Guest from Sep. 11th: Thank you! My chapter length really does vary, doesn't it?
Faelight: Thank you very much!
Guest from Sep. 12th: Is this soon enough?
Guest from Sep. 12th: Yes! Finally, right? Lien is definitely one of my favorite characters to write, and I have a lot!
Guest from Sep. 12th: Wow what happened on the 12th that brought these guest around?
Chezleee: I hope that is still good!
Guest from Sep. 16th: I do know there aren't many, it really sucks! The Clarity of Everything? I feel like I read that once and it just wasn't my cup of tea. Lucky Jade, by Toonwalla, I thought was really good though.
Lien had a strange relationship with water. On one hand, she loved it in the sense that it was the key to survival and as a desert dweller she was naturally inclined to value it more than her own arm. On the other hand, she was a firebender and a desert dweller and seeing too much of it at once, or trying to swim, left her with a sever case of fuck-this-where's-my-sand?.
So while Aang and Katara were busy splashing around in the water Lien was sitting a good distance away, legs crossed and eyes closed. She took several deep breaths, let the sun sink into her skin.
"Aren't you hot?"
Her peace was interrupted by an Air Nomads inquiry. Lien cracked a golden eye open to look at him. He was on the edge of the pond, his arms crossed over the rocks that surrounded it. Katara was behind him, also watching the firebender.
"I'm from the desert. If anything I'm cold," she said simply. Aang cocked his head.
"Are you meditating?" he inquired next, to which the girl had to shake her head after a minute. It wasn't that.
"I was relaxing, not really meditating just… feeling. Sandbenders got by by reading the changes in the earth and the air, learning to understand the shifting tides of the dunes, the flight of birds, and the way the wind blew. I can do that, and a little more," she pointed upward, "I feel from the sun and the atmosphere, the way the heat changed and bring in different weather."
"That, doesn't sound like earthbending," Toph said from she had set against a rock some ways away, an overhang keeping her in the shade. Lien would bet she'd made it herself.
"It's really not," Lien agreed, "Sandbending doesn't have a whole lot to do with traditional earthbending. You felt how loose and malleable everything was?" Toph muttered an, 'unfortunately' before Lien went on, "That means that the style my people use has to change too, to adapt. My mother says it's closer to water bending or airbending most times, and my firebending reflects that too. See, the desert is unforgiving. You can only be so stubborn before it gets you killed, and the Gansu are nothing if not survivors. We learn and adapt, and part of that means that we have to able to know when the weather is going to change."
"What weather?" Sokka grimaced, "We were there for like, a week, and we only saw one cloud!"
"Then you're pretty damn lucky," Lien snipped tersley. When his head snapped around and his mouth opened she spoke before he could keep going. "If you had seen a desert storm, you would be dead, glacier boy."
"What do you mean?" Katara waded closer, frowning, "Water was exactly what we needed. If it rained we would have gotten some."
"Storms in the desert aren't always those that involve water. Just as often there's a sandstorm, which can lasts for months at a time. Those have been known to blind a person, rip a sailer apart and ruin water supplies. That's not even counting the lightning that comes with them. It can bury the unprepared, and drown someone in sand," she said grimly, "On the rare occasions we get actual rain, it can be even worse.
"Sand doesn't soak up water well. So if there's more than, say, an inch and a half that falls lake beds with fill up and overflow, flash floods are almost certain. I've seen walls of water that are over 30 feet high." She watched with some satisfaction the widening of their eyes. "So you see why we need to be prepared."
"If its that bad, why do you live there?" Sokka looked truly bewildered.
Lien cocked her head. "Technically, you're from a desert too. Yours it just made out of ice and snow. You have your own hardships, blizzards and storms and stuff like that, right?" she waited for them to know, "Would you ever leave the poles because of that?"
"Of course not! That's our home!" Sokka leapt to the defense of his native land. Lien smiled just a little and he faltered. "Oh."
"Yeah."
"So, what's the weather going to be like today?" Aang asked, quickly breaking the awkward silence that fell over the quartet.
Lien blinked at him a couple of time. "Um, I'm not really a fortune teller. And it's not like, a whole day thing. It's what's happening now. And right now it's sunny, but there are clouds on the other side of the cliff," she pointed. "This rock stays still, so it doesn't really matter about that."
Three people lifted their head to look up, and sure enough a few puffy clouds drifted across the edge of the cliff that rose above them, one that came equipped with a nice water fall.
"From your silence, I'm going to guess that she's right," Toph assumed, wandering over by Sokka. Lien didn't know why he was so close to the water when he had maps older than his grandmother with him. She didn't like it though.
Still, they had a pair of water benders with them, so it probably wouldn't hurt anything. If it did, she would light his ass on fire faster than he could say-
"What's burning?" Toph asked suddenly, and Lien looked down to see her hand had heated enough to light a small patch of grass on fire.
"Huh," she said offhandedly. With a wave she had sucked the heat away and put the flame out. "Usually when that happens there's a glass handprint. No sand here…"
"So what you just, burn things on accident?" Sokka practically shouted.
Lien shrugged and leaned back. "Not really. It's not fire, its heat. That grass just happened to be dry enough to catch on fire. I'm used to things that just turn into glass. I'll adjust."
"Fire is dangerous," Aang said it so quietly Lien almost missed it. That was right, his first time firebending he'd gotten arrogant and burned Katara, hadn't he? That was before Toph, and before the North Pole. Huh. She really was coming in pretty later in the story.
Lien sat up once more, and slumped forwards. "C'mere," she instructed, and pulled out a piece of parchment and some charcoal sticks from her bag.
Aang came over, as well as the two Water Tribe kids and Toph.
"I've spent a lot of time in a spirit library, and a lot of time thinking about my bending and what it might mean," she said slowly, "I wasn't raised to fear it. Sandbenders don't have time for prejudices. We're too busy trying to live. That would mean giving up potentially valuable asset, like my bending. That gave me a lot of freedom to think. I didn't have any Fire Nation propaganda pushing me to think I was hot stuff," Pun intended, "Or a bunch of Earth Nation Loyalists breathing down my neck for a heritage that I have no say in. And I've come to a few conclusion."
She drew a symbol for all four nations on one piece of paper, her mind going back to years past. To a cartoon boy, still learning, still growing, and a wise old man who told him about the world.
"Traditionally, Air is the element of Freedom," she said carefully, "The Air Nomads detached themselves from worldly desires and concerns, and found peace, right?" She waited for Aang to nod. Earth is the element of Substance. It's people are stubborn and enduring, self reliant and strong. Water is supposed to be the element of Change, and the people of the Water Tribes are adapting, and have a deep rooted sense of love for their community… someone correct me if I'm wrong?"
No one did. She went on.
"Supposedly, Fire is the element of Power, and its people have desire and will, and the energy and drive to achieve what they want, as you all well know."
"You say 'supposedly'," Katara observed, "does that mean you think differently?"
Lien nodded. "Yes. I do." Perhaps she had listened to too many Greek Myths in her past life. Perhaps she had been a part of them in a life before that. Who knew?
"From what I can tell, this is close but, well." Where did she start? "It seems to me that Air is definitely free and peaceful, and Earth I think is pretty spot on too. I mean, I grew up with earthbenders and I know how stubborn and enduring they can be, but they're more flexible than people give them credit for. Like the earth can change from boulders to sand, so too can the benders of it."
"Now, Water, I think, is what should be Power." To that, she received very confused looks. "Think about it," she went on, "Water is what carved the face of mountains, it's what ground stones into sand. You can stop a wildfire, but unless you're a waterbender there's nothing you can do about a flood. The ocean never stops or gives up. You just can't stop water," she went on, and very slowly Katara nodded.
"What about Fire?" Sokka asked suspiciously.
Lien pursed her lips. "For me, Fire is the element of Change," she cupped her hands and a small flame erupted in between them. "It's constantly in motion its boundless energy and brilliance burns across the world without pause or regret," Sokka snorted. Lien ignored him, "Nonetheless, fire is more than mindless destruction-"
"Tell that to the Fire Nation," Sokka dismissed, and Lien resisted the urge to slap him.
Instead, she just kept talking. "Fire gives warmth to those in the cold, and light to those in the dark. It changes colorless sand into vibrant glass. Fire is hope and love. Haven't you ever felt the warm fuzzy feelings for someone? Even when it does cause harm, from its ashes and disaster comes about new life that had previously been choked. Where a tree burns down a wild flower takes root. Fire is the origin of all knowledge and all life, a gift from Prometheus out of love and charity, it is the ultimate protector. It gave rise to humans and the world that we know now-"
"Who the heck is 'Prometheus'?" Toph stopped her long winded rant and Lien came back to herself. Oh. Whoops, too much.
Lien scratched her cheek.
"In some legends, he was one of the primordial beings that crafted humanity. While Zeus, who was their king, was content to leave human kind out in the dark and cold, ignorant and frigid, Prometheus looked upon us with compassion. He stole fire from the sun itself and gave it us so that we might shed light and warmth on ourselves and learn about the world," she explained, "For his crimes he was chained to a stone, and now a vulture eats his liver out everyday," she added, as an afterthought, "Sometimes he's depicted as the father of all dragons," which was a bold faced lie.
"Huh," Toph said after a second, before she got tired of the philosophy talk and wandered away.
The rest looked, less convinced.
"Fire killed our mother," Katara said without warning.
Lien looked straight at her. "People burn. People drown. People suffocate. They get crushed by rocks. Legends even say the first murder weapon was a rock," Thank you Cain and Abel, "My father was killed by a spirit, from what I've heard. That doesn't mean that everyone associated with those elements, or the element itself is always associated with these incidents. It wasn't Fire that killed your mom. It was a human."
Awkward silence descended upon them.
Lien stood up. Brushed some grass off of her pants.
"Tell me when we're leaving." She walked away, taking a shaky breath. That was a little too intense for her. She didn't like it at all.
The sand dweller made her way through the bushes, stunned by the sheer amount of foliage that surrounded her. It was inordinate for her. Even before she was a child of the desert she was a girl born to glass and iron, stone. The closest thing she had ever seen to this massive forest was Central Park.
Lien ended up scrambling up a tree, hauling herself up into the the branches. She was so far out of her element, away from anyone and everyone she had ever known and surrounded by people who, however they hid it sometimes, were suspicious of her. She could see the contingencies welling up inside Sokka's eyes whenever she started the campfire. The girl drew her legs towards her, balancing carefully, and closed her eyes to the feelings. It hurt. More than she thought anything could. More than burning herself or getting slapped with a face full of sand, more than being bit by an Armadillo Wolf.
She missed Shuya.
Lien wanted her mother.
"I can't believe how many people's lives have been uprooted by the Fire Nation," Katara commended when they emerged from the tunnel, courtesy of a pair of earthbenders in uniform. The entrance to Full Moon Bay was crowded with people in green and beige. Even Lien had finally given up some of her tradition clothes. Instead of a multitude of tan clothes wrapped around her body she now sported a long tunic the color of dust, under which she had long sleeves and pants of a dark green that tucked into her usual wrappings around her hands and feet. The only difference there was the layers was fewer, and didn't bulk her hands like boxing gloves anymore. And, of course, the addition of thin green flats. A thick sash of the same color stretched from just under her hip bones to just under her chest.
Her bag she kept tied tight and against her back.
It was such a change from her usually tattered clothes. She felt like she was putting on airs, but Ying had insisted she take the clothes that were too small for her pregnants self.
'They're just old things,' she had insisted, 'I only have them for sentimental reasons. Come on, they'll look good on you!'
So she had accepted the change from her sand encrusted clothes and now fit in, if only a little bit more. Ying hadn't been wrong either. The contrast did look good on her, all things considered. Lien had yet to grow into the fine boned beauty of Shuya, nor did she have the commanding presence of her apparent father. She wasn't plain, by any means, or ugly. She was just on the awkward crust of attractive.
Not that it was easy to tell up until that point. Most of her life she had spent covering every inch of skin that was possible.
"We're all looking for a better life," Ying's husband said quietly, appearing behind the two girls. "Safe, behind the walls of Ba Sing Se."
Lien let out a breath. If only they knew the truth of the matter.
Gold eyes soaked in the world around her, looking, perhaps, for a red scar and an old man. She doubted she would see them, but still she looked. Zuko and Iroh were important, so very important, and even if she couldn't talk to them directly it would be nice to know that they were there.
At last she concluded that there was nothing there for her to look at, and wandered over to the line. While the Gaang talked behind her, making plans, Lien watched with great amusement as the poor Cabbage Man lost his vegetables. Again.
"Next!" The old woman shouted, and Lien walked up before the others to give up her passport. Earth Nation born and raised, there was no reason for her not to have one. She didn't travel outside of the desert much, but that didn't mean she didn't get one when she was younger. Lien wondered if perhaps her mother had known that she would leave one day, and had prepared accordingly.
She was given a stamped ticket and walked away, checking her belongings while the rest of the group tried to get their own. They were lucky that Toph's family was inexplicably wealthy.
They were almost to the boat and Lien had to wonder if perhaps something had changed. If there were no thieves in that den, and they would simply take the ferry all the way across rather than brave the Serpent's Pass.
Then, the scream shot through the air.