Bei Fong Li Xing and the Flying Boar
Disclaimer: Avatar: The Last Airbender, its ideas and characters. belong to Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, who, for some reason, have agreed to let their amazing series be made into a live action movie.
To be directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Yeah.
That guy.
Notes: Written for the avatar100 community at Live Journal.
"Your turn, Toph."
The earth under her feet was warm and alive. She could feel the heartbeats of her companions around her, and she was content to be sitting around the fire on solid ground.
"...How about..." she stuck out her bottom lip and blew her bangs out of her unseeing eyes, "Li Xing?" Met by silence, she grinned. She hadn't told this story yet.
"Tu Yin was a Metalworker who lived in the mountains of Omashu... she began, "Long before there was a Shu. Long before there was Oma, who reformed the mountains. Tu Jin made things out of metal; the first arrows and swords that would be admired by the spirits, though they were frightening in their purpose. He also made jewelry for himself and for his prized flying boars."
She felt the skip in the heartbeats of all three of them, knowing that they were beginning to wonder...
"One day Li Xing climbed up the mountain to ask Tu Jin for a sword, since he had the desire to learn how to make them and thus attain some wealth for his suffering family. Tu Jin refused him, but Li Xing was not deterred. He was determined to become rich and make his family comfortable. So that night he prayed to the spirits to help him, send him a vision.
The next night after that he was looking up at the stars when he realized that a shower of them was falling to earth. The nearest one he marked and watched as it hurtled to earth in a haze of fire. Fortunately the shock of its impact startled the shallow but flooded bed of a river, and it cooled down immediately.
Li Xing took some rough tools and scarped precious much from the fallen star and melted it down to craft what he thought a sword might be."
She felt Sokka leaning forward anxiously and inadvertently turned her head toward him for the next part of the story.
"With it, he climbed the mountain again while Tu Jin was sleeping and stole a flying boar. On it, he flew to the biggest city in the Earth Kingdom and sold the sword, along with the gold jewelry the swine wore and flew back to his family with greater wealth then they had ever known."
When she hadn't spoken for a long minute, Aang broke the silence, rightly assuming that that was the end, though his curiosity was getting the better of him.
"So... Li Xing...?"
Toph grinned, crossed her arms and spit into the dirt off to her left. "Yeah. He was a Bei Fong. The Bei Fong."