"Now try to hit me." Toph Beifong said, slapping her hands together, grinning like a maniac. Her ten year old daughter, Lin stood across from her, blindfolded.
"Mom, I-"
"Don't go soft on me, Lin. Hit me."
"But mom, I can't-" she caught the word just in time.
"Can't what? Can't see? That never stopped me." Lin blushed for a second. Mom hated when people wouldn't speak their mind just because they were afraid of upsetting her. "I see with my feet, Linny, you know that. Now I'm gonna teach you to do it. Can you see anything with your eyes?"
Lin didn't dare lie to her and adjusted the cloth over her eyes till she saw nothing but darkness. "Now feel the ground. Wiggle your toes, dig your heels in. Don't bend anything yet but focus on what bending feels like. Focus on that moment before the earth bends for you, the very second you tell the earth move for me." Lin wiggled her feet a bit, thinking. What did bending feel like? She imagined herself, a shadow of herself, her spirit, reaching out and lifting the ground up. "Now bend something. Something small."
The moment before the earth parted for her, Lin felt something. Something, her spirit or the force of her own willpower flooded out of her the second before the ground between her feet cracked. Her mother remained silent as the stones surrounding them. The quiet was broken by the far away calls of turtle ducks and the gentle rolling of pebbles displaced by the crack she bent into the ground. She clenched her fists and jerked up. When she felt it again she focused on her feet. And when a pillar of rock lifted up out of the ground she felt it as much she heard it. "Mom," She whispered, "I think I felt something."
"What was it, Linny?" Lin wondered if her mom was smiling.
"I felt something go out of me. I felt the rock move when I heard it."
"Just listen. Dig your feet in and listen." Lin heard her mother dig her heels in just before she heard the crunch of rock on rock. Lin froze. The only sounds were the chatter of turtle ducks and the distant sounds of the city behind them. She breathed deeply, waiting. And after half a dozen heart beats, there it was- the tiny rustle of clothing as Toph Beifong slammed her arm forward. Time seemed to slow down as she focused every bit of her being into her ears.
A sharp whistle sounded to her left. The rock she realized suddenly- the whistle of the rock cutting through the air around them. Lin threw her palm to face the ground, twisting, smiling as the circle of earth she stood on rotated to the left. She remembered the clay disks stacked behind her and punched toward the sound, sending a disk soaring towards it. When she heard the crash of clay on stone, she cheered, ripping the blindfold from her eyes. Bits of pebbles and dust showered them as they smiled at each other. Toph jerked her arm back and the circlet of ground under Lin's feet raced toward her mother, gouging a tiny valley in the space between them. When she was close enough, her mother snatched her up and spun her around in a tight hug.
"I did it mom, I did it." Lin shouted tightly clutching her mother's arms. "I heard your arm move before the rock lifted and I even heard it move through the air." Lin suddenly noticed the tears on her mother's face. She reached up to brush them away. "Oh don't worry, Mama. I've got it now. I'll get better soon." Toph laughed, shaking her head.
"You silly badgermole. They're happy tears. I'm so glad you can finally see what I see." Lin smiled as a thought struck her.
"Will I be able to catch people when they're lying now too, mama?"
…
