Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.

Notes: To everyone, thanks so much for not losing your tempers in impatience over the delays. I hope to return to this and anything else I'm in the middle of, now that the worst of the stress is over. You are not, sadly, getting anything particularly long to make up for the long absence, but you are getting a twofer in a way. Kimberly T had requested Shuga's reactions to meeting up with the Gaang for the first time at the Southern Temple, while Vaneria Potter wanted Aang's reaction. Hopefully I've done this some justice, although I'm not really sure of how Aang turned out. So, first is Shuga's take and then is Aang's take on that first meeting. Thanks again for your patience folks.

Shuga

LeeZuko had had Shuga take him up to a funny place on top of a mountain. He said it was where airbenders used to live. Shuga liked all the open space so high up in the air and the bison fields and shelters were old, but had a lot of potential if someone cleaned them up.

Still, it was pretty lonely, and she really didn't think this was a good place for the human member of their little herd. So, while he wandered about aimlessly, Shuga considered whether or not she could get him to meet back up with the nice people with their funny noisemakers. After all, he'd gone and mated with one of them, so maybe she could convince him to make the arrangement more permanent. It would be good for him. Also, she could get her fur all brushed and braided. It felt really nice, especially since the flowery one, who they called Lily, had said it made Shuga look pretty.

That was when she spotted a male bison. He flew through the air and landed with a bunch of human calves, about the same age as her LeeZuko if she was any judge of the matter.

One of them, all in really bright oranges and yellows, bounded off, and Shuga squinted at him. Something was odd about that one . . . he had no head fur! But what was really attracting her attention was the male bison. He was so big! He was taller and had a wonderful wide tail and big strong shoulders. Most of the bisons back home were more slender, all whipcord tension. This one looked strong.

She was barely aware that the short human with no head fur was saying something to the other humans about welcoming them to the Southern Air Temple, but this new bison was so much more interesting and handsome that she just couldn't care enough to pay attention to understanding the humans' speech.

Shuga edged her way into view and shyly greeted the other bison.

His eyes came up and went wide. His head bob and greeting were a little old-fashioned, but it struck her as really sweet. He told her his human name was Appa, and his herd name was Cloud Shaper. It was an old-fashioned sort of name too, but it fit him. She bobbed her head just as she would have to any other friendly face in the herd, something that she'd discovered humans did by baring their teeth in that odd 'smile', and told him her human name, and her herd name of Fleet Tail.

With great politeness, he bobbed his head and then rumbled to ask her permission to groom the back of her neck.

Now, it wasn't that LeeZuko was any slouch with his brushes and combs and everything else, but there were some things that were just best done by another bison's teeth. She was so eager to enjoy a nice grooming, that she plopped down at once, tilting her head encouragingly. A moment later, ecstasy. He was so good at grooming!

Shuga couldn't help but make encouraging sounds, and Appa happily joined her when she wriggled her middle pair of feet into position to scritch him along his front legs.

LeeZuko came running out, looking worried. Shuga hastily wriggled away from Appa, concerned about her human. But he just turned and started shouting at the human with no head fur. Shuga listened with half her attention, as she was really enjoying the grooming. But when the furless one started asking some silly questions about enclaves she pulled away to listen for a bit. When Cloud Shaper hesitantly inquired if she was through with his grooming, she decided to let LeeZuko fill her in later on what he thought was important.

That was when LeeZuko seemed to notice the bisons again. "Shuga!" he shouted at her, "If I have to leave you behind with another enclave herd because you're calving I'm not going to be happy with you!"

For a moment, Shuga thought about it. Then she made a decision. LeeZuko needed a herd, and these other humans seemed nice, and they had a sky bison with them. A really handsome and tall sky bison. So she ignored him and pushed Cloud Shaper flat, happily grooming his back with her teeth. He groaned appreciatively.

LeeZuko was being stubborn, but she was stubborn too. She'd make him feel really guilty about taking her away from Cloud Shaper if he tried. In fact, a short while later, while the other humans had vanished into the temple, LeeZuko was sitting, looking just morose enough that she was really thinking about nudging him back to awareness.

It was only a short time later that first, the furless orange one came running back out, chased by the male in blue, and not long after that an explosion of wind a lot like BadMother's temper tantrums erupted. Deeply concerned that she'd misjudged something, Shuga hurried over, pushing against the wind, followed by Cloud Shaper.

Together they saw the female in blue push her way to furless orange one and talk to him, tell him her mother had died and that she and her brother would be his family. As the winds died down, Shuga asked the other bison if the furless one was alone. Like her LeeZuko. He was, and the two in blue had chosen to be his herd, like she'd decided to be LeeZuko's. With that she decided. Even if LeeZuko got stubborn chasing after things that weren't good for him, she needed to get him a herd, and what better than a herd with another bison and other humans willing to take him in?

She was going to interfere, pick him up and drag him after them, when LeeZuko did one of the smartest things he'd ever do. He asked, "Could Shuga and I come with you?"

Aang

They'd just landed at the Southern Air Temple when Aang's first hopes that Katara and Sokka's insistence that there were no airbenders left appeared. He'd just welcomed the siblings to his home when a female bison poked her head out and rumbled a greeting to Appa. That alone was a good sign. Soon the pair were happily grooming each other, happily making noise about it, when suddenly he and the others were face-to-face with a boy in Earth Kingdom clothing, shouting at them.

"What in the name of all that's holy do you think you're doing!" he roared at Aang. "Dressed up as a Nomad? Painting tattoos all over yourself! Do you want to bring the Fire Nation down on the Water enclaves? I know the ones hiding with the Water Tribes have been more isolated, but that is no excuse sheer idiocy!"

"What?" Aang asked, entirely confused. "What are you-"

The stranger in green cut him off, snarling. "The people of air have remained hidden for this past century for a reason, and parading around and showing off your heritage is a death sentence! I don't even know if my mother and sister are alive or dead because they had to leave before the Fire Nation discovered the enclave in Cheng-Dhu. So go home, change back into your normal clothes and don't drag your Tribe friends into our troubles, the Tribes have enough on their own as it is!"

On some level Aang knew his response wasn't the right one, but after being told over and over by his new friends that all the airbenders were dead, this was great news. "Katara! Sokka! Do you know what this means?"

Sokka replied sardonically, "We're on a mountain with a crazy guy who thinks there are airbenders at the South Pole and in the Fire Nation of all places?"

"It means," Aang corrected gleefully, "That airbenders survived." He grinned happily at the Earth boy, who backed away. Aang wondered why. Why would his smiling make the other one look like that? Like he thought that smiling was a bad thing? Eager for answers nonetheless, he asked, "What do you mean by enclaves? Are there a lot? Are you an airbender? Why isn't anyone else here?"

"Aang," Katara said, "Just because the airbenders survived doesn't mean they're anything like they were before. He was angry because you were showing you're an airbender. It means it's probably really dangerous to do that." Behind her he could see Sokka rolling his eyes, every inch of the Water boy indicating that that was the most obvious, and therefore obviously stupid thing he'd ever heard. The first one just looked flummoxed.

"Who are you people?" the Earth boy asked the Water siblings. "What do you mean? You're talking like that kid's missed what happened over the last hundred years or something."

That was . . . actually pretty accurate. "Uh . . . I . . . uh, sort of did," Aang admitted.

"Aang," Sokka said, "Stop talking about it. We don't know who this guy is." He turned to the Earth guy. "No offense."

"None taken," he said. Still. "So . . ." he paused, and then said, "Aang, right?" Aang nodded. "You're not from an enclave?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about," Aang said, wondering what an enclave was.

"How . . ." The Earth boy started to say something, then noted the female bison sidling up to the male bison again. "Shuga!" he shouted at her, "If I have to leave you behind with another enclave herd because you're calving I'm not going to be happy with you!"

She grumbled and shuffled back a little. Then decided to ignore him and started grooming Appa anyways.

"So the other bison is your friend?" Aang was very eager to chat with someone else who had a bison friend like Appa. Katara and Sokka were nice, but this boy, whoever he was, would understand the connection between a boy and his bison better than the Water Tribe siblings ever could. And if he had a bison, that meant he was probably also an airbender. Earth clothing or no, things couldn't have changed that much.

Something about the question upset the other though. "Yes," he grated out.

Katara sighed. "Look. I know you don't know us and we don't know you, but maybe we can talk. I think Aang needs to know more about these enclaves you mentioned." She looked him up and down and then turned to Aang with a significant look on her face. "Aang? It's up to you what we tell him."

Aang agreed immediately. Obviously they had to tell him, how could he know to trust them if they weren't honest? And he seemed nice enough. Sokka rolled his eyes, threw his hands up in the air and told them, "Fine! And when it all blows up in our faces, I get to say 'I told you so.'"

Aang grinned a little at Katara, who smiled back, clearly agreeing that Sokka's paranoia was just the funniest thing, and then Katara said, "I'm Katara, Sokka's my brother and Aang . . . he's the avatar."

Their new acquaintance paused for a very long time before demanding rather abruptly, "How do you know that? Why should I believe you?"

"Sokka and I found him in an iceberg, by accident," Katara told him. "Just the day after he woke up, part of the ice shelf our village rests on cracked and broke off. Aang bended it back into place with water bending."

"His eyes and the tattoos were glowing," Sokka added, clearly figuring that once they were telling the story, it should be told right.

"Aang still hasn't learned waterbending, and since I'm the only waterbender left at the South Pole, I wanted to learn too. So we're going to the North Pole to find a teacher," Katara explained.

Then he asked one of the questions Aang had been afraid of being asked ever since he woke up to find the whole world had gone crazy. "What were you doing in an iceberg?"

"If it's so dangerous for an airbender to be running around outside one of those enclaves, why are you here?" countered Aang, hoping not to have to answer the question for a long time, maybe never. "And are you even an airbender? You don't look like an airbender, you look like a firebender."

The other sighed. "The short version is that I don't know where any other enclaves are. The Air Nomads, when they scattered, they hid among the other three nations. They had children with Earth, Water and Fire nation people. There aren't a lot of . . . well . . . pure air nomads left."

Before he went on with what was clearly a long story, Aang said, "I'm getting tired, let's sit down." As he wafted to the ground, he noticed the other staring at him as though he'd suddenly grown hair or lost his tattoos. "What?"

"I guess . . . I never really realised what it meant that none of the air masters survived the initial purges to teach anyone," said the boy. He slumped to the ground. "What you just did? Maybe anybody could have done that before, but now? My mother's one of the best-trained airbenders there is, and she could never just . . ." He waved a hand in the air, but the implications of what he'd just said left Aang shocked all over again. All the masters lost? None were left? Not . . . he hastily pushed away any thought of Gyatso. His mentor had to have been fine.

"But how do you train if you don't have anyone to teach you?" Katara asked. She sounded very eager, and Aang felt a small surge of guilt. He'd left, wound up in that iceberg, and thanks to his not being there, the world had gone mad and Katara didn't have any teachers. She was being taken away from everything she knew just to find them. And where he was now, he knew just how leaving behind everything familiar felt.

The response had been something about how the airbenders had adapted other styles to airbending, but in his moment of self-reflection Aang had missed it. Covering up for not paying attention, Aang said, "Huh," Aang said. "Can you show me? I mean, some of the stuff that was adapted."

The talk turned to the boy's family, and Aang was once again happy to have been raised in the way of airbenders, who never had to deal with getting along with people you'd never like, just because they were 'family'. Something about the way the boy held himself and spoke bespoke a deep hurt in him. That part of Aang, deep down, that made him think of things and do things that didn't always make sense but had a wisdom all their own had him skirting the issue and not pressing further. He let the other lead in the conversation because he needed to be handled gently.

When the topic came back to him, Aang decided to look further into the temple in the hopes of finding traces of where his friends and fellows had gone. "Aren't you coming?" Aang asked when the boy made no move to join them.

"No," he said. "I'll stay here with the bisons."

Aang let it go. Nothing would be gained by pushing, and that deeper part of himself whispered that something could well be lost. It had never steered him wrong when he listened to it, so he left the boy and went deeper in.

He'd almost forgotten that there was another airbender there after finding Gyatso's skeleton seated amidst the crowded bodies of the fallen Fire Nation soldiers. But when the boy, Lee, asked to join them, he said yes. The whispers at the back of his mind smiled in encouragement.