Apollo was showing off his bending. As usual.

The twins ventured out into the vast plane that lay between the inner and outer walls of Ba Sing Se. Their bickering was beginning to annoy their parents, and so their mother sent them out to play; Artemis just thanked the spirits they wouldn't be around should their parents start to bicker themselves. The twins' tantrums were far less explosive.

Apollo brought up two pillars of earth, just about five feet away from eachother, then ran a few yards and brought up two more. Summoning a nearby rock, he jammed and squished it up into an almost perfectly round shape, then dropped it over his raised foot, bouncing it from toe to toe like a soccer ball. Artemis winced; she'd taken a rock to the toe before, and it wasn't nearly as pretty as this.

"come on, Arty, let's play!" He shouted, bouncing the rock up above his head and then headbutting it into the rocky goal posts ahead of him.

"No way!" She shouted. "You know I can't earthbend - that thing will kill me! And stop calling me Arty! that's a BOY'S name." She crossed her arms over her knees and buried her face in. He always had to conveniently forget she wasn't a bender. Truly he just liked reminding her of the only reason he was better than her. They were equal in nearly all aspects of life but this one. Somehow that one thing made all the difference - to their parents, to their teachers, to everyone.

"Artemis is a boy's name, too."

"No it's not!"

"Yes it is!"

"Shut up!"

"Make me!"

Without a second thought, she reached down, grabbing a large chunk of earth and hurling it at her twin brother's head. Her throwing was strangely fast and accurate - at least, it would have been, if she'd been smart enough to throw something at Apollo that he /couldn't/ bend.

The rock halted in mid air, then reversed direction, planting with a hard "klunk" right on Artemis's forehead. She exclaimed, then reached up to rub the spot when her brother doubled over in laughter. "It's not funny, stop laughing!" She said, boiling. Unsurprisingly, her demands went unheard. "Fine, you can play by yourself!" She stood, turned on her heel and stomped away, fists clenched at her sides.

"Come back here, you can't go out by yourself! you'll get in trouble!"

"I don't care!" She said, and her brother's angry cries faded into silence as she pressed on.

A gentle breeze rustled her black locks, and she felt calmer. Her life was always so surrounded by anger and hardness that silence and softness was welcome in any way it came to her. She knew for every minute she spent in this calm environment, it would be another minute of yelling or screaming or hitting, but at this moment she didn't particularly care.

She found a tiny stream that cut a little section off the city's circle shape and she settled down on a large rock just on its bank. She kicked her shoes off and dipped her feet into the cool water, closing her eyes.

When she opened them again - it could have been days later, she couldn't tell - her eyes fell directly upon the sun, and she felt a familiar tickle in her nose.
"Aaah... Aaaaah..." She braced herself -

"Aaaah-CHOOOOOOOO!"

- And flew ten feet into the air.