Eclipse (Avatar the Last Airbender)

Chapter 18: The Tale of Miyuki

A day off. The thought of it was almost surreal. When was the last time she let herself get to the point where her schedule was completely free? She could hardly remember. Even back in the Tribe, she was constantly moving from one task to the next, and if she ever reached the point where she ran out of things to do, it was easy enough to find something new to fill her time with. It proved to be a different sort of challenge here, where intel from beyond the walls of Ba Sing Se was difficult to come by, and her network within the walls was sparse.

She shook her head and set about changing into the outfit that she had decided on the night before. Something simple and easy to move in. She maneuvered her way around the slowly growing pile of presents from suitors she had no interest in as she went to do her hair and put on a pair of earrings. She wanted more books. Why was it that they gave her everything under the sun from a guzheng to a fire ferret, but they could not provide her with the one thing that she would actually be happy to receive? She sighed quietly and stepped out of her apartment, still mourning the loss of her usual flow of information and lack of reading material.

Things were a little too quiet now that she wasn't receiving a slew of reports every day, and it had helped her realize that she had become one of those people that lived to work, like her brother did, rather than worked to live. It was a rather startling realization, not that she could do much to change things. There was a time when she didn't have to keep herself moving from one task to the next just to keep her thoughts from straying to things that she would rather not ponder on, but that time was so far into the past, it almost felt like a different lifetime. A time when she learned things out of curiosity and not for profit or some ulterior motive.

She stopped by a food stall and picked up a light snack. Maybe she would stop by the tea shop and drop them off for Zuko and Iroh to have as well. She was about to head further down the street when she heard the sound of a guzheng being plucked. She felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips when she saw a girl plucking at the strings experimentally on the veranda. "You'll hurt yourself if you pluck at them with just your fingers like that," Miyuki called.

The girl jumped a little from her seat and flushed. "I just wanted to try. I heard that a really pretty lady played once at a tea shop and now she's really popular."

Ah. It was her. The girl was talking about Miyuki.

Miyuki cleared her throat softly. She'd never heard someone speak about her with admiration before. It was kind of embarrassing. "May I come in?" The girl nodded and Miyuki took a seat next to her. "Would you like me to play something for you?"

The girl nodded so enthusiastically, Miyuki worried for a moment that the girl would get dizzy from how hard she was nodding.

"Okay then, just a moment. I'll be right back." She stepped out and bought a set of turtle-crab finger picks and tape from a stall nearby before going back to the girl. The girl watched with rapt attention as Miyuki set about taping the finger picks to the pads of her fingers on her right hand one by one.

"Before you play, you need to put finger picks on to protect your fingers. Otherwise, the strings will rub against your skin while you play and eventually end up hurting you." Miyuki plucked at a string when she was done and the guzheng produced a bright, clear tone. She smiled at the girl. "Plus, it sounds better when you're wearing finger picks, doesn't it?"

The girl nodded rapidly. "It does!"

Miyuki couldn't help but chuckle at the sight while she thought of an appropriate song to play for a child. It needed to be a song fit for a child, one that she could teach to a beginner, but also sounded good enough to showcase. A memory of the old woman who had taught Miyuki to play the guzheng on her veranda flickered through her mind and Miyuki smiled softly. Ah. That was the one.