Now that I have more than one chapter up, I guess a quick author's note is in order. This story is just a small collection of short stories that revolve around Toph and her academy. I will add stories to it as I come up with ideas, so it likely won't be a consistent thing. I'm full of ideas already though, so don't worry about me losing steam just yet. I hope you all enjoy what I have to offer.

Disclaimer: I don't own this world, or these characters. I wish I was clever enough to have come up with Toph, but she's not mine.

"Sifu Toph!"

Toph Beifong shot up in bed, her black hair in wild disarray. "What?!" she cried, eyes wide.

"I had a bad dream."

After one month of running her new academy, it was starting to feel to Toph like she was running more of a daycare than anything else. She crawled out of bed, slowly blinking her tired, blind eyes.

"Penga, it was just a dream." She shuffled over to the frightened girl and tried pushing her out of the room, but Penga wouldn't budge. "Go to bed. Please."

"But Sifu!" Penga whined.

Toph sighed. Penga was only nine, and scared. She couldn't turn her back on the girl no matter how inviting her bed seemed. "Why don't we go to the kitchen for some tea."

All the way to the kitchen, Penga stuck close to her teacher. If Toph weren't so vocally opposed to hugging, she was sure the girl would have been latched onto her arm. Sometimes Toph felt bad for taking such a young girl away from home, but Penga's parents had been happy enough to ship their daughter away, so they must not have been all that great. Besides, Toph was only four years older than her. Arguably she was barely a teenager herself, and she was fine on her own.

When they got to the kitchen, Toph put some water to boil on the stove. Penga climbed onto a chair at their small kitchen table. Her bare feet didn't even touch the floor.

"You know, a wise man once told me that tea solves all kinds of problems," Toph said as she sat next to the girl.

"Really?"

Toph nodded. "Yup. And I'm pretty sure he used those exact words. Now why don't you tell me what your dream was about."

Penga took a deep breath as she stared down at the table. "Well, I was sitting in my room at home bossing servants around, because I always liked doing that. You know, it's really unfair that I don't have servants here . Why won't you let us have servants?"

Toph attempted to roll her eyes. It was something she had been practicing.

"What was that?"

"I was rolling my eyes."

"You're not very good at it." Toph sighed. "Anyway. I was bossing my servants around and I told one of them to move my gold trunk out of the cloud attic. I had a cloud attic in the dream, and the servants could get to it by flying. And the gold trunk was actually silver, but in my dream I knew it was gold even if it was silver."

"Could you just get to the point?"

"I had shoes in the trunk. And they ate all my servants!"

"And?" Toph asked.

"And it was scary!"

Toph felt a drop of liquid hit the table, and it was then she realised Penga was crying. The dream, of course, was absolutely ridiculous. But it had seriously upset Penga, and that was all that was really important. Toph awkwardly put a hand on Penga's shoulder.

"You know, shoes don't really eat people," she said.

Penga sniffed. "I know," she said. "But, you know when you wake up from a dream, and you're really afraid of something in the dream? I'm afraid of shoes!" She grabbed Toph's shoulder and tried to look her in the eye, but of course it wasn't working the way she wanted. "I don't want to be afraid of shoes!"

"Penga, are you... are you wearing shoes right now?"

"No!" Penga sobbed, and Toph found that she actually wasn't wearing shoes. This was very unusual for Penga, even at night. Toph knew for a fact that the girl had slippers she wore with her night clothes. It was then that the kettle let off a shrill whistle.

It took Toph a moment to disentangle herself from the sobbing child, but eventually she was able to lug her tired body over to the stove and yank the pot off the element. In hindsight, it was a miracle Toph didn't burn herself, but the high pitched shriek of the steam was grating on her ears. She transferred the tea to a pot and returned to Penga at the table.

Penga was still crying, and she rubbed furiously at her eyes as though she were trying to stem the tears.

When Toph sat down again, she didn't touch the girl. "You know you won't be afraid of shoes forever, right?" Penga didn't say anything. "Sometimes we're scared of something for a little while, but it gets better. Besides. You love shoes."

Penga nodded. "My mom and dad used to buy me all the shoes I wanted."

"Ah." Toph wasn't sure how to respond to that. Talking about parents wasn't exactly a strong point for her.

Penga looked at her teacher. "What about your parents? Did they buy you all the shoes you wanted?"

"Well." Toph faltered. "They bought me a lot of shoes... but I wouldn't say I wanted them."

Penga gasped. "You didn't want shoes!?"

Toph stretched her own bare feet. "Well, I'm sure you've noticed that I don't exactly wear shoes. Ever."

Penga nodded. "I thought you lost them. I was going to offer some of mine, but your feet are too big."

Toph smiled. Penga was really sweet, even if she was a bit of a spoiled brat. Toph could forgive that, having been a spoiled brat herself. "I see with my feet, through earthbending. That's why I make you guys go barefoot and wear blindfolds in practice. Shoes make that... difficult."

Penga opened her mouth in an O. The two of them sat in silence for a moment while Penga stared at the table, pondering on what Toph had just told her. Finally, Toph got up and transferred some tea from the pot into two cups. When she sat back down, Penga looked at her.

"What did you do with them?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"The shoes. You said you didn't want them. Did your parents make you wear them?"

Toph's breath hitched. Her parents had made her wear the shoes they had bought. She had hated every moment of it, and had slipped them off whenever she could. In hindsight, being forced to wear shoes had been what had resulted in Toph running into a lot of things growing up. That was probably one of the reasons her parents were so protective. But of course, wearing shoes was the way things were done.

Penga was still awaiting a response.

"I... I wore shoes as a child, yes."

Penga gasped again. "They made you wear shoes when you didn't want to wear them?!" At least she had stopped crying.

"Well... yes. But, they bought me other things too. Things that I actually wanted. Like the silk bed sheets, or... I had an entire set of earthen badgermole toys growing up. They all wore different outfits. There was something like twenty of them." Toph sank into her chair. "The truth is, there was hardly ever anything I asked my parents for that I didn't get. They wanted so bad to make me happy."

"Mine too."

They sat in silence for a while, sipping their tea. Eventually Toph let out a massive yawn. Her tea had all but run dry.

"Well, if you're not completely terrified anymore, I think it's long since time for bed." She got up and shuffled towards the door, leaving her empty teacup on the table. Toph didn't know how long Penga stayed in the kitchen after that, but the girl didn't complain about her teacher leaving. She sat in silence, staring into her empty teacup. Toph wondered what she was thinking about.

Maybe the two were kindred spirits after all.