Princess Azula and I

My mother always warned me not to play by the river bank and I never dared to disobey her. On one particular afternoon however she had left me with her nephew Forward, and I found myself acting differently. My mother knew how much me and Forward did not like each other.

I told her several times that I did not need a babysitter. Being twelve,I was old enough to take care of myself. I knew how to light a fire and make my own food. What else did I need a babysitter for?.

It was not as if i was going to make the house catch fire. Which was not a difficult task since it had a thatched roof. There was a time I put Shirley's sneakers on a smoking wood pile of which there was no flames on the firewood. It was mostly smoke but the sneakers got burnt. Shirley had made me angry and somehow I felt that she deserved that.

It is not as if I did it intentionally, I did not know they would burn. I was three at the time,and I was probably doing what any other three year old who had been prohibited from playing outside after it had rained would have done. Probably.

Somehow my mother found out about the burnt sneakers and said nothing. She simply went to the store and bought Shirley a new pair of sneakers from Bata. The store in town that sold original shoes. I could not decide which made me angrier,the fact that my mother ruined my revenge or the fact that Shirley's shoes were something of envy.

I thought of Shirley as I made my way towards the river bank . Shirley was my second babysitter after Jessica. She was nice. Quiet but nice. She always made lemon grass tea,and always gave me two pieces of home made bread. Forward however was mean. If he was not my mother's nephew I swear he would have been a bully at school.

My mother occasionally referred to me as her big girl but somehow I found myself stuck with Forward on one two many occasions.

Kicking stones on the way to the riverbank a lot of thoughts clouded into my mind. What angered the most was that my mother never paid attention to me. She never appreciated that I was her child. If she came home from her usual work at the white farmers kitchen and found the house dirty I got scolded.

However this did not apply to my bratty little sister Elena who just happened to be a year younger than me. Elena got away with everything. She played with her friends until it was dark. Bathed when it was dark enough for witches to walk around naked.

"Did my mother complain about such behaviour ?, you might ask me. The answer is, she did not ". She did not even notice it. Well she did,and complained warm heatedly to me that I needed to call my little sister sooner and remind her to bath. That could not even be compared to how she would have reacted had it been me.

I would have been given a scolding based on my ears, the ears that " lost the head ",she would term them. She would sneer at me with disgust. Murmuring more to herself about how I was not able to follow simple instructions. She would then threaten to pull my ears until they became as long as those of a rabbit.

Without fully noticing it,I was standing on the water's edge throwing stones into the water. Using all the might that my anger had summoned I threw a couple stones into the river. They made a thud. It made me smile thinking of Forward,he had once told me that throwing stones into the river was really bad. He had said you can only live up to the number of stones that you threw into the river.

Smiling lowered my anger a little,and a thought occurred to me." What if I threw one hundred stones".I crouched down to wash my teary face. Closing my eyes I tried to breath regularly,as I opened my eyes I saw her for the very first time.

The water parted like a long narrow road. I had heard of the mermaid princess but at that moment all the warning went out of my head. Her name was Azula, so I was to learn. All I could do was stare. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

She had Olive black hair that flowed smoothly on to her back like the weeds found in the river.

I did not want to look away but a passing thought wondered how long that moment would last. She looked directly into my eyes and I felt as though she could read my mind. Having read stories about love in storybooks,I swear at that moment I knew what love was. Her eyes reflected, and in a way sent messages of peace to my brain and tranquillity swept through every vein in my body.

Her eyes,an undefined mixer of emerald green and turquoise. They seemed to embrace all the elements of life around her,the water sprayed into the clear blue sky and came down as a shower. The sun happened not to be too hot and was in no position to shy away either. It felt good on my skin.

utterly forgetting Azula,I could smell the sand on the river bank. Almost taste it ,and at the same time feel my somehow ice cold feet sink into its warmth as if my life depended on it.

Looking on at Azula,who had not told me her name but I knew that,that was her name. A little realisation almost startled me as I acknowledged that she never spoke to me but I could hear her. A little panic attack started brewing in my stomach. "What if she can tell that I like her,oh gosh"

As I looked on I noticed that she was carrying a baby. It did not bother me at all that I had not noticed that at first.

Suddenly without any warning at all,the river started swirling. Lightning flashed,and a majestic man appeared holding a metallic shiny metal. Azula almost dropped the baby,as she was now mysteriously holding a scissors.

Everything from then happened too quickly. The hair fell unto the ground. I happened to be holding the baby and the majestic of a man threw the metallic metal trying to make it land on Azula's head to restore her hair permanently.

Azula pushed me really hard towards the river bank. The river went back to normal and Azula having cut her hair lost her powers. She also lost her gateway to return to the water. She was going to be stuck on land until the majestic man happened to die.

Azula held me ,slapping me softly and crying out. "Help me! Help me!".That cry pierced through my heart and it broke something inside of me. I wanted to help her but she was saying," someone help me".

I wanted to hold her close and tell her that everything was going to be alright. We were going to come up with a plan to assassinate the majestic man who happened to dictate his way to be her husband. There was so much I wanted to know about her kingdom but she seemed distant now, hurried. She touched my cheek and looked directly at me. In that moment I knew I had to open my eyes. Otherwise I would never see her again.

A piercing pain rippled through my head as I opened my eyes and noticed Azula leaving. The people from my township hurried to where I lay crumpled on the ground unable to move. My mother leading the mass,and I could see the love in her eyes. A mother's love coated with fear and anxiety and at that moment I felt like an idiot.

I did not deserve her. Forward was there too,running as fast as he could. I guess he was not as terrible after all. I watched Azula, as she sent a telepathic message to me .

"You will be fine" she said. Until we meet again. I understood that I was not hurt,that it was her holding me from chasing after her. As it so happened, no one else could see her. I smiled at the crowd,as they all gathered and started fussing over me.