"Know yourself as a snowdrift on the sand
Heaped for two days, or three, then thawed and gone."
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald
Takwa entered the small chamber with sweat pouring down his face. It wasn't the heat. After having lived 21 years in the stretching sands of the Si Wong Desert one got used to the oppressive heat. Sandbenders like Takwa called the dry, blistering heat their home. No it was nerves that called the beads of sweat to his forehead and made his blood turned to cement.
Takwa's father, Bakir, had summoned him. Bakir was the head of their small tribe and Takwa knew that an official summons from his father could not be a good thing. Had it been about some trivial matter, like the need to round up a hunting party and venture out in search of food, then his father would have simply pulled him aside and spoken to him in the ordinary casual way. But Takwa was no being summoned to the Court of the Dogdeer by his Dad. No, Takwa was being summoned to the Court by Bakir, High Shaman of the Dogdeer Sandbender Tribe and Defender of the Realm.
Takwa knew that all the regal air of the summons could only mean trouble. But he had swallowed his fear and ascended the winding stairs of the stone minaret that stood at the head of their encampment. Eventually he made it to the summit of the tower and, before stepping into his father's Court, he had cast his eyes out to the sands of the great desert that lay in the heart of the Earth Kingdom. For a second the young Sandbender swore that he spotted, through his shaded visor, a shape swaying on the golden horizon. He shook his head, dismissed it as a mirage, and went to meet his father.
Bakir was silent as Takwa marched up the long, dark chamber where his father sat at the head on a stone throne. Takwa passed between two columns of tall figures who wore elaborate white shrouds and strange clay masks. The Windwalkers were the expert sandbenders and warriors of the tribe, as well as his father's protectors. Numbering 10 in total, Takwa would recognise all of the faces behind the masks. They were people who had played with his as a child and trained him in the art of sandbending as a young man. Their potential familiarity made the twisted masks, with the clay shaped into the likeness of Deer dogs with large antlers, no less unsettling.
Finally Takwa reached the head of the room and bowed slowly before his father, continuing to hold his gaze to the ornate rug on the floor as he addressed Bakir.
"Father" the young man said.
"Takwa!"
With all the sombre silence that had hung in the stone chamber Takwa was surprised to look up and meet a gleaming grin that beamed out at him from the bushy grey beard on his father's leathery face.
"My son! I have such fantastic news!"
Takwa reeled in shock, removing the small white visor and fully meeting his father's eyes.
Perhaps this was the moment, the young man though as a smile cracked across his face. Perhaps his father had decided to finally give up on their clan's hermetic nature and fully join with the rest of the Earth Kingdom instead of hiding themselves away.
"Our clan" his father said, beaming "is going to be utterly transformed!"
Takwa could practically feel his mouth watering at the thought. Oh the sights he would see! No more endless sand dunes spotted with the occasional oases! No more risking life and limb against sandsharks just to keep your belly full! No more bandit attacks! He could mingle among the masses in Ba Sing Se. Maybe even settle down and meet a nice, civilised Earth Kingdom girl who preferred silky fabrics to the rough cloths that kept the sand out. All his dreams were coming true!
"I…am resigning".
Bakir's statement hung in the air for a second and Takwa could feel the Windwalker's stiffen up as they awaited his response. The young sandbender's mouth closed and his grin dissipated like water evaporating off a hot desert rock.
"You're…you're what now?"
Bakir's grin seemed to double, stretching to occupy most of the bottom of his dark face, entirely unaware of his son's utter shock and dismay.
"Why I'm retiring my dear boy! Your old man just isn't tough like he used to be! No sense an old codger like me leading around such a brave and boisterous band of desert warriors like these!"
Bakir extended his arms out, gesturing to the masked Windwalkers.
"No, no" Bakir concluded "what this clan needs is new blood. Blood that has not mellowed with age. New blood boiling in the desert sun, ready to fully commit our people to their existence among the dunes. Just between you and me, I think some among us…"
Bakir raised an eyebrow, indicating his suspicion.
"Have been getting a little bit too interested in the world beyond the sands. There's talk of mechanical carts and strange flying machines and all sorts of things. But you, dear Takwa…".
Takwa found it difficult to even meet his father's gaze. His eyes turned back to the floor. He tried to keep stoic, not wanting to let his face drop into the disappointed frown it was desperate to contort itself into.
"You" Bakir continued "you will change it all. You will bring our people back to their roots in the sand. You will cover us over with the dunes and hide us from the evils that lay beyond the desert. You will bring our tribe into a new Golden Age…as Takwa, the High Shaman!"
Suddenly, in a ruffle of white tunics, the lines of Windwalkers burst into applause to complement Bakir's beaming face. Takwa's head rose up and he met his father's shining blue eyes again and the young sand bender managed to force a smile onto his face.
Takwa gave a dutiful nod and diverted his gaze safely to the floor to assist with the lie he was forcing through his teeth.
"Thank you so very much for this father. It will be an honour to have the reigns of our great tribe passed over to me. I swear by the Spirit in the Sand that I will do everything in my power to protect our noble people from those malign and malicious forces that lay beyond our hills. I will give our people strength".
The applause died down as the Windwalkers listened to Takwa speak. It erupted again shortly after he finished and the soon to be High Shaman looked up at his father and forced himself to return Bakir's smile. His father took Takwa into an embrace and Takwa could feel Bakir's portly belly pushing against him and shaking with several joyous guffaws that caused the small stone chamber of the High Shaman to rumble and echo. Among the echoes of laughter and applause, the frowning Takwa did not make a sound.
Bound, tied and kneeling before her. It was the only time the grimy, dirty bandits that scurried across the EarthKingdom like rats ever looked civilised. So thought Kuvira as she stood in front of the three bandits that had been besieging a small town in the Central Earth Kingdom for three or more months.
Kuvira thought of the fear that the three sandbenders must have provoked in the native populous, a group of simple merchants who lived off meagre sales to tourists and explorers headed for the vast and arid expanse of the Si Wong Desert. These sandbending bandits most have seemed, to the settlement of mostly non-benders, as omnipotent, terrifying forces of nature, surfing along on sand and destroying storefronts and stables with avalanches of rock. Perhaps, Kuvira supposed, these filthy bandits might just be getting a taste of the fear they had inspired as they knelt before her now.
"How does it feel to be brought to your knees?" Kuvira snarled at the whimpering bandits. Though her expression might have been ferocious the metalbender was smiling internally. It always gave her great pleasure to play the terrifying, all powerful conqueror as much as it did the noble, confident liberator of beleaguered peoples. Two sides of the same coin she figured.
"P..please…Kuvira" choked out one of the bandits, his tears pooling on the dry earth below him
Kuvira thrust her fist into the air, causing the metal collar around the bandit's neck to force him into an upright position. Kuvire could see the tears striking down his face, his eyes red and puffy. Had he ever shed such tears for the poor shop keepers he had driven out of their livelihoods? Kuvira thought not.
"When you address the Great Uniter" Kuvira demaded as the bandit sat ramrod straight, his tears meandering their way through the hazy whisps of a moustache that sprouted from his upper lip, "you will do so in a firm and upright position!"
"Y..yes oh Great Uniter".
The bandit's whimpered words were drowned out as a great gust whistled through the valley in the Central Earth Kingdom where the town of Kalbara stood. Or was preparing to stand again, as the case may be. The sandbending bandits had brought wreck and ruin to much of the town and many of its small wooden structures lay smashed, their remains laying in kindling that was scattered across the dirt. Several workers were shovelling sand and dirt from out of the town's small stone well. The choking off of Kalbara's major water supply had been a cruel punishment for the town not coughing up enough one day when the grubby sandbenders had come to loot their lot.
Kuvira looked at the snivelling shapes in disgust and the Kalbaran citizens that lay behind her egged her on and celebrated her in shouts of triumph. Kuvira turned to them, the crowd of joyous, hungry faces, and extended her arms as she did. With this gesture she could feel the metal collars around the bandits thud against the dirt. The metalbender though, with a little grin, she might have heard a nose break.
"People of Kalbara, yours is a story I have seen again and again."
The crowd of merchants and maidens was rapt before the Great Uniter, drinking in her every word. Even the howling wind of the valley could not drown out her valiant shouts of victory.
"Proud towns ravaged by monsters and violent ingrates through no fault of their own. And I feel for your plight! But unlike those distant bureaucrats in republic city…".
She paused for effect, they always loved this line. Sure enough a number of boos and hissed snaked their way out of the small crowd and Kuvira carried on.
"the Great United plans on doing something about it!"
The remains of Kalbara erupted in great cheers of delight and, as they died down, they were overtaken by the thudding of marching boots. The crowd turned to find a sea of green approaching them. Kuvira smiled as she looked upon the many rows of her soldiers who were marching into Kalbara. They came laden down with weapons and supplies, all of them remaining rigid and disciplined even under the weight of many parcels of food and barrels of water. Her vision was becoming reality at last.
"For too long the Sandbending tribes have hidden amongst the shifting sands, rearing their serpentine heads to strike at honest, hardworking folk like you from time to time. Well I say in the new, United Earth Kingdom, no one can hide. Our violent villains can't simply burrow into their hidey holes and disappear!"
Kuvira could see that she was losing the crowd ever so slightly as they rejoiced at the water and food parcels, their hungry faces aglow with satisfaction.
"I wil not be like those lazy apes in Republic City! I will not bury my head in the sand! I will root out those who hide in the desert and I will make them part of the United Earth Kingdom whether they like it or not!".
The people of Kalbara exploded into cheers as they stuffed their faces with an abundance of food they couldn't even have imagined in weeks previous. Kuvira's soldiers were already milling about with tools and sheets of metal, ready to build up a town that couldn't be torn down. A perfect, durable jewel in the new United Earth Kingdom. The perfect base from which to set out into the sands, she thought.