Second Coat of Paint

Chapter 3

To a legendary Math teacher who brought out the very best in me...

oooooooooo

For the next four days Azula managed to stay out of detention. Zyra had to admit, she did cut the girl some slack here and there, some mouthed comments during class she pretended not to hear, but other than that the effort was there. The fifth day, however, the girl shoved a classmate so hard the smaller girl almost tumbled down the stairs. Zyra had to act then, so her and Azula were back where they'd started in the, now completely painted, empty room.

"I really hoped we wouldn't be spending time here again until the library was opened."

"What do we do now?" Azula asked, looking at the floor.

Zyra hadn't mentioned what happened when she asked about the girl's mother, but she had been thinking about it. Even more that that, tying to get more information from other sources so she'd be ready if the girl decided to confide in her. But Azula hadn't. Hadn't mentioned it, hadn't spoken to Zyra, hadn't looked her in the eye too much even.

"Something a little different, a longer project."

"Longer than painting the room?"

"Probably." Zyra drew out three sheets of paper. "We'll take one of these paintings and paint a bigger version of it on this wall."

"A wall painting? Why?"

"To brighten up the room. This is a kids' school."

Azula rolled her eyes, but Zyra didn't hold it against the girl. "Fine..."

"You get to choose which one."

Azula unsurprisingly chose the least colorful painting, showing a sunset over a vast landscape. Zyra knew she wasn't much of a painter, but she was ready for a challenge and she was sure Azula would relax a bit, laughing at her silly drawing skills. This was supposed to be punishment, yes, but the girl had been through enough lately.

"First, we'll draw the outline with this and then we'll add color. It'll be easy... I'll go get the paints." And with that Zyra left to raid the art supplies closet. The school's supplies were a joke in this regard. She made a mental note to resupply it with her own money. "I just realized we don't have any green, so we'll just have to mix some yellow and..." She returned to the soon-to-be library only to find Azula was almost finished with the outline. "Blue."

"What? Is it bad?" Azula asked, standing in front of an almost exact sketch of the painting they were trying to recreate.

"No, it's absolutely amazing... But Azula," Zyra managed to drag her eyes from the wall and to the girl. "I meant to do that. I just wanted you to mix colors for me. I didn't know you were good at drawing..."

Azula kept her face still, but her eyes betrayed her and sparked at the compliment. "I'm not. It's a useless skill."

"Well, it's useful here. I can't do that... You maybe want to paint this, while I mix the colors?"

Azula just shrugged and carried on drawing the lines of a perfect tree. Then, after making a few more adjustments that seemed unnecessary to Zyra, the girl took up one of the brushes and started painting the downmost edge of the wall. After watching it happen for a few minutes, Zyra couldn't hold her tongue any longer.

"And you're sure you never practiced this?" she asked.

"Not really... At least not recently. I used to do some painting when I was a child." The girl only got a stare as a response. "Alright, when I was a younger child."