#the ember island kidfic i sometimes randomly write a few lines for

[volkswagonblues]

🌹 cause im thirsting for more of your writing

@verdanthoney disobeying the rules of the ask game and posting an excerpt, because I laugh in the face of rules

[snippet of a zuko and azula kidfic; in which the two royal sibilngs accidentally get involved with White Lotus shenanigans]

“Concentrate on breathing! Assume your stance! Focus on discipline!”

Zuko concentrated on his breathing; he assumed his stance; he wasn’t sure how to focus on discipline, unless the master meant for him to think about all the ways he’d be punished if he didn’t do the first two, but The Carp wasn’t the type of tutor who seemed to care about punishment. Some of Zuko’s tutors were. Some of them took a special delight in assigning him lines to copy or inflicting little stinging burns across his knuckles. Zuko didn’t know this yet, but the reason he cycled through so many firebending teachers in his short ten years of life was because his father kept hiring those kinds of people — and his mother kept firing them once she caught them in the act. 

Zuko’s parents hated each other, but they were both too polite to say it out loud. They did things like this instead.

His newest tutor was called The Carp. The Carp had a real name, of course, but  that’s what the whole family called him. The Carp had two long tendrils of hair poking out of his upper lip, just like the two barbels growing out of the side of a koi fish. Those quivered when he talked, just like barbels waving under the water. He also had two dark beady eyes and a way of gaping his mouth in annoyance, which made him even more like a fish.

The first time he met Zuko and Azula, Azula had asked him a technical question about the hull designs of icebreaker ships. She wanted to know whether the Fire Nation would ever penetrate the icy walls of the Northern Water Tribe.

“What does a girl know about war?” he had responded brusquely. “Imagine if a fish who’ve lived its life in an ornamental pond trying to understand warfare in the Arctic. You can imagine all you like, but these questions are a waste of time.”

Azula had scowled. This wasn’t how strangers usually treated her. People meeting Azula for the first time usually had one of two reactions: they either loved her or became afraid of her. Not many people dismissed her. In revenge she gave hi the nickname “The Carp”, and it’s stuck ever since.

It was a very good nickname because The Carp wasn’t just fish-like in his appearance. He was a complainer by nature: he enjoyed nothing and complained about everything. Azula had noticed this.

There was a third reason why It was a very good nickname, one that not even Azula could have know. The Carp was The Carp because he was fishy. He was there with a fishy purpose. He worked for a secret organisation. That was why he was Zuko’s tutor, and why he was the royal family on Ember Island during their midsummer holiday. 

He had a secret mission from a secret organization. They called themselves the White Lotus.