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ElementalDarkness28: Thank you! I hope this is just as good.
Not-Gonna-Update: Yep, she can! And she's good too. I hope you like this one as well!
Twelve was a special number for the Gansu.
Twelve was the age at which a young sand bender was to test their merit and their worth, their ability to survive in the hostile environment of the Si Wong.
When Lien was twelve she had thought she would be exempt of this particular challenge. She was no sand bender, she was an orthodox fire bender. Why would they make her go out into the desert, on her own, to get from place to place.
The girl set up the Sailer with all the supplies needed for the two day trip from the Merchant camp she was to start in to the Twisted Knot Commune. Shuya was fussing over her clothes, making sure that none of her skin was showing and that she had fully functioning sun goggles. Lien, who loved her mother but was both a grown woman and budding teenager, could only take so much of it. She twisted and squirmed until the woman had to release her and she was free to take a few steps back, up onto the Sailer.
"Mom," she'd finally kicked her bad pronunciation, "I need to go. Sha-Mo and the others are waiting for me at the Knot."
They had left three days before to prepare to receive the young fire bender once she arrived. If she arrived.
Lien tried to shake those thoughts out of her head.
"I worry," Shuya confessed, smiling up at her daughter. They would be following her in three more days, weather providing. Weather proving, she would make it to the Knot without dying alone in the dune, wasting away, suffocating on the sand. Burning steadily thought her bodies supply of water…
She had to stop thinking about this.
There was no backing down. If she did then she would always be a child in the eyes of her tribe and her family. If she did she would be trailing after everyone for the rest of her life. Giving up was worse than failure.
"I will be fine, Mom. Just don't forget to come after me," she requested.
Shuya nodded down at her and pulled back, pushing herself up higher. It was getting hard with her stomach bulging with a new pregnancy. Another bastard, this one from a young man trying to get from the Omashu to Gaoling. The man had been so lost it wasn't even funny.
They had set him straight and he had spent the night with her tribes men. One night turned into a week, turned into a month, and now he was learning to adapt and preparing to become a father. Lien didn't much care for him, but as long as he didn't try to enforce rules upon her she wasn't going to kick up a fuss. He made Shuya happy so it was okay.
"I won't," she promised, stepping back so Lien could get by and to her sailer, brand new and made by the girl herself. It was a long, hard task, another part of the Coming of Age tradition. It was solid and light, the way it had to be to fly across the sands of her home. If she was lucky it wouldn't explode the second she tried to take off.
If that happened, she would be making the trip on foot.
Lien hopped up on her Sailer and braced her feet in the notches she'd made, custom for her own unique style. There was a sail, but that was for when she was sailing with others, and when she had to rest in the shade during the middle of the day.
Solo sailing was the most difficult thing for anyone to do.
When there was more than one person someone could take over the actual movement, and another could keep track of the direction they were going in. Solo sailing meant you had to bend and navigate at the same time.
It was going to be hard.
Lien was scared. She liked this life, in some ways she liked it more than one she had left. She didn't want to die again.
It was not death she feared. It was starting over again. She didn't know that she could do it again.
So, to avoid that, she was going to live.
Her feet settled into the hard notches, her eyes leveled on the horizon. She took a breath, and as she let it out she struck behind her, palm open, and sent the Sailer gliding over the sand. Lien dared not look back until after she was sure that they were out of view.
On she went, her eyes on the horizon, the compass, the sun high above her.
They started growing wider when the edges of her vision started to change. She didn't notice it as fast as she should have. It was because the sun was setting, dipping low over the edges in the west. Fire across the grains of the Si Wong.
It came from the east. Too fast, too hard, and she had too little warning before the storm was upon her.
She yanked hard on the rudder, twisting the sailer to the west, pouring more fire behind her until she could feel the cloth on her hand starting to singe. Still, no matter how much power she shoved into the fire it wasn't enough. The sand slammed into her.
Lien braced herself onto the sailer. Her knuckles were white beneath the cloth, she was sure. Sand whipped viciously at the girls face, splitting into what little skin was left to the elements. She hissed, and tried to hang on, managing not to be thrown off when the sand surged and bucked beneath herm wind lifting and tearing at her brand new Sailer, scoring the sides and tipping it up as it tore through the dunes bellow her.
Lien gripped the wood so hard it was a miracle it didn't splinter into a million pieces.
Her sailer was thrown up off of the ground, into the air. The sand shredded through the air like a high wave in the ocean, arching above her. Lien's eyes grew wide, panic seeped into her core.
She had never believed when people described horrific events slowing down. Hell, when she had died it had happened in a matter of seconds, no slowing down about it. One second she was there, the next she was thrown out of her seat, and by the time ten were up she had died.
When the sand around her slowed and her mind took in more than it should have been able to she was understandably confused. The confusion was replaced with instinct and memory, twisting her limbs around her. Fire was traded for raw heat that wrapped itself around her exploded, sending a wave out around her and her sailer.
She fell from the sailer, something struck her head and the world disappeared into black.
She couldn't have been asleep for long. Or else she would have been dead again.
Something heavy was on her left leg. It was dark, she couldn't see anything. There was no sun above her. Not even the stars.
The right half of her face and her right arm hurt something fierce, along with most of her right calf and her food.
Lien sat up and tried to move her leg but it was caught. Groping around shoed her that it was her sailer, not badly charred and smelling of burn wood, that had her stuck. When her hands touched the ground she also noted that it was not sand that cushioned her fall but smooth, rounded glass. A slow creeping wetness down her cheek told her than she was bleeding from her head.
Understanding dawned, accompanied by a worrisome lack of fear.
She was trapped in a bubble of glass.
If she wasn't probably low on air Lien would have laughed aloud. She had been reincarnated into the Avatar world, and now she had trapped herself in a bubble. It was hilarious, truly. Ironic.
Or was that irony?
What was irony?
It wasn't rain or your wedding day, or a free ride when you've already paid. Not the good advice that you just didn't take.
Her humming came to a stop when her head started pounding harder.
She needed to escape. First thing first, and easiest, was to free her leg from under her Sailer. She stood, wobbly. If nothing else she hadn't broken her leg, so that was some small blessing. Her feet, covered in cloth, slipped around on the uneven surface of her sanctuary. Her prison.
At least she knew which way was up. Gravity was pretty clear.
That meant that she needed to get out. Which was easier said than done.
Lien dared not light up a fire, it would eat up the air too quickly. So she had to do this bling. Using her hands she navigated from one end to the other, stumbling over her somehow-still-solid sailer she found the limits of her bubble. It was bigger than she'd first assumed. So she had a little more time.
The girl somehow managed to clamber up on top of her sailer, balancing precariously, to press her hands against the top of the bubble. She knew how to get out. It was going to have to be done fast though, or she would suffocate in seconds.
Lien breathed in, held it, and focused. There was no fire to eat away at her air supply, only heat that slowly pushed a glow into the glass at her finger tips. She spread the heat out, over the shield until the top was glowing in an oval large enough for her sailer to fit thought.
A breath out.
Another in.
It was starting to get stale.
With fear finally setting in and gripping her heart so hard she thought it would squish the girl pushed, harder than she thought she could, sending a hard wave of heat and fire exploding away from her hands, up, up, up until light exploded down into her eyes, sending her screaming to the bottom of her bubble.
At least this time she didn't pass out. She was free to gulp in new air, desperate for the freshness of the sandy above ground.
Once she could finally see she got to work, positioning her sailer and setting up the sail she did not use.
Sand Sailers were made to be light and maneuverable, hers hardly weighed anything at all, making her task all the easier. Once it was pointing upwards, towards the surface, she waited until the newly glazed pathway was no longer red hot.
Balanced carefully she lit a small jet from her left hand, towards the cloth, until it was lifting like an air balloon. That wasn't enough to get her moving, she knew, and compensated with a blast to the floor, sending her shooting up. The combined momentum sent her rocketing through the tunnel she'd made of glass, into the air outside.
She separated from her sailer and they both went falling to the ground, in opposite directions. The sand was kind enough give at least a little when she impacted.
She was breathing hard, hurting all over, and filled with a survivors euphoria. She was even lucky enough to land in the shade.
Shade.
Where in the hell was their shade in the desert?
Amber eyes stared up at the sky as this question wrapped around her brain. A few seconds later they were met with a furry little face with bright, unblemished turquoise.
Oh.
She sat up, wincing at the everything. There wasn't a single part of her that didn't ache or sting. The pain on her right side was burns from her glass. Her face was sliced by sand and impact. Her bones whined deep underneath her skin. Groaned. Cried.
She sat up and the little Seeker pulled away from her before she could knock into its chin. Sitting in front of her, rising up through the sand, was a tower.
At least answered some of her questions about when she was. The Seeker made a soft whine at her, alerting Lien to the fact that she was breathing in copper. Her face coverings were soaked almost entirely in her blood.
"Hello," she greeted softly. The little canine cocked its head, ears perked up. Lien smiled a little. She had always loved dogs.
The Library loomed high above her. It was too good of an opportunity to miss out on, so she went to her Sailer, gathered up some rope and a bag of her good, probably mostly destroyed by then, and threw the rope up, into the window of the tower.
If nothing else, sitting in the window would give her some shade.
She climbed up, a much harder task with her aches and pains, so she could perch on the sill of the window and get a good look around. This would be fine, she could wait until night fell and started making repairs on her sailer.
Lien found herself jealous of the Knowledge Seeker, who trotted right up the side of the building like it was nothing. She decided to call him Peter.
A look down and she knew, knew that she had to see more. The engravings on the wall were just too much to resist. The young girl secured her rope and dropped down, a bit faster than she should have thanks to her failing strength. Getting back up would be a bitch and a half.
She landed quietly, turning this way and that to try and see all there was. The Professor had no been wrong, it was truly an amazing work of art, architecture beyond anything she had ever encountered before, a wonder of any world. It left her breathless and star struck.
Movement behind her alerted the girl to the presence of the spirit who created the place and she spun on her heel, a smidge too fast for her probable concussion, to see the massive owl towering above her.
Lien cocked her head slightly.
"Are you Wan Shi Tong?" she asked, "Creator of the world's most vast Library, He Who Knows One Thousand Things?" Flattery would get you everywhere. Be it a merchant or an ancient spirit.
The owl looked down at her, his dark eyes unwavering.
"I am. It has been some time since a human last visited my library. Tell me, young sand bender, what have you come here seeking?"
She wasn't being turned away so it was before Zhao arrived. Or at least, before the Siege of the North.
Lien bowed deeply to the great spirit before her. "I come seeking knowledge on medicine, and on fire bending." There was no point in lying to an all knowing spirit.
Her words seemed to draw him up. "Medicine is a noble cause. However, fire and destruction, are not. They are in vast opposition."
The girl sucked in a deep breath and stood higher, her chin lifted. She was burned and bloody, hardly presentable and hardly one who should give this speech, yet the words fell smoothly from her lips.
"With respect, Great Spirit, you are wrong." His head tilted in that funny way only an owls could. "Fire is not simple destruction. Yes, it can be used to harm, but it is just as necessary for life as water, and air. Fire purifies and gives room for new life to grow where old life choked itself and everything around it. Fire is passion, the driving force behind evolution and the need to progress in this world. Fire is life."
"Is that so?" he drawled. "What is it you do with fire, if not destroy?"
It was a good thing that she had thought to bring her bag. Lien pulled it out in front of her and rummaged through until she had a handful of intact, perfect statues. She lifted for the owl to see.
"I create things of beauty, Great Wan Shi Tong. Now I seek to improve myself and better my abilities, so I might heal as well."
"Fire cannot heal," he said slowly, like she was foolish. Non the less he seemed very fixated on her little trinkets.
Lien tapped her teeth together before she started talking again. She needed to phrase this correctly.
"The human body is made of water, mostly, however it is controlled with energy, and electricity. Both of those are aspects of fire. I believe that if I can learn to create lightning, in small, controlled amounts, I may be able to, to jump start a system stalled," she tried to explain, rolling her hands as she spoke. It had been on her mind for a long time now.
Wan Shi Tong made a strange sound she could not identify. "You are speaking the truth," he seemed to realize. With a wave of his wing Peter came trotting around the corner, up to the girl in the middle of the hall. "He will show you where to find what you seek."
Lien bowed again, lower this time.
"Thank you, Wise One. Please, accept these small tokens as my gratitude," she offered the small glass trinkets, a coyote, a hummingbird, and a cactus blossom. They were small, but beautiful in craftsmanship. They must have been good enough, for they were swept away by his wing.
The Owl watched her turn to his spirit and pad after it, favoring one leg. She could feel his eyes on her back and dared not meet them.
Idly, she wondered if they had a first aid kit in the library.