attackfish: Yshre girl wearing a kippah, text "Attackfish" (Jet Juko TDL quote)
attackfish ([personal profile] attackfish) wrote2012-11-03 10:19 pm

200 word drabble: Marking Boundaries

Written for [livejournal.com profile] avatar_500 prompt #65, Air.

Summary: She feels it around her when she walks in its emptiness.

Marking Boundaries

Toph remembered when she was very young, before she met the badger-moles or became the Blind Bandit, sitting in her window and listening to the wind blow through the trees.  She remembered hanging her feet out the window, with the ground only a few feet below her, and feeling like it was miles below instead.  She remembered the way she used to crawl, or cling to walls when she thought her mother wouldn't catch her, and she remembered feeling like nothing in the world existed except the ground underneath her feet. 

Once, after a party, where a bunch of her father's friends had all sat around and talked about the way the moon looked reflected in a pond, someone told her it was a shame she was never going to see the sky.

Aang and Katara told her that when they were on Appa, they were flying through the sky.  Aang talked about being in the temples, high up in the mountains that touched the sky, but Toph had been in the temples.  They didn't feel any different.  They all talked about the sky and how far away it was, and only Toph remembered that they all touched it, always.

[identity profile] wolfs-lament.livejournal.com 2012-11-20 01:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Toph is amazing. I particularly liked the image of her sitting on a windowsill unable to know how far away the ground is. Makes you remember how terrifying it must have been when she was riding Appa bareback.

ps I'm sorry I don't comment on these more often. I really like them and in future I'll put more effort into commenting as well as reading.

[identity profile] attackfish.livejournal.com 2012-11-20 01:50 pm (UTC)(link)
And Toph, when she's scared, likes to play off the fear as mild discomfort, and make a joke out of it. She is one tough cookie, and it makes me want to hug her and say, "It's okay, you don't always have to be totally with it and brave."

Tell you the truth, I've been really bad about commenting on the avatar 500 drabbles myself...