A beautifully described window into the past, told by the point of view (kinda) of Ursa when she takes Nika to the palace of the Fire Sages. It's really kind of depressing that they do this to a small child; it also (ooh... I used a SEMICOLON) illustrates why Ursa loves Nika so much. It's purely materialistic, really... ENJOY!!!!!
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"Yeah, I mean, your brother may have not been a part of our group for very long, but we were still with him every step of the way. We knew his story, and helped him realize who he was, helped him to become the person that he is now. Now, he's as much a part of our family as anyone, and you can be, too." Toph added. Nika looked at us and sighed.
"It happened when I was five years old…" she began.
Chapter 8: The Silence
"Bye bye Zuko."
The young girl waved sadly as she stepped onto the carriage.
"Come home soon." the boy replied, melancholy evident in his voice. She nodded, and watched as her mother said some final words to her father. He only nodded, a seemingly solemn mood curving his face, but deep inside, both children knew his true feelings.
"MOOOOMM!!!" their sister whined. "Nika didn't say goodbye to me!" Their harried mother turned towards her second child and smiled warmly.
"I'm sure that she didn't do that intentionally. Don't forget, Azula, you didn't say goodbye to her either."
Azula crossed her arms.
"I'm not the one leaving without a trace." she mumbled. The girl got off of the carriage once more and walked over to her sister. She wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close.
"Bye bye Zula." she whispered, and let go. The annoyed child had a surprised look on her face. No one had ever… done that to her before. It felt… strange, and… good, and… comforting! She stood at her father's side and watched her brother wave to the carriage as it began to roll down the path. Zuko stood there until the small vehicle was only a tiny speck in the distance, long after everyone had gone back inside.
"I remember how sad Zuko was when we left. I felt really bad, like it was my fault that he was so sad. It was, in a sense, but I was too young to be able to do anything about it. A pity, really. I might have saved him a few sleepless nights…"
~*~
"Mama, when are we going to be… uh… there?" the child asked, staring over the rim of the ship with great difficulty. Her mother walked over and lifted her up, placing her on her hip. She pointed to a tiny, dark sliver in the horizon.
"See that little line over there?" she asked. The girl nodded.
"That's where we're going." the mother said, setting her child back down.
"But mama, how are we going to stand on that tiny little thing?"
The woman smiled at her child's curiosity.
"It's a magic land." she replied, picking the girl back up. "It gets bigger and bigger as we get closer to it, and when we get there, it's going to be so big, that we can walk around on it!" The girl's eyes widened in astonishment.
"Really?" she gasped. Her mother nodded.
"And there's going to be a big castle and lots of very important people. In fact, you're going to meet one very important person. Look! It has gotten bigger already!"
"I see it! I see it! It's gotten so much bigger!" she shrieked happily. Her mother laughed and set her daughter back down. The girl began to jump up and down in an attempt to look over the rim again.
"It's… getting… bigger… every… time… I… jump…" she said, and jumped higher, almost falling over. Her mother caught her just in time. She shook her head slowly. Only her daughter could manage to fall over the edge of a military ship. Thank goodness she didn't.
"That was the funniest thing that happened to me the entire trip. Besides that, the trip was pretty much uneventful. It was the last time me and mom had real fun together, real alone time. Of course, I was sad that Zuko wasn't there, but a girl has to settle for what she can, right? And there was no turning back now..."
~*~
"This place is coooool!" the girl said as soon as they stepped off of the ship. Her mother had made her change into a dress before they arrived at the small, crescent shaped island. They walked up to the path to a large temple.
"Mama, is this the castle?" the child whispered in wonder. The woman stared straight ahead, the memories of the last visit to her grandfather clouding her thoughts. It was a dark day, just like now. She was beginning to regret coming here, but her husband had insisted on escorting their child to the Temple of Fire.
"It's so big." the young girl continued. "You could probably fit the entire Fire Nation in there!"
The mother looked at her daughter and sighed. Whatever it was that infatuated her daughter so was a mystery to her. Everything about this place was dark and looming, not exactly a very child-friendly building. Even though it was hard for her to admit it, Ursa couldn't help but to wonder why her grandfather had chosen this particular, crescent – shaped island for his final rest.
It was desolate.
Aside from the narrow, dirty paths that led up to the ominous gate at the entrance, there were no roads, except, perhaps, for the small rivers of lava that flowed down the side of the volcano to eventually harden in the cold ocean.
Ursa remembered a legend that her father used to tell her.
The God of Fire once fell passionately in love with the Goddess of the Water. He would stroke her white hair and tell her how much he loved her. She believed him. Then, the great day came when the God asked the Goddess to marry him. When she accepted, he was so happy that he burst out of the Earth with spectacular displays of fire and heat (and much destruction). The very next day, the wedding took place. But when the Goddess wouldn't comply with changing her wedding dress from blue to red, the God grew so angry that he chased her with fiery rivers back into the sea, where her heart grew so cold that she turned to stone. To this day, whenever her children come to visit their father, they share the same cruel fate.
It was strange how most of the Fire Nation legends were so gruesome and sad. There was only one happy one, and to this day, Ursa wasn't fully convinced that it hadn't been altered to convince teenaged girls to procreate for the sake of procreating. Once again, she looked upon her daughter, and wished to any spirit that would still listen that her child wouldn't have to suffer the same fate that she had suffered.
" I had always wondered why mother was so afraid to let me wander the dark and damp corridors without her. It was like she was afraid of losing me the same way she had lost herself once."
"You're being unusually insightful today." Sokka commented. Nika shrugged.
"Maybe it's the story."
~*~
Sadness and sorrow… perhaps loneliness?
Running through the corridors, lost.
Suddenly, a voice. Calm, reassuring. He knew the way. She took his hand and trusted him with her life.
They found the way. They found love. He was royalty. She was not.
They married. She felt something that she had never felt before. Painful, yet somehow pleasurable.
Nine months later. A boy.
Soon after, that same painful pleasure. She was a girl.
It was a girl.
No more pain. Just pleasure and happiness, something she had missed for a year now. Was it two?
Another girl. She was beautiful. No golden eyes. Brown.
Accusations. Crying. Begging. Forgiveness.
Raising three children. And now she was here.
With one.
Those godforsaken corridors. She liked to call them the corridors of doom. Yet, that feeling of being in a familiar place, one that wouldn't scoop her up and then drop her into a place that she didn't want to be in filled her with pleasure.
A painful pleasure. It wasn't the same pain as before, though. It was a longing kind of pain. A longing for the same blissful, ignorant innocence that she was born with, the innocence that was taken away from her by force when she was just a young child. A young, married child. At nineteen.
She stared at the looming gate before her and swallowed deeply, as if she was facing the apocalypse, and she wondered whether or not she should go through with it. She did.
There was a force that drove her on. It was her duty as a manifestation to her grandfather that made her walk down the damp halls to the closed door. It was her duty as a daughter to her father that kept her from grasping her child and running when the strange, robed men opened it. It was her duty as a wife and lover to her husband that made her place half her love into the center to be burned. It was her duty as a mother to her son that forced transparent words out of her mouth to ease the fear in her heart. And it was the duty to herself that helped her to walk out again. Alone.
"I thought the world had ended when mother left me by myself in that horrible place. My young mind wasn't developed enough yet to understand the concept of leaving because you want to stay forever but can't."
"Do you understand it now?" Aang asked. A tear slid down the young woman's face as she turned to her brother.
"Of course I understand it, or else I would still be at home, with you, where I don't belong!" she sobbed. He pulled her into his arms, and the siblings cried together. And though only one was crying with her tears, all of the children were crying with their hearts.
-sniff- please... review -sniff- BUA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
