My entire life, water was a soul construct. It was nearly all I knew. I'd grown up with a mother who was a waterbender, a stepfather who was one, along with siblings who were too. The family line was flooded with water in all their veins. All except mine.
My dad was quick with flame, he was brought up with heated roots, the line becoming stronger with each generation. His joy surpassed my mother's disappointment when they had to scrap all of the wood furnishings by the time I was 2. Fire was my element, what I could do.
By the time I'd reached seven, though, I had little training. My father's siblings had grown up with a sharp, firebending mother, and a peaceful earthbending father. Whilst my father was taking school in a fire-training facility in Republic City, my aunts and uncle had moved their training from boulders and grass to scalding lava in volcanic getaways. The children of both my aunts' are showing strong earthbending skills in their genes.
Meanwhile, my mother and her sister were training in the chill of the sister water tribes. My mother, as I've been told, was always a diligent trainer. Her father was a shipment supervisor in the watertribe fishing industry. My grandma, however, couldn't bend. She eventually moved to the North pole after my grandfather died and my mother stayed in the Southern tribe. My aunt had a child with an earthbender, my eldest cousin (who just finished schooling and now works as a police officer in Ba-Sing-Sei), and one with a firebender, who was the father of my younger cousin. The younger is nearly 13, and is already showing prominent signs of a skilled waterbender.
My stepfather and his family are all waterbenders, though his grandfather was an earthbender in the army a long time ago, when the fire nation was still raising to power. Sometimes, I can't help but feel a sting of pride when I hear recounts of the fire nation's strength, but I also can't help the disappointment I feel either.
My entire life, I'd been immersed in the ways of the water tribe. After my father disappeared, my family stayed in the Southern water tribe, even though I keep begging her to leave. Anywhere was better than the South. The chill froze my bones, and any chance of a flame I had was squelched under snowy banks. My mother refused me to fire bend. Day in and day out I was being forced into the motions of fluidity. When I was younger my father would come and take me away for a few days to the fire nation, but I have little memory of actually fire bending. I have the vaguest memory, however, of my father and his friends and the power they possessed. Every so often, a memory comes back of my father. A move, a look, a smell. When that happens, I feel a flicker of something deep in the hollow of my chest. It burns, and I try and harness it as best as I can. Sometimes, it scalds and I get so hot I start sweating. There are times it makes me so so angry and I can feel my whole body go ablaze. I'm that moment, I try to bend. I try and release all the heat from my heart into my fingers. I try and it never works.
For a long time I questioned whether or not I could even bend. The heat I wanted to feel wasn't there. I thought I'd lost the one thing I was certain about. I didn't, of course, but the fear is still nestled deep in my ribs, blowing gently on the embers in my heart.
YOU ARE READING
Break up with your girlfriends, I'm bored
AcakI suck at developing plot lines so here's a bunch of crap that I'll never finish :)
