"What colour are your eyes?"
"They're blue."
"What does that mean?"
"They're like the ocean."
Toph stared ahead with a pensive expression.
"I hear my eyes are green," she commented with pretended casualness.
Sokka remained quiet. Throughout the years he had learned that these sorts of questions were Toph's way of sharing her worries and fears with him. Therefore, as a silent token of gratitude he would not mock her or push her trust further than she felt comfortable. Thus, he let her lead the conversation, limiting himself to answer her questions patiently.
"Yes, they are," he said simply. "And very pretty, too."
A small smile briefly lighted her face but quickly faded back into a puzzled expression, now topped by the furrowing of her eyebrows.
"But… what does that mean?" she insisted with a tinge of annoyance on her voice.
"Well…" he began, but failed to find the words that could describe the experience of colour to a blind person.
"Argh! Never mind." She let herself fall on her back in defeat. "I'll never see them anyway."
Sokka looked down at her. Her lips were pressed tight on a corner where she was chewing on them from within, making the other end look plumper and slightly pinker than usual. She had put her arms under her head as if accommodating to take a nap, although her left foot was propped on her right knee and moved restlessly up and down. Her eyes were shut, but her frown persisted.
"The thing about colours," Sokka attempted to explain, "is no so much what they look like but what they mean to you. Just like smells. So maybe you can't see colours, but you can feel things that have a certain colour. And so you connect the colour to your feelings towards that object. For instance, you like earth, which is brown. So if you go to a shop and there is a brown dress, you will prefer it to a pink dress because pink is girly… and you like earth. You see?" He was starting to ramble.
"Not quite. I'm blind, remember?" she said.
"Hey! It's not easy to explain–," he stopped midsentence when he heard her chuckle. "Oohh, you…" But Sokka was laughing at the joke as well.
A light breeze caressed their skin and brought with it tiny drops of salty water that specked their faces. Its warmth was filled with the scent of fish and a silence that can only be heard when one leaves the World behind.
"You said your eyes were blue like the ocean."
"Yup."
"But I hate the ocean."
"Well... technically, water is colourless. It looks blue because it reflects the sky, but if you gather some in your hands you will see your hands behind it. Anyway, my eyes are more of a sapphire blue," he added with a smirk.
She grinned and her eyebrows lost their tightness.