duty
-pt 1 at the dawn-
.-.-.
The young mother releases her son's hands. He wobbles, he falls heavily onto his plump bottom, blue eyes filling with tears as he looks up at a pair so similar to his own. The child's lower lip quivers tellingly, but before he can make a sound the patient woman pulls him once again to his feet, her touch all at once warm and reassuring and firm. Loops of hair swing forward as she leans down, kissing the top of the boy's bare head, muttering soft words of encouragement.
She keeps at her duty, lifting him from the floor as needed with steady arms, and later, with just the sound of her voice.
He keeps at his duty, standing up, taking step after step until the wobbling ceases and his chubby legs become accustomed to this new motion, and within weeks there's no one on the island who can stop him from moving.
.
Miles away a little girl is born with wavy charcoal hair and alabaster skin. Her cries are loud, strong, echoing in the modest home. Yet the only ones around to hear are the midwife who helped to deliver her and her exhausted mother. Her mother, proud and private, who avoided her prodding, well-meaning friends for months as soon as her belly began to swell, who metalbent her police uniform around her in such a manner that disguised her ballooning form, who never missed a day of work up until the moment her contractions could no longer be ignored. If any of her officers noticed and wondered, they had not dared to ask.
"Your first duty as mother," directs the elderly midwife, "is to name your new baby. What shall the world call her?"
"Lin," she replies instantly, her arms wrapped securely around the soft, tiny child, its cheek pressed against her unbound breast. Her voice is thick with emotion. "Lin Beifong." The name sounds like silver; it is simple, it is strong, it is vibrant.
"It is beautiful," says the woman, approving. "Just like your daughter."
She does not acknowledge this, her attention fixated instead on the foreign sounds coming from the child. Mewling, instinctive suckling punctuated by sharp screams. Is she hungry? That can't be it; she is already nursing. Is she uncomfortable? Arms shift; blankets are adjusted, tucked, untucked, and retucked. Is she screaming just because she can? Because it is the only way such a small, helpless being can make her mark on the world? Because drawing the attention of others to herself is the only way the newborn can ensure her own survival?
"Don't worry, kiddo," she mutters. "I've got you."
The midwife gestures towards the bundle, a gentle hand on the younger woman's shoulder. "I can take her, if you'd like. Calm her down."
The mother responds with a quiet "no." She can barely even hear herself over her daughter's freshest wave of cries. Under normal circumstances, thanks to her hypersensitive hearing, she would have long ago removed the source of such raucous, head-splitting noise.
But this is her daughter, and only hers. Such a tiny thing, with so much vitality. Lin's cries mean life. Life that should not even have been, but now is.
Toph finds it thrilling.
next: discovery