"We're here! We're here! Wake up, Twinkletoes!" Aang was woken up from his sleep by Toph yelling. The two of them were still touching, and her shouting was punctuated by her rocking back and forth. The two of them were still up in the air, and he didn't have to look down to know that there was nothing of note to look at. Instead, he sat up a bit and turned to look at her. Her eyes, unfocused but facing up, were crinkled around the edges with excitement.
"Where are we and how would you know?" Aang asked, laughing a little bit too. "I'm not going to forget you're blind this time, and there's no way your sand map will tell you where you are without you touching the ground."
"Well, you said we were going West because I told you to go West, and now we're probably . . . West!" Toph erupted into a fit of giggles, clutching her sides and rolling around. "And I have no idea, but I wanted you awake. I'm bored!"She cocked a small sweet smile, then went back to laughing weakly.
` Aang just rolled his eyes, knowing Toph could sense it. "Are you going to tell me where we're supposed to be going?"
"No." Toph immediately answered, relaxed.
"Is there anything I can do to get you to tell me anything about what we're doing here?"
Toph thought about it for a few seconds, tapping her chin with her finger. " . . . no."
Aang stayed where he was for a second, half tilted above her body. He was still looking at her, then realized it had been too long, so he blew air at her face. She blinked, then stuck her tongue out. "You jerk!" The two of them laughed a little bit, just like the old days, but then Aang got quiet, his blood quickly turning hot. It shouldn't have been that easy to fall back into old patterns with her. He leaned to the other side, pretending to have gone just to look off of Appa.
"Hey, Toph! There's a giant whale-deer doing flips!"
Toph went over to the side, pretending to look out. "Oh wow, it's so beautiful."
"No, it's not. It doesn't exist. I made it up so you'd tell me what was going on." He turned to look at Toph again, this time the two of them kneeling on the side of Appa's saddle instead of lying down next to each other. This was much more comfortable for him. He could look at the endless expanse of water instead of at Toph's face. "What do I have to tell you so that you'll let us go down?"
Toph didn't look at him this time, and he was glad for that. She just sighed and faced off the side, the rising sun. "I'll let you know my plans if you tell me a really funny joke. Like a super funny one."
"A joke?" Aang scratched the back of his head in confusion.
"Yeah, like a really funny one. Or else I tell you nothing. By the way, did you pack anything to eat? I'm starving." Toph held out her hand, to which Aang reluctantly put a small apple in. "Any real food?"
"Alright, I have some boarcupine steaks in my bag."
"Really?" Toph asked in a small voice. Last she knew, he was a vegetarian. It was unlikely he would have grown to eat meat, but it had been a while. He could have changed in that time, and she never would have known.
"Nope! Joke! Can you tell me where we're going now?" Aang chuckled a bit, not expecting her to react. He was right, too. There was nothing but silence and the ocean, and when he turned to look, Toph was gone. He looked around harder and saw that she had gone back to lying on Appa's saddle, just facing the brightening sky. Aang turned back around, watching the ocean go by.
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The two of them lazed around with the slowly rising sun, feeling the heat warm them up. They hadn't talked in about half an hour, but it was gentle. Aang kept staring at the sky hoping she would talk first, but content with the silence. Content, until he finally found something to say.
"Hey, I got a joke. How about . . . isn't it crazy how waterbenders will literally bend water, but hate being in the rain?"
Toph didn't even stir. "You're a waterbender, and you like rain?"
Aang blinked, then tilted his head. "Well yeah, but good rain usually comes with good flying weather, and it's a joke, it's not super serious. And I'm mostly an Airbender, I feel."
"Hey, if it was a joke, why's no one laughing?" she grumbled, then turned away from him. He turned away too, looking back at the sky and waiting for the next bolt of inspiration to strike.
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"What did the earthbender say when she lost her shoes?" Toph perked up a little bit. Aang knew she would try, finally a joke about her. That's why he chose it. She sat up a little, and scooted over to the side of the saddle. Raising one eyebrow, she spoke, a small grin having appeared on the corner of her mouth.
"I don't wear shoes, moron."
Aang rolled his own eyes. "Toph, it's going to be funny. I'm sure you own shoes though, do your parents not get them for you? And force you to wear them for dinners?"
Toph's smile froze in place a little, looking just slightly less authentic. Nothing she would have noticed, but Aang could recognize it. The muscles in her face were tense instead of moving naturally, and her eyes weren't happy anymore. She spoke anyway. "What did she say?"
"Omashu! Get it? Like, oh my shoe!" Aang watched Toph slowly slouch down against the saddle, looking dejected. "Hey, it wasn't that bad. This joke killed a hundred years ago! Bumi laughed so hard he knocked himself out on the ceiling."
Toph just closed her eyes and pretended to sleep until Aang could think of something else. He sat down on the other side, staring at the ground.
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Aang finally perked up after the better part of an hour. "What does the cabbage merchant use to fix his cabbages?"
"A cabbage patch. I was there, remember?" Toph answered lazily, her eyes still closed. "I am super bored though, and you're not funny in a words sense there."
Aang just looked down to stare at the sea. The green sea. Filled with mountains and trees. And buildings "Hey, Toph! We hit land! Are we good to set down now? Appa, let's go down."
Toph jolted awake. "Thank the stars, this was the worst! Let's hit the ground so I can see again!" She either didn't care that Aang had already told Appa to go down or just wasn't listening. Upon hearing the work ground though, her hands relaxed, and Aang could see how tense they'd been in the first place. Fortunately, the rest of the descent to the ground was quick. They landed on top of a mountain, somewhere on the edge of the Earth Kingdom, as far as Aang could tell.
"Are you going to let me know where we're going now? Or at least how long it'll take?" Aang asked, feeling cramped with his feet on the ground. Toph was much happier on the ground though, weight seeming to have lifted off of her shoulders. She flashed Aang a smile as they walked down a cliff.
"Nope!" But she seemed really happy, so Aang was okay this time.
The walk through the mountain range was a lot more fun than the flight. Toph started to play fun games with Aang. Not games Aang knew, but games that he intuitively learned the rules to. At first, the two of them started off with a nice game of "How quickly can I turn the rock underneath Aang's next step into quicksand, and will he not notice?" This game was one of Aang's favourites, because he knew he could always keep his feet on fire to glass the sand, but that would be cheating. Instead, he could only do so if he sensed that there was quicksand underneath. The best part about this game is that there was no talking about any of these rules.
"Hey, Toph, how's . . . life?" Aang wanted to talk to her, but after all this time, he had no idea what to say. Hey, why are you still at your family's house? Why aren't you doing something more with your life? Is it because I left?
"It just is most of the time," she said, stomping with her foot harder than normal. That's a fire, he thought, and then kicked his own foot down harder to make a little bust of fire, then stepped down onto some rough glass. "I started teaching a little bit, just to reduce the boredom. I like the feeling of helping, but all of my students are a bunch of wimps. I don't think I've had a student so far who's been able to impress me."
"You mean since me, right? Cause you taught me pretty much everything I know." Aang saw her try to step forwards with force again, but that was definitely a fake. He just stepped down like normal, onto stone. The scenery was changing, and the slope was getting a little steeper. Trees and bushes faded away, leaving bare rocks with some creeper vines.
Toph chuckled. "You didn't learn anything after the war? That's embarrassing. Literally, for the first couple years after we were dumb, I would invite all the top earthbenders to fight me, so I would beat them up and steal their skills." She punctuated her sentence with a hard stomp, and Aang could feel tremors under the ground. Clearly a double-fake, where she wanted it to appear like she was faking a sand-turning by being ostentatious, but actually totally did it. He shrouded his foot in fire and took a step. Instead of glass, there was a cracking noise and his foot slammed straight through for about a foot, before Toph stomped again and pushed his foot out.
Turns out Toph had added in hollows to the quicksand game.
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The walking continued for hours, and new games started themselves. Before the end, the two of them had settled into a nice talking rhythm while dodging rocks, quicksand, and pits (Aang), or vines and tiny splashes of water (Toph).
"Are we there yet?" Aang asked, as annoyingly as possible.
"Yeah, of course, can't you see? We're right here." She gestured to the ground.
"Oh, I can see. I can see a mountain right in front of me. You can't see it, but it's actually super boring rock." Aang was pretty sure that they had gotten back to the point where he could say the blind jokes. She laughed a bit, so he was almost sure he was right.
"Use your feet, idiot. Or, you know what? Let me help you." She stomped her feet multiple times and threw out a few quick punches, chipping off bits of rock from the mountain, revealing . . . a temple? A rather familiar looking temple.
"What is this? Where did you drag me to?" Aang's chest was frozen, his blood running just slightly too warm. "A temple on the top of a mountain, but in the middle of the world?"
"So you haven't been learning anything since the war, have you, Twinkletoes? I heard about this from a couple traveling earthbenders, I thought you would've heard at least something traveling all over the world. This is the Central Air temple."