CHAPTER ONE!
Oh yes, things are about to get interesting! :D
CAUSE SOME TROUBLE
Chapter 1-- The King In Exile
Okay, first some stuff.
Stuff #1: Sandbenders! You’ll be meeting mine in this chapter. Here’s a sketch of them. Yes, I know there are various anatomical flaws. This was like the third sketch I drew after a 3-year period of not drawing anything at all, so I think it's pretty good considering.
Stuff #2: Playlist for this Chapter!
1) Avatar Premiere Main Title, The Track Team. Okay, call me presumptuous for putting the show's main theme on my humble little fanfic's playlist. I just couldn't resist though, I love this music so very much!
2) Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah, Camille Saint-Saëns. This is sort of where it all started. I was listening to this piece over the summer and got an idea for a fanfic in which Kuei’s travels take him to the Si Wong Desert, where he meets a Sandbender girl and her brother…
3) The Forgotten People, Thievery Corporation. Listened to this one a lot while writing this chapter.
4) You Only Live Twice, Nancy Sinatra. (It's funny, I don't much like James Bond but I love this song, IDK.) This one doesn’t specifically apply to this chapter. It’s more like, uh, foreshadowing. ;)
OKAY I THINK THAT'S ENOUGH STUFF DON'T YOU AGREE?
Six Months Ago…
It had seemed like such a simple idea at the time. Strike out on his own, travel the world in disguise, see what life was like outside the palace walls. No fancy parties to host, no Dai Li watching his every move, no Long Feng whispering poisonous lies in his ear-just Kuei and Bosco, off on a marvelous adventure, learning more about the citizens of his realm so that he could be a better king for them once the Avatar had ended the war. He hadn’t realized that life with no limits would be so… well, so complicated. He hadn’t taken any money with him when he and the Avatar’s group had fled Ba Sing Se, for one thing. He’d planned on selling his royal robes and adornments in the first port city they reached, but the others felt this would arouse too much suspicion. (Besides, with the Fire Nation now occupying the capital, the ports around the group's camp at Chameleon Bay were swarming with Firebenders.) The kind little Water Tribe girl and her friends had given him some of their money, what little they had. He hadn’t brought any supplies, either; he’d tried with some success to teach himself hunting and fishing, but neither he nor Bosco could quite get the hang of it. He was hungry, exhausted, smelly, sore, he had an increasingly ragged beard creeping along his typically clean-shaven face-all of which was nothing compared to the shame of having fled like a mouse from a cat owl while the Fire Nation brought the last great stronghold of the Earth Kingdom to its knees. But at least, he thought sourly, he had the freedom he’d always craved.
And so it was that Kuei, the 52nd Earth King of Ba Sing Se, found himself seated at a rickety wooden table in the cantina at the Misty Palms Oasis, located on the edge of the vast and deadly Si Wong Desert. An empty ice-cup sat in front of him, its sides and bottom stained pale orange from the drink he’d purchased at the bar with the last of his money; he’d made it this far without getting himself killed and felt he ought to celebrate. Visiting an oasis-now there was another thing that had sounded quite simple. When he’d arrived, however, he’d discovered it to be quite different than expected. It wasn’t misty, there weren’t any palm trees, and indeed the only thing shady about the place was the nature of its inhabitants. Still, ever the optimist, Kuei was determined to enjoy his stay, a task he felt would have been substantially easier if he could just shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen.
A dark shape appeared suddenly in the corner of his eye and perched on the table’s edge beside him, and he started so sharply that he dislodged his glasses. He hastily adjusted the round lenses and leaned back in his chair to get a look at this apparition. The new arrival was obviously a Sandbender-that much was clear from the shabby sand-colored clothes and from the thick layer of wrappings that bound its arms, legs, and head, the standard garb of all the locals. Then it leaned in close and spoke, and he realized it was a female Sandbender.
“Keep your voice down and don’t look about. There are three men in the corner who’ve been watching you since you came in,” she whispered, muffled by the beige cloth that covered all but her warm, dark brown eyes.
“I-I beg your pardon? Watching me?” he sputtered. His mind flooded with images of Fire Nation assassins, sinister creatures bristling with all manner of unpleasantly pointy objects.
“Friends of yours?” she deadpanned. Kuei frowned and scratched at the tangled mess on his chin.
“Well, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be-“
“I was being sarcastic. Damned tourists.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head pityingly, then glanced past him, presumably to where the three men were. “Oh Spirits, here they come.” Kuei shot an anxious look over his shoulder and received a solid cuff upside the head from the Sandbender woman’s heavily wrapped right hand. “I said not to look about! I know these guys; let me handle this.”
“Well, Zafirah, it looks like you’ve made a new friend,” said a sneering voice behind him. He snuck another glance and saw three more Sandbenders. Two of them had their faces exposed; the one in front was young and smooth-shaven, and the other was older and had a thick beard and moustache. Both were scowling fiercely. Kuei grimaced and sunk down into his chair. The girl, however, seemed thoroughly unimpressed.
“Afternoon, Ghashiun,” Zafirah replied. “Speaking of new friends, I don't think I've met yours,” she added sweetly, waving to the other unmasked man. Ghashiun’s scowl deepened more than Kuei thought was physically possible.
“Never mind him. What’s with the tourist?” he asked coldly. That last word was positively dripping with scorn.
“Oh, you know me,” Zafirah said brightly. “I just love tourists! They’re so entertaining!” She ruffled Kuei’s hair and he ducked his head.
“I, ah, I should be going,” Kuei said quickly, trying to keep his tone light and unconcerned. “You two obviously have a lot to talk about, I wouldn’t want to interfere!” He pushed his chair back and stood-right onto the third Sandbender’s foot. The man shouted in pain. Ghashiun grabbed the front of Kuei’s shirt and threw him back against the table, which creaked in protest. He collided with Zafirah, who elbowed him in the side.
“You just don’t get how to listen, do you?” she hissed. “I told you to let me handle this.” She jerked her thumb at the angry young man in front of them, raising her voice. “Just ignore him, he’s been acting like more of a jerk than usual every since he got in trouble for stealing the Avatar’s Sky Bison.” Kuei looked sharply at the Sandbender boy, feeling some of his fear replaced by anger on the young hero’s behalf.
“That was you?” he demanded. The four Sandbenders stared at him, as surprised by his outburst as he was.
“What would you know about it?” asked the third Sandbender suspiciously. Kuei swore inwardly and scrambled to cover up his slip.
“Well, ah, you see, I had the good fortune to meet the A-avatar on my travels. Naturally, I was curious about the, um, about the Sky Bison, never having seen one before, so I asked him some questions about it, and, uh, he-“ Zafirah lunged forward and drove a solid right hook into Ghashiun’s jaw, sending him staggering back with a cry. The other unmasked Sandbender growled and threw a blast of sand straight into her eyes through the narrow opening in her face coverings. She yowled and jerked her right fist towards her waist; the sand shifted under the man and he fell as though a rug had been pulled from beneath his feet.
“Time to go,” Zafirah told him with what Kuei felt to be a rather inappropriate amount of glee given the circumstances. She seized his arm and hauled him towards the curtained doorway before the third Sandbender could even react. The rest of the cantina’s clientele barely shifted their focus from their drinks as the two hurried past. Tavern brawls were hardly a noteworthy occurrence at the Misty Palms Oasis.
The air outside the cantina felt heavy with the stifling heat of late afternoon in the desert. Zafirah slowed to a walk as she dropped Kuei’s arm and rubbed the sand from her eyes, then laughed when she saw the dismayed look on his face.
“Oh, calm down! You made it out in one piece, didn’t you?” She winked at him, then turned and started to walk away from the cantina, lifting one hand in a casual wave. “Well, thanks for the fun. Bye, now!” It took a moment for Kuei to recover his wits, and then he trotted after her. She glanced sideways at him and as he caught up with her, but she kept walking.
“Are you following me?” she asked flatly.
“Wha--no, no, I just... I wanted to thank you for, ah, helping me. What were they going to do to me, anyway?”
“Oh, rob you, maybe rough you up a bit, maybe with an emphasis on the roughing-up if you didn’t have much money on you.” The girl shrugged. “My getting involved probably made it worse, actually,” she added apologetically. “I just can’t pass up an opportunity to piss them off.”
“I don’t have any money at all, so I suppose I ought to thank you for sparing me a good deal of pain. Won’t that man and his, uh, associates come after you now? I assume they’ll want revenge of some sort.”
“Pffft, no! This is business as usual for us. He and I have a go at each other at least once every couple of months,” she replied, chortling.
“Oh,” he said. Bosco, who had been resting near the depleted iceberg at the center of the oasis, spotted his master and lumbered over. Zafirah shrieked and jumped behind Kuei. “Oh, don't worry! That's just Bosco, my pet bear," he said, beaming. She stepped out from behind him, trying to recover her dignity.
“Pet bear?” she echoed. “Tourists.” She turned and started to walk off again.
“Wait! Is there an inn here, someplace I can sleep?”
“Yeah, but they all cost money, which you’ve just said you don’t have, and I’m pretty sure they don’t allow… those,” she said, eying Bosco distastefully. She paused, considering, then spoke again. “What’s your name, tourist?”
“I am Kuei,” he told her. His given name sounded unfamiliar in his own ears. It felt like he was introducing a stranger. He bowed-he was in the presence of a lady, after all-eliciting a disbelieving snort from his peculiar rescuer. “And I believe the angry fellow back there called you Zafirah?”
“That’s me.” She looked him once over, then shook her head again. “Well, Kuei, I’ve got a perfectly good floor you can sleep on if that suits you.” He blinked at her, thoroughly taken aback.
“W-well, I, that's very-I don’t know quite what to say-“ he stammered.
“Do you want the floor or not? ‘Cause really, it’s that or camping for you, and I’m not feelin' too confident about your chances out in the desert all by your lonesome self. Can't guarantee someone else won't mess with you, not to mention all the nasty things livin' out there. I don’t particularly want your death on my conscience,” she said impatiently.
“Yes, please. Thank you, that’s... very generous of you,” he said, flummoxed. She set off at a brisk pace without another word, or even checking to see if he was behind her. It didn’t take long to get there; the oasis was a very small settlement, little more than several clusters of squat, domed huts of hard-packed earth and wood frames, all forming a rough circle around the iceberg and enclosed by a low wall. Zafirah’s home was nestled in a cluster next to the main gate. Once inside, Kuei saw walls lined with swords and knives of all sizes, a counter in the middle of the room, and a work station in the corner behind it. “Do you make weapons?” he asked.
“Nope. Buy, sell, and trade,” she said.
“Oh.”
“By the way, I’d prefer if you left the animal up here.” She pulled back a curtain at the back of the room and disappeared through it. Kuei told Bosco to stay put and followed her through, down a crudely made wooden ladder barely taller than himself and into a musty, dimly lit basement. It was a fairly small but cozy space, with a kitchen in the corner next to the ladder, a curtained area along the wall opposite, and a thin straw mattress heaped with blankets in the corner past the kitchen. Zafirah reached up and unbound her head coverings, depositing them beside the ladder. She was actually rather pretty under all those wrappings; her deeply tanned face was framed by shorter locks that had escaped the confines of a long, thick braid of dark brown hair. He wasn't very good at guessing ages, but she didn't look much older than twenty. She turned to face him and put her fists on her hips. “I’m not running a restaurant here. You help when I tell you to, got it?”
“Of course,” he agreed quickly. She sauntered over to the kitchen, stretching her arms above her head.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m starved,” she said as she grabbed some sticks from a basket and stuck them beneath a rough iron pot hanging in the fireplace. “Would you light that up while I get some things from the pantry?” she asked, pointing absently at a pair of spark rocks on the counter next to the firewood basket. Not bothering to wait for an answer, she swept off through a doorway to the left of the kitchen. Fortunately, a pair of spark rocks was one of the first things Kuei had picked up after parting ways with the Avatar’s group, and thus he was spared the embarrassment of his host thinking him to be totally useless.
A sudden movement to his left caught his attention; he looked up, expecting to see Zafirah, but instead he saw a nearly naked man rising from beneath the pile of blankets in the corner. Kuei wasn’t sure which of them was more startled. He bore an unmistakable resemblance to his host and was perhaps a hair shorter than Kuei. He had the sort of lean build that suggested a history of scarce meals and daily physical labor. The man blinked owlishly from behind a curtain of below-shoulder-length brown hair hanging loose around his face and took an unsteady Bending stance, clearly intent on defending his home. He succeeded in raising a small cloud of dust that promptly flew up into his own face. As he coughed and shook his head, Zafirah emerged from the pantry, arms filled with cloth sacks.
“Zafi! There’s a thief in our house!” rasped the man, slurring his words.
"That’s not a thief, that’s a guest, so will you please put on some pants?" she demanded.
“But I am wearing pants, Zafi!” he insisted, hurt. Zafirah cleared her throat and looked pointedly downward. The man followed her gaze to his bare legs and gaped at the sight.
“Ohhhhh,” he said slowly. He stumbled back into the heap and dug around amidst the blankets for a minute before apparently giving up. Zafirah stomped over to the fireplace and dumped the sacks on the ground.
“My stupid twin brother, Basam. He’s been drinking sake again,” she explained. Then she pulled a waterskin from a hook on the wall and emptied its contents into the pot. Kuei hovered a couple feet behind her, tapping his fingertips together behind his back as if attempting to magically summon a way to be helpful. People weren't his strongest area of expertise; there was already a certain level of personal detachment that came with ascending to the throne, and with Long Feng meticulously excluding him from matters of government, Kuei had been left with few chances for human interaction. He wasn't even allowed to show his face or speak with guests at the fancy parties he'd hosted! He'd had a veritable army of tutors in every academic subject imaginable, and he considered himself a very knowledgeable man-- but when it came to people, and especially the art of conversation, he was in the dark.
“Um. What are you making?” Kuei asked politely. Zafirah shrugged carelessly and began pouring lentils from one sack into the pot. Basam shuffled over and stood next to Kuei, much too close for comfort, eyes narrowed and rubbing his stubbly chin pensively. He leaned away almost involuntarily.
“I still say he looks like a thief,” Basam pronounced. Zafirah snatched a stick of firewood from the basket and threw it at him.
“Basam. Pants!”
He huffed irritably. “Be reasonable, Zafirah. Why in the Spirit World would I put on two pairs of pants?”
“I don’t know, Basam, why don’t you put on one pair to start with, and find out?” she growled. He looked down and was once again surprised. His pride bruised, he stared imperiously at his sister and then shuffled back to the bed.
“Fine, then! I’ll do that, and you see to the thief.”
“Oh, please. If he’s a thief, then I’m the Avatar! Speaking of which, that was a nice diversion back there,” she said, addressing the last part to Kuei. She opened another sack and added rice to the pot, then took two big fistfuls of dried pig-chicken meat from a third bag and added that as well.
“Diversion?”
“The story about meeting the Avatar and knowing about his Sky Bison.”
“I really did meet him, though.” Met him, let him down, and saw his lightning-struck corpse revivified by Spirits-blessed water. He didn't think it wise to mention all of that, though.
“Uh huh. Nice quick thinking there, you!” Well, if she thought he’d done it intentionally, he certainly wasn’t about to disabuse her of that notion.
“Thank you, I do try,” he said mildly. She pointed wordlessly to a wooden box on the counter. Realizing that he was meant to fetch it, Kuei hurriedly retrieved it. She took it from his hands and lifted the lid; it was a spice box. She threw several pinches of different herbs into the pot, then grabbed a long, wooden spoon from the counter and stirred the pot’s contents, humming off-key as she worked. It wasn’t long before an almost overwhelmingly spicy aroma began rising from the stew.
“So what brings you to our lovely oasis?” she asked, a hint of self-deprecation in her tone.
“I live here!” Basam exclaimed. He had found his clothes and was hopping precariously on one foot as he attempted to pull his pants on.
“Not you! I was talking to our guest,” she growled. Now it was Kuei’s turn to shrug, partly to buy some time to think of an answer.
“I, ah, I saw it on my map and thought it seemed like a nice place to visit,” he tried.
“Must be an old map,” Zafirah replied with a crooked smirk. Kuei couldn’t disagree with that. Silence settled over the room, broken only by the scrape of the spoon against the sides of the pot. Eventually, Zafirah lifted the spoon to her lips and sampled its contents, then nodded to herself, satisfied. She hefted an iron lid and set it in place atop the pot, then sat back on her heels. “Now we let that cook for a while. I guess that monster of yours needs food too, huh. What’s that thing eat, anyway?”
“Meat, usually,” he said. She grabbed the sack of dried pig-chicken and handed it to him, and he headed back up the ladder. Bosco looked up and growled mournfully as Kuei entered the shop. He knelt beside his pet and scratched behind the bear’s ears. “I’m sorry I have to leave you up here alone, my friend,” he said as he placed a pile of the meat in front of Bosco’s snout. When he returned to the basement, Zafirah waved in the direction of another curtained alcove beside the pantry.
“The washroom’s through there if you want to get cleaned up at all,” she told him.
“Thank you, I would like that.” He rubbed absently at his chin and frowned. “Does your brother have a spare razor I might borrow?”
“Nah, just use his.” She shot a look at Basam’s immobile form in the corner. “It’s not like he’s in any condition to argue!” she added in a raised voice. When this failed to get a reaction, she rolled her eyes and lifted the pot’s lid to stir again.
The washroom was a cramped space with a metal basin against the far wall beneath a dingy, cracked mirror. He noticed with some surprise that there was a water pump beside the basin stand. Kuei winced slightly as he caught his reflection in the mirror. His face was dirtier than he’d realized and covered in scratches from where he’d stumbled into a patch of brambles a few days earlier. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and that beard was really quite awful. He found a shaving kit wrapped in tattered leather on a shelf cut into the wall beside the mirror and set about returning himself to something approximating a civilized state. When he emerged from the washroom, satisfied that he was as clean as he was going to get without jumping in a lake, their supper had finished cooking and Zafirah was rummaging around on a wooden shelf above the kitchen counter.
“Bowls, bowls, where are the Spirits-be-damned- aha!” She spun around triumphantly with a stack of misshapen metal bowls held high in one hand. Her left eyebrow twitched upward slightly when she caught sight of him, and he almost thought he saw a flicker of a smile at the corners of her mouth. But it was gone before he could figure out what it was and then she was shoving a bowl into his hands and gesturing to the iron pot. “Go ahead. I said I wasn’t running a restaurant!” She plunked down beside the fire and ladled some of the stew into her own bowl. He settled in across from her and took the ladle after her.
“Zafirah, may I ask how the water pump in the washroom works?”
“Absolutely not.” She paused, then grinned at his obvious shock. “Relax, I’m just teasing you! Spirits, you’re such an easy mark it’s not even fun. Of course you can ask. There’s a water tank behind the wall in there. Every few weeks we fill it with our allotment of melted-down water from the iceberg. It may look like there isn’t much of it, but it’s huge underground. And since there’s so few of us living here, we all get to use it. Not very much, of course, so we have to make do. Like, we scrub food scraps off of plates and stuff with sand, then use a tiny little bit of water to wipe out the sand.”
“Ah.” Kuei couldn’t help but glance dubiously at the bowl in his hands.
“Yeah, it’s not too fancy. Nothing like what you’re probably used to, living in…” She paused again, scrutinized him through narrowed eyes, and smirked. “Ba Sing Se?” Kuei managed not to choke on a mouthful of stew.
“H-how did you…?”
“We get folks from all over the place. You spend enough time watching people, you start to see all these little things that give away a person’s story. You can see it in the way they talk-different cities have different accents, you know. And the way they carry themselves? Kinda sad how easy it is to spot the rich noble types. Like you, for example: here you are, sitting on the ground, and your back’s as straight as a reed.” Kuei slouched self-consciously, sending another ghost of a smile flitting across Zafirah’s face before she went on. “I can tell you're from a big city, and there aren’t a whole lot of those. Gaoling, Omashu, Ba Sing Se… that’s pretty much it. Your accent is sort of like other Ba Sing Se folks that've passed through, so I figured I had a one-in-three shot at guessing right. But I gotta say, I almost couldn’t place you; there’s something… odd about you.”
“Odd?” he echoed in a carefully neutral tone.
“Yep. Your accent’s weird for Ba Sing Se. It’s as if-“ Luckily, a distraction arrived in the form of a nearly-sober and fully-dressed Basam slinking sheepishly over to the fireplace and sinking down between the two. “Feeling better, brother?” Zafirah asked dryly.
“Yeah, the fog’s lifting,” he said with an embarrassed grin. He fished a length of green cord out of his pocket and tied his hair back at the nape of his neck, then turned to Kuei. “Hey, sorry if I-“ He stopped short and squinted at their visitor, then looked over at his sister. “How many guys did you bring over tonight, anway?” he demanded.
“Just one,” Zafirah replied with a bemused smile.
“Huh!” He returned his gaze to Kuei. “You don’t look nearly so much like a thief without that beard, y’know,” Basam commented as he helped himself to a bowl of stew. The three ate in surprisingly comfortable silence for a while. It was a refreshing change of pace to simply sit and share a meal and conversation with people who were making no demands of him.
Basam spoke again. “So how’d you get here all the way from Ba Sing Se?”
“Pure chance, I suppose. I picked it out on my map, as I told-“
“Yeah, heard that part. Why were you reading the map, though?”
“Why am I traveling?” Basam nodded eagerly. Kuei tried to quell his surge of nervousness. How much of the truth did he dare tell them? “Well, to be honest, I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter,” he said carefully. Basam suddenly cringed and slapped his forehead.
“Of course, Ba Sing Se! The Fire Nation!” he groaned.
“Sweet spirits, I almost forgot,” Zafirah murmured, her smile vanishing. “You’re lucky to have gotten out, you know?”
“Oh, yes, I’m certainly aware of that,” he agreed, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. He hoped they couldn’t see the guilt he felt as he thought about the thousands of citizens trapped within the city-all the people he was responsible for, the people he’d been unable to protect. The two Sandbenders must have noticed his sudden melancholy, because they swiftly moved on to more mundane topics. Where had he been before the desert? Oh, Chameleon Bay, I hear it's nice up there. Those scratches all over his face and neck? Ooh, brambles! How unfortunate. Bet he'll be more mindful of where he steps now. Had he done much camping before this? No? Well, experience is the best teacher.
Once the three of them had finished their meal, Zafirah set Basam and Kuei to cleaning the dishes while she started a pot of water boiling for tea. With the chores done and the tea brewed, the trio returned to their seats by the fire. Zafirah lounged against the wall next to the fireplace, her expression unreadable, studying Kuei over the rim of a metal teacup as battered as the bowls they’d been eating from.
“So what’re your plans? Where are you headed after this?” she asked.
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead, to be entirely honest,” Kuei admitted. “I suppose I’ll continue traveling, or perhaps I’ll try to get some work, somewhere.”
“Speaking of which, I’d better be going. It’s probably almost dark by now,” Basam announced as he stood up. He added to Kuei, “You can use my bed if you’re staying till morning, I won’t be here and all.”
“Sand glider construction crew,” Zafirah explained, seeing the puzzlement on Kuei’s face. “That stupid beetle-breath Avatar wrecked a bunch of our tribe’s gliders, we gotta rebuild ‘em. The crews can only work at night though, since it’s so hot during the day now that spring’s here.”
“He… he did? But why would the Avatar do that to citizens of the Earth Kingdom? Oh, it’s not-I’m not accusing you of lying, I just don’t understand…”
“He got angry at us ‘cause of what Ghashiun and his guys did. He lost his temper. Me and Basam were there, we saw the whole thing. The boy’s, what, twelve years old?” Zafirah snorted and turned her head away. “Imagine! The fate of the world in the hands of a child.” Basam rolled his eyes at what appeared to be a budding argument and quietly took his leave, unnoticed by the other two.
“I really don’t think you’re being entirely fair to the boy,” Kuei protested.
“And I really don’t think it was fair of the boy to punish our tribe on account of one idiotic jerk,” she retorted. “Most of the guys that helped with the thieving weren’t even ours. He very nearly stranded a bunch of us in the middle of the desert. Getting stuck out there’s a death sentence, okay? And he went all Avatar spirit glowing and would’ve flat-out killed us if that Water Tribe girl hadn’t stopped him.”
He frowned, unsure of how to respond, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to start an argument. Some guest I make!”
“Aw, never mind that. Not your fault you didn’t know the whole story. ‘Sides, a good argument can be fun sometimes, y’know?” she assured him.
“Arguing, tavern brawls… I do believe you and I are operating under different definitions of ‘fun’,” he ventured. She didn’t leave him time to worry that he’d been too forward with his attempted joke-she immediately grinned her approval and thumped her fist against her knee.
“Aha! Just as I thought-you do have a sense of humor!” she said gleefully. By then, the teapot was empty and the fire had burned down to softly glowing embers. Zafirah scrubbed the teacups and pot, then left Kuei to dry them and went off to the washroom. She emerged a few minutes later, running a comb through her unbraided hair. “All right, well, you know where you’re sleeping. I’m over there behind that curtain. Do yourself a favor and stay out, hmm? Off you go.” She made a shooing gesture with her free hand as she walked past him towards her own bed.
“Um, Zafirah…”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.” She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye, slightly surprised by the sincerity in his voice. He started to say something else but faltered under her speculative gaze, then rushed onward. “To bring a stranger into your home, to shelter a man you barely-not that I would even think of-I wouldn’t ever-“ She cut off his increasingly convoluted outpour of gratitude with a mystified smile and a dismissive handwave.
“Good night, Kuei,” she said pointedly.
“Good night. Sleep well,” he answered, somewhat relieved for the interruption. As he settled into his borrowed bed, it occurred to him that no one had ever argued with him before.
***********
He could hear thunder in the distance. A storm was drawing near, and someone was shouting his name. The voice was familiar; the last remnants of a dream. He searched for the source of the voice. We have to find shelter, he said urgently. We have to- he snapped awake as something grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him into a sitting position. It was Zafirah, crouching over him with an almost palpable aura of fear about her. Her face was ashen and twisted in panic.
“Fire Nation!” she hissed. She let go of him so suddenly that he fell backwards onto the straw mattress again and dashed away up the ladder. He watched her go, uncomprehending. Then her words sank in and his blood ran cold. He bolted after her but froze in the doorway of the shop, rooted to the spot in horror at the sight that met him.
One thing that made the Fire Nation so deadly was that they never did anything halfway. They certainly didn’t need that many troops just to attack a ragtag settlement of Sandbenders, but with the oasis’ tiny population and any reinforcements scattered miles and miles away across the vast desert…well, it was a sure path to an unquestionable victory.
Something caught his eye, drawing his gaze upward. It hovered there in the night sky like a malevolent crimson spirit, and as he watched, the Fire Nation soldiers in the gondola beneath the balloon hurled another bomb down onto the perimeter of the oasis. Thunder roared through the night again and the explosion cast a ghastly orange glow over the battle raging on the ground, through the sand and smoke in the air. Bosco lumbered over and bumped his nose against his master’s hand.
“They have flying machines, Bosco,” Kuei murmured numbly. “The Fire Nation has flying machines, Spirits help us…” The next bomb hit beside the cantina, and in its glare he caught sight of Zafirah surrounded by Firebenders. Even in the terror of the moment, he had to admit that she cut an impressive figure, silhouetted against the burning buildings of the oasis with her long hair swinging around her as she whipped arcs of sand at the soldiers, spinning and twisting amidst the men in fluid, powerful movements. But then he saw another soldier, standing with his back to Kuei and taking aim at the Sandbender woman. “I have to help her,” he rasped through a throat suddenly dry with panic. “I can’t just…” He cast about frantically for some way to intervene on his rescuer’s behalf, wishing not for the first time that he hadn’t let Long Feng talk him out of martial arts lessons when he was a boy. Harder to control someone if they can give you a good, solid thrashing, I imagine, he thought bitterly. Then his eyes landed on a blue and white war club on a nearby shelf. He felt slightly dizzy as he wrapped his right hand around its grip and hefted the weapon, testing its unfamiliar weight. In all of his twenty-five years he had never once lifted his hand in violence to another human being, but by the Spirits, he had to do something, even if it meant… he fought down a surge of queasiness and took a deep breath. Before he could lose his nerve, he spun to the door and charged out into the fray.
The distance between himself and the soldier seemed to vanish impossibly quickly, as though he was moving through a dream. Smoke stung at his eyes and burned in his lungs and the club felt much too heavy in his hand and the soldier seemed to get bigger and bigger as he closed in, and then he was there and he was swinging the club, and someone was shouting hoarsely and he felt fairly certain that the someone was him. The soldier turned, dodging the strike with positively mortifying ease, and his armored fist drove straight at Kuei’s head. He heard the blow connect and saw points of light erupt in front of his eyes before he felt the pain from it. The last thing he saw was Zafirah, hearing his shout, whirling around towards him with dark brown eyes widened in shock, and then the world went black.
Ouch, somehow I don’t think Kuei thought his cunning plan all the way through! D:
CAUSE SOME TROUBLE
Chapter 1-- The King In Exile
Okay, first some stuff.
Stuff #1: Sandbenders! You’ll be meeting mine in this chapter. Here’s a sketch of them. Yes, I know there are various anatomical flaws. This was like the third sketch I drew after a 3-year period of not drawing anything at all, so I think it's pretty good considering.
Stuff #2: Playlist for this Chapter!
1) Avatar Premiere Main Title, The Track Team. Okay, call me presumptuous for putting the show's main theme on my humble little fanfic's playlist. I just couldn't resist though, I love this music so very much!
2) Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah, Camille Saint-Saëns. This is sort of where it all started. I was listening to this piece over the summer and got an idea for a fanfic in which Kuei’s travels take him to the Si Wong Desert, where he meets a Sandbender girl and her brother…
3) The Forgotten People, Thievery Corporation. Listened to this one a lot while writing this chapter.
4) You Only Live Twice, Nancy Sinatra. (It's funny, I don't much like James Bond but I love this song, IDK.) This one doesn’t specifically apply to this chapter. It’s more like, uh, foreshadowing. ;)
OKAY I THINK THAT'S ENOUGH STUFF DON'T YOU AGREE?
Six Months Ago…
It had seemed like such a simple idea at the time. Strike out on his own, travel the world in disguise, see what life was like outside the palace walls. No fancy parties to host, no Dai Li watching his every move, no Long Feng whispering poisonous lies in his ear-just Kuei and Bosco, off on a marvelous adventure, learning more about the citizens of his realm so that he could be a better king for them once the Avatar had ended the war. He hadn’t realized that life with no limits would be so… well, so complicated. He hadn’t taken any money with him when he and the Avatar’s group had fled Ba Sing Se, for one thing. He’d planned on selling his royal robes and adornments in the first port city they reached, but the others felt this would arouse too much suspicion. (Besides, with the Fire Nation now occupying the capital, the ports around the group's camp at Chameleon Bay were swarming with Firebenders.) The kind little Water Tribe girl and her friends had given him some of their money, what little they had. He hadn’t brought any supplies, either; he’d tried with some success to teach himself hunting and fishing, but neither he nor Bosco could quite get the hang of it. He was hungry, exhausted, smelly, sore, he had an increasingly ragged beard creeping along his typically clean-shaven face-all of which was nothing compared to the shame of having fled like a mouse from a cat owl while the Fire Nation brought the last great stronghold of the Earth Kingdom to its knees. But at least, he thought sourly, he had the freedom he’d always craved.
And so it was that Kuei, the 52nd Earth King of Ba Sing Se, found himself seated at a rickety wooden table in the cantina at the Misty Palms Oasis, located on the edge of the vast and deadly Si Wong Desert. An empty ice-cup sat in front of him, its sides and bottom stained pale orange from the drink he’d purchased at the bar with the last of his money; he’d made it this far without getting himself killed and felt he ought to celebrate. Visiting an oasis-now there was another thing that had sounded quite simple. When he’d arrived, however, he’d discovered it to be quite different than expected. It wasn’t misty, there weren’t any palm trees, and indeed the only thing shady about the place was the nature of its inhabitants. Still, ever the optimist, Kuei was determined to enjoy his stay, a task he felt would have been substantially easier if he could just shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen.
A dark shape appeared suddenly in the corner of his eye and perched on the table’s edge beside him, and he started so sharply that he dislodged his glasses. He hastily adjusted the round lenses and leaned back in his chair to get a look at this apparition. The new arrival was obviously a Sandbender-that much was clear from the shabby sand-colored clothes and from the thick layer of wrappings that bound its arms, legs, and head, the standard garb of all the locals. Then it leaned in close and spoke, and he realized it was a female Sandbender.
“Keep your voice down and don’t look about. There are three men in the corner who’ve been watching you since you came in,” she whispered, muffled by the beige cloth that covered all but her warm, dark brown eyes.
“I-I beg your pardon? Watching me?” he sputtered. His mind flooded with images of Fire Nation assassins, sinister creatures bristling with all manner of unpleasantly pointy objects.
“Friends of yours?” she deadpanned. Kuei frowned and scratched at the tangled mess on his chin.
“Well, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be-“
“I was being sarcastic. Damned tourists.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head pityingly, then glanced past him, presumably to where the three men were. “Oh Spirits, here they come.” Kuei shot an anxious look over his shoulder and received a solid cuff upside the head from the Sandbender woman’s heavily wrapped right hand. “I said not to look about! I know these guys; let me handle this.”
“Well, Zafirah, it looks like you’ve made a new friend,” said a sneering voice behind him. He snuck another glance and saw three more Sandbenders. Two of them had their faces exposed; the one in front was young and smooth-shaven, and the other was older and had a thick beard and moustache. Both were scowling fiercely. Kuei grimaced and sunk down into his chair. The girl, however, seemed thoroughly unimpressed.
“Afternoon, Ghashiun,” Zafirah replied. “Speaking of new friends, I don't think I've met yours,” she added sweetly, waving to the other unmasked man. Ghashiun’s scowl deepened more than Kuei thought was physically possible.
“Never mind him. What’s with the tourist?” he asked coldly. That last word was positively dripping with scorn.
“Oh, you know me,” Zafirah said brightly. “I just love tourists! They’re so entertaining!” She ruffled Kuei’s hair and he ducked his head.
“I, ah, I should be going,” Kuei said quickly, trying to keep his tone light and unconcerned. “You two obviously have a lot to talk about, I wouldn’t want to interfere!” He pushed his chair back and stood-right onto the third Sandbender’s foot. The man shouted in pain. Ghashiun grabbed the front of Kuei’s shirt and threw him back against the table, which creaked in protest. He collided with Zafirah, who elbowed him in the side.
“You just don’t get how to listen, do you?” she hissed. “I told you to let me handle this.” She jerked her thumb at the angry young man in front of them, raising her voice. “Just ignore him, he’s been acting like more of a jerk than usual every since he got in trouble for stealing the Avatar’s Sky Bison.” Kuei looked sharply at the Sandbender boy, feeling some of his fear replaced by anger on the young hero’s behalf.
“That was you?” he demanded. The four Sandbenders stared at him, as surprised by his outburst as he was.
“What would you know about it?” asked the third Sandbender suspiciously. Kuei swore inwardly and scrambled to cover up his slip.
“Well, ah, you see, I had the good fortune to meet the A-avatar on my travels. Naturally, I was curious about the, um, about the Sky Bison, never having seen one before, so I asked him some questions about it, and, uh, he-“ Zafirah lunged forward and drove a solid right hook into Ghashiun’s jaw, sending him staggering back with a cry. The other unmasked Sandbender growled and threw a blast of sand straight into her eyes through the narrow opening in her face coverings. She yowled and jerked her right fist towards her waist; the sand shifted under the man and he fell as though a rug had been pulled from beneath his feet.
“Time to go,” Zafirah told him with what Kuei felt to be a rather inappropriate amount of glee given the circumstances. She seized his arm and hauled him towards the curtained doorway before the third Sandbender could even react. The rest of the cantina’s clientele barely shifted their focus from their drinks as the two hurried past. Tavern brawls were hardly a noteworthy occurrence at the Misty Palms Oasis.
The air outside the cantina felt heavy with the stifling heat of late afternoon in the desert. Zafirah slowed to a walk as she dropped Kuei’s arm and rubbed the sand from her eyes, then laughed when she saw the dismayed look on his face.
“Oh, calm down! You made it out in one piece, didn’t you?” She winked at him, then turned and started to walk away from the cantina, lifting one hand in a casual wave. “Well, thanks for the fun. Bye, now!” It took a moment for Kuei to recover his wits, and then he trotted after her. She glanced sideways at him and as he caught up with her, but she kept walking.
“Are you following me?” she asked flatly.
“Wha--no, no, I just... I wanted to thank you for, ah, helping me. What were they going to do to me, anyway?”
“Oh, rob you, maybe rough you up a bit, maybe with an emphasis on the roughing-up if you didn’t have much money on you.” The girl shrugged. “My getting involved probably made it worse, actually,” she added apologetically. “I just can’t pass up an opportunity to piss them off.”
“I don’t have any money at all, so I suppose I ought to thank you for sparing me a good deal of pain. Won’t that man and his, uh, associates come after you now? I assume they’ll want revenge of some sort.”
“Pffft, no! This is business as usual for us. He and I have a go at each other at least once every couple of months,” she replied, chortling.
“Oh,” he said. Bosco, who had been resting near the depleted iceberg at the center of the oasis, spotted his master and lumbered over. Zafirah shrieked and jumped behind Kuei. “Oh, don't worry! That's just Bosco, my pet bear," he said, beaming. She stepped out from behind him, trying to recover her dignity.
“Pet bear?” she echoed. “Tourists.” She turned and started to walk off again.
“Wait! Is there an inn here, someplace I can sleep?”
“Yeah, but they all cost money, which you’ve just said you don’t have, and I’m pretty sure they don’t allow… those,” she said, eying Bosco distastefully. She paused, considering, then spoke again. “What’s your name, tourist?”
“I am Kuei,” he told her. His given name sounded unfamiliar in his own ears. It felt like he was introducing a stranger. He bowed-he was in the presence of a lady, after all-eliciting a disbelieving snort from his peculiar rescuer. “And I believe the angry fellow back there called you Zafirah?”
“That’s me.” She looked him once over, then shook her head again. “Well, Kuei, I’ve got a perfectly good floor you can sleep on if that suits you.” He blinked at her, thoroughly taken aback.
“W-well, I, that's very-I don’t know quite what to say-“ he stammered.
“Do you want the floor or not? ‘Cause really, it’s that or camping for you, and I’m not feelin' too confident about your chances out in the desert all by your lonesome self. Can't guarantee someone else won't mess with you, not to mention all the nasty things livin' out there. I don’t particularly want your death on my conscience,” she said impatiently.
“Yes, please. Thank you, that’s... very generous of you,” he said, flummoxed. She set off at a brisk pace without another word, or even checking to see if he was behind her. It didn’t take long to get there; the oasis was a very small settlement, little more than several clusters of squat, domed huts of hard-packed earth and wood frames, all forming a rough circle around the iceberg and enclosed by a low wall. Zafirah’s home was nestled in a cluster next to the main gate. Once inside, Kuei saw walls lined with swords and knives of all sizes, a counter in the middle of the room, and a work station in the corner behind it. “Do you make weapons?” he asked.
“Nope. Buy, sell, and trade,” she said.
“Oh.”
“By the way, I’d prefer if you left the animal up here.” She pulled back a curtain at the back of the room and disappeared through it. Kuei told Bosco to stay put and followed her through, down a crudely made wooden ladder barely taller than himself and into a musty, dimly lit basement. It was a fairly small but cozy space, with a kitchen in the corner next to the ladder, a curtained area along the wall opposite, and a thin straw mattress heaped with blankets in the corner past the kitchen. Zafirah reached up and unbound her head coverings, depositing them beside the ladder. She was actually rather pretty under all those wrappings; her deeply tanned face was framed by shorter locks that had escaped the confines of a long, thick braid of dark brown hair. He wasn't very good at guessing ages, but she didn't look much older than twenty. She turned to face him and put her fists on her hips. “I’m not running a restaurant here. You help when I tell you to, got it?”
“Of course,” he agreed quickly. She sauntered over to the kitchen, stretching her arms above her head.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m starved,” she said as she grabbed some sticks from a basket and stuck them beneath a rough iron pot hanging in the fireplace. “Would you light that up while I get some things from the pantry?” she asked, pointing absently at a pair of spark rocks on the counter next to the firewood basket. Not bothering to wait for an answer, she swept off through a doorway to the left of the kitchen. Fortunately, a pair of spark rocks was one of the first things Kuei had picked up after parting ways with the Avatar’s group, and thus he was spared the embarrassment of his host thinking him to be totally useless.
A sudden movement to his left caught his attention; he looked up, expecting to see Zafirah, but instead he saw a nearly naked man rising from beneath the pile of blankets in the corner. Kuei wasn’t sure which of them was more startled. He bore an unmistakable resemblance to his host and was perhaps a hair shorter than Kuei. He had the sort of lean build that suggested a history of scarce meals and daily physical labor. The man blinked owlishly from behind a curtain of below-shoulder-length brown hair hanging loose around his face and took an unsteady Bending stance, clearly intent on defending his home. He succeeded in raising a small cloud of dust that promptly flew up into his own face. As he coughed and shook his head, Zafirah emerged from the pantry, arms filled with cloth sacks.
“Zafi! There’s a thief in our house!” rasped the man, slurring his words.
"That’s not a thief, that’s a guest, so will you please put on some pants?" she demanded.
“But I am wearing pants, Zafi!” he insisted, hurt. Zafirah cleared her throat and looked pointedly downward. The man followed her gaze to his bare legs and gaped at the sight.
“Ohhhhh,” he said slowly. He stumbled back into the heap and dug around amidst the blankets for a minute before apparently giving up. Zafirah stomped over to the fireplace and dumped the sacks on the ground.
“My stupid twin brother, Basam. He’s been drinking sake again,” she explained. Then she pulled a waterskin from a hook on the wall and emptied its contents into the pot. Kuei hovered a couple feet behind her, tapping his fingertips together behind his back as if attempting to magically summon a way to be helpful. People weren't his strongest area of expertise; there was already a certain level of personal detachment that came with ascending to the throne, and with Long Feng meticulously excluding him from matters of government, Kuei had been left with few chances for human interaction. He wasn't even allowed to show his face or speak with guests at the fancy parties he'd hosted! He'd had a veritable army of tutors in every academic subject imaginable, and he considered himself a very knowledgeable man-- but when it came to people, and especially the art of conversation, he was in the dark.
“Um. What are you making?” Kuei asked politely. Zafirah shrugged carelessly and began pouring lentils from one sack into the pot. Basam shuffled over and stood next to Kuei, much too close for comfort, eyes narrowed and rubbing his stubbly chin pensively. He leaned away almost involuntarily.
“I still say he looks like a thief,” Basam pronounced. Zafirah snatched a stick of firewood from the basket and threw it at him.
“Basam. Pants!”
He huffed irritably. “Be reasonable, Zafirah. Why in the Spirit World would I put on two pairs of pants?”
“I don’t know, Basam, why don’t you put on one pair to start with, and find out?” she growled. He looked down and was once again surprised. His pride bruised, he stared imperiously at his sister and then shuffled back to the bed.
“Fine, then! I’ll do that, and you see to the thief.”
“Oh, please. If he’s a thief, then I’m the Avatar! Speaking of which, that was a nice diversion back there,” she said, addressing the last part to Kuei. She opened another sack and added rice to the pot, then took two big fistfuls of dried pig-chicken meat from a third bag and added that as well.
“Diversion?”
“The story about meeting the Avatar and knowing about his Sky Bison.”
“I really did meet him, though.” Met him, let him down, and saw his lightning-struck corpse revivified by Spirits-blessed water. He didn't think it wise to mention all of that, though.
“Uh huh. Nice quick thinking there, you!” Well, if she thought he’d done it intentionally, he certainly wasn’t about to disabuse her of that notion.
“Thank you, I do try,” he said mildly. She pointed wordlessly to a wooden box on the counter. Realizing that he was meant to fetch it, Kuei hurriedly retrieved it. She took it from his hands and lifted the lid; it was a spice box. She threw several pinches of different herbs into the pot, then grabbed a long, wooden spoon from the counter and stirred the pot’s contents, humming off-key as she worked. It wasn’t long before an almost overwhelmingly spicy aroma began rising from the stew.
“So what brings you to our lovely oasis?” she asked, a hint of self-deprecation in her tone.
“I live here!” Basam exclaimed. He had found his clothes and was hopping precariously on one foot as he attempted to pull his pants on.
“Not you! I was talking to our guest,” she growled. Now it was Kuei’s turn to shrug, partly to buy some time to think of an answer.
“I, ah, I saw it on my map and thought it seemed like a nice place to visit,” he tried.
“Must be an old map,” Zafirah replied with a crooked smirk. Kuei couldn’t disagree with that. Silence settled over the room, broken only by the scrape of the spoon against the sides of the pot. Eventually, Zafirah lifted the spoon to her lips and sampled its contents, then nodded to herself, satisfied. She hefted an iron lid and set it in place atop the pot, then sat back on her heels. “Now we let that cook for a while. I guess that monster of yours needs food too, huh. What’s that thing eat, anyway?”
“Meat, usually,” he said. She grabbed the sack of dried pig-chicken and handed it to him, and he headed back up the ladder. Bosco looked up and growled mournfully as Kuei entered the shop. He knelt beside his pet and scratched behind the bear’s ears. “I’m sorry I have to leave you up here alone, my friend,” he said as he placed a pile of the meat in front of Bosco’s snout. When he returned to the basement, Zafirah waved in the direction of another curtained alcove beside the pantry.
“The washroom’s through there if you want to get cleaned up at all,” she told him.
“Thank you, I would like that.” He rubbed absently at his chin and frowned. “Does your brother have a spare razor I might borrow?”
“Nah, just use his.” She shot a look at Basam’s immobile form in the corner. “It’s not like he’s in any condition to argue!” she added in a raised voice. When this failed to get a reaction, she rolled her eyes and lifted the pot’s lid to stir again.
The washroom was a cramped space with a metal basin against the far wall beneath a dingy, cracked mirror. He noticed with some surprise that there was a water pump beside the basin stand. Kuei winced slightly as he caught his reflection in the mirror. His face was dirtier than he’d realized and covered in scratches from where he’d stumbled into a patch of brambles a few days earlier. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and that beard was really quite awful. He found a shaving kit wrapped in tattered leather on a shelf cut into the wall beside the mirror and set about returning himself to something approximating a civilized state. When he emerged from the washroom, satisfied that he was as clean as he was going to get without jumping in a lake, their supper had finished cooking and Zafirah was rummaging around on a wooden shelf above the kitchen counter.
“Bowls, bowls, where are the Spirits-be-damned- aha!” She spun around triumphantly with a stack of misshapen metal bowls held high in one hand. Her left eyebrow twitched upward slightly when she caught sight of him, and he almost thought he saw a flicker of a smile at the corners of her mouth. But it was gone before he could figure out what it was and then she was shoving a bowl into his hands and gesturing to the iron pot. “Go ahead. I said I wasn’t running a restaurant!” She plunked down beside the fire and ladled some of the stew into her own bowl. He settled in across from her and took the ladle after her.
“Zafirah, may I ask how the water pump in the washroom works?”
“Absolutely not.” She paused, then grinned at his obvious shock. “Relax, I’m just teasing you! Spirits, you’re such an easy mark it’s not even fun. Of course you can ask. There’s a water tank behind the wall in there. Every few weeks we fill it with our allotment of melted-down water from the iceberg. It may look like there isn’t much of it, but it’s huge underground. And since there’s so few of us living here, we all get to use it. Not very much, of course, so we have to make do. Like, we scrub food scraps off of plates and stuff with sand, then use a tiny little bit of water to wipe out the sand.”
“Ah.” Kuei couldn’t help but glance dubiously at the bowl in his hands.
“Yeah, it’s not too fancy. Nothing like what you’re probably used to, living in…” She paused again, scrutinized him through narrowed eyes, and smirked. “Ba Sing Se?” Kuei managed not to choke on a mouthful of stew.
“H-how did you…?”
“We get folks from all over the place. You spend enough time watching people, you start to see all these little things that give away a person’s story. You can see it in the way they talk-different cities have different accents, you know. And the way they carry themselves? Kinda sad how easy it is to spot the rich noble types. Like you, for example: here you are, sitting on the ground, and your back’s as straight as a reed.” Kuei slouched self-consciously, sending another ghost of a smile flitting across Zafirah’s face before she went on. “I can tell you're from a big city, and there aren’t a whole lot of those. Gaoling, Omashu, Ba Sing Se… that’s pretty much it. Your accent is sort of like other Ba Sing Se folks that've passed through, so I figured I had a one-in-three shot at guessing right. But I gotta say, I almost couldn’t place you; there’s something… odd about you.”
“Odd?” he echoed in a carefully neutral tone.
“Yep. Your accent’s weird for Ba Sing Se. It’s as if-“ Luckily, a distraction arrived in the form of a nearly-sober and fully-dressed Basam slinking sheepishly over to the fireplace and sinking down between the two. “Feeling better, brother?” Zafirah asked dryly.
“Yeah, the fog’s lifting,” he said with an embarrassed grin. He fished a length of green cord out of his pocket and tied his hair back at the nape of his neck, then turned to Kuei. “Hey, sorry if I-“ He stopped short and squinted at their visitor, then looked over at his sister. “How many guys did you bring over tonight, anway?” he demanded.
“Just one,” Zafirah replied with a bemused smile.
“Huh!” He returned his gaze to Kuei. “You don’t look nearly so much like a thief without that beard, y’know,” Basam commented as he helped himself to a bowl of stew. The three ate in surprisingly comfortable silence for a while. It was a refreshing change of pace to simply sit and share a meal and conversation with people who were making no demands of him.
Basam spoke again. “So how’d you get here all the way from Ba Sing Se?”
“Pure chance, I suppose. I picked it out on my map, as I told-“
“Yeah, heard that part. Why were you reading the map, though?”
“Why am I traveling?” Basam nodded eagerly. Kuei tried to quell his surge of nervousness. How much of the truth did he dare tell them? “Well, to be honest, I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter,” he said carefully. Basam suddenly cringed and slapped his forehead.
“Of course, Ba Sing Se! The Fire Nation!” he groaned.
“Sweet spirits, I almost forgot,” Zafirah murmured, her smile vanishing. “You’re lucky to have gotten out, you know?”
“Oh, yes, I’m certainly aware of that,” he agreed, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. He hoped they couldn’t see the guilt he felt as he thought about the thousands of citizens trapped within the city-all the people he was responsible for, the people he’d been unable to protect. The two Sandbenders must have noticed his sudden melancholy, because they swiftly moved on to more mundane topics. Where had he been before the desert? Oh, Chameleon Bay, I hear it's nice up there. Those scratches all over his face and neck? Ooh, brambles! How unfortunate. Bet he'll be more mindful of where he steps now. Had he done much camping before this? No? Well, experience is the best teacher.
Once the three of them had finished their meal, Zafirah set Basam and Kuei to cleaning the dishes while she started a pot of water boiling for tea. With the chores done and the tea brewed, the trio returned to their seats by the fire. Zafirah lounged against the wall next to the fireplace, her expression unreadable, studying Kuei over the rim of a metal teacup as battered as the bowls they’d been eating from.
“So what’re your plans? Where are you headed after this?” she asked.
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead, to be entirely honest,” Kuei admitted. “I suppose I’ll continue traveling, or perhaps I’ll try to get some work, somewhere.”
“Speaking of which, I’d better be going. It’s probably almost dark by now,” Basam announced as he stood up. He added to Kuei, “You can use my bed if you’re staying till morning, I won’t be here and all.”
“Sand glider construction crew,” Zafirah explained, seeing the puzzlement on Kuei’s face. “That stupid beetle-breath Avatar wrecked a bunch of our tribe’s gliders, we gotta rebuild ‘em. The crews can only work at night though, since it’s so hot during the day now that spring’s here.”
“He… he did? But why would the Avatar do that to citizens of the Earth Kingdom? Oh, it’s not-I’m not accusing you of lying, I just don’t understand…”
“He got angry at us ‘cause of what Ghashiun and his guys did. He lost his temper. Me and Basam were there, we saw the whole thing. The boy’s, what, twelve years old?” Zafirah snorted and turned her head away. “Imagine! The fate of the world in the hands of a child.” Basam rolled his eyes at what appeared to be a budding argument and quietly took his leave, unnoticed by the other two.
“I really don’t think you’re being entirely fair to the boy,” Kuei protested.
“And I really don’t think it was fair of the boy to punish our tribe on account of one idiotic jerk,” she retorted. “Most of the guys that helped with the thieving weren’t even ours. He very nearly stranded a bunch of us in the middle of the desert. Getting stuck out there’s a death sentence, okay? And he went all Avatar spirit glowing and would’ve flat-out killed us if that Water Tribe girl hadn’t stopped him.”
He frowned, unsure of how to respond, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to start an argument. Some guest I make!”
“Aw, never mind that. Not your fault you didn’t know the whole story. ‘Sides, a good argument can be fun sometimes, y’know?” she assured him.
“Arguing, tavern brawls… I do believe you and I are operating under different definitions of ‘fun’,” he ventured. She didn’t leave him time to worry that he’d been too forward with his attempted joke-she immediately grinned her approval and thumped her fist against her knee.
“Aha! Just as I thought-you do have a sense of humor!” she said gleefully. By then, the teapot was empty and the fire had burned down to softly glowing embers. Zafirah scrubbed the teacups and pot, then left Kuei to dry them and went off to the washroom. She emerged a few minutes later, running a comb through her unbraided hair. “All right, well, you know where you’re sleeping. I’m over there behind that curtain. Do yourself a favor and stay out, hmm? Off you go.” She made a shooing gesture with her free hand as she walked past him towards her own bed.
“Um, Zafirah…”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.” She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye, slightly surprised by the sincerity in his voice. He started to say something else but faltered under her speculative gaze, then rushed onward. “To bring a stranger into your home, to shelter a man you barely-not that I would even think of-I wouldn’t ever-“ She cut off his increasingly convoluted outpour of gratitude with a mystified smile and a dismissive handwave.
“Good night, Kuei,” she said pointedly.
“Good night. Sleep well,” he answered, somewhat relieved for the interruption. As he settled into his borrowed bed, it occurred to him that no one had ever argued with him before.
***********
He could hear thunder in the distance. A storm was drawing near, and someone was shouting his name. The voice was familiar; the last remnants of a dream. He searched for the source of the voice. We have to find shelter, he said urgently. We have to- he snapped awake as something grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him into a sitting position. It was Zafirah, crouching over him with an almost palpable aura of fear about her. Her face was ashen and twisted in panic.
“Fire Nation!” she hissed. She let go of him so suddenly that he fell backwards onto the straw mattress again and dashed away up the ladder. He watched her go, uncomprehending. Then her words sank in and his blood ran cold. He bolted after her but froze in the doorway of the shop, rooted to the spot in horror at the sight that met him.
One thing that made the Fire Nation so deadly was that they never did anything halfway. They certainly didn’t need that many troops just to attack a ragtag settlement of Sandbenders, but with the oasis’ tiny population and any reinforcements scattered miles and miles away across the vast desert…well, it was a sure path to an unquestionable victory.
Something caught his eye, drawing his gaze upward. It hovered there in the night sky like a malevolent crimson spirit, and as he watched, the Fire Nation soldiers in the gondola beneath the balloon hurled another bomb down onto the perimeter of the oasis. Thunder roared through the night again and the explosion cast a ghastly orange glow over the battle raging on the ground, through the sand and smoke in the air. Bosco lumbered over and bumped his nose against his master’s hand.
“They have flying machines, Bosco,” Kuei murmured numbly. “The Fire Nation has flying machines, Spirits help us…” The next bomb hit beside the cantina, and in its glare he caught sight of Zafirah surrounded by Firebenders. Even in the terror of the moment, he had to admit that she cut an impressive figure, silhouetted against the burning buildings of the oasis with her long hair swinging around her as she whipped arcs of sand at the soldiers, spinning and twisting amidst the men in fluid, powerful movements. But then he saw another soldier, standing with his back to Kuei and taking aim at the Sandbender woman. “I have to help her,” he rasped through a throat suddenly dry with panic. “I can’t just…” He cast about frantically for some way to intervene on his rescuer’s behalf, wishing not for the first time that he hadn’t let Long Feng talk him out of martial arts lessons when he was a boy. Harder to control someone if they can give you a good, solid thrashing, I imagine, he thought bitterly. Then his eyes landed on a blue and white war club on a nearby shelf. He felt slightly dizzy as he wrapped his right hand around its grip and hefted the weapon, testing its unfamiliar weight. In all of his twenty-five years he had never once lifted his hand in violence to another human being, but by the Spirits, he had to do something, even if it meant… he fought down a surge of queasiness and took a deep breath. Before he could lose his nerve, he spun to the door and charged out into the fray.
The distance between himself and the soldier seemed to vanish impossibly quickly, as though he was moving through a dream. Smoke stung at his eyes and burned in his lungs and the club felt much too heavy in his hand and the soldier seemed to get bigger and bigger as he closed in, and then he was there and he was swinging the club, and someone was shouting hoarsely and he felt fairly certain that the someone was him. The soldier turned, dodging the strike with positively mortifying ease, and his armored fist drove straight at Kuei’s head. He heard the blow connect and saw points of light erupt in front of his eyes before he felt the pain from it. The last thing he saw was Zafirah, hearing his shout, whirling around towards him with dark brown eyes widened in shock, and then the world went black.
Ouch, somehow I don’t think Kuei thought his cunning plan all the way through! D: