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Year 1 BG, 3 Months Before Sozin’s Comet and the Air Nation Genocide
Terror constricted Aang’s heart as yet another gale force wind sent Appa plummeting towards the churning waters below.
Great Wandering Spirit, he didn’t want to die!
But no amount of desperation was going to save him, not in this weather. Not when he was stuck more than a hundred miles from shore, so disoriented he didn’t even know in which direction safety lay. Not when a giant, ninety-foot wave towered over him, ready to swallow both him and Appa alive.
Aang watched his death approach with wide eyes, fear freezing him in place like a tiny rabbit before a great dragon. And then he was screaming, yanking at Appa’s reins with all his might, trying to make the wind lift them faster, to get them high enough to avoid the crushing water. His loyal sky bison turned nearly perpendicular to the ground, ascending quicker than Aang had ever seen any bison manage in his twelve years of life, but he still wasn’t fast enough to outpace nature.
The force of the wave, when it hit, sent the pair tumbling through the depths of the ocean in a dizzying, painful crash. Aang barely maintained his grip on Appa’s reins, his grip on consciousness even more tenuous. Not that a higher level of awareness would have helped. The black ocean water pressed at him from all sides. So deep underwater, the young boy had no indication of which way to swim for the surface—as likely to go deeper as he was to reach the blessed air above.
Heavily concussed and rapidly running out of oxygen, a normal person would have stood no chance at surviving. But Aang was not normal; he was an Avatar. And though he was only twelve, such dire straits were still capable of triggering the ultimate defensive backstop of his position.
His eyes snapped open, an eerie blue glow shining from the orbs and lighting up the arrow tattoos that marked his body. Around the world, the eyes of three other twelve-year-old children burned with spiritual light, announcing their Avatar status for all to see.
Four years too early.
Energy flooded Aang’s system and knowledge from a thousand lifetimes of airbenders spilled through his mind. But he was stuck in water.
A young girl dressed in dyed cerulean furs, eyes shining the same color as Aang’s, appeared beside him. She didn’t understand what was happening, why her awareness was suddenly split between her icy home in the north and this watery grave, why a thousand master waterbenders were whispering analysis in her mind, but she knew she needed to save this boy.
“Help me,” Aang begged, not knowing and not caring who this girl was, only that he didn’t want to die.
And without hesitation she stepped into his body, instinctively seizing control of the other twelve-year-old’s arms and moving them in a swirling master level bending form that she had never learned in this life. The water twisted around them and Appa in a spherical vortex, power ready to propel Aang to safety, but even all of their past lives could not answer the question of which direction he needed to move to get to the surface. His only hope was in mere preservation, for even an Avatar could not escape this situation alone.
So instead he froze, a ball of solidified water sending the young airbender into a state of suspended animation, his life paused in stasis by the combined power of the Avatar spirit and the effects of a sub-zero temperature. His heart was stopped, but death did not take him. Rescue at least was still possible.
But it would never come.
In the Fire Nation a peasant girl was brought up from the slums of the capital city to the palace to be presented before Fire Lord Sozin, her family delighted by their unexpected change in status. And in the Earth Kingdom, a general of Ba Sing Se’s standing army looked upon his firstborn son with a proud smile. Their eyes too were glowing blue, but their minds never traveled from their own bodies.
Meanwhile, in the Northern Water Tribe, the chief announced a feast in honor of his best friend’s daughter, the newest Avatar of the Water Tribes, an announcement he hadn’t believed he would have reason to make for another four years. But when the girl returned to her own body, her memories of Aang’s predicament were fractured and vague.
In a different world, one where Aang had not been forced into the Avatar state until he was sixteen, the age at which the Avatar connection naturally opened between the four Avatars, the airbender would have had three powerful friends actively searching for him. But in this world the Avatars were too young, and even the waterbending girl didn’t realize his danger. No one knew to look.
Weeks passed. The glowing blue of their eyes never wavered. Slowly the energy required to maintain the Avatar state drained them until one day the three children all fell into comas, but unlike Aang, these three Avatars were not frozen in suspended animation. Their bodies needed food and water; their muscles needed to move to prevent atrophy. As their comas persisted, the children’s health faded and their immune systems broke down. Within two years all three non-frozen Avatars were dead.
But Aang remained, trapped in a luminescent sphere of ice. For eighty-four years he survived beneath the sea until, finally, the spiritual energy failed even him. The light flickered and died.
And at that exact moment, four women around the world went into labor.
Year 83 AG, August, The Night of the Full Moon
In the Fire Nation, a golden-eyed baby announced his birth with a piercing wail. It was a miracle, the attending healers said, that the child had survived, born as he was with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. An unlucky time of day for a child of fire to enter the world, they whispered, pointing to the full moon shining silver bright in the night sky. The first non-bender born to Sozin’s line, they predicted, watching the Lady Ursa cradle her new son with pity.
Zuko, a seething Prince Ozai declared they would call their boy, thinking to name his son for the failure that his nighttime birth represented. And his wife agreed, for the name also meant ‘loved one.’
A much different welcome greeted the tiny girl who drew her first breath in the icy tundra of the Southern Water Tribe. Born beneath a full moon, surely the chief’s second-born would be nothing less than a powerful waterbender. And so they named her ‘blessed’ and toasted to baby Katara as they celebrated around a giant bonfire.
Toph was born blind, the milky sheen of her green eyes making this fact instantly apparent to the new Beifong parents. Their child was so small, so helpless, and this infirmary would keep her that way all her life. They cried and cursed the spirits for their cruelty and vowed never to let any new harm befall their darling daughter. The couple was wealthy enough, connected enough, that she would want for nothing. They would protect her from the harsh reality that existed outside the high walls of their city estate.
When the air nomad boy was born to the secret society of surviving airbenders, he was not given a name.
Decades in hiding had changed much about the air nomad culture. Before the genocide, their community had observed a strict separation of the sexes, with the males calling the southern and northern air temples home (in as much as a nomadic people called anywhere home), while the women claimed the east and the west. Now the entirety of their people resided together, always moving from one location to another within the sparsely populated mountains of the Sky Peak range at the northernmost end of the Earth Kingdom. Near though they were to the once-great Northern Air Temple, they never ventured too close to their old enclave. They rarely soared through the skies during the day, limiting long flights for moonless nights. Their once brightly colored orange clothing was exchanged for camouflaging brown; the arrow tattoos that used to decorate the bodies of their masters existed now only in their oral history. It was a life of isolation and secrecy, but it kept them safe.
Despite all they had lost, though, some traditions could be preserved. And so when the gray-eyed baby was placed in his mother’s arms, they called him zephyr, one of a list of endearments used to address young children. The boy would pick his own name—Aang—when he turned ten after a week of guided meditation.
Year 99 AG, August, The Birthday of the Avatars
Prince Zuko breathed in a controlled rhythm, his bending syncing the flickering of the candles he’d placed in a semi-circle around him to every inhale and exhale. Rising and falling, in and out, over and over. Today he was sixteen, a man in the eyes of his nation, and he was no closer to catching any of the Avatars than he’d been upon his banishment at thirteen. His birthday was just a stark reminder of that fact.
Azula was born lucky. I was lucky to be born.
Three years, and he had nothing to show for it. Three years of constant travel, sailing the world on his decrepit ship, and he’d not managed a single Avatar sighting. Of course, the Northern Water Tribe was out as far as exploring went, safe behind their frozen walls. And all intelligence reports confirmed that the Southern Water Tribe had no waterbenders left, so he’d not ever bothered to search there. And the air nomads, if any had survived, were in the wind.
So he’d focussed his efforts on the Earth Kingdom ever since his exile. After all, the Earth Avatar was the only one Zuko could be reasonably sure was still alive. The last Fire Avatar had died in a coma almost a hundred years ago, and no one had stepped forward to claim the position for themself or someone they knew yet. And the Water Avatar hadn’t tried to rescue the Southern Water Tribe from the raids that had almost wiped out their population, so he or she was probably also dead, along with the Air Avatar who would have died along with the rest of his people.
That only left Earth, though why that Avatar hadn’t stepped up in defense of the Earth Kingdom was anyone’s guess—Zuko was inclined to believe he or she was hanging back to guard one of the major strongholds like Ba Sing Se (a cowards approach, but understandable).
Assuming of course that the last generation of Avatars weren’t all already dead and the cycle hadn’t started over, in which case he should be looking for a child or maybe a teenager.
In either case, the Earth Kingdom was still his best bet. He only had to secure one enemy Avatar to end his banishment after all.
The only problem was that the Earth Kingdom was massive, and for all the Fire Nation’s conquests, the vast majority of the land was still in open rebellion, at the very least, or else completely outside of their control. The fact of the matter was, if one person wanted to disappear there, it wouldn’t be too terribly difficult to do so.
This meditation really wasn’t helping to soothe his mind. Looked like Uncle was wrong for once. Zuko only wished he could feel happier about it.
He’d woken up in a foul mood this morning. Snapped one too many times at his crew for admittedly very minor infractions. Yelled at his uncle for suggesting he drink some tea to help calm his temper. And promptly been sent back to his room for some deep breathing exercises.
Focus. He needed to focus on the flame, feel his chi warming his breast, filling his lungs with energy and spreading in a lazy pattern through his limbs. Focus. Rise and fall. Up and down. Over and over.
“Aaaah!” a male voice shouted in shock, and Zuko’s eyes snapped open.
Whatever irritation he was about to unleash on his overwrought crew member promptly died in his throat when he got a look at his surroundings, and then it was him who was scrambling back with a cry of alarm.
He was sitting on the edge of a mountain-side cliff so high in elevation that the clouds blanketed the lichen grasses in a thick veil of fog. A quick peek over the side showed a sheer drop of several thousand feet into a ravine far below with dozens of thin rocky spires shooting up from the valley floor, each nearly as high as his own ledge. Sparse trees covered their tops, giving way to a bare stone that disappeared into mist as Zuko’s eyes tracked down, lending them the appearance of floating.
The terrain was unmistakable. He was in the Sky Peak Mountains.
“Who are you? Why have you taken me?” the banished prince demanded, tone hardened to hide his fear (a pointless effort considering his initial response).
“Me? You’re the one who just appeared!” the other boy exclaimed, his words pronounced with some accent Zuko couldn’t place. He was only a touch shorter than the prince, with a willowy frame, close-cropped brown hair, and big grey eyes that appeared far too innocent for a boy who looked to be Zuko’s same age.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zuko snarled. “I know you did something to me! People don’t just appear on the top of mountains.”
The boy got a stubborn set to his jaw and insisted, “Well, you did.”
“No, I didn’t”
“Um, yes you did.”
“No, I did not,” Zuko growled, words coming out more and more clipped as his frustration grew.
Conversely, as Zuko’s expression grew grumpier, the other boy slowly began to smile.
“Did too!” he singsonged.
“I did not!”
“Yes, you di—”
“Enough! Tell me what you did! And tell me who you are!”
“My name’s Aang,” Aang introduced himself cheerfully. He knew the elders would be angry that he was talking to this outsider, but… “Are you a spirit?”
Zuko blinked. “What?”
“I’ve never met a spirit before,” Aang continued blithely. “Is that why you’re confused? Did you not mean to travel from the Spirit World? Did you fall or something? Is that a thing? Can you just fall out of the Spirit World like falling down a hole? Or are you one of those spirits who’s trapped here? Is this your sacred spot? Oh…Oh! I’m so sorry! Have I disturbed it? Is that why you’re angry? I swear I can—”
“I’m not a spirit!” Zuko shouted, cutting off Aang’s rambling apology.
“Oh,” the airbender squinted at him. “Are you sure?”
“What? Yes, I’m sure!”
“Huh. Well, then how did you get all the way up here?”
Zuko’s jaw dropped. “That’s what I’ve been trying to ask you!”
“Riiight. But I don’t know how you got here. I was just meditating and then you popped up across from me.”
“But that’s impossible,” Zuko muttered. Even to his own ears his voice sounded weak. Hesitant. “I was in my room on my ship.”
“If you’re not a spirit, what’s your name?” Aang pressed now that it looked like his new friend had calmed down some.
“Zuko,” the prince finally answered after deciding that it was probably harmless to identify himself to the other boy. And then he was suddenly back in his room, alone.
“Spirits! What?” He ran his hands over his body, checking to make sure everything had come back with him even if he felt no pain. Nothing was missing. He was okay, but what was that?
Uncle said he’d had a vision once.
Zuko, he was lucky to be born. But could the spirits have finally decided to show him some favor? Could that boy be…? It seemed preposterous. Aang really didn’t look like much. He was naive, innocent, like he’d somehow escaped the harsh realities of the world, like the war hadn’t touched him. Zuko could tell that after only a few minutes in his presence. How could someone who smiled like that be an Avatar?
Still though, the Sky Peak mountains. He recognized that area from his visit to the Northern Air Temple last year. Going there was a better plan than Zuko had had an hour ago.
Meanwhile back on a misty cliff, Aang was staring at the empty spot from which Zuko had just disappeared with a furrowed brow. “He said he wasn’t a spirit,” the airbender grumbled. “A confused spirit, more like. Do you think spirits can be confused about being spirits, Momo?” he asked his pet flying lemur that had just flown up to perch on his shoulder.
The animal chirped in response and held out his hand for a treat. Laughing, Aang passed him a couple of berries to eat.
§§§
Katara swirled her hands, keeping the fish she’d just caught suspended above her.
“Sokka, look!” She called, happily surprised by her success.
But her brother wasn’t paying her any attention, eyes rapt on the water and spear held in a ready position. “Shhh! Katara, you’re going to scare it away.”
“But, Sokka! I caught one!”
“Mmmm, I can already smell it cooking,” he continued on, oblivious.
Katara concentrated on moving her catch closer to her brother in an attempt to gain his attention, but just as she directed it to hover over him, he lifted his spear back, ready to strike at the fish he’d been staring at that was still swimming in the ocean, and burst the bubble of water. Katara immediately lost control, the cold water splashing down over Sokka while the fish took the opportunity to leap to freedom.
“Hey!” she exclaimed indignantly.
Sokka turned to her with a scowl, water freezing into solid drops of ice as it dripped off his face, falling like tiny crystals shimmering in the cool light of the moon to coat the thick fur of his parka. “Why is it that every time you play with magic water, I get soaked?”
“It’s not magic,” she sighed with the air of an argument oft-repeated. “It’s waterbending! And it’s…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sokka flapped his hands in a dismissive gesture, rolling his eyes for extra dramatic effect. “It’s an ancient art unique to our culture, blah, blah, blah. Look, I’m just saying that if I had weird powers, I’d keep my weirdness to myself.”
“You’re calling me weird? I’m not the one who makes muscles at myself every time I see my reflection in the water!” she mocked back, a smug smirk curling her lips.
Before Sokka could retort their little canoe hit a swift current, sending them careening through a dangerous maze of ice sheets. Sokka frantically tried to steer them clear to safety while Katara yelled ineffectual commands, all to no use. Their boat crashed, crushed between two large icebergs, and the two teens were forced to throw themselves onto one of the dozens of floes floating around them.
Katara stumbled to her feet and turned to make sure her brother was okay. Seeing him also standing, she opened her mouth, ready to rip into him with another snarky jab, but the words died on her lips. There was something…
It was like she was seeing double. She knew with absolute certainty that the dark winter sky was clear, not a single wisp of a cloud present to obscure the bright glow of the moon or the millions of twinkling stars above. When she looked up, her eyes drank in the peaceful view.
Yet she could feel the rain lashing at her bare skin (skin that was covered by a thick coat); she could hear the thunder rumbling, and when she closed her eyes, she could see lightning flashing across the back of her eyelids.
When Katara opened her eyes a teenage girl stood beside her on the ice floe, her sudden appearance somehow failing to alarm Katara despite her obvious Earth Kingdom green clothing and well…her sudden appearance in the barren tundra.
The two stared at each other, drinking in one another’s appearance. Or more accurately, Katara was taking in the Earth Kingdom girl’s appearance, noting her slight stature and cloudy, pale green eyes which were mostly obscured by a messy curtain of dark black bangs.
The short stranger was looking around in frank astonishment. Katara felt the weirdest sensation, like her chi was trying to reach for the non-existent earth deep below her. It was distressing to find the ground absent, though she felt an even greater degree of shock as the other girl continued to gaze around at their surroundings. With a jolt, Katara realized that it was not her distress and shock she was feeling, the emotions somehow both entirely present and somehow muted.
A ghostly storm started to rage around them, once again seemingly superimposed over the physical world, and both girls watched on in mutual silence as a great furry beast was sucked beneath the waves, as the small tattooed boy who was riding it started to drown then glowed with spiritual blue light. They watched as another child with shining eyes materialized, this one clearly Water Tribe. It was creepy the way the young girl seemed to step into the boy’s body and take control, and then the possessed kid performed the most phenomenal feat of waterbending Katara had ever imagined, freezing himself into an iceberg.
And just like that, reality reasserted itself.
“So that happened,” the Earth Kingdom girl said, sounding remarkably unconcerned to Katara’s ears.
“That…those were…those were avatars!” Katara exclaimed, awed. It never crossed her mind to wonder why she was so sure of this fact, nor did it occur to the earthbender to question it.
“Huh. So this is what it’s like to see?”
“What?” Katara asked, taken aback by the non-sequitur.
“I’m blind,” the girl waved her hand in front of her eyes. “Well, usually,” she amended.
“Right, uh…”
“Name’s Toph, by the way. Toph Beifong,” Toph continued on blithely. She didn’t offer a proper curtsey or even a manly handshake, more interested in taking in this whole new world of sight.
“Oh,” the waterbender blushed at her lapse, “um, I’m—”
“Katara,” Sokka’s voice, tight with nerves, interrupted them before she could introduce herself, and she turned to see her brother watching her with a deeply concerned expression. “Who’re you talking to?”
Katara stared at him, waved her hand at Toph as if to say Who do you think? But Toph was no longer there. Her spirit was back in Gaoling, back in the darkness of her own body, watching her parents’ guests shuffle around the dining room with the vibrations she could feel through her feet.