"Earth is the element of strength, Fire of passion, and water of adaptation. But we are air, the element of continual and constant change. In the coming years you must remember this."
-Master Yu-Gong to the Youngling class
In the beginning many could not bring themselves to commit acts of thievery, bribery, lying, and murder. But starvation and fear are harsh taskmasters indeed. In time our precursors came to learn, that they must change. Or risk the death, not only of the individual, but of a way of life that had persisted for hundreds of years. One that was even then besieged on all sides. So they fled, taking only what they could, and they hid away from the world. Taking on new names, settling in a land far away from there homes. One that was so different from where they had come from, that some began to despair. But they survived, and in time found others like themselves. They taught what they knew, and what they did not they themselves created.
We are not dead, we are only hibernating in the sands.
Some think it is time to reveal ourselves to the world. Three years, after the world was once again shaken to it core.
I am not the last, I am the first.
A new kind of bender, one as wild and free as my homeland.
Brother wind give me the strength to carry on, the heart to be true to myself, and the mind to remember those who have come before me.