Lightning and Thunder
For #10 - #10
"What are you doing?" Aang asked, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He shivered. The cave in which they had taken shelter was growing chilly in the late spring rain.
Katara, standing near the mouth of the cave, looked back at him for a moment and then out again to the driving rain. Lightning flashed, illuminating her silhouette and splashing highlights across the walls. Thunder rumbled – Aang felt it more than heard it, and Toph rolled over fitfully – and the rain continued to beat down.
"Katara?"
She glanced back at him again, almost as if she hadn't heard him the first time, and said, "I'm counting."
"Counting what?" he asked, pulling his blanket around himself and trying his hardest to curl up into a ball the way Momo did.
"The thunder!" Toph said irritably, sitting up and throwing her pillow at Aang. "People are trying to sleep here! If you wanna talk, take it outside!"
"It's storming like crazy out there!" Katara protested, but before she could make more of an argument Aang had bolted from his bedroll, grabbed her hand, and pulled her out into the rain.
"Counting thunder?" he asked again, speaking loudly over the elements.
Katara nodded, blinking the rain out of her eyes.
"How do you count thunder? Why do you count thunder?" he asked before she had a chance to elaborate.
She laughed.
"You wait for lightning to strike," she said, wrapping her arms around herself and looking towards the sky. "And then you count the seconds until the thunder. You can tell if the storm is coming or going."
Aang smiled – he always smiled when he learned something new – and looked eagerly skyward.
When a bolt of lightning split the clouds, they counted together, "One… two…" and then the thunder pealed.
They waited in silence for the next crack of lighting, and counted, "One… two… thr-" before the thunder rumbled.
"See?" Katara asked delightedly, turning to him with a smile. "The storm is getting farther away. Let's try it one more time."
This time when the lighting crackled, Aang gave a sharp tug on Katara's hand – which had somehow made it into his own – and kissed her. He pulled away when the thunder startled him.
Katara, whose eyes were still closed, tilted her head to the side as if thinking. She opened her eyes, looked at him questioningly, and said, "Ten whole seconds?"
It took Aang a few moments to realize she was talking about the time between the lightning and the thunder, and he laughed.
"It was more like three."
Katara blushed deeply and murmured "oh" before turning to go back into the cave.
AN: Anyone noticed my newfound love for Toph? I reread this drabble and said "Meh," but posted it anyways.