Fic: Let the Record Show, Avatar
Title: Let the Record Show
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Word Count: 866
There was a saying among the women of the Fire Nation nobility, whispered into the ears of their daughters along with the secrets of demurity and the secrets of manipulation and pleasure.
"Your first child is lost to duty, your second to passion, but your third is your own."
.
Some nights, particular nights every year, Ursa lies awake with coarse linen sheets laid loose around her, and her breathing comes harsh because the sands of time are lying on her chest. Those nights, she goes back to that saying, its falling syllables, like a salmon to its spawning, like the tides to the moon, like a man to his courtesan. They roll over and over again on her tongue, until she can feel them on the back of her teeth, grainy like sugar but tasting of lemon.
There are parades held in Ba Seng Se every year in honor of the Fire Nation victory. The first time she went, she wore a hood and every bite of food she took turned to ash in her mouth. She watched the procession from under the awning of the fishmonger's shop, and when the princess's painted lips curved into a cold, self-satisfied smirk as her escorts flinched around her and when the prince turned his head at the sound of a jeer and the sun cast impossibly shadows into the grooves of his scar, the unborn child in Ursa's womb leapt and she doubled over, heaving up all her brined hog-yak rinds onto the cobblestones.
"The Fire Nation makes us all feel like that," the fingermonger said grimly, and his wife sat Ursa down and wiped her brow, eyes concerned and ignorant.
But salmons to their spawning, tides to the moon, Ursa keeps going back. And at night, her children burn themselves onto the back of her eyelids, their voices and their laughter and their screams chase her thoughts around her brain until she's as scrambled as Azulon was, up until she slid her hands along the parchment of his cheeks and breathed death into his mouth, stole her son’s execution from his very lips.
.
Your first child is lost to duty, your second to passion...
.
How strange, the two seem to be such polar opposites and wind up being the most poisonous of bedfellows.
She thinks of the son she loved so dearly and of the daughter she never really understood. Of course she thinks about them; they're everything her life has been about. Bear the heirs to the Fire Nation, Ursa, bear them strong and sturdy. Raise them strict and controlled and curb their passion and their curiosity, reign them with the golden ropes of royalty, weave your son a tapestry to be buried in, whisper the secrets of womanhood into your daughter's ear. If you succeed, you'll lose them. If you fail, you'll lose them.
Salmon to its spawning, tides to the moon.
She sees them the way an antmite sees the tongue that will consume it, but not the creature it belongs to.
Zuko, lucky to be born, tolerated and jerked to his father's side like a tethered plaything. Azula, born lucky, spending every waking moment controlling herself and by extent, everyone around her, over and over until her heart collapses in on itself and there is nothing girl left in her, for all the face and the curves and the sway that say woman.
.
... and your third is your own.
.
"Sleep now, Mother," her daughter laughs, reaching out with fingers as gentle as the broadside of a barn to brush her cheek, and her eyes -- as brown as dirt, as brown as earth, not the faintest dripping hint of honey gold -- dance. "If the tax collectors come, I'll protect you."
She will never firebend. She will never feel the slide of silk on her skin. She will never worry about tripping over robes never designed to fit her in shoes like wooden blocks, never learn how to tilt her chin down and cast her eyes away, aloft like nothing matters, like every word she says isn't weighed like the bones of the Earth Kingdom and the Air Nomads and the Water Tribes on which this new Fire Nation stands. She will marry a fisherman, or a baker, or the village idiot, and she'll never have to work like her mother did; poison in her pockets, making a nest out of gristle.
But when she smiles, her lips blush prettily and the corners of her mouth speak of secrets whispered into a daughter's ear, of the duties of a courtesan favored by her lord.
She is everything Ursa should have been, but her hard lines of her mouth are Zuko's, her soft smile Azula's.
Every year, they go to the parade. Every year, Ursa's mind runs itself four-square. Every year, Zuko's face gets thinner and Azula's words get sharper. Someday, there will be nothing left at all, only tracts dug in the commonest mud, run in circles.
Her daughter laughs, and the sounds flits against the walls of the Lower Ring, escaping up, up into the sky like a salmon from the river, like creatures from the low tide, like a queen from her kingdom.
And your third is your own.
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Word Count: 866
There was a saying among the women of the Fire Nation nobility, whispered into the ears of their daughters along with the secrets of demurity and the secrets of manipulation and pleasure.
"Your first child is lost to duty, your second to passion, but your third is your own."
.
Some nights, particular nights every year, Ursa lies awake with coarse linen sheets laid loose around her, and her breathing comes harsh because the sands of time are lying on her chest. Those nights, she goes back to that saying, its falling syllables, like a salmon to its spawning, like the tides to the moon, like a man to his courtesan. They roll over and over again on her tongue, until she can feel them on the back of her teeth, grainy like sugar but tasting of lemon.
There are parades held in Ba Seng Se every year in honor of the Fire Nation victory. The first time she went, she wore a hood and every bite of food she took turned to ash in her mouth. She watched the procession from under the awning of the fishmonger's shop, and when the princess's painted lips curved into a cold, self-satisfied smirk as her escorts flinched around her and when the prince turned his head at the sound of a jeer and the sun cast impossibly shadows into the grooves of his scar, the unborn child in Ursa's womb leapt and she doubled over, heaving up all her brined hog-yak rinds onto the cobblestones.
"The Fire Nation makes us all feel like that," the fingermonger said grimly, and his wife sat Ursa down and wiped her brow, eyes concerned and ignorant.
But salmons to their spawning, tides to the moon, Ursa keeps going back. And at night, her children burn themselves onto the back of her eyelids, their voices and their laughter and their screams chase her thoughts around her brain until she's as scrambled as Azulon was, up until she slid her hands along the parchment of his cheeks and breathed death into his mouth, stole her son’s execution from his very lips.
.
Your first child is lost to duty, your second to passion...
.
How strange, the two seem to be such polar opposites and wind up being the most poisonous of bedfellows.
She thinks of the son she loved so dearly and of the daughter she never really understood. Of course she thinks about them; they're everything her life has been about. Bear the heirs to the Fire Nation, Ursa, bear them strong and sturdy. Raise them strict and controlled and curb their passion and their curiosity, reign them with the golden ropes of royalty, weave your son a tapestry to be buried in, whisper the secrets of womanhood into your daughter's ear. If you succeed, you'll lose them. If you fail, you'll lose them.
Salmon to its spawning, tides to the moon.
She sees them the way an antmite sees the tongue that will consume it, but not the creature it belongs to.
Zuko, lucky to be born, tolerated and jerked to his father's side like a tethered plaything. Azula, born lucky, spending every waking moment controlling herself and by extent, everyone around her, over and over until her heart collapses in on itself and there is nothing girl left in her, for all the face and the curves and the sway that say woman.
.
... and your third is your own.
.
"Sleep now, Mother," her daughter laughs, reaching out with fingers as gentle as the broadside of a barn to brush her cheek, and her eyes -- as brown as dirt, as brown as earth, not the faintest dripping hint of honey gold -- dance. "If the tax collectors come, I'll protect you."
She will never firebend. She will never feel the slide of silk on her skin. She will never worry about tripping over robes never designed to fit her in shoes like wooden blocks, never learn how to tilt her chin down and cast her eyes away, aloft like nothing matters, like every word she says isn't weighed like the bones of the Earth Kingdom and the Air Nomads and the Water Tribes on which this new Fire Nation stands. She will marry a fisherman, or a baker, or the village idiot, and she'll never have to work like her mother did; poison in her pockets, making a nest out of gristle.
But when she smiles, her lips blush prettily and the corners of her mouth speak of secrets whispered into a daughter's ear, of the duties of a courtesan favored by her lord.
She is everything Ursa should have been, but her hard lines of her mouth are Zuko's, her soft smile Azula's.
Every year, they go to the parade. Every year, Ursa's mind runs itself four-square. Every year, Zuko's face gets thinner and Azula's words get sharper. Someday, there will be nothing left at all, only tracts dug in the commonest mud, run in circles.
Her daughter laughs, and the sounds flits against the walls of the Lower Ring, escaping up, up into the sky like a salmon from the river, like creatures from the low tide, like a queen from her kingdom.
And your third is your own.