Snippet #1313860

"Hayden!" Orchid called, throwing her arms around her elder brother. "How nice of you to join us," she added, releasing him and adopting an air of formality. "We have been waiting ever so long for your princelyness. A speech is due - your subjects are eager to hear your opinions on your coming marriage. How do you feel? Trapped, anxious, excited? Everyone wants to know." She forced a fake microphone into his face, laughing all the while. "As for me, I'm just peachy keen. I have absolutely no qualms about being swooped off my unsuspecting feet to an unknown fate in an unknown land!" Fainting dramatically, she peered up at her brothers through her thick eyelashes, searching for a reaction while not really expecting one. They were used to her shenanigans.

"Well apart from having to recce down into town to recapture certain vagrants..." "I resent that!" Orchid cried with false resentment. Honestly, she loved messing around with her brothers, and she would miss them when she went off to marry whoever from the fire nation. "They'll probably want you to say something, too. What do they really expect us to say? They don't want to hear our real feelings - they want the diplomatic response." She shakes her head sadly. As royalty, they were just not real people. Orchid had spent her whole life trying to escape from that cage, and for what? So she could do her civic duty and marry some man she most likely wouldn't love? Yeah. That's exactly what she had done it for.