A/N: This is set after Aang and Gaang's adventures, and it deals with some interesting elements all it's own.
)( If I don't say this now I will surely break
As I'm leaving the one I want to take
Forgive the urgency but hurry up and wait
My heart has started to separate. )(
He handed the bundled blanket back to her, the cocoa newborn cooed softly within silk cream-colored bison fur. Woven for their first child and now passed down to their next considering nothing else was more warmer.
"Take care of yourself," she whispered with her head lowered, suckling the half-asleep infant. "I want you to be back in time for his first steps."
Aang smiled reassuringly. "No matter how many steps I take, I'm never going to be far from you or the kids. "he sobered. "But as the Avatar, it-"
"Is your responsiblity,"Katara finished. Her attempt at keeping sadness from her voice failed." I'm sorry. I know it's selfish to try and keep you down to earth when your meant to soar the world just to keep peace."
"Never." he told her, stroking her cheek. "You know I'll be back when I can but until then you have the whole village to run without me, Katara."
She nodded once. "I do."
"Papa?"
Her skin light, hair dark brown and eyes a deep grey; Nocona stepped up to see her father unsurely, feelings of finality kept seeping into her at seeing her parents like this but she did not know the reasons for the huge scene. The man smiled tenderly at her and opened his arms, she ran into them and took the invitation not thinking. He always did this, he always would.
"Be good for Mama," his arms closed around her. "Look after each other."
A kiss to her, her brother and mother. Aang moved the gunny sack over one shoulder and was out the door toward his Eaglehorse. The creature brought it's head up from grazing near the elder bison and caw-winnied.
Confusion grew into fear. "Mama, where's Papa going?" she looked up at the twenty-five-year-old woman, anxious. "He's coming back soon,right?"
"As soon as he can."Katara assured.
"You don't know!?"
Her mother squated to the child's level, shifting the infant's weight and freeing her hand up so she could stroke the child. The faintest tears were glistening in Nocona's raincloud-colored eyes as she rejected the show of affection entirely.
"Papa!"she cried and raced to him."Papa!Papa!"
Twigs and fallen leaves pinched her little bare feet, her vision blurred and a giant gust of wind propelled her back; the wings of Avian rising up now.
"Papa, come back!I need you."
Nocona seized the, weeping gusts as though graspable. Once it seemed she could hold them tightly place, she pulled back on reigns of the wind. Through a clearing of the tears in her right eye, Nocona saw possibly the only thing she thought unimaginable. She saw her father cut through what ever sort of inadvertant force was bounding him from flying into the sky. She slipped as though an actual rope had been snapped, and came close to hitting the solid earth when a maternal solacement took over her end.
"Oh, baby..."her mother tried calming her."Oh, my sweet girl."
With the sinking of the sun, came the rising of a new manner of life. A life that would gain meaning and must in Nocona's own life some years later.
x.x.x.x.x