I thought I ought to try drabbles more often, and this came to mind. There are seven chakras and the things that block them, but what precisely opens them? So, here we have those seven valuable lessons that Aang has known all along, courtesy of his blind earthbending teacher.
Avatar is not mine.
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The earth chakra is the chakra of survival.
It is blocked by fear.
Aang gripped the bars of the cage which held him, the metal cold and indifferent beneath his small, sweaty palms. Although he couldn't see her, he heard Katara call out after that strange little girl who knew, just as he did, what it was like to be torn in two. The waterbender was asking her for help, for the mighty Blind Bandit to aid them in saving him.
"We need you!"
Katara forgot that Toph was not the Blind Bandit now: now, she wore the mask of the fragile little daughter of the Bei Fong family, and all of that power was stowed away and hidden.
His breath caught, as the words reverberated over and over around the stone ring.
He knew no one would, could, do what Katara was asking Toph to do, just now.
She was asking that Toph reveal her secrets, remove that mask for her father to see what was underneath.
Aang knew that Lao Bei Fong was to blame for that guise. He was also to blame for that light in Toph's eyes, that look of a caged bird of prey, given just enough room to taste what the sky may be like before being called back. When a falconer notices this behavior, of course, he may clip the bird's wings, or discipline it until all the fight is gone and it is simply for show, a lifeless object on display.
"She can't help you."
Once the mask was gone, what would happen?
Katara was asking that this girl, this stranger whom he had just met, risk what meager freedom she had to rescue him. She was being asked to potentially sacrifice the one thing that kept her truly alive, and for whom?
Someone she did not even know.
We need you.
The whole world had needed him, had called out to him, and he had run away from his duties.
Aang himself had not been willing to make the sacrifices Toph was now being asked to: it had been far too frightening to imagine giving up the things he loved, his freedom, his life, for the benefit of a remote humanity and its concerns.
Even now he feared the surrender of such things, wondered if he would be able to do it if it was ever asked of him.
Weak.
Can't.
Can't. Can't. Can't.
The word that clipped wings and crushed worlds.
How could she face those doubts and fears that had overcome him?
He felt her fear in the silence that followed, as everyone waited for the girl to turn again and leave. It would have been so simple, so safe.
To be afraid and to face the fires anyway, as he would have to….
And then, suddenly, raw, fierce, and resolved, another voice crashed against the walls.
"Yes. I can."
And it is opened by courage.
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Next, of course, is water. Thank you for reading!