[Nov. 15] [Avatar] Three Fates

[sophiap.livejournal.com]

Title: Three fates
Day/Theme: November 15 - old maid in the garret
Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Character/Pairing: Aunt Wu, Meng
Rating: PG


"Do you really think I'll find my one true love, Aunt Wu?" Poor Meng was doing her best not to sound mournful, but she couldn't keep her voice from going wobbly around the edges, or the dishes on her tray from rattling a bit more than usual as she set it down.

Aunt Wu poured a cup of tea and passed it to Meng, who blinked a few times then took it as if she had no idea what it was or why Aunt Wu was giving it to her. Aunt Wu flapped one hand slightly, signaling the girl to sit on one of the nearby cushions. It was time for another talk.

"It's like I told you, Meng, dear," she said once the girl was seated. The words were (she hoped) comforting and familiar. "You'll meet your special someone when the time is right."

Meng pouted. It was not a flattering look for her, but Aunt Wu had found that telling her to smile generally produced a frightening, desperate rictus.

"It will be a while yet, so don't you frown, dear heart," Aunt Wu said. That sometimes produced better results than a direct order to smile. She reached out and stroked one of Meng's frizzy ponytails. She did not, however, attempt to smooth it. "Remember--when the time is right. No sooner than that, and certainly no later."

Meng didn't quite swat Aunt Wu's hand away from her hair; she was much too respectful than that. But the instant Aunt Wu withdrew her hand, Meng poked at her hair as if she were prodding a wound to see if it was still sore.

"Aunt Wu, do you... I mean..." Meng's voice trailed off, and she looked up to Aunt Wu for help and permission.

Aunt Wu had been expecting something like this for the past few days, ever since the Avatar and his friends left. Most people had been quick to see the averted disaster as another proof of her amazing foresight, but Meng had proven to be surprisingly thoughtful about such things.

"What is it, dear? You can ask me anything, you know that."

She had her answer prepared, had had it prepared for two days now.

"If... well, you're so good at telling fortunes, why don't you have your one true love, Aunt Wu? Why couldn't your fortunetelling tell you where to find him?"

Unfortunately, the answer she had prepared was not for that question.

"Well..." Aunt Wu looked down into the surface of her tea, but instead of showing her the future it threatened to show her the past.

There were times when Aunt Wu wondered if she had steered Meng wrong, by talking about special someones and true loves.

No matter what people in the village chose to believe, Aunt Wu had never been able to see the future. No one could.

What she could see were glimpses of dozens of potential and often contradictory futures.

In Meng's case, Aunt Wu could see three possible futures.

"A long time ago--but not that long," she said, giving Meng a mischievous wink and getting a flicker of a smile in return, "I could have had my pick of young men. Sometimes it seemed as if there were dozens of them, all of them following after me, some bringing flowers and asking me for dates, others just hanging back at the edge of the crowd, hoping for a kind word or a smile that was for them and them alone."

In one possible future, Meng grew old and grew lonely. She was the homely old woman in a homely old house on the edge of town. She took in laundry and mending, did odd chores, and spent a lot of time looking in the mirror and wondering what life would have been like if she had only been prettier, if only she had been worthy of someone's love.

"It drove all of the other girls in the village absolutely wild with jealousy," she said. Even now, it was hard not to feel sweet, warm smugness fill her heart at the thought. "'What's so special about her?' they asked. 'Wu isn't the prettiest girl in the village. Her father's not the richest. She doesn't have the nicest clothes or the daintiest manners.' Oh, you should have heard them--they sounded like a bunch of chickens squawking."

Meng giggled, and it didn't take a fortuneteller to know that she was picturing sour and jealous looks on the faces of certain girls within their own village.

"What I did have was a very nice smile, or so I was told. One very much like yours, my dear."

Now that got a smile, a brilliant one.

In another possible future, Meng rarely smiled. She was married, yes, and she had three children, but she also had little to smile about. Neither did her husband. When two people are desperate to be married for no other reason than to be married, they usually find that marriage in and of itself is no admirable goal.

"I think, though," she said, tapping at the corner of her mouth as she gazed up at the ceiling, "that it wasn't just the smile."

This was not the sort of thing that was easy to explain to an eleven-year-old, or to anyone, really. Either you understood it deep in your heart or you didn't.

"So what was it, Aunt Wu?" Meng was leaning so far forward that she was practically balancing on her knees. "How did you get all those boys to follow you around? And did you ever pick one of them? How did you know which one to pick?"

She reached out again to stroke Meng's hair, and this time the gesture was accepted.

"So many questions," she said gently, and with no trace of criticism. "Such a curious, clever girl. No, no I don't mind that you ask. I did eventually pick one of those boys, and as for how I knew, well, it was easier to know who was the right one than who all the wrong ones were. One of these days, I'll tell you the whole story."

Not today, though. Today, she wanted Meng to smile. Tales of a love lost too early could wait for another time. So close to her own disappointment, Meng would only find melancholy to be bitter.

"As for what it was that got them to follow me?" She smiled at her young protégé. Ah, as for that..."

There was a third possible future. She saw a laughing Meng, tall (too tall, some would say), strong-limbed and strong featured, striding across the village square, casting a merry look over her shoulder. Her stiff, frizzy hair may not have flowed in the breeze, but swept back and adorned with a gold ribbon, it was as magnificent as a queen's headdress. Three boys stood by the fountain she had just passed. Two were gawking in amazement, and the third had just set his jaw in frightened determination (he would speak to her, yes he would, he would screw up his courage and tell her what he felt). She was not the prettiest girl in the village, or even pretty at all by any traditional definition, but anyone who saw her would have remembered her as beautiful.

"You'll learn that in time, I'm sure of it, my sweet, my clever Meng."

The pout she receive in response to that remark was far more attractive than the earlier one. In time, it would become devastating.

"Not long, now. You'll figure it out, and when you do and when the time comes, you'll find a man who is truly special and truly worthy of your love. It may take a while, because someone like that is going to be hard to find, so be patient."

Meng nodded, and Aunt Wu didn't think that she was just imagining things when she saw that the girl was holding her head a little higher.

Then, Meng cocked her head to one side, quizzically.

"Will he have big ears like you said?"

Aunt Wu blinked, then remembered what she had once foretold in an attempt to instill hope in a Meng who at the time could believe only in her own homeliness. She started laughing.

"Perhaps, Meng. Perhaps."

Meng had three possible futures. Two of them, though, were starting to fade, just a little. The miserable mother and the lonely crone had begun their retreat from the edges of Aunt Wu's foresight, while the brilliant young maiden was confidently walking forward, laughing, hips swaying, to take her proper place. And now Aunt Wu thought she could see dozens of possible futures trailing in the maiden's wake--the proud and doting mother, the great-grandmother who was the beloved center of a sprawling family, a self assured young woman who had gladly put aside thoughts of marriage while she pursued other dreams, and so many more.

And in the end, that was what fortunetelling was about, wasn't it?

Aunt Wu's real work had nothing to do with sentencing people to some immutable, unavoidable fate.

No, her real work had everything to do with guiding people to the best possible futures.