She goes to Dao's house after her first earthbending lesson. "Shifu Riko is a strange person," she remarks.
"Maybe she's a really good earthbender," he hypothesizes. "What with being so serious about her rocks."
"Maybe, but she doesn't have any other students - not right now, anyway - so whether she's a good teacher remains to be seen."
"Yeah, if the ground wants people to stop walking on it, it's kind of screwed," laughs Dao.
"Or 'walk over there, I have an itch', I don't know. Maybe Shifu Riko has an idea and will tell me eventually."
"I would like to actually, you know, bend some earth, and I thought I was going to today. I haven't gotten it to work trying it on my own. Perhaps it's ignoring me because I don't listen to it."
"Perhaps the earth speaks very slowly, and I need to show up every day to listen to the two syllables it utters at around noon."
Beila's next lesson lasts longer, and she shows up at Dao's, visibly exhausted, dry of perspiration thanks only to the constant play of wind around her. She flops onto him and groans.
"Today the earth was mad at me and it decided to show its displeasure in the form of a tiny madwoman."
"She said I wasn't listening to the earth, and if it was so hard, I should see how much harder it would be to get rocks to move by brute force, and I spent most of the day carrying chunks of stone around. As in, in my arms. And you know how I can barely walk without airbending? That does not get easier when I'm carrying something heavy, I fell over a lot. Occasionally under the heavy rocks. This is me after fixing up a lot of bruises as best I could. I don't think this is standard earthbender training."