"Cappuccino" by Urocissa Ornata
Summary: Aang spends an annoying afternoon contemplating the sun, heat, firebending, and breathing while standing in the most uncomfortable stance ever invented, and eventually realizes an important thing or two about Katara. This light and fluffy Kataang vignette takes place during "The Deserter," Chapter 16 of Book 1.
I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender; I just borrowed the characters for a bit and took them for a spin around the back roads of my imagination. Don't sue me, please; you'll only get pocket lint and gum wrappers for your trouble.
Aang closed his eyes and tried to ignore the stinging in his leg muscles. Why he had to breathe while standing in such an uncomfortable manner was beyond him, but he had to demonstrate his obedience to Jeong Jeong, so he had no choice but to keep his knees bent and his feet far apart, as instructed. He breathed deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth.
Birds chirped in the trees below. A cricket hopped around his foot, its antennae tickling his skin through his sock. The smell of river water and rotting ferns permeated the air, even up here on this craggy hill. The heat of the sun warmed the skin of his shaved head. Sweat began to dew under his clothes, mirroring his growing irritation.
Why would a firebender insist on such a ridiculous stance anyway? It was heavy and unwieldy, no way to fight or to concentrate. Were all firebenders like this? Aang thought back to the life and the people he'd known a century ago.
Aang had traveled to other places, including the Fire Nation, with the monks and other children his age. Children only his age, born within a few days of him. He hadn't really pondered why his older or younger airbender friends hadn't been brought on the trip; travel was a natural thing to an Air Nomad, especially with flying bison at their call. Aang understood now: the monks knew the next Avatar would be an airbender, so they'd brought these potential Avatars around the world to see firsthand the other kinds of bending they'd be expected to master.
One of Aang's best friends was Kuzon, a firebender his age. Like Aang, he was already considered a master of his element. Aang remembered how they spent a lot of time together, whirling and twisting as they played with wind and fire. It was fun, but a very different kind of fun than when he played with Bumi; earth and fire shared some similarities, but the Fire Nation was much different from the Earth Kingdom.
Aang compared his memories of Kuzon's stances to Bumi's stances. Firebender stances were often deep and wide, like this awkward horse stance. But they weren't solid and unyielding like an earthbender's stances. An earthbender's footwork was just plain strong. A firebender's footwork was strong in motion. That was the key, Aang realized. A firebender's stances were momentary, changing just like fire itself. They were deep and uncomfortable, but such discomfort was fleeting, like the flames Kuzon liked to shoot from his hands and feet.
Of course, Aang hadn't traveled to learn how to firebend or earthbend, he just wanted to have fun. He hadn't known his destiny, hadn't known that he would select the correct four items that would somehow peg him as the Avatar. He'd just watched his friends from different nations in fascination, getting along with them as easily as he got along with everyone. Airbenders were like that. Flighty, some would say, but fast friends. It was one of the few unchanging things about them; an Air Nomad was a friend for life. Aang's breathing hitched at the memory; the pain in his heart was getting better after he told Katara about running away, but it still throbbed when he thought too much about his lost friends.
So much had been hidden from him. So much would have been hidden from him for a few years more, if all had been right with the world and the Fire Nation hadn't been trying to start a war. But, on the other side of the coin, if the monks had waited till he was sixteen, if he had never run away, he never would have met Katara. Aang got a sick feeling in his stomach whenever he thought along those lines.
"Focus. I can't think about that right now," Aang murmured to himself. His feet were on pins and needles, making it feel as if the cricket that had been tickling him through his socks had brought friends. He resisted the urge to peek down and make sure that wasn't the case. "Ommmmm," he chanted quietly to himself, trying to banish the pain in his legs from his consciousness. Memories flowed beneath his eyelids and his chest rose and fell with each breath.
Now that he thought about it, Aang could remember Kuzon talking about how he'd had to hold stances for a long time, just to train his muscles to drop into them automatically from the swirling, jumping motions typical to firebending. All of Kuzon's training was quite uncomfortable and repetitive—qualities that were not so common to airbender training. Aang had asked Kuzon about that—why there was such strictness among his firebenders teachers. Fire was like air; it could not be pinned down. So why the rigidity?
"We must be rigid," Kuzon had replied. He'd pointed down to the boats in the harbor, the village that lay spread out beneath the rocky ledge upon which they were standing. "If you lost control, what's the worst you'd do? Flatten some houses, blow some ships off course? And you'd have to be very out of control to do that."
Then he'd pointed at one house; Aang remember seeing an elderly widow living alone there as they'd walked through town earlier that day. "If I lose control, even of one finger," Kuzon had said softly, "I could burn down her home. The fire could spread through the entire village. People would probably die, or at best, be scarred for life." He'd looked at Aang very seriously, more seriously than Aang himself had ever looked at anyone. "I can start a forest fire if I sneeze the wrong way."
Aang sniffed and shifted his right foot a little, just to make sure it was still there—he couldn't feel it at all. He fixed his breathing; it had become shaky as he remembered his friend, now probably long dead. This must be what Jeong Jeong had been talking about, how fire was alive, how rocks did not move themselves, but fire could spread and destroy of its own will, if he did not have the will to master it.
This didn't stop Aang from wanting to master the element now. He had failed the world once already; he was anxious to bring balance as he was supposed to. Plus, fire seemed…well, fun. Somewhat like his native element. He expected it to be easy, as waterbending had been for him so far.
Aang kept his eyes closed, breathing as he had been told—in through the nose, out through the mouth. Growing up, he had spent hundreds of hours at the Southern Air Temple breathing this way, although he was usually sitting comfortably, not squatting on sleeping feet on a rock in the middle of a mucky-smelling forest. He had to calm his mind after reliving memories of a friend long gone. He had to bring himself to his meditative state, find his center, even if his center was right now low to the ground, suspended above the earth by two very tired legs….
"Ugh," Aang grunted, opening his eyes and huffing in annoyance. He straightened his knees with effort and almost fell forward onto his face. Drawing air currents up with his fingers, he swirled them around his legs, massaging feeling back into his sore muscles. He stood on one foot, rotating the other one at the ankle, wincing as the bones crackled stiffly. He repeated this process with the other foot, then drew a deep breath and settled back into his horse stance, daring himself to keep the stance as long as he could. Aang liked little challenges like that.
He concentrated deeper this time, breathing evenly and emptying his mind. This time, he was successful. Hours passed, filled with nothing but the steady rhythm of pushing and pulling warm, pungent air in and out of his lungs.
After some time, pleasant swirls of movement began to flow beneath his eyelids. Meaningless shapes, soft and smooth, shifted and surged, back and forth, awakening his mind from the state of emptiness of the past few hours. The shapes flowed like water, like…two arms, bending and shifting, directing the water like a conductor does a symphony. Two slender, smooth, brown arms, moving with skillful grace. Katara's arms.
Aang's discipline slipped; he let a small groan escape his lips. He wished he could copy the movements in his mind with his body now; moving was preferable to standing still for any airbender, and he'd been motionless for a long time. Water never stood still—perhaps that was why waterbending had come easily to him. Even when Katara held water in balls or shapes or whips, it was never truly stationary; the water moved within the shape she held it.
More than that, Katara became the water when she moved it. Her feet slid from one position to the next instinctively; her hands curled and bent in ways no one had ever had to teach her because it was just that natural to her. Her body turned, shifted, folded, and straightened, always precise, but always smooth, never jerky or sudden. Not even when she moved quickly, and Aang knew how fast she could think. The motions of waterbending were fascinating to him. Aang could spend all day just watching Katara move.
Sweat dripped from Aang's temple, running down his face to his chin. When had it gotten so hot, he wondered. It dawned on him that his heart rate had increased, and he was no longer breathing rhythmically through his nose and out through his mouth. An airbender, having a difficult time breathing? Aang frowned and gave his shoulders a little shake to loosen them up. He had to focus.
Shapes, soothing and rhythmic, like his breath, moving back and forth under his eyelids. Brown hands, guiding those shapes, swirling and directing them…but, come to think of it, "brown" didn't really describe Katara's skin very well. Air Nomads were capricious about details; often they seemed too weighty, too worldly. Yet they could spend many hours of many days contemplating minutiae—if it struck their fancy. No, "brown" was far too ordinary a term for Katara, too imprecise. Aang's brows knit and he frowned in concentration.
How, exactly, would he describe Katara's skin? It was smooth and soft, despite her harsh life in the southern tundra. He knew this from the many times she'd touched him, adjusting his arms here, gently turning his shoulders there, hooking a bare foot with her hand to change his stance, moving his hands with hers. Showing was easier than telling, it seemed. Katara always smelled nice, too, even after days of travel with no time for anything other than a sponge bath. It wasn't like the "pretty" scents that he'd discovered when he'd visited Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation towns long ago, scents that assaulted the nose and lingered long past their welcome. It was deeper, muskier, more subtle, more comforting. It was an herbal smell, but different than the herbs used by the monks at the air temples. Sort of…willowy, he decided.
Strange how the muggy it was on this little rocky hill, Aang thought with annoyance. The heat was oppressive, making it difficult to breathe evenly. He was supposed to contemplate the sun, but all he could think of was how he wanted to find Katara and go swimming in the cool river after he was done with this uncomfortable meditation.
Swimming with a waterbender was unlike any other kind of swimming. It was a game between Aang and Katara to figure out the most creative, sneaky ways to splash each other. He had positively drenched Katara the other day; she was so soaked she couldn't even see him gleefully kick up an air scooter and zip around the pond in an airbender victory dance. He remembered the look on her face: surprise mixed with delight mixed with calculating deviousness. Her body arched in a way he hadn't seen before, and didn't have time to study, because she swiftly encircled Aang with a bubble of her own—a huge wave of water from all sides. Her improvisation backfired a little, though; they both ended up deluged, the sudden flood sending Aang crashing backward into his teacher. As they laughed and untangled their limbs, he noticed how white Katara's underclothes were compared to her skin, how they clung to her slender frame, making her curves stand out more than they did under her regular clothes. He remembered just how soft she felt, despite how fit and toned she was.
Aang had been paying attention to things like that lately, things that he hadn't noticed before he'd been encased in ice for a hundred years. He'd thought Katara was very pretty the moment he met her. He'd seen other girls her age during their travels, and some of them had been pretty, too. But Katara was special; no one could quite match her looks. He couldn't quite pin down why, but he suspected it had a lot to do with the intelligence sparkling in her ultramarine eyes, the warm way he felt around her, and her gorgeous color. He just couldn't think of the right way to describe it. There had to be one color that compared to Katara, something smooth and soft and yet strong and powerful. He thought about his travels, about the different things he had seen, some that existed only in one nation or even one town. Something was niggling at the back of his memory, something just out of reach—a common problem for flighty airbenders….
"Aha!" Aang exclaimed, air currents helping propel him in the air. Unfortunately, those air currents couldn't help his sleeping, unfeeling legs support his weight as he came down. His legs collapsed and he landed on his backside, but there was no chance to feel pain; Aang was too excited that he remembered the right comparison.
While visiting the Fire Nation, Kuzon had shown Aang many aspects of Fire Nation life. Among the curiosities that Aang had never experienced before were the strange things Fire Nation people ate and drank. Some of the same spicy foods existed among the airbenders, but they seemed to taste just a little different, as if they'd been prepared with a different proportion of herbs. But the strangest thing was this "coffee" that Fire Nation people drank—so different from the tea preferred by much of the rest of the world. Coffee was a dark, murky brew that Kuzon insisted was an "acquired taste." Kuzon drank the stuff, but not much; he said it made it hard to meditate. His teachers had forbidden him from trying a certain strong kind of coffee, one mixed with bubbling cowelk milk and served steaming hot.
It had taken a lot of effort on Aang's part to convince Kuzon to try this "cappuccino" with him. They'd already been in trouble all week for violating myriad rules Kuzon had to adhere to, and he was getting tired of his master's punishments. "But I'll only be in town a short while," Aang had pled, "and I don't know when I'll be back to try it!" Kuzon finally relented, and with the thrill of doing something that wasn't allowed, the two boys had paid a copper coin each for a tiny cup of the bitter, rich drink.
About half an hour later, Aang suddenly found he was fast enough to air-scoot himself up the entire sheer face of a mountain—the highest he'd ever gotten on the wind sphere. Kuzon had created enormous dragons out of fire and sent them high into the air above the village; terrified citizens fled for the relatively fireproof rocks outside of town. The pair then gleefully decided to spar, Aang's circular evasions faster than a blink while Kuzon's fists and feet swirled too swiftly for even Aang's eyes to follow. Their match took them through the entire deserted village, leaving a wake of windblown, charred destruction in their path. Of course, Kuzon got into quite a bit of trouble, but Monk Gyatso had thought the whole incident hilarious, and convinced Kuzon's masters to relent on his punishments.
"Cappuccino!" Aang exclaimed, smacking his fist into his other palm. "That's the right color!" Rich and almost buttery, mysteriously creamy, that was the color of Katara's skin. It drew out her crystalline azure eyes, making them look even clearer and brighter; the combination was exquisite, unlike anything Aang had ever seen in his travels. Well, Aang amended honestly, Sokka looked a lot like his sister. And he was a nice guy; the two had become good friends in a short while, despite the fact that Sokka had banished Aang from his village. Aang couldn't hold that against him, however; he had, after all, broken village rules and brought the dreaded Fire Nation ship upon them. But somehow, even though the hue was the same, there was an important difference between his two friends Sokka and Katara.
Aang could feel the heat burning in his cheeks. "Sheesh, when did it get so hot?" he asked aloud, brushing at the sweat on his face with his fingers. To his surprise, his fingers felt cold against his face. He'd been standing in this heat all the while; shouldn't his hands be as hot as his cheeks? And what in the world was up with his breathing? His heart kept doing these funny little skip-beats, too, just like they did when he had crashed into her while they were swimming. It was something like what he'd felt when he'd awakened from the frozen air bubble that had kept him in stasis for a hundred years and seen the beautiful stranger who had caught him as he fell. The moment he saw Katara's face, her clear blue eyes, framed by her hair loopies and the fringe of her fur-lined hood, a sudden heat had flashed through his body, keeping him conscious for a brief moment despite all that had happened to him. It was a heat that felt strangely similar to the heat in his face, hotter than it should be given that the rest of his body felt comfortable in this sun….
Aang scrambled to his feet. "This is ridiculous!" he said quickly to himself, holding a hand over his chest as if to calm his pulse. He squinted at the sun. "I've been out here for hours, now! I'm going back to Jeong Jeong, and this time, he'd better teach me how to shoot fire from my fingers." Swiftly, so swiftly he seemed to leave his brain, with its odd thoughts, and his heart, with its odd beat, back on the hill, Aang swirled up an air scooter and practically threw himself down from the hill toward the Deserter's camp. It was time to learn firebending, so he could restore balance to the world, right the wrongs of his disappearance, and get on with more interesting things in his life.
Author's notes:
This vignette took a rather roundabout path to get to the point, but I hope folks enjoy it anyway. It's a bit stream-of-consciousness, but then again, Aang seems to do a poor job of meditation that whole episode, so this seemed realistic. I didn't exactly set out to capture the moment that Aang first realized he was falling for Katara, but within a few paragraphs, I could see it coming, and directed the flow as best I could. Rather like a waterbender, har har. Originally, I had intended for Aang to simply have trouble meditating because he was distracted thinking about Katara, but upon further examination of his character, and taking into account his age and maturity level at that point in the story, I unearthed a slightly different angle that I felt was a lot more powerful. I'm not an expert in how 12-year-old boys discover they're in love, nor how they react to it, but it seemed more fun to write an unconscious discovery than something Aang already acknowledged.
While editing, I considered knocking out large swaths of what I'd written about Kuzon and Bumi and Aang's old life, but ultimately kept most of it because I thought it set up the back half of the fic rather nicely. Plus, I felt that the original anime (I hate calling such a well-produced animation a mere "cartoon.") didn't have the time and space to expand on what things were like for Aang 100 years before, thereby leaving a lot of wonderful space for artistic license. Kuzon was never proven to be a firebender, although I think it's a reasonable thing to believe.
This is my first Avatar fic, but not my first fic in general. I'm an experienced writer who got out of ficdom when it apparently became somewhat passé to create anime and manga with storylines that don't involve school dramadramadrama or overly hyped ninjas or pirates. Not that I don't love me some drama, ninjas, or pirates-or dramatic ninjas and pirates, for that matter-from time to time, but variety is the spice of life. Most of what I like is considered rather dated by now. Avatar's the first thing that's inspired me to fic it up in a good while. It's been so long, I didn't even know if ficwriters were supposed to put disclaimers at the top of their work anymore, or if that was out of fashion.
Anyway, apologies if this little bauble doesn't sparkle with the sleekness of steady practice. It's lacking a little punch, in my humble opinion. I'd polish it more, but I'm sadly short on time, and as it is, I have more ideas than I have time to write. Constructive criticism is, of course, welcome; flames (Do people do that anymore? I'm so freakin' old-school…) will be commensurately mocked.