DEAR DICTATOR → zuko

╸seven : the winter solsitce

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❝ the winter solstice ❞

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NARI'S TIME AT the Royal Fire Academy for Girls was filled with many things. Bad report cards, letters home about terrible behavior, lectures for a ripped, wrinkled, or stained uniform, rude friends, boring classes, and the rise of a still-going-strong teenage ego. And, of course, lots of information on the structural architecture of the Fire Nation.

It was important to know the weak points of certain buildings, where to hide and where to hit. The ins-and-outs of any important structure in the world. The academy even had maps of cities in the north like Bin-Ir and Agna Qel'a.

And while Nari wasn't a straight-A student, she remembered these kinds of things easily. Avatar Roku's Temple has a very traditional layout, and seeing as the Avatar came here out of all places in the Fire Nation, he's likely trying to talk to his predecessor.

"I have a feeling he's trying to reach Avatar Roku," Nari explains, her legs burning from the many, many rock-carved stairs that connect the black sands of the beach to the temple. "There's a place in the temple called the sanctuary. It has a statue of Roku in it. Like a lot of spiritual places in the Fire Nation, there's a celestial calendar around the room, and today is the winter solstice."

"So we head to the sanctuary?"

"Bingo." Nari points, trying to remember exactly how one would get there. In her defense, she's seen a lot of maps. And she's been out of school for a while. The only reason she really remembered anything about Roku's Temple is because she found celestial calendars interesting. "Now we just need to find it."

The more important the place, the harder it is to reach. So the sanctuary, and the Avatar, should be at the highest point of the temple.

Which means more stairs.

By the time they make it up what must've been at least twelve flights, Nari hears voices. And not the kind that's in your head, the kind that are forcibly innocent and squeaky, belonging to an airbending child and two water benders.

Nari puts her arm up and stops Zuko behind her. "Listen to their plan," She says, tiptoeing upwards while leaving her hand back to stop Zuko. She has quiet steps. He does not. "We can intercept them quietly. They'll be so focused on whatever they're doing that they won't expect us. We get the kid and get out, just like that."

Zuko shoots her a nasty look. He's supposed to be the one making the plan. He's supposed to be the one directing the charge. Not Nari.

But he follows anyway.

Nari walks on the outside of her feet, making each step lighter than the last as she creeps up the stairs and into the corridor. There's five fire sages punching a blast of flame into the door, targeting the chambers that will open it. The Avatar presses his back against a decorative pillar, sliding down the snake that adorns it.

Huh. Nari thought the Avatar would be more intimidating than this.

He is a kid, though. She shouldn't have set her expectations so high.

Nari tilts her chin towards the Avatar, pointing towards him with her hand while she shuffles to the back wall. Zuko goes in for a straight approach towards the kid, and Nari surrounds him in his blindspots.

The two Water Tribe kids stick out like a sore thumb in all that blue. She keeps an eye on them, but not a close one. And she doesn't have to, because, as planned, their attention isn't directed on protecting the Avatar. Their too focused on getting him inside the sanctuary.