I wrote this piece for the Avatar Spirit's Christmas exchange last December. My secret recipient was Tophrules9876, who listed Tokka as one of her favorite relationships. Working a Christmas-y theme into an Avatar fanfic stymied me for a bit.
The Star
One night, a star fell from the sky.
It tumbled through the air as though dead, covered in flames and glowing with heat, until it impacted against the Earth with enough force to shake the ground itself. Eventually, the star cooled, and the fire went out. All that was left in the crater was a large lump of metal, rough and unsightly, not at all what one would have expected from the heart of a star. It would have been left there, forgotten, but one boy realized its true worth.
The star's heart was brought back to the boy's master, where it was broken up, shattered into smaller rocks that the boy could hold in the palms of his hands. The rocks into the forge, and the boy guided them back through a process of fire and impact. This time the destination was not death, but life. The rocks came together into a vibrant liquid form, running like water into a mold, where something even greater was born.
That portion of the star's dead heart was revived as a Sword, unique in all the lands, stronger and darker than had ever been seen before. The boy trained with the Sword, and named it, and carried it into battle so that he could protect the ones he loved. He used the Sword to drive back the hateful, the bloodthirsty, and the unjust. The Sword shattered their weapons, and stripped them of their armor. It was a Sword of life, as alive as the star it had once been.
When the final battle came, the star died again. To protect his greatest and truest friend, the boy gave up the Sword, flinging it so that it flew like the star it had once been, stopping one last murderer from spreading more loss and suffering. The Sword did its duty and then fell, as it had once before, passing through flames and heat, coming to its final rest on the ground. No longer a Sword, it would lay there forever, lost, but not forgotten by the boy who forged and honored it.
It was also not forgotten by the girl whose life had been saved by its final flight.
The girl was the boy's closest friend. When forging the Sword, he had saved one small chunk of the dead star's heart, and presented it to her as a gift, so that she would never forget him. In her hands, the the dead star lived again, sustained by her Earthbending powers, flowing and twisting as if liquid, and then hardening again, according to her will.
When the boy gave up his Sword to save her life, she understood the sacrifice it was, and the emptiness he would forevermore carry in his own living heart.
She hesitated for some time, fearing beyond conscious thought that if she gave up the gift of the living heart, her own heart might someday forget him. Yet she eventually realized that so long as her heart lived, it would bear his marks. So she gave life to the star's heart one last time, and then passed it to him.
The heart came to life once more in his hands.
Although there was not enough of the dead star left to make another Sword, its size had been more than adequate for the girl's designs. She had flattened it, straightened it, and bent it very precisely, into a shape she had felt before. Although the boy was a Swordsman by choice, his people favored various weapons, and he had trained in their use, and carried them with him so that he would always be able to do his duty and protect the ones he loved.
The girl turned her rock into a Boomerang.
She gave it to the boy, and he instantly understood her sacrifice. He honored it by keeping the gift always close to his heart, and he had always kept his memories of her the same way.
The star lived and flew again, for as long as the boy and the girl lived.
END
