Dragons do not belong to men.
They belong to the wind and the sunlight,
to the sea cliffs and the empty sky.
***
Two weeks later.
"Ahhh, it's so nice here. I don't even want to leave," Suki sighed contentedly, stretching out on her lounge chair and taking a sip from some cocktail with a tongue-twisting name.
In her red swimsuit (a proper bikini, by the way, not one of those dreadful monstrosities Europeans were still wearing almost up until the middle of the twentieth century), she looked absolutely stunning. A soft tan, not a gram of excess weight, a toned figure without a hint of bulky muscle, pleasantly rounded curves that had become just a little more pronounced over the past few months, mmm… And, most importantly, all of it was mine!
"Yeeeaah... this is the life," Toph agreed.
Like the other girls, she was also wearing two separate strips of red fabric, paying not the slightest attention to the fact that her age might have suggested something more childlike.
As for the color red, it wasn't because the girls all happened to share the same tastes. It was a feature of the local mentality.
The concept of "I'll wear whatever I want" simply didn't exist here.
Every nation had its traditional styles of clothing and its traditional colors. Social status and occupation often added further distinctions, but nobody would even think of wearing something simply because they were bored with their usual color palette. Even women!
If you were from the Earth Kingdom, then you wore shades of beige and green. That was simply how things were done. Choosing otherwise would have struck most people as downright bizarre.
The assumption was so deeply ingrained that most people simply couldn't imagine the world working any other way. Wearing something unusual for your culture only happened under exceptional circumstances or in very specific situations.
Naturally, this didn't mean fashion didn't exist. It simply expressed itself through cuts, tailoring, embroidery, and other embellishments rather than color.
As a result, buying swimsuits in any color other than red on Ember Island was simply impossible. Red was the color of the Fire Nation, the island was a Fire Nation resort. Where exactly was any other color supposed to come from?
In short, this was precisely one of those "exceptional circumstances."
After all, the brave and noble Kyoshi Warriors weren't exactly going to pack swimsuits before setting out on a long and grueling military campaign. I doubted the thought had even crossed anyone's mind.
So they made the best of the situation.
Besides, even with the strictest adherence to tradition, they were fully entitled to wear red. They were serving in the Fire Nation military, after all. Toph was the only one who stood out a little, but she, of all people, didn't care in the slightest—she couldn't see colors anyway.
"I liked the theater," Dandan contributed. "Especially Fire Herald and the Kyoshi Warriors Save the Mechanist from the Evil Commandant. Though I don't remember there being a battle where eleven people fought three hundred of the commandant's soldiers. And I'm pretty sure he was from the Fire Nation, not the Earth Kingdom... Still, it turned out pretty well. Especially that part—"
At that point Toph and several of the other girls joined in, turning the line into a chorus:
"In the Fire Lord's name and in the cause of justice, I shall punish you, villain!"
"Spirits... why is this happening to me?" I suddenly wanted to shrink as much as possible and bury myself somewhere very, very deep.
"What? It sounded pretty good," Suki objected, grinning slyly into her lounge chair while watching my reaction. "They portrayed you as quite the hero. And us girls turned out to be shining examples of perseverance and martial virtue."
"Yeah, and I had no idea you could deliver speeches that pompous!" Toph added, pouring fuel on the fire.
It looked like this little menace was going to mock me over that play for another month or two, bringing it up at every possible opportunity.
"I'd have killed myself halfway through from the sheer idiocy of the situation. Seriously, who has conversations in the middle of a fight? Distracting the enemy while setting up some nasty surprise is one thing, but carrying on what was practically a philosophical debate?" I closed my eyes. "God, that's embarrassing... Though, all right, the part where the Great Me guides the warrior girls onto the True Path wasn't bad either. The tying-up scene was especially entertaining…"
"Pervert!" all the women present exclaimed almost in unison.
"Why does it immediately have to be 'pervert'? I was tying up cute girls, not some suspicious-looking men."
"Heh-heh, I've told you this plenty of times already—your logic is pervert logic, so you're not talking your way out of this one."
"Coming from a girl who learned how to spy on people before she learned how to walk, that sounds a little..." I waggled my fingers in the air as if searching for the right word, "...unconvincing."
"Maybe, but everyone agrees with me!" the little menace declared, smugly lifting her chin as the warriors nodded their approval.
"You do realize you're appealing to a gang of masked girls who, not that long ago, made a habit of launching group assaults—with ropes and the most suspicious intentions imaginable—on innocent male travelers peacefully relaxing on the beach?.. Quite the authority on the subject, yeeeah..."
The Kyoshi Warriors collectively choked on their cocktails.
The uproar that followed boiled down to accusations of me being a "perverted creep with perverted logic," but nobody actually managed to produce a single coherent counterargument. Though judging by the focused look on her face, Suki seemed to be preparing for a second round of teasing.
"Ha! Then what does that make you if all these people think you're a pervert? What kind of person do you have to be for that? Heh-heh..." the earthbender shot back first.
Little menace…
"I'll send you back to your father!" I threatened out of habit.
"Pff. I'll just run away again and come right back to you guys. You're not getting rid of me that easily," the brat promised lazily, stretching out more comfortably on her lounge chair.
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
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