Ty Lee Week 2011, Day 1: Poof

Poof.

She was gone.

Ty Lee left her home at night. She slipped out a window, tip-toed across a twenty-foot garden wall past privately-hired guards, and somersaulted to her freedom.

There was nothing particularly magical about the rickshaw ride to the coast, nor the small steamboat that ferried her away.

Though she was sure everyone back home wondered how she did it.

Left the lap of luxury, the undisputed most affluent place in the world, (for Fire Nation people did not know the extents of the pockets of Earth Kingdom wealth that still remained).

Acquired her own money for passage and located the appropriate boat.

Most of all, how Ty Lee- the dim-witted, if cheerful girl, could orchestrate any kind of plan like this.

If anything, the place she was leaving was where the magic was- where servants appeared at your beck and call, and fragrances forever hung in the air of lofty-ceilinged mansions.

The budding acrobat didn't look back at the archipelago of active volcanoes where she had worked and played for the past thirteen years. She turned her face towards the seawind, because if she looked back she might lose her nerve. She had kept up a steady stream of idle chatter with the sun-tanned man who had pulled her rickshaw seat like an ostrich-horse, and any deckhand that would lend her an ear. Yes, it was partly because she liked any sort of attention. But also, to distract herself.

For the truth of it all was,

Ty Lee wasn't dim-witted.

She only knew that no one took her seriously because she was a little spacey. A dreamer.

It didn't mean she didn't understand how things worked, and it didn't mean she pursued her ends without any idea of how her choice would really be. If that had been the case, the pampered nobleman's daughter would have come running home from the cramped living conditions and traveling before a month was past.

She definitely wouldn't have gotten a low-wage job to pay for any of this, to prove those people wrong, to prove to herself, if she had had anything but a spirit longing for independence and distinction.

She would have asked the princess to arrange it all for her, and been refused. What use has a princess of being associated with a lowly circus performer, noble-born or not?

Poof.

She was gone.

When the girl had disappeared for the second time, it was with as little fanfare. She dropped from the circus, only telling a few of her friends she had made. The ringmaster didn't even know she was gone until hours after she was taken. It was cut and dry: he could do nothing to overturn the princess' wishes. So, he lost another performer. It happened all the time, even if he had a little less warning, and if she was one of the best, with promise of many more years in the spotlight aside.

Her third and fourth disappearances were by order of the princess as well. Her face had crimped into a confused frown as the royal heiress ordered she and her dour friend leave the chambers during the Day of Black Sun. But she obeyed, just as she had in Ba Sing Se. She didn't have the foresight to wonder whether she was being replaced by the shifty, dark-auraed earthbenders. Surely that couldn't happen.

The frown that adorned her face as she was seized from behind by imperial soldiers for treason was not confused, so much as utterly betrayed. Betrayed by both the prince and the princess. It was a lot to take. Almost too much. Sure, there had been negative energy. But how did it end up like this? How could he leave all of them? How could she act as if he had never come back in the first place?

Poof.

She was gone.

She was concealed under the invisibility cloak of bureaucracy that resided in the lava-heated lake. No one in court knew what happened to her and her friend. Only that the princess returned to her father's right-hand side alone.

But as the curtain drew closed on the second astrological event of that Fateful season, the performer returned for an encore.

The release from prison was like magic for her. She wasn't sure whether she would ever see the light of day again, not wanting to break out with the Earth Kingdom friends she had made, on the hope that she would be re-instated.

As she learned the ways of the earthbending Avatar look-a-likes, she slowly became aware of something.

Poof.

Whenever Suki was around, everything else disappeared.

In one young man's estimation, anyway.

And it bothered her.

Poof.

So she disappeared again.

Back to the circus, because she didn't want to deal with the gnawing feeling in her chest any more. After all, the circus did cure all sorts of negative energy the first time.

Was it a cure, though, or simply a treatment?

Ty Lee's life seemed to be a series of vanishing acts. But the two most important ones were on her own power.

But today, that pattern would be broken.

Because this time,

with no ulterior motive besides wondering why she went,

someone came after her.