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The sun silently beats down on the grounds, waves of heat radiating off of everything. But then, a soft rumble begins. It grows louder and louder, starting in the mountains and crashing down down down until a great roaring avalanche of snow arrives...

The calm returns but the blistering heat is gone. "How's that, Autor?" Mia asks.

The boy smiles shyly at her, his warm, knitted scarf demonstrating a clear gradient of skill from raw novice to advanced beginner. "It's lovely," he says, squeezing her fingers in his gloved ones. "Thank you, Mia." Releasing them, he turns and places a hand on his hip to watch the next step.

At the mouth of the inlet a narrow cliff juts out into the water, covered by a thin layer of soil to which a mat of short grass is clinging, littered with demon bunny droppings. On this ledge, Korra stands, her feet planted firmly against the ground. Starting with that wide stance, Korra moves a foot and then pushes her arms in front and up, causing the lake bed to shift, and the waters to part as a narrow ledge of earth divides a smaller pond away from the larger lake.

Turning into the inlet, she leaps onto the surface and slides out into the center on a shelf of ice that stretches out in larger and larger crystals as it thickens beneath her. In the center of what will be the ice rink, Korra stops, and takes one calm, centering breath.

And then with her eyes closed she moves again, this time much more fluid in her motions, turning a slow circle on the ice with her arms in front of her, swaying as her weight shifts from foot to foot. A bubble of water rises in front of her, and as she pushes out, the bubble expands, passing through Korra so she's standing in the center of an ever expanding air filled bubble of water, stretching further and further out so by the time it hits the shore any onlookers will feel the cool sensation of water vapor from a fountain. She shifts her movement again, and the snowflake patterns of ice crystals appear at the top and the spread around the bubble, crystallizing and solidifying in a lattice of clear ice.

Then Korra opens her eyes, and finishes the rink as she slides back to the shore. There, a further turn and a sweeping gesture towards one side shatters a large hole in the side, perfect for a double door.

"Neat trick, Avatar," Autor says, accompanied by a saucy grin and an informal salute. With a few simple words, Mia sets a flurry fluttering down in the dome.

Once the rink is complete, the boy heads off to help an industrious ten-year-old set up the food and drinks table. There are some things too heavy for Rae to lift.

[Credit to the respective muns for their pups' part in the EP! Standard party post rules apply, all tags welcome.]

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OH NOES SNOWBALL.

Korra steps back in front of the snowball, and lifts a hand as if to shield herself. Which actually manages to stop the snowball in its track, leaving it hovering in midair, rotating quickly.

A second later and she swings her arms around, and sends it hurtling towards him.

8|

Tommy so did not expect any of that.

Which is why he hardly has any time to react.

"Gah--!"

PAFF

The snowball hits him in the chest, sending snow down the front of his shirt and up his nose.

"What the--? How did you--? What?"

Korra smugs at him.

"It's called waterbending."

Waterbending.

Waterbending.

That...almost sounds familiar.

"Oh. So, I'm guessing that's kinda like-- firebending?"

"Kinda."

She turns out a hand, palm, up and flicks fire into the air.

"That's firebending."

"Whoa."

He blinks at the flame.

"I think I met a friend of yours, or at least someone from your world. D'you know a guy named Mako?"

Korra closes her hand, snapping the flame off, and shrugs helplessly.

"No, sorry."

But there are a lot of firebenders, so that's not surprising.

Edited 2013-07-22 22:58 (UTC)

"Ah, okay. Well, he was a firebender, so-- but wait, so, you can do both fire and water?"

"And Earth."

:-D

He smirks.

"Well, who's a little overachiever? Lemme guess, you're currently working on airbending, too."

Korra's a little overachiever. And smug about it.

"That's right," she says. "I am."

He doesn't need to know she sucks at it.

"I'm Korra."

Oh, he knows smug when he sees it. Thing is, he's more amused than anything.

"Good to meet'cha. I'm Tommy."

He waves a hand at all the ice and snow in general.

"So, were you involved with making this whole thing, too?"

She nods. "Yeah. I iced over that part of the lake and made the bubble. You enjoying it?"

"Oh yeah, it's great. Pretty damn impressive. I could've done without the live-action snowman, though, but ehh, I suppose that was a neat trick, too," he adds with another smirk.

Korra's smirk turns a little sheepish, but not too much, because it was a neat trick, and a lot of fun for her.

"Yeah, sorry about that. You want some of the snow out of your hair?"

He huffs a chuckle and runs a hand through his hair, wiping a bit of dampness from it.

"Nah, that's okay. But--"

Pulling out a pack of cigarettes, he sticks a cig between his lips.

"You could gimme a light."

That, she can do.

Resisting the urge to finger gun it (which would have unfortunate consequences for Tommy's eyebrows), Korra steps towards him, turning her hand up again, and this time producing a small flame at the end of her finger tips.

Tommy's eyebrows appreciate it.

Leaning in, he brings the end of his cigarette to the flame and takes a few satisfying puffs.

"Thanks, sweetheart. Y'know, it's my job to put out fires, but with firefighting equipment, not-- y'know, hand movements and chi and stuff. I'm thinkin' it'd be pretty convenient to be able to do what you can do, but bending ain't even a thing in my world. What d'you do back home?"

"That would be a really important job without firebending," Korra says. "In the water tribe we just all pitch in if a fire gets out of control."

OR they get Korra to do it all.

"I'm the Avatar, but I'm in training, so mostly what I do is work on mastering all the elements."

"Yeah, it is, in a world without magic or superpowers, but somebody's gotta do it," he agrees with a tic of his head.

"Wait, so-- you're the Avatar? The Avatar? The guy I met told me a little bit about the history of your world and people. You're like-- famous! Right?"

"Yeah."

Smug, but also a little taken back at the recognition. Korra had gotten used to this place as somewhere that takes her as she is, and recognizes her awesome without all the expectations.

"Pretty famous. I'm supposed to keep balance in the world, so it's kind of a big deal."

Mm, there's that smugness again, and he breathes a chuckle after taking a drag off his cigarette.

"Well, yeah, but I mean, it is the whole world an' all. Snowmen and skating rinks and lighting cigarettes are great on the weekends, but I would think keeping balance in the world is a full-time job. You ready for that?"

"Not quite," she says, allowing room for a little humbleness in her admission. "I mean, I gotta learn air first. But I'll get there, you'll see."

"Oh, I don't doubt it," he says with a half-nod. "I mean, I don't know you well yet, but if you think you got what it takes, then you better believe it all the way. You can't be half-assed about this sorta thing, know what I mean?"

The thing about self-assured teenagers is that they inevitably remind him of himself when he was that age. But another thing about self-assured young people, and basically any youth Tommy comes across whether they're cocky teenagers or fresh-faced rookies out of the academy, is that they need a dose of reality -- not necessarily to take 'em down a peg, but to make them really think about what's down the road.

"Is bending air harder to do than the others?"

"Oh, I know what you mean," Korra says. Because she has absolutely no intention of doing anything half-assed. She's just not a half-assed kind of girl.

She bends a handful of snow back into her hands, tossing it up and down as she thinks.

"Yeah. Well, it is for me, anyway. I guess it's harder to bend the element most opposite to your personality."