I can't do this.
Aang ignored the feather-light peppering of his feet as he scrambled on the roofs of the Air Monks' chambers. Tears were already welling in his eyes. The boy could feel the weight of the Elder Monk's words still dangling heavily near his ears, like the rumbling of tiny mosquito-moths that hovered like vermin in the night.
"He may be young, Gyatso, but his own interests can no longer be considered. From now on, he must learn to answer to the best interests of the world."
The world? Aang scrunched his eyes as he felt more tears coming in. But… what about me?
His eyes were glued to the thick, cloudy horizon. A swirl of grays encompassed the skies that evening, which by Monk tradition symbolized the rain season up in the Southern mountains. That year, the Spirits had already given the temple a fair number of rainfalls, blessing the Monks and Monks-to-Be with nourishing freshwater that could not be collected otherwise.
Aang often wondered why they had lived so far from the world to begin with, remembering the Cultivation Monk's palm of silence that was presented to the boy who had dared raise that question. Aang knew that older boy, Ryogen, and the handful of times when he spoke his curiosity to the Monks. He remembered when the Monks had had enough of Ryogen's questioning of their traditions, and had gathered, and decided to transfer the boy instead to their Nomads base at the Earth Kingdom's southern coast.
Ryogen did not complain. It was out of his best interests, after all.
And now, the Monks had gathered again, and Aang wondered why the Spirits had not given him a similar fate to Ryogen's. He wondered why, for the first time in his airbending life, he felt trapped. Empty.
Destined for a life that would never truly be his.
The clouds continued to swirl around him, and the boy, distracted and disillusioned, didn't even feel the broken dent of a roof shingle trap one of his toes… sending him head-over-feet. Aang yelped as his body hit the shingled ground in an unplanned twist to gravity, hating himself even more that the Air had turned away like a distant cousin than the fiber of his own being.
This isn't fair, he wept softly as he cradled his toes.
He wanted to be a Nomad. For as long as he could remember, it's the wanderlust that led Aang into those endless nights with the sky in his glider – one that Gyatso had helped him design from scratch. The shape of the orange seashells that had always washed ashore at the base of the Southern Mountains. He remembered watching Gyatso take flight that very first day in the clouds, and how his silver eyes drank a new sense of love and wonder to the outside world.
He remembered the global missions program that Gyatso initiated. How every summer – much to the dismay of certain Southern Monks – the man had led a handful of well-qualified boys to fulfill their civil service hours in the means of cultural integration to places as far as the sky bison could take them. Aang remembered those excursions across the Earth Kingdom deserts, helping the refugees and tribes seek out water from nearby oases. He would never forget the kindness of the Southern ice people, the little girls with tribal loops in their hair who introduced him to penguin sledding. Girls whose eyes that had the purest of blues.
He recalled summers in the Fire Nation, finally meeting his alter ego in a short, stocky, copper-eyed boy named Kuzon who taught the boy how to haggle in the markets and dance the Cameliphant Strut.
It wasn't fair that now, by decree of the Monks, Aang could no longer see that world, where he could no longer be free to visit Kuzon, or the desert people, or the Southern tribal girls who always smiled at his tattoos.
And Aang sniffled into the gray skies, sitting atop of the roof with his toe finally numbing down.
I can't do this.
That whisper to nothingness was all that he needed to get up and find Appa.
He couldn't live in a place where he couldn't be free.
As the first few drops of rain made their mark on the temple grounds, Aang quietly crept into his old mentor's room to leave him the message… with new tears streaming down his face.
He jumped out of the window with his glider, fighting the young winds as much as they seemed to ask him to stay. Appa was already saddled in the dark evening courtyards, waiting for the boy despite rain or shine.
Even as they went into the air, Aang had no idea where to go. And yet, he felt that he could go anywhere. Everywhere.
But with the raindrops getting heaver and the clouds turning a dangerous gray, Aang thought about the Southern Water tribe.
…And the girls with loops in their hair, who would smile and take him in with open arms.