Chapter Text
"Good morning, Ai!"
The girl in question responded to the cheerful greeting with an enthusiastic wave and an equally exuberant: "Good morning, Ms. Daiyu! How're the chicken-pigs?"
Said owner of the chicken-pigs leaned lightly on the sun-warmed earthen fence around her home with one hand. The building, like most in the village, was a small one-floor affair made out of wood. Peeking out from behind the edge of an enclosure a fence could just be seen, from which the sounds of farm animals going about their buisness sounded.
Daiyu waved the hand that wasn't being used to lean against the wall dismissively in that direction. "Not escaping them anymore, now that you've fixed the fence. Thanks again for helping to round them up, by the way."
Ai, despite cringing internally at the memory of chasing after run away pig-chickens (they'd kept evading her- those things were far too smart for their own good,) offered the woman a shrug and a sheepish smile. "Don't think anything of it! Everyone would be upset if they missed out on the eggs from your flock."
At that, Daiyu's lips twisted into a little self-satisfied smirk. Ai wasn't lying; the woman owned most of the chicken-pigs in the village, and subsequently was where the rest of them got their eggs from. Hence why it was important that they were caught if they happened to escape, even if it meant that hapless teenagers ate shit several times while diving after the feathered nuisances.
Ai blinked. She was so preoccupied with the fact that she was apparently more annoyed with the creatures than she'd thought that she almost missed the woman's reply.
"Of course, you an' your family can have first pick, an' a little more than you'd usually get, as promised. I'm really getting too old to go running after escapist animals." Her smirk smudged into something more self-depricating as she absently touched her right hip with her free hand. Ai shuffled her feet a little but still offered the woman an over-dramatic gasp.
"You, old? Why Ms. Daiyu, you don't look a day over forty!"
Immediately the self deprication was swept away, replaced by something that made her eyes light up. "You've got plenty of charming words in that head of yours, girl. Now, if only there were any young lads or lasses around here for you to spend it on instead of old fogies like me..." She trailed off meaningfully, smirk returning full force at the discomfort that quickly overtook the other's face.
"I-you- goodbye, Ms. Daiyu! I'll be back in the morning!" With that the teenager swiftly strode away, ignoring the sound of the old woman's amusement behind her.
Similar scenes played out as she walked through the village; some cheerily called out to her from the front porch of their homes, others stopped her in the street to make polite small talk. Still feeling off-put by Daiyu's comments in the way all teenagers did when random adults pried into their love-lives or lack thereof, Ai more than happily indulged her neighbours in conversation to take her mind off of it.
By the time that she finally arrived home, the sun was reaching its zenith in the sky and her hand had started to sweat around the handles of the basket she was carrying on her back. With some effort she shouldered the door open, knowing that it would have been left unlocked for her arrival, and staggered into the welcome shade of the house.
Like the rest of the houses in town it was small, though there were notable interior differences that marked it as different from a regulat dwelling. For one thing, the front room was festooned with so many bundles of drying plants hanging from the crossbars above that it was difficult to see the entrances to other rooms, if any existed. Shelves lined with earthenware jares could vaguely be seen through gaps, then quickly disappeared again as the hanging bundles were distrubed by the breeze coming from the open door. Despite this, the room was well lit by shuttered windows, sunlight gently seeping through the gaps in the plants.
As a natural consequence of these things, the entire space was a kaleidoscope of different scents all mixing together, the natural, earthy fragrance of the plants in different stages of colliding and fading as they gradually dried. To a person unused to it it may have been slightly overwhelming, but Ai barely registered it as she slid the basket off of her back with a relieved huff.
"Welcome, what can I help you with today- oh, Ai!" The voice interrupted it's own scripted greeting to suddenly lilt upwards in pleased surprise. From somewhere behind the rows came a short man expertly moving and occassionally ducking so as to not touch any of them. When he finally made it to her, he gestured to the basket with a sharpness that contradicted the massive grin on his face. "So, did you find it?!"
Instead of answering verbally, Ai stooped in order to flip the baskets' lid open and place a hand in side. It was drawn back out gently clutching an enthusiastically flowering plant that had clearly been torn up by the roots, the white appendages dangling like so many bony fingers. With it came a smell vaguely like cabbage, but neither took much note as it was handed over into the man's awaiting hands.
"I'm not sure what you needed it for," she mused out loud, watching the other hurry away to somewhere unseen amongst the hanging foliage. "Unless someone was severely injured in the time I was gone, don't we already have plenty of yarrow ointment?"
"Oh we do, we do," came the reassurance from somewhere vaguely to her left, "but I wanted to try something else! Dan came through town the other week and told e about a fascinating craze sweeping the upper classes..."
Ai was unable to keep herself from snorting in the silence left after the voice trailed off. "And what would Old Man Dan know about the upper classes?"
"Hey, don't call him that! He's barely older than me. Besides," there was a haughty sniff, "he's very well travelled!"
At that Ai audibly scoffed, more for hearing the reactionary noise of complaint from the other side of the room than to express any disagreement. When it became clear that the man wouldn't be coming back anytime soon, she heaved the basket back onto her back and began to make her way further into the house. The benefit of inheriting her dad's chronically vertically challenged-ness meant that she didn't have to duck at all as she made her way through the front room.
The house that Ai and her father lived in was, in a word, full. They hadn't been the first to live in it by far and it had clearly been built with a more residential purpose in mind, so making a one-floor house double as an apothecary made for some clutter. Case in point, the entrance to the kitchen was partially blocked by a small stack of books and scrolls, so she had to carefully maneuver through the gap so as to not send them crashing across the floor.
Once she'd safely made it into the kitchen, she heaved the basket off of her back and onto a counter. From within it she pulled all the literal fruits of her foraging efforts; blackberries placed at the top due to their squishableness, then peaches, then apples. That done, she began the task of putting them away in places that indicated whether they'd eat them in the coming days or preserve them for colder months. At some point while she was doing this her father wandered back into view and started rummaging in the cupboards with his right hand whilst clutching the yarrow she'd picked and a candle in his left. After silently observing him for a few seconds she asked: "What are you doing?"
Without looking in her direction he grandly began, as if he was about to launch into a speech advocating for his own mayoral candidacy: "I am going to make scented candles! According to Dan, it's a new fad and the rich folks to the east can't get enough of 'em! Oh my child, we'll be rich!"
It took a few moments to parse that mentally, but once she did she slowly pointed out: "...Do you know how to make scented candles?"
That earned her a dismissive hand-wave and a: "I'm sure I can figure it out! It can't be that hard," so she tried again.
"Why are you using yarrow as a scent, then? It just smells like cabbage to most people."
That actually got him to pause and glance over, a look on his face as if she'd just physically struck him. "...I figured that people would want it for the health benefits. Smoke of yarrow is quite good for the lungs, as you know."
"...Then why wouldn't they just smoke it themselves?"
He stared blankly for a few seconds before his face took on a disappointed moue. "You know, if you weren't my daughter I'd call you a spoilsport." He dejectedly placed the yarrow and candle on the counter, leaving Ai unsure whether to feel guilty or vaguely amused.
"You could use a different scent?" She hesitantly suggested.
All at once he lit back up and spun around. "Why didn't I think of that? Haven't I always said that you were smart?" With that he swiftly planted a kiss on her forehead and was away like a candle-making whirlwind. "Remember to do your exercises!" He called, disappearing into the front of the shop.
"Are you watching the shop, then?!" She shouted, and after receiving a distant confirmation, snorted and went back to what she'd been doing.
- - - - - - - - - - -
A long inhale, followed by a carefully controlled exhale. Eyes closed to block out some sensory distractions and hands on knees. Letting thoughts drift away...
This is how Ai spent approximately an hour every few days, though the location and time differed. If she happened to be awake before daybreak, which often happened during the long winter nights, she preferred to face the east so that the first watery rays of sunlight could serve as a signal to stop. It being the middle of summer however meant that she was sat in the room of the house furthest away from the customers: the back porch, which faced towards their abundant herb garden. If she opened her eyes, she knew that she'd see bursts of colour and possibly a butter-bee or two making their away across the flowers.
After some unknowable intuition indicated that around an hour had passed, she stood and stretched. 'The sunlight feels nice today,' she mused, switching her attention to some pebbles that she'd picked up from the garden and placed on the porch railing before she sat down. Assuming a steady stance, she jabbed two fingers sharply in front of her in their direction. The giddy feeling that filled up her chest so much that it threatened to explode whenever she did this rose up once more as the wind answered her movement, gusting forwards towards the railing. To her utter elation, though the rest of them wobbled dangerously only one of them fell.
"Yes!" She exclaimed, jumping for joy, though her glow of victory was quickly quashed as her jump created a bubble of air beneath her, which was about as impossible to stand on as, well, air. The teenager fell face-first into the wooden flooring of the porch with a fairly audible thunk, groaning in pain. 'I know what porch wood tastes like, now,' she thought with a small amount of self-pity that was quickly erased when she was reminded why she knew what porch wood tasted like.
'I managed to knock one off!' She thought ecstatically as she picked herself up. 'Go, me!' As she celebrated the amount of control it required to only effect one rock instead of all of them plus whatever unfortunate potted plants were growing behind them plus herself, she neglected to think that this was negated by faceplanting immediately afterwards.
This was also what she spent at least an hour dedicated to every few days: trying her utter best to bend with no teacher and no instructions with only the shaky knowledge of earthbending moves her non-bender father half-remembered from watching his mother in his childhood. So even despite the (partial) failure, she had plenty of reason to celebrate even a small success.
She was an airbender, after all.
The last in the world.