#ga:torma

she is the firstborn of a man who knows not to limit his offspring to archetypes, for their element is air — it’s fluid and dynamic and though it never refuses whichever way it goes, it never stays in one place for long.

but she’s the cause of his first few greys, and the reason for many of her mother’s migraines, for she is stubborn and unyielding almost from the first breath she takes. temper tantrums last for hours, and a refusal means an unyielding no, even as a babe.

as the first child, she is not conscientious, she is not careful. she is not reliable.

she boldly steps into the space where no older sibling has stepped before, and ends up with bruises and scrapes up and down her legs and arms, some scabbing for years before adolescence hits and her body starts to change.

her affinity for airbending surprises everyone — most of all, her father.

the skill runs in the family (her lineage is almost legendary) but with her temperament and her pride and her rigidity…many people wondered if she were better suited for any other element.

with each concept that is conquered, her hubris grows; her ego and her mischievousness knows no bounds. her mother worries about the path her first born will walk down, so unlike all the other air nomads that live on their island. her father is weary as well, but there is a part of him that is proud, naturally. still, he wonders but mostly he worries.

things calm down when her younger siblings are born. she is a doting older sister, but that disposition doesn’t last long before her ego flashes its teeth once more.

self-discipline is a hard lesson learned when she injures her younger sibling in an uncontrolled outburst, and the guilt weighs on her for many weeks after, long after the injuries have healed, and the hard feelings released into the wind.

she retreats into herself for an even longer time after everyone thinks the loose ends from the accident are done and tied. however, it is months before she practices air-bending again.

in this time, she finds comfort in other things rather than her own accomplishments.

meditation helps. tremendously.

she is humbled by her mistakes, and her father truly begins to take her under his wing as she turns this new chapter. this new form of his eldest…this, he can work with, can guide — can teach.

but you cannot completely quell something that is so innate. it simmers low under her skin for many years, but as she matures she gets better and better at wielding it, turning it, and exhaling it out with even-paced breaths.

what she can’t release she squeezes and presses, applies so much pressure until she thinks self-deprecatingly, that under any other circumstance it may turn into a diamond.

but of course, it’s nothing as glamorous or as shiny as a diamond, but whatever it is — she thinks that she can at least hide it in her rib-cage, behind her heart. it’ll just have to live there for the rest of her life, she affirms.

and it works.