"perceiver" (Avatar: The Last Airbender; Toph, gen)
Title: "perceiver"
Chapter: 4
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Characters/Pairings: Toph; gen.
Rating: K+/PG
Warnings: None at the moment.
Word Count: 781
Challenge: 5_sense; List 1: Sound
Summary: There's music, and then there's true music.
Toph Bei Fong, for twelve years of her life, has only ever heard courtly music. It’s not necessarily bad music-the songs are like tiny seashells strung on a golden thread, hung up over the ceilings to whisper as the night wind blows past. And they are accompanied by the soft clapping of hands and tendrils of soft, girlish laughter, tiny peals of laughter like silver bells, their sound reaching up to touch the ceiling.
To be honest-it’s rather boring.
So Toph finds herself thrilled when she hears the discordant melody of Aang, Katara, and Sokka playing with the instruments that they had rescued from being dumped (“Please, mister, since you’re about to throw them away, can we have them?”). They don’t even know the names of the instruments-they’re just referred to as “that instrument with four strings”, “that thing that looks like a flute but isn’t quite a flute”, and “that thing with all the little planks of wood that you hit with those hammer things”.
In the house of Bei Fong, all the instruments had their own names. There was the lute. The Sunghi horn. The qin. The ocarina, the oboe, the zhu, the fiddle, the… All their names became a muddle. Frankly, Toph had never been very interested in the instruments-the way the old geezers talked about music and about pentatonic scales, major thirds and perfect fifths, arpeggios and diminished chords, talking about the way all these elements could be arranged almost by a formula into a musical equation that always, inevitably, sounded dead.
But this discordance-the sound of “that thing that looks like a flute but isn’t quite a flute” mirrors the sound of crows cawing in the distance; the sound of the twanging and plucking of “that instrument with four strings” mirrors the creaking sound of the branches blowing in the wind; the sound of “that thing with all the little planks of wood that you hit with those hammer things” mirrors the sound of her skipping rocks across the surface of the calm, placid lake by which they are seated.
And, somehow, it all fits, and it’s all so simply and utterly alive.
Toph stands and walks over to the trio, sitting outside their triangular formation. Aang scoots to the side and Toph tentatively joins in. Aang stops playing “that thing that looks like a flute but isn’t quite a flute” and smiles.
“Want to try?” he says, offering the instrument to Toph, who takes it and runs her fingers over it.
Toph frowns. “I don’t know-I never played anything like this before. They always said that I’d overexert myself and get light-headed and dizzy from playing too much.”
Aang laughs. “Oh, come on. Just try it.”
Toph shrugs and brings the instrument to her lips, blowing a first note that sounds oddly clear, wavering with a pleasant springiness. Surprised, she continues blowing, occasionally covering one hole, then covering two, then covering another two, leaving one open between them. As she begins to adjust to and recognize the sounds she’s playing, she carefully destroys those formulae and principles of pentatonic scales and minor chords, of suspension and of the use of grace notes, and plays whatever notes she feels are ringing in her heart.
The resulting melody is unpredictable, yet somehow stable, and Toph feels the earth shifting beneath her to sing. She pauses to take a breath, then takes the instrument away from her lips-leaving the melody to linger in the air, unfinished yet decidedly done.
The others are silent around her, savoring the last notes lingering in the air.
“That was incredible, Toph,” Katara breathes after a moment, and Toph brushes the hair from her face.
“Nah,” she says, then raises her eyebrows. “C’mon, why aren’t you guys playing? Here, Aang, you play too.”
They hesitantly pick up their instruments again, and tentatively pluck a few notes out, but within a few minutes, they are back to their banging and plucking and squeaking, and the forest behind them and air around them are filled once again with the sound of crows cawing, tree branches creaking, and rocks being skipped across a smooth lake.
And that, Toph decides, is the best music she’s ever heard-true music.
The other chapters can be found here.
FF.Net: Mirror | Review?
- hl
Chapter: 4
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Characters/Pairings: Toph; gen.
Rating: K+/PG
Warnings: None at the moment.
Word Count: 781
Challenge: 5_sense; List 1: Sound
Summary: There's music, and then there's true music.
Toph Bei Fong, for twelve years of her life, has only ever heard courtly music. It’s not necessarily bad music-the songs are like tiny seashells strung on a golden thread, hung up over the ceilings to whisper as the night wind blows past. And they are accompanied by the soft clapping of hands and tendrils of soft, girlish laughter, tiny peals of laughter like silver bells, their sound reaching up to touch the ceiling.
To be honest-it’s rather boring.
So Toph finds herself thrilled when she hears the discordant melody of Aang, Katara, and Sokka playing with the instruments that they had rescued from being dumped (“Please, mister, since you’re about to throw them away, can we have them?”). They don’t even know the names of the instruments-they’re just referred to as “that instrument with four strings”, “that thing that looks like a flute but isn’t quite a flute”, and “that thing with all the little planks of wood that you hit with those hammer things”.
In the house of Bei Fong, all the instruments had their own names. There was the lute. The Sunghi horn. The qin. The ocarina, the oboe, the zhu, the fiddle, the… All their names became a muddle. Frankly, Toph had never been very interested in the instruments-the way the old geezers talked about music and about pentatonic scales, major thirds and perfect fifths, arpeggios and diminished chords, talking about the way all these elements could be arranged almost by a formula into a musical equation that always, inevitably, sounded dead.
But this discordance-the sound of “that thing that looks like a flute but isn’t quite a flute” mirrors the sound of crows cawing in the distance; the sound of the twanging and plucking of “that instrument with four strings” mirrors the creaking sound of the branches blowing in the wind; the sound of “that thing with all the little planks of wood that you hit with those hammer things” mirrors the sound of her skipping rocks across the surface of the calm, placid lake by which they are seated.
And, somehow, it all fits, and it’s all so simply and utterly alive.
Toph stands and walks over to the trio, sitting outside their triangular formation. Aang scoots to the side and Toph tentatively joins in. Aang stops playing “that thing that looks like a flute but isn’t quite a flute” and smiles.
“Want to try?” he says, offering the instrument to Toph, who takes it and runs her fingers over it.
Toph frowns. “I don’t know-I never played anything like this before. They always said that I’d overexert myself and get light-headed and dizzy from playing too much.”
Aang laughs. “Oh, come on. Just try it.”
Toph shrugs and brings the instrument to her lips, blowing a first note that sounds oddly clear, wavering with a pleasant springiness. Surprised, she continues blowing, occasionally covering one hole, then covering two, then covering another two, leaving one open between them. As she begins to adjust to and recognize the sounds she’s playing, she carefully destroys those formulae and principles of pentatonic scales and minor chords, of suspension and of the use of grace notes, and plays whatever notes she feels are ringing in her heart.
The resulting melody is unpredictable, yet somehow stable, and Toph feels the earth shifting beneath her to sing. She pauses to take a breath, then takes the instrument away from her lips-leaving the melody to linger in the air, unfinished yet decidedly done.
The others are silent around her, savoring the last notes lingering in the air.
“That was incredible, Toph,” Katara breathes after a moment, and Toph brushes the hair from her face.
“Nah,” she says, then raises her eyebrows. “C’mon, why aren’t you guys playing? Here, Aang, you play too.”
They hesitantly pick up their instruments again, and tentatively pluck a few notes out, but within a few minutes, they are back to their banging and plucking and squeaking, and the forest behind them and air around them are filled once again with the sound of crows cawing, tree branches creaking, and rocks being skipped across a smooth lake.
And that, Toph decides, is the best music she’s ever heard-true music.
The other chapters can be found here.
FF.Net: Mirror | Review?
- hl