Poppy's only daughter is born completely blind. Perhaps it's part of her quirk, suggests one doctor, looking at their family history. Lao's family claims to be directly descended from the glowing baby, the first recorded quirk in history. Every quirk in his family is a mutant-type, and manifests at birth. Another doctor in the room murmurs his skepticism.

Poppy Beifong doesn't care. Her daughter is blind. "I've failed you already," she whispers to the infant swaddled in her arms. "Please forgive me, Toph. I'll do better from now on. I will protect you."

The baby squirms at the sound of Poppy's voice, blinking gorgeous green eyes, the color of sea foam. Her smile is gentle and delicate. Such beauty, she thinks. And perhaps Toph's sight was the price of this beauty. Toph would be helpless in the world—and oh god, the world seems so much more dangerous now—and Poppy would have to shelter her baby from it. She touches the girl's cheek, so fragile and soft, and a seed of disappointment sinks into her mind. Lao is a good man, deserving of a healthy heir. This girl is not that.

"What are we to do with you, my poor lotus?"

Toph Beifong is no blooming lotus, but a hurricane from the moment she's born. She screams whenever she's laid down to rest in her crib, as if offended by silk sheets and the softest pillows. She's a finicky eater, angry during playtime, and bawls whenever they try to put socks on her.

(She is not fit to be seen, not ready for world, and they hesitate to introduce her at all)

The only time the Beifong child is ever content, it seems, is when she's curled up against someone's chest, able to press her face against a steady heartbeat.

That is, until her nanny sets her down on a granite countertop—Just for a moment, Mrs. Beifong, I was only trying to reach for her bottle!—and the infant goes still as stone, quiet as a shadow. The nanny, still reaching for the baby bottle at the time, did not notice the way Toph kicked her legs out, squirmed desperately to explore the counter. She did notice when Toph burst into tears, reaching out for the cool, stable surface after being lifted away.

After that, Toph is incorrigible. She must be on the counter. Or the tiled floors. Or the stone pathway towards the gardens. She gives everyone hell if she's left in her padded playroom or any sort of baby carrier.

"It's like—it's like she can see when she's standing on earth," the nanny tries to explain why Poppy's two-year-old daughter looks like a poor farmer's child playing in dirt one afternoon. Toph digs her fingers into mud like she's finger-painting, and when the nanny scoops her up the girl kicks up such a fuss that no one notices the disturbed earth; that hard metamorphic rock yields to her chubby fingers as easily as clay.

"I will not have my daughter playing in dirt. If I come home to find her this filthy again, you will find yourself unemployed," Poppy Beifong promises.

Still, three nannies have to be fired before Lao and Poppy find someone that will do as they're instructed and keep Toph indoors.

(Three nannies, thousands of dollars, and four miscarriages before the Beifongs realize they must keep their daughter indoors)

Toph is four when she finds a nanny that will help her clean up and hide the evidence of her playtime. It's around that time that they take her to a quirk doctor to update her file in the quirk registry. She discusses her ability openly, but Toph is only four and no genius with words. "I can feel the ground. The rocks. I can see with them." She gives a demonstration, navigating easily on soil, gravel, cement and tile. Sand is troublesome, metal floors make her teeth hurt, and glass is unpleasant. She says nothing of her playtime, knowing her mother doesn't approve. The doctor notes that her sense of hearing is also heightened, and explains her quirk as a mutated form of her father's Sonar.

Her quirk is given the name Earth Sense; she can use any rock or mineral to sense her surroundings. Her ability manifested at birth, and while it's not certain that her blindness was caused by her quirk, it's certainly lent itself to her quirk's strength, which has steadily increased her range to about a hundred meters by age four through constant use.

They use a lot of other words to explain the details of her quirk—they say it's a mutant-type quirk, passively-active, no wonder she has trouble on wooden surfaces—and all Poppy and Lao hear is 'Your daughter is going to continue to play in dirt' and they both know immediately that they need to put an end to this Earth Sense before it causes them any trouble.

What they don't see is that Toph is also like earth in many ways—immovable as a mountain, planted like a rock in a river, stubborn and grating like sand. That every time Toph takes a step, she pushes her senses to their utmost limit, straining to catch every vibration, pairing it with every swish of fabric and hum of electricity and thump of a heart she can hear.

When she sets her feet on solid ground, it feels like an extension of herself. So when she insists to her parents I can see, I can see everything just fine, she is not lying.

No one believes her.

Concessions are eventually made. There are no soft-plastic cups or bowls for Toph. Only stoneware, ceramic, fine china.

(Poppy is pleased by her daughter's fine motor skills, how delicately her flower can hold objects.)

Metals work too, though it takes some practice before Toph can fully sense the shape of a fork without poking herself with it. The only knives in the household are kept high on wooden shelves, as far as possible from the curious little Beifong.

The interior decor of their home does not change much. Lao's mansion in Japan is modeled after the Beifong property in China, and much of the interior is already wood and stone. Toph doesn't mind. If she wants to navigate on her own one day, she'll need to learn how to walk on all sorts of surfaces, from wood to carpet to those god-awful padded mats.

She does mind having to wear shoes, though, and at five-and-a-half years old, she carefully trims down the soles of every pair she owns to the bare minimum with a borrowed knife from the kitchen. A maid walks in while Toph's on the counter and promptly tattles on her, and Toph learns to keep a foot on her surroundings at all times—and then she finds the new hiding place for the knives. Poppy notices after five months, and Toph isn't allowed to leave the house for a week, not even to walk in the garden. It doesn't stop her from doing it all over again with her new shoes.

Her parents just don't get it. She is earth, she is stone. She needs to feel the ground.

Toph must admit that her father does at least try to understand. Or perhaps he's just fed up with her tantrums. The doctor suggests taking her on a kid-friendly hiking trip so she can enjoy her quirk safely. Poppy is strongly against it, and they argue about it for days, but in the end, Lao orders a nanny (the one with a stretching quirk, perfect for keeping a child from harm) to accompany Toph for the outing. Lao Beifong has a sensory quirk like his daughter—an auditory one that allows him to use sonar. It was only after exploring his own quirk that Lao realized how he could hone his senses to find new mining sites for metal refinery. Maybe she'll find something useful about her quirk, Lao reasons.

He's right about his daughter, for once. Toph Beifong does learns something new about her quirk that day.