Eclipse (Avatar the Last Airbender)

Chapter 16: Company

Zuko watched as Miyuki made her way to the center of the tea shop where a space had been cleared for her and the guzheng on the floor. She looked reluctant to accept when the owner asked her to perform here just once after hearing that she was a street performer before this. She showed him the sort of dancing she was doing outside and highlighted the amount of clean up it would take, in an attempt to dissuade him from the idea entirely, but in the end, he had insisted that she play the guzheng instead. Her condition that it would only be just this once remained the same.

When Miyuki disappeared to the back to change out of her work uniform, Zuko wasn't sure what he was expecting to see, but evidently it wasn't what he saw when she came back out. He was surprised to find her in a pale green dress the color of fine jade with white and gold accents and her hair swept into a thick braid adorned with small pink flowers when she came back into the room.

She took her time smoothing the creases in her dress as she sat down on the pillow in front of the guzheng, legs tucked neatly under her. Someone had adjusted the instrument to fit her height with eerie precision, and he could see that she noted the small, off-putting detail in her hesitation. Miyuki shifted a little as she fixed the long, draping sleeves of her dress before she lifted her right hand, which now had turtle-crab finger picks taped to the pads of her fingers, and plucked a string experimentally. A bright, clear sound rang across the teashop and the room fell to a deafening silence as all eyes fell on Miyuki. She nodded at the owner before closing her eyes.

Her fingers began to dance over the strings and spin an ethereal tune, and Zuko could almost feel the room take in a collective breath as she wove the melody note by note. Her voice was clear and smooth as she began to sing about a young woman walking by the river on a spring night and watching the rain fall to the ground like silver needles from the heavens as the full moon shone down on her.

Miyuki sang twice in all the time she was on the ship. The first was after losing a bet, so she sang a song that someone else had requested. The second was when she sang and played the guzheng on their last night with the crew. He had only been present for one of those two occasions, but according to his uncle, both songs were songs about unrequited love. Like those songs, this song was a heartbreaking one about separated lovers. In the last one, it was the tale of two lovers who were forcefully separated by their families. This one, however, was about a young woman who told the man that she loved to marry someone else for his sake. There was more poetry to this one, and it required that the audience read between the lines to get the full story. If they failed to do that, it was merely a song about a woman walking by a river at night in spring. It was because of this poetic-style that it felt as though this song was more suited to Miyuki than the last.

All around him, the patrons of the tea house were entranced. Hardly anyone moved, and all eyes were fixed on Miyuki, as though any movement could break the spell. He couldn't tell which sounded better, her voice or the clear notes of the guzheng. Finally, the flow of notes began to slow into a trickle until she struck one final note on the guzheng and it hung in the air like the gaze of the woman in the song as she watched her love from across the river in painful silence.

If everyone had inhaled at the same time at the beginning of the song, it felt as though everyone exhaled at the same time at the end of the song when they could hold their breath no longer. The room practically erupted into applause after the exhale and she ducked into a gracefully flowing bow before standing and disappearing in the back.

By the time she came back, once again dressed in the tea shop uniform and her hair braided back into its usual half-up-half-down style, the room was still singing her praises. An aristocratic couple went up to her immediately. "Hana, was it? You absolutely must come perform at my party next week," the woman insisted.