Zutara Week 2021/ Zutara Smut Week 2021

Day Six: Spirits

The beginning of the cherry blossom season often coincided with the first full moon after the spring equinox. When it did, both were celebrated with a festival in honor of the moon spirit, Yue.
Yue was depicted in the temple as a willowy maiden with flowing, silvery hair and sad, beautiful blue eyes. Something about the painting in the temple reminded Zuko of Katara though the resemblance wasn't an obvious one. Katara was small and sturdy, while Yue was tall and delicate, and Katara's hair was dark brown instead of silvery white. Maybe it was their blue eyes, but Katara's were bright and sparkling with life and hope rather than melancholy.
Zuko pondered this question during the opening of the cherry blossom festival. Then, like most other girls, Katara had lit incense at Yue's shrine and prayed that she would soon meet her true love. Yue had a soft spot for lovers. She always looked so wistful because she couldn't be with her human lover and didn't want anyone else to suffer as she had.
Katara didn't need Yue's help to find a lover. In her formal robes, with its layers of different shades of blue and silver that rippled like water as she moved through the shrine's cherry orchard, she was breathtaking. The smile she gave when someone stopped to chat with her was impossibly radiant as if they were the one person in all the world she wanted most to see. She was as serene and compelling as the moon.
Even the cherry blossoms must be envious of her beauty.
Zuko took a sip of the wine the shrine's priests had brewed from last year's cherries. Uncle approached him from behind. "Prince Zuko," he said. "Have you thought up your riddle yet?"
The branches of the cherry trees fluttered with pieces of red silk. Each piece of silk was inscribed with a riddle that gave a hint to its writer's identity.
Zuko pulled a piece of red silk from his sleeve.
"I wonder which lucky young lady will untie it." Uncle looked around at the young court beauties in their flowing robes tying pieces of silk tree branches, then nudged Zuko.
That was how you played the game. You untied someone's piece of silk and tried to solve the riddle and figure out who wrote it? This game was said to predict a person's future spouse, but since it gave a lot of opportunity for mingling and flirtation, that was often a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"There must be hundreds of them," Zuko said. "It's unlikely someone will pick mine. Even if it does get picked, it might not even be by someone who knows me well enough to be able to guess my riddle."
Uncle smiled and patted his rotund belly. He looked like a benevolent buddha. "What's your riddle?"
"If I told you, then the entire court would find out." No secret was safe with Uncle, especially if it was Zuko's secret.
It took Zuko days to come up with his riddle. Should the answer be "dragon" or "phoenix," the two creatures from his family's crest? No, those were too obvious. With his best calligraphy, he wrote, "I crawl on land and swim on water. Wherever I go, I never leave home. My shell is hard, but my feathers are soft" on his piece of silk.
Uncle patted Zuko on the shoulder. "I hope someone does find it. I'd like to see my grandchildren before I die."
Zuko's father may have disowned and banished him, but Uncle had welcomed him with open arms. He adopted Zuko as his son and made him his heir. Zuko might never be Fire Lord, but he'd someday be Daiymo of Ba Sing Se.
Standing on the tips of his toes, Zuko reached for a tree branch to tie his piece of silk on.
"Seems kind of pointless, don't you think?" a passing court lady said to her companion.
"Spirits know that that Prince Zuko is going to marry Princess Katara."
Ever since the two of them arrived in Ba Sing Se together, the court gossiped that Katara was Zuko's intended bride.
The court lady giggled behind her fan. "Do they know that?"
"Who knows. Maybe Yue will push them in the right direction."

A/N  What do you think the answer to Zuko's riddle was?