Author's notes: I came up with "Yun tells Aparna stories" but it wound up more canon-centric than intended. Whoops.

Anyway, I'm gonna finish the ATLA OC Week prompts, but I can't promise to finish them all on time.

"Alright," Truc said at breakfast the next day, moving his chopsticks through the air as though charting an invisible map. "We're past the Foggy Swamp. Today we'll stop west of the Kolau Mountains. Then we move along the coast, spend a few days in Seomun, and from there it's a stone's throw across the water to Quidong Island."

"We're not stopping in Omashu?" Yun asked.

"We weren't planning on it. Unless there's some reason you want to?"

"No. It's just...I don't know. Most people only pass through the Kolau Mountains to get to Omashu." If anything, Yun was relieved. The incident with Shun was still fresh in his mind; with his luck, he'd step through the city gates and walk right into King Buro.

"Is Trishna coming with us to Quidong Island?" Dechen asked excitedly.

"If he wants to," Jamyang said, glancing his way,

Yun shrugged, suddenly feeling awkward. "I don't have other plans, but I wouldn't want to intrude or anything."

"It's no trouble," Truc said, waving the objection away. "You won't even be the only non-Air Nomad there. My cousin Chimini's husband is from the Fire Nation."

Norbu kept his eyes on his food, but said, in a voice trying too hard to sound casual, "Do you think Gokarmo's family will be there?"

"I imagine so," Jamyang said, with a small, amused smile.

"Who's Gokarmo?"

"Nobody," Norbu said quickly. "Just a friend of Mom's."

Dechen gave an evil grim. "It's not Gokarmo he's wondering about. It's her daughter Kanda. MWA-MWA-MWA-MWA-MWA!"

"Shut up!" Norbu said, his face turning pink. "We're just friends!"

"MWA-MWA-MWA!"

"Dechen," Truc said seriously. "Stop it."

Dechen obeyed. Norbu shot her a look before returning to his food.

Truc picked through his bowl of fruit. "So, Norbu. Assuming Kanda does show up...are you finally going to propose to her? MWA-MWA-MWA-MWA-MWA!"

"MWA-MWA-MWA!" Even Aparna joined in with Truc and Dechen's teasing.

Norbu jumped to his feet. "I HATE ALL OF YOU!" He grabbed his bowl and stormed off to his tent.

"Norbu!" Jamyang called over her daughters' laughter, then turned to glare at her husband. "That wasn't funny!"

"Well, it was."

"But you still shouldn't have said it!"

Yun snorted into his bowl to keep from giggling.

An hour later Mipung was packed, roused and flying through the sky once again. Norbu sat across from Dechen, looking like he wanted to throw her off the bison without a glider. Dechen responded by sticking her tongue out at him.

Yun sat back and tried to relax. He was slowly getting used to having so much free time. Back when he had flown on Pengpeng, jaunting around the world for important functions, he would spend the ride thinking about what was coming, getting drilled by Jianzhu, or at least meditating, hoping to gain insight from his past lives' memories. Now he just sat, and talked with the others, and tried not to think about the stressful situation that he was in.

Because back then, you actually had important things to think about, a nasty little voice in his head sneered. Now all you have is a big, empty future with no plans how to fill it.

He shook his head, trying to banish the thought.

But still, as he sat there, he found his mind wandering back to Kyoshi again. She was still traveling west through the Taihua Mountains. Soon he would be over some mountains, also heading west. He scoffed. Maybe she was headed to Quidong Island too, he thought, though it made no sense, at least assuming that she had started her journey from Yokoya.

He suddenly realized how much he missed her. He swallowed painfully, hoping that she was okay.

Aparna scooted across the saddle to sit beside him. "Trishna?"

"Yeah?" he said, trying to put off his depressing thoughts.

"Can you tell me a story?"

"Alright. What kind of story do you want?"

"Do you know any stories about Avatars?"

Yun winced. He looked up as Jamyang chuckled from her corner of the saddle. "I've been telling her stories about Avatar Yangchen," she explained. "She can't get enough of them, but I've run out. I don't know much about Avatar Kuruk, unfortunately."

"Do you know about any other Avatars?" Aparna asked.

Yun smiled sadly. "I know a lot of Avatar stories, actually."

"Tell me one."

"Okay." He thought for a moment, trying to pick one out of the din. Then he came up with an idea that was irresistibly stupid.

"Once upon a time, a boy from the Earth Kingdom was declared the Avatar."

"What was his name?"

"I forget. Anyway, this Avatar lived in a big mansion, with wise teachers and lots of servants. One of these servants was a girl whom the Avatar had a crush on. And she had a crush on him too, obviously. Most girls did.

"So one day, the Avatar had to go to the South Pole to fight some pirates."

"Like in the play we saw?"

"Very similar to that, yes. Anyway, the Avatar wanted to bring the servant girl along. His earthbending master—" Yun suddenly tensed up as he remembered this conversation; he exhaled slowly, forcing his body to relax. "His earthbending master didn't want her to come along. See, it was dangerous, and she wasn't even a very good bender. But the Avatar really wanted her to be there. He just couldn't tell his master why."

"Why?" Aparna asked.

"Why?" Rangi had asked, when she first found out that Kyoshi was coming. Yun had hemmed and hawed for a bit before finally giving the reason.

"Because she was important to him. See—only important people came with the Avatar when he did missions like this. So if she came along, other people would think that she was important, too. Avatars aren't really allowed to date servants. But if she started to come along on his missions, she might get to stop being a servant and become his girlfriend instead."

Aparna thought about this solemnly. Yun was aware of the others listening in on the story, too, but he kept going.

"So they went to the South Pole, or close to it, and fought the pirates. And it turned out that the servant girl was a better bender than anyone thought! When the Avatar was in trouble, she raised this huge pillar of stone from the ocean—and that's really hard, bending earth through the water. So all the earthbenders were able to fight the pirates, and they won. The servant girl was really badly hurt, though, and the Avatar thought she would die. But they loaded her onto his Air master's bison, and flew home, and after a few days, she was all better again."

"And then what happened?" Dechen asked eagerly. "Did she and the Avatar get married?"

Yun hesitated for a long time before answering.

"No. Because the Avatar's was murdered a few days later."

A stunned silence greeted that declaration. "By whom?" Norbu asked incredulously.

Jianzhu's face, and Father Glowworm's eye, flashed through Yun's mind. "It doesn't matter. But he was gone, after only a few short years of being the Avatar. But...the servant girl was still alive, and because the Avatar brought her on that mission, she and everyone else realized how amazing she was. So she became one of the most important people in the world, using her bending to help everyone. So...in one way, the Avatar got what he wanted. He just didn't realize that she was more important than he was."

He shrugged. Aparna shook her head.

"That's a sad story. I don't like it."

Suddenly, Yun laughed.

"Yeah, sorry. That's just one that I've been thinking about lately. Hey—have you ever heard of Avatar Siqiniq? She rode a sea monster around the world, and if you go to the North Pole, you can see a magic tree that grew where she was buried!"