The next day is bright and warm. I wake slowly, mind forming the room around me. The shadows, the angles, the places the sun hits and hides. The breeze against the red curtains. The sounds of the ocean just outside the window. The feeling of the blanket against my arms and legs. The smell of dust and forgotten memories.
I dress in silence, putting on the clothes Zuko gave me. I follow the noise of Aang and Zuko training out in the courtyard, near the fountain I sat at last night. The house is different in the light, the hallway long with many branching off rooms.
Outside, I find Katara and Toph, clad in Fire Nation red, sitting on the walkway in front of the courtyard. Katara is watching Aang and Zuko practice in silence, while Toph lounges on the ground, looking up, seemingly still asleep.
Katara looks up at me and smiles, and I sit next to her. Zuko and Aang are moving so fluidly, breathing in and shooting fire out. Zuko's fire is so different from how it was back on the ship, but I don't voice this. I just watch them work together, until they stand tall and exhale loudly, bowing at each other and parting ways.
"Doesn't it seem kind of weird that we're hiding from the Fire Lord in his own house?" Katara asks.
Zuko sits down at the fountain, rubbing the sweat off his hair with a rag. "I told you, my father hasn't come here since our family was actually happy. And that was a long time ago. It's the last place anyone would think to look for us."
From what Zuko's told me, I don't think his father was ever happy. Just good at playing pretend.
Sokka and Suki come in from the front side of the house, Sokka carrying a rolled up scroll. It looks like I was the last person to wake up.
"You guys are not gonna believe this!" Sokka says. "There's a play about us!"
"We were just in town and found this poster!" Suki says as Sokka opens up the scroll he's been holding. The poster shows Sokka, Katara, and Aang in the front, all looking weirdly drawn with incredibly girly features on all of them. Zuko is the background, with his eyes looking tired and his scar on the wrong side.
"They put your scar on the wrong side, Zuko!" I say, laughing a little as Katara and Toph stand. I follow suit as we all crowd around the poster.
He glares at the poster while Katara asks, "What? How is that possible?"
Sokka turns the poster toward himself and says, "Listen to this. 'The Boy in the Iceberg is a new production from the acclaimed playwright Pu-on Tim, who scoured the globe gathering information on the Avatar, from the icy South Pole to the heart of Ba Sing Se. His sources include singing nomads, pirates, prisoners of war, and a surprisingly knowledgeable merchant of cabbage.'"
"Brought to you by the critically acclaimed Ember Island Players," Suki adds.
"Ugh!" Zuko says, looking disgusted. "My mother used to take us to see them. They butchered Love Amongst the Dragons every year."
"I didn't know you were so artfully inclined," I say, smiling at the thought of Zuko dressed up nicely to see a play. "And how receptive was a playwright from the Fire Nation in the majority of these places?" I ask, pointing out how apprehensive the majority of the people we met along the way to Ba Sing Se was toward the Fire Nation.
"Sokka, do you really think it's a good idea for us to attend a play about ourselves?" Katara asks.
"Come on! A day at the theatre? This is the kind of wacky time-wasting nonsense I've been missing!" Katara looks away, defeated.
I add, "It's the whole this is where people least expect us to be, like hiding out in the person that's trying to kill us's house!" Toph laughs and punches me in the shoulder, and I can see the grin on Suki's face.
We spend the rest of the morning unpacking the groceries Suki and Sokka went to the market to buy. Katara starts to make lunch, and I chop some vegetables for her. The kitchen is dusty, and she has Aang wash out all pots and pans, plates and silverware she intends to use while we stay here. The wind from the open windows and doors helps keep the heat out. However, the fire in the oven gets a little unbearable for me, so I leave after chopping the vegetables.
I wander the house while she finishes cooking, and I find bare spots on the walls, like paintings were hanging there until recently. The entire house has a depressing air to it, nothing open windows and breezes can fix. It is lonely, and big, and dark. I roam from room to room, searching for these "happy memories" that Zuko talked about earlier.
They are hard to find. I find something resembling these memories when I stumble upon a playroom, with toys for the beach strewn out. A bucket, a shovel, shells. I touch some of them, looking for the memories of children here, once, ages ago, playing.
"What are you doing?" Zuko asks, startling me. I surge forward, knocking down a set of building blocks. I almost trip, but I right myself on a small table.
"I was just. . . " I gesture around the room, looking for an answer. "Bored."
He moves from the open door into the room, which is dark still. The curtains are pulled closed, and this is one of the few rooms nobody else has entered since being here. Mainly because there is no use for it.
"Weird room to wander into," Zuko comments, moving over to right the blocks I knocked down. I watch as he stacks them up with such familiarity that I know they were once his.
"Well, I had nothing better to do." I pause, watching Zuko kneel on the floor with these toys from so long ago. It is a private moment, and I feel like I'm watching something I shouldn't see. "What are you doing?"
"Just setting them back up, since you kicked them." He looks up at me, partly offended, but there's a smile there.
"No, I meant wandering the house yourself."
"Oh, I was looking for you." He stands, and I realize how close he is to me. The heat is rolling off him. How can firebenders stand the summer? Zuko looks awkward and takes a step back, realizing his closeness. "I, uh, lunch is ready. And they wanted to discuss going to the play with everyone. It seems like it's a sure-fire thing now."
"Okay." I nod, and I touch Zuko's arm lightly. Mainly to keep him from erupting from awkwardness, but part of me misses touching Zuko. Sparring with him, making tea with him, being near him. However, we're not like that. Not since Ba Sing Se fell. I pull my hand away quickly and gesture for him to lead the way.
"Thanks for finding me," I say around the lump in my throat. I was trying to keep Zuko from erupting into awkwardness, but I fell right into my own awkward habits.
Zuko grunts and says, "I figured you'd want something to eat. I think the play is going to be long. The Ember Island Players are rather long-winded."
"I haven't seen a play in ages. I did see Love Amongst the Dragons but I didn't think you would enjoy anything so romantic."
"Why?" Zuko whips his head to look at me, stopping. I stare at him wide-eyed, startled by him again. He realizes his weird reply and starts walking again. We're almost to the courtyard, because I can hear people talking and smell food. "I mean, it was my mother's favorite when I was growing up."
"It has a nostalgic hold on your heart." I nod. "I understand." Certain things from our childhood hold our hearts prisoner, and those blocks in the playroom have the same hold on Zuko as the play does. A better, simpler, happier time.
Zuko pauses in the shadow before the walkway around the courtyard. He is watching everyone laugh and talk. I place my hand on his arm again and don't pull away. There is sadness in his heart again, and I can see it in his eyes.
"I don't understand how they can take the time to go to a play. The comet is in less than a week," Zuko whispers.
"They're kids, Zuko. We all are. They need a little fun." I start to walk forward, pulling Zuko along. "Come on, the play'll be fun! Let's go have lunch!"
I spoke too soon. The play isn't fun.
We make our way as a group to the theatre, and the air is much cooler than it was earlier in the day. The breeze from the ocean helps. We follow the lanterns up to the theatre, and the moon shines bright off the water.
The theatre is done in the same style as anything built by the Fire Nation. There are dragons around the entrance, and the color palette is red with shades of gold thrown in. The theatre is crowded, and we pay the entrance fee. We get seats rather high up, on wooden benches. It's hard to see the stage so far up.
Toph has a similar issue. She sits down at the end, with Katara next to her. Suki, Sokka, and I sit on the bench behind them. "Why are we sitting in the nosebleed section? My feet can't see a thing from up here!" It wouldn't even help if we sat further down, since the whole theatre is made from wood.
The lights dim, and a hush falls over the entire theatre.
"Don't worry," Katara says. "I'll tell your feet what's happening."
I smile and sit back, looking down at the stage as the red curtain starts to rise. I was there, too, in the iceberg, but I feel like I missed a lot of what happened. I hope the play fills in the gaps.
The curtain rises, and it reveals Sokka and Katara's actors canoeing in the South Pole. The set pieces are amazing. The icebergs behind the canoe are well painted and show depth. The wooden "waves" that the canoe cuts through moves back and forth like real waves.
"The set is nice," I whisper over to Suki, who nods and keeps looking down.
That's the only thing that's nice about the play it seems. The second that Katara starts talking ruins everything about this being a quality play, but it still makes it difficult to keep from laughing at anything the actors do.
The Katara actress is dramatic, over the top, even from the nosebleed seats. Sokka's isn't much better, seeming to take on the comedic relief character as he jokes about his constant hunger. Sokka and Katara are offended by their portrayals, but Toph loves it. The audience loves it too, because of course they do. Anything that paints other nations in a bad light is good news for the Fire Nation.
Then there's Aang's character. Who is played by a girl wearing a bald cap. She dances around the stage much like Tai Lee did at the Boiling Rock, making bad jokes about anything and everything.
Iroh is painted as a fat man who only cares about food, while Zuko is just as dramatic as Katara, only about honor and capturing the Avatar. The scar he wears is on the wrong side, just like in the poster, and is attached kind of like the bald cap on Aang's actress.
I can't hold my laughter any longer. Everyone is an exaggerated version of who they are in real life, I can't wait to see how they portray me. I wait through the entirety of the first act, and there isn't a sight of me.
However, that doesn't stop me from enjoying the play and poking fun at everyone's actions. The Blue Spirit part is funny, considering I don't think it's well known that Zuko is the Blue Spirit. I see Jet, who apparently crossed paths with Aang and everyone. He destroyed an entire village and had the nerve to chase us through Ba Sing Se for maybe firebending? It seems like Jet had more issues than he was letting on.
Maybe I'm able to find the humor in this parody of the adventures everyone's had over the last few months since I'm not yet included in it. Granted, it's easy to laugh at everything that's happening because it is a parody, an exaggeration of everyone's personality traits and flaws. If you separate it from the actual person, the actual things that happened, it's easy to laugh at.
It also helps that it is poorly written, and the actors aren't very good, and the audience loves it.