Hello friend! I spent entirely too long trying to decide what little treat I could give you. So here’s a little drabble for my Living Statues idea I’d had for @zkmythicalcreaturesweek I never got around to writing:
The statue was a gift from the Southern Water Tribe for his father, placed out in the garden by the turtleduck pond. It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, carved from some unfamiliar black stone that must have been native to the arctic south. Whom ever had carved it took their time to put in the fine details: the lines of the statue’s palms and each eyelash were carved delicately into the stone’s smooth surface.
It was of a young woman with flowing hair and round eyes that seemed to follow you wherever you went. Most of the Fire Nation court marveled over it for the first few weeks after its arrival (it had been on display during one of his father’s lavish parties to be admired), but for Zuko there was something about it he didn’t quite like, although he couldn’t place his finger on it.
Zuko was neither superstitious nor silly, but sometimes he felt as though somehow that statue was alive, that in the darkest hours of the night the girl would step off of her stone pedestal and creep through the empty halls of the palace, her stone feet scraping lightly as her round eyes roved, looking for him.
It was foolish and stupid, and Azula would have surely made fun of him if he had ever dared to voice that irrational fear. That’s what it was—irrational. Statues didn’t move. But it did not stop Zuko from hurrying away from that statue when the last traces of twilight fled the sky, his heart thundering in his chest as his skin prickled, fearful that one of those cold stone hands would wrap around his shoulder as he fled.
No, it wasn’t rational at all. Yet Zuko could not quite convince himself that the statue wasn’t some alive creature, waiting, biding its time, searching for the perfect moment to creep through the palace and murder him in his sleep.
Come trick or treat in my ask box!