Rating: Pretty much G - not even the slightest hint of violence.
Characters/Pairing: This chapter's about Aang's mother, about whom we know absolutely nothing, so this is another OC chapter - OC with OC friends, OC/OC, the whole shebang.
Summary: Some of the missing and/or dead mothers of Avatar: who they might have been, and things they might have done or never did. Each chapter will be sort of its own five-things fic.
Disclaimer: Places and people you recognize from canon are not mine.
Acknowledgements: GIANT THANK-YOU to my sister, for the beautiful art (unfortunately, I can't embed it here!) and the constant nagging. And, of course, to the ladiesbigbang challenge on Dreamwidth, for leading me to actually get off my butt and post fic.
Other Notes: I went a little nuts with this one - technically speaking, I'm not sure it's not canon-compliant to have clans of Airbenders roaming the islands, but I don't think there was any hint of it in the show. I just wanted the Air Nomads to do some actual nomadry. So nearly everything about the way the Airbenders lived is pretty much my own personal fanon, and utterly made up. Sister Iio and the apples are canonical; she's the nun who helped Aang tame Appa, in his canon flashback, and she looked old enough to me that she could have helped his mother, too. Also, some of the placenames and people's names borrow phonetics/spellings from Wylie transliteration of Tibetan. It seemed appropriate, given the visual aesthetics of Air Nomads in the show.
(One person Aang's mother might have been, and five things she might have done.)
One:
Sister Iio smiles at her. "All right, go on," she says, "take an apple. And remember, Sungtsi, choose carefully. I know it is not your nature to be patient, but your sky bison will be your companion for life."
Sungtsi nods solemnly, and takes the biggest, reddest apple she can find - she wants her bison to like her.
The bison calves are eight months old, and already big enough to ride on, fluffy with the blustery wind that was blowing when Nya led them down. Nya is Sister Iio's; she likes Sungtsi well enough, but it's not quite the same as having a bison for your own.
Sungtsi almost gives the apple to the closest bison, and then remembers Sister Iio's advice. Not that the closest bison doesn't look like a sweetheart, all huge brown eyes and puffy fur; but Sungtsi is supposed to find something special.
So she holds the apple tight and keeps looking. The second bison is shy and skittish; the third is already eating Lin's apple; and she is about to look at the fourth when she is suddenly knocked over. "Oh," Sungtsi cries, laughing, and gets soundly licked.
It is the smallest of the calves, the runt of the litter, who is panting in Sungtsi's face. Sungtsi looks at her and thinks, Kima, without entirely meaning to. "Kima," she says aloud, just testing it out; giving Kima the apple is almost an afterthought, because she's already Sungtsi's.
Two:
Sungtsi finishes the move and then brings her hands together, and laughs aloud. Even before she looks and sees that Sister Iio is smiling, she knows she's succeeded.
.*.
She's fourteen and has never really cut her hair before, so it's almost down to her waist. They have to shave it to give her the tattoos; she's sorry to see it go, but she knows it will grow back, and it's worth it, to have earned her arrows.
Lin helps her cut it, to make the actual shaving a little easier. Lin doesn't have her arrows just yet, but Sungtsi knows she will soon, and tells her so.
Lin laughs. "You're just saying that to make me feel better," she says, slicing off a lock and letting it drop to the floor.
"Am not," Sungtsi protests. "You beat me last time we played partner airball, it's only a matter of time."
.*.
Normally the Mother Superior would do the tattooing, and Sungtsi's mother would be there to witness. But Sungtsi's parents are dead, killed by a sickness when she was two; so it's Lin's mother, and Sungtsi's aunt - Miisei - who sits by her, clasping her hand, and smiles proudly as the Mother Superior pushes blue beneath Sungtsi's skin.
Three:
It's one year after you earn your arrows that you're meant to leave the Temple and rejoin your clan, unless you want to stay at the Temple and be a nun; but you're also supposed to have your mother to go back with you, so Sungtsi gets to wait until Lin and Aunt Miisei can leave with her.
She was right about Lin - it only takes a month after she gets her arrows for Lin to earn her own, and Sungtsi helps her cut her hair just like Lin did for her, even though Lin's is shorter.
And then, a year and a month after Sungtsi gets her tattoos, they leave the Eastern Air Temple.
.*.
The morning they leave is bright and clear and autumn-crisp, and Sungtsi can hardly get Kima to keep her feet on the ground long enough for Aunt Miisei and Kun to take off first.
Lin's Naika is huge, especially next to Kima, who is still tiny for a bison her age; Sungtsi sometimes imagines that calm, patient Naika must think Kima is an idiot, and only bears her ridiculousness for Lin's sake.
Their clan usually travels the southern foothills of the Eastern Island; it's the furthest Sungtsi and Kima have ever flown together. Sungtsi's a little bit surprised by how nervous she feels - not that Uncle Ryo hasn't visited them at the Temple before, or any number of the cousins, but they still haven't been with the clan in ten years. If it doesn't feel like home anymore, Sungtsi doesn't know what she'll do.
Somehow she doesn't think she has the temperament to be a nun.
.*.
They find their clan in the late afternoon, camped in the foothills with a blazing bonfire - they had word, when Lin got her arrows, and it's traditional to light a great fire to guide new masters back to their clans when the waiting year is up.
The moment they land, they are surrounded by congratulations and grinning faces, until Uncle Ryo makes everybody give them some room to breathe. "Welcome back," he says, smiling, and Sungtsi throws her arms around his neck and wonders why she was ever worried at all.
Four:
They run into the Ming-Tsa Clan near midsummer; it's been blistering hot for at least two weeks, hot enough that even flying doesn't provide much relief, and everyone's glad for the excuse to relax and have some fun. The Dzo Shao Valley is big enough for both clans to land all their bison and still have plenty of space to spread out.
Sungtsi is weaving her way through the crowd, hand tight around Lin's wrist, looking for familiar faces; and then someone shrieks, "Sungtsi!" and a moment later Sungtsi is nearly bowled to the ground.
"Mian!" Sungtsi cries, when she realizes who exactly it is who has latched onto her shoulder. Mian is Ming-Tsa, a few years older than Sungtsi and Lin; she was at the Temple until Sungtsi turned ten, and is the reason Sungtsi knows how to climb onto the part of the Temple's southwest roof that nobody can see from the ground.
Mian backs up a little and beams at her, and then says, "Oh - yes, and this is my brother."
"Ming-Tsa dan Bao," the young man behind her says stiffly, and bows, awkward in his tallness.
"Yiensun dan Sungtsi," Sungtsi says.
.*.
Mian is just as bright and friendly as Sungtsi remembers; Bao ... isn't. He's quiet, instead; quiet and dour, and he seems to view everything Sungtsi does with great suspicion.
It's hilarious. By the fourth night of the impromptu festival, Sungtsi is smiling at Bao over the firepit solely to watch his eyes narrow.
"What's the matter with him?" Lin says. "Did you set him on fire once or something?"
"Not that I know of," Sungtsi says.
.*.
On the second-to-last day of the two-clan feast, Bao finally breaks, and corners her. "Why do you keep smiling at me?" he snaps.
Sungtsi considers this carefully. "Because I like to," she says; and it's true, but something about the way it sounds when she says it out loud makes her face feel suddenly hot. She laughs at herself a little bit, and then looks up and starts laughing harder, because Bao is staring at her, mouth open, hilariously nonplused.
"Oh," he says, "um," and then goes slowly red.
Five:
When the baby is almost due, the whole clan goes back to the Temple. After six days, Sungtsi finally feels the first rippling tug; she labors for sixteen hours, surrounded by Aunt Miisei, Lin, her thirteen other female first cousins and four other aunts, and many of the sisters of the Temple.
The baby is tiny and wrinkly and distinctly ugly, when Sungtsi is done; and Sungtsi thinks she could have cried for happiness, if she had not been so tired.
.*.
The child is a boy, so it is for Sungtsi to name him - if he had been a girl, the task would have gone to Bao. She hopes it will come to her right away, the way Kima's name did, but it doesn't.
"Well, you have to think of something," Bao tells her. "Or else I'll just have to tell little Nobody that his mother didn't love him enough to give him a name."
Sungtsi punches him in the thigh. "Watch it, or I'll be stuck explaining to him why his father walks with a limp," she says, laughing.
.*.
"Please tell me you've picked something," Lin says. "It's been three days already."
"I think maybe I have," Sungtsi says; she's not sure about it until the moment she's done saying it. She's been turning over a few options - Ryo, for Aunt Miisei's husband, or Shung, for Bao's grandfather, but the one she's come back to again and again, she just made up. "Aang," she says. It's the first time she's ever said it aloud, and it sounds good.
"Aang," Lin repeats consideringly, and brushes a finger against the sleeping baby's wispy hair. "I like it."