The Senior Fire Nation Princess sat perfectly straight on an exquisitely carved bench of stone; her garments seemed to ebb and flow like a river of fire around her. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap before her and her long, brown hair was laid behind her back and done up with the trademark fire emblem that graced royalty. She was very lovely and she smiled warmly at Mai.

“Ah, you are one of Azula’s friends. Mai, was it?”

The girl struggled for her mouth to form the words “yes highness”, but all she could do was nod.

The woman chuckled amiably, covering her mouth with one hand.

“Azula did say that you were very quiet. I can see that now.”

Mai dropped her gaze in timid awkwardness, holding her hands behind her back. The woman seemed to realize that she had caused the younger girl some embarrassment.

“Oh there is nothing to be ashamed about, sometimes there is strength in silence. That is something that has taken me years to learn and perfect.”

The girl did not appear reassured as she shuffled her feet and kept her gaze elsewhere. The woman smiled more knowingly.

“Would you like to sit by me? I could use the company while I wait for my son to finish his sparring lesson for the day.” The princess smiled smoothly as the girl finally seemed to perk up at this information. So her suspicions were justified. This pale, shy little girl, whom Ursa had caught stealing glances at her son on more than one occasion, was indeed smitten with Zuko. She patted an open space beside her on the bench closest to the girl, where her skirts did not occupy it. The girl approached the woman timorously, more introvert than ever as she slowly lowered herself to sit on the bench, daring not the meet the princess’ eyes. She sat on the high end of the bench, arms holding to the edge as though she might fall off otherwise, and her shoulders rising high to meet her ears. She looked entirely like she was ready to run the very instant things the royal lady changed her mind and decided to reprimand Mai’s foolish actions.

Ursa chuckled to herself; this girl reacted rather extremely in the presence of royalty. Too acutely shy. It should not have come as a surprise with Azula as one of her friends. Their friendship was at once a blessed union of political astuteness and yet, it was a road of treacherous policies and forbearance in the face of a pampered palace child. And what was worse, Azula seemed to be fully aware of her power over her companions and she exercised this regularly. Ursa was not too distracted to notice the girl’s burnt hair ribbons. That would explain why she was wandering the halls alone, poor dear.

--taken from "Unintended Rendezvous" by Blackfire 18 at fanfiction.net.

FULL VIEW, PLEASE!!! You can download if you want, but that's a big image....

I spent HOURS on this, this is without a doubt the piece that I have most focused and spent the most time on. Feel free to criticize my grammar in that particular sentence, but the point is, today alone...it took me roughly two and a half hours to touch it up in Paint. I think I added the scales and most of the shading then, along with Mai's burnt hair ribbons....drawing it was probably the fastest and easiest part, taking roughly an hour, maybe an hour and a half....but I certainly clocked a lot of time reworking it, fixing that skirt over and over again, taking advice and touching up Mai's eyes, and of course, that bench.

The bench....I used Fang for reference...I decided not to make the "exquisitely carved" bench some simple loopy thing and call that fancy....I wanted to put some Fire Nation into that thing, and dragons were perfect. That bench actually gave me quite a bit of difficulty...the scales were a lot easier than one would think, a lot of copying and pasting and then pasting the outline over and voila. I know that the lanterns are small, they are more for show than lighting (hence being near the ground...more of just little runway lights so that you don't trip over the bench in the dark or something, you make up what they are for).

Yeah, I didn't nail a specific passage in the story, her pose is all wrong....call it a moment that you don't see, as she's sitting there, she crosses her legs nervously. All fidgety....artistic license, people!

I had a lot of fun with this pic....those dragons especially....the columns are evil. I hate round cylinders, the shading STILL doesn't look quite right, but....it passes! I hope!

Please comment, review, fave, do whatever! Just don't steal this and call it your own, unless you're Blackfire 18, in which case you have all of the rights to this just as Avatar's creators and Viacom do.

Viacom, Mike, Bryan, and Nickelodeon all own the characters and settings.
Seeing as I made the bench from my head, it is MINE. MINE, YOU HEAR??? HAHAHAHA. The same goes for the pic itself....
The story belongs to Blackfire 18.

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And check out the full story here: [link]
I recommend it highly!

Thank you once again, Blackfire, for your work and permission! Some slightly lesser thanks also to anyone who commented on my progressive works!