Can we see zutara for #57 on the prompt asks?
"You're not as invisble as you think, you know?" a low voice cut through the darkness of the city when Katara, dressed as the Painted Lady, slowed her steps and leaned against the wall of an alley to take a breather after running from some daring immigrants to Ba Sing Se that had thought to test her status as a spirit rather than a human girl playing dress-up.
She uttered a soft shriek at the voice, spinning quickly, her hands diving for the water pouch she'd secured at her hip, uncorking it and preparing to Bend at the intruder on her solitude.
"Who's there?" she demanded, scanning the darkest shadows of the alley, trying to pinpoint where the voice had come from.
"Are you supposed to be a spirit of the Fire Nation?" the voice asked again, and Katara's gaze jerked up to the low-hanging roof of the building across the narrow alley.
She squinted until something moved in the shadows, blending seamlessly into the night, before a ghostly blue and white face appeared when a cloud overhead shifted just enough to cast the faintest moonbeam upon the speaker.
"The Blue Spirit," Katara whispered as her heart turned over inside her chest, fear and a little awe skittering through her veins like ants.
"Impersonating spirits is best done if you're not so... transparent in your bending abilities," he informed her quietly from the place where he crouched on the roof, folded up small, balanced precariously yet rock-steady, like he was a gargoyle designed to be there.
"And you know that from your own impersonations?" she appealed.
He didn't answer, and Katara really hoped it was someone dressed as a spirit and not an actual Blue Spirit she'd potentially just offended.
"Well, uh, thanks for the... critique? I guess?" she rambled a bit nervously when he didn't speak again, just remained perched there, that creepy, unmoving blue and white face watching her in silence. "I'll, uh, be going now."
She shuffled her feet, wondering if he would say or do anything else, wondering how long he'd been following her that he'd figured out she was human and a bender. Had he followed her while she'd been moving through the infirmaries where they took the injured refugees, healing those she could and trying to ease the troubles of those she couldn't? Was he a real spirit, after all?
He didn't say anything to her announcement, so Katara recapped her water skin and picked up the hem of her flowy skirts, where the day and the filth of the lower ring had soaked into it, and pulled it down, gravity desperate to pull it from her frame and into the mud along with everything else.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she moved, and when she peered over her shoulder, the Blue Spirit was gone. Movement out of the corner of her eye snatched her attention, and she blanched to find he'd somehow silently jumped between rooftops and now walked along the one nearest to her, keeping pace with her as she made her way through the dark.
"Are you... a real spirit?" she whispered fearfully, wondering if she'd angered the spirits with her impersonation of one of their own. "You're so silent when you move..."
He only cocked his head again, letting the faint glow of a nearby candle in a neighbouring building's window cast shadows off his mask, and a chill spider walked down her spine. Shivering, Katara rubbed at the gooseflesh that prickled along her arms before hurrying to the mouth of the alley where it was better lit. The spirit kept pace with her, she noticed, eyes on him as she scuttled for a more populated area, like that might save her.
Only when she'd stepped out of the alley and back into the glowing streetlamps of the main road that led toward the gates back up to the middle ring did he stop, standing tall on the rooftop where he could remain in the shadows.
As Katara cast one last look at him before picking up her skirts, intending to run all the way back to the house she and her friends had been given in the middle ring, she heard his voice float to her on the breeze one last time.
dededos
jbbartram-illu
dailybridgerton
origamiaround
areudirty
vaporwave
