Author's Notes: Double drabble for theavatar100 Challenge #62: Prima Facie (at first glance).
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The clothes, hair, swords, and scar are all new.
The line of his jaw and the shape of his good eye conjure up well-worn memories for comparison, but her attempt to overlay them in her mind fails. One on top of the other doesn't work because they don't match.
His face is too gaunt and its angles too sharp. He has scowl lines and his nostrils flare with rage.
Where did you go? Mai wonders morosely, but then an errant ball of flame -- whether deflected or off course to begin with she's unsure -- comes barrelling towards her and she's not quite fast enough.
She twists, slips, and then she's falling, off of the side of some oversized rock in the middle of nowhere in the stupid, stupid Earth Kingdom, until a hand wraps around her forearm, fingers clenching hard enough to bruise. He tugs her back up over the edge in one smooth motion and she skids along the ground with the momentum.
He lets go and leaves her there and only looks back for a split-second before rejoining the fray, but she knows.
Oh, she amends to herself, there you are.