Story [Avatar: The Last Airbender] A Water Tribe Proverb (Izumi and Zuko Oneshot for Mini-Games)

Title: A Water Tribe Proverb

Author: devilinthedetails

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender; Legend of Korra.

Characters: Izumi; Zuko.

Genre: General; Family; Drama; Vignette.

Summary: Izumi and her father discuss a Water Tribe proverb in a Fire Nation royal garden.

Author's Note: Written for the Proverb Mini-Games challenge hosted by the fabulous @Kit' My assigned prompt was the powerful African proverb: "The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down just to feel its warmth." For in-universe reasons, I chose to attribute this proverb to the Water Tribe for fanfic purposes, but all the real world credit goes to the African originators of this proverb that served as moving inspiration for this story.

A Water Tribe Proverb

“You don’t mind–” Izumi addressed her father as they walked side by side along pebbled paths lined by the beautiful shade of pink-blooming cherry blossom trees who spritzed the air with the flowery fragrance of their perfume. Such afternoon strolls in the palace garden had become commonplace for them. A bonding exercise. A respite and reprieve from the pressures of governance. “That I’m reading so many scrolls on Water Tribe parenting?”

Ever since she had first felt the new life growing like an orange sunrise over the ocean inside her, Izumi had ordered the royal scholars and archivists to hunt down Water Tribe scrolls for her to read as inspiration as she prepared for motherhood.

“I’ve always encouraged your reading.” Her father smiled fondly. They came to a bridge crossing a shallow stream that wound like a blue ribbon around the garden. At the arching apex of the bridge, they paused to stare down at the koi whose white and scarlet scales glittered in the sunlight as they swam. “And I hope that if I have taught you anything, dearest daughter, it is the wisdom that can be gleaned from studying different cultures. Different nations.”

“You have, Father.” Izumi leaned over to kiss her father on the cheek. Below the still livid red scar that circled his eye.

She remembered the year she had studied abroad as a teenager in the Northern Water Tribe with its gleaming white buildings carved from snow and ice. Its canals and dams that could be raised by its expert waterbenders. How much she had learned being immersed in that culture at the far tip of the world.

She had been back to the Northern Water Tribe many times since. On diplomatic missions. Representing her father in negotiations and at official events as he readied her to rule after him. Each visit had always broadened her perspective.

As if in echo of her thoughts, her father went on, gazing in the direction of the bustling Caldera City ports where the foam-flecked cerulean waves of the ocean lapped at the wharves and steamship bellies, “Every brook and river, no matter how humble, trickles into the sea. We should be like the sea, drawing from many sources and streams. For stagnant water is unhealthy. Attracting mosquitoes and other nasty creatures.”

“The Water Tribe,” murmured Izumi, watching the koi fish dance in the water, “has some proverbs about raising children that cut to the core. They say that it takes a village to raise a child.”

“No people value community more staunchly than the Water Tribe.” Her father nodded. Sagely.

“They also say.” Izumi found her spine shivering despite the tropical sun beating down on her back. “That the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down just to feel its warmth.”

“I used to be such a child.” Her father’s voice was fractured by pain. Grief. Remorse. The voice of a teenager, burned and scarred. Exiled from his homeland by his own father. Disgraced and dishonored. “I set so many villages ablaze in the hope they would bring me back to my father. My country. My inheritance. I didn’t stop being such a child until I was embraced by a new village. A new village of people who forgave me for burning their villages before. Who trusted that I wouldn’t set fire to their villages again by mistake or malice.”

Aang. Sokka. Katara. Suki. Toph. The village who had embraced her father in his time of turmoil.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Izumi contemplated her father’s reflection. Mirrored below her in the stream. “That we speak in metaphors of water, and the Water Tribe in metaphors of flame.”

“Not so strange as it might seem on the surface,” her father remarked. “For the wisest members of any Nation understand the opposite element intimately. Thus, the elders of the Water Tribe have a visceral knowledge of both the warmth and the peril of fire. How essential it is for survival and for community, but also how deadly and destructive it can be. Likewise, the great minds of the Fire Nation realize how water sustains, cleanses, and heals us, but also how water can drown us, sink our ships, or send tsunamis that devastate our islands. We find balance and harmony through our opposite element.”

“My child,” Izumi declared, planting her palms over the sphere of new life swelling within her, “will travel among the people of the Water Tribe. Learn their proverbs. Understand their element. Find balance and harmony that way.”

“I have no doubt they will.” Her father beamed, radiant on this golden afternoon, at the image of the next generation that she painted. “As you did.”

“You named me for a fountain.” Izumi, who often found herself dwelling on the meaning of names as she considered what to name her future child, shot her father an inquisitive glance. “A fountain of water or a fountain of flame?”

“Both.” Her father grabbed her hand. Squeezed it. So she could feel its warmth like sunshine seeping into her skin. “A gushing fountain of water luminescent with the orange and crimson fires of the most sacred hours of dawn and dusk.”