Aang thought about not going back home right away. But he grew up here, and he knew that you couldn't really hide on this island. He had the place memorized, sure, but so did everyone else.

So instead, after leaving Zuko and Katara at their lesson, he reluctantly made his way back to the village. Of course, his grandmother and parents were right there, waiting for him at the entrance to the tree.

"We need to talk," Jaya said.

Aang's shoulders slumped. "Haven't we done enough talking already?"

Ceba stepped around Jaya and held her arms out to him. Without hesitation, he stepped into them, and he instantly felt better as that familiar warmth of her embrace enclosed him.

She had hugged him when he had first arrived, but this was the first time he really registered how long it had been since he'd had a hug like this.

"Aang, you're not in trouble. We were out of our mind with worry. After what happened…we thought you had left for good."

She held him for a while, and Gaden and Jaya joined in too, until finally they all pulled away.

"We just want to know what happened," Jaya said.

Aang sighed. He glanced up through the lattice of pathways and saw some other villagers staring in their direction. He gave them a little wave and a smile, but then looked at his family. "I would prefer to talk about it in a private place."

They nodded. The four of them climbed back up and into Aang's childhood home at the very top of the hollowed out trunk.

They'd passed by so quickly before that he hadn't be able to register that he was home. But now, as he walked in, his breath caught a little in his throat.

The house was the biggest one in the town, but it was still pretty small. It was carved directly from the wood of the giant tree, like most of the other houses in their hidden hamlet, and sat on a platform at the highest point in the town. One bridge connected the house to the rest of the pathways, and looking down from the platform, you could see all the way down to the very base of the tree.

Inside, it was cozy, if a little cramped for the four people who had lived here since Aang was born. It was essentially one room, split into two halves by a curtain of woven leaves and vines. The front half was the "public" area, which included a place to prepare food, a little table and chairs for eating or reading at, and a single bookshelf which contained the few scrolls, books, and other relics that their people had managed to salvage during their years on the run before they'd come here. There were also a few chairs arranged near the bookshelf as a sort of sitting area. These were padded with pillows stuffed with various things they'd scavenged from the woods.

Most of the furniture, aside from the chairs around the table, were part of the structure of the house, carved directly from the tree at the same time the house was carved, but they'd been painted with various colors to keep everything from being a monochrome brown.

They didn't go past the curtain for the moment, but behind it, Aang knew, there were beds for him, his grandmother, and his parents, but not much else. They hadn't needed much else, really. Living in this village was a very community-focused experience. People spent most of their waking hours outside their homes, either chatting with neighbors, working on things inside the tree, or foraging for food and supplies in the forest.

They all sat down in the chairs near the shelf, and for a long moment, an uncomfortable silence stretched between them, everyone waiting for the others to talk. Aang couldn't look at their faces, instead choosing to stare down at his own hands.

Finally, Ceba spoke up. "Aang, we were so worried about you. What happened? Why did you leave?"

Aang took a deep breath. "I… I'm sorry. I had to. I…" He sighed. "I guess I should just start from the beginning." He held up his right arm and pushed back the sleeve, revealing the small, slightly faded blue arrow tattooed on the inside of his upper arm. "You remember the day I got my tattoo?"

His parents and grandmother looked at the mark, and their expressions were a mixture of pride and sadness.

"Yes," Jaya said. "You begged for us to let you have that."

A FEW MONTHS AGO

"Guess what, Appa?" Aang asked. "Today, I'm going to become a real airbender!"

The bison grunted, and Aang laughed. They were up at the top of the village tree's trunk, where Appa usually hung out. Aang was lying against Appa's giant side, running fingers through Appa's fur and smiling to himself.

After weeks of begging, they were finally going to let him do it. They were finally going to let him get airbender tattoos.

Of course, it wasn't quite true that he was going to be a "real" airbender. Back before the war, before his people had been forced to isolate themselves on the back of this lion turtle and give up on their nomadic ways, an airbender received their tattoos after mastering the 36 tiers of airbending, or by inventing a technique of their own.

Unfortunately for Aang, though, any written knowledge of most of those tiers had been lost to the war, and the last person who knew them had died almost eighty years ago.

He had, however, mastered the few techniques they still had records of, and though they may not have been as sophisticated as the airbending techniques of old, he'd probably made up at least a dozen others, just by messing around on his own.

And so, Jaya had finally said yes. She was going to let him get his tattoos. That way, at least, he could start to feel like a real airbender—even if he never truly would be. That was good enough for Aang.

He was dressed for the occasion, too, wearing one of the few traditional monk robe ensembles they still had from before the war.

He smiled up through the branches of the giant tree, then jumped at the sound of the trap door to this area thumping against the floor as it swung open. Looking over, he saw Ceba climbing up the ladder into the enclosure.

She smiled. "I thought I would find you up here. Are you ready?"

Aang jumped to his feet. "Yes!"

Like Aang, Ceba was dressed in traditional Air Nomad robes, swathed in flowing red and yellow fabric. She didn't have tattoos, of course, but she had her dark hair brushed back so that her whole forehead was exposed, in a style similar to how female airbending masters had often worn theirs. She had wound the rest of it into a loose braid that went down to her mid-back.

"Let's get going, then," she said, holding out her hand for him to take.

As they made their way down through the tree, Aang found that he had to force himself to walk slowly, to not jump and down with excitement, and to look confident.

The rest of the town came out of their huts as they passed and joined their procession down through the tree. Most of them were not wearing traditional robes—there just weren't many to go around—but there was prominent red and yellow everywhere, and everyone had pulled out the best they had for the event.

People smiled at him, patted him on the back, bowed to him, whispered and shouted their congratulations, and then joined the line with the others, until eventually they had made it out of the tree and were making their way up to the very top of the island, where Jaya and Gaden would be waiting.

Aang had wondered about that—he had not actually received his tattoo yet. The tattoo was going to take a long time, especially since they couldn't use airbending to speed it along like the monks could. Why not wait to have everyone else come at the end, for the reveal? Did they really want to make everyone sit around for hours while Aang painstakingly got his tattoos?

Jaya had said it would be fine. And she'd said it with that look she sometimes got that dared him to question her at his own peril, so Aang had not pressed.

Their little procession made it to the island's peak, where the shell of the dragon turtle was exposed, adorned with its familiar hexagonal design. And there, as expected, were Jaya and Gaden. Between them was a little stool holding a small container filled with blueish ink, and in Gaden's hand, he held an implement with a wooden handle and a sharp-looking metal needle on the end. Presumably that was what they would use to give Aang the tattoos.

Aang tried to remain serious and stoic, professional, but he couldn't keep the smile from bursting forth on his lips every few seconds. It was happening. It was really happening.

Jaya smiled at him, and bowed deeply, and Gaden followed suit, then one by one, everyone around them bowed until Aang was the only one standing. It lasted only a second, but to Aang it felt like a century. Eventually, though, everyone rose.

"Aang," Jaya said. "This is the day our people have been anxiously awaiting for a hundred years. By taking this step and receiving your master's tattoos, you are not only progressing further on your personal journey, but showing that there is still hope that our people will one day recover from the damage that the Fire Nation has done to us. Please, step forward."

Aang did, though his heart was hammering in his chest. He bowed his head. "It is an honor beyond words to be given this blessing."

"Then sit." Though Aang kept his head bowed, he could hear the smile playing across her lips as she said those words.

He did. And once again, he wondered how exactly this was going to work. The robes that Jaya had given him had been ceremonial Air Nomad robes, worn only for very special occasions, and they covered basically everything on him from the neck down, except for his right arm, shoulder, and a small portion of the right side of his chest, which were left exposed. Traditional Air Nomad tattoos, he knew, involved more than just the arm. Maybe they were going to start there and do the rest later?

Gaden came around onto Aang's right side, holding the needle in one hand. In his other, he held a piece of chewy, dried fruit, which he offered to Aang. "Here, chew on this. It'll help distract you." Then, in a quieter voice, he said, "I'm so proud of you."

Then he took up the needle and instructed Aang to rotate his arm so the inside of his upper arm was more easily accessible. Then, very gently, he began the slow process of tattooing, first prepping a small area of the arm by wiping it down with a damp rag, then dipping his handheld needle into the container of ink and starting to poke at the skin.

Around them, the other villagers began to sit, cross-legged, and whispered conversations burbled up, but Aang couldn't focus on that. He was concentrating too much on staying still, and chewing on his fruit stick to distract himself from the sensations in his arm.

It hurt, of course, but not in the way Aang had been expecting. It felt like the skin of his arm was buzzing, and it burned a little. Strangely, the moments when Gaden had to pause to dip his needle in the ink were almost worse than when he was actively tattooing, because at least during the tattooing there was a rhythmic tapping sensation that helped distract from the pain.

He steeled himself for many more hours of that pain. But, to his surprise, after less than an hour of this, Gaden leaned back with a smile and said, "There!"

Aang frowned. He'd been avoiding looking over at the arm that was being tattooed, but now he did. There, on the inside of his upper arm, was a small, light blue arrow, maybe about an inch wide and two inches long. The skin all around the tattoo was a little red, and now that Gaden had stopped, that burning sensation was starting to get more intense. Aang's frown deepened even more, confused.

"Wait, that's it?" he asked.

Gaden ignored the question and began gently wiping down the tattoo with a clean, damp cloth, while Jaya stood and started talking to the rest of the village about what an honor it is to welcome the first new master airbender their people had seen in nearly a hundred years.

Aang, though, felt like he was in a daze. Her words were just noise to his ears. That was it? A little tattoo, so small it would be unnoticeable in his normal clothing? After months of begging, years of working as hard as he could to be the airbender his people wanted him to be…this was all?

Surely this was some kind of joke. Maybe they were just doing this much now, and they would come back later, in private, to finish the rest.

But Gaden finished wiping off the tattoo, then pulled Aang to his feet and held up his newly tattooed arm for everyone to see, like this was the culmination, the completion. The villagers cheered, and Gaden whispered again to Aang how proud he was, but Aang barely heard.

So this was what Jaya had meant when she said it would be fine for the whole village to be there for the tattooing process, why it wouldn't be a problem. They had never intended to give him the proper tattoos at all. Just this measly replacement, to humor him. To placate him and get him to stop nagging, like giving a crying child their binky.

"Aang? Aang!" The sound of his grandmother's stern voice shook him slightly out of his daze, and Aang realized that she had finished whatever speech she'd been giving, and the cheers of the other Air Nomads had died down, and everyone was staring at him, expectantly. He didn't know for how long.

"What?" he asked.

"Would you like to say a few words, to close out the ceremony?"

Aang tried to tamp down the roiling emotions that were burbling up inside him for now. He wouldn't make a scene in front of the whole village. Instead, he slapped on the biggest, fakest smile he could muster.

"You have no idea how much it means to me to be given this honor. I hope I will get to continue the legacy of my great-grandfather, Avatar Aang, and help lead our people back to what we once were. This tattoo is the first step on that long journey. Thank you." And he bowed, partially out of respect, partially to hide the fact that his happy persona was crumbling a little.

Another cheer rose up, and people began to filter away, going back to the village to continue their normal duties.

Gaden came over and began wrapping Aang's arm in a bandage, murmuring to him about how he would need to be careful with it for a few weeks, keep it clean so it doesn't get infected, but Aang was already slipping back into the daze.

They had lied to him.

After a few more minutes, only Gaden, Ceba, and Jaya were still there in the clearing with Aang. They were all smiles, happy as could be, and none of them seemed to notice that Aang felt anything but.

Until, finally, he found the courage to speak.

"You…lied to me," he said quietly, and the chattering between the three of them stopped as they turned to look at him. "You never intended for me to get real airbending tattoos, did you?"

Gaden frowned. "What do you mean, Aang? That tattoo is real, real as could be."

"You know what I mean."

The three of them looked at each other for a long moment, before Jaya finally took a step toward him.

"Aang," she said. "You have to understand, we did this for your sake. Our people have managed to avoid capture for so long because we are careful, and we do not flaunt our location to the world. Traditional airbending tattoos are large and easily identifiable. If anyone saw, it could let the Fire Nation know there are still Air Nomads out there, and you don't want to put our whole village in jeopardy, do you?"

"Who's going to see me?" Aang demanded. "We haven't had contact with anyone from the outside world since Avatar Aang died. Nobody has been allowed to leave, ever. For all we know, the war could have ended twenty years ago, and we're still here, hiding out, slowly losing touch with everything that made our people who they were."

Jaya's eyes went steely. "Avatar Aang's final wish was that our people survive, as you very well know. I can't risk exposing ourselves and ruining that wish in any way."

It was the same thing she had said a hundred times over the years. The same thing that Aang would never understand.

But then, none of the rest of them were airbenders. They didn't seem to feel bothered by the constraints the way Aang did. Everyone thought that the old Air Nomads had been travelers because they were trying to find enlightenment and spirituality, and while that may have been true, Aang also knew, probably better than anyone else alive, that it wasn't just that.

They had to move. It was in their nature. It was a basic need, almost as important as breathing, or food, or water. Staying in one place went against everything in their being.

That was why Aang had always struggled so much with being forced to stay here, why he constantly begged to be allowed to go out into the world, see how the war was, meet new people. Air was the element of freedom, and airbenders were not meant to stay in one place.

Aang bit his tongue. He had argued with her enough on this point to know that there was no point in trying to do so again. So instead he just bowed his head. "As you will, Elder Jaya. Thank you for giving me this much, at least."

And then he pushed out of the clearing, leaving Jaya and his parents staring after him.

He avoided the village the whole day, preferring to wander the woods, and ended up falling asleep at the very edge of the island, near the lion turtle's head.

And, yet again, he dreamed. For as long as he could remember, he'd had occasional dreams about leaving the island, about something calling him to go, but in the past few weeks leading up to the tattooing ceremony, he'd been having them nearly every night.

In some ways, they felt like more than normal dreams. They felt like a sign. They felt like maybe the spirits were talking to him, telling him he had a destiny he needed to fulfill, and he couldn't do it here. Each night, the pull became a little stronger.

He dreamed of riding on Appa away from the island, the only home he had ever known. He dreamed of meeting people, indistinct in appearance, little more than silhouettes, and helping them achieve great things. He dreamed of eventually coming home, and leading his people off the island, back to the air temples where they belonged, the war over.

When he awoke, he found himself staring across the ocean, and there on the horizon he could just barely see a landmass, glistening white with snow. In his hazy, half-awake state, something about it called to him.

Then he noticed was the sting of pain in his arm from the tattoo, and the reminder made him angry all over again. That was when he decided he would leave.

Jaya wouldn't like it. Ceba and Gaden and all the others of the village would be angry; they would probably never forgive him. At the moment, Aang was too angry to care.

That wanderlust that Aang had felt his whole life was coming to a boiling point, and he couldn't stand to ignore it anymore. He couldn't stand anyone else telling him no, that it was too dangerous, that he would bring danger to the village. They couldn't hide out here forever. This island was the place they lived, and had lived for years, but it wasn't home. His people needed to go home eventually, and the only way they could do that was by leaving.

Why shouldn't he be the first?

"Tonight," he said quietly, and he didn't know if he was speaking to himself, or to the lion turtle, or to that landmass in the distance. A promise.

He made his way back to the village, pretending everything was fine, until night came. And he left.

"I rode away on Appa late at night," Aang said, "traveling south toward the landmass I had seen, until we came upon a bad storm not far from the shore. I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but I woke up a few days later in Katara and Sokka's village. They had found me and nursed me back to health. Then, not long later, we met Zuko, and I finally understood what the call had been for. The Avatar needed me."

Silence. Deafening, uncomfortable. It stretched for several long seconds, while Aang carefully tried to avoid meeting any of their eyes.

Finally, Ceba shook her head. "Aang, you could have died."

Aang bit his lip, and didn't respond.

"What you did was reckless and stupid," Jaya said. "I've half a mind to keep you here and force your friends to leave. It would serve you right, for endangering yourself and our whole culture the way you have. And then for you to come back here, when you are actively being chased by the Fire Nation? How could you—"

Aang grit his teeth. He should have known they wouldn't understand. "I won't stay. You can't make me. If you kick my friends out, I'm going with them."

Jaya glared at him, and opened her mouth to say something, but Gaden broke in.

"Jaya, please. The boy was just doing what he thought was right."

Jaya pursed her lips, unimpressed.

"I'm glad you're safe," Ceba said. "But you really should have come to us, talked to us. Or at the very least, left a note."

"I've been trying to talk to you for twelve years," Aang said. "And all you ever did was shoot me down. So I decided to take matters in my own hands, and now look at me. I'm doing something important! I'm helping the Avatar fulfill his destiny and bring an end to this war so that everything can finally go back to normal, and we can all go home. Isn't that what you always wanted? Isn't that what Avatar Aang wanted? To eventually be able to leave this place and reestablish the Air Nomads?"
His family all looked at each other.

"I am…proud of what you have accomplished, Aang," Jaya said, though there was clear reluctance in her tone. "But you should not have returned here. We will allow you and your friends to stay here for a short time, but your presence brings risk, and if the Fire Nation discovers us, we will stand no chance."

"If they haven't found us in eighty years, what makes you think they will find us now?" Aang asked. "We weren't planning on staying long. A few weeks, maybe. Enough time for us to recover, and for Zuko to get a good start on his waterbending training. But before long, I believe we are planning to head to the Earth Kingdom to find him an earthbending master. I just wanted to stay here long enough to give the Fire Nation a chance to lose our trail."

"This island is not invisible," Jaya said. "What if you were followed? What if someone saw you land Appa here? If they are using their eyes to track you, you can still be seen."

"We were careful," Aang said. "We avoided populated regions, tried to fly up in the clouds as much as possible. I don't think anyone saw us."

Jaya shook her head. "It is too dangerous for us to harbor the Avatar for long. Even your great-grandfather avoided staying on this island as much as possible, for fear that the Fire Nation would discover it."

"Fine," Aang said, crossing his arms. He kept his expression carefully neutral, though inside he was roiling with anger and betrayal. How naive he had been to think that his family would be happy that he was finally following his destiny, how stupid to think they would want to help him. "Like I said, we aren't planning on staying long. And when we leave, I can go?"

Jaya pursed her lips again, and her gray eyes pierced into his soul. "Well, like you said, Master Aang. I can't make you stay." She paused. "One week. I will give you that, because I have missed you, Aang, and I would like to spend time with you. But then you and your friends must leave."

Aang just nodded.