BUTTERFLIES! ━ prince zuko

𝖛𝖎. Liar, Liar

𝖑𝖎𝖆𝖗, 𝖑𝖎𝖆𝖗
liar, liar
volume ii, chapter vi

❄️🦋💦

"PSST... YUE... psst... !"

Six year old Princess Akiara clambered onto Yue's bed. Her sheets were soft and silky, slippery and hard to hold on to and Akiara's chubby little arms grabbed desperately before she hauled herself all the way up and practically on top of Yue. Yue let out a groan, pulling her feathery blankets further over her head and smushing her head into the pillow.

     "Wake up," Akiara whispered into her sisters ear, giggling. "Wake up, Yue! Wake up!"

     "Akiara... " Yue murmured. "Go back to sleep."

"Why?" Akiara asks.

"It's nighttime," said Yue. Her voice was muffled by her pillow. "Everyone is asleep."

"But I'm awake," said Akiara. Her lips jut out as she pondered Yue's words, arms crossing. "And you're awake... "

     "I wish I was sleeping," countered Yue, but she didn't really sound annoyed.

     "The stars are awake," Akiara said and then she looked at her sister slyly. "And the ocean is awake and the moon is awake, too. And if the stars and the ocean and the moon are can be awake, so can we!"

     Yue lifted her head from her pillow. She smiled, now. "Do you want to say hello to the Moon?"

     "Yes!"

     Hand in hand, the sisters dart down the dark and quiet corridors of the icy palace. Akiara was loud and noisy as she bounced down the halls and though Yue did her best to urge her sister to be quiet, she couldn't keep from laughing. When they got outside, snow was falling and Akiara giggled in the quiet, cold air as she reached her arms out towards the heavens, trying desperately to catch them. Yue barely tugged her along, luring her with the promise of saying hello to the Moon.

     And that's how they found themselves in the Spirit Oasis.

     Little Akiara's eyes widened as she touched the grass. "It's so warm in here," she murmured breathlessly. For once, she was speechless. "Is it magic?"

     Yue nodded.

Akiara fell back into the grass. It felt so different from snow! As she did, her head tilted back to look at the sky. And she decided right then and there that she'd never seen anything so beautiful in her entire life.

Violet ink drenched the clouds and the heavens were made from frozen indigoes. Yet everything was awash in silver. Like fragments of shattered ice, the stars of lilac scattered the heavens. But most magnificent of all was the pale crystal that dwarfed them, the white-rock of the full moon that seemed to sing to Akiara. She was bathed in moonbeams and she smiled.

"Hello, Moon," she said and she waved.

"You don't have to look to the sky," Yue told her, pulling Akiara to her feet. She took her sisters hand in hers and led her forwards, towards a pond of moon-lit water. In it, two Koi fish circled each other. One of inky black with a blazing white mark and the second of blazing white with an inky black mark. "He is right here."

Akiara blinked. "Those are fish."

"Not just any fish," Yue told her. "Tui and La. they are the Moon and the Ocean Spirit. They watch over us. Protect us."