Lost Arrow [A:TLA au]

eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
( INCOMING PERIL )

THINGS WERE GOOD. LIKE actually good. Peaceful, in a way.

Flo never thought her life would be like that again.

It made her suspicious. Anxious, even.

The past few weeks or so went by smoothly. Katara obliterated all the boys in her and Aang's waterbending lessons. Aang vacillated between taking the class seriously and goofing off. Sokka went to warrior's training everyday and was doing well. Flo went with him and practiced archery a lot of the time, which soon led to Ujaraak, the friend of Akiko's father, showing her how they made their arrows; it was a little different than how she was taught, and she soaked up the information like a sponge. At some point, she finally bought a new dagger, one made from a leg bone of an animal with leather wrapped at the handle for a secure grip. It felt nice to have a weapon for close range attacks again.

Akiko sought her out sometimes to mediate, though not a lot. She and Princess Yue seemed to be better, because Flo saw them occasionally spending time together. Speaking of, Princess Yue spent time with Flo, Sokka, Katara and Aang semi-regularly. She was very interested in their adventures so far, so at first a lot of their conversations (or, well, their conversations; Flo let the others do the talking for the most part) were just stories of where they've been and what they've done.

So, yeah. Nothing happened, really. Not anything bad. It was all sort of mundane, almost. She didn't need to carry her bow and arrows or her new dagger everywhere because there weren't any threats. Life was going on by and things were good.

And Flo anticipated for something to ruin it all.

She's felt like this for the past few days. Everything has gone by too smoothly for her to really dismiss it.

Something was going to happen, wasn't it? It always did. As if the universe was intent on ruining everything for her and making her life miserable.

For once, Flo wanted things to stay good. She didn't believe that it ever would, though. Not with a war going on. Not with Aunt Wu's prediction of her family 'reunion'. And if by some miracle, things did turn out good and stayed that way, then it definitely wouldn't be any time soon.

She could feel it in her bones.

Things were about to get bad.

+++

For the sake of not ruining everyone else's good moods, Flo went about her days like anxiety wasn't clawing up her throat and squeezing her chest tight like a gecko python restrictor.