The Tales of Henwa Island
The Wedding of Chief Hakoda and Lady Ursa
'I could plan for every possible contingency and at the instant I finished my task; a new contingency totally unanticipated would arise. I have no colorful theories to explain it but the Universe works that way.' Azula Kai
"Three days of boredom for a five minute palanquin ride?" Karo sat across from Azula on the heaving seat of a palanquin. 'The others got picked up by cabs but you insisted on having four sweaty teamsters heave you up to the Fire Nation palace on the back of their shoulders. Do you know what happens to people who screw with teamsters? God I hope they get paid."
"I wanted to return to the palace in the traditional manner befitting a royal princess." Azula smirked. "I wanted to see if we still had the palanquin and the people to bear it."
"Koh the Face Stealer has nothing compared to union bosses when it comes to evil. I'll end up digging my own grave and then having it filled with concrete." Karo muttered. "These four look very unhappy."
"How do you know they're teamsters?" Azula sat cross legged on a large red cushion.
Karo sat cross legged on his cushion as the palanquin rocked back and forth as the bearers climbed up the mountain on the old road that lead to the old guard tower. Karo knew Zuko had a fine new motorway built to the palace but judging from the grunting of the men carrying him; they weren't using it.
"How many members of the Dentists' Association would carry us on their backs in a box?" Karo stated the obvious.
Azula knew the traditional trappings of royal privilege would make the democracy loving Karo uneasy – which was half the fun. The other half came from her knowledge that at union scale; Zuko would wind up paying these four men more for a single trip to the palace than most people spent on a car. She also knew the teamsters might have more than a few complaints with their union boss and that would make even more trouble for Zuko.
Karo coughed loudly and then sneezed. "How long has it been since this thing was last cleaned?"
"I rode it to leave with my father on his trip to destroy the Earth Kingdom."
Karo patted the red fabric of the cushion next to him. A cloud of rancid dust came up. "I smell rat feces."
"Quite the labor saving contraption. I've never rode on a human powered vehicle with finials." Karo directed his comments at the gold leaf covered wooden caps over the four corners of the palanquin and the thing at the top he took for an unnecessary weather vane. "So you used to ride around the capitol in a box that looks like a mock up colonial style garden shed? That dude hosting the home improvement show must be proud."
"My dad rode around on the capitol this way." Azula explained. "I had to traipse all over the globe with Ty Lee and Mai doing work for my dad while he planned more military failures and met with concubines. I think this particular palanquin belonged to my mother before I had it."
The palanquin stopped swaying and both Karo and Azula heard it drop to the ground with a thump.
Azula poked her head out and saw that they had only gone a third of the way up the hill. She could see the vast harbor of the capitol below them and the tangle of red roofed houses laying along the graceful hillsides near the palace mountain. The four bearers had taken a seat on the carved stone railing and had opened metal lunch boxes.
"What are you doing?" Azula asked in a strained voice.
"Lunch break!" A husky man with permanent five o'clock shadow who looked like he had trained to lift elephants held up a thermos. "We get two coffee breaks and one hour of lunch according to union rules."
"Quite the labor saving contraption – this palanquin." Karo commented from within the vehicle. "Makes me wonder why we ever bothered to invent the internal combustion engine."
"I'll deal with you later."
"Half a click in four hours, twenty six minutes eleven seconds by my reckoning." Azula hissed as she stepped off the palanquin. "Some glaciers put us to shame."
"That trip cost me quite a bit, but it annoyed you so I got good value for my money." Lady Mai spoke in greeting as she stood beside Zuko in the palace garden.
"If we hadn't brought that portable magnetic chess set; I might have grown quite angry with the trip." Azula had determined not to climb out of the palanquin and walk the last few hundred meters for she hoped the trip cost her tormentors a packet.
Karo stumbled out of the palanquin and looked blankly at the only two people in the palace yard: Zuko and Lady Mai. As if setting the stage for some kind of oddly Asian stereotype, cherry blossoms wafted in the wind and Karo prepared to bow. Zuko and Mai wore the long, luxurious robes of the Fire Lord and Lady fully gilded with gold and wore the gold and red hair decorations which made them look like fancy porcelain chess pieces. A sharp blow to his side caught Karo's attention as he wondered why cherry blossoms looked so gentle and beautiful while olive trees looked like cranky old men and had flowers not worth looking at.
"Bow," Azula growled at a low range only she could reach, "and I kill you."
"Ow!" Karo held his back. "I sat in lotus position for four hours. I can't do anything but bow!"
Azula had the entire afternoon to think of various cajolories and threats. Karo badly wanted to dispense with the Fire Nation ritual greeting and find a comfortable bathroom.
Zuko knew he had not kept a close enough eye on his wife and she had fired the first round in what he feared would become a flare up in the cold war between his sister and his wife. He found out about what Mai had done only after the palanquin had left and the teamsters had their promise of double overtime if they hauled Azula and Karo up the hill as slowly and agonizingly as possible. He had discovered even he couldn't defeat incompetence and those people he trusted to tell him important details often failed to include the smaller details needed to fill in gaps in his understanding. He concluded that incompetence merely moved around but never actually went away like the line of dust the dustpan always left behind.
He hoped to God Azula was angry but predictable. He looked into Azula's eyes as they shot daggers at Mai and realized that wasn't likely.
"Of course I found out about this only when it was too late..." Fire Lord Zuko said apologetically. "I had your baggage sent to our finest guest room."
Lady Mai had almost dared to hope to provoke Azula into a fight. Mai had the power of the title of the Fire Lady and Azula had no position of consequence. The princess had become a citizen of a democracy.
Fire Lord Zuko had reason to worry. The Dominion had banned the Agni Kai, had no concept of honor but had the money and the technology and would take every opportunity to put their thumbs down on the Fire Nation. Zuko didn't want an international indecent.
Zuko turned his face to Mai's ear and slowly whispered. "You should apologize to Karo and Azula for the trouble. When I say apologize, I mean offer to pay both him and Azula the same money to compensate for their troubles."
"What will that accomplish?" Mai whispered back.
Zuko cleared his throat. "We have greatly inconvenienced you two and we apologize. We made a mistake and so will also pay both of you the same money we paid the men plus fifty percent."
Mai looked at her husband in stunned silence.
Zuko understood Karo and the Dominion as well as any foreigner. Money settled matters and he hoped Azula had lived in the Dominion long enough to have acquired their oddly financial world view.
"The bearers were teamsters and palanquin bearing wasn't part of their job duties." Azula argued. "Union regulations typically pay twice the overtime rate for such duties and that would be at the wages in the Fire Nation. Your workers earn a fifth as much as ours so I will accept your deal if and only if you pay out based on the wage of our teamsters in our currency."
This was his way of delicately explaining their money was worth nothing.
"I'm actually proud of you in the only way I can be proud of you and somewhat shamed." Karo sat at the large red couch in the living quarters of the guest quarters and counted his money out onto the ornate wooden coffee table. He didn't mistrust Zuko but a good economist and denizen of the Dominion never failed to check these things. "We can get a new radio with 'Magic Tune' and built in phonograph with our money."
"I don't have the Admiral 670 to yell at and kick over here in the palace so I have to torment my brother and Mai." Azula opened the curtains to the late afternoon light.
"I feel pity for both of them." Karo started counting his money again. "I have heard about how you treat the programmers you have philosophical differences with. You told the team of programmers from Ba Sing Se to 'kindly do the world a favor and commit suicide'." Karo reminded Azula of an incident that led to several letters between the two institutions.
"We still have philosophical differences. I want a general purpose programming language that forces the programmer to program at a low level without aid from complex tools." Azula and a number of others in the fledgling industry didn't want 'help' and wished to keep tools simple, general and able to address a wide range of problems. Ba Sing Se wanted a full fledged language with a debugger and memory management and specialized modules to allow for programming complex mathematical simulations. They showed Azula their work and she told them what to do with it. "They want a funky abacus; I want a machine which serves everyone's needs. The computer will progress faster if more demand exists for it. Those idiots at Ba Sing Se bought one and no one outside the math department ever sees it - stupid backwards knuckle dragging apes!"
Karo nodded. "I find it hard to become passionate about programming language or mathematics but I find this a canonical example of how you hold onto grudges."
"Hatred serves to keep my mind limber."
"At least you kept yourself from shooting lightning at Mai."
"You sound relieved. I try to be kind but it isn't in me but I can win by other means. I didn't lose it with Mai because I found a way to win by diplomacy." Azula looked out into the palace yard and opened a window to let fresh air into the stuffy room. "Zuko will do anything to keep the peace between Mai and me and so I turned my anger into profit. A major spat or Agni Kai would cause him problems with the Dominion. I enjoyed the look on Mai's face when Zuko agreed to pay us on our terms"
"She must really please him in other ways."
"Ew..." Azula rolled up the blind and daylight poured in. "You do have the kit to test our food for poisons?"
Karo knew the Kit. Actually the kit was a good idea in a palace of poisoners where others prepared the food. It let Azula know if someone had decided to poison her with arsenic, thallium or plain good old fashioned mercury. She had had memorized the spectrum of each element.
Azula stood at the window facing the palace gardens with a wrench in her hands.
Karo knew no good would come of this. Azula had broken into a utility box.
Lady Mai and one of her hand maidens walked under the shade of a flowering cherry tree. Karo knew the Fire Nation had a special name for this activity but that wasn't important at the moment.
Azula had her hand on the dial of the timer of the palace garden sprinkler system which she had convinced to turn on at her command rather than at two in the morning as the staff had set it to do.
"Do I want to know?" Karo picked up the smashed brass padlock.
Click
Azula clapped her hands in joy as Mai screamed and her servant girl scattered.
"You do know they have the death penalty in this country?" Karo ducked instinctively. "Will my life end when I face a Fire Nation firing squad? Lady Mai doesn't have your sense of humor and she hates you."
Two large burly men rushed towards Karo and grabbed him by his collar.
"Come with us!" The burliest man said to Azula. "You are under arrest."
Azula kicked the brass lock away. "For what?"
"Being an utter pain in the ass." Zuko came out from behind the burly guards. "I knew you would try something like this so I had the guards stake out the obvious prank locations."
"You had the sprinklers set for less than optimal watering."
"Quiet...please." Zuko raised his hand. "You make my wife unhappy and when my wife is unhappy; I am unhappy. I have never had a happy wife but your presence in the palace has made her more unhappy than normal. In two days, we'll have the wedding of my mother to Chief Hakoda of the Water Tribe. I notice most of the social malfunctions and wedding misfires come out of your twisted sense of propriety so I have decided to keep as many eyes on you as possible."
"I had nothing to do with this." Karo hung from the burly arm of the guard. "I may have anticipated this more robustly but when was my stupidity a crime?"
"I have a new policy called containment." Zuko silenced Karo with a gentle wave of his hand. "Azula was alone in the plot to ruin my life, run up my phone bill and enrage my wife but you should keep your woman on a shorter leash."
"He only has one testicle." Azula said in his defense.
Karo shut up. He didn't think he had anything to say that would help his case.
"Bring them along." Zuko ordered his guards.
"Ow! How will crushing my chest advance your cause?" Karo complained as the guard lifted him off the ground.
The guard holding Karo propped him in front of a fairly angry looking Fire Lord Zuko while maintaining a death grip on him.
Karo felt a nervous twitch propagate from his eye over his entire face.
Zuko glared at Azula. "I awoke this morning and I told my wife 'I loved her'." He waved his hand in the air with a grand gesture. "She told me to get stuffed."
"What has this got to do with me?" Azula spoke in a condescending tone carefully designed to get under her brother's skin.
Karo looked pathetic. "This guard has begun to crush my spleen." Karo sounded in distress.
"Will crushing Karo help Mai's mood?" Azula put her hand against the steel pillar and twirled around it.
"Crushing Karo will keep you from doing anything foolish." Zuko reprimanded Azula. "I doubt your started mucking with the sprinkler system for the palace because you have your certification as a plumber! The sprinklers worked fine for years until you two arrived and then Mai found she couldn't get across the courtyard without getting drenched."
"As pranks go, that one counts as rather harmless." Azula protested. "I was one lose wire nut away from a gas boiler explosion but I restrained myself."
Zuko growled out loud. He didn't want to make a show of his frustration but the old resentments surfaced involuntarily. "Can you tell me why the phone company keeps sending me wake up calls at five in the morning? Only you and now Katara know how to get past the switchboard and Katara promised me she wouldn't abuse the privilege."
Azula had to admit that would prove annoying. The Fire Nation phone company had a service where for a fee, they would call a customer up and act as a kind of alarm clock. Azula decided this service so heinous that it needed abusing and she gave them Zuko's number and a nearly impossibly early time for the call.
Azula stifled a snicker. She had done this to make Mai more miserable. Annoying Zuko came as a courtesy bonus.
"I told them to stop." Zuko punched his fist into his hand. "I told them to stop because as the Fire Lord I had earned respect. They told me to submit a letter to terminate the service."
"The phone company respects no man woman or child. I speak from personal experience. When we conquered Ba Sing Se during the War; I had a phone installed and the phone company sent me a bill a magnitude of order more expensive than the agreed upon fee. I threatened beheading if they failed to rectify the problem. I told them as Princess Azula; I could send them all to prison."
"What happened?" Zuko almost seemed curious at this point.
"They told me to stop calling and disconnected the phone." Azula pointed her delicate finger to the sky. "I planned my unspeakable revenge and sent guards to their billing department but the roads in Ba Sing Se developed traffic jams because of 'phone company maintenance' vehicles, carts and ostrich horse driven utility carriages. They ran their lines on poles ten meters above street level but somehow needed to dig a trench by their offices."
Zuko ground his teeth and sighed under his breath. He nodded to the guard holding Karo and the guard let go; Karo dropped to the floor and ran off. Zuko had never quite understood what the nervous Karo saw in his sister. He figured Karo was either oblivious to her flaws or had the demeanor of a saint.
"Fine!" Zuko said unhappily and waved his hand. "You may go." Zuko knew better than to make himself the broadest target in a prank war. He could have spoken out about her misuse of the palace sprinklers but then that would simply stiffen Azula's resolve to win at all costs and that could be costly.
"I have caterers to speak with." Zuko waved his hand. Negotiations with caterers involved having the best foods of the Water Tribe and the Fire Nation available. Never mind the solid fact the two nations disagreed on what constituted edible cuisine. Zuko had never had to find dolphin sweetmeats before. The Water Tribe knobs expected to eat them on regal occasions.
Zuko stared at Azula as she strolled the throne room and sat in the throne of the Fire Lord.
"I can't leave you alone for even a moment without you trying to take the throne." He tugged at the red sleeve of his robe. "Where is your fiance?"
"He barfed on the palace grounds under that old peach tree. Your guard traumatized him." Azula sat on the throne. "What did I do?"
"Nothing...in the last thirty minutes that any of us know about. Get off the throne!"
Karo stumbled into the throne room and bumped into Zuko looking wobbly.
"Have you finished puking on the greenery?" Zuko brushed Karo's vest with his hands and helped steady him.
Karo stared over his glasses as his eyes adjusted to the dark. "I puked on a cherry tree. Azula called it a peach tree." Karo steadied himself. "What Azula didn't tell you was that Lady Mai – your dignified wife – hacked the sprinklers and nearly drowned me. I could hear her cackle as I danced around the north palace garden trying to keep dry. I swear she wanted to see me dance."
Zuko had expect many of these sorts of things to happen in the next few days. "If you don't want to be a target of opportunity; have a word with Azula and negotiate a truce."
"I fixed the phone in your quarters." Azula twirled the broken end of a telephone receiver on her finger. "She nearly soaked me by the way. She blames me for sending her to prison."
"You did send her to prison!" Zuko exclaimed.
"She had torn off those 'Do Not Remove' tags on mattresses. I had no choice."
Karo heard an argument in the distance.
"I hear mother arguing with someone." Azula announced as she held the wires of the broken telephone.
"I kept the receipt for the wedding gift."
A ficus met its end when it toppled over. Hakoda walked backwards with the dead plant tangled in his feet.
"I can't move to the Southern Water Tribe." Lady Ursa announced.
"You have a ficus around your feet..." Karo pointed down as Hakoda turned around. Karo saw the potted ficus all over the palace and had tripped up on several of them but in spite of his bad nerves; had not managed to puke in one.
The acoustics in the palace throne room were very good. Azula could hear Hakoda's shock and her mother's indignation despite the fact the size of the throne room would put hockey arenas to shame. From the throne, Azula could hear the finest detail.
"I have no joy in life." Zuko waved his hand. "Azula – please get off the throne. Can anyone explain to my what this fight is about?"
Azula sat on the throne and put her foot up on the gold rail. "Water Tribe men have certain ideas of what good wives should do. One of the things they want in a wife is obedience."
"Azula...please don't try to help." Zuko rubbed his head. "Take Karo and find a servant to let you in your quarters and have all the Mr. Fuzi you want."
"I'll take it under advisement." Azula smiled slyly. "I can't imagine why my mother wouldn't want to move to the Southern Water Tribe Homeland. A land where temperatures can plummet to 'cold enough to make dry ice' in the open."
"I can visit you but I must stay by my son and be a leader for my people." Lady Ursa pleaded. "I am Lady Ursa."
"Have you two considered our little island nation as a fitting compromise. A half hour north east of our hometown is a nice town called Torquay. You can retire in a nice house with green gables and live your days enjoying the best retirement amenities like lawn bowling and the marina." Azula explained. 'You will have to learn our language but contrary to rumors, it isn't that difficult."
Hakoda looked at Karo. "Suihan is easy to learn?" This was news to him. "I will admit Karo speaks a beautiful language for music but my five decade old brain is far to old to memorize those long noun conjugations."
"Declensions...noun declensions...verbs conjugate and nouns decline." Azula corrected Hakoda politely. "I'm not saying you have to chirp like a native but after a while you'll catch on. Besides that, in time you'll come to admire the language for its vast repositories of swear words and obscene expressions."
"Can we keep our mind on task?" Zuko protested. "I had lessons and all I can remember is the word 'vino'." Zuko lacked a complete education as his banishment kicked in shortly after the teacher delivered the bad news about Suihan verbs; namely that they had hundreds of fiddly endings. Zuko had one of those teachers who waited until the day after the last day to withdraw from a class to drop that bombshell on his Chinese speaking students who didn't expect verbs to turn tricks. Zuko quietly envied Karo and Azula's ability to unpack the fifteen trivial endings on a Suihan verb and somehow make it mean anything at all.
"Where do you want me to go?" Karo asked nervously. "You gave me a command to leave. You forgot the second person pronoun 'tui'. Maybe I do speak a fussy language." Karo paced in a circle.
Zuko faced both Lady Ursa and Hakoda and tried to come up with a razor fine piece of reasoning to settle the argument. He had pondered the 'Southern Water Tribe' culture is a rich and vibrant one. Azula would scoff at the very thought. As for comfort, the most Water Tribes could offer was a painless death from hypothermia. He considered the 'for the love of each other' but Azula would put that down quickly.
Azula knew most of the anthropological claims made about the Water Tribe made a good argument for not living with them. Arranged marriages and old fashioned gender roles combined with the utter lack of public services and an institutionalized belief electricity and gas were magic made for less convincing arguments for adopting that way of life.
"As a man in the prime of my life; I see no reason to settle down in a tropical resort and retire." Hakoda directed his reply to Lady Ursa who now seriously pondered the idea and Karo who had decided to play the role of the Torquay Chamber of Commerce. "As a Water Tribe gentleman, I can't stop sailing the seas and take up gardening in a backyard plot."
"You don't have to." Azula now had relaxed a good deal more on the throne and lay back with her feet dangling over one of the gold rails. "You could have a pond stocked with fish. One stick of dynamite and – kablammo! You have all the fish you want for the next month."
Zuko held his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. "My doctor tells me I have anxiety issues and told me to take up gardening. Azula! Do I have to have you removed from my throne?"
"Zuzu!" Azula plopped her feet loudly on the floor. "I look so cool on this throne."
"Lady Ursa could buy one of those tourist hotels they have in Torquay to cater to tourists and you and your Water Tribe crew could fish and have a place to call home in the off season." Karo snapped his fingers. He had done work for an estates agent in Torquay who had a nice hotel with Victorian style gables and a full professional kitchen in his listings. He had no idea why he recalled this except for seven digit price tag.
Azula lay back on the huge four poster bed and wondered how many trees had died to make the thing.
"Karo?" Azula complained. "Quit drinking soda and belching verb conjugations! I may have to damage you if you keep this up."
Karo had discovered Chinese exchange students used belching to memorize Suihan conjugations and prided himself that he could make it much further into the nest of conjugation twice as far before he ran out of gas.
Karo stopped at the past perfect third person. Chinese verbs had one form but his native language had countless forms. He wondered if Hakoda was right – if his native language was 'fussy'. Karo always thought it the paradigm of logic and common sense although learning to read proved a right royal pain in the ass. The written word seemed a trivial invention but one the Realm had never managed to get right.
Karo had started to turn blue from hypoxia as he walked around the room. He let out a gassy sounding gasp and picked up his 'Special Edition Ritalin Enhanced Cola' which had twice the sugar and still tasted bitter. His belch sounded a good deal like the past participle of the verb 'to become'.
Katara walked into the room with a Fire Nation servant following her with a yellow measuring tape in her hands. "As Lady Ursa's daughter, have you decided what you will say during the toasts? The wedding's tomorrow."
"Karo can belch out verb conjugations." Azula sat on the edge of the bed. "Feed him soda and an irregular verb in his native language and he'll get to the past participle and then start suffering from lack of air."
"Uh huh." Katara pulled up a padded desk chair and sat down. "I take that as a 'no'?"
"Quite a talent you have, Karo." Azula told Karo. "Hard to believe your belching has gone unnoticed for such a long time." She yawned. "I have decided to 'wing it' and tell some banal and inoffensive stories from my childhood."
Katara's Desktop Guide to Suihan Grammar listed the verb forms in the traditional way: present tense, past tense, future tense and then the participle. If Karo followed that order then he had a really strange talent or a herniated esophagus.
"Do you have any banal and inoffensive stories from childhood?" Katara asked doubtfully. "I can't see you and Zuko playing together in a sandbox. You fight and disagree with every member of your family and everyone in my family I have been stupid enough to introduce to you. Can you please tell me a story from childhood?"
Azula stared into space. "Well no! So Karo belching verb conjugations it is?"
Katara looked at Karo. "In the talent pool; Karo belching out the plus perfect is all you have?"
"Karo won't be belching out anything." Karo held his head. "Karo may have had an aneurysm and is very dizzy."
"The way I met Karo is the kind of story of two dorks finding each other." Azula offered Katara something. "You remember how we met at Iroh's tea house?"
Katara had to admit of all the stories of all the people she knew; the way Azula and Karo had met was sweet in its own twisted way. As with most of their shared history as a couple, it involved humor and yet one thing she never doubted – Karo and Azula did love each other.
The Fire Nation had a hall that put big box stores and the Fire Nation throne room to shame.
"Kiá magai da, vecí mnui hin nagátte téttinan datte, to séliki námu anmé." Karo whispered under his breath. Old Church Suihan had its charms and if the Modern High Suihan language failed him; he could 'drop down' to a more liturgical mode of speech.
"For he that is mighty, has done for me great things, and holy is his name?" Azula whispered back. "Why do you quote church hymns when you feel nervous or socially put upon? It's an odd neurosis."
"God isn't here but it hardly matters since every other Fire Nation and Water Tribe of any social importance has come to this little wedding." In spite of the vast scale of the huge hall with row upon row of wooden tables laid out like furrows; Karo found himself feeling cramped and claustrophobic. "I had hoped God would turn up so I would have someone I could talk to."
"Ask the All Knowing Creator of All why the Fire Nation has to have such squalid interiors." Azula's eyes panned over the heavy roof with huge Gothic arches carved into it. Large windows covered in red curtains let a feeble sepia toned light through which made the roof look looming and evil. "The legend has it that the dwarfs of yore carved this hall out of solid rock."
"But I can see the seams where the mortar joins the rock." Karo admitted. "Rather shabby looking stonework for dwarfs."
"Fire Nation dwarfs built it – so its ugly."
"I haven't seen wooden floors this large outside of basketball arenas." Karo never understood why Fire Nation architecture always had a good amount of heft to it. He knew it had to withstand quakes but the dark stone and bleak, charcoal gray floor and tiny windows made for an oppressive experience.
"We invented basketball and decided to make money selling out our royal hall to college teams." Azula lied in an obvious way.
Karo told himself to calm down.
"In the time we spent on The Yue, we didn't see the irregular noun and his irregular noun wife once," Karo muttered by way of random nervousness, "I just saw 'Regìs Arvùn Alluitte Kiràtan' take his seat but where is 'I Regúsei'?
"Dead...for the better part of a decade now." Azula said as she scouted out for anyone familiar in the hordes of wedding guests. "He has largely retired and turned his duties over to his son – Hensei if your newspaper has the spelling correct."
"We have a seat at Table 3." Karo held out a paper 'Order of Service' or whatever the Fire Nation called it. Karo hoped the seating plans made sense and he'd sit next to someone he knew but he knew weddings didn't work that way. "I think we're sitting next to one of Hakoda's college friends."
"Ask yourself: Does Hakoda look like the college graduate type?" Azula had her hand on Karo's back and weaved him through the crowd as they talked and looked for their seating arrangements. "Maybe he did his letters in philosophy but he looks like the kind who ended up squatting in the quad playing the guitar."
Katara had the most beautiful Water Tribe dress Azula had ever seen (Azula would not ever admit that). It had shades of blue cascading silk and the fur collar she wore looked pure white. She had bright blue gem earrings and wore her mother's Water Tribe choker and when Azula checked – big feet in the very best high heeled blue seal skin shoes she had seen. She had her hair braided but in place of the blue porcelain hair decorations had cobalt blue glass ornamenting her hair.
Katara walked up to Azula clutching a delicate blue seal skin purse as her stilettos made a loud, confident thumping sound against the floor.
"You look gorgeous." Karo spoke admiringly.
"Didn't those animals badly need their skins to keep their innards in?" Azula pointed at the purse and kicked Karo's shin. "I will admit you put on quite a show. I might have thought something important had been scheduled for the afternoon."
"Royal Northern Water Tribe formal dress for the daughter of the groom." Katara twirled happily for both Karo and Azula. "What do you think?"
"Beautiful!" Karo picked at his vest which was the black vest of a Fire Nation royal. The thick felt and gold trim made an impression but it certainly didn't flatter. Karo knew the black vest was made of some kind of woven rock wool designed for deflecting fire bending attacks and the trim was gold but he never felt sexy in it. "Please stop kicking me." He protested to Azula as he grabbed his ankle. Even though Azula never caused pain, she had habit of delivering a poke check or kick to the shins to get his attention. "She looks nice."
The hall appeared to have the same layout as the solar system. The wedding party and immediate family formed the central 'Sun' and Table 3 lay in the habitable zone of the realm of inner planets. The close relatives and friends sat in the terrestrial planet zone. The outer tables sat the more distant relatives and given the size of the hall; the Kuiper Belt tables sat journalists, guests and people savvy enough to walk in off the street for the promise of a free meal. The inner tables had fancy red velvet covered chairs made of fine mahogany. The Kuiper Belt had the folding stacking chairs made of butt numbing gray metal.
Azula sat down and held the chair for the nervous Karo.
Karo sighed with relief for nothing had gone wrong yet.
Karo gasped with joy as a middle aged man with a tall but athletic build sat down next to Azula. He wore the traditional dress clothes of the Northern Water Tribe but had a clean shave look and short brown hair that had begun to go thin at the temples.
"That is Tikano!" Karo whispered in Azula's ears in Suihan (so the sycophancy in his voice couldn't be heard).
"Good for him. Quit leaning into my space." Azula whispered back. "How drunk will they let me get?" Azula stared into an empty glass next to an elaborate red origami napkin.
"I have his hockey card. The greatest goalie who ever strapped on skates and you're sitting next to him!" Karo muttered back. "He played in Ba Sing Se during the War. I saw him play at University Place back when they didn't all wear helmets."
Azula knew things had gotten worse. After the War, Ba Sing Se had torn down their temple to sports – University Place – and built the glittering new 'Earthdome Arena'. Karo bought a brick from the old arena and kept it in his collection of sports memorabilia. He had also tried to buy one of the old back breaking insults to comfort the arena managers called wooden folding seats but lacked the money. He even bid on the old asbestos tiles but health officials forbade their sale.
Azula tapped her finger and thought of possible courses of action.
"Can you get his autograph?" Karo handed Azula a five spot.
"On a fiver? So you want this man to write his name on legal tender? Do you have a pen? "
Karo nodded in the negative. "Don't you?"
Azula grumbled something about living in a country with no denomination of paper currency smaller than a fiver. She produced a fountain pen and handed it and the fiver back to Karo.
Much to Azula's relief, the dim lights dimmed further. She had that feeling of watching a casino show chorus line about to take stage. The stage stood on a stage about half a meter over the sea of tables set aside for the proletariat. Azula had hoped for a kick line of chorus girls singing show tunes. Instead an elderly man with white hair and a thin mouth took the stage and a follow spot tracked him as he walked alone the stage. He had the robes of the Fire Nation priest but looked like an elderly science school teacher. He had white, unruly looking short hair with no hair decoration. Azula thought he looked a tad ridiculous for someone with the somber position of Fire Nation priest.
Karo had expected a drum roll and could not escape the impression he had expected a Fire Nation priest to wear a hat.
"Some of you make know me from my science program on Dominion Radio: The World of Tomorrow. My name is Kaizen and I will be your master of ceremonies."
Azula coughed as she recognized the voice of the radio announcer ricocheting across the hall. She knew the occasion was important because the talents of educational program narrators didn't come cheap.
"I wish to welcome Avatar Aang and his beautiful wife Ty Lee." He announced as the follow spot lit up the table directly below the stage and Aang and Ty Lee stood up and bowed as the hall erupted in a chorus of applause.
Azula wore the desperate look of Scott of the Antarctic after he had eaten the last frozen Shetland pony. The thought in her mind was much the same: 'I'm not getting out of this alive'.
Karo leaned up against her holding the five note and the pen.
Azula kept hoping someone would bring along a drinks trolley. They did this on short haul flights in float planes to prevent anyone from being to sober enough to realize they were riding a chair in the sky.
"Will you quit leaning on me." Azula pushed Karo away. "You can talk during the wedding reception. Right now, sit still and let the radio commentator speak."
Kaizen had the refined voice for radio work. Azula understood he came at a high cost which is something she had feared for the more expensive the wedding, the longer and more boring the ceremony. She had hoped a midget would have come out with her mother and Chief Hakoda in tow and simply stated: 'You're married'. She didn't know why the image of a midget held such appeal for a wedding but had hoped for a short and concise ceremony.
"Do you want to change seats?" Azula asked Karo as she blocked a rather bad pun made by the announcer. "You can sit in my seat and have old hockey players deface currency."
"You can't change places," Katara warned as she pushed between the aisles helping others to find their seats. "We had the seating order very carefully planned out so you can't shift seats."
The table numbering scheme defied Azula's sense of logic. Karo and her sat on the outside along with others who would be speaking, but due to the lack of ornateness in her dress, they had placed her and Karo behind a collection of Kyoshi Warriors, Fire Nation knobs and Gran Gran and Master Pakku. She imagined they wished to hide the boring looking people when a wedding was a social game of dressing up. Those at the front had clothes that had more than enough cloth to make sails for a ship.
The announcer drone on and introduced various 'special' guests as the follow spot searched over the crowd like the guests were in a game show.
The Kyoshi Warriors stood up in unison as the follow spot landed on their table. Azula had once gone to the opera with Karo to a popular operetta called The Geisha and the Kyoshi Warriors were even more brightly dressed than the opera singers.
"And the daughter of Lady Ursa." The announcer shouted and gestured flamboyantly. "The beautiful and ingenious Princess Azula."
Karo nudged Azula as the light descended on her.
"Stand up." Karo explained.
"I feel life the Mothership has come to beam me up." Azula stood up to a roar of applause. "Let me know if we win the car." The follow spot drifted away from Azula and she sat down.
"And the host of the festivities of this day – Fire Lord Zuko and his beautiful wife Lady Mai." The announcer motioned for the crowd to stand up and applause. "Thank you for your kind hospitality."
Azula wanted to chuck a rolled up napkin at Mai's head but Karo shook his head in disapproval.
And the ceremony began. A Fire Nation wedding ceremony was exactly like a Church of England wedding except for all of the details and the Fire Nation priest dressed up in red robes and gold and an amphora shaped helmet. He made swift moves that looked dance like and a Fire Nation icon emerged in glowing orange flame.
Karo could feel the heat as the emblem blazed and hoped the man had superb control.
Azula hoped this would end the contribution of religion to the ceremony.
A Water Tribe priestess entered from the other side of the stage and looked down on the crowd as she sculpted water into an intricate shape like that of the moon that froze into a solid icon of the Water Tribe.
Azula feared this was only the beginning of a ceremony based in ancient tradition, incomprehensible cultural significance and one up man-ship. Any culture capable of delegating the chewing and dying of hides to women had much to teach industrialized countries: that lesson wasn't efficiency in making mass produced goods.
The Fire Nation culture had taken the art of paper folding beyond all reason. Azula had heard of a Fire Nation origami artist who had made a scale model of the nucleus of a Uranium atom and had such a finely honed sense for detail that he even used colors to represent the spin of the electrons. A culture capable of folding a red napkin in delicate bird shapes also had much to teach industrialized countries: the graceful toleration of boredom.
Azula had anticipated boredom and brought a thick book – the kind of book that looked like it ate other books – with her.
"I recognize the book: I had to read large chunks of that fat thing for my first year literature course." Karo whispered to Azula. "How many a Canterbury Tale will our guests hear? A knight there was, and he a mighty man?"
"How far would we have to travel to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury?" Azula placed the huge book on the table and it announced its presence with a loud thump. "Can your Geoffrey Chaucer sue us from the grave?"
"I wouldn't put it past him."
The moon shape faded into steam as Katara sat next to Karo and answered the question of who was seated to the other side of the hockey legend.
"If you want to have a more true to life story; why not read from Hamlet?"Katara sat down with an elegance only hoped for by Karo or Azula.
Fourteen billion years ago, the Universe began out of nothing.
Azula pondered if The Theory of Relativity was complete. The time dilation effects of velocities made perfect sense for the bean counting physicists seeking to make sense of the order of things. Azula wondered if the effect of boredom also generated this effect. The clock on the wall told her that in her frame of reality – five minutes had gone by. She had wondered if the clock told a lie because she had spent eons in the hall as the two priests recited their lines.
Karo wondered if thirty five degrees centigrade at ninety percent humidity was the temperature inside the hall or if he now sat on the surface of the Sun. For a late winder afternoon; thirty five degree heat seemed obscene. Karo felt his gold plated hair pin half expecting the zinc core to have become molten.
As the Universe evolved; humans entered the scene and they made up all the institutions they needed to delude themselves into thinking of their little lives as important. In the Avatar Realm; that included ceremonies for every occasion.
Karo wondered if anyone in the Fire Nation or among the Water Tribe valued their time.
Azula had once accused the written Chinese language of having the expressive power of two paper cups attached by a piece of string. Karo wondered if spoken formal Chinese had narcotic powers. Azula had already nudged him twice to keep him awake.
Azula wondered at what point the roaches would take over and it occurred to her that the basement under the hall had thirty tons of a toxic nerve agent her father had brewed up for some unforeseen eventuality.
She had no idea if Zuko or one of his cronies had uncovered it.
"Did you bring that magnetic chess set?" Karo yawned as he fanned himself with The Order of Service.
Azula plopped the magnetic chess set on the large tome of literature she had brought to pass the time. Karo had bought the Magneto-Magic chess set because it had the words Magnet and Magic in the name. He had also been captivated by the copy on the cardboard box that promised the buyer a chance to 'One Day Play Chess in Zero Gravity'. Azula set up the board and prepared to defeat Karo.
Katara was last seen prowling the Asteroid Belt zone of tables greeting distant relatives and dignitaries such as the Mayor of Geelong (a city to the north of the capitol famous for taking the name of the local volcanic mountain – Mount Geelong which had a cable car and a viewing deck that looked out to the sea and nothing else).
Authors Notes: The Suihan language belongs to the Indo European language family and is a distant cousin of Germanic Languages like English. Suihan shares features of Latin and Old Irish and fits in best as a branch between the closely related Celtic and Latin branches of that tree. Some readers may have noticed it has much in common with European languages of antiquity.
Fire Nation Chinese speakers find it a difficult language because it has features like gender for nouns, free word order and makes use of many word endings to mark grammatical functions in nouns and verbs. A student of Latin or German would find it fairly easy to master and English or French speakers would find the grammar fairly regular as while it does have irregularities; they fall into systematic patterns that arise out of the phonology or historical circumstances of the language.
The 'roots' of nouns, verbs and adjectives usually have Chinese characters with the endings spelled out using a kind of system similar to gana found in Japanese. Suihan has few homonyms so characters and their combinations have one reading. Japanese has at least two, Chinese can have thirty. This eases the burden as does the fact Suihan restricts itself to 808 characters in common use. The Suihan language can be spelled out in their alphabet 'Gana' which fits the language well. The use of digraphs combinations of characters) like ci to spell ch, gi to spell j and si to spell sh – so called hardening is far more regular than English and no words have truly irregular spellings. Accents lengthen vowels (or in some dialects mark stress) and follow rules. The Gana or Alphabet characters Suihan uses follow the same rules. A chart of Roman to Suihan Gana is very close to being accurate with the Roman accent using a similar mark over the Gana for that vowel. The Suihan language borrowed the Gana from Old Kyoshi but selected the hiragana used on sound as well as simplicity: Suihan uses cursive forms not stroke order to render them and cherry picked those characters easily written in one or two stroke. What the reader sees written in phonetically is fairly accurate.
It began as a project to account for Fire Nation names like Azula that definitely didn't fit the pattern of Asian names. As the language grew, it began to become a character in its own right. Suihan had to appear exotic and strange to those who would speak Asian language because it works in a manner different from Chinese. Suihan would become what the European's called Japanese – a devil language.
All languages are basically the same. Like the rooms of a house or the organs of mammals, languages arrange their bits and pieces in different ways but a common pattern exists. Suihan had to reflect this truism. That iconic language of Asian culture; Japanese has honorifics and the level of social distance between speakers is cast into the verb as it does in Latin. The 'san', 'chan' and 'kun' endings – the vocative case – existed in Latin and functions in Hungarian and Polish. Of course Suihan and English took a different approach by 'apparently' not having any honorifics. Both languages get around this by using 'fancy words' in formal situations like courtrooms and Suihan makes use of Old Church Suihan in cases where mere polite and fancy talking won't do.
Readers should feel that Suihan has its own character: a language used by forward looking technocrats. Suihan should sound precise, curt and active – a language spoken by culture that wants people to get to the point. Suihan speakers don't use fancy greetings, seldom speak using please or thank you or have words to express deference or respect. Words for politeness do exist but one does not thank a person for simply doing what is expected when, for example, a cashier gives change in a store. The word 'bíniciette – thanks' or 'laódi - please' sound out of place in such cases. Azula addresses people by their first and then last name (as is the rule) but no title. If she meets a person she doesn't know, then a simple 'ke namu? what name, or tam namu? your name?.' is short and yet entirely correct. If she speaks with a professional then 'dosen - doctor' is perfect if it describes the profession of that person. Suihan was meant to oppose Asian propriety and be 'in your face'.