"Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom's chain;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain."
The last tie was broken.
Every hair on Aang's form crackled and crisped with lightning. The black void of his suppressed past threatened to seize his last lucid thought – he had to run. Run or risk unleashing the volcanic fury of a thousand past lives, a thousand different cries for vengeance, on this dead land.
-
She was gone and Aang was consumed by the raw life force that had sparked the first beat of life in his being so long ago. Giving in completely to that which had always threatened to consume, the avatar let his shackles fall and barreled into the spirit world. Here, he would run for days, for years, for endless time. He was running from a dream that became fainter with each passing second. As time stretched on, the maddening fever the girl- - was it a girl? - had possessed him with dulled to a heavy throb and he wondered if he was forgetting something that should be remembered.
The sages of the four nations prayed and fasted for the avatar's return, but they knew their efforts were futile. They were responsible for the loss of what could never be lost. Never be harmed. Maybe if Aang wasn't an airbender, or if he didn't loved with the hopeless veracity of youth, the avatar would still be anchored by flesh, blood, and gravity. Regardless of hypotheticals, the world had lost its one source of redemption. There was nothing to do but wait.
-
He flitted alongside ancient, nameless beings, delving deeper into the abysses of the spirit than any of his predecessors had and seeking the answer to a question he had long forgotten. And it was in this way the avatar spirit subsisted.
Until one day –
(Aang!)
a shattering cry pierced straight through the fog -
(Katara?!)
and something – or someone(?) – stirred.
.