Disclaimer: I hold no rights to any of the worlds depicted within, only the content of my own dreams.
Arranged marriages haven't been explored as of yet, but it begs the question; how prized would an Avatar be as a wife?
The girl trembled in the room, but didn't dare let her features let a single tear fall. She couldn't afford a single sob from her lungs, nor a single frown.
From birth she had been told that she was an Avatar; a creature of great peace and justice, and what better justice than peace between the two biggest Earth Nation families? In another life, she supposed that she had felt the soil beneath her feet, fire at her fingertips, air along her back and water across her face.
But not in this life.
Her black, glazed hair in a high bun, her face dusted with rice powder, eyebrows coaxed into very pointed, eye-catching dots and her tiny lips had been stained with rouge into a flower-shape. The robe she wore; the colors of azure, ochre and carmine in perfect harmony. Her décolletages and their shawls are as thin as a cicada's wings, which let her skin show faintly.
She was primed into a Queen, as she would be in only a few minutes. She took a breathe to still herself, and inhaled the smell of spices- rose and osmanthus flowers.
She had been made into a truly beautiful creature; but then again, she had been trained since birth to fill this role. Her tutors ad drummed it into her, from the second she was born that she must be the most beautiful- "be beautiful without and intelligent within."
It had been drummed into her that King Zhi Neng would also prize her mind; her talent for music, dance and singing. Her expertise in calligraphy and painting.
Hadn't that been why she had been named Bao Bei? To be an ultimate treasure. Except once she had been naive to think that SHE was the treasure- her personality and presence, not just a treasure for her worth to others.
But now; at the age of 13, with a wedding in another room and an elderly soon-to-be husband, she understood the true meaning of her worth.
But she wouldn't leave, or couldn't leave. How can you escape when you have no idea where you're going? How can you escape when it would mean a glorious war of thousands? But mostly because she had been trained since birth to suppress what she wanted, and taught that her own feelings were selfish. Even though this was to be a forced marriage, she still couldn't escape her duty as an Avatar of peace.
An Avatar as a wife must be the ultimate prize.
MEANING:
Bao bei: 1. Highly valued object; or person who is much loved or valued; treasure;
2. Kind of gambling tool in ancient time;
3. Cowries, as money in the ancient times;
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