Author's Note: This is a short two shot I wrote about Aang's mother (who I left unnamed for now), since we never really learned about who she was. It's probably not what it was like, but I took the information I knew about the Air Nomads from watching the show and reading the wiki info and applied it to the writing. Hopefully it comes across as believable.

Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer - I don't own Aang. He belongs to Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.


It startled her awake, the small changes in the air around her. It shifted and almost seemed to purr as it slithered back over her, grazing gently across her skin.

She still felt sore, a mere week after the birth of Aang, and her body felt empty. Like a void…a hollow pocket without purpose. But she was alive and well and after such a close brush with death she could not let her spirits be dampened by the strange feeling that had settled over her psyche.

Meditation appeared to ease the ache that still held her hostage and attending to Aang gave her purpose.

All was well…

Except for one small dilemma that haunted every step that brought her closer to his departure to the Western Air Temple, where he might have to stay.

A great many of the children were raised and then trained in the Airbending ways at the temples, where the monks resided. Children who had been orphaned were the majority, but a great deal were taken to the temple. A mother or father who were painfully aware of the fact that they could not properly take care of their precious little one knew they could ensure their child's safety if they left them with the monks.

It was a painful separation, but for the good of their children – it had to be done.

She was certain that she would not have to resort to such a thing as leaving her child behind. She could take care of Aang, no matter how hard it became – she would always have food for him to eat and a place for him to lay his head. She would teach him how to walk and how to airbend and travel the world with him. A constant companion – her dearest loved one.

Her husband had died before she knew Aang had even been conceived; he was taken from her by a terrible sickness, one of the unpredictable disadvantages of the nomadic lifestyle. He passed away in her arms, the twilight closing in around her as his last breath was pulled from his body as if by a string. She'd never felt so alone before.

But being a strong and stubborn woman, she struggled to force the palpable presence of bereavement from her mind, her body, the feeling resting even in the roots of her soul. Meditation kept her sanity intact for a little while, but when she discovered she was pregnant with Aang, she could hold on no longer – she cried that night, clutching her stomach as if holding onto the last piece of him.

And the next morning, her cheeks stained with salty tears, she resolved to cry no more.

It was tradition, for the monks to raise the orphaned, the abandoned, the children of mothers and fathers who couldn't take care of them. Sensibility was mostly the culprit of this custom, as the monks were a particularly peaceful strain of Airbender that had grown out of their restless wanderings and settled down in the world, let their roots grow. As young creatures, they had been a slave to their will to keep moving, never look back, feel the currents of air that surrounded them in a vast blanket.

The world was open to them and they were free to roam its many paths, sate the hunger for knowledge and the thirst for freedom.

But after their age began to set in and they became unable to ignore the weariness which maturity entailed, they left the nomadic lifestyle and let the world be open to the youth of the era. It only made sense that the children that didn't travel the world would be nurtured by the masters of the Airbending discipline. And then, when they were older and wiser, and able to wield the raw currents of the air around them, they were liberated from the temples, permitted to go wherever they wished.

She tried to ignore the possibility of having to give Aang up. She had no choice; if it was for Aang's own good, for him to harness his power, then they would force her. It would be no use fighting them as there was power in numbers and the hallowed halls of the temples were surely not wanting in the influence of human life.

All that she knew was that the next Avatar would be an Airbender. As removed from the world as she had been for the last nine months of her life, she at least was aware of the news of Avatar Roku's recent death. It had been two weeks since his passing; the new Avatar had already been born.

If Aang was the chosen one, then it was her duty to deliver him to the temple to be educated in the disciplines of his past lives.

It was being separated from him that she knew would be the most painful decision of her life.

She sighed deeply, inhaling the fragrant auras of the breathing mountains outside the cool shelter of the cave. Her uneasy thoughts were left to their own devices.

Suddenly, she felt she was being watched.

Her body shifted and turned so that she lay on her side. When she settled into her new position, she found Aang's wide, deep gray eyes locked on her. His father's eyes.

She looked down at him and he looked back at her, still crooning softly and moving in that erratic sort of way that at first had concerned her. But after a mere few days of motherhood, her maternal instincts allowed her at least the comfort of knowing he was a healthy little boy. Sleep, perhaps, she was deprived of as he woke every two hours to cry, but it was nothing she could not bear after receiving such a gift of life.

She already loved him; she had loved him the moment she realized she was pregnant with him, even in the wake of her husband's death.

An unspoken bond between mother and son began to weave itself in the midst of their unwavering focus. Her chest heaved once more, exhaling forcefully, and she chuckled a little as she brushed a stray black hair from his forehead.

He outstretched his arms and his flailing limbs reached desperately for her retreating finger.

"Here you are, my dear one," she murmured softly, offering the appendage; she laughed as he began suckling her thumb, mewling as he did so.

Her cheeks began to ache from smiling so much, but as his clear gray eyes closely watched her movements and he began to imitate the gesture, albeit awkwardly, she felt it was worth it.

It was the first time she'd seen her baby smile.