Chosen by the Spirits | A male reader x Avatar the Last Airbender story

Chapter 18- The Library (part 1)

It had been a few days since Aang first learnt how to earthbend. While he had been improving his earthbending skills with Toph, I had independently been mastering the art of water temperature regulation. Now, I could successfully control the temperature of moderately large bodies of water with little effort, meaning I could potentially lob boiling water at any future enemies. During this time, I had also helped Aang improve his waterbending, and I also taught Katara a thing or two as well. Once Aang was comfortable enough in both his waterbending and earthbending, he announced that we were all to go on a 'mini-vacation' each: essentially a day out that we individually picked from my map. And so, we stood at an arid clearing in a desolated plains, somewhere in the earth kingdom. It was a rather warm day, but there a cool breeze in the air. The gang stood in the isolated, dry plains, while Aang sat cross-legged a few metres in front of us. Ahead of him, there were many tiny hills in the ground, likely caused by a small animal of some sort.

"What's out here?" Sokka asked Aang in a confused tone.

"A lot, actually," Toph stated as she held her palm to the ground, feeling the vibrations under the earth. "There's hundreds of little-" she began, before Aang cut off her words.

"Shh! I know you can see under the ground, but don't ruin the surprise," he told her, holding a wooden flute in his hand. "Just watch," he instructed us before he blew into the flute. A clean, high note came out of the flute and, only a second later, a small mammal quickly emerged from one of the holes in front of us, mimicking the noise that the flute had made. Aang did this a few more times, stating "I'm putting an orchestra together!" before making a song out of the weird creature's mimicking. He did this for a few more minutes until Sokka got annoyed and plugged his finger in the end of Aang's flute, preventing any noise from being made.

"This is great and all, but don't we have more important things to worry about?" he asked Aang frustratedly. "We should be making plans!"

"We did make plans," Toph told him casually. "We're all picking mini-vacations,"

"There's no time for vacations," Sokka bluntly said, ruining the mood. While I agreed with him that Aang's teachings were the priority, a small day off never hurt anyone, right?

"I'm learning the elements as fast as I can," Aang tried to reason with Sokka. "I practice hard every day with Toph, (Y/N) and Katara. I've been training my arrow off,"

"We should be allowed a day off," I joined in, placing a hand on Sokka's shoulder. "At the Northern Water Tribe I was never allowed a day off, and let me tell you, it's fun,". Despite my anecdote, Sokka evidently wasn't convinced.

"Even if Aang does master all the elements, then what?" he asked us all seriously. "It's not like we have a map of the fire nation. Should we just head west until we reach the fire lord's house?". He was kind of right; master Pakku's map that he had gifted me was detailed, but rather outdated. It had clearly been made way before the hundred year war had begun. Sokka continued to ridicule us some more, before Katara came up with a compromise.

""All right, we'll finish our mini-vacations and then we'll look for Sokka's intelligence," she joked, and all of us except Sokka laughed. Aang held out master Pakku's map in front of Katara.

"Your turn, Katara," he said to her excitedly. "Where would you like to go on your mini-vacation?"

"How about the misty palms oasis? That sounds refreshing!" she exclaimed, and Aang gave a quick nod.

"Oh, yeah, I've been there," Aang casually explained to her. "It's a pristine natural ice ground, and I don't usually use the word 'pristine'. It's one of nature's wonders,". And so, with our next destination decided, we all hopped on Appa. During the trip, I had a long and hard think about where I wanted my mini-vacation to be. As I had never left the Northern Water Tribe before now, I had little clue of where there was in the world to explore. Before I could come to a conclusion, we arrived at the 'pristine' misty palms oasis. However, the destination turned out to be far from pristine, as we found ourselves stood outside rotting wooden doors that were swung open. We were now in a sandy desert, with the mist palms oasis consisting of a small ring of yellow sandstone walls. "Must have changed ownership since I was here," Aang awkwardly laughed as we walked into the oasis with disappointment on our faces. The oasis turned out to just be a pile of ice on the ground, which was a huge disappointment to us all. We decided that we would at least grab a drink before we left, though, so Sokka could choose his mini-vacation destination.