Mingan and Zuko settled into somewhat of a routine. It had been three days since their arrival and it was turning out to be very boring. Zuko would always wake at dawn and go off to do whatever he did during the day. Mingan would wake up hours later, well into the morning and eat breakfast... alone. In fact, she ate every meal by herself. It was a culture shock for her. In her tribe, eating meals with family or friends was a significant part of their lives but here, everything was so... impersonal. But, she comforted herself with the fact that she shouldn't get personal with anyone here or even want to for that matter. So she ate her meals in silence. Her food was gentle and almost always, what she came to learn was called, deep-fried. It was oily and it didn't always settle in her stomach well, but, at least it was edible and not unbearably spicy. Then, after she finished eating she would go gaze out the window at the garden. She had tried to go outside once but she found that the door was locked. That had saddened her particularly. She came to notice that the garden was actually longer than it was wide and that it did not end just out of her sight like she had originally thought. It actually went to the right farther down. But, she couldn't see to the end of the courtyard because of the angle of her head on the window.

After doing almost nothing but staring longingly out the window for hours on end every day she began to notice patterns in the wildlife. When she woke up there would be a small flock of tiny, brightly colored birds with long tails, bathing in a little stone bowl set upon a pedestal. Then they would usually fly into the tree with pink flower blossoms and eat whatever bugs or fruit they found there. Then they would leave and it was always kind of damper on Mingan's mood. Occasionaly she would see a small creature hopping out of the bushes along the walls. It looked exactly like a snow jackolope, but with out the antlers of course... and it was brown, not white. The first Mingan had seen the little animals she had nearly cried for joy at seeing something familiar. Sometimes, very early in the morning Mingan would wake up to strange noises. It sounded like tiger-seal barks but it was... different somehow. Of course she had never seen the source of the noise because it came from the part of the garden she couldn't see from the window.

Today, she woke up with an almost foreboding feeling. She had been awake for all of five minutes and she already felt depressed. She ran her bath water and just stared at the water while it filled. Her thoughts drifted back to when she was just a little girl. She had begged for her father to take her with him on a fishing trip with most of the other men of the village. He had eventually grown tired of her persistence and allowed her tag along. A gnarly storm had kicked up and the icy water had swept her off her feet, sending her plummeting into the sea. She didn't remember much of the incident, mostly just her recovery in their hut. But, she did remember her nose filling with salt water, choking her, stinging her eyes. And it was cold, so very, very cold. She had been scared of deep water ever since. The tub had filled by the time her reminiscing ended. She turned the tap off and stepped in, only to yelp and yank her foot back out. She had burned her foot! She muttered all kinds of nasty things about the Fire Nation as she nursed her aching toes.

Not only did she burn her foot, but then at breakfast she spilled her tea all over her lap. Then she tripped over tripped over a large, fancy area rug and snagged her fingernail on a cushion on the couch she caught herself on. Her day was getting worse and worse. Not only did she miss her home so much that it ached, but she was being downright clumsy. She was fighting back tears of aggravation and utter sadness when she bumped her head on her window. Her only lifeline to the outside world and it had hurt her. It was silly, but it felt like she had been betrayed. Her heart just went ahead and plummeted in her stomach and the first of many tears fell. She backed away from the window and locked herself in her room, curling up on the on the bed and crying. She missed her family so much. She could physically feel the heaviness in her chest when she thought of them. She missed her dad's warm laugh and her mom's quick wit. She was not sure when she started sobbing heart-wrenching cries, but she knew that they were all from just thinking of her parents; she had not even begun to touch the memories of her friends and the icy land she called home.

She thought of the rowdy bunch of boy she called her best friends. When she had returned home from her Pamyuan they had greeted her- after the general shock of seeing a Red Deer hide and antlers slung over her back- with louds shouts and yips like a wolf pack, a common greeting among the water tribes. She smiled sadly to herself. Her pack of rowdy boys had given her claps on the back so hard that it sent her stumbling. But she couldn't have loved the rough-housing boys more. Very quickly it turned into a competition to see who could smack her the farthest into the snow and she had retaliated triggering an all out brawl. They were a tangled mess of limbs, kicking and punching. In all the hubbub Mingan had received a particularly hard kick in the ribs leaving her with a boot-shaped bruise; but that was an occupational hazard when a petite woman pal'd around with a bunch of immature young men. She remembered the feast held in her honor in the big ceremony public hut. She could almost see her tribe sitting around the large fire, eating, singing and dancing. They danced the ancient motions of Loota-Kohanis, Chuchip and the moon and ocean spirits. She could almost hear the crackling of the fire, the laughter, the music. And it broke her heart. And then there had been Sokka, the Chief's son. She thought he was handsome and very funny. She had always kind of had a crush on him and when he asked her to dance she had accepted readily. They spent quite a bit of time together at the feast and when it was over he walked her home. It had been cold outside, their breath freezing in the air and it was awkward. He told her he had a good time and said his goodbyes, but they hadn't parted ways. The stood a foot from eachother, shuffling their feet in the snow and looking anywhere but at eachother. Suddenly he had leaned in and given her a kiss on the cheek and scurried off. As she lay there, crying on a Fire Nation mattress, she could still feel how her cheeks had warmed and how her heart had pounded. And it hurt. It hurt.

She slept through lunch and when dinner came around she wasn't hungry. She left her tray, food untouched by the one from lunch, in the same state as dinner. Mingan sat now on the floor of Zuko's study with a book in her hand and a stack on either side of her. When she had woken from her nap she left the relative privacy behind the changing screens set around her bed -to create a make shift room- and found herself to be very, very sad. In a last-ditch attempt to distract herself form her melancholy feelings she had snagged a book off the bookshelves that all but lined Zuko's study. In fact, the shelves in themselves were something to be oogled at. They started from the floor and went all the way to the high ceiling. The covered two of the four walls of the room and every single space was filled with books. Mingan didn't care for books being as she couldn't read nor had she ever seen one before. But desperation can do strange things to a person. She flipped through the pages and found it filled with the strange markings she didn't understand. But, in the back of the book, there was a beautiful picture. Mingan had never seen such a thing, something with such detail and beautiful colors. It looked as if it were real! She had to see more.

So, now she sat in a fortress of books, flipping through them eagerly, searching for more pictures. She found quite a few. She had even come across a book that was nothing but pictures a few columns of the markings. She ignored those.

"Mingan?" She heard Zuko call from the sitting room. Normally she would still be sitting on one of the cushions out there, or more often gazing out the window. She was angry with him for obvious reason. And she even blamed him for the hazardous day she had so she was really not concerned with answering his calls. "What are you doing?" He asked a few seconds later, his voice now filling up the silent space of the room. He really wasn't sure why she was looking through books if she couldn't read.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" She asked sarcastically, not bothering to look up at him. Actually, it kind of annoyed him. He was used to everyone always paying rapt attention to him when he spoke.

"Well you sure aren't reading," he quipped. The girl sitting cross-legged on the floor didn't even acknowledge him. He breathed out sharply and then walked around behind her to see what she was "reading". He was about to open his mouth, make some kind of smart remark when he saw what she was looking at. He stood there like an idiot, his mouth still open and blinking curiously. It was a children's book. He didn't recognize it but stared regardless. He looked at the stack surrounding her and saw that the titles were all children's stories. He walked around her, running his eyes over the stray books strewn in front of her. The majority of them were picture books, but there were a few history and geography books. He sat down across from her and snapped his fingers, flame coming to the lamps around the room and the big candle chandelier above them.

"Thanks," she muttered, not looking up from the book in her lap. It was opened to a page with a picture of children in a courtyard, playing some sort of game. He looked at her face, tilting his a bit to the side to see under her bangs and around the strands of hair that fell from her ponytail. She was resting her head on her hand, a corner of her mouth hidden under her palm, her mouth was in a tight line, her tongue peeking out to touch a strand of dead skin on her lips. Her brows were furrowed and the space between them scrunched and her eyes staring at the book below her. He thought it was actually... really endearing.

"What are you looking for, exactly?" He asked quietly.

"Pictures," she replied, still staring at the page.

Well that explains the children's books, Zuko thought to himself. He yawned and rubbed his face with his hand. It had been a long day and he was tired. He started to leave but paused in the doorway. "Your tutors will be here tomorrow morning, don't give them any trouble. Please."

"Uh huh," she said, probably not even really hearing what he said. Zuko rolled his eyes and left.

Mingan was not enjoying this. She had been dragged from bed by a maid, squeezed into a corset and a tight dress with a neckline that she thought scandalous. Now she sat across from a group of middle-aged men with graying hair. There were four of them, she cared not to remember their names. They stared down their noses at her like some lesser being worthy of nothing more than to be under their feet and treated her as though she had a disease. "What do you know of arithmetic?" One of them drawled.

"Arithma- what?" She asked.

The man rolled his eyes. "Math." Well, she deduced he much be the one in charge of math.

"I know how to count and add and subtract, divide if that's what you mean."

"What is 350 divided by five?" Math asked.

"Um..." she mumbled.

"Perhaps something easier," another man suggested.

"93 add 67."

"It's uh, I um know this its-" she fumbled, her cheeks turning pink.

"Its worse than I thought." Math sighed. "This is going to be harder than I thought, I didn't expect to be teaching a dumb savage girl," he muttered.

"I am in charge of geography and sciences," another man said, she couldn't recall his name. "Where is the earth kingdom on this map?" He asked, unfurling a scroll on the table between them.

Its a trick question. They want to trip me up, make me look like an idiot. It should be the hardest to find... the smallest. "That one," she said pointing to a small orange area on the left of the map. They were all silent and exchanged looks with each other. She must have surprised them. She almost smiled, knowing she had answered correctly. She felt a little bit of pride at her cunning.

"No. That is not the Earth Kingdom." Her heart sunk into her stomach. She had just made an utter fool of herself. Her chest clinched and she felt nervous, that sickening feeling of being utterly wrong. "That is the Western Air Temple of the Air Nomads." Her cheeks flamed red and she opened and closed her mouth like a gasping fish. Suddenly on of the men burst out in laughter.

"The Earth Kingdom! Naïve girl! Even a stupid street child would know that was not the Earth Kingdom!" He had to take a deep breath so he could laugh some more. "Dumb girl, what next!? Do you know where the South Pole is?" He mocked. Mingan looked at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. She felt like a fool and utter, stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why hadn't she just kept her mouth shut instead of answering like she had traveled there, lived there! She was so angry with herself and other three tutors, chuckling and holding back laughter only made her feel worse.

The man in the middle slid a book towards her, still grinning from the jokes about her. "Read this." It was not an outrageous request, only a few figures and there was a picture next to them. But, she didn't know what the markings meant. She tried, tried so hard to figure out what they said. She stared for a long time at the four figures on the left side of the page. "Come now, it's a children's book, surely you can read that." But she couldn't. She didn't understand the markings, she had never, ever been shown writing let alone taught how to read it. Tears welled in her eyes as she tried to read, tried not to make an idiot of herself for a third time. But she couldn't do it. And it made her feel dumb. It was a child's book, something a kid could read and she couldn't.

"I- I don't know... h-how." The laughing man burst out in laughter, finding this twice as hilarious as the fact that she didn't know where the Earth Kingdom was. And as soon as he started, Math and Science joined him.

"Illiterate! I never dreamed such a thing! The Prince brought back a stupid, stupid girl! A feral, illiterate child!" He roared. Mingan felt utterly ashamed. She had never been openly laughed at before, and now within all of five minutes, it had happened twice. She hung her head as a tear slipped down her cheek and she quickly swiped it away, hoping for all she was worth that the men hadn't seen it.

Math spoke up after a long agonizing minute. "Gentlemen, we ought to take a day to adjust our lessons."

"I agree, I will have to find my lesson plans for when Prince Zuko was hardly more than a baby," the laughing man joked.

After they left, a few tears fell from her eyes but she forced the rest back. She wouldn't cry over a bunch of crazy old codgers!