HEY YOU ALL! WELCOME TO BOOK TWO!

This is just a shooooort little Prologue to get you all settled in, so enjoy ;)

If you're finding this when it's posted, this will likely make ZERO sense, so I implore you to go check out it's predecessor 'The Prince's Choice'. This is a Selection!AU, but it's become so much bigger than JUST that! I'd say it's for sure worth a read!

Date: Night of the Palace Attack

Location: Deep in the Swamps of the Earth Kingdom

The windchimes tinkled lightly, and then a gust of wind swept them around with a gale-wind force. The trees around the windchimes, however, were still.

Below the deck of the shanty house, a Fire Nation girl sat with a basket held against her hip, one hand facing out toward the windchimes. She was grinning widely and flexed her fingers again, sending a second breeze through the windchimes.

She'd never tire of their sounds.

"Dhakiya, have you fed Appa yet?" Her father called from inside the house. "I can hear him complaining all the way from in here."

"Not yet, dad," Dhakiya sighed, pushing her fingers through her hair, wishing that the swamps didn't have to be quite so humid. She was used to heat, coming from the Fire Nation. The heat combined with the wetness here? It was a little overwhelming, but she'd gotten used to it. She pressed a sticky strand of hair behind her ear, fanning herself.

It was stupid to be using her airbending skills for something so trivial, but it was in moments like this she was glad for her abilities.

She tilted her head and, over the ringing of the fire bugs and the swamp creatures, she did indeed hear Appa moaning for his dinner.

She hastened through the vines to his stable, where he was dramatically laying on his back with his many legs splayed out, his tongue lolling as he made low keening sounds. When he saw Dhakiya approaching, he stopped for a second before resuming his moaning in a more dramatic way.

"Appa, you big lout," Dhakiya said, rubbing his nose. "You're acting like you're withering away! It's only half an hour past when we usually feed you. And, if you really wanted to eat, there are vines right there."

Appa rolled over, glaring at Dhakiya for even suggesting such a meal.

"I know, too slimy," she said, flopping the basket of straw and fruit in front of him. "I'm just saying."

Appa nudged her with his head affectionately, but since he was so large, Dhaikya lost her balance and stumbled into the marshes behind his hut. She spat out river water, picking a leech from her skin.

She got up, drying herself off with a gust of wind. She saw Appa looking at her with a sense of longing. Until she met him, she'd never met an animal that could emote eloquently.

"I know, bud, I know," Dhakiya said, feeling a little bad for airbending in front of him. "You miss Kuzon, er, Aang."

She'd never officially met Aang, only seen him at dinners or in the palace halls. Zuko had never attempted to introduce her, and she wondered now if that was intentional? However, she'd never given him much thought, in fact, nearly none at all...until the night she'd left. Zuko had explained everything on their last date, in hushed and frantic whispers and he told her how she was going to stay alive. Finding out that the kid who had hung around Prince Zuko was not his cousin-third-removed or whatever lie they had spun, but was instead the Avatar had been a shock of a lifetime, only second to the shock of her own powers manifesting. She hadn't been used to calling him by his real name and still slipped up in front of Appa.

Appa had taken to Dhakiya instantly when she arrived at the swamp; she figured he could sense her airbending genetics. But that didn't mean that he didn't terribly miss his original owner. At this point, it had been years since they'd seen each other. Appa was miserable without Aang, but what could they do?

"I'll be back tomorrow with a huge plate of fruit for breakfast, how's that? And, maybe we can take a ride?" she offered.

Appa's eyes glimmered at her suggestion, and he responded by licking her face. Dhakiya shrieked, but she was laughing.

She had found herself quite taken with Appa soon after her arrival, months ago. She was well aware that he wasn't her Air Bison, but Air Bison weren't around anymore, so despite them being a hallmark of an airbender, she would likely never get her own. She was aware that one day, she'd have to give Appa back to Aang.

Dhakiya knew this. Didn't mean it didn't hurt, just a little.

She hugged Appa's snout one last time before bidding him goodnight and leaving his stable.

Outside, she worked to shuck the Air Bison saliva from her skin before returning inside.

Her father stood over their tiny kitchen - a dinky and worn set that would be more likely to set their hut on fire than cook anything good – as he prepared dinner. The catagator they'd caught was roasting in a pan, spitting oil everywhere.

"Hey, hon," he greeted, going over and kissing her forehead. "I just got news. I have to leave again tomorrow."

Dhakiya tried not to let her utter disappointment show and forced a large smile on her face.

"That's okay, dad. I'm perfectly capable out here," she assured. "I'm sure mom misses you."

Ever since Prince Zuko had smuggled her out of the Palace and officially released her from the competition, she'd been living out here in the Foggy Swamp. Her father came whenever he could, with food and supplies and letters from her twin sister, Alcina, but he had to go home to keep up appearances every so often. Dhakiya hadn't been out of the Swamp in months, but she'd grown used to it.

It was worth it to keep herself safe; so far, besides Aang, she was one of the only airbenders around. She knew that if Ozai found her...she shuddered at the very thought. Suffice to say, it wouldn't go well.

Dhakiya opened the cupboard that held her food. "When you come back, bring Fire Flakes. We're nearly out," she said, shaking the can. Most of the food she ate was taken right from the Swamp, and thus a wide variety of spices were necessary to make it palatable. Only the fruit was sweet and flavorful, but that could be found few and far between. She knew that it was the Airbender way to only eat veggies, but she just couldn't support that lifestyle out here, not now.

And even when things were good, could she really go there? Yes, she was an airbender...now. However, she'd grown up as a Fire Nationer, as – she had thought - a late blooming firebender. She was more firebender than airbender in her temperament, so which way to go?

Luckily, these were questions that she didn't have to consider for a very long time.

Her father flicked his fingers, producing a flame to purify the water for their meal. Dhakiya continued going through the pantry, taking some parchment from his bag and making a list - encoded - of what to bring back for her.

Realizing she was an airbender and fleeing the Royal Family, sans Zuko, of course, who was helping her father hide her, had been a tumultuous chain of events. The Dhaikya who resided in the swamp, keeping Appa safe, was wholly a different person than she even was three months ago. The Dhakiya who had entered the Prince's Choice was the quieter of the twins, the softer one. She had only ever worn nice clothes and couldn't remember the last time she was barefoot. She had only eaten things that other people prepared for her, and the thought of any confrontation had her quaking before it happened.

The Dhakiya now nearly never wore shoes and had developed a nice hardened layer protecting her feet. She had scratches and scars all over her body, from learning how to survive the hard way. The Dhakiya now had killed that catagator herself and was wholly self-sufficient when her father left. The longest she had gone without seeing another person was two weeks. The Swamp Benders came by when they could; they'd shown her the ropes of living in this difficult environment. She knew how to make a trap, how to sharpen sticks into weapons, how to lose any enemy - animal or human - in the deep vines, and which plants would kill her in seconds.

The Dhakiya who existed now was someone who had only existed in stories before. She was a person she was proud to be now, a person who she was sure could take whatever life threw her way. She wouldn't go back to the old Dhakiya for anything, even if it meant being unable to marry the prince or having to sleep under a net to keep the mosquitoes out.

One day, when this was all over, she might thank Prince Zuko, she often mused.

She ate dinner with her father quickly, as he would need to get to bed early for the journey out of the Swamp and back to the Fire Nation tomorrow. As her father began to clear the plates, Dhakiya jumped up.

"No, dad, you get to bed. I'll finish these."

"Sweetie, it's fine. I can," her father insisted. "I'm the one leaving, I should do it."

"Nope!" Dhakiya argued back with a soft smile. "Do you want to know what's on my schedule tomorrow? Make another basket of vines, maybe try to catch a possum-chicken to-"

A blinding pain rocketed through her whole body, causing her to drop the plates. They clattered onto the wooden ground as Dhakiya clutched her head, falling to her knees. Outside, Appa began to emit a low moan, and all the screeching birds in the trees flew up at once, as though there'd been a grand disturbance all across the swamp.

Faintly, she heard her father calling her name, grabbing her arms. Dhakiya shook, gasping for breath as she slumped against the wall, unable to talk.

She'd felt this one time before - this pain, this searing, this change within her body.

She'd been 13 years old. It had been a day like any other day. Alcina and Dhakiya were at their bending practice and Alcina, of course, was so much ahead in her training. Dhakiya had never even gotten a rotten puff of steam and was losing hope fast that she'd ever firebend. She was, in all, feeling pretty crappy about her self-worth. Alcina, seeing her doubt, had tried to pass off he own firebending as weaker than it was, but had been yelled at by their master.

She remembered that Alicna had taken her to a lake outside their village, and the pair floated in the cool water, watching the clouds pass by.

"You'll get there. Dad didn't firebend 'till he was 12," Alcina had tried to comfort her.

"Yeah, but I'm nearly 14," Dhakiya said sourly. "I don't think it's ever gunna happen."

"The fortune teller has never been wrong!" Alcina screwed her face up. "And there hasn't been a non-bender in our family in generations!"

"Is that meant to make me feel better?" Dhakiya turned on her stomach to swim away from her sister.

"No – arg – I didn't mean it like that! Look-"

Whatever her sister was going to say was cut off, as Dhakiya was suddenly gripped by a pain so intense she thought she might pass out. Her limbs felt heavy and her head pounded. Before she knew it, she was sinking deep into the water, her sister frantically screaming her name.

When Dhakiya woke up, she was at home. Alcina was sitting next to her, sobbing. She'd nearly died, Alcina had said.

According to the physician, there was nothing wrong with her that could have caused such pain. There was no reason to why she lost her breath, why she couldn't move her legs, or where the headache had come from.

Dhakiya didn't believe that, though, because she felt different. She couldn't put it into words, but something about her had changed.

It wasn't until two days later, when her mother deemed her well enough to get out of bed, that she figured it out, when she got into a fight with Alcina, threw her arms toward the door, and closed it with a gust of wind.

She was an airbender now.

At the time, she'd thought that her near-death experience had triggered it. In fact, up until this very moment, that's what she'd assumed. Her parents had leapt into action, realizing how dangerous it was to have an airbender in their family, a race thought to be extinct. They were under no illusion that the Fire Nation had likely had a hand in the extinction of the Air Nomads, even if they had simply not offered help when the illness swept through. Dhakiya, feeling a little wiser, had a feeling it was much more than that.

Whatever the case, she was told to keep up the firebending classes, so no one would have a reason to point her out. As they grew up, Alcina became even bolder, and Dhakiya was always her shadow. Her whole family transformed to make sure that no one would ever find out Dhakiya's secret. Until she told Prince Zuko, when she deemed him to be a man of good morals, and if she were to continue couldn't imagine keeping this from him. And, not long after, Zuko had explained to her that if she vauled her life, she needed to leave. She had been so excited to get her picture drawn with him, so excited when he asked her to stay after, and that was all shattered. In that moment, she recalled that she had wanted to just lay down and sob. It had all felt so unfair. She had wanted to marry Zuko, had wanted to be normal.

But that was in the past. She had thought that the pain had been something strange: a food past its date, a sudden cramp, a bug that had bitten her wrong.

In this moment, she knew that all to be false.

As her vision wavered back into view, she looked up at her dad. She was panting hard, the ripples of this event still echoing in her limbs, in her heart that thumped as fast as a jackrabbit.

Before saying anything, she raised her fingers, creating a gust of wind. She let out a sigh of utter relief; if something like that pain could once gave her powers, she had worried that it could take her bending away, too.

Huu burst into their hut. "Y'all okay?" he asked, his spear raised carefully.

"What in the world is going on? Are we under attack?" her father sputtered, looking out of the window as he helped Dhakiya to her cot.

"No, it was a spiritual change. It was a tremor that the entire tree system felt." Huu looked halfway between scared and ecstatic about this. "I only felt this once before...years ago."

"Nearly five years ago, right?" Dhakiya asked, finding her voice. Huu lowered his spear. He scratched his head.

"How'd ya figure that out?" he asked.

"Because I felt it too five years ago," she said, swinging her feet over the side of her bed, hunching her shoulders and groaning.

"Well." Her father paused his fussing with his daughter, considering what Huu said. "If it was spiritual...then...where did it come from?"

"Somewhere deep in the spirit world. It was angry, ya'll," Huu confirmed, rubbing his chin. "I pity wherever it came from."

"Do you think it's the Avatar?" her father asked in a hushed tone. Dhakiya grabbed the pot of sanitized water, drinking it straight from the tin as she rubbed the back of her neck. She could hear Huu and her father theorizing in front of her.

"It for sure is," Dhakiya broke in, "I just know. And I know something else, too."

Her father and Huu turned to her, looking at her expectantly.

"Dad, get ready to send more people here. The Spirit World was accessed, opened, just for a second. And you know what it did the last time? Made me an airbender," she said firmly, meeting her dad's soft light brown eyes. "So take a wild guess what it's going to do this time?"

Understanding dawned on her father. "Make more airbenders," he said. Dhakiya, despite feeling a little woozy still, got up and started examining the space critically, knowing that her day - and the days to follow - were about to get a lot busier.

"Exactly. A whole lot of people are about to be in a lot of danger."

DUN DUN DUN!

Yes, I know, it's pretty vague...but it was more to give you a taste about what is to come ;)

As I stated at the end of bk1, I won't update for at least two months so I can pre-write a large majority of the story, but I figured you guys should have SOMETHING.

If you guys want to see the cover in all it's full glory, go to my tumblr 'youngbloodlex22' where I upload art/updates/stuff relating to this story, as well as others!

I'll see you on the other side,

Lex :)