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It had only been a few weeks but Elani was already full of life. Her smile reminded Mai a lot of Ty Lee, although she wasn't a loud baby. She was calm most of the time; she smiled at the Kyoshi Warriors' antics and when their friends came to visit from the south pole, she waved at Appa flying over.
When Aang and Katara joined them, Sokka had already started making goofy faces at her.
"Oh, she's adorable!" Aang cooed and tickled the young girl's nose. Her high pitched giggle melted everyone's hearts.
"Do you want me to take her?"
"Oh, that would be great, thank you Aang. She's not very heavy but it can feel like it after some time." Ty Lee laughed.
Aang and Sokka immediately turned to showing Elani some (in their opinion) age appropriate tricks and grinned at her delightful laughs.
Ty Lee wore her enthusiastic grin, joking this soon after giving birth like it hadn't affected her at all. "Be careful, guys, the warriors would already kill for her and they've only known her for a few weeks."
Sokka put on a serious face at that. "I've only known her for a day but if anything happened to her I would kill everyone here and then myself."
Mai couldn't help but agree. She always thought she could never love someone as much as she loved Ty Lee, but as soon as she held her daughter in her arms, she knew her life's true meaning.
"Yeah, so maybe don't do that please."
"Oh don't worry, I would never do anything to get on the wrong side of any of you or Suki. Where is she anyway?"
"Speak of the spirits." Mai had spotted her walking down the street from the dojo straight towards their patio.
"Hey there handsome," Suki greeted, leaving Sokka to blush and stutter instead of a response. "Aang, Katara, how's the belly?"
Katara chuckled, "Hopefully empty soon, how's the warriors?"
"Oh they're good, we got an adorable new member recently and Mai's lessons have been very helpful."
Mai gave a small smile at that. She had fun training the girls, but it made her all the more sure that fighting wasn't for her anymore. She did find ways to incorporate her knife skills around the house, though.
They spent another while catching up and Katara, Aang, and Sokka spent almost a week on Kyoshi Island to celebrate Elani's birth and support Ty Lee and Mai with the added responsibilities.
Dear Aang,
How are you all? I know you've been waiting to see whether Tenzin might show some signs of airbending. Recently we have been seeing some peculiar things with Elani that we would like your opinion on.
Greetings,
Mai and Ty Lee
Hi,
We're good! Tenzin has been starting to show some signs of airbending and we've been watching his progress closely. I will be going to Omashu in a few weeks, so I can come by Kyoshi Island on the way.
See you soon,
Aang
"See, ok, wait." Suki tickled Elani under the nose with a small puffin dove feather, until she let out a sneeze that any great uncle could be proud of.
Aang jumped from joy. "Oh, spirits, that's awesome! Do you think she could be a bender? That would be fantastic!"
"Oh, come on, everyone in my family sneezes like that, it's not that special." Ty Lee cut in, clearly exasperated with the fuss.
Of course it would be great if Elani could be an airbender, she and Tenzin would have a much greater chance of rebuilding the culture than he had on his own, but Ty Lee wasn't convinced. Neither her nor Mai had any Air Nomad heritage, so how could Elani?
"Well, she has got to have it from someone", Suki pointed out. "Have you seen her handle a fan?"
She handed Elani a miniature Kyoshi Warrior fan, and they all watched as the small hands swung around at random, creating small gusts of wind around herself.
"Oh, common, what's a little bit of wind, you gave her a fan!" Ty Lee said but the others didn't seem to be paying her any mind as Aang presented Elani with some small rocks and showed her his marble trick to see if she could try to imitate it. She stared at Aang's rocks in fascination but held hers firmly in her hands.
Tenzin and Elani had become fast friends. Aang and Katara left him at Kyoshi Island a lot when they were traveling and so the two of them would spend their days playing on the beach or exploring the island.
"I'm boored," she whined not too rarely, followed by a new idea: "Oh, we should make a sand boat!!"
And so they would start off on another adventure until she inevitably grew bored of the halfway done project. Tenzin always happily tagged along with her, encouraging her with his enthusiasm.
Mai was reminded of her own adventures with childhood friends, Azula always setting the tone, Ty Lee and herself following with varying degrees of excitement. She supposed most young friendships look similar to that.
Elani didn't remind her of Azula in many ways. Most commonly she would see Ty Lee in her excited demeanor, her exaggerated expressions and the lightness in the way she spoke and carried herself. But that boredom, the casual way in which she treated her surroundings was clearly Mai's.
Tenzin and Elani sat opposite Aang, all in identical poses with their eyes closed, legs crossed, and arms relaxed. They had started training their bending and that came with a lot of spiritual training as well.
Ty Lee had thought about joining them, too. There was a spark inside her that she could set alight with the right winds, but she had decided to stay with the Kyoshi Warriors instead.
Elani enjoyed her training, she showed the marble trick to anyone who would let her (much to the Gaang's dismay) and sent winds through the dojo whenever she visited the warriors.
Now, though, as so often, she was sitting mostly still, deep in thought, without even her usual finger tapping.
Aang spoke in a serious tone so unlike him then: "Open your eyes now, but don't leave that meditative state. Move your hands and try to feel the air between your fingers. Realize every feel of it. You can barely notice it but it is all around you.
“Now slowly try to push the air to one side. Slowly. Feel how it flows. You cannot grasp air but you can move it if your mind is connected with the things you cannot see. You cannot force air but you can coax it to follow your will if you know it well enough."
It all seemed to be going a bit slowly for Ty Lee but Elani had assured her that with her mind still halfway in the spiritual realm, it wasn't half as torturous as it seemed from the outside.
"Now form a sphere right in front of you. Air, unlike water, earth, or fire, is not distinguishable from your surroundings if it is not moving. Airbending is about continuous movement. You can start it, keep it going, accelerate it, or slow it, but air will always move. You can only influence the speed and direction, you can never control it, just how you can never control your surroundings completely."
Through all this the three had been moving their hands through the air in front of them, Aang holding a spinning sphere of air. While the other two made the same movements, Ty Lee couldn't distinguish between the air in their hands and the air all around them.
She trusted Aang to train her daughter well, though, so she knew they would be able to get as wind-blowing as himself one day.
Airbending wasn't for her, she could never sit still and try feeling the air around her, instead of flying through it. That restlessness Elani had inherited, but she was Mai's daughter just as much. So even if the airbending came from Ty Lee, her ability to just observe without exploring was so very Mai's.