By: Sugeatarc
Disclaimer: I still don't own Avatar. I'll let you know if that changes.
Genre: A little romance, a little humor, a little action
Characters/Pairing: Toph/Teo; lots of other familiar faces popping up
Rating: G
Special Note: After I named this story, a native speaker of Chinese told me that the more correct phrase for what I was after was something like "Tian Mi Shi Liu". I'm trying to track down and wipe out the old phrase; please excuse any I missed.
Summary: Toph allowed herself to be shepherded toward the whatever-it-was. Definitely some kind of glider. That made her nervous. Teo led her over to it and nudged her to take a seat, which made her more nervous yet. “Uh, flyboy, you know how I feel about getting my feet off the ground….”Chapter Two: Up, Up, and Away
Up ahead, Toph sensed the earth rumbling. She braked the earth sled, recognizing the feel of a tunneling badger mole. But there were overtones to it she wasn’t familiar with. “Okay, what’s going on up there?”
Teo turned to look, just as a sinuous golden shape shot out from the cave mouth and began to circle in the air above them, making happy-sounding little snorts and chirps. Shai had gotten bigger since the last time Teo had seen her, although she still had a long way to go before she would reach the size of her parents. Her bright scales were tipped with tracings of blue, red, and in some places the colors mingled to lavender. The young dragon was a glorious sight, really; Teo wished Toph could see her.
Three full-grown badger moles erupted from the ground around the group and looked at the humans curiously. “Um, Toph – is this going to be a problem?” Zuko definitely sounded nervous.
“Nope. They’re not mad. They’re waiting for something. Not sure what, though.”
Shai stopped circling, shot off a short distance, and landed lightly in front of one of the many cave mouths. The three badger moles disappeared back into the dirt. A moment later one stuck its head out of a cave mouth. Shai pounced and missed. A second mole popped up in a different cave; Shai pounced again and missed again. The third time she feinted toward a cave at her left, and when the mole popped up in the middle cave she jumped, and patted it lightly. The mole gave a squeak and showered the dragon with dirt. Shai took flight again to avoid getting any more on her, and came back to circle above the group.
“She looks pretty smug,” Sokka said.
“I think she won the game, whatever it was,” Teo said. “Pat-a-badger-mole or something?”
“As long as she didn’t try to roast and eat them, I’m satisfied,” Zuko said. He flicked a small puff of flame from his fingers; Shai followed it down, settled to all fours, and rested her head on the ground. She batted her eyes coyly at the young Fire Lord. Sokka snickered and muttered something about “Mai” and “jealous”, which earned him a dirty look from Zuko. Sokka, still snickering, ignored it and made a beeline for the cave Shai had been waiting in. There was a clattering sound and a muffled oath from inside, then Sokka emerged carrying a strange contraption made of metal poles and canvas.
Teo perked up instantly. “Hey, whose glider is that? Mine’s back at the Bei Fong mansion. I don’t recognize the design.”
“This is a sort of Tian Mi gift from me and your Dad to Toph. And to you, sort of, even though you hit sixteen a while ago.” Sokka tripped on a piece of trailing canvas and nearly toppled. He swore again. “Come over here and help me get it set up already before I impale myself on one of these poles!”
Teo moved to his side, and between the two of them they began fitting the frame together and stringing canvas. Toph got only the faintest impression of what exactly they were building. “Sparky – do I want to know what’s going on over there?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he replied. She thought about smacking him for that, but decided not to. Shai might take offense.
Toph noticed Zuko was petting the dragon’s head, which Toph expected – but he was doing it with a rock. The stranger thing was that Shai appeared to be enjoying it. “Do you always pet your animals with rocks, Zuko?” It seemed more like an Azula-style activity, even though Shai was practically purring at the attention.
Zuko grumped at her under his breath, knowing full well she could hear every word. “It’s lava-foam, as you’d have noticed if you’d bothered to check. Shai’s going through a molt, and the dead scales peeling off itch. This helps. It’s certainly better than having her try to scratch herself using the sides of buildings in the Capital – most of them aren’t sturdy enough to stand up to her weight.”
“You’re becoming quite an expert on dragon care, Sparky.”
“I don’t have much choice. The Sun Warriors were specific when they paired us up – ‘learn from each other.’ Which means I get almost no help from them, just wide evil grins from the Chieftain when I ask how to deal with Shai’s problems. Which means Uncle and I are reinventing the skill of dragon-raising and dragon-riding from scratch, pretty much.”
”You can stop pretending it’s a chore you hate, you know. You’re not fooling me. You love every minute of it.”
Zuko laughed suddenly, and Shai chirruped back, bumping him hard with her head. “Okay, Thumper, I’ll stop griping. You could help me with this though, you know. Shai would appreciate it.”
“Hm, yeah, I guess I could.” She rooted herself and raised a cloud of grit and small stones from the ground. Zuko backed away hurriedly as the sand-cloud surrounded Shai, who gave a surprised squeak and looked worried for a moment. Then Toph began moving her hands in a swirling motion, and the sand cloud coated Shai’s scales evenly (avoiding her still-fragile wing membranes) and began to scrub. Shai crooned loudly and rolled over onto her back, exposing paler creamy belly-scales etched with silver so Toph could get at those too.
Toph heard Sokka making exaggerated coughing noises from behind the Shai’s wriggling bulk, and dropped the sand bath. Shai looked at her reproachfully. “We’re all set over here!” said Teo. He sounded almost as happy as Shai had been a few moments ago. Toph heard the sound of wheels and the creak of canvas, but the whatever-it-was didn’t have enough weight to it for her to get a good sense of its shape or purpose. Teo walked carefully over to her and wrapped a warm hand around her elbow. “If you would come this way, my lady?”
She gave him a light arm-punch for the unwanted formality, but allowed herself to be shepherded toward the whatever-it-was. Definitely some kind of glider. That made her nervous. Teo led her over to it and nudged her to take a seat, which made her more nervous yet. “Uh, flyboy, you know how I feel about getting my feet off the ground….”
“I think it’s time you got over that. I’m tired of flying alone.” As he spoke he was busy pulling straps around her and tying her in. She considered smacking all of them with earth spikes and making a run for it, but this experiment or whatever it was clearly meant a lot to Teo. So she gritted her teeth and put up with it. Teo tugged one last buckle into place, then bent forward to kiss her. She considered punishing him by turning her head away, but quickly discarded the idea. There was only so far she would go in a fit of pique, and doing without Teo’s kisses was well past the line.
In a moment more Teo seated himself beside her and began his own strapping-in process. “Wait a sec,” Toph protested. “What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like? Strapping in! This thing's a two-seater!”
“Wait, WHAT? You can’t get two people off the ground in a glider!”
“Hah!” Sokka snorted. “Just watch us. Er, I mean, you’ll see. No wait, I mean – argh, you know what I mean!”
She did, of course. Years had gone by and Sokka still managed, with great regularity, to forget she was blind. It was rather endearing, really.
“Okay, so now that we’re strapped in, what happens? It’s not like we can launch from here. Not enough altitude.” Toph avoided gliders like she avoided shoes, but you couldn’t possibly hang out with Teo for more than a few days without learning more than you wanted to about the irritating contraptions.
“We’re trying out a new type of launch.” The sly tone in Teo’s voice set off all sorts of warning bells in Toph’s mind, but she didn’t have time to do anything about it.
She sensed Zuko swinging aboard Shai’s neck, at the junction of the young dragon’s long skinny neck and her broad shoulders. A moment later she heard Sokka’s running feet, and the Water Tribe warrior leaped up and landed neatly behind Zuko. “Get this oversize, spoiled catlizard in the air, Jerk Lord!” he commanded, and Toph’s stomach dropped out the bottom of her shoes as Shai leaped into the sky, and the two-seat glider went with her.
“TEO, YOU MANIAC!!!” she howled over the rushing wind. “YOU TIED THIS THING TO A DRAGON!! I WANT DOWN NOWWWWWWW!!”
“IT’S NOT TIED TO HER!” he howled back. “SHE’S JUST HOLDING ON TO IT! SHE COULD DROP US AT ANY SECOND! I THINK YOU’D BETTER HANG ONTO ME FOR SAFETY!”
Toph wailed wordlessly in a combination of rage, panic, and exhilaration, and grabbed onto Teo for dear life. Which he clearly enjoyed, the sneaky ratsnake. Up above, the pounding beat of Shai’s wings steadied as she reached whatever height she was aiming for – Toph really didn’t want to know how high – and things quieted down some, though air still rushed by at an alarming rate.
She became aware she was holding Teo’s arms in a death grip, her head buried against his shoulder. In the name of all the itty-bitty earth spirits and their giant cousins, she hated flying! As the three young men had all known very well. But Teo was warm against her, and his arms, always very strong from his years of pushing his chair, were wrapped tight around her, and after a little while of steady smooth flight, she realized that there was the tiniest little chance that she might actually be enjoying this.
“Hey flyboy…”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Knock that off, I can’t punch you when I’m hanging on for dear life. We’re underneath Shai, right?”
“Yep. Don’t worry, Zuko and Sokka tested this and she’s got more than enough strength and endurance to handle the glider with two aboard.”
“Teo, you can’t really call it a glider when it’s dragon-powered, you know!”
“…Huh. Ok, you have a point there. But it’s a sound design. If Shai did have to drop us – which she won’t! – the chair would be able to glide down to the ground safely. So there’s nothing to worry about, okay?”
“I’m not worried,” she lied, but it was only a small lie. “I was just wondering --- how long is this flight going to be, do you think? Are we just going up and circling around so you can scare me to death and get me to grab onto you?”
“Well, the grabbing on part is very important, of course. But no, we have a destination. Sokka said Zuko thinks it’ll take maybe an hour or so to get there. Sokka didn’t say where ‘there’ is, but he was grinning pretty evilly about it. Think you can survive an hour? We can land for a break if you need it.”
“Don’t say ‘land’ and ‘break’ in the same sentence, please. No, I think I can handle an hour….but only, of course, if you hold me very tightly.”
“Oh. I think I can manage that.”
“Sparky and Snoozles can’t see us down here, right?”
She felt him craning his neck upward. “Pretty sure not. I can’t see them. There’s a lot of dragon in the way.”
“Good.” She pulled her legs up onto the seat so they didn’t dangle so loosely into the open air and tucked herself into a ball at Teo’s side. She would never be very tall, it seemed, but at times like this she counted that a blessing and not a curse.
“Yes, good thought. I have some privacy to court you properly, now that your Tian Mi Shi Liu is here.”
“Court me ‘properly’? Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, I plan to. In proper style as befits a lady of your status. I don’t know where I’m going to get a snow-white ostrich horse, but I’ll manage somehow. Going to need to hit up someone for a loan to get my courting suit made, but fortunately I’m pals with the Fire Lord, and he’s loaded –“
“If you don’t want to get pushed out of this thing, you’ll shut up right now. I’d die of embarrassment if you did any of that ‘proper courting’ stuff, and you know it!”
“Come to think of it, I do. Guess I’ll have to court you in my own way.”
Despite the height and the wind and the lack of solid ground beneath her feet, the hour passed very quickly.
She and Teo came up for air when they felt the beat of Shai’s wings begin to slow, and the glider swayed as the dragon began to move lower. Toph, of course, couldn’t have seen their destination even if it hadn’t been deep night, but Teo saw what looked like a mountain covered in tiny lights.
“HEY!” he shouted, waving at the two people up in the first-class seats on Shai’s back.
“HEY WHAT?” Sokka’s yell came back.
“WHERE ARE WE?”
“YOU DON’T KNOW? WELL, WELCOME TO THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF OMASHU, WITH ITS ADVANCED MAIL SYSTEM AND COMPLETELY INSANE KING!”
“We’re going to see Bumi?!” Toph perked up. She enjoyed the old earthbender’s bizarre sense of humor.
“Bumi – the really old strange-looking Earth guy who visits Zuko’s Uncle a couple times every year?”
“Yup, that’s him. He’s a king of sorts – runs a big city on a mountain. Which, come to think of it, I’ve never visited!”
“I guess that explains this trip then.” Shai descended and slowed some more, figuring out her landing. Zuko had gotten to his feet on her back – something that looked terrifying to Teo but didn’t seem to bother Zuko in the slightest – and was flaring with light, trying to let her see the ground and find a safe place to put down. “There’s one thing I still don’t get though,” Teo continued.
“What’s that?”
“….What was with that crazy evil grin on Sokka’s face back at your house when he was talking about this trip?”
[End Chapter Two]
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bored
busy
infuriated