Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar or anything else related to the following oneshot, and I don't want to own, never will own, never did own, and am afraid of owning Uncle Iroh's shoe.
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"Where are we going?" Iroh asked his guard, shifting slightly in the thick ostrich saddle.
"The city that you once lay siege to for six hundred days,though it refused to fall to you," the guard replied, his voice tinged with pride and bitterness. He ran the reins through his hand.
"Ah. Ba Seing Sei. My men had been fighting hard. We were tired. I was tired." Iroh paused to yawn and jangle his cold cuffs once. "I am still tired."
With that he closed his eyes and fell off the ostrich into the dust. His guard looked down, surprised, and signaled to the private to help him with the prisoner.
The two guards swung off their ostriches and thumped onto the ground, and walked over to the man laying in the dust in two strides and scooped him up, one on each shoulder, gripping his arms tightly then hoisting him back onto the saddle.
As they did so Iroh opened one eye and looked back. A single sandal lay in the dust. He silently chuckled. He forgot to wash his feet last night and his nephew would not be happy, to say the least.
Iroh let himself be rearranged on the saddle so he would be less likely to fall off and then felt the rhythmic movement of the ostrich under him again. Just so he could mentally brag to himself about this latest tactic of his, he opened one eye as the ostrich rocked along and looked back at his sandal.
He smiled quietly to see the meadow vole from before scratching around in the dirt next to his shoe. He watched as it sniffed the sandal once, recoiled, obviously highly disgusted, bit part of the shoe, dragged it to the side of the path, dug a small hole, buried the shoe, and covered it up with a pile of leaves and then peed on top of it all.
Iroh blinked.
The vole blinked.
The vole twitched its nose, glinted its eyes, and smiled at Iroh, showing him teeth all the way back to its molars, as if to say, "sorry, sir, but something that smells like that breaks at least forty three fire codes and twenty two personal hygiene laws and lord knows how many all-for-the-good-of-mankind rules."
Then the vole happily scurried away, obviously quite proud with itself, knowing it would one day grow up to be a fine law enforcer.
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Author note: I honestly don't know where that came from. If what the people (i.e. Iroh and the guards) isn't right, then sorry. I haven't been able to watch an episode of Avatar since the season finale, and I can't remember their exact words, but I think this is close. If someone can get exact quotes that will do and say so in your review and I can change this accordingly. If I feel like it.
Can be looked at as a sequel to "Prince Zuko's Diary" (which, I will repeat, was NOT IrohxKatara.).
