School Days

salixj:

“… and keep your lines straight,“ Azula instructed. “Make certain that all your tools remain in their proper order as I have displayed here.” She spread her hands, indicating the items on the table in front of her.  "Do not, at any time…”

“Lady Azula,” began one of the teachers.”

“Let me handle it,” Sokka said, having come to the weekly Mother Present’s Day" for this very purpose.  

Azula frowned.“You are interupting my presentation,” she hissed at her husband.
“The presentees are three. It is probably considered a successful day if no one picks their nose while pasting on the pom-poms.”
The teacher and her aide nodded.
Azula’s eyes went wide.
“And on no account,” she went on sternly “must anyone pick their noses. Is that clear!”
Several more children began to cry. “At ease.”
The children didn’t move, but stood straight and tall as they had been ordered.
“You can sit down,“ Sokka told them.
The children, save for Cami, who had learned “at ease” when she was two, still didn’t move.
“Tell them to sit down Azula,” he begged.
“They aren’t yet at ease!”
“They are three!”
Sokka slapped his face with his palm.
“Please tell them to sit.”
Azula sighed, “Sit down and begin your work,“ she told them.
While the work the children produced was exceptional, the teachers agreed never to have Azula back again for Mommy’s day.

She was, however, called to come to every field trip that the children of the school participated in.
No child dared to step out of line, shout out a question, fail to bring the required items, fought on the bus to or from wherever they were going or dared touch anything they hadn’t been given explicit permission to touch, as long as she was along on the trip.
Not only were the teaches less stressed, but they received glowing notes of thanks from every place that they went.
It was with a great deal of sorrow that the schools watched the last of Azula’s children don graduation hats and sail off to their next phase of life.
Their only hope was that soon, soon, the oldest would have children of her own.
It was said she was quite a bit like her mother.