Chapter 26
Our Own Gravity, Defying the World
A/N: Before we get started, here's Azula, to (not) answer your pressing questions. Sorry about her harshness, but you gotta love the girl's style. Sincere thanks for the feedback and inspiration.
Q: Are you trying to portray [Azula] as someone who was born evil or turned evil?
A: Foolish knave, know this, and tremble: unlike lesser mortals was I perfect born; wielding heaven's mandate, petty conceits as thine 'good' and 'evil'/ beyond – and held in scorn.
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"Fire," explained Ursa, a flame leaping to life in her right hand, small, but dancing with a proud intensity as it flickered, like the two small eyes it danced in reflection upon, "requires fuel, and there are many kinds of fuel which it can use, right daughter?"
"Right," nodded Azula, "Wood is perfect fuel for the fire place, we use coal to fuel our ships, cloth burns well," listed the little Princess, checking each one off with her fingers, "as well as the flesh underneath it," she added with a wicked grin.
"Yes…" acknowledged her Mother reluctantly, quickly moving the conversation along, a brief agitated flicker of her flame the only betrayal of the sudden alien chill she quickly suppressed. "There are many different kinds of fuel. Ambition can be one such source for your bending, but there are others."
"So?" dismissed the daughter. "Once you find something that works, that you're good at, why not just use more of it, like… like a bonfire. You can keep piling up more of the same fuel, and the fire gets bigger and stronger."
"Would you build and sail a ship of raw iron dear?"
"No…" admitted Azula, chewing on the corner of her lip as she it mulled it over, sensing her Mother had a point. "For one, it'd get too rusty. That's why we add other elements to the iron, alloying it into stronger steel. …So you're saying bending can be made stronger by adding another element to ambition? Like how the servants will sometimes stuff used paper between the logs to help get a fire going?"
"Very good Azula, very insightful," encouraged the Mother, patting her daughter on the head. "You've got the idea. You've forgotten one little thing though; it is however the most important." Ignoring her daughter's perturbed scowl, Ursa causally rose to her feet and lit one of the candlesticks ensconced in the alcove wall behind them. Taking it from it's holder, she brought it back and held it out toward her daughter as she sat back down. "Put out the flame."
The little princess held out her hand gingerly, hesitating for a moment. If it was her giving the order, she knew this would be some cruel prank, ending with Zuko or Ty Lee getting burnt fingers (Mai was too stoic to usually be worth torturing). "Go on daughter, if you're afraid of a little flame like this, you'll never master fire."
Goaded by her Mother's words, Azula determinedly pinched the flame together between her fingers, instantly snuffing it out into a wisp of dark smoke. The Fire Princess grinned; she'd shown that flame who was boss! She looked up at her mother, eager as a puppy having mastered a new trick, hoping to be praised again. Ursa looked satisfied, but still silent, expectant. Reminding Azula that the test was not over; she still had one little thing to remember.
"The flesh may be willing, but appears insufficient after all." Azula noted the slight emphasis on "sufficient," clue that she needed to find that which was "necessary."
"Hold up your palm dear," requested the Mother as she pulled from her robe a small glass sphere, one end open. She placed it over her daughter's palm, the end toward her tilted up enough to slide a finger underneath. With a flick, she lit a flame off the finger, filling the cup. The little princess gasped in alarm as the glass warmed, but before she could even pull her hand away the flame vanished! Her Mother's finger just as quickly slipped out, the glass sealing down on Azula's hand with a strange sensation, like inverted negative pressure. The little princess stared in surprise at the glass and how it magically pulled up on her skin without any visible means of force. It was the first time she'd ever experienced a vacuum.
Ursa watched in amusement as her daughter turned her hand upside down, testing the strength of this strange new phenomena as she lightly shook her hand. The glass sphere effortlessly held on, as effortlessly as it had put out the flame, defying the World's inescapable gravity with it's own inner force, the hollow purity which is absence of force, which all other force futilely runs off of, allowing it to become its own separate world, its center its own gravity "How…?" whispered Azula in wonderment, her eyes two satellites drawn, like her flesh, into awe filled orbit by this silently powerful, other-worldly gravity.
"You might say that it is the power of Yin," explained Ursa, herself being pulled in by her daughter's child like fascination. It was one of the greatest blessings of children; to be transported from the quotidian world of adulthood, wherein the piled up years of experience have irrevocably buried wonder, and given the chance to see the world afresh, through eyes for which so much is still new and magical. Ursa knew she could never return to that magical world, but in moments like this it felt like she was reliving apart of it through her child.
"There are many kinds of power in this world Azula," revealed the Mother, having to keep her suddenly swelling sentiments from choking her voice. Strong fearful feelings for this child whom she wished to give everything; the world; for whom's sake she also feared might have the terrible power to actually obtain it. "Not all power needs be brutal and overwhelming. Some forms of power are soft, and warm," she whispered fiercely, moved to pulling her daughter closer as she stroked her back and planted a kiss atop her head. "Like this power that can conqueror even our strongest fires. Like the power that bonds people together, like your flesh to the glass world." Azula leaned into her mother. They stayed like that for a moment, on the courtyard bench watching the sun rise, pulled in by the warmth of flesh and the afterglow of fire, the only two inhabitants of a wondrous, fragile, world of glass.
* * *
Shameless Omake Next:
Azula: If the chick does not break the egg's shell…
Katara: It will die without being born.
Azula: We are the chick; the world is our egg.
Katara: If the world's shell does not break, we shall die without being born.
Azula: Smash the world's shell!
Ursa: The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever would be born, must destroy a world. The bird flies toward God. That God's name is Abraxas.
Azula: … (muttered disbelief) Of course you'd know the original. We just made matched bookends, didn't we?
Katara: … (worried) No one's going to get yet another obscure Teutonic literary connect the dots between Nietzsche and Hesse you know. How many are we up to anyway?
Azula: The uncultured peasants have google and la wik, do they not? They only have themselves to blame if they remain ignorant rubes.
Katara: (awkward laughter) hahaha (whispered) Stop intimidating the readers Azula.
Azula: Aaand… Bam! Double book ends!
Chapter 27
Pride and Power