I do no own.

This is a throw-back to the Intermezzo. I meant the song as a parody, but some other people got me to see it in a different light. Now it brought me to this.


Hope

Oft hope is born when all's forlorn. - J.R.R. Tolkien


Shadow, then light. Cool, then warm. Clouds, with free, deep blue skies in between. There was a breathy whisper of wind through tall blades of grass, blackened, broken stumps, and the skeletons of behemoths that, exactly one year ago tomorrow, rained fire from the skies.

But life was restored to this place. Aang absently swung a blade of grass back and forth in his mouth, a habit he must have picked up from Jet, or Toph, or any number of friends who were not so blessed with easy social mannerisms(Fire Lord or not, Zuko was on this list).

As the Avatar in a world unused to peace, Aang did not have time to watch the clouds. His eyes followed their edges, but his mind was miles away, in Ba Sing Se where the people were demanding reparations from the Fire Nation's empty vaults, to the Northern Water Tribe who had forgiven their war debts while preying on shipping and trade(but damn their plausible deniability), to starving refugee camps and under-funded veteran hospitals. I defeated Fire Lord Ozai, he thought, but I still needed help. I'm trying to help these people, but they won't help themselves.

The war was over, but hope was still so hard to come by. There were bandits preying on travelers and no one to catch them. There were soldiers coming home to no jobs. There was anarchy. There was poverty. There was sickness.

There was violence, and in some places, it was hard to believe that the war was over.

There were some who would not let go.

All these were problems that Avatar Aang needed to solve, and quickly, before war returned and claimed those who had so narrowly escaped it.

There was so little time for anything, for reunions, for friendships, for love, that it was so easy to let everything fall apart without even realizing it, but Aang had learned a long time ago (the little boy he used to be was in another life, another time, a closed book) hope was not something to give up so easily.

But Philosophy has it's time and place, and when a person is so engrossed in the workings of the mind and of problems far away, her or she will fail to see the answer in the now. Perhaps not the answer one was looking for, but an answer that would be welcomed all the same.

It took Aang several minutes before he realized he was humming a tune carried over the wind, the words a simple whisper from far down the coast. The slow, twangy lullaby played in his ears, until . . .

Oh give me a home

Where the Sky-bison roam

And the monks and the airbenders play . . .

The verse drifted off as the breeze died, but Aang had heard. It was no memory, no trick of the wind.

It was fate.

Epiphany. Eureka. Because some things are not always obvious.

That voice was not coming from along the coast. It was coming from above it.

No trick of the wind. No misplaced hopes. Aang snapped open his glider, and flew into the sky. I know what I heard.

Where there is hope, there is life, even where none seems to be.

I am not alone.


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