#which would be such a cool character if Tui knew how to write…….

[lillyosaurus]

you always hurt the ones you love.

the ones you shouldn’t hurt at all.

[redux-iterum]

Lynx is Busy Today so Dullard will Talk About The Dark Secret Alone

Spoilers under the cut.

To open up: Starflight is my least favorite of the DoD. I never cared much about him and I didn't find him charming. I understood his place in the Five-Man Band, and he fit there just fine. I simply preferred everybody else over him.

This book did a great job at winning me over. I'd say he's still my least favorite, but not by such a huge gap as he had before. He's right behind everybody else now, and I think that's nice. I like all of the main five now, which is vital for a book series where you're going to be stuck in the perspective of each of them for an entire book at a time. Well done to Tui, and especially well done for writing all of their perspectives differently. It doesn't feel like the same character every time, which I know can be hard to do.

I don't know if it counts, since we do go to different locations, but this felt a bit like a bottle episode of a story - that is, it felt like we were stuck in one place for a long time and the vast majority of the events happened on that volcano. I didn't mind it, honestly. It felt fitting for the race of dragons that were trapped in one shitty area and were fighting to get off of it.

Speaking of that race and its territory, I'll say that, in this book and the last, my expectations of where NightWings lived were subverted. I had the mental image of a starry place of crystals and clouds, so to have pretty much the exact opposite be the reality is a nice reveal. To see it in depth and how awful it is is radical.

By the way, the queen's specific curse, being ice-stricken and having to live in lava? Fucking radical. What a cool idea.

Har har.

Anyway.

I will say that I unfortunately knew the reveal about the prophecy way in advance - before I even intended on reading these, after asking Lynx about it. If I hadn't known, I would be way hyped about this plot twist, because it's a super interesting one. I can't recall the last time I read or saw something where the prophecies were just made up and weren't real. It feels like every time there's a subversion, the prophecy is still fulfilled, just in a different way than initially thought. This is a fun idea that I'm shocked I haven't seen before.

Not too much else to say from me. I appreciate Starflight's writing, Fatespeaker's a charmer, fuck Morrowseer and goodbye loser, and the final resolution of NightWings vs RainWings is honestly probably the best way this could have gone for everyone. I'm eager to see how Sunny's perspective goes.

That's all for now. See y'all next month.

[seawing-vibes]

Othermind, dreamvisitor, and ocean?

Othermind: If you could rewrite one book/plot point, what would it be?

Oh definitely the uh. Sl*v*ry,, or at the very least re-write the way it was written because that was just. Very poorly handled,, I dont feel like I need to go into detail on it, but just know that almost immediately that should be removed or changed. It was just handled poorly and in all honestly should’ve started in Io’s perspective or something and then moved to Blue’s or SOMETHING else. In all honesty I feel that its just a topic that Tui shouldn’t try and tackle here, it doesn’t fit and its a topic that she obviously doesn’t know how to write about

I would also hav re-written The Dangeous Gift to be more plot driven than slice-of-life vibes, ya know? It also felt very.. childish the way it was written (the constant full cap’s dialog paired with far too many excitation points…), also yes I’m aware that WoF is still marketed as Children’s Books but compared to the other books it just feels so frustrating, especially once you shift to Jerboa’s scene!! There’s far better ways to convey Snowfall’s childish nature than that and it just frustrates me. I dunno!! There’s a lot I would tweak there (looking at you Animus objects and destruction of the GREAT WALL.) but I wont get into that, overall I liked the book but ohhh boy would I want to change it a bit :,]]

Dreamvisitor: Which character would you be best friends with?

Sunny and I would be besties INSTANTLY just because of how much our personality’s vibe, and Starflight acts almost exactly like a few of my friends so <333 I would also be besties with Tsunami due to the fact that we’re both cool and awesome

Ocean: Favorite part of the WoF universe?

Anon I feel like you knew what you were doing with this one,,

THE SEA KINGDOM,, Aquatic is so so cool please, why dont we talk about this more?? Its so creative and neat, I wish it got more development because its so so cool. The Seawing culture that’s been developed is also so nice? They worship sea animals and even hold many at high regard to treat them with respect and dignity. The details of how they orchestrate party’s and even down to their weapons,, its all so so fascinating and so cool!!! So cool please lets talk about it more ESPECIALLY THEIR RELATION TO ANIMUS MAGIC-

[zutaradreams]

1000 Follower Fic

When I reached 1000 followers, I decided to write a story based on one of the prompts for the latest Zutara month. This story features aged up characters, where Zuko is never banished and serves in the navy under Admiral Zhao. Katara and Sokka never find Aang and travel to the North Pole on their own. As requested, this is for Day 9: Shatter. Please enjoy! It will be up on AO3 soon! 

@zutaramonth

The Healing Hut

He says a lot of things as the fever works through him. He curses every time he moves, when he feels the pain surge through his body. He thinks he talks to Mai. He calls for his mother at one point. He imagines his father, but never lets a plea for him leave his lips. 

Through all the murmurs of a fevered man, the first thing he says consciously when he realizes he is not alone is:  “My uncle?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know your uncle.” Then two cool hands massage his temples, and he falls back to sleep.

  He hears a lot too. “I can’t leave. They’ll kill him.”

A man says, “The guards will make sure no one does.”

“The guards want to kill him.”

“They can’t. He’s worth more alive.”

“Not anymore,” the woman’s voice replies, the one the cool hands belong to. “He asked for an uncle.”

“That would be General Iroh.”

He wants to speak up, say “yes, did you find him”, but the air around him is so hot, and he feels like he can’t breathe. 

“Ozai’s brother,” the man adds. 

Ozai. 

The air feels hotter and hotter. He moans in pain. The hands find him. 

“That’s Ozai’s son you’re helping, Katara. And the whole tribe knows it.” 

“And they know this is the man who killed Zhao.”

“Yeah, too late,” the man sneers abhorrently. 

“He’s part of the reason I have my bending back.”

“Yue’s the reason you have your bending back!” he shouts. 

“Look, I couldn’t just let him die out there. Especially not by Zhao’s hand.”

“So you’ll save his life, nurse him back to health, and then what?”

The woman, Katara, gives no answer. She prods at his neck, his shoulders, his chest. He wants to shout at her to stop touching him; it all hurts so much. But then she pulls her hands away, and he realizes he does not hurt as much as he did before. 

“Good, your fever’s going down. Now how are those ribs?” Her hands trail down from his forehead to the center of his body. “Hmm, not as good as I want them to be. This might hurt a little.”

His chest seizes in pain immediately as she attempts to mend the shattered bones. He wishes he could stop her. He wishes he could burn her hands from his body. He wishes she would let him die. 

“There. That’s better,” she says softly, and opens his mouth to bend water down his throat. 

His fever breaks that night.

She’s not expecting to see his hazy eyes staring back at her when she enters the healing hut. It’s easier to heal Prince Zuko when his eyes are closed and he’s lying still. Now that he’s awake, now that his fever’s broken, now that his bones are on the mend, she wonders what to do with him. 

“You,” he says in a deep, raspy voice, deeper from his illness. “You were at the oasis.”

“Yes.” She stood with Sokka and Yue, trying to protect the moon spirit from Zhao and his men. 

“Katara.”

She wonders why he feels the need to call her by name. She’s surprised he even knows it. 

“I should be dead.”

“You should.”

“The force of Zhao’s attack-”

“I was able to heal most of the burned skin with minimal scarring. The force of the blow shattered your ribs. I had to work quickly to stop the internal bleeding. You’ll have to stay in bed longer, though. You still have a lot of healing left.”

“My uncle?” he asks again. 

“I don’t know.” 

As far as she knows, every Fire Nation soldier drowned in La’s revenge...every single one except Zuko. Sokka tells her La spared him because he would have died from his injuries. Katara thinks La spared him out of gratitude, for delivering the fatal blow to the one who harmed Tui. 

“Who would know?”

“I’ll ask around. Let me check on your ribs.”

Her hands are less steady now that golden eyes watch her every move. 

As soon as he can sit, he starts making demands - for a ship, for parchment, for an audience with the Chief. 

“Eat the food I brought you,” she says, rolling her eyes. She’s starting to prefer him unconscious. “The broth is delicious.”

“I need to let my father know I survived.”

“He knows,” she tells him. Chief Arnook sent word to the Fire Nation, hoping to settle on a ransom. “He knows you killed Admiral Zhao. You’ve been labeled a traitor to the Fire Nation.”

He hurls the bowl of soup at her. She bends it right back at him. 

Sokka urges her not to heal him again, and she’s inclined to agree. She holds out for three days before she wonders how his ribs are faring. 

He’s the only patient in this healing hut. He thinks he knows why. He’s a traitor to the land he’s from and a prisoner to the land he’s in. 

“What will your people do with me?” he asks, while she soothes the bruises beneath his scarred skin, evidence that his bones are moving back where they belong. 

“They’re not my people,” she reveals.

There’s nothing more absurd to him, that this young woman with hands cloaked in healing water, would not consider these people of the Northern Water Tribe hers.

 “I’m from the South. I came here with my brother a few years ago to learn waterbending.”

“I didn’t realize the South had any waterbenders left.”

Her hands still. 

“That’s thanks to your people.” 

He doesn’t see her again for five days. His ribs ache. 

“He’s a liability,” Chief Arnook says. 

“Yeah, especially now that you told the Fire Lord we have him,” mentions Sokka critically. The relationship between the two of them suffers irreparably now that Yue can no longer keep the peace between her father and her husband. 

Katara wonders if this means Sokka will consider leaving the North Pole now. Maybe she can convince him to come home, the way she had to convince him to leave all those years ago. But Sokka will never leave, not when he’s Arnook’s heir by marriage, not when he has a son he has to raise alone. 

This may be her time to leave, however. “I can take him back to the South Pole,” she offers. “That way the threat’s away from here. The Fire Nation won’t attack the South Pole. There’s no need when they’ve already taken everything. The North, on the other hand, has too much to lose.”

“Katara-“ her brother begins. He doesn’t want them to be separated. He still stands by some promise he made to their dad that he would always look after her. But she’s grown up now. She’s a master waterbender. And it’s time to go home and wait for new waterbenders to be born. It’s time for her to teach them. 

“My mind’s made up,” she says. 

Prince Zuko will return to the South Pole with her, as a prisoner of the Southern Water Tribe. 

He’ll trade one icy pole for another, it seems. When he hears the news, he wishes she had let him die. 

“When do we leave?”

“As soon as I think you’re able,” she replies. “It will be a long journey. You’ll need your strength. How do you feel today?”

His body feels better, but nothing else. His mind is raging at the thought of spending the rest of his life in that plundered village of ice and snow. He’s seen it before, briefly when he was under Zhao’s command, as they searched for the Avatar. He never wants to see it again. 

She helps support his weight when he begins walking again. His arm hangs around her shoulders, and though he’s working hard to keep the indignance plastered on his face, she can tell by the stride of his steps that he is eager to walk again. 

They take laps around the hut until his breaths grow heavy, and then she helps him back into his bed. He eats his soup without protest. 

A question persists on the tip of her tongue. It’s bothered her for weeks, and now she feels like he’s in a stable enough mood to answer it. “Why did you kill him?”

Zuko had attacked first, as soon as Zhao struck Tui, not the other way around. Zhao’s final blow, while intended fatally, had been in response to Zuko’s wave of fire. Even on the ground, with shattered bones and melted skin, Zuko rained fire down on Zhao until the admiral’s death. 

She would have done it, had her bending not been taken from her. Sokka would have, if he could have gotten close enough without being burned. Zhao expected this from them, the enemy. He clearly didn’t expect it from Zuko. So she wants to know why he did it.

Why did it matter so much to you?

“The sky’s not supposed to be red,” he replies, reminding her of how it felt to have the moon plucked from the sky, how it felt to be without her bending. “He could have destroyed the whole world. Mortals have no business with the spirits. We can’t understand them.” 

“Yeah, but La would have handled him, like he handled the rest. You didn’t have to.” 

“I didn’t know what La was going to do. I just knew what I had to do.”

“What did you think the mission was here?”

“I was told that we were here in case the Northern Water Tribe was harboring the Avatar. I didn’t know Zhao had other plans until we got to the oasis. No one knew. All those soldiers died fighting blindly.”

“They’re all fighting blindly if they think this war is justified,” she returns.

He’s standing in the healing hut when she comes to check on him. He knows not to leave; there are four guards right outside in case the idea ever strikes him. His back is straight, and if he’s in pain, he hides it well. 

Wordlessly, she sheathes her palms in water and presses them to his chest, searching for lingering damage to the bones. There’s barely any left. 

“I hope you don’t get seasick.”

“I don’t.” 

“We leave in a week,” she decides. A week is enough time to work out the details with Sokka, like where to avoid Fire Nation fleets and how much money she’ll be allowed to take with her, and which vessel she’ll be given. Sokka wants her to take a couple guards too, but she’s hesitant to add more stakes to the clandestine transport of the Fire Lord’s son. 

He smirks. “You shouldn’t have healed me before we left.” 

She’s seen what his hands can do. She won’t let that intimidate her. “You shouldn’t try anything. Not when I know exactly where you’re vulnerable.” Her hands can shatter as well as they can mend. He’ll learn that if he wants to survive the journey. 

He could melt the shackles, but he doesn’t desire to have molten metal coating his wrists. This will be his last morning in the healing hut, and his first morning outside in weeks. Two guards grab him by each arm and force him forward, not that they need to. He has no qualms walking out on his own. He wants to leave this land as much as they want him to. 

For a quick second, he pauses right outside the entrance of the hut, as soon as he feels the sun on his face. 

He looks up to the sky. It isn’t red. It’s blue. He’s a traitor and a prisoner. But the sky is blue.

[awkwardpenguinproductions]

Okay I’m sure you’ve gotten asked about this before but how would Zuko interact with Jet assuming he was with the gang in their first meeting with him?

You’re the first one, Nonny! 🎉

So I started writing this at 12:45am my time, and finished at around 1:30pm my time. Total active writing time was probably about 3, 3.5 hours? Honestly, that kind of turnaround is unheard of for me, but IDEK, I saw this ask and this popped nearly fully formed into my head.

Nemesis

The smarmy jerk’s got style, Zuko will give him that. He still rubs Zuko the wrong way––instincts honed over years spent in the company of soldiers recognize bloodlust regardless of how well it disguises itself under smooth charm. He and Sokka exchange irritated glances, but both Aang and Katara are googly-eyed, and if half the squad is dug in, the rest aren’t going anywhere.

The hideout’s pretty cool. Zuko can appreciate the strategic genius of the location; the trees are so tall and the canopy so thick that there’s very little chance of the Freedom Fighters (oh Agni what a stupid name) being discovered––firebenders like to be rooted, and that preference informs almost all of Fire Nation military tactics, so it’ll be a rare Fire Nation soldier that would think to look up for his enemy. That speech, though... Zuko shivers and prays to Agni, Tui, La, and the Four Winds that his new squad has the sense to keep Zuko’s firebending confidential.

The guy’s a nutcase. The elder he’s just assaulted was barely able to stand up without the cane Jet had swiped out from under him, and now he’s on the ground and Zuko has a rappel line ready but for once Sokka beats him to the punch, leaping from the perch like a diving eagle-hawk. The Water Tribe warrior catches Jet’s foot with his club as it swings towards the elder’s face, and Zuko lands behind his squadmate just as Jet snarls “remember why you fight” in Sokka’s face. When they return to the hideout and Sokka tells Katara and Aang what had happened, Jet fucking lies to their faces—if that elder had actually been an assassin, Zuko will snap his bow in half and join the Imperial Firebenders.

Zuko is awake at dawn (he is a firebender after all) so he clearly hears the whispers outside the hut. Sokka hears them as well, and without a word they both slip out and follow Jet and his cronies to a cliff overlooking a nearby village and the dam that protects it. Zuko knew Jet was bloodthirsty, but wiping out an entire village just to get rid of half a garrison’s worth of soldiers? Gaipan, Zuko remembers from reading pilfered reports back at the Stronghold, is barely worth the ink that marks it on the maps. Wiping it out wouldn’t do a single thing to uproot the Fire Nation’s foothold in the Earth Kingdom. And the guy’s bullshit excuse about the demands of war makes Zuko want to either laugh hysterically or breathe fire. This kid has no idea about the demands of war; he’s just lashing out at what he perceives as monsters.

But he’s too dangerous to be pitied, and too steeped in fear and rage to be reasoned with. When Sokka refuses to go along with their plan, and Zuko makes his opinion clear by spitting in the nutcase’s face with all of the precision trained into him by the Yuyan, Jet orders Pipsqueak and Smellerbee to take them on a “long walk”. Their hands are tied behind their backs, and Smellerbee jolts them into motion with the poke of a dagger.

As they walk, Zuko is itching to fight; the odds are much better now that it’s two on two, even accounting for Pipsqueak’s size. But a single look from Sokka banks his fire. The Water Tribe warrior is subtly leading them in a specific direction, so sublty that even Zuko hadn’t noticed until just that moment.

Sokka suddenly speaks, it’s a signal, and Zuko watches carefully for signs of what to do. He knows that Sokka is going to break left the second the other boy shifts his weight, and they turn and run in unison, so suddenly that their captors are left behind to shout and give chase. Zuko immediately sees where Sokka is going with this—the same traps they had discovered yesterday are primed and waiting. The two Freedom Fighters bumble into the traps and get snapped up like hog-monkeys, and Zuko smirks as he easily snaps the shoddy vine-rope with a flex of his arms. Even spitting mad, a blush spreads across Smellerbee’s face, and Sokka laughs as he easily undoes his own bindings.

“While you’re up there and daydreaming about how ripped Zuko is, you might want to practice your knotwork,” he quips, and Zuko cuffs him under his stupid wolf-tail.

As they sprint back towards the hideout, Sokka breathlessly outlines his plan. There’s no time to argue, and Sokka isn’t yet advanced enough in Yuyan hand-language to understand him anyway, so Zuko agrees, and they pack up Appa’s saddle and race to the village. Zuko and Appa drop Sokka off to get the villagers evacuated, and then return to the hideout to pick up Aang and Katara.

Who aren’t in the hideout.

Shit.

It’s hard for Appa to punch his way through the forest’s dense canopy, and by the time they find a hole big enough for him to get through without scraping the saddle and half the fur off his back, they’re much farther from the resevoir than Zuko wants to be. They fly back as fast as Appa can manage, but the resevoir’s full, the blasting jelly is in place, and Zuko can hear a birdcall whistling through the air. Another call answers it.

A burning arrow arcs through the sky, too far away for Zuko to shoot it down. All he can do is watch.

The dam explodes.

The village floods.

Agni, please let Sokka have gotten them out in time. Please let Sokka have gotten out in time.

Heartsick, burning with fury, he directs Appa over the flooded remains of the village, following the flow of the water. There are no bodies, but that means nothing. Until they round a bend, and then it means everything.

Sokka is waving his arms and jumping around like a maniac, grinning from ear to ear, jubilant in his plan’s success. Behind him stand the entirety of the village’s residents, Earth Kingdom natives and Fire Nation colonists and soldiers. Zuko returns Sokka’s grin, and holds out an arm for the other boy to hoist himself up on Appa’s head. Sokka waves to the people, and everyone but a few shell-shocked soldiers cheer. Zuko spots the elder from the day before, tears in his eyes as he bows shakily to the two boys.

They find Katara, Aang, and Jet just inside the treeline atop the cliff. Jet is frozen to a tree, and Katara is shouting at him furiously, tears flowing down her cheeks. Aang is sitting on the forest floor with his big, stormy gray eyes staring at Jet like the asshole had broken his heart. Zuko’s fury reignites at Aang’s expression, and he glares at Jet and wishes that he could roast the bastard to ash with the strength of his gaze alone. The flinch Jet can’t supress at the sight of Zuko is satisfying enough, he supposes.

Aang and Katara climb into Appa’s saddle, Momo flutters down to wrap around Aang’s shoulders, and Sokka flicks the reins. The bison roars and lifts off, drowning out the furious, insane screams of the would-be terrorist of Gaipan. Looking at the faces of his squad, Zuko knows that this was a lesson that needed to be learned, but it was a cruel one, and he’s not looking forward to the debrief. For now, though, he’s content to act as comfort for shellshocked Aang and miserable Katara, and smirk when Aang points out to Sokka that they’re flying the wrong way.

X

And I wasn’t even planning on writing a Jet redux. “Jet” comes before “The Blue Spirit” in the series continuity, which, spoilers, is when I’m planning for Zuko to join Team Avatar, so in my outline (really more of a list with a one sentence summary/prompt, some of which I look back at and go “????” because I can’t really remember what sparked each one in the corresponding ep) Zuko and Jet don’t meet until Ba Sing Se. But to be perfectly frank— “Jet” was a filler episode. It introduced the character and his motivations, but it could’ve appeared anywhere in Book 1 and been perfectly effective. So, this takes place a week or two after “The Blue Spirit”, or at least the Dragon ‘verse version thereof.

I’ll post a more polished version of this to AO3 this weekend, but I hope this answered your question, Anon!