Tale Of Two Avatars

Bitter Work

We manage to find a rocky terrain to practice our earthbending, all of us deciding to settle down for the night before both Aang and I would be taught earthbending. I was sleeping like a log when Aang awoke me by constantly shaking me in excitement the next day, "Today's the day! Can you believe it? After all that time searching for a teacher, we're finally starting earthbending! And this place, it's perfect, don't you think?" I growled at him, shooting him a glare to make my displeasure known. "Oh, you were still sleeping, huh? Sorry," Aang slowly backs away from me in fear.

"Aang, you know well enough not to wake me up," I sighed, picking myself up from the ground and dispelling Aang's fears by offering him a smile. "Anyway, I am excited to finally get to earthbend."

The ground beneath us begins to rumble and both of us turn towards the source of the rumbling, looking at Toph's earth tent whose slabs of rocks were shot in every direction. Toph stands in the middle of where her tent once stood, putting her hands on her hip while looking at us. "Goooood morning, earthbending students!"

"Good morning, Sifu Toph," Aang greeted, bowing respectfully as she approached us.

"Wait, do we call her master or sifu?" I asked in confusion, deciding to emulate Aang's greeting, also bowing before her respectfully as Aang did. 'I guess I'll stick with sifu.' "Anyway, good morning, Sifu Toph."

"Hey, both of you never called me Sifu Katara," Katara complained, rising from her sleeping bag tiredly.

"Well, if you think we should..." Aang scratches the back of his head nervously.

"Well, we'd be more than happy to if you want us to call you that," I pitched in.

"No, I think I prefer Master Katara," Katara smiled.

Sokka suddenly sits up, grumbling at us in displeasure before lying back down. I see a mischievous smile forming on Toph's face. "Sorry, Snoozles, we'll do our earthbending as," she lowers her voice to a whisper sarcastically. "quietly as we can."

Toph slams her left heel into the ground, causing an earth pillar to form underneath Sokka and catapult him into the air. He eventually lands back down with a thud and he hops back up, going over to Aang first, then me and then Toph all while mumbling some incomprehensible gibberish before he goes onto Appa's saddle and lays down there instead.

Aang was already jumping up and down energetically, looking over at Toph in eager anticipation. "So what move are you going to teach us first? Rock-a-lanche? The Trembler? Oh, maybe I could learn to make a whirlpool out of land!"

"Let's start with..." Toph makes a gesture. "move a rock."

"Sounds good, sounds good!" Aang clapped excitedly. The two of us follow Toph into a wide and vast canyon, where she sets out a rock each in front of us while also earthbending a rock and placing it in front of herself.

"The key to earthbending is your stance," Toph demonstrates her stance and both Aang and I imitate it. "You've got to be steady and strong. Rock is a stubborn element. If you're going to move it, you've got to be like a rock yourself." She pushes both of us, making us lose our original stance.

"Like a rock. Got it," Aang nodded in understanding.

"Good. Now the actual motion of this one is pretty simple," Toph slams her hands against the rock, sending it colliding against the canyon wall. "Okay, both of you ready to give it a try?"

"I'm ready." I imitate Toph's earlier stance, forcing my hand against the rock like she did but instead of the rock moving, I feel my hand hurting from the impact. "Ow!"

Aang also fails on his first attempt, the impact of his hand against the rock sending him backwards into Appa.

Katara, who was standing at the side and spectating everything unfold approached Toph and looked at her puzzlingly. "I don't understand what went wrong. Both of them did it exactly the way you did."