So! Where do I even start? This story has been around for a while. I started it in 2009. I never got around to finishing it, due to various circumstances. I fell out of the fan fiction game for a while. And now I am rewriting it. When I started this project, I told my handful of readers that I would finish this story no matter what… and then I kind of left it hanging for a couple years or so. (Sorry, guys.) Well, we're back in business. To those of you who read this before and are getting the update notifications, please enjoy these revisions. To anyone who's just now jumping in, welcome! I hope y'all like OCs and minor characters who got like three episodes of screen time, because that's exactly what you're getting. Let's roll!

CHAPTER ONE- THE KING IN EXILE

One week after the fall of Ba Sing Se

It had seemed like such a simple idea at the time. Strike out on his own, travel the world in disguise, see what life was like outside the palace walls. No Dai Li watching his every move, no Long Feng whispering poisonous lies in his ear and keeping him distracted from reality with frivolities—just Kuei and Bosco, off on a marvelous adventure, learning all he'd ever wanted to know about life outside Ba Sing Se's walls.

But he hadn't realized that life with no limits would be so… complicated. He hadn't taken any money with him, for one thing. He hadn't brought any supplies, either; he'd tried with some limited success to teach himself hunting and fishing, but neither he nor Bosco could quite get the hang of it. Luckily, he'd managed to sell a few of the larger fish he'd caught, and that was enough to keep a few coins in his pocket as they went along. All in all, this was proving to be more of an ordeal than he'd planned for. He was hungry, exhausted, smelly, sore, and he had an increasingly ragged beard growing in.

And all of that was nothing compared to the shame of having fled like a mouse from a cat owl while the Fire Nation brought the last great stronghold of the Earth Kingdom to its knees. But at least, he thought sourly, he had the freedom he'd always craved.

And so it was that Kuei, the 52nd Earth King of Ba Sing Se, found himself seated at a rickety wooden table in the cantina at the Misty Palms Oasis, located on the edge of the vast and deadly Si Wong Desert. An empty ice-cup sat in front of him, its sides and bottom stained pale orange from the drink he'd purchased at the bar with the last of his money; perhaps it would've been wiser to hang on to those final few coins, but he'd made it this far without getting himself killed and felt he ought to celebrate.

Visiting an oasis—now there was another thing that had sounded quite simple. When he'd arrived, however, he'd discovered it to be quite different than expected. It wasn't misty, there weren't many palm trees, and indeed the only shade to be found was in the suspicious glances thrown his way by the locals. Still, ever the optimist, Kuei was determined to enjoy his stay, a task he felt would have been substantially easier if he could just shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen.

A dark shape appeared suddenly in the corner of his eye and perched on the table's edge beside him, and he jumped so sharply that he dislodged his glasses. He hastily adjusted the round lenses and leaned back in his chair to get a look at this apparition. The new arrival was obviously a Sandbender—that much was clear from the shabby, sand-colored clothes, heavily layered arm and leg wraps, and headscarves, the standard garb of all the locals. Then the person leaned in close and spoke in a low, rich voice that sounded like it might be feminine.

"Keep your voice down and don't look about. There are three men in the corner who've been watching you since you came in," she whispered, her voice muffled by the beige scarves that covered all but her warm, dark brown eyes.

"I-I beg your pardon? Watching me?" he sputtered. His mind flooded with images of Fire Nation assassins, sinister creatures bristling with all manner of unpleasantly pointy objects.

"Friends of yours?" she deadpanned. Kuei frowned and scratched at the tangled beard on his chin.

"Well, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be—" he started, but she held up a cloth-bundled hand to stop him.

"I was being sarcastic. Damned tourists." She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head pityingly, then glanced past him, presumably to where the three men were. "Oh, here they come! Watch this, it's gonna be hilarious."

"Oh?" Kuei remarked nervously. He wasn't sure how she could possibly sound so enthusiastic about this situation. He shot an anxious look over his shoulder and received a solid cuff upside the head from the Sandbender woman's heavily wrapped right hand.

"Didn't I just say not to look? I know these guys, let me handle this," she said in an undertone. Her eyes darted up, looking behind Kuei, and she raised her voice slightly as she added, "They're not as tough as they look."

"You think so, huh?" said a sneering voice behind him. Kuei snuck another glance over his shoulder and saw three more Sandbenders. Two of them had their faces exposed; the one in front was young and clean-shaven, and the other was older and had a thick beard and moustache. Both were scowling fiercely. Kuei grimaced and sank down into his chair. The girl, however, seemed thoroughly unimpressed.

"Afternoon, Ghashiun," the woman replied. "You seem a little tense today! Is something wrong?" Ghashiun's scowl deepened more than Kuei thought was physically possible.

"You tell me. What, you hanging out with tourists now, huh, Zafirah?" he asked coldly. Kuei tried not to sink any further in his seat, feeling as though he'd been plopped down in the middle of something bad.

"Oh, you know me," Zafirah said brightly. "I just love tourists! They're so entertaining!" She reached over and lightly flicked Kuei's ear; he ducked his head, startled.

"I, uh, I should be going," Kuei said quickly, trying to keep his tone light and unconcerned. "You two obviously have a lot to talk about, I wouldn't want to interfere!" He pushed his chair back and stood—right onto the third Sandbender's foot. The man shouted in pain, then snarled and grabbed the front of Kuei's shirt, throwing him back against the table. The brittle wood creaked from the impact and he collided with Zafirah, who elbowed him in the side.

"You just don't listen, do you?" she hissed. "I told you to let me handle this." She jerked her thumb at the angry young man in front of them, raising her voice. "Just ignore him, he's been acting like more of a jerk than usual every since he got in trouble for stealing the Avatar's Sky Bison." Kuei looked sharply at the Sandbender boy, a spike of anger pushing through the fear.

"Wait, that was you?!" he demanded. All four Sandbenders stared at him, as surprised by his outburst as he was.

"What would you know about it?" asked the third Sandbender suspiciously. Kuei swore inwardly and scrambled to cover up his slip. That flash of boldness was gone as quickly as it had come.

"Well, uh, you see," he sputtered, "I had the good fortune to meet the A-avatar on my travels. Naturally, I was curious about the, um, about the Sky Bison, never having seen one before, so I asked him some questions about it, and, uh, he—"

And then Zafirah lunged forward, shoving past him, and drove a solid right hook into Ghashiun's chin. Kuei's jaw dropped as the Sandbender man stumbled back with a pained howl. The other unmasked Sandbender swore and leaped at her—but she deftly twisted to the side and he staggered by, slamming into the table. The man pushed off of it and whirled to face her, sweeping his left hand up. Zafirah dodged the blast of sand that flew at her, but the man's right hand brought another hail of sand that flew right through the gap in the cloth covering her face.

She yowled and clasped her left hand over her eyes, then jerked her right fist towards her waist; the sand shifted under the man and he toppled backwards as though a rug had been pulled from beneath his feet. Zafirah spun to face Kuei, eyes red and watery, but crinkled in the corners—almost like she were smiling beneath her headscarves.

"Time to go!" Zafirah told him with what Kuei felt to be a rather inappropriate amount of glee given the circumstances. She seized his arm and hauled him towards the exit, right past the third masked Sandbender. Kuei braced himself for a last-minute attack but the man just stared dispassionately at them as they passed, arms crossed over his broad chest. The rest of the cantina's clientele barely looked up from their drinks as the two made their escape through the curtained doorway. Tavern brawls were clearly not a noteworthy occurrence at the Misty Palms Oasis.

The air outside the cantina felt heavy with the stifling heat of early evening in the desert. Zafirah slowed to a walk as she dropped Kuei's arm and rubbed the sand from her eyes, then laughed when she saw the dismayed look on his face. His heart was hammering and he probably looked as rattled as he felt.

"Oh, calm down! That was hardly even a fight. And you made it out in one piece, didn't you?" She winked at him, then turned and started to walk away from the cantina, lifting one hand in a casual wave. "Well, that was fun. Bye, now!" It took a moment for Kuei to recover his wits, and he suddenly recalled how the fight had started— those men had been watching him, surely they would have done something to him if she hadn't intervened. He ought to express his gratitude, then!

"Wait one moment, please!" he called, hurrying after her. She glanced sideways as he caught up, but didn't slow her pace.

"Are you following me?" she asked flatly. Her fingers flexed and he could see the sand around her feet swirl to life.

"Wha-no, no!" he exclaimed, halting in his tracks. "I just... wanted to thank you for helping me. You said they were watching me, didn't you? Whatever they were plotting, I would have fallen right into it. I don't even know what they wanted from me."

"Huh?" She cocked her head, then chortled and said, "Oh, I didn't do it to be helpful! I mainly just wanted to piss 'em off! I told ya it was gonna be hilarious, didn't it? Man, the look on Ghashiun's face!" She put her fists on her hips and shook her head, chuckling.

"Ah, I… oh," he said, taken aback. "Well, um, even so, thank you for stepping in. What would they have done to me?" He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know, but he couldn't help wondering.

"Not a whole lot. Ghashiun's an idiot but he's not dumb enough to go 'round killing random guys. They'd have just robbed you, maybe roughed you up a bit, maybe with an emphasis on the roughing-up if you didn't have much money on you," she told him with a casual wave of her hand.

"Oh!" He blanched at the thought. "I, uh, I don't have any money for them to rob me of, so I suppose I ought to thank you for sparing me a good deal of pain. Won't that man and his, uh, associates come after you now? I assume they'll want revenge of some sort."

"Pffft, no way! He knows he'd get stomped into the dirt if he tried it," she replied, chortling. "This isn't the first time we've scuffled and it sure won't be the last."

"Ah, so it's a… a rivalry, then?" he ventured, smiling slightly in relief. He was worried he'd caused some sort of feud somehow.

"Hah, yeah, something like that. My getting involved probably made it worse, actually," she added apologetically. "I just can't pass up an opportunity to piss that guy off."

"Oh," he said, unsure what to say to that. Bosco, who had been resting near the depleted iceberg at the center of the oasis, spotted his master and lumbered over. Zafirah shrieked and jumped behind Kuei. "Oh, don't worry! That's just Bosco, my pet bear," he said, beaming. She stepped out from behind him, sniffing and straightening her headscarves, trying to recover her dignity.

"Pet bear?" she echoed, then scoffed disdainfully. "Tourists." She turned and started to walk off again.

"Wait! Is there an inn here, someplace I can sleep?" he called after her.

"Yeah, but it costs money, which you just said you don't have, and I'm pretty sure they don't allow… those," she said, eying Bosco distastefully. She paused, considering, then spoke again. "What's your name, tourist?"

"Oh, uh… I'm Kuei," he told her. His given name sounded unfamiliar in his own ears. It felt like he was introducing a stranger. He bowed—he was in the presence of a lady, after all—eliciting a disbelieving snort from his peculiar rescuer. "And your name is Zafirah?"

"That's me." She fell silent for a long moment, during which she studied him intently. He shifted from foot to foot, starting to feel quite exposed. Finally, she heaved a sigh— more of a groan, really— and shook her head. "Well, Kuei, I've got a perfectly good floor you can sleep on if that suits you." He blinked at her, thoroughly taken by surprise.

"A—a floor?" He echoed. "That is, a floor in your home?"

She snorted. "Well, it's not like I own a lot of floors, so yeah. In my home."

Almost without realizing it he took a half step backward. "W-well, I, that's very—I don't know quite what to say—" he stammered.

"Do you want the floor or not? Yes or no, pick fast. I don't much like tourists, to be honest, and my generous moods don't last long," she said impatiently. He'd never slept in a stranger's home before and he was quite disconcerted by her sharp words, but it would certainly be a nice change from sleeping outside in the dirt.

"Yes, please. Thank you, that's... very generous of you," he said, flummoxed.

"All right, then, just follow me and, uh… try not to be too awkward in front of my neighbors," she said with a slight wince. She turned and set off at a brisk pace without another word, or even checking to see if he was behind her. It didn't take long to get there; the oasis was a very small settlement, little more than several clusters of squat, domed huts of hard-packed earth and wood frames, all forming a rough circle around the iceberg and enclosed by a low wall.

As they walked, they passed a tall, thin woman exiting her hut. As she ducked out of the doorway, she spotted Zafirah and waved to her. A smile creased her weathered face, left uncovered for the moment.

"Zafirah, good afternoon!" she called. Zafirah froze for a second and then slowly turned towards the woman, laughing weakly.

"Hey there, Sefa," she said, clearing her throat. "Weather's not bad today, huh?"

"Not bad, indeed! Better now that it's nearly sunset," the older woman agreed. "Got a guest today?" She nodded to Kuei.

Zafirah laughed half-heartedly. "I'm just taking in a stray overnight, that's all. You know me, too damn nice for my own good!" She held her hands up in a helpless gesture and chuckled uncomfortably again.

Kuei, behind her, gaped in surprise at her. A stray? To be sure, he probably looked like one, but that seemed a bit harsh to say right in front of him.

Sefa bid them a good evening and went on her way. Once the woman was a couple paces away, Zafirah let out a breath and shook her head, then waved wordlessly to him and moved on. He followed, although a bit more reluctantly than before.

Zafirah's hut was nestled in a cluster next to the main gate. As he followed her through the curtained doorway, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimly lit interior. But once they had, he saw rough-hewn wooden shelves lining the walls of the single room they stood in, and all of them laden with odds and ends of all types—swords, knives, pottery, hats, and an endless variety of other things. Weapons seemed to dominate the selection though, in all types and sizes. A woven reed chair stood near the back, next to a worktable strewn with jars and rags.

"Do you… make weapons?" he guessed, amazed.

"Nope. Buy, sell, and trade 'em—among other things," she said. She barely even slowed her stride as she hurried across the small room. When she reached a second curtain at the back of the room, she paused and looked back at him. "By the way, please leave that beast up here," she added, shooting a wary glance at Bosco.

"Ah—um…" He hesitated, glancing at his pet. Bosco looked up at him and whined.

"Don't worry, he'll be fine," she told him. "No one's gonna come in here without asking, he'll be left alone."

"Oh, I wasn't worried that he'd be attacked!" Kuei assured her—although the thought had crossed his mind, having found out that the very man who'd stolen Appa was here. "It's just that, you see, he gets very anxious if he's left on his own for too long…"

Zafirah's brown eyes were wide with incredulity behind her headscarves. "You don't say," she remarked flatly. "Well, think of it as a chance for him to learn a little independence. You coming or not? I've still got half a mind to take back that invitation." With that, she turned and swept through the curtain. He couldn't help but pause for a moment. He certainly wasn't accustomed to being spoken to so bluntly! It had him off balance, to say the least.

Still, it wasn't as if he had anywhere else to go. This was the first time a stranger had ever invited him into their home, and he was reluctant to turn down such a generous offer, even if his host was rather harsh. Besides, surely she couldn't be that mean of a person, if she was willing to take a ragged-looking wanderer like himself into her own house.

So he crossed the shop room and pushed through the tattered curtain at the back, finding that it led to a narrow alcove that had a ladder going down through a hole in the floor. He followed her down the crudely made wooden ladder and into a musty, lantern-lit basement.

It was small room, not much larger than the shop above it. The corner to the right of the ladder held a modest kitchen. A fireplace sat nestled in the back of the kitchen, beneath a chimney that led up through the top of the hut. Next to it stood a battered old table, solidly built, its surface stacked with spice jars and burlap bags. A few crates were stacked up beside the table. A rickety wooden cabinet leaned against the wall on the other side of the fireplace; its doors were ajar and Kuei could see a few mismatched plates and bowls piled inside it.

In the opposite corner of the room was a space that had been curtained off, though he could see a mattress on the floor through a gap between the two curtains hung across it. Next to that corner was a mattress on the floor, heaped with blankets and tattered pillows. A well-worn rug covered the middle of the room, along with some cushions to sit on.

"So, this is it. Welcome to the cave," Zafirah joked, spreading her hands to encompass the space, although there was an odd undertone in her voice—a defiant tone, almost.

"It's very pleasant," he said, looking around and smiling. And it really was—it had a warm feeling to it that went beyond the stuffy heat of the desert.

Zafirah eyed him for a moment, then shrugged and ambled away. She reached up and tugged at the back of her headscarves, unwrapping them with well-practiced swiftness. Once the last layer had come loose, she yanked them off and tossed them into a woven basket beside the ladder, shaking her head and huffing out a sigh of relief.

For some reason, he'd half expected her to be older than he was, yet she actually looked like she was around his age, perhaps slightly younger. Shorter locks of dark brown hair had escaped from the confines of a long, thick braid, framing her copper-toned face and high cheekbones. She pulled the braid forward over her shoulder, tightening the green string tying off its end.

Flicking her braid back behind her, she turned to face him and put her fists on her hips. "I'm not running a restaurant here. You help when I tell you to, got it?"

"Of course," he agreed quickly, still considerably confused by her harshness. She studied him again for just a moment, and then nodded slightly and sauntered over to the kitchen, stretching her arms above her head.

"I don't know about you, but I'm starved," she said as she grabbed some sticks from a basket and stuck them beneath a rough iron pot hanging in the fireplace. "Would you light that up while I get some things from the pantry?" she asked, pointing absently at a pair of spark rocks on the counter next to the firewood basket. Not bothering to wait for an answer, she swept off through a narrow doorway to the left of the kitchen.

Fortunately, he'd learned how to use spark rocks during his stay with the Avatar's friends, and thus he was spared the embarrassment of his host thinking him to be totally useless. Grabbing the spark rocks, he knelt down by the fireplace and piled up some kindling just as Sokka had shown him, carefully striking the spark rocks to get a blaze going.

A sudden movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention; he looked up, expecting to see Zafirah, but instead he saw a nearly naked man staggering upward from beneath the pile of blankets across the room. Kuei wasn't sure which of them was more startled. The man blinked owlishly from behind a curtain of below-shoulder-length brown hair hanging loose around his face. He took an unsteady Bending stance and Kuei braced himself for an attack—but the man only succeeded in raising a small cloud of dust that promptly flew up into his own face. As he coughed and shook his head, Zafirah emerged from the pantry, lugging two canvas sacks. She chuckled dryly as she walked back to the kitchen.

"Oh, good, now we're all here. Cozy, right?" she jibed.

"Zafi! There's a thief in our house!" rasped the man, slurring his words.

"That's not a thief, that's a guest, so will you please put on some pants?" she demanded.

"But I am wearing pants, Zafi!" he insisted, hurt. Zafirah cleared her throat and looked pointedly downward. The man followed her gaze to his bare legs and gaped in surprise.

"Ohhhhh," he said slowly. He stumbled back into the heap and dug around slowly amidst the blankets for a minute before apparently giving up and flopping back down. Zafirah strode over to the fireplace and dumped the sacks on the ground.

"My twin brother, Basam. He's maybe just a little bit hung-over," she explained wryly. Then she pulled a waterskin from a hook on the wall and emptied its contents into the pot. Kuei hovered a couple feet behind her, tapping his fingertips together as if attempting to magically summon a way to be helpful. People weren't his strongest area of expertise; there was already a certain level of personal detachment that came with ascending to the throne, and with Long Feng meticulously excluding him from matters of state, Kuei had been left with few chances for human interaction. He wasn't even allowed to show his face or speak with guests at the fancy parties he'd hosted! He'd had a veritable army of tutors in every academic subject imaginable, and he considered himself a very knowledgeable man- but when it came to people, and especially the art of conversation, he was in the dark.

"So… your family sells and trades, um… quite a lot of different things," he remarked. "How's the business going these days?"

"Could be better—a lot better," she said bluntly. "Amazing how a hundred-year war can put your trade routes down, right?"

"Ah—yes, of course," he agreed, wincing. All right, that hadn't been the wisest choice of topic. Trying again, he asked, "What are you making?" Kuei asked. Zafirah shrugged carelessly and began pouring lentils from one sack into the pot.

Basam shuffled over and stood next to Kuei, much too close for comfort, eyes narrowed and rubbing his stubbly chin pensively. Kuei shifted awkwardly, coughing slightly. At this range, Kuei could clearly see the resemblance between this man and Zafirah—the same brown eyes and high cheekbones, the same angle to their eyebrows. He had the kind of lean, angular build that suggested a history of scarce meals and daily physical labor.

"I still say he looks like a thief," Basam pronounced. Zafirah snatched a stick of firewood from the basket and threw it at him. Basam leaned out of the way and stumbled to the side.

"Basam. Pants!" she commanded.

He huffed irritably. "Be reasonable, Zafirah. Why in the Spirit World would I put on two pairs of pants?"

"I don't know, Basam, why don't you put on one pair to start with, and find out?" she growled. He looked down and was once again surprised. His pride bruised, he stared imperiously at his sister and then shuffled back to the bed.

"Fine, then! I'll do that, and you see to the thief."

"Oh, please. If he's a thief, then I'm the Avatar!" she retorted. Pausing, she considered it and added to Kuei, "Speaking of which, that was a decent diversion back there." She opened another sack and added rice to the pot, then took two big fistfuls of dried pig-chicken meat from a crate near the fireplace and added that as well.

"Diversion?" he asked, confused.

"The story about meeting the Avatar and knowing about his Sky Bison," she explained.

"I really did meet him, though," Kuei insisted. Met him, failed him, and saw his lightning-struck corpse revived by Spirit-blessed water. He didn't think it wise to mention all of that, though.

"Uh huh. Well, hey, at least you made an effort. Next time ya find yourself in a tavern brawl, maybe you'll even get to do some actual fighting," she joked. Well, if she thought he'd done it intentionally, he certainly wasn't about to disabuse her of that notion.

"Thank you, I do try," he said.

"Grab that, will ya?" she asked. She pointed to a small wooden box on the table and Kuei hurriedly retrieved it. She took it from his hands and lifted the lid; it was a spice box, judging by the earthy-toned powders inside and the rich aroma that wafted up from it. She threw several pinches of different herbs into the pot, then set it aside and grabbed a long, wooden spoon from the table and stirred the pot's contents, humming off-key as she worked. It wasn't long before a savory scent began rising from the stew.

"So what brings you to the lovely oasis of the Janan tribe?" she asked, more than a hint of sarcasm in her tone.

"I live here!" Basam exclaimed indignantly. He had found his clothes amid the blankets and was hopping precariously on one foot as he attempted to pull his pants on.

"Not you! I was talking to our guest," she growled. Basam wobbled and fell back into the heap of blankets.

After a moment's hesitation, Kuei replied, "I… saw it on my map and thought it seemed like a nice place to visit."

"Must be an old map," Zafirah replied with a crooked smirk.

"I—I really couldn't say," Kuei said, neither wanting to agree nor disagree with that. The Oasis wasn't quite the lush jewel of incomparable beauty that his history books had described it as, but he didn't want his host to think that he was speaking ill of her home, either. Even though she spoke of the place in somewhat self-deprecating tones, he had a feeling that a stranger bad-mouthing the place wouldn't be quite the same. Even he could sense that much. Then again, it was almost as if she were inviting him to make that very mistake with her sarcasm. His host was a prickly one, indeed— although he noted that she seemed slightly more relaxed now than she had been before. Perhaps the prospect of an imminent meal was putting her in a better mood.

Silence settled over the room, broken only by the scrape of the spoon against the sides of the pot. Eventually, Zafirah lifted the spoon to her lips and sampled its contents, then nodded to herself, satisfied. She hefted an iron lid and set it in place atop the pot, then sat back on her heels. "Now we let that cook for a while. I guess that monster of yours needs food too, huh. What's that thing eat, anyway?"

"Meat, usually," he said. She grabbed a fistful of dried pig-chicken and handed it to him, and he headed back up the ladder. Bosco looked up and growled mournfully as Kuei entered the shop. He knelt beside his pet and scratched behind the bear's ears.

"I'm sorry I have to leave you up here alone, my friend," he said as he placed a pile of the meat in front of Bosco's snout. When he returned to the basement, Zafirah waved in the direction of another curtained alcove beside the pantry.

"The washroom's through there if you want to get cleaned up at all," she told him. "Maybe scrape some of that dirt off your face?"

"Thank you, I would like that." He rubbed absently at his chin and frowned. "Does your brother have a spare razor I might borrow?"

"Nah, just use his." She shot a look at Basam's immobile form in the corner. "It's not like he's in any condition to argue!" she added in a raised voice. When this failed to get a reaction, she rolled her eyes and lifted the pot's lid to stir again.

The washroom was a cramped space with a metal basin beneath a dingy, cracked mirror. He noticed with some surprise that there was a water pump beside the basin stand. Kuei winced slightly as he caught his reflection in the mirror. His face was dirtier than he'd realized and covered in scratches from where he'd stumbled into a patch of brambles a few days earlier. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and that beard was really quite awful. He found a shaving kit wrapped in tattered leather on a shelf cut into the wall beside the mirror and set about returning himself to something approximating a civilized state. When he emerged from the washroom, satisfied that he was as clean as he was going to get without an actual bath, their supper had finished cooking and Zafirah was rummaging around in the wooden cabinet near the fireplace.

"Bowls, bowls, where are the Spirits-be-damned— aha!" She spun around triumphantly with a stack of misshapen metal bowls held high in one hand. Upon spotting him, she paused for a moment as her right eyebrow quirked upward slightly. Then she waved him over and shoved a bowl into his hands, gesturing to the iron pot. "Go ahead. I said I wasn't running a restaurant!" She plunked herself down beside the fire and ladled some of the stew into her own bowl. He settled in next to her and took the ladle after her.

"Zafirah, may I ask how the water pump in the washroom works?" he asked.

"Absolutely not." She paused, then smirked at his obvious shock. "Relax, I'm just teasing you! Spirits, you're such an easy mark it's not even fun."

"Ah", he said, unsure of how to take that statement. People didn't generally tease the Earth King, after all. His host was more relaxed now, but still shockingly forthright!

"Anyway, sure you can ask," she said. "There's a water tank behind the wall in there. Every few weeks we fill it with our allotment of melted-down water from the iceberg. It may look like there isn't much of it, but it's huge underground. And since there's so few of us living here, we all get to use it. Not very much, of course, so we have to make do. Like, we scrub food scraps off of plates and stuff with sand, then use a tiny little bit of water to wipe out the sand."

"Ah." Kuei couldn't help but glance dubiously at the bowl in his hands.

"Yeah, it's not too fancy. Nothing like what you're probably used to, living in…" She paused again, scrutinized him through narrowed eyes, and smirked. "Ba Sing Se?" Kuei managed not to choke on a mouthful of stew.

"H-how did you…?" he sputtered, his heartbeat spiking in sudden alarm.

"We get folks from all over the place," she said smugly. "You spend enough time watching people, you start to see all these little things that give away a person's story. You can see it in the way they talk—different cities have different accents, you know."

Kuei considered that, tilting his head. It hadn't even occurred to him that he had an accent!

"So then, you could determine my heritage based on my accent?" he asked, astounded.

"Yeah, but there's way more than that," she said. "The way folks carry themselves? Man, it's kinda sad how easy it is to spot the rich noble types. Like you, for example: here you are, sitting on the ground, and your back's as straight as a reed." Kuei slouched self-consciously, and a ghost of a smile flitted across Zafirah's face before she went on. "I can tell you're probably fancy and from a big city, and there aren't a whole lot of those. Gaoling, Omashu, Ba Sing Se… that's pretty much it. Your accent is sort of like other Ba Sing Se folks that've passed through, so I figured I had a one-in-three shot at guessing right."

"You certainly made an astute guess, then," he remarked. He decided that he ought to start paying more attention to details like those—spotting such things could prove to be a useful skill to have. And, reflecting on those he had fled from… concealing such things might prove useful, as well.

Zafirah leaned forward, tapping her lower lip contemplatively. "But I gotta say, I almost couldn't place you; there's something… odd about you."

"Odd?" he echoed in a carefully neutral tone. She couldn't possibly have guessed who he really was… could she?

"Yeah. Your accent's weird for Ba Sing Se. It's as if—" Luckily, a distraction arrived in the form of a nearly-sober and fully-dressed Basam slinking sheepishly over to the fireplace and sinking down between the two. "Feeling better, brother?" Zafirah asked dryly.

"Mmhm, gettin' there," he said with an embarrassed grin. He fished a length of green cord out of his pocket and tied his hair back at the nape of his neck, then turned to Kuei. "Hey, sorry if I—" He stopped short and squinted at their visitor, then looked over at his sister. "How many guys did you bring over tonight, anway?" he demanded.

"Just one," Zafirah replied with a bemused smile.

"Huh!" He returned his gaze to Kuei. "You don't look nearly as sketchy without that beard, y'know," Basam commented as he helped himself to a bowl of stew.

"Um, thank you," Kuei replied, although he wasn't entirely sure how much of a compliment that had really been.

Basam spoke again. "So how'd you get here all the way from Ba Sing Se? Couldn't help but overhear. Small basement, and all."

"Pure chance, I suppose," Kuei said, and that at least was true. "I picked it out on my map, as I told—"

"Yeah, heard that part. What brings you all the way out here, though?" Basam asked.

"Why am I traveling?" Kuei guessed. Basam nodded eagerly. Kuei tried to quell his surge of nervousness. He didn't want to lie, but how much of the truth did he dare tell them? "Well, to be honest, I didn't have much of a choice in the matter," he said. It wasn't untrue. Basam suddenly cringed and slapped his forehead.

"Of course, Ba Sing Se! The Fire Nation!" he groaned.

"Oh, right, I almost forgot!" Zafirah said, her smile vanishing. "You're lucky to have gotten out."

"Oh, yes, I'm certainly aware of that," he agreed, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. He hoped he didn't look as guilty as he felt, as he thought about the thousands of citizens trapped within the city—all the people he was responsible for, the people he'd been unable to protect. Those who hadn't been lucky enough to have the assistance of the Avatar's friends.

"How did you get away from there?" Basam asked, eyes wide.

"I… had some friends who took me out of the city with them," he said quietly. And, again, it was not untrue. "We parted ways shortly after that."

The two Sandbenders must have noticed his sudden melancholy, because they traded a grim glance and quickly changed the topic.

"Where else you been before this?" Basam asked.

"Well, I started from Chameleon Bay and I've been following the coast ever since," Kuei said, relieved.

"Yeah? I heard it's nice and green up there," Zafirah commented.

"Have either of you ever traveled outside of the desert?" Kuei inquired, although he already suspected the answer.

"Nah, not us," Zafirah confirmed. She waved a hand dismissively but he thought her tone sounded wistful as she said, "Who's got the coin for traveling, anyway?"

"It does cost more than I expected," Kuei admitted.

The conversation meandered along from there in between mouthfuls of stew. Once the three of them had finished their meal, Zafirah set Basam and Kuei to cleaning the dishes while she started a pot of water boiling for tea. With the chores done and the tea brewed, the trio returned to their seats by the fire. Zafirah lounged against the wall next to the fireplace, her expression unreadable, studying Kuei over the rim of a metal teacup as battered as the bowls they'd been eating from.

"So what're your plans? Where are you headed after this?" she asked.

"I hadn't thought that far ahead, to be entirely honest," Kuei admitted. "I suppose I'll continue traveling, or perhaps I'll try to find some work, somewhere, if anyone will have me."

"Speaking of which, I'd better be going. It's probably almost dark by now," Basam announced as he stood up.

"Sand sailer construction crew," Zafirah explained, seeing the puzzlement on Kuei's face. "That stupid beetle-breath Avatar wrecked a bunch of our tribe's sailers, so now we gotta rebuild 'em. Don't know where that tantrum-throwing little baldy expects us to get all that extra wood and sailcloth from."

"He… he did? But why would the Avatar do that?" Kuei wondered, frowning. Zafirah scowled slightly and he hastened to add, "Oh, it's not—I'm not accusing you of lying, I just don't understand…"

"He got angry at us 'cause of what Ghashiun and his guys did," Zafirah retorted. "He lost his temper. Me and Basam were there, we saw the whole thing. He accused all of us and started trashing our sailers. The boy's, what, twelve years old?" She snorted and turned her head away. "Imagine! The fate of the world in the hands of a child." Basam rolled his eyes at what was clearly a well-tread topic and quietly took his leave.

"I really don't think you're being entirely fair to the boy," Kuei protested. "He'd lost his bison, he was distraught—"

"And I really don't think it was entirely fair of the boy to make our whole tribe suffer on account of one idiotic jerk," she retorted. "Half the guys in Ghashiun's gang aren't even from our tribe. Little Master Baldy very nearly stranded us in the middle of the desert. Getting stuck in the open desert means death, you understand that? And he went all glowy with that Avatar power thing and would've flat-out killed us all if his little girlfriend hadn't stopped him." Kuei reeled back slightly at that— it hadn't occurred to him that the encounter had been so dangerous. And yet, he couldn't help but feel somewhat protective of the boy.

"I'm sure Aang didn't actually want to kill any of you—" Kuei tried to interject, then stopped himself when he realized he'd let the name slip.

Zafirah arched an eyebrow again. "Oh, I'm fairly sure he did mean to kill us. And what's with that 'Aang' thing? You call the Avatar by his given name? You his buddy or something?"

"No, no, no, I'm—I had just heard his name mentioned before, that's all, and…" He trailed off, realizing he had dug himself into quite a deep hole. "I apologize. I didn't wish to start an argument. I had no idea that the situation had been so dire for you." And he realized now that it would be quite dangerous if a young boy with Aang's level of power lost his temper in such an intense way.

She grimaced, then shook her head. "Nah, never mind that. Not your fault that you didn't know the whole story. 'Sides, a good argument can be fun sometimes, y'know?" she said, mustering a grin.

"Arguing, tavern brawls… I do believe you and I are operating under different definitions of 'fun'," Kuei sighed.

She smirked faintly at that. "Keep traveling a while longer, fancy-pants—you'll start seeing things my way."

By then, the teapot was empty and the fire had burned down to softly glowing embers. Zafirah scrubbed the teacups and pot, then left Kuei to dry them and went off to the washroom. She emerged a few minutes later, running a comb through her unbraided hair. As her eyes landed on him, though, her mood seemed to shift. Her mouth settled into a firm line, her eyebrows tugging inward slightly.

"So," she started, "I'm going to sleep now. You can borrow a blanket from Basam if you want, and sleep over there on that rug. Borrow as many as you need, he won't be back till morning. I sleep behind that curtain. With a knife."

"Oh," he said, puzzled—and then the implied threat occurred to him. Although even with the understanding that he was being warned of something, he was at a loss as to why. Did she worry he would steal something? Or…he had heard mentions in his travels of slavers capturing Sandbenders to sell in Ba Sing Se and Omashu. Could she think that he had some nefarious purpose in coming to the desert? An uneasy chill went through him at the thought.

"Um, Zafirah…" he ventured.

"Yeah?" She paused outside the curtain, still combing her hair.

"Thank you," he said. She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye, eyebrows raised in surprise. He started to say something else but faltered under her speculative gaze, then rushed onward. "It was quite kind of you to bring a stranger into your home, you certainly didn't have to do that—and especially one that you, uh, well, you didn't seem terribly—" She cut off his increasingly nonsensical outpouring of gratitude with a raise of her hand.

"Good night, Kuei," she said pointedly.

"Good night. Sleep well," he answered, somewhat relieved for the interruption. As he settled into his borrowed bed, it occurred to him that no one had ever argued with him before.

He could hear thunder in the distance. A storm was drawing near, and someone was shouting his name. The voice was familiar; he searched for it urgently. We have to find shelter, he said desperately. We have to— he snapped awake as something grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him into a sitting position. It was Zafirah, crouching over him with an almost palpable aura of fear about her. Her face was ashen, eyes wide.

"We're under attack! It's Firebenders!" she hissed. She let go of him so suddenly that he fell backwards onto the rug again, and she dashed away up the ladder. He watched her go, uncomprehending. Then her words sank in and his blood ran cold. He bolted up the ladder after her but froze in the doorway of the shop, rooted to the spot in horror at the sight that met him.

Overkill. It was a word he'd seen in a few of the books in the royal library—an excessive amount of force dealt out in a battle, far beyond what was needed to secure a victory, beyond the line between a fair fight and outright cruelty.

Everywhere he looked, flames rose up from the oasis, searing red and orange against the cold blue-black sky. The fires raged so brightly that even the stars faded in their light. The air around him crackled and roared, the heat singed his throat as he gasped to catch his breath. And rising above the thunderous chaos of the fires… screams, cries, harsh shouts.

A group of five Fire Nation soldiers marched past him, their pointed armor nightmarish in the firelight. Standing in their path—a group of Sandbenders, huddled together but holding their ground with their arms raised in Bending stances. Kuei couldn't tear his eyes away as the soldiers descended upon the Sandbenders with massive bursts of flame. The Sandbenders retaliated, but it was over quickly… and Kuei looked away as their battle cries turned to screams of pain.

Something caught his eye, drawing his gaze upward. It hovered there in the night sky like a malevolent crimson spirit, and as he watched, the Fire Nation soldiers in the gondola beneath the floating balloon hurled a spurt of flame down towards the ground, the fire casting a nightmarish orange glow over the battle raging on the ground, through the sand and smoke in the air. Bosco lumbered over and bumped his nose against his master's hand.

"They have flying machines, Bosco," Kuei murmured numbly. "The Fire Nation has flying machines, Spirits help us…" The next blast hit beside the cantina, and in its glare he caught sight of Zafirah surrounded by Firebenders. She was silhouetted against the burning buildings of the oasis, with her long hair swinging around her as she whipped arcs of sand at her enemies, spinning and twisting amidst the armored soldiers in fluid, powerful movements. He could barely see her as she darted back and forth; she was holding them off, but they were gradually closing in on her.

And then another Fire Nation fighter crept up on the group, standing just outside the ring of soldiers that surrounded Zafirah, braced and ready to attack—waiting for a chance to catch her unaware!

"That coward, he's sneaking up on her!" Kuei exclaimed. Surrounded as she was, what if she didn't notice in time? He had to do something, he had to… I have to help her. This woman had gone out of her way to help him, he couldn't just stand there and do nothing. But what could he do? He clenched his fists, pulse thrumming with sudden panic, glancing around hastily for some kind of idea, anything at all… what was he even supposed to do?

And then the weapons lining the shelves of the shop caught his eye. The flames from outside gleamed and flickered off of exposed blades and decorated hilts. His whirling thoughts came to a halt. Oh… that was what he had to do. He, of course, had never held a weapon in his life. In all of his twenty-five years he had never once lifted his hand in violence to another human being. He'd wanted to take martial arts lessons but Long Feng had talked him out of it, insisting that peaceful things like meditation were more suited to royalty.

A blue and white club sat on the shelf directly ahead of him; it looked like something from the Water Tribes. He dashed over and snatched it off the shelf. It was heavier than he'd expected, and it looked as if it were carved from bone. His fingers felt numb as they curled around the leather-wrapped grip. His head was buzzing. There was no time to think about this. Shuffling past Bosco, he left the hut and broke into a run.

He sprinted towards the cluster of soldiers surrounding Zafirah, right towards that particular soldier—the one lying in wait. He could see the man there with his back to Kuei, through the haze, edging his way closer and raising his fists, a spark of fire appearing in front of his knuckles as he prepared to take his shot-

Kuei ran faster than he ever had in his life and yet the distance between him and the soldier seemed to shrink too slowly, as if he were in a dream. Smoke stung at his eyes and burned in his lungs and the club felt much too heavy in his hand and the soldier seemed to get bigger and bigger as he closed in, and then he was there and he was swinging the club, and someone was shouting hoarsely and he felt fairly certain that it was himself.

The soldier heard his shout and turned, dodging his swing with positively mortifying ease, and his armored fist came up and drove straight at Kuei's head. He heard the blow connect and saw points of light erupt in front of his eyes before he felt the pain from it—and the pain, when it hit a heartbeat later, was immense. The last thing he saw was Zafirah, hearing his shout, whirling around towards him with dark brown eyes widened in shock, and then the world went black.

Ouch, somehow I don't think Kuei thought his cunning plan all the way through! D:

So, as we wrap up this rewrite of Chapter 1, I wanna say what I've been saying ever since I started this fic: yes, it will be finished someday! Even though I've been working on it for years now, I still want to finish it. But it deserves to be rewritten before I tackle the ending. Everything is outdated. In fact, very little of it is accurate to the story I had originally envisioned, when I started writing it. So I'm going to go through and revise all the existing chapters before I finally get to the final story arc, and I promise that the story will be better than it ever was before. This is gonna be a wild ride, so let's get going!