200 word drabble: Out of Order

Written for avatar_500 prompt #55, Fire.

Summary: Suki reassures her student.  Part of the Firebender!Suki AU, set directly after this.

Out of Order

"Do you think Jeong Jeong was right?"

Suki folded her fan and glanced at her student warily.  "About what?"

"That I'm messing everything up by learning firebending now, instead of waiting until I've learned waterbending and earthbending?"  Aang fiddled with Appa's reins.  "I mean..."

She snorted delicately and unfolded her fan again, running a cloth over the fine metal joints, rubbing away the rust.  "You think you're the first Avatar to try it out of order?"

"Well..."

"Kyoshi came to the island when she was too little to walk," she said.  "And she might have been an Earth Avatar, but she learned firebending from the dragons first."

"Oh."  He turned back around and flicked the reins.  "That's good to know."

She glanced at him around the fan.  "You know, if this is some scheme you cooked up to avoid firebending practice..."

"No!"  Katara yelped.  "Aang wouldn't do that!"

"Uh huh, sure."

~*~

She trudged up the steps of the headman's house and didn't look up when the fans came down to bar her way.  "Why have you come to our village?"  Her baby squalled. "Is that-"

"No!"  Not the Avatar, not the baby Chin was destroying villages to find, not her Kyoshi.