tushanshu_logs | March catch-all [open]

"Very likely. How does airbending work?"

Still, the comment about Aang being the last makes his eyebrow go up a little. Instinct tells him whatever story is behind that is not pleasant, and gracefully decides not to ask. Instead, he glances around and after a moment's contemplation gestures idly. After all, the boy already has some idea what he can do.

A light gust of wind gently swirls the pieces strewn around into less of a spread. They're more mixed up, but easier to reach. "Do any of your people have other bending talents? Earth, water, et cetera?"

"Well," he picks up a few stray puzzle pieces from a more consolidated pile on the floor. Holds them in one hand, palm up. He then places his other hand, palm down, over the pieces.

"It's a matter of focusing my chi."

The pieces appear to levitate between his hands, before turning to spin about between them.

"Uh huh. There are three more traditions: earthbending, firebending, and waterbending. I haven't mastered firebending yet, but Korra can and there are few others here than can bend fire too."

Septimus watches with interest. Clearly, Aang's airbending uses an entirely different set of principles, but that doesn't mean he can't watch some of the mechanisms and figure out how to apply them. It wasn't quite the same--but maybe close enough. Given the lack of powerful wind furies, the more tricks he can pick up, the better.

"What is chi?" Words that make no sense to him, plus equals one.

Still, something about the way it's phrased makes him tilt his head a little. "Yet. Do the others have more than one skill, like you? Or could learn the others?"

Once he's got a better idea... well. Exchanging tips (or maybe kind of teaching Aang, who seems talented but it still less than half Septimus's age) is not infeasible. (He misses having furycrafters around.)

"Chi is the universal life force that flows through all things," he says without missing a beat. "And through which we are all connected."

Aang moves his uppermost hand, causing the air above his palm to go from spinning to more of a tornado like vortex.

"No, it...it's just me. I'm the Avatar, the one destined to master all four elements and bring balance to the world. Though, Korra's the Avatar too. She's my next incarnation."

Chi has officially been deemed odd. Anything remotely philosophical of that nature utterly baffles Septimus; Alerans have no concept of it. Still, that's interesting. If no one else can learn airbending...

"Can people in your world only learn one kind, then? Or is it just that no one besides the Avatar can learn all four?"

Beat.

And also... "Incarnation?" Totally, totally baffled Septimus is baffled.

Aang nods, and allows the puzzle pieces to come to rest on the palm of his hand. Each one is flipped so that the picture side is down revealing hand written numbers on the back of each piece.

"It's both, really. If you're born a bender, then you bend the element of you're most spiritually connected to. People from one of the Earth Kingdoms are earthbenders, firebenders come from the Fire Nation, and then there's the two Water Tribes."

Aang skips over the Air Nomads, for...reasons, opting instead to look for the boxes labelled with the same numbers as the puzzle pieces.

"Avatars reincarnate. When I die I'll be reborn as Korra, just like I'm Avatar Roku reborn."

Well, that's actually quite interesting. Septimus just decides to drop the whole 'reborn' question, because it frankly makes zero sense to him. He'd rather not pry indelicately--like about how much one life remembers from others--or say something along the lines of that just sounding bizarre. He tries to have good manners!

He certainly thinks it, though.

"What if someone is the child of a mother from the Earth Kingdom and a father from the Fire Nation?" He's picked that at random, really.

But it's intriguing, and he wonders how Aang will react to how... differently Alera works.

Aang looks up at him, a strange expression on his face.

"That wouldn't happen. The nations don't mix that way."

At least, not that Aang is aware of, he is 12 afterall.

"Ah. Yes, of course."

Septimus conceals his amusement, and decides not to break the poor boy's brain by posing it as a 'well, what if.' Of course, he would have known that was false at twelve--but then, despite being Princeps, Alera by nature means he wasn't as sheltered as this boy seems.

"But you have to be born to be a bender? It can't be learned, just trained?" Subtle difference, that.

The wary expression remains. A seed has been planted in his mind, one that won't germinate for years to come.

"Well...you learn during your training, but no amount of either will make a non-bender a bender. It has to do with an innate spiritual connection that is either there, or it isn't. In the Earth Kingdom I met a set of twins where one was a bender, and the other wasn't. My best friends are brother and sister. They had non-bender parents, but Katara is a waterbender and Sokka isn't."

It's an interesting thought, certainly, and Septimus mulls over that thought as he begins sorting out pieces with the same marking on the back. He'll let Aang indicate which boxes they go in, but for now...

For now, that 'innate spiritual connection' does make a little more sense ~~(because furies are pokemon)~~, and he can put it in the perspective of relative furycrafting strengths. Still, the idea that not everyone can craft--bend, whatever--

It's interesting, and it just does not compute. There's never been an Aleran who can't craft.

"Does that spiritual connection also determine how strong a bender is, then?"

"Yup. Being in good physical condition helps, of course, but bending is less about muscles than it is about how attuned you and your element are to one another. All of my people were airbenders."

Aang starts sorting the boxes in numerical order. He's still getting the hang of Western Arabic numeration, you see.

It's certainly interesting, although Septimus gives Aang a startled look at the comment about good physical condition. After all, since when did physical condition have anything to do with--

Well, might as well ask that one.

"If it's about being attuned to a feeling, I'm surprised it has anything to do with muscles. Is movement somehow connected?"

The numerals do make some sense to Septimus, but he'd rather make piles of bits that go together than sort pieces as they go.

"It's the mind-body connection. The body acts as a tool by which you can control your element, and varies what you can do with it. I can do a lot of little things without a lot of movement."

Aang holds his hand out and by creating a small vacuum, sucks the pieces from Sep's hand into his own. He then quickly sorts them, and gets to his feet.

"But with a different movement, I can do something else entirely."

Here he takes a few steps back, so as not to scatter all their hard work to the winds...as it were. A few fluid arm motions later and there's a small spinning ball of air on the floor that Aang then jumps on top of and rides like a top around the other half of the room.

Septimus blinks and stares before laughing richly, again. This boy, he's decided, is definitely good company. "I have never seen anyone use windcrafting like that," he admits with delight.

He leans a little closer, reaching out with sense even as he just takes a look at it, trying to get the feel for what's going on here. Truthfully, it might not be so different from some of the principles used in flight, if he's gauging it correctly, just contained and hooked into a circle on itself.

"How hard is it to control? And balance on?" Septimus... probably wouldn't do this himself (much), but he's already wishing he could somehow get this back home for the kids to play with.

The laughing only seems to encourage Aang, who zooms around the room faster in an effort to show off.

"Not very. This is the technique I created, and the one that earned me my arrows," he says proudly. "It only took the other kids at the Temple a day to learn to do it themselves, and make up a game using it."

"Only a day?" Septimus looks speculative and starts taking even more detailed mental notes on the feel of that. It's definitely a promising start, and clearly he needs to play with a potential new crafting technique, test its potential, right?

It's only reasonable.

"Earning your arrows is a rite of passage?" Now that's curious. It puts him in mind of nothing quite so much as the day his father handed him the signet dagger of the Princeps.

The airscooter begins to lose its momentum, and so Aang steers it back towards where he was seated before on the floor.

"Sort of? Or well, one of them. It's a sign that you've mastered airbending. There are thirty-six forms you have to master before you've earned your arrows, and you can do that at any age. But, I'm the youngest one to do so in history."

That pride falters just a little bit towards the end.

"Of course, if I'm totally honest? I only learned 35 forms, not 36. But they let me pass anyways because I made my own form: the airscooter."

"I'd say that's compensation enough," he agrees with a grin. "Did you have to learn the last anyway at some point?"

And now he really wants to know what those forms are. Even if they don't make much sense, he can probably figure out how to duplicate anything he doesn't already do.

"Do the other types of bending have something similar?"

Aang picks up a couple of spare puzzle pieces and sorts them as he answers.

"I was supposed to, yeah. Haven't yet though."

He goes quiet for a few moments, stuck in a memory.
Sep's second question stirs him from it eventually.

"Hmm? Oh, oh yeah. The other have form specific to them. Waterbending is a bit more fluid, and earthbending is all short, strong motions. Airbending is all circular."

Septimus knows that look, knows what it feels like to be lost in the past. Internally he winces, hard--no child should have that expression on his face, not ever.

But thinking about it pushes him too close to actively dwelling on his own past, and while it is easier, it is not forgotten. "And you've learned those? If you have, then I'm sorry I don't know enough about your home's forms for fire to help you with them.

Fluid, circular--do you know what nature fire forms tend to have as a rule?"

This is really interesting.

To learn that last form, to master it like the others. That's one of the reasons why the Council of Elders outvoted Gyatso to send Aang to the Eastern Temple. To learn from the sisters there, and to hide.

Instead Aang ran away.
Now they're all gone, and he still hasn't finished the work they asked of him.

"I've learned most of them, yeah. It's been a busy summer," he says forcing a smile.

His imagination turns inward, to memories of firebending used against him, and of his short time in training under Jong Jong.

"Firebending is sharp motions. Long body extensions. Fast."
With the others he'd be more than happy to give a short demonstration, but not ith fire. Never with fire.

Ah. Like that, is it?

Septimus is silent, sorting out pieces into piles by the markings on the back for several long moments.

Then, while examining a piece with a mildly faded and thus less clearly discernible mark:

"I set my nursery on fire when I was five."

O o p s.

Aang looks up sharply, shock and concern clearly evident on his face.

"Was everyone okay?"

"Yes." His expression is more than a little wry.

"Mostly because at the time I was supposed to be asleep--some family was over, it was late and I'd been put to bed while they had dinner. Grown up stuff, you know." He snorts with laughter. "Boring, except it was small and just immediate family.

Anyway, I was bored and couldn't sleep, but I was supposed to, so I couldn't go find anyone to turn on the furylamp for me if I didn't want to get found immediately." He has the good grace to look sheepish, at least.

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