Fluffy.
I don't own Avatar. I knew we had something in common.
Smell
Wherever Aang was, it was hot. He felt himself sweating, the bare skin along his arm tingling uncomfortably in the heat. He had no idea where he was, even if he was in a real place. He felt like he was in the Spirit Realm, though he was never hot there. Still, the feeling of a disconnect from reality reigned in his mind, and he couldn't help but feel like this was a dream.
He itched his skin and called out for his friends. "Katara? Sokka? Toph? Hello? Is anybody there?"
There was no echo, no reverberation at all. It was perfectly dreamlike, and Aang could be sure that his body was somewhere in the physical world while he was currently trapped inside his subconscious. But the feeling of loneliness and of heat were so real that Aang didn't feel like leaving his subconscious. The pressing matter was to find his friends and cool off his body, so it didn't matter that he was eventually to wake up and forget it all.
His footsteps sloshed through the mud, a detail he hardly registered as he called for his friends. He scratched his arm again, irritated by the heat. He must have been somewhere deep in the Fire Nation, but it made no sense; before he was frozen he would visit the Fire Nation regularly, and this was the first time he had ever felt uncomfortable. He knew what it was like to feel hot, but not uncomfortably so, unless one counted Zuko's blasting fire in his face, but that was a different kind of discomfort. Now Aang felt like feeling his skin off, it was so irritating to him.
"Katara?" he called again. "Hello? Sokka? Toph? Where are you guys?" He scratched his arm again, furiously, as if the red mark on his skin would eliminate the itch.
Suddenly he was under the strong impression that Katara was very close by. It was as if he could smell her, smell her skin burning up in the heat. But she was close by, Aang could tell. He whirled around and aimlessly started to run, his feet slow in the mud, whose presence was now all too obvious. "Katara!" he called out. "Where are you?" His skin started flaring up in his mind, irresistible to scratch furiously as he continued his frenzied running about and name-calling. He seemed to be going nowhere but in circles, calling the name to the same empty spot as a moment before.
At some point he realized that it was pointless to continue, and it would be easier simply to wake up, which he did. Ironically, as before, he didn't know where he was right away. He could feel Appa's fur underneath him, the familiar rising and falling of his giant friend's chest bringing Aang comfortably back into reality. But there was a weight on him, as if there were a layer of air pressing down all around him.
Aang sat up to see that he was lying under Katara's parka, which was strange. It wasn't there when he went to sleep. He always liked to sleep in his monk's outfit, even when his friends were shivering in their animal skin sleeping bags. And now, under the folds of Katara's parka, Aang could feel why his skin was so itchy and warm. He absentmindedly went to scratch his arm again.
He was about to throw the parka aside and go back to sleep when he noticed Katara, a few paces away, standing and looking over him, smiling sweetly. "Go back to sleep," she whispered.
"Did you put this on me?" asked Aang.
Katara nodded. "You looked cold."
Aang blushed, for some reason. "Thanks, but I wasn't."
"Well, that's good," said Katara, slipping into her own sleeping bag and out of Aang's line of vision. "It's there if you want it."
"Thanks," said Aang again. He made to toss it aside when something caught his attention. It was the scent, the smell of Katara's parka. It was like the feeling in the dream, where she was so close, so definitely close, but he couldn't find her. Now she smelled even closer, as if she were right there. It wasn't a smell that made Aang want to panic. It made him want to curl up, bury his nose in the itchy parka, and smile to himself as he drifted into a deep sleep, leaving his subconscious to wander around Katara's scent.
And that is exactly what happened.
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Something short and fluffy to make sure I have something for you all this Sunday. This week was hard for writing because I was body temperature challenged for much of it (I had a fever) and I couldn't focus. So I had to write about how Aang always has the same body temperature no matter where he is. I am jealous.
I hope the not editing of this story was okay.
-samtana