Work Text:
Two Lovers in the Snow
Winter came early and hard to the tall mountains where Oma’s tribe made their home. Snow piling on rocks and village roofs. Wind howling down the sharp slopes and narrow passes like the unquiet spirits of those slain in the long war between Oma’s tribe and the neighboring one.
The war so long that it had been waging before Oma’s birth. Before her parents’ birth. So long that not even the toothless elders could recall the beginning or the cause of the conflict.
With the winter came a temporary pause in the hostilities as the warriors of both tribes sought shelter from the snow and wind around their village fires.
During those winter snowstorms, Shu, strong and brave son of the neighboring tribe with whom Oma’s people were at war, would come to her. Sneaking out of his home as she did hers. Dressed in robes black as bare branches. Black as a winter’s night without stars.
She would be ready. Garbed in robes white as the snow covering the mountains. Waiting for him beneath a green-gold umbrella that spoke to the hope that she held in her heart that one day she would be able to take such strolls with him along verdant spring valleys and below a summer sun heavy and yellow as an egg custard tart’s center. Instead of having to slip away during snowstorms or hide in mountain tunnels carved by the earthbending the badger-moles had kindly taught them.
They would walk side-by-side beneath her umbrella that offered flimsy protection from the snow. Tree branches dripping snow and ice crystals over their heads. Her fingers wrapped around her umbrella. His arm draped around her back. Adding warmth and shelter from the elements.
They leaned together in these stolen snowstorm moments, talking of their love, and when Oma founded the city of Omashu, became its first proud and beautiful queen, she commissioned an ink painting of this scene. Depicted, at her command, in simple, soft strokes that evoked the tenderness of youthful love. In stark shades of snow-white and winter-night black.
The painting became a treasure of Omashu. Passed on through the generations of the kings and queens of Omashu. Admired by the people of Omashu and the rest of the world for thousands of years. Inspiring many artists throughout the Earth Kingdom. Restored, when time demanded, by the careful brushstrokes of those who always felt unworthy to touch such a masterpiece. Survived even the looting of the Fire Nation when even that violent army could not bear to burn such an object of art and love.