Hello again. It's been a while. I'm still lacking in the awesome ideas department, but here is some fluff featuring our favorite mother-daughter earthbenders if I still have any readers.
Once again, I don't own Avatar or LOK.
Four-year-old Lin Bei Fong stomped through her forms as her mother instructed. Obediently, columns of earth erupted from the ground, following the path of her forms. It had only been one month since she accidentally bent earth the first time, and she'd been training as hard as she could ever since. She was determined to make her mother proud of her.
She turned in a particularly complicated form and tripped over a rock that had appeared during one of her previous movements. She fell hard, landing on her hands and knees and sliding a little. She rolled into a sitting position and looked down at her dirty, skinned hands and knees. Now that she could see the damage, the sting in them suddenly intensified until it was more than she could bear. She began to cry.
Her mother had stopped yelling form names at her. She felt, rather than saw, someone kneel in front of her. She looked up to see the blurred face of her mother.
"Lesson number one," her mother explained in an uncharacteristically gentle voice, "know where your feet are. They're the most important part of your earthbending. Lesson number two," She reached out and cupped Lin's face. Rubbing her thumbs under Lin's eyes, she wiped the tears away. "Bei Fongs don't cry. Rock is a stubborn element. You're gonna get a lot of bumps and bruises. You won't have time to learn anything if you cry over all of them. You gotta shake it off and keep going."
Toph trailed her hands down Lin's face, over her shoulders, and down her arms. Lin hissed when they made contact with the broken skin of her palms.
"Lesson number two, my little badger-mole." her mother reminded her. She raised her hands slightly, and the dirt and tiny pebbles embedded in the scrapes followed them, dislodging themselves from Lin's skin. No longer concerned with the pain, Lin watched, fascinated, as her mother sent the bits of earth away with a careless wave of her hands. Toph placed her hands back in Lin's, and Lin wrapped her fingers around the thickly calloused appendages. She turned her mother's hands over and gently placed them over her skinned knees. Toph bent the earth out of those wounds as well before turning her hands back over and grasping Lin's again. She stood up, pulling Lin with her.
"You shake it off and keep going." she repeated. She let go of Lin's hands. "Let's try it again."