.decadence.
Omashu is where she is treated like a queen, colorless shadow-girl paraded at the front of the conquering party. Given every luxury the Earth Kingdom has to offer, allowed free rein of the labyrinthine city- it's a dream come true, a life without struggle or conflict. Her father relishes the chance to play petty tyrant over the savages, Ozai in miniature; her mother croons about getting the royal treatment wherever she goes, palanquins and armed retinues. The biggest decisions she makes all day have to do with what dessert to eat or which knife to throw at her new bedroom door.
Mai sits before a gold-plated mirror, brushing out her long black hair with peppermint oil, and thinks of Zuko.
She's not supposed to remember him- not since he was banished, especially not since his wanted poster came out. "You're a pretty girl," Mother had 'reassured', "why waste your time? Forget about the traitor prince- we'll go to the matchmaker and find you an admiral, instead." Commodities, men are to her, status symbols on Father's totem pole.
He's disfigured, she reminds herself, giving the brush a brutal tug. Probably blind in the left eye. And what would he want with a spoiled, pampered noblewoman like you?
A sharp burst of self-loathing courses through her; complaining about having too little stimulation, of all things. Zuko probably isn't suffering from an excess of decadence in exile- it can't be much fun, roaming the vastness that is the Earth Kingdom like a common peasant, dodging a world's worth of soldiers. He must have grown as hard as a geode by now if he means to survive- if she ever sees him again, he will not be the gentle, determined boy that lingers in the back of her mind, a last remnant from their childhood.
Mai looks at her reflection in the glass- a sharp, expressionless face stares back, narrow-eyed and thin-lipped as she fixes her ox-horns and ties up her sentimental parts. Both of them, she thinks, missed the mark on the lives they wanted.