Mini-Meme: Ozai Edition!

[beckyh2112]

Because I love writing Ozai way too much.

Any Ozai requests. Pick a pairing, an AU, a random crack-induced scenario, whatever, and I'll write it. One request per person, unless you're a) dark_puck, or b) one of my chatpost buddies, in which case you get three.

Comments

[dark-puck.livejournal.com]

1) Ozai/Song; scars and body-worship

2) It has been a year since the war ended; a year since Ozai had a portion of his soul ripped out.

3) Ozai/Ursa; how Zuko was conceived

Ozai: One Year Later

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

"I am wounded, wounded, and it will never heal," Ozai breathed, eyes staring past Tian, skin pale and clammy.

The young woman bit her lip and gently pulled his head in her lap, fingers working through the tangles in his hair. She needed a brush or a comb, something better than fingers. If someone would just come, she could ask-

But no one was going to come. Today was the first anniversary of War's End, and everyone was out celebrating. Even if it wasn't as loud and boisterous as other Fire celebrations, there was food and drink and merriment for all.

Who, in that, would care about the Firelord's fallen father?

A tear dripped down her face, and she blinked back others furiously.

Tian had just come to bring sweets to him, because his brother had brought her to the Palace kitchens in the first place and he had liked her cinnamon rolls. She just thought he'd appreciate the distraction on today of all days.

Her cinnamon rolls were scattered on the floor behind her, dropped when she saw the state he was in.

"Ursa..." His fingers convulsed, snapped open and closed in a child's firestarting technique. "Ursa, Ursa, I can't find it-"

"She's coming," Tian gulped, petting his hair. He was so cold, icy, and she couldn't tell if her warm touch was helping or hurting him more. "She's coming. She'll be here soon. You just have to hold on longer, lord. Please."

It was cruel to lie about that. Even if he probably wasn't coherent enough to understand her through the pain twisting his expression.

But she couldn't leave him like this, not alone and abandoned, not even to get help.

Because there was no one to get help from.

His fingernails were turning blue. She stared and tried not to cry again. It was too much, though, and hot tears spilled down her face as she reached to grab his hands and press them against her body. He needed warmth.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

Ozai/Ursa

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

A red fire blast reduces the last pirate's chest to smoldering ashes, and Ursa extinguishes the blue flames on her swords. Her pristine swords, because the heat of her fires has destroyed all the blood.

Her hands and arms are not so lucky, nor is her armor. That is all right, because the sticky-feel of drying blood and gore reminds her that she can kill and kill well.

Her heart is still pounding, and she feels strangely alive, ready to rush headlong into another fight. Or-

She sheathes her swords and turns to her husband. The sight of him takes her breath away.

- Fuck.

Ozai doesn't deign to wear armor, and his fine robes are cut and torn and burnt. Tendrils of hair have come loose, and his hands are bloody to the elbow. He absently pushes hair out of his eyes, smearing blood across his face. His eyes blaze molten gold against the false, bloody warpaint.

He is more beautiful than anything.

Ursa stalks towards him, her hips swinging, and Ozai's expression becomes sharper, more intense. Hungry.

One bloody hand siezes him by the beard to yank into a kiss, while she tears open his robe entirely with the other. His hands go in her hair, blood and ash rubbing into her scalp.

She shoves him back, forcing him down on a pile of bodies. His hands fall away from her hair, burn away the latches of her armor to unbind her. Then he bites her mouth in a kiss-

His robes vanish in a puff of ash, and her armor crashes to the floor.

Ozai/Song

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

"Someone branded you as his," he said, holding her ankle with such care. His hair fell around him like a veil as he leaned down, and his breath was hot against the side of her knee when he spoke again. "Has your lover reclaimed them for you?"

"No," she said, and she thought she should be afraid. But her needles were coated with sleep-jasmine and numbweed, and this eminently dangerous man could break her before she could pierce him. "I reclaimed them myself."

"Good," he murmured, and his beard slid like silk over her skin. Teeth scraped against the inside of her knee.

She laid her hand on his hair, marveling at how lovely it was even in the wilds of the Earth Kingdom. He was more beautiful than his son, though she recognized that was because Lee had yet to finish refining into an adult.

Perhaps if she saw him again, he would take her breath away.

Perhaps if she saw him again, his father would break his neck with that warmly delighted smirk.

His tongue traced the curves and windings of her scars from knee to ankle. She turned and lifted her leg as he directed, sometimes feeling rather immodest at the position it put her in.

He kissed her ankle mildly, spine curved like a sun-warmed snake. She could not see his eyes, could not see if they were cold or warm or burning.

His mouth, though. His mouth she can feel.

His lips brushed against the lattice-scar on her ankle. "Shall I mark you as mine, Song-chan? I've nothing so permanent as fire."

"I do not mind teeth," she allowed.

His smile pressed against her skin like she had made a mistake.

[suzukiblu.livejournal.com]

I <3 you. *grins*


That damn diamond-chains Ozai; culture shock. You know you wanna. <333

Ozai/Ursa, feral!verse; no one will ever change this animal I have become. Yes I DO mean the raised-by-sabretooth-moose-lions one, be grateful I did not ask for OzaiKITTY.

Ozai, Azula, Zuko, and lack-of-Ursa; see what you miss by being dead?

Diamond-Chains Ozai

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

AU, obviously, where Roku's smack-down on 'no conquering' actually took with Sozin, and the Fire Nation has been trying more subtle methods to acquire the Earth Kingdom. They find the NWT extremely useful in this regard.

---

"He's a gift," the Fire Nation envoy repeated. "From the Firelord himself as thanks to the aid the Northern Water Tribe has given us in the past and hopefully will continue to give us in the future."

Arnook looked at the young man draped in glittering silver and crystal chains, at the hard line of his mouth and the fire in his golden eyes. 'Willingly brought', the envoy had assured him, and he knew there was more than one kind of willing.

"The Fire Nation is generous in its gifts, but it is not the Water Tribe's customs to take people in exchange for anything," Arnook said, picking his words carefully. Turning down this gift lightly would be taken as an insult.

Though, knowing the Fire Nation, he thought dourly, turning down the gift at all would be taken as an insult.

The envoy's guards predictably bristled, and the envoy himself suddenly seemed on-edge of boiling over. Only the one they presented as a gift seemed not to care.

"I do not think you understand," the man who was a gift said softly, voice raspy as so many of the Firefolk's were. "I am Prince Ozai. To refuse such a gift as me is to invite the fire and sword. Honor," he twisted the word into mockery, "Would demand no less."

The men of the Water Tribe on the quay paled, and Arnook himself could only spare a flash of absolute horror. The Firelord's own son?

"I see," he said, because he was chief of the Tribe, and he must. "An interesting gift they give me."

Ozai shrugged, the chains rustling over the surely too-thin clothes he wore. "The Firelord is generous. But he does not send merely me." He raised one bechained hand. "He sends you silver and diamonds to do with as you will."

"The Firelord is very generous," Arnook said quietly, seeing the trap laid out before him. Deny this gift and face war, or accept it and be in debt to Azulon.

He was almost tempted to risk the war.

But what kind of man would do this to his own son?

Arnook didn't know the answer to that, and until he did, he could not risk his people against the Fire Nation. Not given what he knew of their capabilities.

Ozai/Ursa: Feral'verse

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Some mornings, he does not remember he is human.

Ursa brings him back, Ursa always brings him back. But she cannot change that some mornings he is not Ozai, the wild one, but instead is the sabretooth moose-lion with hands and fire.

She cannot change that he learned language, his own language, because he is clever. That it is still an effort to translate some days.

His instincts are all wrong. They are the instincts of a solitary predator, and he always reads humans as cooperative herd creatures. Not quite predators, rarely prey.

Herds feel wrong, and he does not like crowds.

He likes Ursa, loves Ursa, fucks Ursa. So he lets her teach him to be human.

But some mornings he remembers he is a moose-lion.

Bonus: Ozaikitty and Long Fengkitty

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

There is a red-furred cat with bright golden eyes sitting on a cushion. Not just any red, either, but the fine, deep red of a purebred Fire cat.

He rises, stretches, and from nose to tail, he is the epitome of purebred Fire. His coat is silky and long, deep red on the body with a dusting of gold at the color-points and covering his tail. His build is sleek and thin, the long fur enhancing the long lines of his body.

Sitting nearby is a deep, dark green cat. This one too has color-points in gold, but they are deeply filled, covering the face and ears, the paws and tail. His fur is short and silky, and his pale green eyes are sharp.

There is something of a similarity in build between the Fire cat and the green ones.

The two cats ignore each other utterly.

Ozai, His Kids, and Lack-of-Ursa (1/2)

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Ember Island is different this summer. People have always been respectful to Father before, but now the crown is in his hair and people are... different. Zuko can't catch the spark of it, though, and it's frustrating.

Azula refuses to have anything to do with anyone, and she spends most of the week (only a week in the entire summer!) inside the vacation house. Zuko doesn't see her most of the time, and Father spends most of his time sun-basking or attending to his work as Firelord.

Zuko is left alone for much of it, and he doesn't know what to do with himself.

One morning, though, Father puts away his work and hunts down Azula. "We are going to see 'Love Amongst the Dragons' tonight. Be presentable, or you'll stay here."

Azula scowls and pretends that her hair isn't a rat's nest, fingers tugging through the ends of it. She looks terrible, but she's looked the near-edge of terrible since Mother went away.

Zuko frowns. "But the Players never play tonight..."

"We aren't going to attend anything from them anymore," Father says with such surprising venom that both Azula and Zuko startle back. Father ignores it, of course.

Li and Lo come over that afternoon and by the time the evening comes, both Zuko and Azula look as if Mother were still here.

They don't go into town, though. Instead Father walks them down to the beach, and there is a circle drawn in the sand there and blankets laid out for an audience. People have already gathered, but of course they make way for Father to sit where he wants.

There's a rustle of activity among the folk standing on the other side of the circle from those seated. It's not until years later that Zuko realizes that they'd not been expecting the Firelord and needed to replan a few bits.

Zuko tries to stay settled at Father's right hand, but Azula is sitting as still as ashes and that's so strange. He doesn't realize how jittery he is until Father's hand settles in the middle of his back.

"Watch," Father says.

A man, scarred by a blade, leaps into the circle, fire flaring around him. "Welcome, everyone, to tonight's performance of 'Love Amongst the Dragons' as performed by the Flame's Edge Troupe! We'll begin when it gets full dark. Until then, we've a bit of fiery acrobatics and slapstick to entertain you."

The acrobatics are impressive, though it's more impressive to Zuko at the number of retired soldiers in the troupe. So many firebenders, and they're so skilled, and by the time they're done, Zuko has vowed to train harder than ever.

The slapstick he gets some of, because it's slapstick, but there's times when the adults laugh and he has no idea why. What's so funny about the Earth Kingdom servant responding to the princes' accusation that he has undone their mother with "I have done your mother!"?

[spyridona.livejournal.com]

Yay! <3

Hakozai, keeping it hidden. Because while traumatized Sokka is fun, traumatized Katara isn't.

Urzai, warrior.

Lu Ten and Ozai, teenhood. You know the drill, switch out the 'and' for '/' if you'd like. :D

Ozai/Lu Ten

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Lu Ten is about five years younger than Ozai, so he's about fifteen-sixteen here. Not one of his shining moments.

---

Uncle Ozai has a lover, and it's not Lu Ten. Which is probably why three-quarters of the guards cower away from him, his mother isn't speaking to him, and the servants walk on glass around him.

Lu Ten is miserable of seeing Ozai with his guardsman, of their little not-very-secret touches, of the fierce delight in Ozai's face when he and Li Kazai spar together.

It's made him a snarling horror to be around, and he can't even tell anyone why he's behaving this way. Because Ozai is his uncle, and that means it doesn't matter that Ozai is his only equal or that Ozai is beautiful like a dragon in flight.

Lu Ten hates Kazai for having what he cannot. He'd love an excuse to challenge the older man to an Agni Kai, but he is never less than utterly respectful to Lu Ten.

It's Mother who gives him the answer in a note, because she is still not speaking to him but she wants him to be happy. 'See that your grandfather hears that Ozai has a male lover, and that your father hears the lover's name.'

Ozai/Ursa: Warrior

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Ursa's father was a soldier for the Firelord for two twenty-year enlistments before he married her mother. He had fought and fought and fought, because he was Roku's son, and that blood had no love from the Firelord.

Her father won the right not to die in service, but he never stopped fighting. Her mother's family were spice-merchants, so he took a ship for them and captained it. He fought pirates and storms and often his wife.

Daiki was his first child, and he learned everything his father could teach him. How to fight, how to sail, the nature of elemental balance, what the price of duty was.

Ursa was his second child, and the only firebender. She learned what her elder brother could not, how to fight with fire and fury and blue, blue flames.

She too learned the price of duty.

Duty compelled her to the Fire Palace today and to the gold-eyed man in silk robes who looked nothing at all like Sozin.

He was not a warrior, rumors said, not a soldier. Not like his brother. He was a scholar and a Sage. A pretty plaything of a prince. An insult, her father had said, a wastrel.

That night, when they consummated the marriage, she found hard muscles underneath those robes. She found scars from burn and blade. She found calloused hands and burning fire.

She found a warrior to make war with.

Hakoda/Ozai

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

There are sins no fire ever burns away. The sins of fire are bright and hot, and the damage they cause is ugly and terrible.

Fire is the element of power, and Hakoda thinks even Ozai does not realize how little power he actually lost. If the Fire Nation were not so preoccupied with 'bending, the Phoenix King would sit on his throne still.

Perhaps Hakoda would be safer if he did.

Katara is home without Aang for the first time in a long time. Her eyes sparkle and some of the strain is gone from her voice. She is so happy to be with her father and Bato, to see Master Pakku and train with him, to help Mama with the cooking and the gutting.

She is not happy to see Ozai with his polar beardog, and her bright eyes turn icy when he happens by with the half-grown pup trotting at his side.

But Iqniq adores Ozai, and Ozai has let Bato teach him how to train the pup to hunt and track and carry and do all the useful things polar beardogs do. So even Mama, who has more reason than anyone to loathe the Fire Nation, cannot complain about the fallen Firelord's beardog.

Katara's eyes go icier still when Ozai brushes past him, and Hakoda asks Yue to keep Katara's focus on the fallen Firelord. Anything to keep her from seeing the flush in his cheeks, and the way even that little hardly-touch burns.

At night, Ozai stays with Bato, and it's too damn cold in Hakoda's tent without Iqniq flopped across them both.

(without Ozai's obscene firebender warmth soaking through his skin)

But Katara shares with him, because she certainly can't share with Mama now that Pakku does. It's nice to spend time with his little girl, to tell her ancestral stories and listen to her own stories. It's nice to feel normal, soft and content and sleepy.

Water is the element of change, and in the morning, Ozai's touch on his shoulder when he bends down to drawl in his ear that Bato is taking him out to fish is so welcome and familiar, Hakoda has to stop himself from leaning into it.

Ozai pauses to pull on his gloves, dragging the sleeves up enough to flash a deep, fresh bite-mark atop a fading one on the inside of his arm.

Hakoda stares down at the snow to keep from glaring at Bato. They are best friends, have been best friends since they were boys, and this should not be happening. But he can't stop the ugly heat in his chest.

Katara is looking at him with worry when he raises his head, and Ozai is long gone.

Fire is the element of power, and water is the element of change. It shouldn't hurt or surprise him so much that Ozai hurts them.

They're the ones letting him, after all.

[lunatron.livejournal.com]

In which Ozai discovers he didn't really have his 'bending ripped out - he just had the wrong kind of 'bending put in.

Bonus: Ozai and Scourge Cause Crime

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

The black tanker-truck smashed through the armored barriers and slewed to the side. His tanker-trailer unfolded into a battlestation aimed at the soldiers defending the ring-device.

Ozai reached for the handle of the door. "Perhaps something a bit more subtle, Scourge."

The door obligingly opened. "Setting people on fire isn't subtle."

"Consider it less potentially damaging to the artifact then."

Ozai stepped down from the driver's side of the black truck, dressed in blood-red clothing of a foreign sort. He still wore the gold crown of Firelord in his hair, however, and he smiled to see the fear redouble on these men's faces.

Then Scourge transformed, and their opponents broke and ran.

Ozai With Different 'Bending

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

He was cold, so cold. Everyone remarked on it, as if he didn't know it were more than merely inside his own mind.

As if he hadn't realized months ago that while he no longer felt fires, he did feel something else.

It had been going on for weeks before he really noticed it. He hadn't been himself for some time, his spirit retreating deep inside himself after the Avatar's mauling. After losing the entire world, everything he had ever won for himself.

Ozai's lips peeled back in a snarl. Weeks, weeks to realize that what he was sensing was not fire but something else. Weeks to realize he even sensed anything at all.

But there was something in people, in cups of tea, in the rain that danced in the places of his mind that had once listened to hearth-fires, signal-fires, and the flow of lava below the capital.

He refused to give it power by naming it. Not after his miserable failures to manipulate the element.

Ozai had been a firebending master. A grandmaster, likely, if that rank had not been abolished long ago. He burned in the core of his being, and he knew that burning, that everything he had ever been taught was all wrong for this other element.

To master it, he would have to change himself.

He was not yet ready to do that. Not until he understood the nature of Water more fully.

The undertow, the flood, the hurricane. The volcano, the inferno, the firestorm. The spring, the well, the river. The hearth-fire, the forge-fire, the signal-fire.

It would take time, but patience was a virtue Ozai had in abundance.

His mouth curved in a smile, and the guard whose blood-water he held still fell down dead.

[stillthere4me.livejournal.com]

Cool meme! :D

(XD I don't know what you mean specifically by "chat buddies", so I'm going to assume that's not me since I don't know)

Hmm... Ozai noticing Zuko likes boys more than a straight fire nation prince should (whether suspicions are well founded or his own misconceptions or Ozai is told this by Azula whom he trusts more or any combination of the three), and is not happy with this and confronts Zuko.

Can be either little Zuko at a time he's not around his mother (though Ursa's still alive), that intermin between his mother leaving and Zuko getting burned, or when he's back at the beginning of season three.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I don't think I can write Ozai as being unhappy with Zuko being gay. It's just completely contra to the way I write Fire Nation culture in general (where it's sex-acts that are problematic rather than the gender of partners) and Ozai in particular (who doesn't give a flip about what is and is not appropriate sexually for a prince and would probably be supportive of Zuko not having children).

*awards an extra request-slot since I did say 'anything goes' previously*

A-HAH!

[calicojane.livejournal.com]

Ozai and Iroh's first conversation after Iroh gets back from his mourning/spirit quest after the seige to find his father is dead, his brother is Fire Lord, his sister-in-law is missing, and oh yeah, his sort-of-grandson-who-he-never-met is now his nephew. 'Cause this is Flintverse, of course. :D

*earliest. opportunity. told you.*

>^.^<

Iroh and Ozai

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Iroh comes to him alone, his armor still soot-stained and bloody and broken from the Siege. Cleaning it has seemed too big a chore, and what does it matter when he will never wear it again? He has failed, and he has burned his son, giving Lu Ten honor in that hellish land so far from home.

He has failed. Lu Ten is burned to ashes, ashes and cinders.

His brother sits on the Bronze Throne. Their father is dead. Of what? Fever, Iroh thinks he heard, fever or heart attack or perhaps grief for hadn't he loved Lu Ten too? Not as well as he loved Azula, but she was his name-child, his immortality.

His brother sits on the Bronze Throne, and Ozai's eyes are false-honey, hard and cold as gold coins.

Ozai's eyes were not so cold the last time he had been home, when he and Lu Ten had played at shogi for hours.

Lu Ten is ashes.

Ozai's eyes are as cold as when he faced Iroh in that long-ago Agni Kai. When Kazai had gone he knew not where.

Ursa did not greet Iroh on his arrival as was her wont.

"Hail, Firelord Ozai," Iroh says tiredly. He has done nothing to earn Ozai's enmity this time, and he will not bear his brother's anger. He has lost too much already, his father consigned to flame, his son is ashes, ashes and cinders and smoke on the wind.

"Hail, Dragon of the West," Ozai says, and his voice is crueler than the sun that still shines. "Hail, General Iroh."

"No longer." Each word is a mountain to move from his thoughts to his tongue. "I cannot."

"You cannot?"

Lu Ten is ashes, and Ozai's eyes are hard.

Iroh undoes the latches on his breastplates and lets it crash to the floor. "I will not fight this war any longer." Lu Ten is ashes and cinders. "I will take Lu Ten's boy-" His voice cracks, and he does not weep before his cold, hard brother. "-and I will live with Zolena."

"You would take my son from me?" Ozai asks, and malice gilds his voice as fair as a white dragon blossom.

Lu Ten is ashes. There is nothing left to fight for. Lu Ten is ashes.

Iroh shakes his head. "No. Let me depart in peace, Firelord."

"Of course, brother. Go."

He went.

[neldluva.livejournal.com]

Hmm ... what about something along the lines of ... kid!Ozai and younger!Iroh, a firebending lesson. (Hehe, Ozai as like, 7 years old would be so adorable.)

tiny!Ozai and Iroh

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

The light in the palace is grey today, where it is not yellow from the lanterns. Ozai knows exactly what this means, and he does not show up for tutoring as he ought. Li and Lo will be mock-irritated with him that evening, but they and the Fire Sage understand why this is more important.

No one else will even notice to care.

There are many windows in the prince's levels of the palace. He settles on the sill of one looking out on the storm, pushing open the shutters so he can watch. The wind blows rain on him until he is soaking wet, but he doesn't care.

Water won't kill him.

Lightning flashes, and thunder sounds as loud as a spirit by his side. Ozai gazes out at the storm in awe, following the cold-fire before it strikes.

Some time later, someone comes and finds him. The storm has faded, but Ozai still focuses on the distant rumble of thunder.

"What are you doing?" his brother asks, voice smoke-roughened and gravely.

Ozai glances sharply at the man, annoyed no one had told him Iroh had returned from the campaign so soon. His brother looks much as he did the first time Ozai met him last year - he wears his armor easily, his mood is genial, and he is almost the spitting image of portraits of their revered grandfather.

"Following the lightning," Ozai answers as he climbs down from the window. His brother is giving him a stern look, and it occurs to him what he must look like - a half-drowned urchin more than a prince of the blood. He adds, almost defensively, "It doesn't come when I call yet, but I'm improving."

"You are young to be learning lightning yet, Ozai," his brother says fondly. "Why don't we find you some towels and dry clothes."

"I am ten," Ozai says, calling on his breath of fire to warm himself. He crosses his arms and glares up at his brother, who is ever so old at just over thirty. "Stop acting like I'm a baby."

Iroh looks amused rather than properly chastised, and he almost casually bats the sodden rat's tail Ozai's phoenix tail has become. "You are still soaking wet. Dry clothes and tea, then perhaps I will show you a few things about lightning, little brother."

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

I kind of want to see Ozai courting Ursa. Either that or more corporate!Ozai AU.

Corporate Ozai

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Every girl's crazy about a sharp-dressed man.

---

"Do you always have to dress up so nicely?" Ursa teased her fiance, fingers stroking the material of Ozai's pinstripe suit.

He grinned at her, briefcase over his other shoulder, jacket and shirt sleeves down enough to tantalizingly show the bite-mark on the inside of his wrist. "I do have a company to run, darling. Father may want Iroh to inherit his company, but that doesn't mean I have to wallow in decadent luxury."

"You'd find it boring if you did," she purred. "Speaking of which, my dearest business partner, we need to talk about the new import-export laws and duties."

[raikomotomiya.livejournal.com]

Ozai and Zuko. OH SNAP moment on Ozai's part and Zuko finally getting one up on the old man.

Extra special bonus round: Zuko shows off that he might not have the firepower of everyone else in the family, he's still learned a few damn neat tricks along the way.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

.... So, "Day of Black Sun"?

[gigabomb.livejournal.com]

Post series, Ozai interacting with little Ursa in some way (maybe doing grandfatherly things with a granddaughter who isn't his by blood).

Ozai and little Ursa

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

The little girl with the glossy black hair rode on a Fire man's shoulders, licking sugar-stickiness off her fingers. The man's hair was a thick mane of pepper-and-salt, soot black and ashy white, and every now and then, the little girl would rub her face against it.

From the pained look the man gave when she did, he hadn't forgotten she was eating spun sugar.

The street fair in Ba Sing Se was gay and full of color, bright paper lanterns strung between buildings and vendors everywhere. It seemed to delight the little girl, and she pointed excitedly at an acrobat dancing through an earthbent obstacle course. "Look, Grampa!"

He looked. "Hnh."

"Mama says Auntie Ty Lee can teach me to do things like that. Ooooh!" The little girl's eyes lit up as she caught sight of an earthcoaster rising out of the street further down. "Can we go on that, can we, can we, pleeeeeeaaaase, I've been really good, pleasepleaseplease?"

The man eyed it dubiously. "What does your father think of that kind of thing?"

The little girl shifted uncomfortably, her shoulders slumping. "He says they're not safe."

"Then of course we can go on it."