I was born a firebender, but raised as an airbender. Perhaps stated better, I was born a firebender and raised as an airbender. Because for all my immediate family did to make me unconsciously renounce all that had to do with the firebending identity, that in of itself was of central importance to my image growing up.
My birthplace was a small fire community in rural Agaskia, and I had the traditional ceremony for every firebending newborn: I was born out of a C-section, conducted via my mother being given a heavy dose of traditional fireproofing medicine so as not to dissolve her tissue when the doctor burnt a perfect cut right down through her abdomen. There was never any threat posed by a natural birth, but traditional firebending values dictated that this was the “honourable” way to emerge into the world. My mother always told me it was simply another means of controlling women, but I always felt there was something more to it than that.
But I – no, and – I was raised an airbender at heart, so I never did learn the real reason for why such a complicated practice for delivering babies was so often preferred. All I ever got for answers was that the firebenders were a bunch of patriarchs who valued pseudo-intellectual ideas of machismo and the gender binary over the safety of even their own mothers or children. The only reason I had such a birth was that my mother had gone into labour while the family was on retreat in the wilderness, and a group of fellow firebending hunters from a nearby village just so happened to be strolling past their campsite at the time.
Like I said, I was still raised as an airbender. But my roots and outward abilities as a firebender were of equal importance to this image of mine, primarily constructed by my mother, aunt and grandmother. Back home, we lived in the quaint but hard-nosed mountain town of Hium Leja. It was a historically airbending settlement, and exactly the kind of place my all-female, all-firebending guardians wanted me to feel right at home in. They were all ogentushiteli, or extinguishers. They were conscientious objectors to the Firelord and the Fire Council, and were part of a new wave of dissidents who demanded a smashing of the “imperialist-firebending-industrial-complex" I was always hearing about. They didn’t want me to absorb such a supposedly fascistic culture, and so they felt the need to condition me into embracing the total opposite: the pacificistic, meditative ways of the airbenders.
It started with my mother bringing me to her weekly group sessions at the Singing Wind Chapel, where residents learned how to pay attention to the “songs'' and “melodies” of the wind. According to my mother, she was always so happy when she brought me along, because I would be dead silent the whole time, just curiously observing the calm, meditating folks around me. In fact, in her words, I never really was much of a fussy little one in general. I had no qualms about being taken most places, and the only thing that made me throw a tantrum was when I didn’t get to hear the ending of my favourite picture book at bedtime because Aunty was too tired. Mom still thinks to this day that it was all the good work of Hium Leja, but I think it had more to do with it just being me; and me being slightly weird.
I know this for near utmost certainty from the first time I attended school. It was in a virtually all-airbender kindergarten, and as with all children that age – even airbenders – most of the other kids became extremely rowdy when break time was called. I quickly found myself surrounded by toys and colouring supplies being ripped off the shelves, chairs being knocked over, something really loud falling over and smashing in the other room, and the mind-numbing sensation of dozens of clanky boots stampeding all over the floor. I ended up retreating to my cubby and staying there the whole twenty minutes, carefully constructing a bobcat out of the few pieces of Lego I had managed to salvage in the initial chaos. My teacher only came to check on me when break was over, and she told my mother I had a look of “poignant introspection” on my face. I was barely five, but it is still by far the clearest memory I have of my earliest years living in Hium Leja.
Being that one does not gain their bending abilities until early puberty, I spent most of my early childhood not feeling any particular difference between myself and my peers at school. They never would have even known I was a firebender unless I said so, and I never felt the need to, so I felt just like one of them pretty much at all times. As for the whole part about being brought up in a more peaceful culture, I never really felt that either growing up.
That isn’t to say my family didn’t work tirelessly to try and insinuate that for me though; they took me to every community conference, every winding singing session, every cultural celebration of air and nomadism and meditation; they gave me every book to read on the history of airbenders, of meditation and pacifism, of the atrocities of the Fire Empire; they made me watch documentaries on all those same things too. And although I enjoyed reading, none of the morals personally stuck with me. I have never been one to think in such absolutes, that this is absolutely right and this is absolutely wrong. On certain things yes, obviously; but when it came to political struggle sessions, the term ‘fence-sitter’ quickly became a buzzword for me, before I was even really in adolescence.
The only time I can remember when my firebending genes ever actually came up while living in Hium Leja, was at one point in my first year of middle school. We had just gotten our first major snowstorm of the year – one of many to come – and at break time the whole class came together and built a monumental snowman; the teachers even let us stay out slightly longer to finish it. After school that day, I climbed up the limbs of the six-foot beast and sat on top of its head, the thick packing snow not suffering so much as a dent throughout. I stared straight ahead over the sharp cliff drop just beyond the tall school fence, which descended into a deep blue lake below. But the snow had picked up again and it was incredibly misty, so all I saw was a white void. I thought it looked cool, so I took my time sitting there admiring it. Then this other kid in my class started climbing the snowman too and stopped as he stood on the edge of one of the three huge chunks that made it up.
“Hey,” he beamed at me from slightly below. “Are you a firebender?”
I looked down at him. “How could you tell?”
“Somethin’ about the way ya walked. I could tell it in ya.”
“Oh. Well, yes, I am a firebender. I can’t bend anything yet, though.”
“I know that, dumbass. I can’t bend anythin’ yet either.”
“Oh. Okay.”
With that, the guy hopped off the snowman and walked away, leaving me to bask in the whiteness all around me. I got so caught up in the ambience that I slipped off the snowman’s head and fell back-first onto the ground below. When I got up, I realised the snow was already quite a bit deeper than when I first ascended. I had to be back home soon, or mom would force me to shower to supposedly fend off an oncoming cold. And whether it was something about my “fiery” soul or not that put me off of water, the one thing that could still make me throw a tantrum was being forced to take an unwanted shower.