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Guru Pathik: A Recollection
Guru Pathik will never forget the horrific day he discovered the massacre of the Airbenders. He remembered visiting the Southern Air Temple where his friend Monk Gyatso resided and coming across a temple filled with cruelly slaughtered monks. He could still smell their burning flesh. During the next few days he remained at the temple, digging grave after grave for his noble friends. At night uncontrollable sobs raked through his body. He recalled trying to purify the violated temple of what happened by scrubbing the floors and walls of their blood and blessing the area over and over again. When he tried to collect the Fire Nation's armor with the intent of burning it all, everything he lost became too much for him to bear so he left. Grief was not a fickle thing.
The next year of Pathik's life was spent travelling throughout the world to each of the four temples. Each time he arrived at a new one, he was filled to the brim with hope that even so much as one Airbender escaped, but was only met with disappointment.
Thus, Pathik was the reason each temple no longer had the bodies of the deceased littered around the sacred grounds. Much of his time was for the sole purpose of making it so his fellow spiritual companions had a proper burial to commemorate their brave and honorable sacrifice. The Airbenders could have ran and avoided their fate, yet Pathik had come to the conclusion that the Airbenders knew nature would run her course. He just wished they knew the extent.
There was not an hour, nor a minute that passed by when he did not feel the pang of loss deep in his soul. Some days this burden became too much, making natural acts to him like meditating and concentration become difficult tasks. That is why the massacre of the Airbenders grew into such a pivotal moment in his spiritual and emotional growth. Guru Pathik discovered shortly after the true meaning of letting himself detach from the world. He was without companions, a home, and a sense of belonging. His mind became his home, so he remained there all hours of the day, wandering the empty temples often if not the Earth Kingdom.
Worldly items became mere distractions in his spiritual enlightenment. Along with human necessities such as food, water, and shelter. He exercised his body into accepting the meager scraps he occasionally allowed himself to indulge on. Throughout this process, he became increasingly aware of the spirits and of the cosmos that surrounded him. Guru Pathik watched the separation beginning to unfold in all four nations and it saddened him. The bloody war waged around him and he was helpless in stopping it.
Nevertheless, great hope surged within him the day he received a vision from the spirit world. He saw a young, bald, master Airbender he knew to be the Avatar come to him. Guru Pathik picked apart this vision often, eventually coming to the conclusion that he was to train the Avatar once he reached this world. Yet even he could not think of how this young Airbender has existed when he spent the last few years in search of a trace of even one.
That vision was the reason he came to the decision to stop travelling and spend the remainder of his years at the Eastern Air Temple. He was certain now that his fate was to help the next Avatar, spending the rest of his years in isolation until the Avatar found him at last.
And that was what he did. For the next one hundred years.