Zutara Week 2012
Day 7
Prompt: Seasons
A/N: I'm sorry it took so long to post this chapter! I posted it on my tumblr and thought I did so here, too, but only just discovered my mistake.
I've also realized that I never announced the url change to my tumblr: what used to be insidemissfaber is now zutarasbedsheets. Follow me on .com for updates, sneak peaks, and such :3
This drabble is written from Katara's point of view. Enjoy the final installment of Zutara Week 2012!
Season: [see-zuhn] n. one of the four periods of the year (spring, summer, autumn, and winter), beginning astronomically at an equinox or solstice, but geographically at different dates in different climates. a period of the year characterized by particular conditions of weather, temperature, etc. a period of the year when something is best or available. a period of the year marked by certain conditions, activities, etc. a period of the year immediately before and after a special holiday or occasion.
Spring wasn't very kind to me.
We tried to bury our skeletons, then; opened hatchets that we weren't sure we could close. Still, we did it together; and that was everything.
But I digress.
I liked to think of it - what we did in autumn- as a cleansing; absolving me of all my empty hopes through streams of seawater. After all, isn't that what water is: purity, clarity, chances? I'm a waterbender; I should know.
We tried to recreate ourselves, and that, perhaps, was our mistake. Some things are meant to stay the way they are, blessed with immortality; elements, portraits, scars. As the salt scraped at my face, I heard a small sound; like a toothy exhale, the final wisps of a tsungi horn. I touched my cheeks, and was taken aback at the purples and blues on my fingertips.
We couldn't purify ourselves, but we could fix each other; so you wiped away the bruises left from your lips, oh-so-ten-der-ly. My lips trace the glossy ridges of your scar, and we exchange a look; like I've never looked this beautiful in your eyes. And I'm torn, tossed between the shores of reality and you, between expectations and desires, like something's pushing me to and fro, along tumbling, delicious waves, and flinging me onto the jagged-
No, spring wasn't very kind to me.
Summers, with us, are candles and seawater and fireflies. Do you remember the basin we made in the violet hours of a summer night- filled to the brim with thoughts, desires, and helpless dreams? The moon smiled upon it, upon us, as we fashioned it out of our elements and out of stray leaves. We murmured the hidden parts of our souls into it; whispered haikus, our lips tainted with the poison of grapes.
After storytellers, we'd become swimmers, dancers, spirits freed. The contents of the basin undulate, and I'd stare into your eyes; molten pools of amber. And together, we'd cup our trembling hands and lower them into our deadly concoction and take a small sip.
Oh, summer brought us close; but autumn severed that.
I was weak. I held a feather between my fingertips, torn from your messenger hawk- It won't be long, but Agni, I'll miss you- twirling it, marvelling at the delicate, hollow shaft, the downy little fibers, each an individual shade... and thought of you.
It's difficult- no, impossible- to refine raw feelings into loops and dots and lines. Perhaps if I let the feather into the wind... that could work. Maybe some projection of fate would take hold of it, send it over, with an airy kiss. Maybe you'd find it, and shiver in a spell of nostalgia.
No.
I was weak, and that irritated me more than anything else; more than your absence, even. I was a master, a hero- yet here I was, snivelling over some golden eyed boy.
You can't taste the ink like you can my lips.
Winter is a gentle season to speak of, ironically enough. Harsh winds and the bite of ice weren't new to me, and as your heated palms drew patterns over my skin I was never more grateful that you were a firebender.
I remember a walk we took, once, during an especially chilly winter spent in Ba Sing Se; you wouldn't remember it, it was hardly significant. The ground was frosty and the air was brisk, the mysteries of the world hidden in the folds of the next street corner. Some snow had seeped into my shoes and it was irritating, but the world was white and quiet and a melody was playing in my mind and my breath was hot and you absentmindedly threw me a smile that felt especially warm, like a secret.
For a sheer moment, I felt closer to you than I ever was; like I had crept under your skin and settled there.
I wanted it to last forever, that feeling, but it didn't. It didn't even last a solid minute. The moment ended as quickly as it had begun. For a while, I felt choked with despair; but that ended too, and I kept walking, and the melody continued as though it had never stopped.
After all, everything that's new is only new for a second.