The air smells heavily of evening and dense forest.
Once, before this ordeal, before Aang and worry of the entire world's fate, before she had traveled farther than the strong strokes of her hand could carry her kayak and herself, Katara had not known the smell of forest. 'Forest' had meant the sparse scrubby pine trees that grew twisted and stubborn on southern island, kept away from crushing ice by shear cliffs.
In the South Pole, the vastness of the land was taken up by sweeping tundra, rolling onward and endless to meet the sky. In summer it was wrapped in a burst of life, covered in flowers while sea living birds hid speckled eggs among the blooms. But the rest of the year let the sky and the earth melt together in similarity, white shaded snow meeting billowing white grey clouds forming a flat blanket in the sky. This was what she knew, of being able to looking into a void, and finding a sense of physical reality only when one knelt over and brushed away soft snow from lichen coated stone and earth.
Here however, it is all green. Instead of looking out and seeing the horizon, one only has the sense of endlessness that goes on past the trees, told only by the silence. For the first few days, it had un-nerved her, and Sokka had shown he was clearly claustrophobic, though his scowls denied anything. Even now though, Katara's older brother was perfectly oblivious to the oddness of the forest, while Katara herself retained some wariness of it, especially when she woke in the predawn and blearily realised that she could not honestly say what stood twenty feet away from her.
She was deep enough in thought that as a large moth fluttered about her head, she simply brushed it away with gentle fingers. Sokka ducked sideways, his feet kept in the balance his fighters training had taught, and fixed his eyes on where he knew their nightly camp and their fire lay ahead. It was too late for anything was immediate and imminent threat to interest him.
Aang on the other hand was ever curious, and tilted his head. Cupped hands, the backs of which were accented by their distinct indigo design, caught the moth. He clenched his teeth and grinned as flight wings fluttered against bare skin. Then, realizing that withholding noise will not catch the attention of his friends, he allowed a bit of his mirth to escape. This was rewards by two pairs of eyes turning towards him, identical in their deep cobalt color, but not in their expression.
Katara managed a faint smile, which she promptly dropped of exhaustion, though her eyes remained on Aang's intertwined fingers, glimpsing the movement within.
Sokka turned away, not with cruelty, but with exhaustion and hunger and spoke over his shoulder.
"Come on, its just a bug. We've got good food by the fire." Katara nodded in agreement.
"It has been kind of a busy day. Let's just bring all this back." She said, indicating the weighted skin of water and a bundle of firewood in her arms. "Then we can get some rest. Momo must be bored."
Aang nodded accepting the excuse. He doubted the inquisitive winged creature had waited for his human companions to arrive to go find something interesting to do, but the air bender knew he wasn't getting anything out of two people so tired. For a moment, he was irritated that they could be so worn-out, until the feeling was buried by the fact that most of his evening had been spent pulling down dry branches from tree tops, while the others had dragged the thick branches off to camp.
Sighing resignation, he released the frazzled moth, giving it a gentle breeze to easy it into the canopy, before walking down the trail again, spinning his staff absent-mindedly.
At the abrupt movement ahead and Katara's angry cry, he tensed visibly. Then his legs crumpled at a sharp pain along his neck and the sensation of his breath being knocked out of his body. He lay, hearing vague voices, and thought he was coming to, until a sudden jerk sent him inelegantly into a place with not thoughts or sensations.
That was the last time any of them was conscious for quite some time.