Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction ❯ Lucidus ❯ Questionable Songs ( Chapter 2 )

Lucidus

Chapter Two:QuestionableSongs

 

She's an odd traveling companion.

 

She sings as she walks, legs moving in deep strides, and she reaches to tie her hair back. It's wild and unkempt, and he smiles.

 

“What element, sir Zuko?” she asks between notes.

 

He ignores her, stepping behind her, because she seems the worthy one to lead the way.

 

“When one asks you questions,” she thinks aloud, “do you choose to ignore them, or are you deaf?”

 

“I'll answer questions as I see fit.”

 

She doesn't like this answer, and she stops suddenly, turning on her heel to face him.

 

“It is impolite. An unanswered question is one that hangs in the air, waiting to find its completion.”

 

He suddenly doesn't like her. He clenches his fists and gives a slow, seething answer. “I will answer as I see fit.”

 

She frowns at him and turns quickly, going back to playing with her hair. Her lilting his off-set now, and he smiles at the silence.

 

“What is your quest?” she asks. There is no conversation, just questions, because it was her decision to take a companion, claiming him “her bodyguard,” and he just let her.

 

“I'm searching for somebody,” is his unwise answer, a tad hesitant.

 

“Who?”

 

Her question is unsettling, because he's not quite sure. “I'll know him,” he decides. “He'll be recognized.”

 

But he was assuming it was a “he.”

 

She nods. “I'm searching too.”

 

For what, she did not mention.

 

“Zuko,” she says, testing his name. It was foreign to her lips, the shape her mouth made when saying it. An odd name, one she hadn't heard before. “Where do your loyalties lie?”

 

It was a trick question. He did not give up his origins, but his loyalties were less distinguishable. Some villages and towns had completely given themselves up the Fire Nation, claiming themselves in their name. He chose his words carefully, as not to incite suspicion.

 

“My loyalties lie with my country.”

 

She nodded. “That makes sense. But the question still remains: what is your origin?”

 

He did not answer.

 

---

 

“Cherry blossoms gracefully bloom o'er the fields that lie,
High up is the castle wall, where have warriors gone?
Where is the moonlight that brightly shone up high,
Shone upon the warriors who drained the glasses dry?”

 

She sings.

 

He looks up from his position, which is legs outstretched over brush and leaves, resting against a trunk of a tree. She's in the branches above, one arm anchored around the trunk, the other outstretched to reach a fruit.

 

“Where did you learn that?” he calls.

 

“My mother sang it to me.” Her words fall down like rocks as they clash against him.

 

“And you're Water Nation?”

 

Her grip slides from the tree as she tries to touch the fruit before her. He doesn't quite remember how she got up there, but she was a spry thing, like a squirrel.

 

“I am.”

 

It's an odd thought, since he learned the same song from the same source. His mother had sung these words before she'd gotten ill. Before…

 

He closed his eyes. There was the scar on the side of his face, where all his memories would lie. Thankfully, Katara had yet to ask the question of its origin.

 

“Oh, the moon is rising high in the depths of night,
Silent is the ruined site lying on the ground,
Ivies creep o'er the gate in the cold moonlight,
Rustling are the pine trees through the windy night.”

 

She continues with her song, skipping a verse. She preached of the moon before; what an interesting ideal she held…

 

Her arm is no longer wrapped around the tree trunk as she touches her fingertips to the food, voice dying as she took her concentration completely on the item before her. He watched as her fingers gripped the branch it was sitting on. Her feet slipped, her arm grabbed for an anchor, and the branch broke so that she and the fruit fell. He stood quickly, throwing out his arms. She landed awkwardly, her arm latching at the last minute on a sturdier branch, her other hand catching the fruit she'd been so desperately trying to find. She let her arm slip so she landed bridal style in his arms, grinning at her prize.

 

“You're insane,” he decided.

 

He set her down, and she pulled out a knife from some odd place. She sat down cross-legged and began to peel away at the skin, pulling a rag out to catch the inside, which he learned were small seeds.

 

“What is it?” he asked.

 

“A pomegranate.” She paused to offer him a seed, which he took hesitantly. “They're delicious.”

 

It was sweet. He sat down beside her as the rest of the seeds spilt out.

 

“You risked your life for this?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“You're insane.”

 

She smiled and placed a seed into his open mouth, which caused him to jump back.

 

“I might be,” she popped a few seeds into her mouth, staring down at her stained fingers, “But at least I'm happy.”

 

He took that as a personal jab.

 

---

 

“Oh, rabbit on the moon,
What are you leaping for?
I shall leap, I shall leap soon
At the large full moon!”

 

She sang to herself to make herself sleep.

 

He heard her voice in his drowsiness and stared up at the starry sky. There was a melancholy tone in her voice, and he felt a chord strike within him. He saw her hand reach up, as if to touch the sky, and she covered her face.

 

Some answers weren't meant to be given, and some questions weren't meant to be asked.

 

Authoress Notes:

A short filler chapter before any actual plot.

Katara's personality is different for a reason, reasons unknown, but soon to be found out.

The pomegranate came from the chapter in Song of Magdalene where Miriam and Abraham fed each other pomegranate seeds. Pomegranates are good.

All songs can be found from this site: mamalisa. com/world/japan .html

Next Chapter: Katara causes trouble, and Zuko stands by his conviction. This conviction? She is insane.