#zuko's hair could probably be better but i'm proud REGARDLESS

[imjustavenuxwithaboomerang]

made the gaang with this picrew cause i have too much time on my hands, enjoy

[soopersara]

I'm intrigued! SB-08 - Whimsical please!

I just spotted the fic in your masterlist and .. love the premise. Now I must go read...after work. :D

Thanks for the ask!

So SB 08 - Whimsical is chapter 8 (and probably 9, 10, 11, etc - I didn't split the chapters up very well and the doc is over 13k words) of Stolen Bending, a fic that's been on hiatus for... longer than I'm proud of. It's not abandoned by any means, but my plans for later in the fic have always been squishy at best, I was dealing with some burnout and writer's block when I posted the last few chapters, and I just haven't gotten back to iron out the squishiness in between getting my other projects back on track post-writer's block.

Oh, and it's named "Whimsical" because my plan to keep the fic's length from ballooning out of control was to structure the story around old Zutara Week prompts—specifically the prompts from 2012, in this case. But, uh... when each "prompt" was getting to the 10-20k range, I had to accept that I had another novel-length fic on my hands. Whoops.

But there's some very fun goofiness that I'd completely forgotten about mixed in there - have some element-swapped Zutara meeting the musical hippy nomads as a treat!

"Hmm." Katara shaded her eyes with her hand. "What do you say that we just tell Sokka that it's full of fish, then laugh when the only thing he can catch is seaweed?"

The idea took him off guard, and he snorted. "That's one of the better ideas I've heard in a while. " He broke off when he heard something odd from the far side of the pond.

Katara glanced up at him, then she paused too, brows furrowing as she squinted off across the pond. "Is that—"

The approaching noises grew louder, and Zuko grabbed hold of her forearm. "I don't know. Let's just go before—"

He didn't make it any farther than that before a flash of color appeared through the trees, then another and another and another—not, to his surprise, because there were very many people coming their way, but because each of them wore almost clownishly bright outfits.

Zuko stared. On the one hand, this could possibly be a good thing. No one who willingly looked that absurd could pose a serious threat. On the other, these people were definitely out of their minds. Dangerous or not, he could hardly imagine this encounter ending well.

Unfortunately, it was probably too late to flee, and Katara didn't seem inclined to move anyway. Maybe it was curiosity or friendliness or even politeness, but it seemed that Zuko was stuck regardless.

The first of the strangers—a relatively tall, lanky man with shaggy, chin-length hair—burst from the trees and stopped at the edge of the water, slack-jawed.

"Whoa. Check out the river spirits, everyone." There was a slow, drawling quality to the man's voice that matched his almost vacant expression a bit too well. "Total coolness."

Zuko blinked. Then, entirely by reflex, "This isn't even a river. It's a pond."

Katara shot a bemused half-smile up at him, but the stranger across the pond nodded as though that were somehow a profound statement.

"Awesome. We found some pond spirits."

At that, Katara covered her mouth, but not quite fast enough to suppress her laugh. "We aren't spirits. We're just normal people."

"Oh," the man said as his companions—a very round man and a woman who might have been even taller than the first stranger—joined him. "Cool."

If there was any doubt left in Zuko's mind, that was enough to dispel it. These people were insane.

He gave Katara's arm a slight tug. "Let's just go back to camp," he said, quiet enough that the crazy people wouldn't be able to hear him. "If your brother wants to fish for pond grass, I say we let him."