocturnal and the other half were day risers. She savored the small window of quiet as some began to sleep and others just woke. Azula didn't seem to mind the noise either way, she might have even liked it; it cleared some of the buzz in her head, she claimed. Zirin was much the opposite, the constant insect chatter drove her up the wall. She enjoyed being able to hear the other noises of the jungle; branches snapping under animal feet, leaves rustling, and various avian calls.
They finished their meal by nightfall and took to a discussion about the days the spent as Kemurikage. About Ali and her duo-tone hair and Rana and her bold side-shave. Occasionally Zirin would bring up an old inside joke and Azula would roll her eyes. Apparently, she hadn't heard that one yet. That night she confessed that she the other girls used to talk about Azula when she was away and it wasn't the pleasant kind of talk. Mostly they would say that they were only speaking with the princess as a means to evade being locked up again, most of them thinking her pushy and overbearing. Azula had crinkled her brows and asked why Zirin would disclose such. And Zirin replied, "cos, we ended up likin' you in the end, even if you was bossy 'n all that."
"I am not." She folded her arms across her chest. To which Zirin only quirked a brow until the princess muttered, "fine, maybe a little."
She kissed the pout from Azula's lips. Kissed her until she pushed away with a, "geez, let me breath for a second, will you?" That was another thing she had come to notice about the princess. Over the past few months she had come to relax a little. In a sense she'd lightened up. It was a thrill to know that Azula was more comfortable around her than she was with anyone else.
Zirin gave her the second and resumed this kiss. Only moments later she was on her back. She'd been there enough to know where this was going, and only hoped that Azula, unlike her other 'lovers', would stay afterwards.
She found that, Azula—for all the confidence she emitted and dominance she maintained—didn't exactly know what she was doing. She never imagined that she would be the princess' first time. Azula had enough of an idea to know what she wanted to do, but her execution was a little lack-luster. Zirin supposed that they would have to work on this aspect of their relationship.
But what she lacked sensually, she more than made up for in other regards. That night Zirin found that she was unexpectedly romantic and had knack for holding Zirin close and making her feel protected, even if she didn't particularly need it. Azula, she came to conclude, liked closeness. She was growing sleepy in the firebender's arms, propped up against one of the lava towers. But Azula wouldn't let her sleep, as soon as her eyelids so much as fluttered, the princess would give her an irritating jab.
"Come on now 'Zuels, it's getting' to be pas' my bedtime."
"Not yet." She mumbled, "You can sleep soon, but not yet."
There wouldn't be an argument. She found herself happy to have been kept awake. As it would turn out, Azula had a very specific reason for dragging her out so late and on that night in particular. She'd been to visit the village astronomer. His call for a meteor shower had been correct.
For hours, Zirin leaned into Azula's embrace and stared at the sky. She could feel the Azula's hair against her back and then eventually, the firebender's touch. Soft hands trailing up and down her spine. Azula's touch was pleasant and relaxing especially with stars bursting overhead. It had been a long time since Zirin had felt so sublimely tranquil. Her eyelids were growing heavy. Apparently, this time it was time for sleep. Azula let her lay atop her and shut her eyes.
That night she dreamed of screaming and a scuffle; two puma-goat with blazing red eyes locking heads. The male puma slashed at its feminine counterpart, drawing a very uncanny human yell and then unleashing a human-like grunt of its own. The fight waged on and on until both goat-puma were in bloody, gut-spilling tatters.
She woke up alone that morning. Alone and pissed, thinking that the princess was just like everyone else. She'd gotten what she wanted so she had no reason to stay. She scowled to herself, she was a fool for bedding a high-class lady.
But then she noticed Azula's clothing still laying rumpled and discarded on the floor—perhaps it wasn't animals that had been snapping the branches after all. Some feet from that she spotted the spatter. And it registered that the screaming in her dreamscape had been a familiar cry. That, that was precisely what had made it so unsettling.
It begins to set in, the cold and dark fear. The guilt; how could she have slept through it? How?
She stooped down to examine the crimson, there was an alarmingly sized circle of it mostly collected on the face of a rock, with a few other splotches here and there and another larger circle of blood some feet away. Whoever it was had bashed her head against the rock, maybe a few times and then left her laying for some time.
How had this person—or people?—gotten the best of Azula? She found another cloth laying discarded on the floor near the rock. Against her better judgment she gave it a small whiff. Her world spun and she tossed the cloth to the floor. They had cheated, that's how. After than she imagined Azula fighting through a wave of hazy dizziness—apparently giving enough hassle to warrant tossing her upon a rock for good measure.
.oOo.
She remembers crying that night, for the longest time with Okon unable to console her. She recalls searching very frantically, shoving paintings of Azula in everyone's faces as if they didn't already know her by name. Her princess had been gone.
Gone and found only by chance.
Zirin balls her fists, she can't imagine getting lucky a second time and wonders how she managed to lose someone so precious a second time.
Have the same people been observing them the whole time, waiting for a chance to recapture Azula? It chills her to think that she and Azula had been watched in the midst of some very venerable, sensitive moments.
She returns home empty-handed and with the same brand of tears and fury as the first time.
"Ya didn't fin' 'er did ya, Zizi?" He doesn't even ask about the screws she'd neglected to get. He rubs her back reassuringly. "Ya don' know that she been taken again."
"Where would she go then, daddy? Where'd she go. She ain't got nowhere to be." She sobs into his shirt. "I ain't able to handle losin' her again."
Okon rubs his brow. "Jus' give 'er 'til the enda the night, kay, Zizi. If she ain't back by then, you ken start ta worry."
The end of the night seems too long. Especially when sleep refuses to come easy, in fact Zirin doesn't even try it. Instead she waits in the front most room, eyeing the door. The door, she realizes, that they never bother to lock. They've been fools, thinking that no one would go for the princess again. Fools to keep their door unlocked at all.
She isn't any closer to rest when the doorknob jiggles. She sits upright, fire blazing golden-orange in her palms. She leaps to her feet, coaxing the flame higher as a hooded figure slides in. She tosses the first ball of fire. The figure evades and pulls the hood back.
Zirin first notices a tattoo. A blue dragon with scales outlined in gold curls itself around the woman's scalp, it's tail dipping down and around her ear. It is fierce and elegant. From its mouth spans a ray of blue fire. But that's not what stands out; what does is the dragon's wings. They aren't dragon wings at all, they are wolf-bat wings.
She may not recognize the tattoo from anywhere but she recognizes the woman whose flesh it is tattooed on. She wants to weep in joy and lash out all at once.
Azula strolls inside, looking for all the world, like she hasn't done anything wrong, hasn't caused any worry or grief. She tries to walk by without a word and Zirin is beside herself. She snatches Azula at the bend of her arm. "I hate you." Zirin yells, but it sounds more akin to, "I haychoo." And shoves Azula who looks at her with a passive indifference. "I. Hate. You." She accents each word with a soft punch to Azula's chest. The princess takes each blow with a blank face.
When her fury finally subsides she watches the Azula wander towards their room. Zirin considers shouting at her to sleep on the couch. But she doesn't want her to leave again. She is afraid that she'll do it anyhow. So she follows the princess. "You ain't gonna leave, again are you?" She practically spits.
Azula cocks her head a bit.
"It ain't a hard question."
She shakes her head, yes.
Zirin opens and closes her mouth once and then twice, as she struggles for words. At Azula was upfront. "Well, can you at least tell me when yer gonna go into town for…for a tattoo?" Zirin can't even fathom what had possessed the princess to go get one, hadn't she been in enough pain already?
Azula crawls under the covers having no intention of giving Zirin the answer she demands. The comfort she seeks. Doesn't the princess know that there are people who worry for her? Doesn't she realize that there are people who don't want to see her hurt.