Alright, first real chapter is here.

Reviews (that I didn't expect to see at all yet);

Not-Gonna-Update: Yep, gruesome deaths are a specialty of mine! Don't expect to too much more blood for a while though.

CarlaAether: Thanks so much! I hope that the rest of the story is just as good!

She was pretty. Shuya, that is. Tall and tanned, she swept around with the grace of the desert birds. Sand would lift and twist with just a flutter of her fingers, forming whatever she willed it to with the greatest of ease.

Her little daughter, Lien, was a bit different.

There was no doubt she one day be just as tall, but as a child she was scrawny and gangly, like a new born antelope-cat. Which was, apparently, a thing in her new home. Which would have been splendid, as they were adorable, if it wasn't one of the many, many signs that she was far from where she belonged.

Lien stared out at the passing dunes, watching the ever changing desert roll past. One of her hands gripped Shuya's pants, holding tight to her mother for her own sake. The other was white knuckled against edge of the sand-Sailer. Not that you could tell through the cloth wrapped around her hand.

Dark eyes watched the world, her long lashes protecting them from the wiped up sand and the wind as their pack raced across the desert. Bouncing every now and again, moving in perfect unity through the endless dunes of Si Wong.

Her tribe, the Gansu, was moving again. They had to. Their territory, for all the good things in it, only held water in certain places, unlike the Hami who laid claim to an entire spring system in the east. It made it a struggle to keep their water, and their food.

Sailer's were built for speed across the desert, and mobility in the big storms. Not for large transports of goods or necessities. For that they waited until the storms had passed and gathered their equipment into the large Carriers. Once those were packed they were roped to a herd of Sailer's controlled by Benders. One of which included her mother, the most talented in the tribe.

Ironic since her daughter had no talent at all for it.

Lien puffed harsh sighs through the cloth over her mouth. Irritated. She was irritated. There was no guarantee she would know already. Many didn't develop until they were just shy of puberty. Her cousin, Ghashiun, hadn't managed to get anything to move until last month and he was two years ahead of her five.

So it wouldn't be very much of a surprise if she didn't develop for a while yet. Five was pushing it, even for her bloodline.

That didn't make her feel as much better as she thought it would.

Lien leaned on her mother's leg, letting the constant shift the sand bender push her to and fro and they moved across their land. She did wonder what it would be like, to draw the earth to her finger tip, to whip it around in flurries of power and strength.

It must be incredible.

How wonderful to have that kind of power, a power over the world around them that gave an advantage in the harsh climate. In the desert, any leg up was needed if they wanted to survive.

It was frightening. Death stalked them on the distance, rippling with the heat off the sand.

It was strange, two. Heat and sand, two things she had made her life out of before. Back then it had been hard too. In a city where a studio apartment was over 2000 a month life wasn't easy. You had to work for it, hard. Even then sometimes it wasn't enough. Even if you had enough for the roof you still needed to think about health. Food, water, electricity. None of that was free.

It was a true stroke of luck that glass had turned into a trend when it did, or else she would have had to leave the city she was born into and the art that her family had passed to her, before they had passed on.

Memories of her past had ceased to dampen her eyes by then, but she still felt the terrible ache in her chest when she remembers all she'd left behind.

Not that dwelling would do anything, she was well aware. It wasn't like she'd left any lasting legacy behind. No kids, not husband. Just her glass. It was best to move forwards in the desert or she might never move again.

Her mother told her once when she complained of wishing rest 'those who stand still are swallowed by the sand'. And just as she had not wanted that then, she did not want it now.

So the only choice was to go on. Move. Always, and let the sand sweep over her foot prints.

It was the way of her new people. To Lien, it seemed tragic. No matter what they did, no matter how they struggled and toiled there wouldn't be anything left of them when they died. Even their bones would be buried in the sand and, in the end, forgotten.

The only way to be remembered was to be great enough for stories to be told of their exploits, like her Grandfather, Li-Shu, who had built the fastest Sailer their tribe had ever seen. Or Ghashiun's great-grandmother, the most precise sand bender in four generations. So, unless she did something noticeable, she would struggle through another life and have even less to show for it than she had before.

A hand touched her head, drawing her attention away from the endless desert and up to the face of Yulduz, her aunt. Non bender, Ghashiun's mother. She was smiling when she opened her arms for Lien and it took the little one only a minute to release her mother and step into them.

The people of the sand were, for one reason or another, very touchy feely, even when it rubbed grains between them rough enough to hurt and it was too warm to reasonably expect anyone to want to touch you. Or so it would have been, she knew, if the body Lien now inhabited had not been crafted for such an environment as this.

Like the rest of her people, like her mother, her limbs were long and she was thin. The less body fat they possessed the insulation there was, and there for the less likely to overheat they became. It was simple adaptation. The exact opposite of what happened in colder worlds, where people were shorter and fat reserves worked to protect their core temperature.

Or so a national geographic special on the Inuit had once told her.

While logic and physics may not have carried over totally, some laws of nature had to remain the same.

"Lien, do you know where we are?" Yulduz asked her. It made the girl wonder, not for the first time, why she was Lien.

Lien, it was very far from the mark of Yulduz or Shuya. Or even her cousin's friends, Anora, Ona, and Elnura. Of course, there were those in her tribe that had picked up names from traders. Ki-shin had brought a name back for his son that would have made Lien laugh if it wasn't such a horrible reminder of where she was.

Sokka was only one in the Gansu littler than her. So small he was still in a basket strapped his mother's back until he could walk properly on the sand.

The little girl held on to her aunt's shoulders, ignoring the frown Ghashiun was throwing at her from under his own face wraps. It was only visible through the squinting of his eyes. He was such a momma's boy. Her eyes wandered from him to the compass on the deck, ticking away to the left. The sun was lowering itself to their right.

"We're… half a day from Twisted Knot. Going South," she said at last. "Between Misty Palms and the Center."

Yulduz patted her head and set her down beside Ghashiun. "That's right. You're very bright, Little Lien."

Lien was pretty sure that if his mouth was in the open Ghashiun would have stuck his tongue out at her. To which she would have rolled her eyes and gone back to looking at the passing dunes. At first glance they were all the same, but after five years of seeing nothing else she was beginning to notice things in their changing patterns. Like tides.

Or a jigsaw puzzle that kept changing its pieces.

It made it difficult to navigate, impossible to map properly. Her people were experts on getting across the desert though. Well, around. No one crossed a Si Wong. It was impossible.

Perhaps that would be what she would remembered for.

They had managed to make it to the Commune before the storm broke.

When she had first heard them talking about a commune Lien's first thought was that they weren't desert bandits after all, but hippies.

That theory was quickly shot to hell when she found out that commune was actually code for town. Or something similar. There weren't enough resources in the desert for many people to stay in one place, the Misty Palms being one of the few exceptions. Across the Si Wong was a number of Communes, where tribes came to meet, exchange goods and services, and mingle. It was also where Traders were found, and Merchants who would sell to and buy from the people of the sand.

This one was called by its inhabitants the Silver Spring Oasis. The plants the grew around it, some creeping species of lotus, spread up across the banks and into the branchless trees that dotted the water. The silver tinted vines slithered around the buildings that made the watering hole their home, almost obscuring them completely. The plants stretched out towards the desert, like the reaching rippled of water from the ground.

Silver Spring indeed.

The Spring was in the middle of being buried with sand, along with their Sailers. Lien was standing near the corner of one room, playing with the long stripes of clothe that had been wrapped around her hands. They made her look like a boxer in a bad Rocky spin off, she thought.

Around the large room her family had gathered. Once they were fed and hydrated the sand benders that had been working today slipped past a dust colored cloth, into another room that was made entirely of mattresses and heavy blankets. In the desert, the heat plummeted at night until it might as well have been freezing.

The rest of the Gansu had spread themselves out around the room, talking quietly. Children ran and played. Ghashiun and his friends had been running amuck around the fire pit when she looked away to mock up some half assed cat's cradle. It was easier with strings than ribbons but ribbons was what she had so she made due.

She was halfway done with the Eiffel Tower when a shadow fell over her small self. She looked up just in time to find herself shoved onto the floor.

Lien fell with a yelp, her butt hitting the hard packed ground of the house painfully. Her tailbone popped and tear welled in her eyes when pain radiated outward from it, hot and sharp.

"What," Ghashiun mocked from above her, "Are you gonna cry?" he demanded. The other children around him started laughing. Across the room Yulduz and Sho-Ma stood up and started moving towards their son, along side Lindor, Ilida, and Rodez. They didn't get the chance to get close enough to pull the children apart.

Lien reacted too fast, moving on instinct and driven by hot anger and indignation. She lifted her leg and kicked out, smashing her foot into Ghashiun's knee cap so hard dust rolled between them. The little boy dropped to the ground, howling as he gripped his leg.

His parents came running.

Lien was glowering at him, furious. The little punk had pushed her down because his mom had been talking to her, she was sure of it, and then he insulted her?

The adult part of her brain knew that the reaction was childish, but if she was being totally honest she had been childish for a long time. Lien was and always had been a strong believer in petty vengeance, and this seemed fair to her. His knee for her coccyx.

"Ghashiun, stop crying, let me see," Yulduz ordered, kneeling by her son. He only wailed louder once he knew she was there, though he did nothing to keep her from pulling his hands away from his knee. The mother sucked in a sharp breath. Something between a gasp and a shout. Her husband loomed over her shoulder, his brows furrowing in confusion. His eyes lifted up to Lien, who was standing in the corner again, dusting her self off and trying to see if the damage was bad.

Her rear end hurt, taking up most of her focus. So much of it she almost didn't notice it.

The two hand prints in the sand, made entirely out of glass.