Fanfiction: Ursa Departs (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Sonnet: Ursa Departs
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Character(s): Ursa
Pairing(s): None.
Rating: G
Word Count: 107
Warnings: None.
A/N: I was mugged by a sonnet on Friday and spent the weekend recovering from the shock and then pummeling the mugger into (barely) postable shape. Sonnets are hard -- and I'm not sure why I keep diving into seventeenth-century poetry and poetic forms when I write Avatar 'fic -- cf. here and here -- but perhaps it has something to do with being an English major. Concrit welcomed with pretty rooms (and bonus gold to aery thinness beat to anyone who spots the reference :-). Crossposted from nebroadwe to avatar_fans and avatarfic.
Dedication(s): For William Shakespeare, il miglior fabbro.

---

She's never gone but where her going's known
Nor come but where her welcome is assured --
Hawk-heralded, by rumor's wings outflown;
What's needful to her comfort long procured
Or whistled up in haste; her way prepared
By liv'ried outriders, as fits her state;
Her hosts all deference, no effort spared
To earn her gentle protest of surfeit --
Till now, when with laborious steps and sore,
She gains the ridge's broken summit, spent --
Behind, the royal court, her home no more;
Ahead, the desert of her banishment --
Like an explorer at the utmost North,
For whom all ways are one, and that one, forth.

---

[Acknowledgments: Avatar: The Last Airbender was created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko; copyright for this property is held by Viacom International, Inc. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[aerodactylus.livejournal.com]

Whoa...I am impressed. Speaking as someone who can't write poetry (much less sonnets,) worth a damn, it's really cool to see such a well crafted bit of wordsmithing.

Ol' Willy Shakes would be proud.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Heh. My usual go-to form for sonnets is Petrarchan, not Shakespearian, but then I realized I had "assured" as a line ending and could not imagine finding three other rhyme words for an abba abba octave. So Shakespeare it was. (I did put the turn after the second quatrain, though. Shakespeare does that occasionally, so it's okay. Phew.)