Avatar: The Last Airbender: Double Trouble

Chapter 3

Dread curls in my gut as we get closer and closer to the temple. I know Aang is excited, but I also know that we might be walking into a graveyard. People think we've gone extinct and there's a war going on . . . I'm smart enough to put two and two together. Aang is, too, but his mind just doesn't work the way mine does. He always tries to see the good in everything, expects everything to be okay. 

   "Hey! Who ate all my blubbered seal jerky?" Sokka asks and I look over at him with a wrinkled nose. 

   "Don't look at me. That sounds disgusting," I say call over from Olla.

   "Oh. That was food?" Aang asks and I snort. "I used it to start the fire last night. Sorry." I laugh at that.

   "You what? Aww. No wonder the flames smelled so good."

   "We'll find you something to eat once we get to the temple," I tell him. "Probably not any meat, but I'm sure there are some fruit trees still growing." He grumbles at the thought of eating fruit and not meat and I smirk.

   "The Potola Mountain Range!" Aang exclaims as we get to the mountains. "We're almost there!" I vaguely here Katara talking to Aang, but I can't hear what she's saying from my spot on Olla's saddle. A small smile comes to my face when the temple finally comes into view. It still looks jut as beautiful as it did a hundred years ago.  "There it is, the Southern Air Temple." I swallow around the lump in my throat. You can tell from here that it hasn't been taken care of. That it's clearly abandoned. 

   "It's amazing!" Katara exclaims. Aang turns to smile at me.

   "We're home," he says and I nod in agreement. 

I walk a little ahead of Katara and Sokka as Aang runs ahead of us. I take in everything that is wrong while he just barrels on ahead. It's too quiet. There are no bison flying around. No monks. Nothing.

   "So where do I get something to eat?" Sokka questions and I roll my eyes. 

   "You're lucky enough to be one of the first outsiders to ever visit an airbender temple and all you can think about is food?" Katara questions. 

   "I'm just a simple gut with simple needs," he responds. Aang starts explaining what things are, but I decide to continue to the temple. Snapping my glider out, I fly up to my window and land in it. My room is trashed. A far cry compared to the neat and tidy room I had left a hundred years ago. Someone had been in here. I sigh and grab a bag, shoving scrolls and books into it until it's full and then I fill another bag with clothes. I quickly change into a new outfit and pull a brush through my waist length white blonde hair before braiding it. The monks had thought me a disgrace for growing my hair out after receiving my tattoos. I just liked my hair too much to stay balled and I wasn't a monk so they couldn't say much. I grab a few more bags before looking around my room one more time and flying out my window. I land next to the statue of monk Gyatso just as Aang come running up.

   "Someone trashed my room," I tell him and his face screws up in confusion.

   "What do you mean?"

   "I mean that it looked like the little kids had their first airbending lesson in my room." He shakes his head then looks back at the others. 

   "Hey, guys! I want you to meet somebody." Aang gestures to the statue. 

   "Who's that?" Sokka questions. 

   "Monk Gyatso," I answer. "He was the greatest airbender in the world."

   "He taught us everything we know," Aang says. We bow to the statue and I think to myself that he hadn't taught us everything we know.