Born of the Wind
He is but a boy, gentle as the breeze, staring across snow-capped peaks and glimmering seas to a future unimaginable.
You are the Avatar, guardian of the balance.
The words, solemn and sudden, echo through the chamber as the heavy mantle–the burden–of the Avatar settles around the boy's shoulders.
Everything changes.
As the days pass and the word spreads, the once-tolerable gap between him–the gifted prodigy–and his friends grows until there is a gulf too wide and too deep to bridge.
By the turn of the month, it has all but replaced his name. To so many in the temple, he has become the Avatar. In their eyes he is an ideal, the personification of natural balance–otherworldly and distantly revered.
But none of them understand. None of them see the lonely boy–every bit as human–haunted by dreams and nightmares of a responsibility that he isn't ready for.
None of them...save for Gyatso.
His first teacher pulls him aside as he dejectedly trudges from yet another training session. Wordlessly, the older monk guides him down a familiar path, to a familiar room and a familiar Pai Sho board.
Familiarity. It is a something he longs for and yet fears at the same time.
As the elder lays out the tiles in a ritual all too familiar to the boy–not the Avatar–fear and desperate hope roil together in a bitter mix of confused anger. So many emotions tear through him and he chokes on them; fails to move or even speak. He can only stare across at wizened eyes, a burning question in his gaze.
"Why, you ask." A sly smile tugs at the aged face. In the brief silence between words, the anxious roar of blood fills his ears–the rhythm of life and death.
"Because you have not changed whatsoever, as others may believe." Here, a touch of melancholy seeps into his words.
"You have always been the Avatar, Aang. Just as you have always been yourself. Nothing has changed, save their perceptions. But don't worry." Here his lips twist into a mischievous grin.
"This old man is a little too stubborn to change. And I've known from the start."
Hope bursts to life in his heart, yanks him to his feet and throws him across the board into waiting arms.
He is but a boy who needs someone to understand, someone to treat him like the child he is beneath the cloak of his title.
Nothing has changed.
The words give him strength; the strength to ford through the river of change that almost drowns him every day. His old master becomes a shelter from the expectations of the world; their time together, a shield of custard tarts and Pai Sho, of cheerful laughter and weightless happiness.
But nothing can last forever.
The Avatar will be sent away...
The solemn words are a judgement–a sentence–and he can see the defeated slump in his teacher's stance. The council has spoken.
His fragile world begins to shatter.
Today, Gyatso isn't there to pull him aside after training and when the moon eventually rises, his sleep is broken and restless, haunted by a familiar despairing loneliness.
Visions of the roiling elements come to him, each surging furiously against him–fierce and consuming. A voice, echoed by innumerable tongues, speaks.
A storm gathers on the horizon, child of the wind, spirit of the world.
Will you walk the sheltered path laid out before you?
Or will you find your own way?
He wakes to roaring rain and crashing thunder, his decision made as brilliant lightning knifes through the sky.
Aang only looks back once, to his home and his family–his life–as his bison spirits him away into the storm.
His goodbye is brisk–ephemeral.
Like the wind.