[SEPT 9] [AVATAR] [THE BORDER BETWEEN RISING AND FALLING]

[fulselden.livejournal.com]

Title: The border between rising and falling.
Day/Theme: September 9: 'The border between rising and falling'
Series: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Characters: Zuko, Azula
Rating/Warnings: PG; sexual tension between siblings.

 

Two objective points are relevant: it reflects light efficiently; that is, it is bright, indeed dazzling; moreover, it does not tarnish (oxidize); it is unchanging through time, incorruptible.

Colin Renfrew, ‘Varna and the Emergence of Wealth in Prehistoric Europe’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp.141-69, (p. 149).

 

The palace, it seems to Zuko, has shrunk down and settled in the time he was away, like sea-warped wood. From outside, from Mai’s window, it looks just the same, the high wall, the sharp red roofs, towers stacking up against the sky. But inside it is empty in new places; things have moved around. They have kept some of his old things, the stuff he needs for ceremonies, but everything smells of camphor and cedar.

 

When he gets to the training ground, Azula is waiting for him. She is moving through an opening kata, left punch step back short kick pivot swing back, beginner’s moves.

“What are you doing here, Azula?” he asks, marching out into the ground still in his silks.

“What does it look like, Zuzu?  I’m here to spar.”

“I don’t need to practise with you,” he says flatly, starts to turn.

She smiles, kindly.

“What you mean to say, Zuko, is that you don’t need my help.”

“But,” she says, “you do.”

Her eyes flick upward. Through the dark lattice-work of the upper gallery, something moves.

He cannot help it, he sucks in his breath. His good eye widens.

“Oh, honestly,” says Azula.

“It’s not him. It’s Li and Lo. But of course they expect a good show, Zuko.”

She moves closer to him, her breath coming past him, her voice in his bad ear, abrupt and refracted as though heard underwater.

“After all, they’ve heard all about how you killed the Avatar.”

He stands still, his mouth stiff.

“Fine.”

He clenches his fists.

Azula puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t be long changing,” she says. “I haven’t got all day, you know.”

 

 

When he is five and she is nearly four, they do their breathing exercises together in the long light training hall, the sun coming in wavy and dappled off the pond outside. They sit side by side, a row of candles in front of them, in and out, in and out. They are meant to breathe together; it is good discipline, although the servants kneeling behind them do not keep time. In the warmth, the mat slippery under him, Zuko’s eyes droop; his head is too heavy, too big, his hands too wide, the ache of his morning training dropping away. He jerks awake. The flames in front of Azula are moving, in and out, higher and higher. Her face is still. Behind them, the servants rustle and whisper. A door slides shut as someone leaves to spread the news. For the next five months, before Zuko makes the candles rise and waver, she is the heir.

 

 

He loses, of course, coming down on a lick of her flame a moment too soon, the ground under him suddenly smooth and slick with heat, his footing gone. He thumps down on one knee, catches himself on the heel of his hand. Gets up, bows, hand over fist.

“Thank you.” It is customary to say it.

Azula bows back.

“My pleasure, brother.”

The wide dark sweat stains on her clothes are already wicking away into white rings of salt, her skin pale and matte as always, as if she is denser than most people, made of some different stuff.

Zuko steadies his breathing, in and out. Servants are hurrying out to repair the grounds, to fill in the gouges and hollows in the close-packed dirt, to sand down the grey patches of char on the hardwood railings.

Azula smirks at him.

“Don’t look so down, Zuzu. I think you made a very convincing showing, personally.”

She waves a hand towards the gallery.

“They’ll have nothing to tell Father.”

Zuko glares at her, opens his mouth. Closes it. Stamps off to change.

Later, walking back through the lower halls, he thinks of what he should have said. It is so perfect and cutting, it rests on the back of his tongue like a slide of steel. He sees Azula, at the end of a corridor, her hands clasped behind her, talking to someone standing out of sight; she must already have seen him, he knows.

By the time he reaches her, his reflection following him, slipping in and out as he passes shiny dark red pillars, the air thick and still this far inside the palace, she is alone. He comes up to her, pauses for breath.

“Oh, Zuko,” she says, “did you need something?”

Familiar, close and constant as an old burn, she rests her hand on the back of his neck.