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He doesn’t really know her name.
Her brother said it once, and Aang caught the last scraps of syllables. Tara, maybe. Lara?
Aang knows exactly three things about her 一 she has an older brother and her name rhymes with capybara and she wears her hair in two slender loops, wrapped in blue beads. Up until now those have been enough to catch his attention. He knew … well, he knows he shouldn’t pry.
He really isn’t trying to.
She doesn’t introduce herself formally but she helps him up when he trips over a rock in the stream.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
They get to know each other silently. She laughs when he splashes water at her face as they play in the Fangfa River, the water knee-high and threatening to rise. Aang curses the tides for ruining his shirt. The girl shrugs in her refusal to speak badly of the moon.
Her clothes are blue like her beads, navy-dark in the Fangfa. She splashes water back and her brother mutters something in her ear. Tara-something waves goodbye and begins walking to the shoreline. She remains smiling from ten feet away, and Aang wants to yell and ask her name but he shouldn’t. If chivalry is dead, actions like this undoubtedly put the nail in the coffin.
Tara-something doesn’t know that he’s trying to teach himself waterbending, rendered shy after Master Pakku’s rejection. He can’t find anyone else. It’s not Aang’s fault that Master Pakku refuses to teach women, and probably anyone with tattoos because they’re a sign of ‘laziness’ among the populace. Aang could’ve stayed, yes. But he cares too much about chivalry, and the legacy of Kyoshi gnawing at his memory, to bow to a teacher like Pakku.
Kyoshi totally would’ve kicked Pakku’s ass in waterbending, Aang thinks. Too bad she’s not around to do it.
In three more weeks spent at the river, the girl with beaded hair will tell Aang her name. He’ll learn it means ‘flow of the water,’ and that it rolls gently off his tongue.
Katara begins teaching him by running rivulets up and down Aang’s arrows, practicing how to draw streams. She likes control, he learns. Not in an unhealthy way, but she prefers her life orderly. Her brain is upset when its mazes are cluttered with debris and greyed articles of clothing that she meant to wash last week. Katara prefers to view the world with the added lens of foresight.
Aang teaches her to fly, teaches her what it’s like when your stomach flips in midair, or when air brushes past your cheeks and paints them ruddy.
(Sokka was halfway through a scientific debate between himself and himself 一 “listen, there’s no way mammals would be able to fly; the only reason birds can do it is because of their hollow bones” - “but flying lemurs exist, and you can see flying red pandas in the Earth Kingdom” - “eh, I guess I could be wrong about the bird thing” 一 before he learned to fly too.)
Aang likes Sokka. He shares Katara’s love of rationale. They must have very smart parents, he guesses one day, and Katara talks his ear off about her mom’s engineering school back in the South Pole.
After Aang brings Sokka on the glider and irons out all his questions about the laws of physics, he brings Katara. She throws foresight out the window when she’s a hundred feet above ground.
“What do you think?” Aang asks. She’s gripping his shoulders as he handles the glider.
“This is exhilarating!” she screams, the sound stripped away by the wind’s howl.
“Eh, maybe.” He swerves leftward to avoid a patch of fog and he can feel her breathing hasten. “I dunno, I guess you could say it’s the best feeling. It’s freedom.” She’s so close. Her breaths brush against the back of his neck and Aang tries not to think too hard about that. Sokka would kill him if they crashed.
“Why would you ever not fly if you could do this all the time?!”
Sokka and their friend Teo are flying solo in the distance. Aang can see them laughing. Teo built him a glider last month, and Sokka’s fallen in love with it. It’s nearly as bad as the time he got the meteorite sword, Katara swears.
“How have we never done this before?” She clings onto Aang a little tighter. “I’m glad I met you.”
She teaches him many things. The spirit of water, the way of the world, and how to say her name like a promise.
“Me too,” Aang tells her softly. He pulls his gaze from the orange horizon to look back at her. She hasn’t stopped grinning and her hair, whipping around in the air, is tangled. If he were braver he might ask to kiss her.
But, then again, he’d hate to crash and burn.
Next month their group will fly to the Western Air Temple, where Teo’s father sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the monks and their students. (Acolytes? Protégés? Aang isn’t sure what the children at that temple like to call themselves.) He and his friends at the Southern temple experimented with ‘monklings’ for a while, but one too many eye-rolls from Monk Shubing made them switch back to ‘student.’
Next month he will show Katara around his home. Technically, the Western temple is one of his many. They’ll meet monks wearing saffron robes and, most likely, confusing metal contraptions put together by Teo’s father. He’s been experimenting with clockmaking. The monks, in turn, have fallen in love with their pocketwatches.
Next month he might tell her how he feels. If time can be contained in a silver orb, if teenage boys can fly, what can’t happen? From this height, watching the rays of golden hour crest down upon them, the whole world feels possible. Maneuverable. The rest of his life is putty in his hands.
“Do you wanna land?” Aang asks.
Katara shakes her head no. He can feel her move against him; no need to look.
They fly until the sun sets, watching it glow and pulse like melting gold.