Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction ❯ Incarnation ❯ Oma and Shu ( Chapter 1 )

“Fire and water,” he said, “don't really mix. You could say they're incompatible. But when they do love each other, they love passionately.” Funke, Inkspell

 

((Because apparently I got the names wrong.))

 

Incarnation

 

Oma tugged at her skirts, looking up at the starlit ceiling. She would be in so much trouble if she were caught missing. Her mother would scold her and her father would not let her leave their home for the next two months. It sounded stupid and childish that she was afraid of that, but after being caught gone the last two times her parents would probably lock her in her room until someone decided she was pretty enough to be taken away.

 

And that could not happen.

 

Oma gave a sigh, a mixture of frustration and romanticism as she dreamed. Beneath the glow of the crystals she could see it as he had described beneath the stars. They would marry, love each other, have a thousand children together, and they would be happy forever, until there was no breath left to laugh in them.

 

That was what Oma wanted.

 

It would've been perfect.

 

But he came from the opposite tribe, on the other side of the mountain, and it had broken her heart when she'd heard her father speak of the opposite tribe, as if they were no more than demons.

 

There was a crumbling noise from the wall across from her. She braced herself for the flying debris, not even sure if it would be him. The badgermoles had been roaming about the mountain, but she had her flute tucked away if she felt the need to ward them off.

 

But as the wall sucked back as if a vacuum had been placed beside it, from the shadows stood her lover, and she ran instantly to greet him with a hug. He laughed as she threw her arms around him, kissing her cheek.

 

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I couldn't find an excuse to sneak off.”

 

The man was Shu, and the woman was Oma. They had met beneath the stars and pledged their love, and now they met beneath the earth to redeem it.

 

They had been burrowing tunnels through the mountain for two months now, placing the glowing crystals as markers for their path, and each time meeting with booming love. It was a curse, their love, as much as it was a blessing. They could never be together, but it pained them to be apart.

 

What hurt more was that Oma was of marriageable age.

 

“We could run away,” he had said between kisses. “We could run and live together somewhere else.”

 

“No,” she had whispered, barely able to breathe beneath their passion. “It's my family. I love them, and I would do anything for them. I could not leave them.”

 

He had nothing to convince her. So they met secretly, but it was an insatiable love. They could not live without each other, and their visits were more frequent. They became careless.

 

And in the separate tribes, people were becoming suspicious.

 

“You should marry,” Oma's mother had advised. “There are so many suitors awaiting you, and your father wants your consent.”

 

“I've found none of them to love,” she'd answered. There was no point in arguing.

 

“Take a wife,” Shu's father had demanded. “Choose any. Or go off to the war.”

 

Shu chose neither.

 

And so the lovers continued to meet, their love for each other only growing. The life promised beneath their first night sky together was sitting between them as they dreamed together, as they curled up beneath the damp caverns they made themselves, and as their love grew so did their passions.

 

But there is always the inevitable.

 

Stories of the time were not known for happy endings. War was too prominent. Fights and feuds were everywhere. Happy endings were lies in their eyes, as women lost husbands and children lost fathers.

 

And this story did not have a happy ending.

 

Oma ran to their meeting place, tears streaming from her face as she remembered the fight she and her parents had. There was no longer a choice in her marriage, and she would accept what came to her. She'd cried and shouted, and they'd shouted back. So Shu had turned and ran, ran to meet her lover, the only man she would ever consider marrying.

 

She waited. A few seconds turned to a few minutes turned to a few hours turned the night sky to daylight and she stood, weary from her sleeping place, wondering if he'd gotten lost in the catacombs. She did not return to her home but waited even longer. She waited and waited and waited until the day had turned back to night back to day and her father found her, sobbing, crying, screaming for Oma, wondering why he had abandoned her.

 

That was when the message came.

 

Oma's cries only turned louder as the young boy delivered the proclamation of death.

 

Shu, forced to go into war by his father, had been killed.

 

Hell was forced from its home beneath the earth as Oma screamed. There was anger in her voice, regret, love, sadness, and then she quieted, resorting to silent tears as she approached her parents.

 

“I loved him,” she announced. “I loved him more than anyone else in this world and I could not be with him because of an airy word.”

 

They marched over to the opposite tribe, using her tunnels. They stood before each other and offered peace. Peace for the lovers of all tribes, peace for the mothers that had lost their children, peace for the widows, peace for those who only felt pain and hurt and anger and sadness.

 

And peace was taken.

 

This was the beginning of the great city Omashu.

 

This was the beginning of a long line of lovers, whose love would last a hundred years and more, who would learn that was what right was harder to choose from than what they wanted, who would learn it's hard not to be selfish, and sometimes they were.

 

This was just the beginning.