DEAR DICTATOR → zuko

╸one : the rules

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❝ the rules ❞

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               NO ONE WOULD check up on Nari after the incident. It's no surprise...

     The dim moonlight makes Nari's eyes striking. The yellow glow within them was a warning, like scales on a snake. When paired with a red emotion like anger, she could be deadly. 

     Her fingers wrap around the stone half-wall, and with the quiet air around her she hears her grip tighten. Her skin is scalding with heat strong enough to burn, which is well intended with her boiling anger. She's never felt so much rage– her lungs seethe with a hot fire, eyes stinging and breath rigid and bitter. 

     Even at the young age of fifteen, Nari exhibits enigmatic wrath– it was typical for boys to be hot-headed, but not a nobleman's daughter. Or so according to her disdained parents Rai and Hikaro. 

     It's no surprise to find steam puffing from her nose, or witness heat waves like a mirage carrying wisps of unkempt hair upwards. She'd snap at her brother, Tayiko, for the simplistic vice of jealousy. If her cookie was broken in half, she'd throw it across the room. Sharing was not something she was capable of. 

     But Nari never got her way. Tayiko was always the favorite of their parents– who'd long been intertwined with the peak of nobility– even if his bending was poor and weak and pitiful. Hikaro holds his kids to a high standard though never showing attention to Nari besides reprimands. He looks to her as a disgrace; for some reason a powerful bender who's skills rival the princess of the Fire Nation did not fit in his family.

     Because Nari lacks restraint. 

     She never holds her tongue. She acts on impulse. Her motivations are purely fueled through spite, much alike to her fire bending. And that is dangerous for a young girl. 

     This is not a behavior which a lady should exhibit, not if she wants a nice husband or honorable representation. Which her mother never hesitates to tell Nari.

     But Nari doesn't care about reputation. She's fifteen, and in all those years she had ruined it to such an extent that she couldn't give a rat's ass for it. It's too late to patch up all the holes she's punched in walls and repair all the offenses she made, and it's too much work. She's spoiled it like milk past its expiration. 

     Nari tires to hold her irritation back. Through deep breaths, she lets the flames in her belly depart in fragments of steam from her exhalation. The rage does not ebb away. It grows, and grows, and grows, because all Nari has ever thought about is how much she was hated. She let the weight of that self pity drag her down. 

      So even in her family's garden, where her mother loved raising bushels of roses and lilies that had softer thorns than her own daughter, Nari was set on the intention that no one would check up on her after the incident. 

     Her brother was busy making appearances. Her parents would never check up on her. And why should they? If Hikaro and Rai have anything to say, Nari already heard it. They held their words in their mouth as if they were children with stolen candy.

     Dramatic, yes, but Nari can't take much more; she gets three 'calming' breathes in before she jumps over the wall, sharp and precise motions looking as if they were repeated actions from a scroll. Right punch, left punch, all within the fading orange-to-white flames that swirl from her hands. She'd not yet mastered Azula's signature blue fire; it was a skill of many attempts and years of practice with the proper girl, of a fire burning purer than all else. Nari can not pin down the ability.