Title: Trading Up
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Word Count: 486 words
Characters: Mai
Summary: She should know better than to expect anything less from a strategist of war. A character study, set pre-canon.

Disclaimer & Notes: I, of course, do not own ATLA. Originally written in 2008.

Her mother raps her knuckles with a slender reed - not hard enough to leave a scar, but with the level of intensity to smart. She's only five years old, but the repeated performance of a lifetime is demanded from her. She tries to will away the sting as her grandfather's fingers - she must imagine them as those of a visiting nobleman - pinch her cheeks too roughly. She should know better than to expect anything less from a strategist of war.

She moves to wipe her tears away with her sleeve, but her training forces her to stop abruptly. Instead, Mai waits for the maid to offer her a handkerchief and takes it, closing her mouth to stop the hiccups. She picks up her brush, dips it in ink, carefully practicing the unsteady character she's meant to perfect. She'll pause when she hears her mother's impersonation of her father, coax a wide smile to her face, attempt to convey constrained excitement. She'll run up - but always gracefully - to her mother, bowing deeply. Her mother will gently pat her on head, and she'll turn her head shyly, bow again, and resume her calligraphy.

When this act is set in motion, the actors replaced, her father will walk in with an unfamiliar dignitary, who will comment on her beauty, her innocence, or some variation upon those themes. He will hand her a beautifully decorated sandalwood box, her family's crest carved in deeply. She knows exactly what's inside - a lacquered comb, dragons spiraling up its spine, porcelain teeth flashing bright. Her mother will tell her father not to spoil her, and he will turn to the diplomat and say, "Why not indulge Mai for the time being? My daughter will soon learn to share with a younger brother." The adults will all laugh (they always do), and when they walk out of the room, she will wrap the comb back up in the silk cloth and hand the box to a servant.

After the third time, she knew she wasn't supposed to keep it. (That she didn't realize it sooner meant she needed to be far more observant.) It will stay in her grandmother's room, far out of the reach of her too chubby hands until the next politician arrives.

When she turns ten, she doesn't need to count the days between glimpses of the heirloom. Her father no longer needs to be known as a family man with an attentive wife and doting daughter, doesn't need the budding reputation of being a generous but strict disciplinarian with his career firmly established. Instead, she sits in the room quietly doing her needlework. No forced smiles, no gestures of gratitude. There is no mention of a future son, only uneasy looks and heavy silences when her father presents his only child.

The comb rests in her hair, and she wonders if she's really gained anything.