Chapter 23.4- And so the Dragons Danced

The difference e between the Foggy Swamp and the rest of the surrounding earth was like night and day. Perhaps that should have been the first sign that told us that this was not a regular fixture. Perhaps it should have been the first thing that pointed pout just how fucked we were and just how much trouble we were about to be in. But it didn’t. Nothing could have prepared us for what was coming, no matter how stubbornly I might have thought otherwise. We stopped at the edge of the swamp just as the sun was cresting the horizon.

“We set camp here tonight” I had told them before drifting towards my tent and falling asleep with any a word to anyone or anything. It was when I fell asleep that the first sign that things were not as they were came to be. I still could not remember what she looked like. All I knew was that my every sleeping moment was haunted by the same woman. A woman who I knew was my mother even without being able to see her face. I felt her hands trail across my skin and jolt me to wakefulness. Taking it as nothing but the dreams caused by a restless mind, I tried to go to bed again. Again and again. After the fourth time, I’d given up and now here I was, sat around the fire with the men that were to keep watch over the camp while the rest of us slept.

It was one thing I’d taken from the way Sung ran his army. He had multiple scouting detachments out at every sleeping or waking moment, while still making sure that the most disciplined of men were assigned the duty of watching over the camp itself and ensuring that everything was in order. It had come about after the Mountain hd been able to slaughter all ur scouts that night that felt like years ago and move in almost undetected. Now, they’d be here to both present some sort of first line of resistance to any attack as well as an emergency warning system to those sleeping.

“So General, Sir. What do you think?” One of them, Horokoshi, turned to me to ask. I felt myself jolted into attention on hearing the title that I was forced to hearing more than my own name these days. I racked my mind to try to find what they’d been talking about, and thanked Agni that some part of me had been listening to it.

“I prefer my women tall and strong. The size of their breasts doesn’t matter much to me. As long as they are beautiful enough, then I will be satisfied” I said, in answering the question. I watched as the men looked around themselves and then as coins swapped hands between Mori and Jinpei.

“What’s that?” I asked them.

“Just a bet. Mori thought you’d be the type to like women with small breasts” He said in reply.

“And why is that?” I asked, genuinely intrigued.

“Well, if you look at all those noble-type women. It’s usually really small so we thought it was a preference kind of thing”

“ I see. I see your point. But its probably that most nobles have other things in consideration when picking a spouse that by the time the size of her chest comes up, there aren’t even many suitable options in the first place” I said after stroking my chin in thought for a minute or two. It was a fair observation, and even as the military training urged me to demand they get back to work, I was enjoying the conversation around me too much to even consider ruining the fun.

“Other things. I can barely think of things more important than that” Jinpei commented, prompting the only woman in the lot to launch an elbow into his side.

“Oh don’t be like that, Tonfa” Mori said, stepping into his friend’s defence.

“Tonfa is right, there’s lots of things more important than a woman’s chest. Her dowry for one. Her family history, family fertility, number of firebenders in her family, personal fire bending skill and potential, and more things.” I said, to blank looks from those surrounding me.

“I agree with the first part of what you said, General, but I thought for sure you’d have mentioned her personality or something. Now I don’t even know whose more shallow between the two of you,” Tonfa said, making those around her burst into laughter.

We ended up spending the rest of the night cycling between topics as we spoke on all varieties of things. I learned about them, their lives, their families, and was struck with the fact that I had been a very terrible leader. Before today, I hadn’t even known their names. It had taken what was essentially a random nightmare for me to learn that Tonfa had only joined the army to avoid jail time for stealing bread from some army supply depot, or that Mori and Jinpei were cousins who had run away from inheriting a family farm to join the army and try to build a better life with their pay from here.

Horokoshi was the one with the most stereotypical reason. Just like me, his whole family had been in the army and had even served under the now defunct blasting jelly corps. Considering the man had lost his arm while arming an explosive made of the material that gave his corps its name and he’d been one of the lucky ones, it was no surprise that the corps did not exist anymore. The last of the group of five, Kai, was the most interesting. He’d apparently been using fire bending to entertain people at a market for pay and had run into Jeong-Jeong who had immediately sponsored him into the Army. The fact that the both of us had Jeong-Jeong in common was a common point of bonding, but I did make sure to say loudly and often how much I wanted to catch the man and toss him in prison for desertion.

A/N; Here ya go