The Greatest Avalanche

05: First Lesson - Touch Rock

You know, I’d always been weirded out by the story of Romulus and Remus.

They’d cofounded Rome and indulged in a little fratricide when they couldn’t agree on a name with an obvious victor, but before the brotherly murder they’d been raised by wolves. And not just raised, but from practical infancy given their mother had been ordered to abandon them on the banks of the Tiber River. Something about vestal virgin giving birth seemed to alarm the local ruler so he’d ordered them killed. Standard mythological origin story, really.

But, being raised by wolves never sat well with me.

Predators ate meat. Yeah, that was super obvious, me, but their survival depended on being willing to take every opportunity they could to eat because Nature was a harsh bitch.

Of course, I’d also read about the real life documented cases of children, often toddlers, being adopted by animals.

The monkey troops and apes sorta made sense given we had some closer relationship to them, but the fact multiple children got adopted by packs of wild dogs and even wolves, and it was documented, fucked with my head. I knew it was real, but it was real in the same sense I acknowledged quantum mechanics. I.e., I nodded and turned away to do something else.

I just could not get my head around the idea of these predators not immediately eating an easy meal when it suited them, so while I could acknowledge the feral adoption happened, it was difficult to process it as my gut always found it fishy.

All this to say…

I was very conflicted sitting in the badgermole den, covered in cub slobber, with an apex hyper carnivore gently rumbling while the cubs nursed.

“Are you dumb?” I asked. “Broken? I’m not complaining, okay maybe a bit, that was a lot of slobber,” I said, wiping my face for the twentieth time and still finding yet more to wipe away. “But like, why do you trust me with your babies? I’m a human! We have poke-y sticks! Also I’m snack sized! Surely you see why this is weird!?”

The badgermole shifted and I felt warm breath on my face before I got licked yet again. “Great, thanks,” I huffed, wiping my face again.

My earlier fear had faded given it was very clear I wasn’t going to be eaten, but now I was just stuck here wondering what I was to even do.

After all, I’d been brought all the way down here, and I was blind. Chances were pretty high I couldn’t get out on my own, so now I was stuck down here until the badgermole brought me out or some earth bender came to find me.

Assuming said earth bender was willing to chance a badgermole on its home turf deep underground.

Un-fucking-likely.

“Blargh, I say, blargh,” I muttered aloud.

I kicked my legs and sat against the stone wall of the den. Where my sandals went, I had no idea. They were among the first things to go in Puppy Hell.

Still…

The stone felt kinda nice. Earth in general did, like when I got to hang out in the garden with Lan Lan.

It was about the only thing I was reasonably certain made me fairly sure I was an earth bender because in my old life touching dirt and rocks didn’t cut it for me.

I’d never been a new age ‘connect with the earth’ type. I had enjoyed Nature well enough when I could, but standing barefoot on toes had just made me think of those little parasites who would burrow into your feet if given the chance.

Here? It felt… right.

It wasn’t like there was a heavenly feeling of warmth or something. Instead, there was a certainty to it that almost everything else lacked.

When I walked on wood, when I was separate from earth, there was the vaguest feeling of being… airy. Like I wasn’t anchored down. It wasn’t distracting in the least, but it was notable because I’d never had that issue in my life before.

Touching grass, or more accurately the soil beneath the grass, actually helped calm me down here.

I blew a bang out of my eyes. Not that I could see it of course. “Would be real nice to know how this actually works,” I grumbled.

A slight boost in surety when standing on earth or stone was not exactly the greatest superpower to have. Which was frustrating as I knew there was more.

Father liked to talk about his business dealings over dinner, and earth benders came up a lot.

They were frequently other nobles, people with lots of money, but they popped up everywhere. The best guards were earth benders, but so many had been taken up by the army lately and he’d had to make do with ‘lesser’ men trained in the spear for his caravans. But they also were frequently brought on for construction, for mining, for road laying, some specialized in jewel crafting, some helped with transporting goods on the ‘Ba Sing Se’ trains which sounded fascinating, and more and more. This wasn’t even counting what military earth benders could do.

But, so far I’d had… nothing. Just a few odd incidents with a stone block moving, pebbles shifting, and a lot of horrible poetry read at me.

“Don’t suppose you know what to do?” I asked the badgermole mother as her cubs settled in around her to nap.

Badgermoles were said to have taught the first earth benders, although how was never said…

In answer, she rumbled, low, stood up to the whining of her cubs, grabbed me, and sat back down. A massive claw bigger than my whole body pulled me in close as she proceeded to… cuddle me.

Seriously, her nuzzling jostled my whole body, but…

Her whiskers were not making me ticklish!

…

Some time later, the cubs had resettled, many around me. I tried wiggling, but that did nothing but make her grip me tighter.

“…an animal is giving me mandatory nap time. Some reincarnation this is,” I said, before yawning.

Badgermole fur was surprisingly soft, and she was very warm.

A nap wouldn’t hurt…

~~~~

I woke to my pillow betraying me by shifting and emitting a low rumble that really confused me because marshmallows weren’t supposed to make motorcycle sounds.

Then I snapped awake as I remembered I’d gotten lost, abducted, and adopted in short order.

The badgermole mother had shifted, craning her neck upward and jostling me around in the process. She seemed…

Not tense, from the way her fur and bulk felt, but alert?

I waited, head tilted, listening for whatever she had heard but nothing came for several minutes.

Stone shifted, and another badgermole stepped in. I knew this because it gave off a deep rumble similar to the one from the badgermole mother who’d taken me away.

It hadn’t occurred to my stupid, idiotic brain that badgermoles might have devoted mates.

There was an answering trill from the mother, followed by the excited whines of all the cubs.

This reunion shattered as it sniffed the air and I knew it became aware of my presense. The cubs excitement were silenced with a sharp bark

A trill answered, and thudding steps and grinding of claw on stone made my heart quicken as I realized…

Well, the mom may have said I was hers, but that did not mean the dad did. There were lots of examples of males killing younglings they disliked or weren’t parent of, and whatever maternal shortcircuit got me adopted may not happen in the male.

I could die here.

I barely breathed as the immense bulk came up to to me, step by step, claws that I knew could cut through stone clicking on the ground. I trembled as I felt its warm, moist breath wash over me.

A low growl built up in its throat and then…

I heard a smack. Like, a literal smack, and an answering growl from the female. Had…

Had the female just hit him?

There was a wounded sounded trill from the male, followed by growl from the female.

He then proceeded to…

Lick my face.

Ugh.

~~~~

My worries for badgermole related mauling, at least with this group, were unfounded.

Okay, that was a lie. The male had been hostile right up until the female knocked some sense to him. But so far they seem to have adopted me and, when it wasn’t mandatory nap time, they both seemed content to let me wander the den.

It was surprisingly spacious, although given how big badgermoles were compared to me, it’d have to be. The stone was all smoothed out in a way that briefly confused me but made sense as I thought about it. Smooth stone was nice to walk on. I imagined badgermoles felt the same and given they were innate earth benders, why not smooth out their den?

But it was also sealed off.

They must have used earth bending to open and close it. Some sort of air ciculation remained given the air didn’t feel oppressively stagnant, so maybe they left holes somewhere. But that meant no wandering out.

The thought made me snort. Yeah, escaping into miles and miles of badgermole tunnels and caves seemed like a great idea.

The badgermole female, or at least I thought it was her, eventually left while the male stayed behind. Which was kinda weird. We were deep in the earth with stone walls. The chances of something breaking in was minimal.

Although…

Was there something down here that would hunt badgermoles? That was a disturbing thought.

Further musings were broken as I felt a tug on my sleeve. “Hey!” I snapped.

Only a playful growl answered me as a cub pulled my sleeve, until with a tear it ripped my sleeve.

I went still.

Lan Lan had helped pick this dress! She said I looked good in it! And…and!

With a fierce growl, I leaped back at the badgermole, or where I thought it was. It gave a surprised oof as I crashed into it and I wrestled it to the ground…

Briefly.

“There! Take that!” I growled, as it went belly up.

It was at this point I realized the reset of the den had gone very quiet aside from the sniffs of many badgermole cubs.

I realized I may have made a mistake.

Then the stampede began and I was swept away.

~~~~

As it turns out, wrestling badgermole cubs was very tiring.

They were young and already my size or bigger. I think the first one may have been surprised when I tackled it, but that had meant the others saw me as fair game.

I liked to think I put up a good fight, but one me did not equal half a dozen badgermole cubs the size of golden retrievers.

The male did eventually save me, breaking up the wrestling match I’d drowned in. In the aftermath I laid fully on the floor, recovering but also enjoying the sense I got from the stone. I stretched out, feeling the comforting, cool stone beneath my skin from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

It was at this point while catching my breath I felt something.

I wasn’t sure what it was. But it had felt almost like a vibration in the earth, akn to tapping on a piece of wood on one side and feeling it resonate through to the other. Except it felt almost like more.

It was disorienting, but I felt as if I could tell the direction it came from.

I heard the dad badgermole shift in a way that suggested alertness, but soon even the cubs did as well as a silence fell upon the den.

Then stone shifted and the badgermole female entered, rumbling as she closed the stone behind her. Something dropped to the ground afterward.

I realized the female had been very successful in her hunt given shortly afterward I heard the sounds of meat tearing and bone crunching as the two adults fed. I think the cubs might have gotten a nibble or two in, but they still nursed. Badgermoles evidently left almost nothing behind.

But that wasn’t what I paid attention to.

Instead, it was that pulse.

I’d felt it, through the ground, before the badgermole even arrived. Like a tremor, but instead of being everywhere, it’d been directed. The badgermoles had all sensed it, too.

What’s more, there was…

I felt like I’d known something was there. Blurry, fuzzy, yes, but for the first time I since I’d woken up, it felt almost like…

Almost like I’d been able to see.

~~~~

AN:

HiddenMaster: Another slow chapter, but I like building up and working with this, and going through the realization, the refinement of earth bending from badgermoles is… fun.

Also Toph bonding with the badgermoles a bit is still very cute to me. I think seeing more of what life is like with them is another neat thing to explore.

I will say her parents and Lan Lan are almost certainly freaking the fuck out at this point. That will get worse before it gets better.

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