150 th day of our journey. We have changed direction and have retraced our path, going north-west and leaving the thick tropical forest behind. We have kept to the fringes of the forest, a sparsely-wooded region of high hills and warm spring sunshine. The Avatar is continuing his earthbending and waterbending training very assiduously, sometimes late into the night.

I don't know how Aang does it. He has immense stamina and moves tirelessly from waterbending to earthbending training, and then back again. Both Toph and my training combined doesn't seem to tire him out – or rather, it does, but he keeps pushing himself anyway. It's as though he's trying to make up for those 100 years in a few days.

He's been at this pace ever since we left the orphanage.

It was hard leaving that place. Grandma Lokai and Onku stood in the orchard to bid us farewell as we climbed onto Appa's saddle. The old lady, small and fragile near Onku's bulk, waved goodbye with a vague, sad smile and lots of homely advice to be careful and wear warm clothes. Onku grinned broadly and waved his arms enthusiastically as we took off.

I looked back at their receding figures, guiltily feeling as though we were abandoning them somehow. Finally, even the tower was just a small smudge in the distance above the tree line.

'They will be fine. They will.' Aang told me, but it sounded more as if he was trying to convince himself.

We left at dawn for we did not want to risk those wild boys finding us at the orphanage. The one with the eye-patch had threatened to get his own back on me and my brother, and the last thing Grandma Lokai needed was another fight on her hands. So we flew over the thick forest until we arrived to a more sparsely-wooded area where Aang insisted on starting practise right away, and he's been hard at it ever since, stopping only in the evening for a long session of meditation.

He refuses to talk about what Grandma Lokai said about the Air nomads.

'I just didn't expect to hear about my people like that,' he told me 'I didn't see it coming and that place is so full of old memories. I got a bit upset, that's all. There's no need to dwell on it.'

He seems to have shrugged it off, but I'm not quite convinced.

I know Grandma Lokai's story hit deep, and her words about the airbender refugees and their children was unexpected and distressful. The same had happened ( well, not the same – much worse) when, up North, he believed he'd found some Airbenders still alive, hiding in the high mountainous caves, near the Northern Air Temple, only to find out it was Zhao's trap. It was the same kind of trap that had been used to lure the last Air Nomad refugees to their death.

Grandma Lokai's words prodded a wound that can never heal properly.

Or perhaps that's just me... I think certain wounds shouldn't be allowed to heal. They will continue to fester inside of you, whether you like it or not, anyway! I try not to let my past distort my view of the present, but sometimes, it's difficult to separate the two, for both are part of who I am.

Once, in a dark cave on a stormy day, I advised Aang to stop feeling guilty about his past. Perhaps he has. Or perhaps he hasn't entirely. One thing for certain is that his past - a whole century that is no more than a few months ago, for Aang - hasn't really let go.

'I know thinking about the past doesn't do any good, but sometimes, the past just won't let go,' he told me at the orphanage. I know he still grieves for his people, though he has rarely said anything after that first cataclysmic display of rage and pain at the Southern Air Temple. But I know he thinks of them often. Sometimes it is just a sad, pensive look he gets when he thinks no-one is looking, sometimes, especially when he finds some artefact or relic belonging to his people, it is a just a nostalgic expression that is so odd to see on a face so young, and, at other times, it is just the hopeful look in his eyes when we are near high mountains such as the Air Nomads used to favour. It is a hopeful look that is quickly quashed. After what happened with Zhao and the cave full of air nomad relics, he has been careful to let any false hope cloud his judgement again.

It's only when the surface of his outward calm is scratched that I see beneath it, just how deep his grief is. It happened at the desecrated Northern Air Temple, where the evidence of the Air benders' dead culture was present not only in the hidden charnel house, but everywhere else in the building. It happened again at the Orphanage when Grandma Lokai's long memory brought to life a poignant last look of his people...

I think the training both distracts his mind from dwelling on the horrors of the past, as well as provides him with something tangible and positive to do. And he's made great strides in both forms of bending – I'm liberal with my praise, and even Toph's nodding her head in approval (that's high praise from her) She rarely ever yells, or infuriates him into better bending – she doesn't need to: he is infuriated enough with himself I think, and in part, he is punishing himself for those 100 years of suffering he may still be subconsciously blaming himself for.

Now that we're at some distance of time and place from the depressing events of the Orphanage, he seems as cheerful and upbeat as ever, but I don't think he's forgotten Grandma Lokai's story, nor his determination to create newer – and better - memories.

151 st day of our journey. In order to continue training the Avatar without him being recognised or followed, we have kept to uninhabited areas on the outermost part of the forest, even further away from the woods and forests we have spent our last few days in. It is a place of scrubby grassland and steppes on the fringes of the Si Wong Desert, and an excellent place for learning Earthbending, though not so great for Waterbending.

But then, truth be told, there is not much else I can teach the Avatar. He has largely mastered the art of waterbending, and now he just needs to keep his skills honed.

That is true. Aang is a skilled waterbender now, but I've hesitated to tell him there's nothing much else I could teach him because, I suppose, if I do, then there would be no point in us continuing to practise waterbending together...

And I still enjoy that. Even the simple no-nonsense bending forms we practise. We still need to keep our skills honed by constant practise, after all.

Be that as it may, the decision to continue practising waterbending has been taken out of my hands really, for there are no streams or water sources in this arid place.

It reminds me a bit of the Great Divide. It's great for earthbending, but nothing much else. Even the few plants that grow here are straggly and shrivelled by the dry winds that constantly sweep these plains. I don't mind the wind so much as the lack of water. I find myself with a lot of time on my hands and a sharp edge to my mood. I hate being idle, but there's nothing much to do – or even write about. I find myself, like I had at the Great Divide, longing for rain. Rain that I know rarely falls in this bone-dry place.

But I have learnt a lot since the time we crossed the Great Divide. Sokka and I were constantly bickering then, and I think a lot of that was my fault. Subconsciously, I fear being helpless and vulnerable without a source of water. Even now, I constantly feel the urge to check that my water bottle is full. We replenished our water supply from the last stream we came across but I don't know how long it will be before we venture back into relatively inhabited greener areas. Sokka thinks we'd better stick to the desolate fringes of the desert until Toph says Aang has learnt earthbending well, because after all it was only nine days ago that we were chased by those three girls. They, and Zuko, may still be prowling around here looking for us. Sokka, too, is not too happy with this place, There's nothing to hunt, so he spends his time polishing his weapons and brooding over our maps.

I must try and find something to occupy myself with – even if it is mending and patching everyone's' clothes - anything - as long as I can do something useful. Waterbending does not need to be the only thing I can do to help Aang and the others. I need to do this because it will help keep me focussed and my temper in check. I do not want a repeat of what happened in the Great Divide. I've come a long way since then and have learnt (I hope) to recognise some of my faults, if not all of them. Apart from the intrinsic discomfort of the lack of water in itself, one of them is a deep-seated frustration at being, for whatever reason, unable to help, or be useful, to those around me.

Waterbending will have to take a backseat for a while.

Aang seems to have recovered a bit from the ghosts of the past that the visit to the orphanage disturbed. He does not drive himself so punishingly hard now, but his earthbending continues to improve.

Perhaps I can persuade him to take a break, tomorrow.

That's a good idea.

Perhaps we all need a change of scene and something else to focus on, even if it is just for a day or an afternoon. I hope Aang agrees. Perhaps if I say I would like a break, it would be easier, and something I can look forward to.

152 nd day of our journey, Noon. I am writing this in a seedy bar at the Misty Palm Oasis. During a break in the Avatar's training, I suggested we visit this place because it sounded refreshing.

However, it did not turn out as we expected, and what was once an ice spring and one of nature's wonders, is barely visible at all, and the whole place is run-down and dirty. However, our visit did have its positive side. Sitting at the table next to me is Professor Zei, Head of the Anthropology Department at Ba Sing Se University. He, too, is writing a journal about his travels and has spoken about a wondrous Library brought to the physical world by the knowledge spirit, Wan Shi Tong. It is supposed to be found in the Si Wong desert, and he has been unsuccessfully searching for it for many years. Sokka has suggested we go there to find an accurate map of the Fire Nation, which is essential if we intend to overpower Fire Lord Ozai.

Professor Zei kindly showed us a sketch of Wan Shi Tong's Library and will accompany us on our search, early this afternoon. With A Flying Bison, it should not be either difficult or dangerous.

Well, perhaps it will not be dangerous (though going to the desert is even worse than the arid plains I've been having a hard time adapting to) but I'm sure it will be difficult. Even though the Library is a huge impressive building, it is small compared to the immensity of the desert on Sokka's map.

Today was the first time in ages that Aang concentrated on something other than bending. I had suggested that he takes a break and, as I suspected, he was kinda reluctant at first.

'I need to practise –' he protested.

'Aw, relax, Twinkletoes – you can bend some rocks now. You'd have The Boulder begging for mercy in an Earth Rumble!'

'I don't think so. And I'm still not that good at listening to the earth and stuff...'

'It'll take time to become even half as good as me, but you'll get there one day. Right now, I'm kinda likin' Katara's mini-vacation idea.'

'See Aang?' I continued, persuasively 'Toph said you're a good earthbender. So, how about it?'

Aang's face broke into a broad grin, and I knew I'd won. The appeal of a change of scene to an Air Nomad is irresistible. 'Sounds great. Where shall we go?'

I insisted he pick the first place, since he'd been working hardest. Sokka reluctantly agreed when we explained the idea to him, but he insisted we keep off the beaten track. Aang picked a vast prairie on the edge of the Si Wong desert.

'There's something there that had tourists coming from all over the world to see,' he said enthusiastically.

'I thought I said we should keep off the beaten track!' Sokka scowled.

'Oh, we will Sokka – it's miles from anywhere.'

'What can there be in such an arid place, Aang?' I asked curiously.

'It's a surprise. You'll love them.'

'Hey - it won't be those fish-opotumus things you were dream-riding the other night, will it?' Toph frowned.

I had an idea that it just might be something like that, or worse...something equivalent to riding a desert-version of the Unagi, but Aang wouldn't say anything else. It wasn't very far from where we had set up camp, so we arrived very early in the morning.

I must say when we finally found out what he meant, it was quite a pleasant surprise: Singing Groundhogs!

The holes to their burrows pockmarked the vast, flat plains and apparently, as Toph told me later, there is a whole labyrinth of tunnels and nests beneath the surface of the plain.

I admit I was baffled at first when Aang sat down and quickly fashioned a reed flute from the many thin reeds waving in the prairie wind and then started playing a few simple notes on it. Suddenly, little brown animals popped up from the holes, singing in pitch-perfect response to the notes of the flute. It was amazing! More of them peered out of their burrows as the clear notes of the flute beckoned them out with a musical call.

My brother, however, was unimpressed, and thought it all a waste of time. (He's been obsessed with making plans recently).

'We need some intelligence if we're gonna win this war,' he said.

Trust Sokka to be a wet blanket! Well, I wasn't going to give up on the idea.

'Alright, we'll finish our vacations, and then we'll look for Sokka's intelligence,' I said.

Aang chuckled and went back to his reed flute, calling back the little creatures.

'It's their mating ritual,' he explained 'The female sings and the males try and outdo each other in repeating her song. I guess the best one wins the paw of the lady groundhog. But they respond well to any musical note'.

He played a short melodic tune on the flute and the little creatures mimicked it perfectly. The Groundhogs' mating call is uncannily similar to a human voice, so they sounded as though they were singing. Toph actually clapped as though at a musical festival. Aang's 'orchestra' was truly something else!

In fact, I think Aang is quite good with the flute himself, from the little bit I heard.

I must ask him to play something for us, tonight.

But he had got up and was asking me to choose the next 'mini-vacation'. I looked at the map and my eyes were instantly drawn to the Misty Palms oasis. It was far enough off the beaten track to suit Sokka, and it had ICE! Being an oasis it would have water too. I miss water. Aang said he's been there before and had seen the pristine natural ice spring.

Unfortunately, as I wrote in the visible part of this journal, the place has changed a lot since Aang's last visit here, and our maps are too outdated to reflect that change.

There are no palm-trees anywhere, and little of the ice spring is visible. It lies in the middle of the small settlement of mud huts, the palm- trees that must have once shaded and protected it have long gone, so that the tip of the ice evaporates slowly in the heat of the desert. Vermin-ridden dogs were licking morosely at the ice or at the rubbish littering the place, and the Mosquito-flies and the heat are even worse out here than on the prairie.

Several men in many layers of ragged and stained white clothing looked at us curiously through visored eyes when we arrived. We headed for the cantina, followed by their unseen eyes. They have a predatory look about them that I don't like.

Thankfully, the cantina was cool and dark compared to the eyeball-searing light outside. The iced drinks looked good however so we headed straight for the bar. There are no windows (probably to keep out the harsh glare of the sun) and the place is lighted by small oil lamps.

We met Professor Zei by accident, for he bumped right into Aang and spilt his iced mango drink all over him.

'No worries,' Aang said, unperturbed 'I clean up easy.'

And with a gust of air he airbended the stuff off him and his clothes dry. I glanced around me quickly. The bar was almost deserted, and there were only two customers, who were both in a drunken sleep and noticed nothing. The bartender, as Bartenders everywhere in the world, pretended not to notice anything, but the man who had spilt the Mango juice all over Aang was astounded and recognised the airbending immediately.

'You're a living relic!' he exclaimed.

'Thanks. I try,' Aang replied, good-naturedly.

Professor Zei introduced himself hastily as the Head of Anthropology Department at Ba Sing Se University, then immediately proceeded to ask Aang a million questions about the Air Nomads and their temples – some of which even Aang was at a loss how to answer. Professor Zei was ecstatic at the opportunity to meet an Air Nomad – he guessed he was in the presence of the Avatar, but that didn't seem to interest him as much as the anthropological aspect. He even started measuring Aang. I don't know what he expected to find – apart from his tattoos and the fact that he's a shade paler than my brother and I, Aang's a human being just like the rest of us! All the Airbenders were.

Aang submitted to the rather invasive examination with good grace while the rest of us got fruit drinks (which, I must say, despite the shabbiness of the place, were very good).

I get the impression that Professor Zei is extremely intelligent, and goes to great extremes in order to know his subject thoroughly. I'm kind of overawed at having the opportunity to speak with someone so knowledgeable. Ba Sing Se University is the oldest and greatest in the world they say. Professor Zei confirmed it, but when Sokka asked him for a map of the Fire Nation, he didn't have one.

It seems that maps of the Fire Nation Islands are very scarce. He did have one of the Si Wong desert however, marked with the meandering lines of his excursions into it, searching for the mythical Wan Shi Tong Library.

'Wan Shi Tong and his knowledge seekers collected books from all over the world, and put them on display for mankind to read, so that we might better ourselves,' Professor Zwei explained, and suggested that a Fire Nation Map would surely be found at this place.

So Sokka picked the Library as the next mini-vacation.

I must say, the way Zei spoke was inspirational. And his enthusiasm over this legendary Library was infectious. As a learned man and a Professor, he must have spent a lot of time in the large University Libraries at BA Sing Se, but from the way he spoke, even these pale in comparison to the immense treasure of knowledge at the Spirit's Library.

I have always loved stories and scrolls. Back at the South Pole, I used to love reading the scrolls that told the heroic tales of the adventures of the brave Southern Tribe people. There weren't many of them, for after so many successive Fire Nation raids, many of our scrolls had been reduced to charred remains.

One of the earliest memories of my mother was of her carefully copying down some of these blackened, fire-damaged scrolls onto fresh parchment, shaking her head sadly over the irreversible loss of the ancient knowledge of our tribe. Gran Gran had said even fresh parchment was difficult to come by or make, as the strength of our tribe was slowly but surely leached away.

The last few precious scrolls that my mother had preserved with the intention of writing down Southern Water Tribe customs and history, before it was lost forever by the dwindling numbers of our tribe, had been handed over to me before my journey.

I did not write about our tribal customs, but perhaps about something even more amazing: the journey of the Avatar. It has been an adventure really worth writing about!

But it is only now that I have started this long journey that I fully understand my mother's distress over the loss of our Tribe's written memories. At the Southern Air Temple, I have seen the desolateness of a place whose people were wiped out by war, at the Northern Air Temple, I have seen the physical memories of those same dead people forgotten and stamped out of existence by the needs of the living ...

I don't want that to happen to the Southern Water Tribe. Perhaps, when this war is over, I can take up once more my mother's mission to preserve our Tribes' customs. Now that Master Pakku and the others will have re-built our village into something stronger, I can concentrate on recording what's left of it.

Perhaps, in Wan Shi Tong's Library, I may find some Southern Water Tribe scrolls that have escaped the Fire Nation's destruction...

If I have time, that is. The most important thing is to find Sokka's Fire Nation map and anything else that may help Aang in his mission.

I'm getting cautiously excited about this library. Professor Zei has a thick, travel-worn journal in which he writes about his travels. He's been writing copious notes on what Aang told him, and about Appa, while we finish our drinks.

Looking at him, I felt that I had made the right decision when I decided to write our adventures in my mothers' scroll and then in this squat little earth book. In fact, it was he who inspired me to take off the water skin from my back and open the little pouch beneath it, where I'm keeping my little journal now, and start writing about our mini-vacations. They're not tremendously important, but Professor Zwei has given me a few pointers about journal-keeping in a professional way. And one of them is to record accurately even what may not, at the time, seem particularly significant. I usually write the day's events in the evening, when everyone is resting or asleep, but we still have a few hours before we set off to cross the Si Wong desert, for we want to avoid the scorching midday heat. I want to postpone that as much as possible for it's surprisingly pleasant in this dim, cool cantina, sipping our drinks from refreshingly cold cups carved out of the ice spring itself.

I had seen Professor Zei observing me closely as I took out my thick little Earth Book and my pen and ink.

'Ah – so you are keeping a journal, too,' he said.

'It's just a day-by-day account of our travels,' I replied modestly, suddenly feeling a bit self-conscious about my plain scribbles. 'It's nothing much really.'

'The greatest explorers and adventurers, both past and present, only kept simple journals if they did at all, and yet their exploits have become the stuff of legends,' Zei told me seriously 'You see – sometimes the literary merit is in the recording of the event itself, not in the choice of words, and you, Katara, are recording an event such as the world hasn't seen in a long time. Your work is about a legend, and will become a greater legend...'

I hadn't really thought of it like that before.

'The legend of Aang...' I murmured, looking at my unassuming but sturdy little earth book.

Of course I intended to preserve the story of the Avatar's journey in it but I had never thought of it becoming 'legendary'. I hadn't even thought about what to do with it, other than keep it as a means of preserving that which during these turbulent times of war could easily be lost.

I looked up at professor Zei in wonder. I guess he's right. Aang is his own legend.

It puts a different perspective on things... and it certainly makes me feel as though I have to put a lot more effort into writing what had initially seemed something much smaller in scale.

'Make sure you ask Aang all about his people,' Zei was saying 'And record what he tells you faithfully. There were so many times, when I was on excavations of lost civilisations, that I dearly wished someone had taken the trouble to write about day-to-day life, and that writing had been preserved...it would unravel so many mysteries about lost civilisations. The Air Nomads being one of them, now. Perhaps I will find the answer to many of my questions in Wan Shi Tons Library. Hey - !' Professor Zei exclaimed suddenly, leaning over, 'Where d'you get that journal from? I know that symbol!'

Professor Zei bent over to examine the small, brown leather book I had opened. On the first page was the squat little symbol that represented 'Earth'.

'Aang found it among the wreckage of Admiral Zhao's fleet at the North Pole. We couldn't find its owner, so I started using it as a journal. Do you know who it belongs to?'

Professor Zei shook his head. 'No, but I know that symbol: it is the sign of the most famous bookbinder in Ba Sing Se. His name is Kun Lei-Han and he and his family, have for generations – centuries in fact - made the famous Lei- Han books and scrolls for the Royal Family and for the noblemen and noblewomen of Ba Sing Se. We have quite a few examples of his work, and that of his ancestors, at Ba Sing Se University.'

'Really? I didn't know that. No wonder it's such good quality. Its pages are waxen – I thought maybe it was made for a mariner.'

Professor Zei reached over and opened my journal, fingering its strange, waxy pages.

'You are right. This is an ancient technique used by book-binders. Though I do not profess to know all their secrets, I believe they use the rare wax to produce this waterproof effect. I have seen an old scroll in Ba Sing Se museum, that used to belong to a famous Earth Kingdom mariner treated in the same way, and it has survived, with its writing untouched, for 500 years.'

'Wow!'

'This little journal will hopefully survive just as long, Katara,' he said, as he handed me back my journal 'You're doing a good job, but I suggest you do not space your journal entries so far apart. It wastes space.'

'Uh... I...um, yes. You're right,' I stammered.

I hoped he wouldn't ask why the visible parts of the journal are separated by seemingly empty spaces. He gave me many helpful tips on recording the Avatar's history, but I have moved away from his table now, because he might just notice that I'm writing in water, and what are apparently black spaces in the little Earth Book, are actually full of invisible words.

I don't think he'd approve of the latter, because they do not strictly stick to the recording of events a great and famous explorer should be writing down.

But then, I guess, I'm only a girl...