storypaint: (Default)
storypaint ([personal profile] storypaint) wrote2011-03-28 09:44 pm

[Avatar] aerodynamics (Kyoshi gen)

Title: aerodynamics
Fandom: Avatar
Length: 414 words
Prompt: Given a character, I will write something about them set in precanon: Kyoshi
Pairing: Kyoshi gen
Other: n/a

Excerpt: Kyoshi was scared of flying.

Kyoshi was scared of flying.

She couldn't tell anyone at the Temple, though. She'd come to learn airbending last, with her previous deeds spread out before her, a legend at age 21. She was a master earthbender with a particular talent for rockslides; a firebender and waterbender of some strength. And now she would be an airbender. In theory. In practice, she tried not to look off the edges of the cliffside path, hoping her feet would stay planted. She found herself bending up the edges of the path a little, just in case someone tripped.

She'd never admitted it to anyone, avoiding the subject whenever possible. She hoped her makeup was hiding her trepidation, but she knew she'd be stripping it from her face tomorrow when she got up to begin her training. Bare-faced, she'd be standing next to the rest of the novices. She'd be treated just like one of them, but that was no consolation: they'd know she was the Avatar. They'd watch the Avatar try and fail to bend the winds -- they'd watch her glide and fall.

She was polite to the woman who showed her to the dormitory, quiet but firm like always, and when she told the other girls that she wanted to sleep early, instead of going to dinner, no one protested. Instead, when she was alone, she sat down on her new bed and began to breathe deeply, in and out, meditating.

There were airbending Avatars -- one of every four, of course. She saw Yangchen's face clearly in her mind. The other Avatar looked serene.

"We're all frightened the first time," she said to Kyoshi. "To trust yourself to the sky instead of the earth you know? It's a hard thing, especially for one who was an earthbender first. But we have done it before you. You can do it now, Kyoshi."

Kyoshi glimpsed, then, a young girl with a glider climbing into the sky, laughing, just at home there as Kyoshi herself was among rock. The wind was not dropping her -- it was guiding, gently, among her skin, a flowing presence, like water in her hands.

She hardly noticed when the other girls returned, sliding easier from meditation into sleep, but when she got up the next morning, she didn't feel like running anymore.

Yangchen was right. She could do this. She was them and they were her. This was just remembering something she'd done hundreds of times.

The breezes greeted her like an old friend, and Kyoshi leaped.

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