Written for the prompt "Window" on the Avatar 500 LJ challenge community.
"Only from the heart Can you touch the sky." - Rumi
On hands and knees, Toph feels the earth.
There it is. Quy was right. No road up.
Who needs one? Toph stamps her bare foot, and the mountain itself carries her to the temple at its peak.
She pads past a statue of a bald man in lotus position, holding a flame in her palm for warmth. Inside, leaves blow through the corridors. The quiet is a weight on her heart.
A huge door lies in pieces, twisted metal tubes among the rubble. Beyond is a cavern filled with more broken stone; in the center lies a human skeleton roughly her size. She sits beside it and struggles to empty her mind.
Hi, says the voice in her ear, breathy and hollow.
"Avatar Aang?"
That's me. His lighthearted tone doesn't completely hide a note of sorrow.
"I'm here to learn airbending."
That will be difficult. Pause. You could try the scrolls in the library.
"Helloo, I can't read them."
...Oh.
"Is there another way?"
I don't know. Quy didn't make it this far before she...
"I know. We talked." The gentle, sad voice under the great banyan tree on the solstice, telling Toph how she failed to master all the elements and stop the war, and how time was running out...
She senses something long and thin on the ground near her and grabs it. "What's this?"
My glider! I can't believe it's still intact.
With it pressed against the ground she can sense the mechanism inside. She stands and bangs the end of it down hard.
Hey! Aang protests. That's a delicate instrument!
A sudden chittering from the doorway makes her take a stance.
Relax, he says. It's a flying lemur.
When she steps toward it, it scampers off. She feels the vibrations from its little paws...and suddenly they're gone.
"That's it. Maybe I have to face it head on," she murmurs.
What? You're talking like an earthbender. Airbending doesn't work like that...
She ignores him and heads for the stairs. In the topmost room of the temple, Toph climbs onto a windowsill, holding the glider to her back, her face whipped by the wind. Her stomach threatens to expel the fruit she ate that morning.
You're going to smash to pieces on the rocks, Aang frets.
"If anything kills me," she says, "it won't be rocks." Still, she hesitates.
Then her foot slips somehow and she is falling. The glider wings rustle uselessly, she's about to lose her grip on it, the earth is gone forever and she is lost to this endless cold...
Then the glider lifts. No, she is lifting it. She's bending air.
Watch out for that cliff! shouts Aang.
The glider flies out of her hands, she claws the air, finds rock and tumbles onto the cliff top. When the blood in her ears stops roaring and her breath slows, she calls out, "Aang?"
Yeah, Toph?
"Airbending sucks."
His laughter mingles with hers.