As always, the objects in space were beautiful. As always, blind eyes squinted in burning concentration straining against the darkness inside and out. As always, sensitive ears pricked harder, canceling out Braum trees swaying, candorbirds fluttering, badger moles burrowing.
It was time to see more clearly.
Concentrate, concentrate, push through the tiniest shudders and start listening with the left foot, then the right, she recanted. And so she did. She willed. She willed ever-so-slightly, not enough to cause anything but the most incremental change in the movement of the dirt. The humming started, shaking the tiniest of pebbles on the ground, but more importantly creating just the right vibration in the air. Like the sound of some far off buzzardbee, there was something, something lurking just on the high side of this frequency-
And suddenly the whole world was a wash of the sensory electric, spiraling branches of mole tunnels and the grass of the plains. There were delicate strange buzzing bees just above the ground, the echoes reverberating on the dirt below. A wonder filled little girl held the world in her mind, through her feet, through her hands, and gasped. The world vanished, again becoming a more vague here-and-there acknowledgment of objects in space. What had been objects a few seconds ago were pale shadows, silhouettes.
It took so much effort to find just the right amount of Bending, but it was always worth it. Everything looked so vibrant for that instant, every time.
It dragged a lot out of Earthbending little girls, though. Toph sighed, admitting it was finally time for sleep. Yawning and listening -- not probing, listening -- to the campfire's dying and Sokka's snoring, Toph smiled in the dark of the stone lean-to. It was soon that she slipped into dreams of burrowing through mountainsides.
Next she knew, there was something strange in the air. The air had changed, in the way it always changes during the daylight hours. There was something more, though, some strange tang, some weird crackling noise coming through the gaps of the Earth Tent. Something bizarrely familiar for this early in the morning-
"Aang! Wake up! Appa's fur sloughed off during the night! He was sleeping too close to the campfire!" A Water Tribe tenor, a very male and very panicked voice.
"What?!" Came another voice, falsetto with fright. Aang's. "Where's my staff?! I need it!"
"It's just a little one right now! You go get your staff, I'll try to douse some of it!"
So Sokka was screaming his head off and running back and forth from Appa. There was nothing new about him being spastic, or at least not in Toph's experience. Really this was very consistent with Sokka. There was something definitely Sokka-like about the staccato footfalls back and forth, a very Sokka-like way of sloughing water from a bucket, a very iconic Sokka-like way of somehow fanning flames with water.
Really it was funny, but fires were a very dangerous thing.
Sighing inwardly, Toph dug her fingers into the dirt, and a wave of rising earth suddenly coiled out from the lean-to, growing closer and closer to the center of action. In what at one point had been a fatality move in the Earthbending Tournament, the dirt erupted in a great paft, shaking a good deal of the area Sokka had been in. The sudden end of the bubbling crackling noises informed Toph her aim had rung true.
"Toph, you could have killed me!"
"I didn't. Quit whining." It was appropriately curt, she knew.
Silence. Grumbling. Water splashing out of a bucket, probably washing off Sokka's face. Toph rolled over to go to sleep, and came quite close, until some all-too-familiar footsteps passed the stone leanto. The corresponding voice was nothing new, and typically Toph would have ignored it. Toph would have, but this voice was in new wrapping, and sounded like raw silk. Tiny ears perked up, and the related mind began to awake again.
"What was all the commotion about?"
Delicate. The Sugar Queen was delicate, but Toph never thought that was a good thing before--
"Appa's shedding nearly set the tents on fire, that's what happened."
"No, I meant the shaking, and then someone shrieking like a little girl." Angry.
"... Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing."
"Why are you covered in dirt?" Amused.
There was a silence here, one of those awkward silences that means someone knows something and the other person pretends they don't know that they know something. From weeks on the road with the others, Toph came to know this silence, like she had come to know the voices of her comrades. Sokka's voice being completely not present was an indicator of an aforementioned Meaningful Silence.
"It was you screaming, wasn't it?"
"Aw, shaddup!"
Ah, domestic bliss.
Realizing it was really time to get up, Toph broke her stone lean-to and assimilated it with the ground, and started walking in the same direction as the rest of the group. There was a punchline just waiting, oh she knew it. If she timed it just right, it'd be perfect. She got just within range -
"Ah, you missed a spot." A pointing at Sokka made it even better.
Silence, Katara giggling.
Now it was perfect.
The next few hours, indeed the whole daytime, were and was uneventful. Azula and her two goons hadn't attacked this week, which was good. Apparently the group was going on some sort of "vacation", whatever that meant. Most of the day was spent talking about where they could go to.
More specifically, most of the day was spent pointing to a map that certain people on the bison couldn't see, let alone read. Toph couldn't care that much about the map, the others did this all the time. They were excited, wanting to go out and see the world. Where could she ask to go? She'd heard of places, but only third-hand. Mostly it was the slight mentioning of teachers or the tournament jockeys or her newfound friends, and even then there wasn't much to go on. No ground to hit running.
Where would she ask to go?
Again, Toph fiddled with a pebble, and went to sleep. This one was about burrowing through mountainsides. There was a rushing noise, and something familiar. Dirt, and comfort. Toph smiled.
Toph woke up with her nose and her face first. There was the wind, which smelled of sunflowers and earliest summer and some perfume Katara had bought, and Sokka's jerky. The sun was warm, buttery warm, with a nice breeze. Next came the sensations from the rest of her body. Sokka's jerky hadn't been too shabby this week, so her stomach was sated. It was a mostly good day, but then she realized she was still on Appa.
This would not be a problem were it not for shedding. The longer hairs just rolled off of clothes and bodies, but the chaff and dander was murderously itchy. To make matters worse, the damnable itch had settled into the creases of Toph's skin. Her skin, of course, including her ultra-sensitive feet.
Needless to say, Toph was in a cranky mood by the time Appa touched down for the night. Curt and cranky, she went through the motions of helping unpack. There wasn't much out of the ordinary in the camp site; the scrub had died in a roughly circular area, the loam was fairly black and porous, and there was a stream nearby. She could tell that much on first landing.
If there hadn't been a stream to get the damn scratchy fur off, she would have let her anger out. A few weeks ago she would have anyway, but Toph was changing, little by little. The others had noticed too, over the past few weeks. Toph only pretended to not notice Sokka's grudging compliments and Aang's motivational uptalk. Her itchy discomfort, she realized, came second to helping out The Group. She might be a little grumpy, but a few itchies weren't worth blowing up about.
If there weren't a stream, though, she might entertain Thoughts.
The camp was set up, and down the ravine Toph went. Using a slab to Bend on, the trip was barely a trip at all. A scenic hike would have been nice on a day like this, but for one Toph couldn't appreciate "scenery" if it didn't involve rock formations. Secondly, the itching had gotten worse since her efforts pitching the tents and collecting loose wood.
Reaching the destination and resting the slab on grass, Toph heard the water. It was impressive, all right. The Sugar Queen would like this, oh yes. Probably start showing off that damn Water Whip again. Katara was off somewhere, probably into the woods to get more water and tinder wood for the fire. Toph mused that the Sugar Queen might be maternal, but sometimes that was a good thing. If nothing else, she didn't have to do all of the work.
The stream was that – a very boring, normal stream. Lots of rocks, rich in mineral deposits underneath, maybe a geode or two based on that weird outcropping below, but not much different from any other stream. Nondescript, running water, summer-bath temperatures. Toph breathed in deep. The loam was rich and soft near here, and a few species of flowers were in bloom, and the fragrance was everywhere. Today was a good day, other than the itching.
If nothing else, the stream was small enough that she could wash off most of Appa's fur without falling in, drowning, or both.
Toph took her clothes off, noting they needed to be washed too. Her undergarments weren't due to be washed for another four days, but the damn bison fur had gone everywhere. Leaving the clothes hanging on the tree for now, Toph began to wade out, nude to the world and not really caring. She hummed, listening, concentrating on the next step in the shallow stream. The water wasn't so bad if she just focused on the river bed. At least she didn't have to swim.
So she stretched out her muscles, splashing water over a flat chest and degreasing some of her hair. Playing with the river rocks, causing a splash here or a splash there. Listening to the birds off in the distance. How long ago had it been since she'd been nude? A week? Two? She was definitely going to take her time, that much she knew. The servants would always officiate Proper Bathing Procedure at the mansion, and so she had skinnidipped during her outings into the city proper. Her old moonlighting wasn't nearly as peaceful as this, though.
Breaking city pipes for a decent shower rarely can be described as "peaceful". And so she played.
She was like this for some time, she knew. The angle of the sun was lowering toward the horizon, and the goosepimples she had initially had turned to gooseflesh. Playing around with some river rocks, learning how to counteract the water by turning a rock into a giant wedge. It was harder than being on dry land, but not impossible.
It was getting late, and as fun as it was irking the local wildlife with throwing large river stones, it was time to wash her clothes and head back to camp.
And then Toph realized something about the water.
Namely she could see it.
It wasn't anything remarkable. It was just a flicker, really. There had been weird echo effects like this before; water of course would jostle around the rocks below and garble the acoustics that she often relied on. Everything would be skewed, and typically it would just give Toph a headache. But this ... this was different.
The water came up to her waist, maybe a bit above. If she Bent with her right, her normal information would come back. Rock this way, rock that way, a few mockingdeer a few hundred yards away, it was all normal.
If Toph concentrated, though, the water would ... the water would ...
It was like putting her head on the pavement in a busy intersection; enough of the steps overlapped that she could tell precisely where everything was, where everyone was headed. But it was completely unlike that.
When she Saw, she could only see maybe a few inches off the ground. Maybe she could see the toes of someone else, and she couldn't really figure out the shapes of the nails. If she really poured some concentration into it, a huge section of the river suddenly came alive. She could see trees far off, and a huge section of the grass – well, she thought that's what they were, based on what she thought was there perfunctorily. Her feet told her they were trees. Her ears didn't know what the hell they were.
The shapes were all new, and all of them were alien. All of them were beautiful, objects in space.
"Toph?"
Toph's attention swiveled, and her jaw dropped.
It wasn't like seeing competitors in the Earthbending Tournament. It wasn't like anything she'd seen before.
Toph stood there, dumbstruck, dimly aware that the amplitude of the water had increased, and a few pebbles were shaking on the far side of the stream. Dimly aware, because the ... thing in front of her was glowing, electric blue like the dirt so many times before. But ... it was ...
She could see someone.
There was a heartbeat, and a stance and breathing pattern that she knew was familiar. But there was ... something.
"Toph, what's wrong?" The voice was unmistakable.
Katara. She was seeing Katara.
All of the shapes moved along in tandem with the words. They meant something.
"... Katara?"
"Toph, you ... are you okay?" The shapes moved again, staying in a position. Her voice sounded concerned. The lines didn't make any sense to Toph. Nothing really did.
All she knew was that she wanted to keep looking.
"Katara, is ... is that you?" Toph pointed, realizing she was triangulating a ... was that her hand?"Yeah, what do you mean--" and all the shapes froze. Two ovals of light disappeared and reappeared rapidly. Was ... was that a blink?
"Toph, you can see me?"
It had been hours since Toph babbled out some inane response. Katara had bubbled over with joy, asking questions, and of course Toph had to reply curtly in turn. It was so frustrating! It had been there for an eternity in the water with little effort, but as soon as she stepped out, all of the physical transmission properties changed. She could barely see above the ground with the stiffest concentration.
What was that in front of her? Was that really what other people sensed through their eyes? Was the world that crystalline to others, the tiniest features of the body in strange relief?
Did everyone really look like that?
Katara more or less dragged Toph back to camp; the night had grown long. Katara's fingers wrapped around Toph's, not leading as much as confirming. Katara was happy, and didn't seem to notice the mounting worry that Toph had. Would she be able to do it again? For that matter, did it change anything? Katara's perfume and hands brought her forward, toward the higher land of the camp site.
Everything seemed different, searching for more than the here-and-there. Without really concentrating, there just wasn't anything. Aang and Sokka were already sitting around the campfire. Sokka was chewing more of his jerky; the tang was hanging in the air. Aang was munching on some round vegetables that he had bought in bulk a few towns ago; mostly he did it to prove that, yes, he could possibly use that much food in a week. Toph could make out general points of reference, but no more.
The dinner passed, with meat and vegetables and nuts and water, as always. Sokka excused himself, then broke off from the fire. Aang made a few remarks about looking forward to more Bending practice with Toph, who said something cryptic that would probably haunt Aang tomorrow morning.
It was a normal night, other than Katara lingering with Toph. The fire had died; the noises had stopped and so did the heat. The moon was probably up; Katara didn't seem to mind the new darkness. Toph never did.
Katara hadn't said anything about the incident at the stream, only that she had found Toph bathing and helped her get back in time for dinner. There was no explanation for Toph not using a slab to get them both back; there simply was none necessary for Katara.
Katara patted a shoulder, which was more than enough to tell Toph what she thought.
Who needed talking when silences meant so much more?
There are silences between friends, and then there are the necessary noises. The next few weeks were full of them, all emanating from the Earth Tent of many a campsite. Most were faint to the point of nonexistence; very few of them were loud enough to wake Aang, who was sometimes a light sleeper. It didn't take much when one knew the soil and the subject.
Toph could See like that first day but she didn't say anything. She never did. Not even Katara knew that she had succeeded; Toph supposed she was trying but it wasn't panning out.
This was a delight; Earth Kingdom territory was resonant. The dirt was stable, clear, and unflinching -- the little worms provided the proper structure for just the right properties of transmission. Sokka and Aang had been interesting at first, especially certain bits, but boredom quickly set in.
It wasn't the same with Katara. Every night now Toph started after The Girl fell asleep. On some warmer nights she didn't sleep in her mattress-cocoon, and so the water bender would press body against ground. The little sleepy breathings would come clear through the dirt. The slightest movement would register, if the Bender payed enough attention. If she did just the right Bending, ever-so-careful and cautious, she could see a wry smile splayed on Katara's face. Toph could feel, see, experience the girl. She just couldn't do it first-hand.
Toph found it relaxing, listening to Katara night after night, ears pricked to hear the slightest sound and her feet burrowed underground to Bend for greater clarity. There were some nights that she wanted to See and touch, but knew she couldn't without good reason. Katara might be understanding, but she wouldn't let Toph cling to her or explore her, probably ever. Toph wanted to, though; being "hands-on" was her style. Social mores be damned, it'd be easier to figure out what things were if she could touch them.
So Toph had to settle. During the day, Katara's hands passing against hers was enough. Her perfume when standing close was enough. Her laugh, when Toph poked fun at Sokka, was enough.Why, then, did she think enough wasn't quite enough? Why did she want more? The questions worried her.
On many nights, Toph went to sleep after exhausting herself Seeing. It was enough, at least for the night.
She fell to sleep every night, dreaming of tunneling through mountainsides and seeing rivers.
That, for now, was enough.