Hiding My Masked Affection

spockjasperzukowriting

Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender.

5

Memories plagued my distant dreams. The images and worlds around me shifted through moments of sheer horror, to aching and hopeless scenes of loss.

At first, I was having a snowball fight with my brother back home, giggling as innocently as young children could. Black, mutilated snow began to drift around us, and fumes from the encroaching Fire Navy ships stung the air with an acid-like smell that hurt my throat.

We halted our game, and looked up in shock at the blackening sky, screams erupting around us as men burned, women were struck, and children were abandoned.

And all we could do was stand.

The memory dissolved into the staining black colour of the night, and then my body went numb as I lay on a cobblestone street, staring up at a tall, shrouded man silhouetted by a half-moon, and donning a Blue Spirit mask.

I was suddenly flipped onto my stomach, slowly sinking face first into the salty, gelid waters of the South Pole, the fuzzy shadows of underwater predators slinking around me in the corners of my vision. My dress floated around me, flashing to me that it was too blue for the sea-green, dark purple transparent white world around me.

Suddenly, there was a big, glowing ball of ice below me, slicing through the all ready filtered light in the tranquil water. My eyes widened as I picked out the form of a sleeping, curled Appa with Aang in a meditative position below him.

I quickly snapped my head to the right as I saw an armoured young man from the Fire Nation swim with ease towards the rounded ball of ice, jagged scare pulled along his cheekbone and temple, angry expression murderous.

He took a moment to right himself before shooting lines of red flame at the ice, melting it open and releasing an unconscious Aang and Appa.

He turned back to me, his golden eyes flashing like fire as he took Aang by the arm, fastening his fingers in unbreakable shackles around Aang's skin. "The Avatar is mine!" he snarled, tightening his grip on Aang's arm, voice undisturbed through the water.

Devastation gripped me and I floated, frozen in the cold, while he moved to swim to the surface, pausing only to meet my gaze. He hesitated, golden eyes suddenly bold as he turned and pushed upwards.

I curled up into a ball and waited, staring up at the surface from the dreary, glum ocean floor. I took life as it came at me along the swift current, and waited for a restoration of life, for a sign to stop me from sinking.

Eternity passed, yet there was nothing.

More dreams came, clear compared to the foggier memories.

I was once standing in the frothy snow at home, leaning affectionately into Sokka's warm hug as he squeezed my shoulder. I gazed at the flickering lantern he had dangling from his free, outstretched had, and he watched with sad eyes as all the men in the tribe were whisked away in giant ships, out the save the world with their meagre numbers.

I shut my eyes, gently letting the memory and sensations I had felt years ago fade and morph into new images, new ideas. I felt my body rock gently in the calming rhythm of waves below a ship, and I was back on the Earth Kingdom cargo carrier being lead to my new life, my new fate, and a rescue made by a mysterious Blue Spirit.

I was suddenly propelled into the future. I was sitting on a garden bench in a royal Fire Nation palace, aged eight years, and holding out my arms towards a child with black hair and blue eyes running towards me, his pale skin glimmering in the light and his smile brighter than the sun. He was beautiful in all standards, and his eye-colour plumes and tumbled like a rolling, fiery ocean. His step, though he was two years old, was graceful and lithe, and the grass hardly bent beneath his weight as he sprang up into my arms, crying, "Mommy!" in delight.

Then the outline of a Fire Lily started burning in the garden image, crinkling it like paper, and my son flew out of my arms and into the simmering hole that the imprint had carved into the back-drop, like burnt paper darkening what was once radiant, streaming colours. The embers flew about in a taunting, frightening dance, and my son disappeared into the black. His scared shouts and cries faded as I sat there, shocked at what had been given to me and taken from me in the same moment.

But the dream around me faded, and new, tense, coarse feelings of pain replaced my stinging emotional agony, and my eyes truly opened to a world of bright colours, screaming noises, and air scented with Fire Nation spices.