My name is Adeline Ying, but everyone just calls me Addie. Or at least, everyone did. I come from a fairly wealthy family from the Fire Nation. My family and I lived in the Fire Nation Capital where my father worked as an adviser for the fire lord and my mother was a fire bending instructor. I was a sheltered child as I was forced to stay hidden in my home and play only with my twin brother Clayton. We were very close until he started making friends at school that were fire benders like him. You see, I'm not a fire bender which brought great dishonour onto my family so they hid me away from the world. For the first seventeen years of my life I couldn't bend. I was a normal person who was a stain on my family name just for being born. It wasn't until the day avatar Korra allowed the spirits to roam freely into the human world that I felt a surge of power within me. I didn't understand it, I thought that maybe I was just more in tune with my spiritual side. It was like the spirits naturally flocked to me.

"Addie! Make the freaky ghost things leave me alone!" Clayton called early in the morning, barging into my room as if we were still children and it wasn't weird. I drew my blanket up to my chest, covering me as if I were naked even though I was fully clothed in my sleeping robes. Two fairy like spirits were fluttering around Clayton's head, their high pitched voices were chirping in her ears and it looked like it had kept him awake all night.

"Make them shut up!" Clayton charged into the room and waved his arms in the air trying to swat them away as if they were flies.

"CLAYTON!" I yelled loud enough that I know I woke my parents up. Even though I was loud, my idiot brother still flailed and complained the whole time.

" !" I raised my hand and almost like that pent up energy that was building up inside of me all released at once. A huge gust of wind came flowing out of my hand and hit my brother square in the chest, knocking him through the paper and wood door and into the hallway. The spirits came to my side and landed softly on my bed by my legs. I heard my brother groan in pain as I sat frozen, staring at the back of my hand. I didn't know what to do with myself. It had felt so natural like it was an extension of myself. My mother rushed to my brother while my father stood in the doorway, staring at me with his glasses half way down his nose.

"An air bender...in my house..." My father was disgusted with what he saw in front of me. It was as if me being an air bender was worse than being powerless. Within minutes I had washed, dressed and being pushed out of the house.

"Leave, before they find you." My mother whispered as she and my father led me to the edge of the city to the beginning of the mountains.

"Before who will find me? What's going on? Why can I bend suddenly?" I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay here and be finally accepted by someone but it looked like even that wasn't going to happen. No matter what I did, I was an outsider. I looked back at the alley we had come down and standing at the far side was Clayton, glaring at me as if I was an enemy instead of his flesh and blood. I wanted to call out to him. Apologise for hurting him, but he turned away and walked into the crowd. There was a loud cawing nearby and diving down from the sky was my families pet raven eagle, Beck. He swooped down and landed on a tree near me.

"Beck, come here." My father held out his large arm, waiting for the large bird to come to his side, but Beck stayed by me, staring down my father. Defeated and looking weak, my father lowered his arm and took a large breath. He gave me one final look before heading back down the alley where Clayton disappeared.

"Be brave." My mother whispered in my ear as she hugged me tightly, her voice shaking. I felt her hands slip down to my waist where I had a sash synched around my waist. "Be strong." Were her final words before she left me and went with my father. I reached to where she had touched and I pulled a metal fan out from my sash. I opened it and it was made with pure metal with the fan being bright red with a fire nation symbol in the middle. I felt tears in my eyes as I looked back down the alley and my family was gone. I was alone and abandoned. With Beck flying around me, I headed into the mountain, the fan in my hand as tears rolled down my face.

And that was how I came to be. Now I am on the edge of the Fire Nation capital, sitting in the forest with a small fire keeping me warm in the cool night. Beck sat in a nearby tree in the low branches, eating on one of the animals he had caught, one of the other ones he had gladly shared with me and it was now roasting on the fire. I sat on the grass, staring at the metal fan my mother gave me that day. Two weeks had gone by and I was surprised that I didn't die by now but with help from Beck I have been able to survive. This fan meant so much to me. It represented the nation that abandoned me and also my mother who wanted nothing more than to protect me. So many time I had wanted to throw it away or destroy it, but a little piece of me always stopped myself. With the fire slowly dying, I picked up the fan and with a very light movement of the fan, I used my air bending to light the embers back up and the fire started roaring.

"This would be so much easier if I was a fire bender." I muttered under my breath. With a heavy sigh I pulled out a map and a schedule of shipping boats that were heading out of the Fire Nation and into Republic city.

"Republic city." I traced my finger over map where the city was clearly located. "The avatar is there...maybe she can answer some of my questions. What to do you think Beck?" I asked and Beck answered with a loud caw. I chuckled and laid back on the grass looking up at the stars that blanketed the night sky.

"Tomorrow, we will be looking at a completely different sky, so try to remember it well." I said out loud to Beck and he cawed before flying off into the sky as if he understood me. With one last glance at it I closed my eyes and reached up to my hair and pulled it out of the top knot and let my long black hair flow around me. "Freedom."