200 word drabble: Marking Boundaries

[attackfish]

Written for 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.

Comments

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

I think it's very interesting that Toph here is the character who remembers the sky. Toph is, well, grounded, pardon the pun.

I feel a little odd about the ending here. "They didn't feel any different. They all talked about the sky and how far away it was" is very... Toph. But "only Toph remembered that they all touched it, always" is poetic in a way I don't recall Toph ever being.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that she is the one who remembers the sky, so much as it doesn't occur to her that there's a difference between the air and sky.

Originally, I was going to end it "only Toph remembered they always touched it anyways." But I decided that it was okay for Toph, especially in third person, to have a little bit of poetry. I'm not as happy with it as I could be, but I'm happiest with it.

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

I remember being taught that in kindergarten. The implications didn't sink in back then. There are probably multiple fics, or at least plot points, in that idea.

There's probably something in the fact that you can look up and still see blue even when you're already in what most people would call the sky, and yet you never see it anywhere near you. But Toph isn't really the right viewpoint for that particular musing. Maybe Aang.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Or Tenzin. I want to see more Tenzin fic in the world, and it would be the kind of thing he would muse on.