i know you are all waiting for a "big city white boys" update, or maybe "forfeits, fears, demigods," but this came to me and i had to write it. it's so short.

"When will you update your more popular fictions?"

soon, soon, beloveds. stay with me now

all my love and such - review me pls it is a must

scorpiaux

They are staying in an abandoned farmhouse for the night. After setting up camp, they sleep on the thin bamboo mats that they've carried on their backs; they eat the stolen pork buns with large, slow bites.

Uncle says, "Do you have the canteen?" and Zuko hands it to him wordlessly. After eating, Zuko massages his uncle's feet. They are gashed open because the path was full of rocks up the cliff side. He tears off large straps of fabric from his shirt and wraps them around his uncle's ankles and toes. Iroh kisses his forehead as he does so. Once, lightly. But enough.

Then they sleep for a while. Iroh dozes with deep snores and Zuko, forever a light sleeper, can't get in more than two consecutive hours without the wilderness awakening him. He was born a prince and his blood still believes him to be a prince, though he is a fugitive and currently in exile. You can forget your genes, Zuko realizes, but your genes do not forget you.

In the snake pit near the well, a long ways from the farmhouse, Zuko hears a hiss and a spit. Then again - more spitting, but this time with some clucking, too. A struggle. He leaves his dozing uncle and stands up to investigate. It's dark morning now, the stars and sun both simultaneously visible. He peers over the ledge of the well to see the snakes. As he suspected, a snake was attempting to swallow a rabbit. The rabbit was putting up a fight. Another snake waited at the periphery, its fangs dripping.

Zuko sits on his haunches and looks on, his golden eyes matching the sunset behind him. The rabbit is already poisoned, the snakebite on its neck bleeding and purple, half of its body paralyzed. When the snake shoots up and bites again, the rabbit jumps away and clucks in rage. It is pathetic and futile. There is no way the rabbit can get out of the sand pit. There is no way the snake was going to let up a good meal.

Then something seizes him, and without knowing what he's planning, he shoots a string of fire at the snake. It combusts and writhes wildly, attempting to douse itself with sand. It burns on. Zuko shoots the other snake that - dumb to the agony of the first - also writhes and smashes its body against the loose sand beneath it. The rabbit flares its nostrils at this new smell of scorching meat and limps on in a small circle. It is blind in this light, terrified and twitching. Zuko feels his heart ache with a compassion he's only known in the presence of small, motherless turtle ducks.

On his knees now, Zuko reaches towards the rabbit to pull it up by the scruff of its neck. At his touch, the rabbit seizes forward and clucks again. His arm extends and he pulls the rabbit up, careful to support its weight with his left hand. He does not anticipate a bite for a thank you, but there it is - on the periphery of his thumb, two perfect incisions to match the rabbit's flared incisors.

In a few hours, the bite shows signs of infection, and Zuko's feverish brow worries Iroh in the morning. Though his uncle's feet have yet to heal, the new concern is the possible rabies infection and the rocketing fever.

In a matter of hours, though, it passes. Uncle makes garlic broth for him which clears his head and reduces the fever. In the evening, left alone at camp, Zuko has the energy to bend, even energy enough to touch himself beneath his flimsy sheet. He imagines his Uncle is out meditating or meeting strangers to blow their cover. It's as if nothing changed. His hand is bandaged, though, and he can't feel the rest of his thumb. Uncle had found the cooked snakes and made them into a soup earlier. Had the rabbit lived, wondered the firebender. He spent the day in awe of his feat and ashamed - if he had added any more days or years to the rabbit's life, he had did it at the cost of two healthy predators, and in doing so, expended his own strength and health in the process.

But this dilemma does not sink in fully at first. It is not until later that he realizes he may have made a stupid mistake. They are ready to move on. In the valley that awaits them, there are entire forests brimming with rabbits. He sees them skipping about, hurrying after one another, fretting across the exposed roots of the forest. Some are very young while others are grayed and slow. They shimmer in the sunlight, velvety and unafraid. There are enough to keep a kingdom of snakes happy, realizes Zuko, but not a snake in sight.

"What a wonderful valley," marvels his uncle. "The spirits are happy here. So peaceful and quiet."

Can he not hear the rabbits? Zuko is confused, but then he notices Iroh is only looking up at the canopy and the light streaming in from above. Iroh mentions the sound of crickets here, but he does not notice the rabbits - if he does, he makes no move to show it. The small animals move about, unperturbed, and the beauty of it all - the mystery of it - is enough to fill Zuko's eyes with water. He wants to ask his uncle if he is a snake or a rabbit - a human or a spirit - or if he is a grand combination of these things, and if he is in fact a combination, why does he feel so lost here, in the presence of spirits showing themselves to him? Why does he ache only for food and sex instead of a sight as breathtaking and brilliant as this?

He hurries, falls in a few steps ahead of his uncle, and bends his mouth to the dirt. He kisses the ground on which he is exiled and the thought of tomorrow, for once, no longer paralyzes him.