I do not nor have I ever had anything to do with ATLA or Nickelodeon
"BG" means "Before (Air Nomad) Genocide" which happens when Aang is 12 years old
I want to thank my Beta-Reader fanatla, without you Anila's Story wouldn't be as great as it is!
Anila's Story
PROLOGUE
(12 BG)
The sky in the Fire Nation became dark, a volcano was spewing molten Earth and poisons gasses in the Fire Nation covering the moon with ash. People from the volcano's Island were running away in fear for their lives, while they saw their home getting erased from Earth's face.
In the meantime, a beautiful young woman with long black hair, bright and expressive gray eyes, and blue arrows tattooed on her forehead and body, cried out in pain. Her name was Anila and she was still quite young, only about seventeen.
"Not much longer now... It will be time to push soon." A nun told Anila.
The young woman was at the Western Air Temple to bring forth a new Air Nomad baby. The temple was the sacred place where all female Air Nomads went when it was getting close to the time they were going to give birth. Some women arrived a month before going into labour, some came only days even hours before they give birth. When Anila had arrived, the nuns told her she had a few weeks before the baby was going to born, but Anila went into labour two whole weeks before her given due date. Nobody knew exactly what had caused it.
After giving birth the women stayed at the temple for a year or two after their child was born. They brought their babies with them when they attended the Yangchan Festival, then return to the temple again. Then they turned their child over to the monks nuns to raise the children, they were separated and sent to the several Air Temples across the world. Boys to the North and South, girls to the East and West temples. The children never again would see their parents again, they'd be raised by tutor monks and nuns from that moment until they were old enough to be on their own, the same as it always has been and it always will be.
Anila knew all this because she was raised to be a perfect Air Nomad or even a nun in a future if she chose, a little voice in the back of her head kept telling her how wrong it was to separate a child from its mother, how wrong it was for a mother to keep away from her child, how wrong it was for a child to grow up, away from a family. She had seen with the pass of years, the dramatic scenes of desperate crying in the temple when women turned their daughters to the nuns.
Anila knew these ancient traditions were part of her culture, but she had kept wondering if a tradition, even if it was ancient, that provoked such sadness between people was worth being supported.
Meanwhile, another pain wave hit her body with the start of a contraction, producing a choked cry from a very frightened Anila.
In the Fire Nation, one old woman stood amongst all the people. Her worried gaze never leaving the volcano peak, because deep within her, she knew she would never again see the love of her life, the man she had shared a lifetime with… 'Oh Roku… why did you have to stay and try to fix this… please dear be safe for me and your children… please don't die on me.'
That was her last though when she saw a red dragon, Roku's dragon Fang, fly to the volcano's pit before a sudden chain of great explosions shook the depths of the earth and a lava flow covered all the island surface, followed by the deafening silence of death…
The woman fell to her knees crying her eyes out while her family embraced her with love and affection.
Another agonizing labour's hour had passed in the Western Air temple when a last piercing cry of pain from the young woman's lips tore the silence of the night and, a few minutes after, it was responded by the sound of a baby's wailing filling the birth room….
"It's a boy", announced the midwife nun while she handed the new mom a little male baby. Anila cuddled her newly born son between her arms detailing all his features with a gaze full of love and adoration.
"Do you have a name for him yet?" asked the midwife cutting the umbilical cord and massaging the lower abdomen to wait for placental expulsion.
"Yes", She answered softly, Anila still mesmerized by the baby in her arms who started to nurse his mother's breast milk.
"His name is Aang... peaceful soaring... Soar my tiny one, soar."
(A/N There will be a more detailed version of this part down the road)
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