#tulok

Our third match has been set.

OC: Avatar Tulok

About two years ago (three? my last four/five years are one grey clump of time), when I really got back into ATLA and subsequently started actually interacting with the fandom for the first time, I had the ambition to write something of a follow-up to ATLA myself. Y’know, like LOK, but I’d never watched LOK and still have no intentions to. 

Tulok was the Avatar after Aang in that Alternate Universe of Mine. I mean, he still is; the idea is still technically on live support. He used to be a Southern Water Tribesman but, a while ago, decided it was much more fun to make the Avatar a member of the Foggy Swamp Tribe. 

I also realized that Canon!Old!Toph lived in the Foggy Swamp, the place Aang first saw her in, and that the Taang potential with that is endless, so she does in this AU, too. Just, like, ... not permanently. Just in autumn or something, so she still ... visists the kids, sees the grandkids grow up. Stuff like that. 

And she’s the first to know Tulok’s the Avatar, when he’s still a toddler and stumbles into her camp/cave/whatever (this AU is really not thought through at all), but she doesn’t tell anyone where/who he is for a while. ‘cause a normal childhood is important, and her husband didn’t get one. Neither did she. 

And she knows it's not him.

She knows.

But for just a moment – a short, irrational, hopeful moment –, she thinks it is, feels a tug deep inside her, on a string of her heart that hasn't been tugged in years (that have felt endless and went by in the blink of an eye just the same), so she says, because she cannot help herself, low and yearning: "Twinkle Toes?"

The boy stumbles.

Maybe over a rock, maybe his own feet.

His every step is unsure.

His hand presses against the wall.

"... what?"

And his voice is soft, scared almost, so very clearly that of a child.

She shakes her head, and steps closer to him.

She must've been in the shadows before, because he sucks in air and stiffens a little, and she almost chuckles.

"I'm sorry", she says. "I mistook you for someone."

"Oh."

His chubby finger ghosts over the cave wall in slow, shaky circles.

"I didn't know somebody lived here. Sorry."

Still so very quietly.

She waves her hand to dismiss his concerns. 

"Don't be sorry. I just moved in yesterday."

Well, for this year.

The boy snuffles.

Something about him – and she can't say what, she hates that she doesn't understand – is very undeniably Aang, and it's not the way he carries himself, so very unsure, like a child should be when it stumbled upon a stranger, it's not the way his naked feet feel against the cold stone ground, his toes curled, his weight shifting, and he must be a child of the Foggy Swamp Tribe, and she wonders how he found his way here.

She makes it a point to stay somewhere far away from their settlements.

This is a time for introspection. To think and quietly remember.

(Her husband, their life, how very much she misses both, to return to her family in the early winter and smile at their children, be proud of their grandchildren, without regret in her heart that he would never be able to again.)

The child reminds her very loudly.

Of Aang and something she cannot remember.

"What's your name?", she wants to know. Has to know.

"Tulok", he answers. "Who are you?"

"It's nice to meet you, Tulok. I'm Toph."

-----

Tulok’s born in 167 AG, which would make Aang about 79 (or 179) when he dies. That’s not incredibly old for Avatar world standards (considering Guru Pathik, Bumi and Kyoshi), but it’s not so terribly young, either. Plus, he gets to meet all of his (OC) grandchilden, because the fact that Canon!Aang doesn’t get to meet even one grandkid honestly goes against everything I stand for. 

But, this post isn’t about him. 

Tulok is born and raised in the Foggy Swamp; he’s half Southern Water Tribe through his father, but he has never seen snow, much less the South Pole. Neither have his sisters, of whom he has three. None of the Avatars I know of seem to have actual siblings, so that’s why Tulok gets three of them. Their names are (until I start actually writing them, at which point I may decide those names don’t fit them anymore) Puja, Akna and Rupa. He is the youngest. 

He meets Toph for the first time when he’s about four or five when he stumbles into her cave. CurrentAU!Toph does still live in the Swamp after Aang’s death (mostly because Taang), but only ... part time. During autumn. Anyway, she is the first (and for a long time only) person to know he is the Avatar. 

He becomes a master waterbender at age seventeen, and finds out around that time who he is, as well. That’s obviously later than the Avatar is usually revealed, but in this story, there is just ... nobody who thought to check the Foggy Swamp for him, apparently (or if they did, they were quickly dismissed). I think the Foggy Swamp people are easily over-looked; they like to stay among themselves and they live in the Earth Kingdom, which is usually not the first place you start to search for a waterbender. And when Toph turns up with him, the people who’d actually been searching for him get quite annoyed. 

After water, he has the easiest time with airbending. Maybe because he’s older when he starts learning, maybe because he has been raised in a very spiritual place. Either way, airbending is his favourite after his native bending discipline. Then comes earth (the basics of which Toph has ingrained in him since he was a child, quite unbeknownst to him), then comes fire, as his opposite. 

Two more Tuloks (one of whom looks kinda weird), and one Kipu, because I’ve been thinking some more about this AU. 

I changed the hair, but I think with this cut he looks a bit too much like Sokka. His dad is from the South Pole, though, because I didn’t wanna take the Southern Water Tribe completely out of his story, soo ... we’ll see. I’ll see. Whatever. 

Kipu is the guy who’ll teach him airbending. He’s in his early thirties in the drawing, because he is when Tulok meets him for the first time. (Because that’s when Tulok learns he’s the Avatar.) He’d be obviously older when Tulok actually starts tackling airbending, because it’s the last element he has to master. He’s Aang and Toph’s youngest grandson; the youngest son of the youngest son.