Title: Practice
Words: 2300
Rating: K+
Summary: "Gotta have something to keep me occupied while we look for this stupid library that probably doesn't even exist. Sandbending is the only option I see." Toph Can See!AU. Re-write of the episode "The Library" from Toph's point of view. Pro-bending Circuit Season 2 Submission.
a/n: Round 6 submission for the Pro-bending Circuit tournament.
Task: "The Library" from Toph's point of view
Prompts: (object) goblet; (smell) burning rubber; (AU) blind (or if Toph - sight)
OOO
Practice
OOO
On their way out of the desert pub, Toph swiped a goblet off of the counter and stuffed it into her pockets.
Something about these sandbenders gave her a really sick feeling — one that she couldn't quite explain but certainly one that she was planning on taking seriously. Walking into the town and seeing them all clumped up together with their dusty, grimy clothes like they thought they were forced to be reckoned with. They looked like a bunch of disgusting leeches that spit at people's feet, drank themselves silly in the middle of the day, and generally acted like a bunch of illegal vagrants.
The hack of a professor warned her that many sandbenders in these parts weren't to be trusted — illegal deals and blackmarket stuff, apparently. Toph didn't find that surprising in the least. She had an intuitive sense of these sorts of things, and she knew just from seeing only a few of them that she was right.
So, while Twinkle Toes and his merry gang of archeologists began to prepare Appa for the trip across the desert, Toph scooped sand inside the goblet and hid them in the folds of her clothes. Toph wrinkled her nose as the smell of burning rubber filled her nostrils, and she looked back to the entrance of the town where a few sandbenders were returning on a large looking wooden raft that was floating on sand instead of water. A sand sailer, the professor had said. It was what they used to travel through the desert.
The rubber and leather of their harnesses and equipment must have been baking in the sun all day and was filling her with a strong sense of disgust and aversion. Toph kept her eyes on them as she came back to the group and mounted Appa.
Once the group had been travelling for over an hour looking for the professor's library, Toph tipped her head back and groaned in frustration. "Aw, does this place even exist?"
The professor smiled serenely. "Some say it doesn't!"
Toph's face fell as she turned and glared hatefully at the professor. "Shouldn't you have mentioned that before?" Figures that Aang would always attract these crazy, fanatics obsessed with the Avatar and with fairytales. Toph squinted out at the miles and miles of desert sand around them and suddenly had a sick thought of what would happen should Appa get too tired or Spirits forbid get lost. In the distance, she could just barely see another one of those damned sand sailors moving across the horizon at speeds that made Appa look positively sluggish.
Toph reached into her pack and pulled out the goblet of sand that she had scooped up back in the town. Katara, probably tired to death of listening to the professor go on about his dissertation and about his graduate students, immediately turned her attention to Toph and pointed to the goblet. "What's that for?"
Toph hovered a hand over the rim. "Practice," she said shortly.
Katara peeked over to look inside the goblet. "But there's just sand in there — wait, are you trying to sandbend or something?"
"Trying being the operative word," Toph replied.
"Any particular reason why?" Katara asked in amusement.
But Toph merely shrugged in response. "Gotta have something to keep me occupied while we look for this stupid library that probably doesn't even exist. Sandbending is the only option I see."
Perhaps Sokka's paranoia was rubbing off on her, but Toph didn't want to take any chances. Toph stared down into the cup and tried to concentrate on the sand underneath her hands. Sand lacked the stability that Earth possessed. Despite the fact that all sand really was was thousands and thousands of small rocks and pebbles ground together, it was difficult to focus on such small particles. Sand moved in waves, sand couldn't hold a shape, sand wasn't something you could ground yourself on. It was easy to move the top layer of sand and make waves over the surface, but Toph was struggling to see any offensive benefits to this element.
It was too shifty, loose, and made her bending seemed clouded and stunted. How anyone could stand to bend this sort of thing exclusively was beyond her.
Toph kept practicing up until Sokka had pointed out a small tower sticking out of the desert sand that Professor Zeng had confirmed to be the very tip of the looming library. Katara had shoved the picture of the library over to Toph and confirmed that, more than likely, if this was the ancient library that they were all looking for, it was completely buried in the desert, probably hundreds of feet deep.
The professor pulled out a small shovel from his pockets before he knelt down on the ground. "Well, time to start excavating."
Toph rolled her eyes and walked up to the side of the small tower. She smacked her hand against the surface until a few of the bricks easily slid out into a small platform just big enough for both of her feet. She pushed herself up the side of the tower until the platform was high enough for to peek into one of the windows on the top of the tower. Toph peered inside, but the dim lighting and dusty particles were blocking her sight and preventing her from seeing whether or not there was anything salvageable inside. Toph clicked her tongue against her teeth, chipped off a small pebble from one of the bricks, and dropped it inside.
She leaned her ear closer to the opening and counted for a few beats before she heard the faint sounds of the rock hitting a surface and echoing gorgeously against the inside of the library.
"Actually," Toph called out to the rest of the group, "that won't be necessary. The inside seems to be completely intact. And it sounds huge."
Sokka pointed up towards the top of the tower. "That foxy thingy went in through that window, too. I say we all climb up there and give it a look."
Toph stared back inside the building dubiously and then looked back out towards the desert sprawling out around them. To be completely honest, Toph wasn't a fan of looking for intelligence. The professor was obsessed with knowledge, Sokka had his intelligence to look for, that intelligence directly involved Aang, and Katara wasn't about to go anywhere without Aang or her brother. Toph had no interest in the endeavor and trusted the rest of the group to be able to handle things themselves. Besides, there was something else that she would have liked to focus her time on.
She lowered herself back to the sound and stared at the rest of the group. "I say you guys go ahead without me."
Katara frowned. "You got something against libraries?"
Toph shrugged. "Eh, books never really did it for me."
Aang was patting the top of Appa's head. "Actually, that might be better. I'm not about to make Appa go underground again. Plus I don't think it's good to leave him outside by himself. He can stay out here with Toph!"
"Sounds fine to me," Toph agreed. "We'll both be here when you guys get out. But do hurry it up, will you?"
Once the rest of the group had lowered a rope through the spire and began to lower themselves into the library, Toph turned back to the desert, eyed Appa, and lifted her head slightly in greeting. "What's up?" she smirked.
Appa grunted in response and lowered himself comfortably against the said, lidding his eyes and resting his head against his front paws. Toph smiled fondly. She didn't blame the lug. He'd been flying for hours. He must have been tired.
"Rest up, big guy," Toph announced. "I'll try to stay quiet and not wake you up."
Toph shifted her feet into the sand and attempted to bend the sand up to surround her ankles as an alternative way of grounding herself into a stance that would allow her to bend properly. Her feet were still sinking into the sand in a way that was incredibly annoying, but Toph bounced on her feet a couple of times, trying her best to shift the sand under her feet, until she managed to bunch of enough sand underneath her to make for a stable stance.
She breathed out carefully, sunk down into a horse stance, and tried a simple bending motion. Toph shot her fist forward as if she were trying to launch a boulder forward, but instead watched in annoyance as a harmless wave of sand floated into the air and was promptly swept away by the wind. Toph growled under her breath.
Toph took a moment to bend the sand into a denser clump before repeating the motion. This time when her hand shot forward, a slab of sand shot out of the ground and travelled a few feet. It managed to keep its shape for a few seconds longer than the last time before falling back into its loose consistency and falling back against the dunes and into the wind.
This continued on for a long few minutes — Toph practicing different ways of handling the sand, giving it different textures and consistencies and feeling out which combinations were better for offensive bending. It was a strange way of bending, but not one that Toph couldn't get used to. It was just a matter of approaching the element in a different way. Sand needed more love and patience. It couldn't just sit there and wait for you to manipulate it in just the way you wanted it to. It moved with the wind, and you needed to move along with it, adjusting your stances and your techniques in order to keep in sync with it.
Appa growled from her left as he stared curiously at her. Toph smiled and turned back to the sand dunes in front of her. "Yeah, I'm trying something new this time. Figured if those gross idiots back in the town could do it, someone as awesome as me can."
But the bison dug his toes in the sand and growled at her again. Toph nodded in sympathy. "Yeah, I know. I bet you're more comfortable flying. I prefer the Earth myself where I can at least pack a solid punch." She stuck her foot into the sand, lifted it, and watched it slide off of the top of her foot. "But this sand is so loose and shifty, it makes bending nearly impossible."
Appa grunted again, this time lifting himself up, walking over to Toph, and nuzzling his nose into her side. She laughed at the show of affection and patted him on the head. "Ah, don't worry about it," Toph assured him. "I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. Look! Let me try something else…"
Toph moved away from Appa. She grounded her feet into the sand this time, and kicked one of her legs up in an arc. A strong wall of sand managed to thrust up out of the ground and keep its shape long enough for her to thrust her hands forward and push it away from her a few feet before it collapsed in on itself and fell back into the dunes. Toph laughed in victory and looked back at Appa. "Haha, see? No problem."
Appa nodded his head a couple of times in acknowledgment, and Toph took it as a sign of approval. It was as Appa was lifting one of his paws to scratch at the top of his head that Toph looked over at the edge of the horizon and saw one of the sandbenders' sand sailors, curving along one of the sand dunes and poking their heads over their sails and towards the small spire sticking out of the ground where Appa and Toph were sitting. Toph glared in the direction of the sand sailer and cursed under her breath. "Those leeches need a hobby."
Toph pulled her foot back and picked a powerful wave of sand up into the air — higher than Appa was tall — and watched with satisfaction as it floated back to the ground. The sand sailer coincidently steered away from the horizon and sailed off out of site. Toph scoffed. She wouldn't have put it past those freaks to be looking for trouble this far out in the desert. There would be no other reason for them to be scouring the horizon like that.
Appa groaned and walked over to Toph, pushing his nose into her lower back. Toph kept her eyes on the horizon and patted the top of Appa's head where his arrow was. "Don't worry, big guy. I wouldn't have left you out here by yourself. I'm not gonna let those idiots mess with us."
Appa licked Toph's back, and she laughed with the effort. "Yeah, yeah, I like you too. Just hope your little Airbender hurries his sissy little butt up and gets back out here. I'm still not a huge fan of all this sand."
The bison lowered himself back down to the ground where the shadow from the spire was shielding him away from the heat. Toph smirked and followed Appa's lead, leaning against his fur and basking in the shade. She stretched her legs out and buried her toes in the sand with a sigh. "Yeah, this heat is the pits, too. Don't worry. When my vacation comes up, we're going somewhere luxurious. A waterfall, a spring, or some nice meadow. Real classy, you know?"
Appa growled happily in response and Toph nodded in approval. "Yup," she said to herself. "The farther away the two of us get from this dust bowl, the better off we'll be."