Lords of the Air
by Melospiza
Disclaimer: Avatar: The Last Airbender was created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and belongs to Nickelodeon. I don't claim to own these characters and am making no profit from their use. I'm just borrowing them for fun.
Author's Notes: This fic has not yet been beta'd, therefore it is subject to change without notice. This also means that constructive criticism is very much welcome. This is the second posted version of this chapter, I changed the poem and made the chapter itself longer. Enjoy!
The night was dark, no father was there,
The child was wet with dew;
The mire was deep, and the child did weep,
And away the vapour flew.
William Blake
Chapter 1: A Call for Help
All was quiet, save for the whistling of the wind in her ears, dawn rising without a sound and turning the sky into a cathedral of many colors. The dark-haired girl sat in the flying bison's wide saddle, her braid whipped out behind her as they moved swiftly in the space between pale clouds, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her parka, her brown cheeks reddened by the wind. Nearby her brother sprawled gracelessly, snoring, one lean leg dangling over the saddle's side. Ahead of her the young monk with tattoos gracing every limb was slumped comfortably on the bison's neck, both hands loosely holding the reins, the flying lemur that was their newest companion curled around his slender neck.
He had been unusually quiet for the past several days, ever since they had left the Southern Air Temple, and neither of his companions could blame him. To say the visit had been sobering was a magnificent understatement. When she recalled the boy's distress at the ravages time and war had caused upon his former home, the blue-eyed girl that watched him felt something tearing inside her chest and was filled with a fierce protectiveness that had once been reserved for the young children of her tribe. She was forced to remind herself of her brother's words, that she could not protect the boy forever. Besides, he was the Avatar, the world's only hope against the Fire Nation's iron fist. One day he would have to fight, whether she liked it or not.
When she exhaled a frustrated sigh, the young monk turned his head to glance back at her, gray eyes glinting like polished steel in the growing sunlight.
"Good morning, Katara," he said. He sounded almost cheerful.
"Good morning, Aang," Katara replied, then added, "Good morning, Momo," as the lemur chirruped and vaulted into her arms. Stroking Momo's long ears, she asked, "You couldn't sleep again?"
"Not this time," Aang answered, tucking one arm behind his head as he lay back on the bison's white-furred shoulders. "I've been thinking too much."
"About what?" Katara asked, leaning over Appa's saddle to gaze at Aang.
"Nothing important," Aang murmured evasively, averting his eyes. After a moment of silence, he countered, "What about you?"
"I slept a little," Katara said honestly. "I'm not sure what woke me up. Maybe Momo was digging around in my sleeping bag."
Glancing around in search of the lemur in question, who had wriggled away from her after the brief petting, Katara spotted his thin rump and lashing tail poking out of the sack of the last bit of fruit they had gathered at the Air Temple.
"Hey!" she exclaimed, lunging to grab him. "Don't eat it all!"
Aang started to laugh, then was distracted by a thin cry that rose from the clouds beneath them. Sitting up he leaned to one side to peer down into the impenetrable swirl of pale mist.
"Did you hear that?" he asked softly.
Katara stopped in the midst of trying to disengage a very irate lemur from her head and listened. Even Momo was quiet. The cry came again, distant and plaintive, from somewhere far below.
"Someone's in trouble!" Aang declared, sitting bolt upright and firming his grip on the bison's reins. "We have to check it out. Appa, yip yip!"
"Aang," Katara started to protest, but they were already descending swiftly into the cloud bank, and in moments they were surrounded by a thick white fog. Roused by the cool mist and the sudden change of air pressure, Katara's brother blinked and asked drowsily, "We're going down? We getting food?"
"No. Aang heard something," Katara said.
Crawling across the saddle to kneel beside her, Sokka squinted at the space between the bison's horns, attempting to pierce the mist that surrounded them with his keen eyes. The brazen light of the sun above them grew gradually more dim, until finally they could see the dark, churning sea beneath them. They emerged into a cheerless gray drizzle, the blanket of clouds they had just passed through obscuring the sunlight from the world below. Wiping the sudden onslaught of water from their eyes, Aang, Sokka and Katara scanned the unfriendly sea until Aang jabbed a finger toward the white foam of breakers to the northwest, shouting, "There!"
The island was small and rocky, consisting of a single peak that soared up from a dense forest of tall evergreens to vanish into the clouds. Surrounded by forbidding shoals of sharp stone, the island promised disaster to any ship that might sail near it, but such a natural barricade was no defense to flying bison.
As they grew nearer, the thin wail came a third time, making Sokka yelp and grab Katara with sudden trepidation.
"That doesn't sound like a person," he declared, his voice wavering.
"No, it doesn't," Aang agreed. "But whatever it is does sound like it needs help."
His face screwed into a determined expression, Aang angled Appa toward the island's pebbled shore.
Effortlessly the bison carried them downward, but at the last moment balked, snorting and thrusting pillar-like legs out against the empty air as he hovered mere feet above the stone-strewn beach.
"Appa doesn't like it here," Sokka observed. "Maybe we should just keep going."
"I think we should stay and look for whatever it was that made that sound." Glancing back and taking note of the contrary expressions on Sokka and Katara's faces, the young monk amended, "We'll just look around for a couple of minutes. I'm sure it will be okay."
Vaulting easily from the top of Appa's head into the saddle, Aang paused just long enough to scoop up his staff before becoming airborne a second time. Bending the air almost without thinking, he manipulated it to catch in his clothing, allowing him to drift to the ground as lightly as a bit of thistle down. With a disconsolate rumbling the bison slowly settled to the stone nearby, crouching so that Katara and Sokka might more easily scramble down from his back.
"Can you tell where the sound came from?" Katara asked, glancing around.
"No," Aang sighed. "Maybe we should split up?"
Sokka slowly let his gaze drift over the forest, where scraps of fog drifted through trees that were far larger, darker and more intimidating from this vantage point than they had seemed in the air from Appa's back. There were no birds singing, no insects chirping, only the barest rustling of branches in the windward breeze. Aside from the sound of the sea at their backs, it was eerily quiet.
"I don't know if that's such a good idea," he said. "We could easily lose track of each other."
Turning to give the towering trees a hard look, Aang twirled his staff, then thrust the tip of it into the pebbled ground before him. Slipping into a fluid crouch, he pressed his palms together for the span of a single breath before thrusting his arms sharply and powerfully open. The subsequent wave of air swept forth to rip the fog into ribbons, chasing the mist farther into the depths of the brooding forest.
"Is that better?" he asked brightly.
"Great," Sokka muttered, utterly unenthusiastic. "Thanks."
"Come on, Sokka. Where's your sense of adventure?" Katara teased, already beginning to stride toward the forest's edge.
"I think I lost it the last time we almost got killed," Sokka retorted, trailing reluctantly after her.
Appa and Momo remained on the beach while Sokka and Katara threaded their way between the trees, and Aang vaulted into the canopy above them, springing weightlessly from branch to branch. The forest's understory was open and parklike, the space between the high, intertwining limbs and mossy, needle-strewn ground filled only with cool air. This should have made it relatively easy to find whatever creature might be hiding somewhere between the ancient boles, but in places the trees grew in dense clusters and the terrain was uneven, filled with ridges and dips that echoed with the whisper of unseen streams. And then there was the fog lurking in the distance, creeping back toward them slowly and shrouding from their view what lay beyond the area Aang's air blast had cleared.
"You go that way, and I'll check over here," Sokka suggested to Katara, pointing toward a rise to their left. Katara nodded, and the pair split up, each padding quietly over the rough, mossy ground.
Over their heads Aang clung by one hand to a slender branch, ignoring how its bark prickled at his skin as he shaded his eyes with one hand and let his gaze rove over the forest. The branches of the trees were thick with dark needles and wove together high above the forest floor, so that seeing through them was difficult. They were also thin and springy, and bent under his weight, so standing on them was also difficult. But he knew that from here he likely had a better vantage point than his friends upon the ground.
"Where are you?" he said quietly to the unseen entity. "How can I help you if I don't know where you are?"
As if roused by his will alone, a mournful shriek suddenly resounded through the quiet forest, far louder than it had ever sounded before. Katara and Sokka both looked up suddenly, their heads wheeling toward the sound.
"This way!" Aang shouted, and immediately sprang from his tree to the next, toward the source of the sound.