Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to Avatar: the Last Airbender. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.
Hitsuzen
The monks teach him the philosophy of hitsuzen. They say, What happens, happens so that what has yet to come may come to pass. An inevitability: a conclusion drawn from events which strive to create this conclusion.
"All things occur for a reason," Gyatso tells him. "No matter how tragic or small. There is a purpose in it, even if we do not have eyes to see it or mind to understand it. With time, if we are wise, meaning will be revealed to us. Do you understand, Aang?"
Aang puffs at dust motes drifting through the windows. He says, "I understand."
The monks summon him from his childhood games. They say, You are the Avatar, of whom we have a great need.
Aang returns to the courtyard, but the other children have gone. From low on the mountain the wind whips across the courtyard, cool and sharp. A storm is coming.
The prayer bells peal: the hour for evening meditations has arrived.
Gyatso finds him hiding in the courtyard as the other children complete their evening tasks. He rests his hand upon Aang's back.
"Are you not cold, Aang?"
Aang turns his face away. "No."
"Perhaps not," Gyatso agrees. "But let us go inside together anyway."
A storm descends upon the temple.
The monks wish to take him from Gyatso. They say, You play games with him when he must train.
Gyatso says, He is a child.
They say, He is the Avatar: this is his destiny.
Gyatso says, He is still a child.
The abbot says, "The Avatar will be sent away to the Eastern Air Temple."
Aang runs; he flies into the coming storm. He will hide with Kuzon in the Fire Nation, or Bumi in Omashu.
The wind howls. The sea draws ever nearer. Appa moans and drifts, disoriented, sinking as the waves rise to swallow them.
The monks tell him earthly attachments must be shed. They say, Love, fear, regret: these things cloud the mind and distract the spirit, and must be exorcised.
Aang wakes in the arms of a girl, in a world of ice and snow and frigid sea. She is very near to him, near enough her breath strikes his face in a hot cloud, near enough she is all he can see. A strange girl with blue eyes and dark hair, a plain girl suffused and radiant with wonder.
He smiles at her and the girl smiles back at him.
Aang's heart contracts, then expands.
The monks taught him this: all things occur for a reason.
Aang wakes to a world a hundred years changed. His people are dead, their way of life forgotten. The temples are empty, overgrown with the straggling weeds of the high mountains.
You are the Avatar, they said, of whom we have a great need.
Katara says, "If you had stayed, you would have been killed along with all the other airbenders."
"You don't know that," he says.
"I know it's meant to be this way," she says. "You give people hope."
Her faith is a calming wind. Her love is a running spring.
He believes her.
This story was originally posted at livejournal on 08/25/2009 in response to the 08/25/2009 prompt for Kataang Week (Summer 2009 Edition), "destiny."