Team: Water Tribe
Round: 1
Category: Drabble
Prompt: (2) Jade (10) Romantic Pairing, Toph/Sokka
Word Count: 508

The bazaar was noisy, people crowded around, haggling this or that. Money trading hands as fast as wares and goods, at a dizzying pace. Sokka plopped down against a nearby wall, tired, hungry and bored. So bored. Sure, he enjoyed a good shopping trip as much as the next guy but after three days nonstop? Not only was he broke, he was over it. He watched Katara flit from shop to shop, trying on this, oogling that, all with poor Aang in tow. He was glad he wasn't him, that he was free to sit against this wall and do nothing.

He felt a plop down beside him and looked over.

"Oh, hey, Toph. You bored too?"

"Yup."

He smiled, Toph was easy to hang out with, "Did you buy anything? I got some more hunting stuff, and some more paper. A fashionable bag, to replace my other one ya know."

"Yea, I got some stuff. Mostly stuff Katara said I should get." Toph dumped a bag out beside them, mostly jewelery and other things fell out. "Sokka, what's jade? Katara insisted I should get this jade thing because it looked good on me."

"It's a stone made out of nephrite or jadeite. It's kinda pretty, a lot of ladies wear it in the Earth Kingdom." He replied, picking up a jade necklace. As that was the only jade piece, he assumed that's why she was asking. She furrowed her brow.

"Yea, but what color is it?"

His auto-sarcasm mechanism kicked in and he almost blurted out that duh, of course it's a light green color, can't you see it? But then he remembered who he was talking to and he paused. Toph had asked him before about the color of things. The water, the rocks, the sun and clouds. All of those were easy, he had little to no trouble. But jade was a more complex color than any of those. Not quite a white, not quite a green.

How would jade make her feel?

"Hello? Earth to Sokka. You still beside me or what?" Toph knocked on his head and he batted her hand away.

"Hey, hey! I was thinking, give me a moment." He crossed his arms in front of him. "Jade, jade… hmmm." Then he got it. "You know how you feel when the days are starting to warm up again and you step onto wet grass in the morning? Everything is quiet but coming alive, soft but starting to have an edge?"

"Yea… "

"That's what color jade is. It's being," He searched for a word for a moment. "Content. Jade is the feeling of being content."

"Being content, huh? Jade." She said, leaning over to rest her head on his shoulder. "I like it." He put the necklace in her hand and gave it a small squeeze.

"Glad I could be of some service, Toph." He smiled, not so bored any more. She laughed, feeling around the pile fore a bracelet next.

"Good. Can you tell me what color chartreuse is now?"