She could tell a lot about a person from their feet.
The first five years of Toph's life passed in a world of sound and touch and smell before she developed her sight. She knew it wasn't real sight, of course, but it was a true sight. She often thought that she could see more than those in the world of 'light' and 'dark' and 'color' could. Once she learned to solidify the vibrations around her into recognizable, tangible things, one of the first things she noticed was the way her mother walked.
Poppy Beifong had the tiniest, daintiest feet. She moved as though stepping over shards of fine china, with her petite frame perfectly balanced on each precise step. Toph had never seen a peacock before (seen, felt, sensed, whatever), but she imagined her mother's steps to be like a wind-up peacock's, elegant and mechanical and shimmering all at once. She rather liked it, especially when her mother's feet were moving toward her rather than away.
Her father had two sets of footsteps. One was confident and solid with a long stride. He often used that one while dealing with business partners and important people. The other set of steps was smaller, and perhaps a tiny, tiny bit more shaky. At first, Toph's childish mind thought it was the shoes he was wearing that made him change. As she got older, she understood that that was just how her father was.
Seven more years passed, and her only company was those two pairs of distant footsteps, bustling about the house anywhere she wasn't. There were guards, of course, pacing and tracing the same paths every day for hours on end. And there was 'Master' Yu and his obnoxious, patronizing stance. But guards and babysitters didn't count. Toph wanted to sense footsteps that for once weren't calculated and mathematical. She didn't want to become the perfect wind-up daughter her parents wanted. She wanted to swagger.
Swaggering was what made Earth Rumble VI so fun.
Every time she snuck out, every time she stepped into the arena, there were hundreds of different feet to greet her. She could sense each stamping pair and match it up with a cheering voice and she reveled in it, because those people were there to watch her be herself — her real, tough, swaggering, frickin' awesome earthbending self.
She'd given up on friends, so why not have some fun with fame?
Then suddenly there was a new set of footsteps in the arena. Different from the big, obvious, theatrical steps of her usual opponents. These were ghost feet, hardly even there for all the sound and vibration they made.
A challenge.
As it turned out, a frustrating challenge.
Once she sorted everything out with Twinkletoes, though, she grew to like his footsteps. They were light and carefree and they went pitterpatterpitterpatter like a spring rain. And they always traveled with three more sets of feet. She liked those too.
Sugar Queen walked with purpose and efficiency and grace all at the same time. Her feet knew when to plant themselves and when to move… most of the time. Snoozles, on the other hand, was clumsy, but charmingly so. His steps were energetic and recovered quickly after every stumble. And the other set of footsteps had six feet, though they were less like feet and more like huge towers of fluff with padded toes on the end. These were best appreciated from the ground and not the air.
Toph didn't think things could get any better than they were. She had a group of a dozen collective feet plus her own, and those feet kept constant rhythm with each other. Each unique, but all united.
Then a counter-rhythm to their beat walked up.
Toph was instantly intrigued by these footsteps. They weren't the most sure, but they were determined and directed, with a fascinating quality of finality to them. Those feet knew that once a step was taken, it couldn't be taken back. Maybe there were missteps in their past, but there was no hesitation with each new step. Toph respected that. When those feet asked to come with theirs, she vouched for them. It took a bit for the other feet to understand, but they managed it.
Now she had a complete family, a percussive, chaotic team of fourteen feet that stuck with each other through thick and thin. Every now and then she liked to sit back and 'watch' them as they moved around each other in the dance of life, interacting and moving forward and backward and sideways and always keeping in view of each other, not because any of them needed to be coddled or suffocated but because they all wanted to be around each other, always.
This was what she had missed for twelve long years.