South, nudged Tapa as it once again swam the opposite direction of the lodestone Prince Zuko placed in its tub.
“SOUTH,” shouted Prince Zuko, relaying the direction of the fish.
“South,” muttered Helmsman Kyo. “We’re running out of supplies and we’re supposed to head straight down to the edge of the world.”
Unfortunately, creaked Jee’s armor.
Three months and counting since their young Prince-cum-irritant had decided to entrust the entire ship to a fish.
Spirits, Jee thought. And that was the entire problem.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, their path was blocked by a sudden massive iceberg.
——————
“IT'S GLOWING! UNCLE, THAT MUST BE THE AVATAR!”
“Or it could be another spirit.”
“CREW, MELT THAT ICE!”
“Prince Zuko, we've gone down this road before.” Many, many false positives, sighed Iroh. Pakku did not appreciate being called a century old, the Guru in the East was a nonbender, and his nephew's aquatic friend, while it initially glowed, seemed to be a regular fish otherwise.
Zuko ignored him.
“Almost—UNCLE, THERE'S A PERSON INSIDE!” A… person? Not a corpse. This was incredibly strange. Iroh stood, abandoning his game in time to see his nephew standing over a boy, the light subsiding.
The boy was clad in orange robes resembling the depictions in the Air Temples; Zuko’s breath held in clear anticipation at the sight of him.
The young boy’s eyes fluttered open. After a deep breath, he opened his mouth. “Do you want to go penguin sledding with me?”
“NO.” The frustration couldn’t be more audible in his nephew’s voice if he tried.
“I'm Aang. What's your name?”
“I’m Zuko, son of Firelord Ozai and Ursa. Are you the Avatar?”
“Uhh… no?” Zuko squinted his good eye at that; evidently, his nephew wasn't completely hopeless. “I'm just an airbender,” Aang said.
“But how? All the Air Temples are empty!”
Aang flinched as if struck. Though it was eerie how the boy didn't know such things, Iroh put it out of his mind for the time being. His nephew was not the… most tactful in delicate matters such as these.
He said, “Fire Lord Sozin used the power of the Great Comet, renamed in his honor, to wipe out the Air Nomad Temples. Your people may yet survive, but my nephew and I traveled the world, and we have seen none at a temple.”
“When did this happen?” Aang asked, still agape.
“You may have been in that iceberg for far longer than you think,” he began. “Fire Lord Sozin started The War a hundred years ago.”
“There's no way—” It seemed this airbender was much like his nephew in the way he had a difficult time confronting brutal truths. The boy trailed off and leapt off the ship, vanishing for a moment.
“Follow him!” His nephew pointed in Aang's last spotted direction.
The Wanyi lurched forward, to find the boy with a beast. He waved at them. “This is my flying bison, Appa.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I am alive
new fic
I only say morning
IlliterateReader
Summary:
One must wonder how in the show, Zuko and Iroh manage to survive on a raft seemingly without food or water.
or
AU where during his banishment, Zuko… befriends the ocean I guess?
teaser drabble of my take on @muffinlance's breakfast friendfish au
When they had finished visiting the Air Temples, his nephew insisted they ought to search the Earth Kingdom for a fugitive centenarian. And what did he do? He said the Avatar could have been reborn into the Water Tribes, causing Zuko to shout the Helmsman into setting course for the Poles.
And what else did he do? He suggested they head north, as Father had imprisoned all the Southern benders.
Now here they were, their course determined by a spirit fish. A spirit fish his nephew dubbed “Tapa”.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
He was a damn fool at the time, dazzled by the blinding, ruby glint in the lamplight as he played hero—
Hold it!
Mister Asogi only had that one ring.
But how could—Klint was dead already.
sudden late night working on the fic synopsis I abandoned—er, postponed.
have 2 very short snippets
Aunt Wu takes one look at Ozai and foretells doom. Something along the lines of "the path may be misleading" or something of the sort. I have no idea what she tells Bumi.
And wouldn’t you know it, someone at the market recognizes Ozai standing there while pretending to not be handcuffed to Bumi.
me: I'm just thinking about how aziraphale's idealizing heaven like an expat who wants to come home, meanwhile crowley remembers it as an abusive home that threw him out; and this fundamental mismatch somehow went undiscussed for 6000 years, but now things have all come to a head and they can't come to an agreement because they're feeling too much too quickly and it's overwhelming and—
me: what if there was a scene where aziraphale went back to earth, but he still offered again because no one would look twice at two angels working together. they'd be safe from violence*, and wouldn't it be lovely to bring the prodigal son back home
also, I wrote something for this last night. if that's anything
They had been talking around each other for thirty minutes, and neither was Aziraphale closer to convincing Crowley to think twice about his opinions on Divine Forgiveness nor the other way around.
"This is the Ineffable Plan, Crowley."
"D'you know, I think that sentence is a paradox."
"Oh would you just listen to me!" Aziraphale shouted. "What I mean is," he said in a more reasonable tone, "This isn't the Great Plan. The Great Plan was never meant to happen."
"Well, I think it's a load of bollocks, honestly. Great, Ineffable, whatever you call it. I'm never doing that. I do have some self-respect,” said Crowley.
“Crowley!” Aziraphale let out, “I’m only trying to bring you home!”
“Oh, angel,” and if one asked Aziraphale, the worst part of it all was the genuine sweetness in Crowley’s smile as he continued, “I can never go home again.”
“Well—whyever not?”
How do you answer that sort of question, if you’ve been there? Discarded, degraded, had a screaming row with your Mother and cursed Her out as She did you?
Some things can never be repaired. Some things, once shattered, must be left in the dust, dreams and naïveté chief among them.
And you try not to think about how it would have been like, if you were that little bit less strangled, loved to the point of being listened to. What would you be, then?
You wouldn’t be real. But, it still stings, just a little. What would have happened if you were created to be a person, not an extension of Her. A thing, a houseplant, a passing fancy.
It's just a little bitterness. Barely anything.
You’d be less cool, for starters. Wouldn’t have been a rebel. And that’s very important to who you are. You do what you want, screw the rules.
You do what you want. You are who you are. And you wouldn't be that in the golden cage in the sky.
Crowley didn’t answer.
[some context: the fall backstory is because this is a snippet set in an AU that'll be completed I don't know when, no I don't think canon pre-fall crowley was yelling at God. But everything else is... potentially canon compliant as far as I'm concerned.]
I am waiting for the water
it remembers, they say
well, I hope it remembers
Three:
I raise my head
I keep my head up
that you may check on my collar
Four:
have I done what you wanted
have I become enough of a woman—
that girls are filed down into
or am I a wild woman
am I the monster you desire
[note: Maybe this is too on the nose, what am I doing here?]
and if I were a siren
let me be untouchable
and if I were made to enchant you
let it be to curse you dead from your own wanting
you will not have me, you will not take me
you cannot embrace me like the depths below
I am the seal woman in her sixth year
pixelskylines
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
