bones are important / advisable to keep them / also, stay alive

[roc_on]

The news is grim today. A self-driving software glitch caused the first Republic City car accident in the last four years, uptown; someone has a concussion and someone else has whiplash from their own car swerving to avoid. The company is swearing to have the software patched as soon as possible. There was a food poisoning incident at the Flame Festival in one suburb, and a fireworks accident out in earth country, but these have resulted in no deaths. Death has resulted from what appears to be a murderer - it's hard to explain natural causes leaving a corpse with most of its bones missing.

The news doesn't speculate. Chali, however, does; Beila brings it up with him once he's home, and he says that out in a little town called Hirakyo there was a graverobbing incident - missing bones. They don't have hard evidence on it yet, but they think the same person may have escalated to taking his trophies from living victims, that this could be a serial.

Disquieting. To say the least. But Chali has no reason to believe that it's Avatar business - no spirits, no geopolitics, no heavy-duty bending. So Beila reads another chapter in the autobiography of Avatar Meixing and goes to her firebending lesson.

Comments

[roc_on]

"I think I can sense it while it's following me, yeah," she nods, waving her arm again and getting fluttery streamers of fire chasing it. "What with it being there." She flaps her arms as she was doing before, trailing fire from each.

[fiery_delights]

"Sensing it while it isn't there is how you get the generally applicable ability to decide you want to make a certain kind of fire with a certain movement and then immediately figure out how to do it," he says. "Otherwise known as how I invented half my repertoire. But the silhouette trick is a clever way around the hard part, and I bet you can get pretty far with it. Try seeing how the fire follows you naturally, and seeing how you can vary the shape, and pay attention to how the energy feels both ways."

[roc_on]

Flap. The trail lengthens. Flap. It shortens. Flap. It's ragged-edged, long in places and short in others. Flap. It smears, lengthening as she moves her arm rather than moving wholesale.

[fiery_delights]

Jun watches this progression thoughtfully and with a certain amount of pride. Beila is such a great student. He's glad Shifu Riko introduced them.

[roc_on]

Flap. She lets it hug her arm a little closer, not touching, and extends her fingers; she forms a wide wing shape, with featherlike protrusions extending from her hand.

[fiery_delights]

"Nice," says Jun.

[roc_on]

"Wheeeee," she says, twirling; the wings follow her like she's wearing them attached to invisible sleeves.

[fiery_delights]

Jun laughs and applauds again.

[roc_on]

"What next?"

[fiery_delights]

"Well, you've accomplished wings," he says. "But if you want to take them flying with you, I'm thinking you'd better be able to shape them very accurately and consistently. So, practice. And I still recommend asking your earthbending instructor if she has any thoughts on bending with arbitrary movements and the difference between conscious and intuitive understanding of how to do it, and I'll get a big mirror put in hopefully before our next lesson so you can see your wings properly and don't have to guess how well they live up to what you're going for."

He smiles.

"If you want to do extra practice between lessons, I recommend the fire-following trick to practice reading energy flows, and I recommend not getting too big or fancy with it until you've had a chance to practice the wings in front of a mirror. It doesn't take much uncertainty about where exactly your fire is going to produce some pretty spectacular accidents, and the thing about these fancy fire-shaping tricks is that unlike conventional fire blasts, a lot of it is happening outside your field of view."

[roc_on]

"I've got a mirror at home. I can take it outside someplace good for fire practice. I feel like the obvious thing to do with fire-following is to run through katas, not bending anything else, just going through the forms? I could also go dancing but I might alarm someone at a dance place."

[fiery_delights]

"It takes a pretty big mirror to see the big stuff like wings clearly enough, but you can use it to watch the smaller stuff, yeah, good thinking. Unless you have a wall-sized mirror at home which you can conveniently haul out to the beach for some firebending practice, I guess I shouldn't assume. Katas are a fine idea, not alarming your fellow dancers is very kind of you, it is as always a pleasure to teach someone who is both clever and methodical."

[roc_on]

"I can detach my closet door if I get my dad to bend the tracks it slides on aside. It's big. I'm imagining doing some enormous combination dance thing with all four elements, now."

[fiery_delights]

"Well, you know your closet door better than I do. Stick to doing things you can see clearly in it and you should be fine. As for enormous combination dances, I will happily help you choreograph one. I don't fear the competition."

[roc_on]

"I don't know if I'm cut out for the performance lifestyle, but it'd be an interesting exercise. Maybe go up on a wind funnel, fire following me around, and bend water and sand around in parallel."

[fiery_delights]

"Good aesthetics," he says, nodding. "If you wanted thematics I'd suggest sticking to rock for the earth aspect, or waiting until you can do lightning and including lightning and metal for a more modern composition. If you wanted thrill factor I'd suggest lava."

[roc_on]

"Oooh, lava. Well, nothing says I have to stick to one of these patterns."

[fiery_delights]

"The performance lifestyle might not suit you, but I think the challenge of crafting a performance might."

[roc_on]

"Yeah. Pity I can't pass them on entire to actual performers. Unless you want to coordinate with three other people."

[fiery_delights]

"Find me an earthbender, an airbender, and a waterbender who're interested, and I'll work with them. Why not?"

[roc_on]

"Cool."

[fiery_delights]

"Anyway, we're just about out of officially planned lesson time, although you could probably squeeze in a little more fire-following practice without making yourself late to anything. Up to you."

[roc_on]

She does a fire kata across the room, with fire following her but not emitting from her strikes.

[fiery_delights]

"I'm definitely stealing that trick."

[roc_on]

"Get me a ticket. Two."