Author's Note: This was one of my more experimental pieces, style-wise. I think it (mostly) worked, but I also think it would have been impossible to sustain for more than this short snippet. Oh, well. At least next up you get a nice, long, plotty thing featuring King Bumi.
21. Dancing on a wire
Up is down and down is up and back is forth and round and round and round she goes. Cartwheeling down halls, cartwheeling down stairs. She cartwheels past teachers and threats of detention. She's upside-down and downside-up, skirt 'round her head, hands on the floor and heels in the air.
Heels in the air, she's dancing on her hands. She's ignoring gravity, she's ignoring detention. Ty Lee's in trouble again, yes Ty Lee's in trouble, but Ty Lee doesn't care. She doesn't care because her aura is pink today, pink against Mai, who is graygraygray, and pink against Azula with her coldfireblue.
(And to think about Azula is to dream about dancing on a wire and she's got to keep moving, got to keep from falling, can't think of falling, can't stop, can't ever stop, and the wire cuts into her feet.)
Back bows, braid whips, hands slap against stone. Her laughter spins out, turning the world pink. She's failed history again, she's drawn flowers on her test, chains of five-petaled daisies looping round and round the names of Fire Lords past.
Handsprings carry her away from history tests. They carry her away from her parents' dreams of a good marriage and a demure daughter, a dutiful daughter, a daughter with her heels on the ground and her head out of the clouds.
Heels in the air, and Ty Lee's gone away, she's cutting school, she's off the grounds and out of bounds. She's past the guards, knocking them down with a tip-tap-tap, cutting their chi and cutting her apron strings.
She's running away. She's joining the circus today, this very day, this pinkest of days.
She's joining the circus and she'll dance on a wire, up and down and down and up, back and forth and to and fro, always moving, never stopping. She follows her dream and a dream follows her, coldfireblue burning, flickering at her heels, and part of her knows she'll forever be dancing on a wire, even when her feet are firm on the ground.