Earth - Located at the base of the spine. It deals with survival and is blocked by fear. Write about getting out of a sticky situation. Alternatively, write about someone's greatest fear.


At the beginning of her life, she had never known true fear.

Of course there were childish things, such as spider rats, or the dark, or the that the master of the estate would punish her for not behaving properly, but she had never known true fear until the first time she had been forced to take her first mission as the master's assassin, until the first time she had been forced to hear a victim's agonized screams; to see fire-etched black and crimson flowers blossoming across his skin and light leaving his eyes. It was the first time she learned the meaning of death. It was the first time she realized what suffering was.

The memory haunted her for a long time. It brought her gory visions in the night, and cold, fearful chills in the day.

But over time, as her kills grew greater in number, her initial horror waned until it was almost nothing. There was nothing. Nothing in her but a numb, aimlessness and a suppressed conscience.

But that had been before he found her. Or did she find him?

Either way, her initial goal had been to kill him, a tiny young man with a calm, fearless face and a noble purpose. He was a revolutionary who saw her and recognized how desperately trapped she was. He dodged her attacks almost as effortlessly as one of the fabled airbenders that her nation had killed over a hundred years ago. Each of her violent attacks felt like a step in dance; each of her battle cries a beat of music.

The way he complimented her dangerous assault was incredible.

When he finally bested her, pinning her to ground with her hands above her head, she stared into his eyes and felt something that was not fear. It was fear's opposite in almost every sense. Warm instead of cold, bright instead of dark.

But there was still the familiar, tumultuous sensation of painful heartbeats and squirming chills all the way to the base of her spine. It was a feeling of much more pleasure, and much more agitation.

It was her first time experiencing love.

Since then, she has only ever come to associate the two together. Where there was love, there was fear, the fear of losing something even more dear than her own life. A heady rush of sickening bubbling in her stomach and frantic beating of her heart, fright and ecstasy and adrenaline searing through her limbs like a bolt of lightning. Such happiness and such unadulterated, cold dread every time she looked into his eyes.

She could not even bring herself to imagine life without him, simply the thought of losing him nearly brought hot tears of terror into her eyes. It made her heart to squirm and pound painfully against her sternum, like the hands of fear were grabbing and wringing out all of its lifeblood. It drew chilling beads of sweat down her trembling spine.

To be without him again was the greatest terror. He was her lifeline, and without him, she could not survive.


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