#hellohightides

This isn't happening. 

This can't be happening.

How could they do this!? What had the world come to, that a whole people would live in fear of the day they would be wiped out simply for existing!?

"Where are they taking us!?"

"What have we done wrong? Why must we be punished like this!?"

A hollow voice beside her asked if she could see anything from the window where she stood, and even as Toph's blind, unblinking gaze stared past him and everything else and she heard people mutter about how  the view was wasted on a blind girl, she -for once- kept a remark to herself.

There were no words or jokes to be made that would lighten this oppressive mood, this tension so thick it could be cut with a knife. What use was there picking a fight when this could very well be the last few hours of her life?

She turned back to the wall, hunching her shoulders tighter into herself and listening to the air whistle through the window she was lucky enough to find in her cramped little corner of the cattle car. She couldn't sit, and even though it was gearing up to be a cool night, she was still sweating from being packed into such a tight space with so many people.

"Mom! Dad! Where are you!?"

"Someone, anyone, Bend us out of here!"

"It's all wood and metal! We can't get out!"

It seemed that, after all these months, the sword of Damocles, with its ominous shadow hanging over all of Europe, had finally fallen. People had been disappearing left and right in her neighborhood for weeks, but she had naively hoped her family's previous status might, in a way, keep them safe from such a fate.

She bit her lip and blinked rapidly to quell the tears that pricked at her eyes. Her parents were long gone by now, taken weeks before she had been snatched off the street on her way home from school. It had only been through the kindness of her neighbors that she had had a roof over her head and food in her belly after her parents' disappearance...but even then, she could not hide from the soldiers.

It really shouldn't have surprised her as much as it did when they came for her: though she was Asian on her father's side of the family, she was ethnically Jewish on her mother's side, a capital sin in occupied Poland.

Being an Earthbender didn't help either.

The roar of the rails was drowned out by the cries and moans of the others there with her, packed inside the stuffy freight car like cattle being shipped for the slaughter.

"Lord have mercy on us!"

"Shut up! You're not the only one who's afraid!"

"...ba'agala uviz'man kariv v'im'ru..."

Someone was reciting the Mourner's Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Toph had never been to a synagogue, but even she knew what mourning sounded like.

Toph covered her ears with her hands, trying to drive their pain out of her head. She didn't need this, not now.

It seemed almost too easy to give in to despair, but she wouldn't give them that. They would not have the satisfaction of breaking her.

She ground her teeth and fire burned in her white eyes. They had taken away everything, her home, her loved ones, and most probably soon: her life, but they would not crush her spirit.

She was an Earthbender, dammit! She would not bend, would not cower before this. She would stand firm and strong.