Author's Note: I'm not even going to attempt to apologise for the appalling lateness of this chapter. I did have a lot of RL commitments, but I have a more predictable schedule now and hopefully future chapters will be finished at a much more reasonable pace! Anyway, thank you all for your interest in the first chapter of this story, and I hope you will enjoy this chapter as well. One of my readers brought up Zumi's physical appearance, and I thought I should clarify that, as she and Azula age, it does become easier to tell them apart. However, they still look a lot alike, because honestly all the women in Ta Min's line that we see seem to have been decanted from the same clone vat. (Hey, maybe that was what lay behind Azula's breakdown; it wasn't schizophrenia, it was the Hive Mother implant becoming active. ;))

Ozai's training methods in this chapter are a bit… well, Ozai-esque, but nothing goes above a T rating.

Chapter Two: Secrets

A fireball hovered in the air in front of her. Zumi could feel the air hum on her skin like a vibrating string. Raindrops hung in the air, strung around the pavilion's columns and roof edges. For a knife-edge second she could see it all: the motion of her limbs under her clothes, the glint of the grey light on her dagger, the way one of her sister's bangs was caught in mid-swing, like a wagging tail. She could see the trajectory of Azula's strike, the slight leaning to the left that told her sister's next move.

Time snapped. Rain hammered the pavilion again and the fireball whooshed just a hair's breadth away from her arm. She twisted around and dodged Azula's left-hand jab, but everything was happening too fast. She barely managed to bend the thrust of flame back towards her sister, and when she lunged forward, blade-point held low, Azula spun out of the way and into a lunge. Step, parry, block—Zumi struggled to keep up. She could feel every ache, every drop of sweat, every strain of her lungs. She was pushed back inch by inch, towards one of the pavilion's sides. She managed to block one of Azula's spinning kicks, but her sister quickly jumped back and used the leverage to launch herself forward.

A thump in Zumi's ribcage. Time had slowed down again—that must be how she knew that Azula was about to deliver a fight-ending blow, a strike of fire to the chest that would knock Zumi to the floor, singed and defeated. Heat rushed through her veins. With a noise in her throat that sounded very far away, she half-spun sideways as the jet of flame burst between them, and drove her palm and blade into it, pushing it back as her knife drew a blazing arc. Azula stumbled back with a yelp—

she's going to fall

—tottered on one foot, and dropped to her knees.

Zumi cooled immediately. This might be the first time she'd won against Azula, but her sister was on the floor on all fours, head low, one hand pressed on her side. She must be really hurt, Zumi thought with a pang of guilt, and stepped over towards her. 'Are you—'

The hit came so fast she barely saw it. She went down in a split-second, and hit the floor tiles so hard the air was smacked out of her lungs. Azula stood over her, one foot on Zumi's ribcage.

'I win,' Azula said.

'Enough.'

The rule was that their sparring wasn't over until someone was flat on the ground, but they both knew it wasn't really over until father said so. Azula drew back. Zumi got up, pulled by his voice like a puppet on a string, picked up her dagger on her way up. She had let it clatter across the floor when Azula had knocked her down. She felt her face grow hot with embarrassment as she sheathed it and glanced at her sister, unwilling to look at father just yet. Azula's clothes were as smooth as if they'd just come off a hot press, not a thread or a hair out of place. She hadn't even broken a sweat. Zumi was sure her own clothes were a mess, and her skin felt slippery.

'Come here,' father said, and the two of them walked up to and kneeled in front of his seat at the back of the pavilion. His head turned a fraction towards Zumi. 'Why did you lose?'

'She cheated!' She sank back down, suddenly fascinated by the pattern in the floor tiles. 'She cheated,' she repeated, subdued, and felt her sister snort.

'Of course she did,' Ozai said, and Zumi looked up at him. The ache of effort in her muscles receded a little. 'This is not a game of pai sho. This is not a race in which you get a nice little bowknot for second place. You either do whatever it takes to win, or you resign yourself to losing. Because—' He steepled his fingers and his gaze slid from Zumi to Azula and back again. '—in life, that is the only score anyone is keeping. No one cares if you worked ten hard years for your skills or if you are a prodigy who acquired them in an instant. Winning. Losing. It is that simple.' He lowered his hands and turned to Azula. 'So what did you do wrong?'

'I—' she stammered. Azula never stammered, and Zumi couldn't help but feel a dark little drop of satisfaction.

Maybe that was why she spoke, every word heated like a burning ember. 'It's because she chea—'

Her father's gaze turned to her. She fell silent, cooling. 'I am sorry, father,' she said, eyes downcast.

'No. Never apologise. If you are right, it is a sign of weakness, and you shouldn't be wrong in the first place. You let everybody see you cheating,' he said to Azula, in a voice like a steel band. 'The only good trap is the one nobody sees you build. Do whatever you have to to achieve victory. Never get caught doing something that leaves your victory in doubt.'

'Yes, father,' Azula said, a thin little smile in the corner of her lips.

'Zumi. Get up.'

She nearly stumbled as she got to her feet, her muscles suddenly a tired jelly. Her father beckoned her to his side. She hurried towards him, sure that she was covered in grime and sweat, and stopped awkwardly, not knowing how to stand or where to look. She was used to the elaborate rules governing the positions of superiors and subordinates—where to stand, how to sit, when to raise. It was one of the few things she had learned faster than Azula.

But then again, these lessons of theirs were hardly conventional.

'What was your mistake, daughter?'

Her gaze slid over the golden dragons climbing the pavilion's pillars. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. 'I will try harder, father. I will practice even more and—'

'Be quiet.' He got up, fast enough she could feel the motion of air. 'Your skills are not unworthy of training. You can use the blade and the flame together, at least.'

Not unworthy. She cradled the words to her heart, precious jewels.

'But you are still refusing to understand the most basic,' he went on, circling her. 'Where does firebending come from?'

'The breath,' Azula piped up. Zumi said the same, a beat behind.

'Quite, my dears.' He grabbed Zumi's wrist, so fast she nearly gasped, and splayed his other hand on the spot just below her heart. Heat radiated from his fingers. 'Right here. Breathe.'

Zumi drew in a breath, as deep as possible. She was sure she could hear her lungs rattle, her ribs flap about like paper fans. She held the breath until her chest ached. Ozai released her. She exhaled, a tumble of air.

'No.' Her father shook his head, and the heat that still lingered in Zumi's chest sank for good. 'You are failing to grasp the fundamentals.' She nodded, fervently. If the fundamentals were within reach, she would grab them two-handed. 'You use your muscles to fight with a blade, and so you think that the same principle applies to firebending. It does not. Your fire does not become stronger if you breathe in deeper. It does not grow hotter if you flex your arms harder. You have a little sun inside you, buried deep just below your heart. This is where firebending comes from. You will hear from others that firebending is your chi mixed with air. But that is merely mechanics. In truth, firebending comes from the will. The ability and power to impose it upon the world. What do you want? What drives you? That is where firebending comes from.'

'Oh.' Zumi said, but father wasn't finished yet. She was a little relieved that he didn't seem to be expecting an answer.

'Reach into that bag,' he said. Zumi looked at the floor next to his seat. She hadn't even noticed the satchel before.

She kneeled, fumbled with the fastenings for a few seconds—her fingers felt like they'd turned into half-cooked dough—and pulled out a ball of fabric.

At first she wasn't sure what it was. The fabric strips were too small to be a proper piece of clothing, and there were too many of them for them to be beach clothes. Here and there they were sewn onto bits of rubber—Zumi knew you got that from the sap of a certain tree, but she'd never seen a layer this thin—and sturdy fastenings dangled in all directions.

'Come on, put it on,' father said, a little impatient.

Zumi looked at the tangle in her hands. It had so many holes it must have been designed for a fire squid's tentacles. She glanced at her father, and a drop of cold swelled in her chest. He was looking at her as though the thing's use were self-evident. Before she could slip her head into the first available hole, though, Azula had sidled to her side and jammed her elbow towards one of the openings. In a few moments Zumi was wearing the thing, which was a bit like a tunic made from some huge spiderfly's web, fastenings trailing down her back. She felt herself blush; it was actually pretty obvious how to put it on once you figured it out.

'Good,' Ozai said. 'Now come here.'

She edged even closer to him. He didn't really like touching other people, so when his hands moved towards her she startled, thinking she was about to hold her. But instead he grabbed the fastenings. 'Breathe,' he said.

There was no time to take even the smallest breath. The garment crushed her chest, dug into her back. All she could do was let out a strangled cry, and even that sounded a cricket's sigh.

'Don't try to fight it,' father said, and drew the fastenings a little tighter. Tears prickled Zumi's eyes. 'The pain is nothing. The pain is a distraction for the weak, and you are one of the strong. Aren't you?'

Yes. Yes. She didn't speak, though. She was sure that if she tried, all she'd be able to produce would be a sob. At her side, Azula was wearing a little smirk, and despite the pain, despite the tightness, Zumi felt heat grow inside her, a kind she'd felt before only dimly. It was something alien, something that floated placidly in her stomach, untouched by her discomfort, the garment squeezing the breath out of her lungs.

A little sun. She felt its rays move in and out even though her breath had been crushed to a trickle. Azula's smirk irritated her, but the sun made her less afraid.

'Breathe,' father said again, and tightened the garment another fraction. 'Breathe.'

Despite everything, air drew into her lungs, sank deeper still. There were more tears, enough to cloud her vision, but through the haze and the agony she could still see the little sun, flaring bigger like a hearth that had just been fed fresh coals. I can do it. I can do it, father.

'Light the lamps,' he said. 'Don't look at them. Don't think about it. Do it.'

She couldn't move, and she couldn't think. Another time, she would have to look at the lamps, to think about the oil inside them. But now all she did was push the sun's heat towards the pavilion's edges. The lamps came to life, a trickle of dark red flame at first, then a higher and hotter flame, until for a second the pavilion was ringed with plumes of nearly white heat.

'Control it.'

The pain gripped her again, harder. This time she was sure she was going to keel over, a flopping fish gasping, and the last thing she'd hear would be her sister's mocking laughter. The anger pushed the pain away, made the sun flare again. The flames rose, dimmed, settled.

'Good,' father said, and loosened the ties. Zumi stumbled. A rush of air filled her lungs, making her ribs ache. The flames whooshed again before spending themselves. 'Still a flaw there at the end,' father went on, but he didn't sound completely displeased. 'Next time you will be perfect. Now take that off.'

:=:

Her body shook as the two of them walked into the gardens after father dismissed them. She wondered if there were going to be marks on her flesh; her chest and back ached with the keenness of a fresh bruise. At least her arms and legs only felt a little wobbly, like they always did after a training session.

'You weren't completely terrible with the dragon's coils,' Azula said as she leaned down to rip up a blade of grass. She straightened up and twirled it between her fingers. 'Of course, I did it all perfectly the first time.'

'You did that too?' Zumi almost felt father's praise grow a little duller. But he had told her she could use the blade; Azula didn't get to do that.

'I haven't needed it in ages, that thing is for babies,' her sister said with a dismissive wave of her hand, and burned the blade of grass away, then wiped the smear of ash off her fingers. 'But it does make everything… sharper, doesn't it?'

Zumi didn't answer. For a second there, in the middle of the sun, things hadn't really felt sharp. They'd felt almost… peaceful. But no, that was really stupid. She pushed the thought away.

Azula elbowed her. Mother was coming towards them. Zumi tried to compose herself, but she was sure mother would see the sweat right away, her rumpled clothes, even spot the dagger burning inside her sleeve.

Her sister, of course, looked like she'd just been bathed and dressed in freshly laundered clothes.

'There you are,' Ursa said instead. 'What were you doing?' She leaned down towards Zumi and began straightening out her clothes, used a handkerchief to dab at her daughter's face. 'Look at you, Zumi—you look like you've been tumbling about in the dirt. You really should take better care of yourself.' Her tone was not unkind, just vaguely disappointed, but Zumi had to make herself not squirm out of her grip; mother was handling her like a wolfbat worrying a pup.

'Father is teaching us to play pai sho,' Azula said innocently once Ursa released Zumi. 'Today he taught us how the Five-Fold Flame hand.'

Mother nodded. 'That's wonderful. Come along now, we have just received a letter from Uncle Iroh, and afterwards Lady Ty Fen and Governor Rao's wife are paying us a visit.'

Zumi brightened. That meant Ty Lee and Mai were coming over to play and that meant—well, it meant that it wouldn't just be her and Azula all the time. She felt her face grow hot and hoped against hope that Azula didn't spot it. Mother was always telling them about the importance of family and reading stories where the moral was always about sisterly feelings and sisterly duty. Father never brought any of that up, but he did talk a lot about how each of them would be judged by the other, how the two of them were a chain and a chain was only as strong as its weakest link, which Zumi always understood to mean she was letting her sister down.

But sometimes she really wondered about how things would be like without Azula. She couldn't even remember life without her younger sister, even though she knew there had been a year and a half when she'd had mother and father to herself.

Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to not have her around, just for one day. 'Liar,' she whispered at Azula under her breath, as though the word had been pushed out by her thoughts.

'What, do you want to tell her the truth?' Azula whispered back.

That was a good point, Zumi had to admit, and they were both silent as mother shepherded them back into the palace.

Uncle Iroh's letter was all about how the siege of Ba Sing Se was going: well, apparently, even if the letter was sparse in details. Azula had told her once that was due to military secrets, which had made Zumi picture a row of generals whispering into each others' ears as though they were in a game of Pass the Message. It didn't matter, in any case; she and Azula had played at besieging Ba Sing Se using their toy palace as a stand-in for the city, and father had given them books about Ba Sing Se and later had quizzed them on its military history, political and strategic importance, and weak points.

'"I hope you all may see it someday"," mother read on, '"if we don't burn it to the ground first".'

That got a big laugh from everyone, even from Azula, who never laughed at normal jokes. Once Zumi's laughter had trailed away, she felt her chest swell. Would the siege still be going on by the time she was old enough to fight? She was going to be ten this year, which meant at least six years before she was allowed anywhere, and it would be an even longer time before she could be a general. Maybe they'd even run out of war before she was old enough to go with father into battle—but cousin Lu Ten wasn't really all that old and we was allowed to go, so maybe it was different when your father was a Fire Prince.

Mother kept reading the letter. '"Until then, I hope the girls enjoy this gift—"' At that, Azula mouthed "the girls" and made a face like she'd just swallowed a scorpion-bee dipped in lime juice. Zumi had to bite the side of her mouth to keep herself quiet. '"—of two new friends."' A servant approached carrying a tray, and uncovered it to reveal a pair of dolls, one wearing green trimmed with yellow, the other wearing yellow trimmed with green. '"They wear the latest fashion for Earth Kingdom girls.'"

Zumi picked up her doll. The face was made from porcelain smooth as an egg's shell, daubed here and there with colour, and the hair looked like real hair, but she couldn't help but feel a hot pebble of disappointment, low in her stomach. She would have liked something from the siege, maybe even just a chunk of rock blasted from the Walls. That's what father would have brought back to them. Maybe a flag from a surrendering general, its edges still singed. And he wouldn't call them "the girls" when he gave it to them. He would use the words he had used less than a handful of times, when he was particularly pleased with them.

My little dragons.

A few feet away Azula held the doll as though it were a dead elephant-rat, then turned back to mother.

'If Uncle doesn't make it back from war, then dad would be next in line to be Fire Lord, wouldn't he?'

The words startled Zumi, but she said nothing.

'Azula, we don't speak that way. It would be awful if Uncle Iroh didn't return,' mother said as she rolled up the letter. 'And besides, Fire Lord Azulon is a picture of health.' The servant glided to her side. 'Now, put your toys away, it's time for tea. And I will have no more of that talk, young lady.'

Azula rolled her eyes but she remained silent as they made their way to one of the tea rooms and mother and the other two women exchanged greetings at great length before they all sat down. Mai sat to one corner, next to her mother, and remained perfectly still, occasionally nibbling at a tea cake or a sweet roll. On the other side of the table, Ty Lee was being ignored by her mother as she made a mess bouncing food around. Zumi squirmed in her seat, the smell of lotus tea making her drowsy, the seams of her clothes digging uncomfortably into her flesh. Finally, after their mothers had discussed the weather, their health, and their families, the four of them were dismissed, released to roam free in the gardens. The rain clouds had scattered, and the sun blazed again.

'I thought I was going to be sick with boredom,' Azula said as she swaggered down one of the paths.

'Maybe you should have,' Mai said. 'Then we'd have been dismissed even earlier.' They all looked at her, unsure of whether or not to laugh. It was always hard to tell when Mai was making a joke; her voice always sounded the same, flat and dusty like a hoarse cricket. Mai shrugged. Zumi did the same, Azula turned away. Ty Lee giggled.

'What should we do now?' Azula said, imperiously, as the four of them ambled across the grass and finally came to a halt under a tree. 'Maybe we can play a game.'

'How come you said all those things about Uncle Iroh?'

Zumi—

had wanted

—was sure she hadn't meant to speak until the words were out of her mouth, but maybe they had been simmering inside her, pooling on her skin like the tea steam and the faint sheen of sweet from their practice.

A frown rippled lightning-fast across Azula's face, then her expression smoothed. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'I was right there,' Zumi said, unable to keep a note of irritation off her voice. 'It happened an hour ago.'

'Oh, that,' Azula said with a dismissive hand-wave and leaned back against the tree. She started lighting the tips of her fingers, then winking them out. 'I was just telling the truth. It's a fact that if Uncle Iroh dies, father becomes the Crown Prince, isn't it?'

'No, Cousin Lu Ten becomes the Crown Prince,' Zumi said. It was true, but she couldn't help but feel like when father asked her a question and she gave the wrong answer.

'Fine,' Azula said, and stopped playing with her firebending. Zumi glanced at Mai and Ty Lee, who stood to one side, watching. Mai seemed uninterested and unimpressed, but she always looked uninterested and unimpressed. Ty Lee's gaze darted back and forth, between Zumi and Azula. 'If Uncle Iroh dies and Cousin Lu Ten also dies, father becomes the Crown Prince.' She looked up. 'Why do you care, anyway? Do you like Uncle Teapot better than father? Maybe you wanted those stupid little dolls to arrive earlier, so you could have played with them instead of—'

'Shut up.'

'So you must think father wouldn't be a great Fire Lord.'

'No!' The denial nearly came with an accidental burst of flame. Father was the smartest person Zumi knew, the best firebender. To doubt it was like doubting the sun rose in the East.

'Then I don't see what you're complaining about,' Azula said, breezy. Mai had sat down, her chin propped on her folded hands. Ty Lee was still standing. 'I mean, it's not like mother would like you any better than she does me if she knew what you get up to. You just admitted she told me off for telling the truth.'

'Well, you don't have to say it,' Zumi said, a little flustered.

'Why not?' Azula said, scorn dripping from her voice. 'That's a dumb thing to say, don't you think?'

Neither Mai nor Ty Lee said or did anything, but for a second Zumi was sure that she heard a titter of laughter. Eyes watching from behind screens, snickers hidden behind hands, mocking whispers disguised in the turn of a head.

Then the answer struck her. She could almost see it floating in front of her, like fire writing. 'Because father said so.'

Azula turned very still. 'It's all part of—strategy,' Zumi went on, stumbling but gathering steam. 'You should never let other people find out everything you know, or everything you think, or everything you plan to do. "Know yourself, and cloak the knowledge from your enemies",' she recited, with only a little hesitation.

'It's "veil",' Azula said, and stepped away from the tree. 'And I don't think mother would like you calling her an enemy. She might end up washing your tongue,' she added acidly.

It didn't matter. Zumi had won for once, and she could feel it.

Ty Lee jumped up. 'I've been learning how to do cartwheels and somersaults—do you want to see?'

Zumi drew a breath. There had been something in the air, but it had cleared now, like a rain cloud melted away by the wind. 'Sure.'

Ty Lee took a few steps back, ran across the grass, and spun into the air in a cloud of pink fabric. She tumbled forward, landed on her hands, and swept onwards in a cartwheel. 'Ta-da!' she said with a giggle as she straightened up, a few strands of hair loose across her forehead, her braid askew.

Azula snorted. 'That doesn't look that hard, I bet—' Her mouth snapped shut. When she spoke again her tone had changed, and she threw her sister a sharp gaze Zumi didn't quite understand. 'I bet we could all do it if you taught us.'

'Oh, it's really easy! You just have to think of your feet as your hands.' Ty Lee hurried to Azula's side and pulled on her sleeve. 'Come on!'

'I think Zumi should go first,' Azula said, sweet as sun-warmed honey. 'She's the eldest. Or maybe Mai, she looks really bored.'

'I'm fine,' Mai said, an impassive effigy in a tomb.

Zumi sighed. 'Show me, Ty Lee.'

She landed on her knee on her first cartwheel, but even Azula's burst of laughter didn't feel too bad. She rubbed her knee, got up, wiped the dirt from her hands. Ty Lee gave her an encouraging look. 'You'll get it right the next time, I'm sure!' she said. 'You put your hands in the right place and everything.'

'Do you want to see a dead body?'

They all turned towards Azula. 'A real dead body?' Mai's tone was the usual rasp, but even she couldn't disguise a sparkle of interest in her eyes.

'No, a paper dead body,' Azula drawled. 'Of course a real dead body. But you have to promise not to tell anyone.'

They all nodded. Azula lead them across the gardens, around the pond where a handful of baby turtle-ducks dotted the water, and into a copse of trees in the shadow of a palace spire. The shrubbery had been arranged in imitation of wildness, moss allowed to hang from the trees. When they all entered the copse, Azula in the lead, even the air smelled green, a damp, vegetable smell.

Azula pulled a curtain of willow branches aside and another smell entirely hit Zumi's nose. Nothing in the palace was ever allowed to go bad, but the stink reminded her a little of ripened bean curd, pickled fish, fruit that had been allowed to soften into mush.

'Here it is,' Azula said.

Mai leaned forward to take a look. 'Gross,' she said, the smallest note of excitement in her voice. Zumi edged towards the bush so she could see. At her side, Ty Lee let out a small squeak, but didn't stop staring, either.

On a small grove on the ground, half-tucked under a shrub, there was a small pile of feathers smeared with white. The white wriggled a little, and Zumi realised it wasn't dust or sand, but dozens of maggots. She felt her stomach contract and a stinging wave rise into her throat, but she kept looking too. This close, the smell was almost solid.

'I thought you said it was a real dead body,' Mai said. 'Not a bird.'

'You can't have dead people in the palace,' Azula said, and stepped away from the bird. She didn't look bothered by it at all, but Zumi noticed she was breathing through her mouth. 'Someone would notice.'

'What kind of bird is it?' Ty Lee said, and took a tentative step towards it. 'It's all... fuzzy.' Her face furrowed in concentration. 'Fluffy? Poofy?'

Azula shrugged. 'I don't know. The kind that's dead. Birds fly in from outside all the time, and when they drop dead the servants clear them away. But they missed this one. I bet that in a month's time it'll just be a skeleton. Just some bones and some feathers, maybe. You know, ages ago they used to keep cat-gators in the palace grounds. I bet they cleared all the dead birds away. I wish we still had cat-gators. Turtle-ducks are so dull. Anyway, I think we should come back here every week, see what's happening to it. All those maggots weren't there a while ago. I bet the beetle-flies lay their eggs in the flesh and then they hatch.' She seemed to find the idea fascinating.

Zumi stared at the bird, one open eye sunken into the skull; it looked like it was staring back, still surprised that something this undignified had happened to it. She had never really thought about death, not even when they went to the shrine of the ancestors to pray. Death was ashes entombed in some catacomb out of sight, a picture, incense sticks. 'We should burn it,' she said.

Azula snorted. 'What would be the point of that?'

'What do you care? You're not even interested in animals.' Azula always wandered away when they were at Ember Island and Zumi wanted to see the anemones in the low-tide pools. Either that, or she threw a stone into the water so it would turn murky.

'I like finding things out. Learning is so important, isn't it?'

Zumi's gaze fell on the blind, open eye again. 'We can't just leave it out here. It's just... bad,' she finish limply.

'Why do you care?' Azula punctuated her words with a shrug. 'You laughed with mother and me when she read that joke about Ba Sing Se burning to the ground. What do you think that means? All those Earth Kingdom peasants would be dead like this. A bit more charred, I suppose,' she added.

'I...' She had never thought about it like that. She tried to picture a person lying like that, limbs askew, flesh sunk, beetle-fly maggots crawling on their skin, eyes turned a sickly yellow, staring without seeing. The thought turned her mouth dry. But they didn't kill—

if we don't burn it to the ground

—helpless people, they killed soldiers, and that was only if they didn't surrender. And besides, when the War was over, everything would be better. One world, united under the golden banner of the flame. It was so clean when she played war with Azula, just figurines being knocked to the floor. When she imagined being a general. Paper dolls burned to ash in a second.

She looked up. 'Don't you want to see what it looks like when it burns?'

Azula considered this for a second. 'You know, that actually sounds interesting. We could make a little pyre, like when they burn a dead person.'

Azula was the one who dragged the rotting bird from under the bush. Ty Lee had gathered a brace of rocks, Mai just one. 'I didn't look very hard,' she said as she put it on the ground. 'Can we go do… anything, after?'

'I'll let you play with my toys,' Azula said, then her stare swept over the others. 'Before we do it, we should swear to each other. You know, sisters.'

'We're already sisters,' Zumi said.

'I don't mean like that, dum-dum.' She lit a white flame in her thumb. 'I'm going to put a mark on all of us, and then we all have to swear we'll keep each other's secrets for ever and ever, and if any of us breaks the promise, the mark will swallow her up in flames until she's nothing but a pile of ash.'

'Wow.' Mai's voice was as flat and dry as a salt desert.

Azula's face furrowed with anger, smoothed. 'Are you scared?'

'No.' Mai pulled her sleeve up, exposed her wrist and a hand balled into a fist. 'Do it.' Zumi had never seen her quite so... lively.

Ty Lee jumped up in front of her. 'Oh, can I go first? Where did you learn about all this, Azula? Is it really true?'

'Sure,' Azula said indulgently, and pressed her thumb's tip on Ty Lee's wrist. There was a hiss, the smell of seared flesh. Ty Lee yelped.

'It really hurts!' she said, rubbing her wrist, her eyes wide.

'Don't be a baby, Ty Lee,' Azula said, and pressed her thumb to her own wrist. A tremor ran through her shoulders but her face remained still, her voice even. 'See? Who's next?'

Zumi was the last. She held Azula's gaze as her sister burned the little fingertip-shaped mark into her skin, but she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from making a sound, to keep herself absolutely still as her world narrowed down to a bright point of pain for a few interminable seconds. Don't be a baby. Azula had been right; besides, it was only a little worse than all the times they'd got burned during practice. Azula drew her hand away. For a moment, all Zumi could think of was how desperately she wanted a chunk of ice. She looked down at her wrist, where there was now a circle of angry, blistered red.

'Forever and ever,' Azula said, and held up her wrist so they could all press their hands together.

In the end, it was Zumi who lit up the pyre. The dead bird was damp, still soggy with the fluids of decay. Still her fireball was strong enough to wreath it in fire in seconds. A few stray maggots wriggled down the rocks, took refuge in the grass. Feathers curled and withered, flesh shrank. In a few moments there wasn't even any stench of rotting flesh anymore, only the smell of smoke and charred meat. Only flames and ash.

It was clean, Zumi thought, then anger—

at her

—flashed inside her; her fingertips worried her burn. They were doing the right thing, in the War. It was necessary, and it was clean. The smell of smoke filled her throat, stung her eyes. She had to keep herself from coughing. In the pyre, the dead bird's skull crumbled down, a chunk of powdery coal.

Forever and ever.

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:

TBC...

Notes: We'll be starting with the action in earnest in the next chapter, but I do hope you've found these two chapters interesting in terms of the characters' dynamics and interactions… I feel this AU premise is the kind where the changes are small at first but eventually snowball into something huge, hence all this set-up, and I of course hope you agree with me enough to keep reading! Oh, and Azula didn't kill the dead bird, in case anyone is wondering about that—she doesn't care about live animals, as far as she's concerned, they're just irrelevant background elements, like rocks, but she's just gruesomely fascinated with death and decomposition, which, as a biologist, of course strikes me as perfectly normal child behaviour. ;)