V3.C47. Listening to Rocks

Chapter 47: Listening to Rocks

The back gardens of the Omashu Royal Palace were less a garden and more a geological playground that had politely allowed some plants to grow. It was a vast, tiered expanse of sculpted stone terraces, mossy boulders, hidden grottoes, and a few defiant, gnarled trees that had punched their way up through the rock. The morning sun painted the grey stone in warm gold, and the air smelled of damp earth and crushed mint.

Aang stood nervously in a small, sandy clearing, dressed in simple Earth Kingdom trousers and a tunic. Opposite him stood Princess Suyin, looking entirely too cheerful for the hour. She wore practical training garb, her hair in two neat loops.

King Bumi stood on a nearby boulder, looking like a particularly deranged mountain spirit. “FIRST LESSON!” he boomed, making several nearby sparrowkeets take flight in panic. “EARTHBENDING! It is the element of SUBSTANCE! Of STUBBORNNESS! Of BEING TOO HEAVY TO PUSH AROUND! Unlike air…” he shot a glance at Aang, “…which is all ‘whoosh’ and ‘maybe later’ and ‘let’s go see what that cloud looks like from the other side.’ EARTH says, ‘NO, I AM A ROCK. DEAL WITH IT.’”

From a shaded terrace overlooking the clearing, Sokka and the twins, Lin and Wei, had set up a spectator area. They had a small picnic blanket, a bowl of salted nuts, and the air of people about to watch a very strange sporting event.

“Ten copper pieces on Suyin,” Wei said, nudging Sokka. “What?No! Betting on my friend!” Sokka protested, then lowered his voice. “What are the odds?” “Suyin’s been able to make pebbles dance since she was six,” Lin said. “Aang’s got arrows on his head, but can he make a rock sit still? That’s the real question.”

Down in the clearing, Bumi hopped off his boulder and landed without a sound. “Before you MOVE the earth, you must LISTEN to it! It has things to say! Mostly ‘I am heavy’ and ‘get off my lawn,’ but sometimes it whispers about underground rivers and the secrets of moles!” He pointed a gnarled finger at a fist-sized, ordinary-looking rock in the center of the clearing. “BEHOLD! A ROCK! Your first opponent! Your task, Aang, is not to hit it, not to lift it, not to throw it at Suyin, tempting, I know but to LISTEN TO IT. Tell me what it Is thinking.”

Aang blinked. “What it’s… thinking.” “YES! Is it a happy rock? A sad rock? A rock that regrets its life choices and wishes it had been born a juicy melon? FIND OUT!”

Sokka choked on a nut. The twins dissolved into silent, shaking laughter.

Aang looked at Suyin, who gave him an encouraging, if slightly pitying, smile. He took a deep breath, walked over to the rock, and sat cross-legged in front of it. He closed his eyes, trying to look meditative.

“No, no, NO!” Bumi yelled, stomping over. “You are an AIRBENDER! You listen with your SKIN, with the WIND in your EARHAIR! Earth is DIFFERENT! You must listen with your BONES! With your TOES! With the part of your brain that gets angry when someone cuts in line!” He shoved Aang lightly. “Lie down! Put your EAR on it! GET INTIMATE WITH THE ROCK!”

Gingerly, Aang lay down on the sandy ground and pressed his ear against the cool, gritty surface of the stone.

“What’s it saying?” Bumi whispered loudly. “Um…it’s… not saying anything?” “NONSENSE! You’re not listening hard enough! SUYIN! Show him!”

Suyin sighed good-naturedly, walked over, and lay down on the other side of the same rock, pressing her ear to it. She closed her eyes for a moment, then her face lit up. “Oh! This one is… impatient. It’s been here for three hundred years and thinks the lichen on its north side is growing too slowly. It finds it rude.”

Aang stared at her. “You can hear that?” “Of course!”Bumi cackled. “She has the GIFT! The CRAZY! It runs in the family! Now you try! What is the rock’s opinion on… RAIN?”

Aang pressed his ear harder. He heard the distant shout of a merchant in the city, the crunch of Sokka eating another nut, the faint whistle of wind through the canyon. The rock was silent. “I think…it’s neutral on rain?” Aang ventured. “WRONG!”Bumi shrieked, popping up right between them. “This rock HATES rain! It washes away its favorite dust! It told Suyin just now! Weren’t you listening?”

From the terrace, Wei fake-whispered to Lin, “I think the rock also said it thinks the Avatar has a nice smile.” Lin snorted.

The “lesson” continued in this vein for an hour. Aang was instructed to “ask the pebble for permission to move it” (the pebble, according to Suyin, grudgingly agreed). He was told to stand in a horse stance and “feel the earth’s stubbornness rising up through your heels.” This mostly resulted in his legs getting tired.

The funniest moment came when Bumi had them play “Rock, Paper, Earthbender.” The rules were nonsensical and changed every round. “EARTHBENDER beats ROCK because it can throw it! ROCK beats PAPER because it is too heavy to blow away! PAPER beats EARTHBENDER if you write a funny poem on it! NOW GO!”

Aang, utterly confused, mimed throwing a rock. Suyin immediately unfolded an imaginary piece of paper and pretended to read a poem: “There once was a bender from air, who got dirt stuck up in his hair…” Aang, playing along, clutched his heart and fell down dramatically, “defeated.”

The twins were howling with laughter, rolling on their blanket. Sokka was wiping tears from his eyes. “This is the best training I’ve ever seen! And I once watched a platypus bear try to teach its young to swim!”

During a water break, Suyin sat next to Aang on a low wall. “Don’t feel bad,” she said, taking a sip. “Dad’s methods are… unique. But there’s a point underneath. Earth isn’t like water or air. You can’t just guide it or ride it. You have to be a part of it. To move it, you have to be even more stubborn than it is.”

Aang nodded, looking at his hands. “I’m trying. It just feels so… still. I’m used to motion.” “That’s why he started with listening,”Suyin said. “If you can understand its stillness, you can learn to share in its strength. It’s not about forcing it to move. It’s about convincing a tiny part of it that moving is its own idea.”

From the terrace, Lin cupped her hands around her mouth. “OOOH, SUYIN! GIVING PRIVATE LESSONS NOW? IS THAT WHAT THE ROCK TOLD YOU TO DO?” Wei joined in.“CAREFUL, AVATAR! SHE MIGHT TRY TO TEACH YOU ABOUT ‘THE BIRDS AND THE BADGER-MOLES’ NEXT!”

Suyin’s cheeks flushed a brilliant pink. She scowled at her siblings. “Ignore them. They’re idiots whose brains are made of the same rock they think is so funny.” Aang chuckled,his own face feeling a bit warm. “It’s okay. Sokka’s the same.”

Bumi, who had been busily trying to balance three smaller rocks on top of a big rock while humming an off-key tune, suddenly whirled around. “ENOUGH REST! PHASE TWO! SENSORY DEPRIVATION!” He produced two thick, rough-woven sacks from seemingly nowhere. “BLINDFOLDS! If you cannot see, you must feel the earth! You will navigate the obstacle course by FOOT FEELING ALONE!”

He pointed to a chaotic assortment of low stone pillars, rolling logs (courtesy of the gardeners), and shallow pits he’d apparently just earthbent into the ground.

“This is gonna be good,” Sokka said, leaning forward eagerly as Aang and Suyin were blindfolded.

What followed was a masterpiece of slapstick. Aang, trying to sense the earth, took a cautious step, immediately tripped over a pillar he’d misjudged, and went sprawling. Suyin, moving with more innate confidence, still walked directly into a log that rolled, causing her to yelp and windmill her arms before sitting down hard.

“FEEL THE VIBRATIONS!” Bumi cackled, jumping up and down on his boulder to create misleading tremors. “THE EARTH IS SPEAKING! IT’S SAYING ‘WATCH YOUR STEP, DUMMY!’”

At one point, Aang and Suyin, both disoriented, shuffled cautiously toward what they each thought was open ground and collided gently. They froze, hands out. “Sorry!”they both said at once. “OOOH,A COLLISION!” Wei yelled.

“IT’S FATE! THE ROCKS BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER!” “MAYBE THEY SHOULD LISTEN TO EACH OTHER’S HEARTBEATS INSTEAD!”Lin added, dying of laughter.

Suyin, mortified, took off her blindfold and threw it at the terrace. It fell short. “YOU TWO ARE THE WORST!” she shouted, but she was fighting a smile.

Aang pulled off his own blindfold, grinning despite his bruises. He looked at the “obstacle course,” then at Bumi, who was now trying to see if he could lick his own elbow. The method was madness. But for the first time, lying in the dirt after a fall, he had felt it—a deep, resonant hum through the stone, a patient, immovable presence. He hadn’t been able to understand its “thoughts,” but he had felt its reality. Its substance.

It was a start.

Bumi abandoned the blindfolds and declared the lesson over. “PROGRESS! The rock has acknowledged your existence! It still thinks you’re a flighty nuisance, but that’s a start! Tomorrow, we see if you can ask it to do a little dance! A TANGO, PERHAPS!”

As they trudged out of the garden, sandy, bruised, and exhausted, Suyin fell into step beside Aang. “Sorry about my brothers.” “Don’t be,”Aang said, his spirit lighter than it had been in days. “It was fun. And… I think I felt something. Right before I face-planted into that pit.” Suyin smiled.“That’s Dad’s teaching. The lesson is always in the mess.” From behind them,they heard Lin’s voice, singing a made-up song: “Aang and Suyin, sitting in the dirt, T-R-Y-I-N-G to not get hu-urt!”

Suyin groaned, but Aang just laughed, the sound echoing off the stone walls of the palace, a moment of pure, unburdened joy in the long, hard road to summer’s end.