River considers it one of life's crueler ironies that her mother named her Sarugani, "River of Fire," when she cannot, in fact, firebend. Or waterbend. Or anything bend, for that matter.
"Well, your mother is a lady," her father says, as if that explained it all. And perhaps it does. River is not a lady, and heaven knows she would never name her daughter something so hideously over-blown and fanciful—especially if, as is the case with River herself, her daughter was most decidedly not the object of anyone's fancy. Saraiyu might as well have gone ahead and called her something even more excruciatingly awful, like Phoenix, or Dragonheart, or Soulfire, or—
"Lavapit?" her father suggests.
"Lavapit," she agrees. "Lavapit would have been perfect. It would have expressed my firey personality, my smoldering sensuality, my brooding introspection, my—"
"Overblown imagination?" her father asks.
She shakes her head. "No, I don't think 'Lavapit' screams 'overblown imagination.' If anything, it says 'complete and utter lack of it.'" She looks down at her filthy, stained tunic and wrinkles her nose. "Being called Lavapit, would, however, explain why I'm constantly covered in soot."
(The mines started burning a month ago—the work of the Fire Nation Fleet sitting silently in the harbor. They're still burning, sending huge dark clouds out for miles in every direction, dust raining down like black snow. River is becoming accustomed to the constant dusk and an ever-present burning in her chest.)
Her father considers his own filthy clothes. "Perhaps I should have been named 'Ash Heap'" he muses. River agrees, nodding her head so vigorously that her hair shakes free of the bun it's been in all day. Her father has to bite his lip to keep from laughing as she goes off on another tangent, seemingly unaware that half of her hair is sticking straight up.
"Lavapit, daughter of Ash Heap," she intones. "I like it. It utterly lacks dignity, unlike my current name—which is far too dignified to belong to me." She has a point: at thirteen, River is still small, her body skinny and gawky and her eyes huge in her bony face. She looks like every other child in this Earth Kingdom city; despite their parents' best efforts, the siege has been hard on the children here.
And then there is the matter of her hair, which (unfortunately) cannot be blamed upon the Fire Nation.
Manfully ignoring said hair, her father solemnly voices his agreement. "Right you are," he says. "Henceforth, you shall be known as Lavapit. I'll advise your mother of the change. I'm sure she'll approve."
"I'm sure she will," River laughs, "since she'll completely ignore it and keep calling me Sarugani, same as always."
"Well, no one else likes the name," her father smiles. "She's got to keep using it to show us both that she does not care what we think." He and his daughter both roll their eyes in agreement, grinning at each other. But his smile falters a little as he recalls the long list of matters upon which Saraiyu refuses to consult him or anyone else—most of them far more serious than the matter of their daughter's "proper" name.
River doesn't seem to notice the shadow passing over her father's face, though. "Well, mama can never let her guard down, not even on the teeniest detail" she chatters blithely. "If she gave an inch, we'd take a mile," she adds. And it's true, her father admits silently to himself: if he'd had a say in any of it, when would he have stopped questioning Saraiyu?
He doesn't get very far on this painful train of thought before he's derailed by the silence. The dull roar of enemy fire has been a constant in their lives for more months than he cares to remember. But now there is…nothing. River takes his hand, her golden eyes filled with a painful mixture of worry and hope. She's too old to hold my hand willingly, he thinks inanely, but at moments like these he feels every wrong, every slight, every little thing that the Fire Nation has taken from them acutely. "Daddy," she asks quietly, "Have they finally—"
But before she can finish, there is an explosion—one that rocks the ground they stand upon, knocking them both off their feet. They hear a sickening crash: a long, loud, never-ending crumbling roar as the city wall finally comes crashing down. And in that moment, in that sound, River's father feels as if he can see everything that will happen next—the final moments of his life, his daughter's life, his wife's. He can, he thinks, see the Fire Navy storm over the remains of the wall, ready to make the city's residents pay dearly for resisting the inevitable for so long. He sees the city burn; he sees it fall. In an instant, it is a smoking ruin, and his family with it.
And in that long moment, River's father looks into his daughter's terrified, hopeless eyes and knows that this time, they will not escape.