A/N: Well I'm back now, hopefully to stay. And no, my writing has not improved in the least, despite my oh so desperate and sincere attempts. Alright, maybe I've been lazy. To clear things up, the quotation mark key on my keyboard was spazzing out so all speech is in italics.
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It is ninety years after the great war, four after that last Avatar, a simple Airbending monk, died. Throughout the various villages of the Water Tribes, the test is taken. Now it is her turn.
The village elders look at the tiny girl with wise blue eyes, smiling kindly.
Any four toys I want? the child whispers, amazed at the generousity.
Any four.
It really is a wonderful array. Mechanical toys, wrought by clever Fire Nation craftsmen, beautiful animals carved from stone and wood, all piled before her, waiting for her. She stares at them all eagerly, before choosing the ones she likes best.
They are rustic toys, a sharp contrast to the advanced ones around her, yet she chooses them precisely for that reason, for the familiarity in their simplicity.
The elders exchange their all-knowing smiles.
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Her friend mocks her for her selection as her metallic dog struts stiff-leggedly on the ice, slipping a little with each step.
She has no desire to argue, but merely shrugs and holds up the horse in the sunlight so she can see the delicate features painted on so long ago. It is warm and earthy in her icy world and she likes it even more than before.
The dog stubbornly marches, into a rock and falls over, metal limbs twitching. The two children stare at it and cannot help but laugh.
Her grandfather, an ancient man with a boomerang slung across his back comes to take her home, his eyes full of some hidden knowledge, and he seems to look at her in a different light.
I was thinking we should begin your training, soon, he says as he leaves her with her mother.
Her mother smiles with that same sense of inner knowing and agrees, looking carefully at the toys the child clutches.
She, in turn, clutches them possesively and gains a certain warmth.
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She was never strong.
A weak child from birth, she wasn't supposed to make it past the first year. It had been a miracle.
Miracles never last, her mother thinks bitterly as she watches healers bend over her little girl. A whispered prayer for the young life slips from her lips and hits empty air.
This has happened before, the coughs, the racking pains, but somehow she always pulled through.
Yet one day, and they all knew, really, one day she would cough and cough and gasp for breath to never get one. Her life is a simple thread, ready to break at any instant, at the slightest tension.
Could she have done it? she wonders for a brief moment. Could this weak child have lived up to her duties, to her inevitable destiny? Or would she have failed, and become a blight in the history of Avatars?
For no Avatar has ever failed. They have been missing for a time, lost in history, but once found they never failed. So she has been told, so has everyone, so would her daughter have been once she began her schooling.
One of those ancient toys (she tries not think of what it represents) slips from her daughter's hand and hits the floor. For the first time she notices a crack running down one side.
The crack widens as the thread breaks.
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Her name is omitted from the scrolls, the lists and records of all the Avatars before her. The elders sigh as they remember the other names, destined to mean something great and important to the entire world, ending in a swift streak of paste and a slip of paper.
They are nothing more than anonymous spaces in time, nonexistent, soon replaced by some brilliant, hero.
For no Avatar has ever failed.
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There you have it, my first OC. And she doesn't even have a name. XD. I was a bit paranoid about posting an OC and took countless Mary Sue litmus tests. Let me know if she deserves the low score I got. Damn I'm lazy.
I didn't notice until after I wrote this that I had forgotten to include any names. Lets just pretend I did it on purpose. Because it adds. Oh yes.
Reviews are to me what ramen is to Naruto. Feed the addiction. (Guess who my OC's grandfather is!)