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༉˚*ೃ ¹⁴. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐓!
𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐈 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 drifted off to sleep, because she recognised her dream as just that, as she stood on the edge of a precipice between day and night—split between the sky in the middle. A gleaming divide of light and darkness. Luli's feet teetered on the great mountain. No, not a mountain. A volcano. It was hot beneath her soles, but Luli barely paid it any mind. Hot magma was boiling, bubbling inside. Orange and red and yellow.
Where was she? Was this supposed to be some unknown volcano across the Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom? Was it just something she'd conjured up in her sleeping mind? But, no. Luli recognised those hillsides spanning the outskirts of the volcano. Those tree formations and jagged rock-side. Because she had stared at them from the city's high points for hours and hours.
It was the Caldera, all filled with lava again. The volcano active after hundreds of thousands of years. There was the peak of a yosemune-zukuri rooftop pointing out of the roiling magma, once a home. The melting statue of Firelord Ozai that decorated the shopping district's street was visible by only its face—a glint of metal amongst a fiery sea. Other signs that Caldera City had recently been inhabited were flags burning up, poking from the magma. Other shards of rooftop just visible out of its roil. As if everyone had been caught inside.
Surely the world would think that was better off, but all Luli could think was, what did those people to do deserve that?
And there was the Royal Palace, covered completely except for its top floor. From its highest point, the onigawara statue made to save its inhabitants from evil was beginning to melt. Its magnificent roof ornaments had all dripped away, its windows had shattered. It was starting to sink into the churning fiery abyss.
From the sky swooped two dragons, gigantic, gleaming in colours of blue and red. They swept over the magma and back up out of the volcano towards the sun, twisting, mirrored, in their eternal dance. Their wings grazed the magma as if it were a body of water, their long, lithe bodies arched up towards the sky. In that split precipice of light and darkness, they were doused in night and then sun with each weave. Their bodies silhouetted against the expanse of horizon.
"What does it mean?" she asked them, but there was no reply. The lava rose and rose, enveloping the windows of the royal palace in its bubbling of orange. Its walls crumbled. They glowed as if they were breathing fire from within, started to melt in sagging droves like raindrops. It tilted uneasily of one side. An entire section of palace roof split and fell into the sea. The other half leered to the side, just grazing the magma that rose and rose. When Luli thought, is this really what it's destined for?, only the protector onigawara stared out of the lava. Up to its stone throat, then its head, and then it was gone. Only a sea of toiling hot magma left living.
