Here's the last one! Again, thank you to all those who followed, favorited, or gave me input.

Fire 火

A frigid blast of wind cuts through the night as she makes her way to her front door, chilling her to the bone beneath her armor. She pulls her overcoat a little tighter but doesn't speed up, a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

As if in defiance of the weather, she pauses just before the door and turns to take in the city she has just spent all day (and a fair bit of the night) protecting. Warm light spills out from windows and streetlamps, glowing softly against the dusting of snow, making the city look so much purer and more pristine than she knows it to be. But still, it is beautiful. Her city. A small smile crosses her face before she brushes off the moment of sentimentality and lets herself into the house.

The entryway is dark, like the rest of the house, but she needs no light to navigate the place she has lived in all her life. Shrugging out of her coat, she drops it unceremoniously on the front table and continues into the sitting room. Here, before doing anything else, she picks up the flints by the hearth and easily strikes up a fire in the fireplace. Once it catches, the flame grows quickly, and she moves into the adjoining room, the kitchen.

She finds the kettle and tealeaves almost by instinct. Sure, she could use the electric lights installed years ago, but she won't. To be honest, she doesn't care for them much. When she was growing up, they had rarely ever turned them on; after all, her mother was blind, so the light itself didn't matter, and Toph had much preferred the sound, scent, and warmth that a good old-fashioned fire provided.

Fire is life, Aang had told her once. But for her, fire is also familiarity. Everyone already knows that earth connects her to her mother, and she wouldn't give that up for anything, but not many know that fire does too.

For her, fire is a six-year-old curled up in her mother's lap near the fireside and it's way too hot, but it's long past bedtime and she's listening to some wild story and her mom's arms are tight around her so it doesn't matter. Fire is fuming and folded arms because her mother has plunked herself down between her and Tenzin and won't leave them alone so they're reduced to watching the firelight flicker on the wall all night. Fire is the funeral pyre of the Dragon of the West the first time she ever saw her mother cry, and fire is laughing and roasting their dinner on sticks in the fireplace because the cook had the day off. So maybe it is life after all.

Meanwhile, her tea is ready, so she pours a cup and returns to the sitting room, sinking down onto a chair with a sigh, relieved to be off her feet at last after a long day. She knows that if others could see her they would call it a lonely existence and they would pity poor Lin Beifong in her big, empty house. Just thinking about it makes her roll her eyes. Sure, she's not made of stone, and everyone feels lonely sometimes. But not tonight. Tonight she has a warm fire and a steaming cup of her favorite tea, and she is content.