The Western Air Temple
"What do you make of her?"
"I don't know."
"Another Air bender? We found her floating in the clouds."
"Nah, she looks Fire bender to me."
"Sokka, you think everyone strange is a fire bender."
"I do not!"
"Katara's right, Sokka, you've got to calm down."
"We just lost in our invasion of the Fire Nation, our friends have been sent to prison, and this girl just appears out of nowhere! I will not calm down!"
"Would all of you be quiet? She's waking up!"
These are the voices I hear in my dream. It's a strange dream. There are all these fluffy clouds, and I'm somehow flying through them with four people hovering over me: two girls and two guys. This is possibly the nicest dream I've ever had. Everything's so quiet, except for the four people's bickering.
Suddenly, I feel a splash of water across my face and bolt upright, facing one of the girls. She's wearing some kind of blue, animal skin dress, and her hair is braided down her back, except for two loops which I think are her bangs.
I'm definitely not dreaming anymore.
"Oh good," the girl says in a perky voice, "You're awake!"
"Yeah…" I say slowly. Have I been kidnapped or something? I've never seen this girl before in my life.
Suddenly, one of the guys (same blue animal skins as the girl, except not a dress, and his hair is in a ponytail) grabs me and presses a sword to my throat. "Who are you and what do you want with the Avatar?"
"I—what? What's an Avatar?" I'm totally confused. Plus, it's hard to answer without slicing my throat open.
"Sokka let her go," the other girl says. She's dressed in a pretty green fabric, and her clouded eyes say she's blind. "She's telling the truth!"
"Oh, just like Azula was telling the truth?"
"Sokka, really, this is ridiculous!" the first girl exclaims. "Put her down!"
The boy, Sokka I guess, holds me for a moment more (as if to prove he can) and slowly sets me down. I finally get a good look at my surroundings. The five of us are in a saddle of some kind, and we are flying through the clouds on a huge fuzzy animal.
That's enough to make any city girl freak out.
"What the…?" I whisper. "Where am I?" I ask louder. But then I take another look at their clothes—definitely not from the Gap—and alter my question. "When am I?"
"Just calm down," the girl with the hair loops says. "We're almost to the Western Air Temple, and then we can figure out what's going on."
"Air Temple?" I ask. These people are crazy! Why would they worship air? Don't they have gods or something?
"You've never heard of it?" The girl looks confused. "It's one of the last places where the Air Nomads lived before the Fire Nation destroyed all of them."
Air Nomads? Fire Nation? This dream is getting crazier by the minute!
"We're almost there," the second boy pipes up. He can't be more than twelve, but his head is shaved. There's some kind of blue arrow tattoo on his forehead, and he's carrying a stick of wood, which he jerks open. Before I can even blink at him, he leapt off the beast we're on, gliding on his stick-hang-glider thing, towards the ground below.
"Almost where?" I ask. But everyone ignores me. Ponytail boy—Sokka—is busy getting to the head of the animal where I think I see the reins attached to its horns. Hair-Loop girl is speaking soothingly to the blind girl, who looks a little air sick. I'm by myself in my own corner of the saddle. So I take the time to evaluate my situation.
First, I check to see if I'm awake. A pinch tells me yes. Then, I check to see if my body's intact. I shimmy around as best I can without drawing Sokka's attention. My chestnut hair is soaked, my pale-as-paper skin is sure to burn under the sun, and my blue eyes could use some shades, but I'm perfectly okay. Although, I am a touch hungry; that toaster waffle I scarfed down for breakfast just wasn't cutting it. I check my backpack, which is sitting beside me, for some towels to mop up the water that was splashed across my face, but it's totally empty. Weird, I think, that thing was filled with stuff for the pool today!
"Reaching the ground in 3…2…1!" Sokka calls from the beast's head. I realize what's happening and brace myself at the last second against the shallow walls of the saddle. The animal soon touches down.
"Yeah, we're here!" the blind girl exclaims as soon as her feet touch the ground. "I can feel it!"
"Umm, I think your feet need their eyes checked, Toph," Hair-Loop says gently.
I glance around as I cautiously get off the furry beast. We're at the edge of a cliff, yawning into a vast drop of emptiness.
"No, she's right," the bald kid says. "We are here!"
Yeah, I think, and I'm totally in New York eating a corn dog from a street vendor.
"Wow, it's amazing!" the blind girl says, sliding her bare feet across the grassy cliff.
Just when I think I've found myself with a bunch of crazies, the bald kid throws a rope over the cliff.
"No," I firmly say. "No way am I going over a cliff to who knows where."
"But the temple—" the bald kid protests.
"Obviously doesn't exist," I snort. "If you wanted to get rid of me so bad, why not just throw me off that furry thing?"
"Who said anything about wanting to get rid of you?" Hair-Loop asks.
"Besides," the blind girl says, "you can't see the temple because it's right under our feet!"
The bald kid backs her up. "Toph's right. The temple hangs from the underside of the cliff."
I raise an eyebrow at him. Are they all nuts?
"Look, if it makes you feel any better, you can fly down on Appa instead of the rope."
"What's an Appa?" I ask, but I'm drowned out by Sokka's complaints.
"Why can't we take Appa down?"
"Just look how tired he is from carrying all of us from the Fire Nation!" The bald boy shouts. "He can barely lift himself up!"
I risk a glance at the animal that brought us here. He looks like a cross between a manatee and a bison I saw at Central Park Zoo, except for the fact that he's approximately the size of my apartment building. Alright, half, but he is huge. He's covered in armor, and he looks dead tired.
The bald boy helps me back onto the beast as everyone else swings down the rope.
"Don't be afraid," he tells me. "Appa is completely safe." The beast roars his agreement.
"Come on, Appa," the bald boy calls from the ground, "yip-yip!"
With a huge leap, the beast leaves the ground behind and soars over the edge of the cliff. I can barely hold in a scream until the temple comes into view. It looks like a bunch of houses from Chinatown were plucked up, turned over, and glued to the underside of the cliff. Of course, they're a lot cleaner than the buildings in Chinatown, and they're all white. I marvel at the sheer number of the buildings, when something catches my eye to the left. I think I see a person dressed in red, but he's gone so quick that I can't be sure.
The flying animal—Appa, I guess—sweeps into the temple with ease, as if it was built to hold his size. Hair-Loop helps me down while Sokka and the bald boy start taking the armor off the furry creature.
"I don't think I've properly introduced myself," she tells me. "I'm Katara, and the boy in the pony tail over there is my brother, Sokka." She looks apologetic. "Sorry about the sword, but we just came from a huge rebellion against the Fire Nation. What's your name?"
Her words swirl in my head. Rebellion? Fire Nation? I feel myself sway a little on my feet.
"I'm Starr," I introduce myself. "Nice to meet you." My mother's southern manners have been instilled in me since I was born, even if I did grow up in the Big Apple.
"Nice to meet you too, Starr," Katara smiles. "That girl over there is Toph, she's an Earth bender. And the boy over there helping Sokka is Aang, the last Air bender and the Avatar. Oh, and I'm a Water bender."
"Avatar?" I ask, mostly to myself. How could he possibly be an avatar? He's not even blue!
"You haven't heard?" Katara looks shocked. "The Avatar's alive! Sure he was frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years, but he's still the same twelve-year-old Air bender."
"What's an avatar?" I ask her, since our definitions seem to be completely different. When I think avatar, I think of the movie that came out a few years ago with all the blue people living in the jungle.
"Wait, you don't know who the Avatar is?" Now she looks really worried.
"Obviously, if I'm asking you," I retort, swaying a little more on my feet. Am I in shock or something?
Next thing I know, I'm falling to the stone ground as everything turns black.