Title: Jade and Steel
Summary: "Honestly not the kind of airbending Beifong I was expecting years ago, but that's just me." In which Opal Beifong gets a unique airbending err...teacher.
Characters: Opal Beifong, Tenzin, Lin Beifong
A/N: Another quick thirty minute writing exercise. I know I should be updating Adagio, but it has become a monster to edit. Thanks for reading!
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Circular movements. Quick like a well-choreographed dance. She had been an airbender for a couple of months now, but something was...off. Tenzin and Jinora were excellent airbending teachers, guiding her with grace and a lot of patience. Still, there were times, when propelled mid-air by the wind currents she bends, that she feels magnetized back to the ground.
Opal thinks a lot about the implications of being both air and earth, polar opposites. But it's silly, really. So she shrugs it off, focuses more on her footwork.
One day, she did bring it up with Master Tenzin, though. Just to be sure.
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Tenzin finds it a curious thing, looking directly at the eyes of one Opal Beifong. She's the spitting image of her mother Suyin, yes; from her complexion, her lithe frame. But her eyes - the color of sunlit jade, a defiant green that clashes with the yellow and scarlet robes of the air nomads - her wide almond eyes that slope a fraction smaller when he catches her smiling with his Jinora and the other air acolytes. They remind him of another younger Beifong from years ago.
He and Kya were watching Jinora, Ikki, and Meelo train the new airbenders months ago, before the Red Lotus wreaked havoc on all their lives. The waterbender gestures to Opal's general direction and tells him, in a tone that was supposed to be playful and in jest;
"Honestly not the kind of airbending Beifong I was expecting years ago, but that's just me."
Kya awkwardly shifts the conversation to, of all things, the weather, after noting her brother's lack of a decent response.
Tenzin is pulled out of his thoughts by the young girl in question, who mentions something about air and earth? He's really getting old, he muses.
"Oh, yes," He replies, unsure of what he could say to his student. "I guess you could say that airbending and earthbending are direct opposites. Avatar Aang found it quite difficult to get the hang of earthbending when he was training with your grandmother."
Opal smiles politely at the mention of her Grandma Toph, and again he feels a quiet pang of emotion in his chest, seeing Lin's eyes looking right at him. His nostalgia gives him an idea though, and it might actually work, if only she would agree to it.
"You know," he starts. "Have you ever seen your Aunt Lin metalbending?"
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Circular movements. Quick like a well-choreographed dance. She watches her Aunt Lin break a handstand with a pivot, metal cables that look impossibly light flowing with her graceful movements. Titanium cables aren't supposed to look like wind currents, she muses. Lin Beifong lands on two feet, metal cables retracting with a sharp shriek.
"The mastery of metalbending," she explains to her enthralled niece. "Is all about pressure and pain. It took me years to get it right. Surprisingly, of all the techniques my mother taught me, what I really needed was some airbending forms."
"After all," Opal looks into Aunt Lin's eyes and sees a flash of uncontained joy, of memories of the Chief's younger years, perhaps, and she sees her own eyes, her mother's eyes, but it was gone before she could admire it, the older woman's melancholy voice cutting through jade and steel. "Air is the element of freedom."