paixaorpg | This is a VERY rude awakening (completed)

Character(s): Toph and anyone else near the area
Content: Toph's rather unexpected arrival.
Setting: Joutenheim Gates
Time: Early Morning
Warnings: None that I can tell

Here's a well kept secret: Water Bisons are not all fun and games to sleep on when you're petrified of falling off one. You may love that Bison to death and trust him to not let you fall, but if you've just met, those concerns are bound to come up. More importantly, when you can't see anything to begin with, the prospect of falling is far more frightening than people think. How do you know how far you're falling, or when it'll stop. For those reasons, Toph wasn't really happy about sleeping on Appa. Of course, this doesn't take into account that the body gets tired and makes you sleep anyway, so in a matter of time you have very little say in the matter. Still, that doesn't decrease the danger, just the reluctance, which was why, several hours later, Toph had a rather rude awakening when she hit the ground full collision. She found that the ground was soft, and this relief was immediately abandoned when she realized a split second later it was almost FREEZING.

If she had been very far in the sky, that would have been it for Toph but as luck would have it, she only received a very hard drop on her bottom. She was raised a lady, so she only swore under her breath rather than with loud exclamation, and got up. She shivered and perked up her ears to listen, and especially felt the ground with her feet. It was a pain in the neck, because the ground was either very hard and cold where there wasn't snow and very wet and cold where there was snow. <i> This is Katara and Sokka weather</i> she thought grumpily.

Ahead of her were people, but they were way in front, maybe less than half a mile away. That wasn't good, but far from the only thing that was amiss. She couldn't get any assurance that Katara, Sokka or Aang were around, and she had already gotten a little acquainted with their biorhythms. Wherever she was, there were people up ahead, but nothing here felt familiar to her. Unless they had wandered off into the fire nation, which she highly doubted, the ground had the very uncomfortable feeling of being dead. In fact, most of this place, even though there were people, felt like it had held its breath too long. She shrugged her shoulders and walked on, kicking the snow about seeing if she could find some answers. If the others had left her behind, she was going to knock them around until they were rag dolls. This was definitely not a joke she found too funny.

She stopped when she felt she was closer to people, and started to shuffle around, hoping she wouldn't step on anyone's toes. Even the people here didn't feel right: she was used to people sounding a lot more excited, a little hurried, making polite conversation. Everyone here seemed to have this instinct to mind their own business, and if their heart rates were a little more quickened, she would have figured they were scared. This wasn't the case: these people just seemed to be lacking any kind of chi.

Bland, Toph thought, but considering her family status, she'd been used to bland people, just not people that had any kind of active energy. She was still contemplating this when she heard someone say, "Name."

She looked up, even though it was pointless. "Toph," she said, not bothering with the last name. "This might sound weird, but where am I?"

"Paixao, outside the gates of Joutenheim. You must be a foreigner, or you would have known immediately where you are. The giants are dead giveaway."

"Giants," Toph's voice trailed off, and indeed, she could feel ahead of her a massive sculpture of two figures, although she had no clue what they looked like. "Yeah, where is this place again? Last I checked, me and my friends were headed into Earth Nation territory."

"How droll," came the dry reply. "Well, you aren't there anymore little girl, so kindly step aside, and get your journal and map. They'll explain everything."

"Yeah, see, that won't help me." Toph waved a hand over her face. "I'm a little lacking in the visual category."

"Not my problem."

"Okay," Toph said softly, sounding hurt. "Sorry to have bothered you. By the way, that chair your sitting in, isn't it a bit too rickety?"

"What do you talking about? It's just fi-gahhh!" Toph smiled as she heard the chair break apart, and hoped he got splinters in his butt along with pants full of snow. She walked off, and silently cursed. She might have to get some kind of footwear if she didn't want her only way to feel the world around her to freeze off. Where was she to go?