Blue Fire 火 Tyzula

VIII. Beach

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Thousand Woes Under the Blue Sky - The Handmaiden OST

The three girls made their way out of Chan's house and down to the beach.

Azula and Ty lee still couldn't look at each other, and remained uncomfortably silent as they walked with Mai alongside the shore.

"Why are you guys so quiet?" Mai asked, feeling a weird tension between them.

Truth was, Azula's heart was still pounding hard on her chest from what had just happened with Ty Lee at the party.

She still couldn't believe what they had done.

But she recognized they were standing very near her family's old beach house, where she thought Zuko might be, so she went on the look for him to evade Mai's question.

"I'll be right back." The Princess said before walking further ahead into the steps of a big beach house that looked abandoned.

"We can sit on these logs while we wait.'' Mai told Ty Lee, pointing to a small campfire on the beach.

They both sat down in the logs over the humid sand, and Ty Lee kept quiet for the first time in her life, enveloped in a thousand feelings at a time.

One part of her was shaking with nervousness, not knowing what had Azula thought of them kissing each other, as it had been so awkward after they were interrupted in the party.

Another was worried Mai would figure out what she had been doing with Azula, because her face had 'guilty' written all over it, and she was not good at keeping secrets.

But then, a bigger part of her was ecstatic with joy, remembering how she and Azula kissed inside the powder room. It had been so thrilling, sexy, romantic...

''Are you okay? Why are you acting all suspicious and stuff?'' Mai asked her, snapping Ty Lee out of her thoughts.

"Me? Oh no, no. Not at all, It's just... The temperature in this island is really hot. I feel like I'm suffocating!" The brunette replied with an innocent smile, fanning herself with her hand.

Mai just gave her one of her uninterested, 'whatever you say' kind of looks and let it go.

Azula went up the stairs into the dark porch of the abandoned house.

There was Zuko, sitting on the steps of the front door, sulkily looking at an ancient painting of their family, when he and Azula were just kids.

''I thought I'd find you here.'' Azula said in a low tone as to not scare Zuko.

''Those summers we spent here seem so long ago... So much has changed.'' Zuko said, reminiscing of old times.

Azula understood right away, because looking at their old family house, it gave her the exact same feeling of nostalgia that Zuko was experiencing.

Flashbacks of her playing in the sand with her brother and her cousin Lu Ten as kids flooded her mind.

When her mother was still around, and their family was fine, not torn apart.

''Come down to the beach with me. Come on, this place is depressing.'' Azula said softly, encouraging Zuko out of his own sullen mood.

Both went down the stairs and joined in with Mai and Ty Lee. They all sat around in a circle.

Zuko began a bonfire with the dry logs that were around and threw the small painting he was holding on to earlier to the flames.

''What are you doing?'' Ty Lee asked startled as soon as she saw it was his old family painting.