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“Gyatsoooo,” called a small voice next to his ear. Gyatso twitched his mustache but otherwise didn’t stir. He already had to rise early this morning. No sense in getting up any sooner than he had to finish his mediations and assist the preparations.
“Gyatsooo,” called the voice again, accompanied by a musical little giggle. He cracked one eye open and found Aang’s face peering into his own. He also noticed that it was still dark outside. Far too early for little children to be so awake.
He closed his eyes again and snored loudly.
“I saw you. Wake up!” Aang called, tapping on Gyatso’s nose. Gyatso let out another mock snore, loud and grinding, suppressing a smile as Aang laughed.
He felt Aang take his face into his hands and shake him about. “Wake up wake up wake up wake uppppp,” he chanted. Gyatso snorted, pausing his mock snores. Aang stopped shaking him.
After a long pause, he let out another snore. Aang reached out and pushed one of Gyatso’s eyelids open with his thumb. Gyatso pretended to let his gaze roam all over the bare room.
“I know you’re awake,” he said. “I woke up hours ago,” he continued.
“But I am sleeping now,” Gyatso said back, not opening his other eye.
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yu-huh,” countered Gyatso.
“Then, uhm, how are you talking?” Aang asked reasonably.
“I am sleeptalking,” answered Gyatso. To corroborate the story, he let out another mock snore.
Aang repositioned himself, lying next to Gyatso and scootching closer so he could cup his hands around his ear.
“I can’t reach the jackfruit pie,” he whispered. At that, Gyatso opened his eyes and turned to face Aang.
“Now this is a travesty. Come come,” he said, waving his hands to herd Aang. He grinned and rolled to his feet, running out the door into the halls. Gyatso looked out the window, still a little bleary-eyed. The eastern horizon was barely lightening with the blue-orange bands of dawn.
It’d been a hard adjustment, the last - now nearly two - years Aang had been with him. Little children had so much energy. So so so much energy. Gyatso had never felt his age more.
He stood and pulled on his day robes and his beads, combing down his mustache with his fingers when Aang reappeared in the doorway.
“You are taking a long time,” he informed Gyatso.
Gyatso put his hand on Aang’s head. “Patience is an acknowledgement of the beauty of here and now. To dwell on the past or dream of the future - even the immediate future - is to remove yourself from the present.”
Aang stared up at him with big eyes. The other monks had recommended he should bring his philosophical musings down a little. Aang was only four, after all.
“What does ‘dwell’ mean?” he asked. Gyatso smiled down at him. Case in point. However, people did not speak to one another in the simple manner so many adults adopted around children. He’d always thought that doing so stunted their ability to grow, just as the monks who carried their little charges up the difficult ledges rather than allowing them to try it for themselves guaranteed that their students would only learn their own limits when permitted to test them.
“It means to think about something a lot,” Gyatso answered. “Think about how, in this moment, you are hungry. You would like some jackfruit pie, but you cannot reach it. I will get it for you, but you are now waiting for me. You are not present in this moment - you’re thinking of a moment very soon when you will be eating pie. But come here,” he said, crouching down so they were on the same level.
They were silent for a moment.
“What are we doing?” Aang asked.
“Listening to the birds.” Through the window, Gyatso saw the bands of dawn start to grow brighter on the horizon. With them, the birds had started singing. So far above the crust of the earth, on their mountain, the birds funnily enough declined to fly unless necessary. They had a splendid habit of running between the bushes of flowers and in the mornings they’d sing. It was a high, clear sound and when a group got going, they’d layer over one another, their little voices carrying far on the wind.
“Do you hear them?” he asked Aang.
“Yes,” he answered, eyes screwed shut as he concentrated on listening.
Gyatso smiled at him. “There is always beauty to be found in the present. Even when we are suffering,” he said, poking Aang in the belly, drawing a laugh out of him as high and clear as the birdsong.
“Now,” Gyatso said, straightening. “Breakfast.”
Aang took his hand and led them both through the halls towards the kitchens.
“Why do they sing?” Aang asked as they walked.
Gyatso hummed. “Why do we talk?” he countered.
Aang stopped short, and looked up at Gyatso with wide eyes. “Why do we talk?” he asked seriously.
He took Aang’s hand and prompted them to continue walking. “All things talk, in some way. You and I talk about how lovely the birds sound, and how we would like to eat pies. Or how we would like more sleep,” Gyatso said, raising an eyebrow at his young student. “Perhaps the birds are talking about how lovely they find our voices, just as we are about theirs.”
“Oh,” Aang said. They lapsed into silence as they walked.
“I know what they’re saying,” he said seriously.
“You do?”
Aang nodded, again, very seriously. “They’re wondering why we are dressed like them.”
Gyatso paused. Another thing he was learning as he’d become Aang’s guardian is that children were sometimes more difficult to decipher than the most rigorous philosophy scrolls.
“We are dressed like them?”
Aang just nodded, and they arrived at the kitchen. Aang released his hand and ran to one of the far cabinets. He was tall enough to reach the bottom of the door to open it but his hands couldn’t reach the top shelf where the pie sat. He’d been taking to bending cushions of air around himself, but hadn’t quite gotten the hang of lifting himself off the ground yet.
Gyatso reached out and took the pie down, serving them each a healthy slice. They each had a long day ahead of them, after all.
As they walked into the dining area to sit, Gyatso cast his eyes on the only three other of their peers who’d risen this early, sitting at the long tables that stretched through the room. Looking at the warm colors of the robes, it clicked, the saffron colored shawls against the yellow of the robes looking for all the world like the orange necks and tawny bodies of the birds that nested in the mountain bushes. He pressed down a smile.
They took their seats near pupil Lo, who was cradling a teacup to his chest and reading one of the dusty old tomes they kept. He was coming up on his tattooing and Gyatso had heard that the boy was so anxious about forgetting the ritual words that he’d spent the last several weeks studying them to exhaustion.
As they took their seats, he looked up and smiled at them with tired eyes. Aang immediately dug into his pie.
“Good morning, Monk Gyatso. Good morning, Aang,” he greeted them. “Are you excited for today, Aang?”
Aang answered around a mouthful of pie.
“Gyatso said we are going to suffer.”
Gyatso choked on air and Lo let out a startled laugh. “Certainly he didn’t mean that about the toys, though, right?”
Aang nodded. “Because we can’t eat,” he continued, digging Gyatso further into a hole. Aang took a contradictory bite of his pie.
Lo raised his eyebrows, looking at Gyatso. “Are the kids meant to be fasting?” he asked, looking concerned.
“No, no,” Gyatso said, waving his hands and clearing his throat. “Simply a discussion on patience we had this morning.”
Lo laughed a little. “Patience sure can feel a lot like suffering, huh?” he asked Aang. The young man wasn’t yet twenty but he was excellent with the children. Gyatso hoped he’d opt to remain as a monk of the temple, after his tattooing and his year of wandering. The children would benefit from more teachers like him, rather than Tsering. Not that Tsering was bad at teaching, but however a man who took himself and everything around him so seriously managed to ascend to the council was still a mystery to Gyatso.
Aang nodded vehemently. “I was so hungry and Gyatso was lying and said he was asleep but he wasn’t,” he told Lo.
Gyatso felt his face pinch. Besides their energy, Aang was also showing him that little children were prone to melodrama - Lo must think he had commanded the poor boy to fast for days to teach him the value of suffering, with how Aang was talking.
“Hm,” Lo hummed, eyes dancing. “Is that what happened?” he asked lightly, tilting his head curiously.
Aang twisted his lips. “Yes. After I woke him up,” he answered, mumbling through the last bit. Lo laughed again.
“It’s really great that Monk Gyatso wanted to make sure you got your breakfast, even though he was tired,” Lo said.
Aang thought about this for a moment, as if just realizing something. Then, his face lit up. “Yeah! Thank you, Gyatso!” he said, overloud and exaggerated in the near-empty dining hall.
Gyatso leaned over and grasped Aang’s chin between his forefinger and his thumb. “Certainly,” he said in a silly voice, moving the boy’s chin on each syllable to match the silly voice. Aang laughed and pulled away.
“Can I get butter tea, please?” he asked, rubbing his eye.
“Half a cup to start,” Gyatso said with a nod. He was certainly allowed a bigger portion than that, but he was prone to spilling the cups if they were filled all the way. Aang scrambled to his feet and ran over to the serving area, arms stretched out like the wings of a glider.
“I guess you haven’t had your morning meditation yet, huh Monk Gyatso?” asked Lo. In answer Gyatso yawned.
“I have not. I will be supervising the search with the other Elders today, so it will have to wait until this evening,” he answered. They’d already completed the ceremony in the Western Temple, to no conclusion. Now came their turn in the search for the Avatar.
Lo leaned in interestedly. “Which temple do you bet it’s gonna be?” he asked.
Gyatso shrugged. “Who’s to say?”
Lo raised an eyebrow. “We’re not betting on it, just… speculating,” he said with a flourish of his hand.
Gyatso hummed - he’d had to ensure not to encourage any uncouth behavior since becoming one of the Elders, but… Lo was correct, after all. It was harmless speculation.
“The North,” he answered. After Yangchen, he imagined the next one would be male, and the Northern temple seemed right.
“Really?” Lo asked. “Huh. I think it’s gonna be here,” he said firmly.
“What makes you think so?” Gyatso asked.
Lo took a sip of tea as Aang returned, setting his own cup down on the table and dropping back down into his spot. Even with it being half-filled, Aang had managed to slosh a little onto the table. Lo didn’t answer, meeting Gyatso’s eye over the rim of the cup and quirking an eyebrow in a silent question.
Gyatso shook his head once.
“What will you be getting up to today before it’s your turn with the toys?” Lo asked Aang, instead.
Aang set down his butter tea, having given himself a little mustache while sipping on it. “Monk Gopal said we’re going apple picking,” he told Lo, smiling widely. This, of course, gets no horrible spin from Aang’s child-mind.
“I’ll be down that way, too. I need to go to the stables this morning,” Lo said. “I think Fengmi’s going to have a baby.”
Glancing out the window, Gyatso realized it was quite light out by now, and the hall had started filling up. He was running behind. “Lo, my boy,” he said. “Would you please walk Aang down to Monk Gopal in the orchard, since it’s on your way. I have lost track of time.”
“Sure thing, Monk Gyatso. I hope it goes well,” Lo said, draining his cup and standing, tome clutched under one arm. “Ready, Aang?”
Aang scrambled to his feet and leapt across the table to Lo’s side. “Can I visit Fengmi with you?” he asked.
Lo looked at him and Gyatso gave him a nod. “Sure, if there’s time! Fengmi loves apples. You might have to make sure she doesn’t pick all of them for you,” Lo said, leading Aang out the hall. As they went out the doors, Aang turned around and waved at Gyatso.
After Aang was situated, Gyatso quickly made his way to the Elders’ room. He’d made the council three years ago. Even then he’d not looked forward to this inevitable day.
Following Roku’s death, he’d known that the Air Nomads would have to find their Avatar. Thinking of Roku - his spirit, rather - being born among the children in the Eastern and Western temples, a cycle beginning again, ever-new, ever turning, was beautiful.
Really, it was.
Truly.
Gyatso sighed. In the interest of not lying to himself, he admitted in the privacy of his mind that it was ever so slightly disconcerting. In the abstract sense, not so much, but having been as close as they were made it feel strange. Besides that, one thing he’d noticed with Roku was that being the Avatar was a bitter job. To be the world’s burden-bearer. To guide it. Gyatso sometimes was overwhelmed with the simple guidance of ensuring Aang got to his classes on time, let alone the whole of the world looking to you.
They’d already started laying out the rows of cloth by the time he arrived. Great bins of toys sat throughout the room, and yellow light poured in from the east-facing windows.
Tsering smacked his gums. “You’re nearly late. This is a sacred day, especially with your pupil as one of the candidates.” Gyatso held back a sigh. Tsering, for all his technical skill and esoteric knowledge of archaic forms of airbending, was also as stuffy and uptight as an Air Nomad could be.
“I just sent him over to Gopal. He’ll send the children over one by one while they’re working in the orchard,” Gyatso said in lieu of rising to the comment.
“Apple-picking!” called Abbot Namkhai. “We should all be so lucky to pick apples with the breeze on our faces. Perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to see the face of the Avatar today,” he said happily. His voice shook with age and his skin was so wrinkled and sagging, his features were nearly lost. He’d step down at some point soon, and then it’d be up to the other members to select which one of them would take up the mantle. Dawa was prime for it, well-loved in the temple, an excellent teacher, and good for a story.
“Careful! These are ancient relics!” Tsering snapped at poor Yonten, the newest member of the council, who gingerly sat down the box with the Avatar toys.
Dawa, also, did not have such a stick up himself as Tsering. Tsering, as Abbot. Gyatso shook his head. The temple would pick itself apart if he were to come to run it. As Tsering turned around, Gyatso met Yonten’s gaze behind the other man’s back, making a funny face at him. Yonten split into a smile as Tsering puttered along, agonizing over whether the relics should be placed randomly or in accordance with the cycle.
Ignoring him, the rest of them got to work laying out the toys, settling them carefully down on the strips of fabric.
Throughout the morning, child after child came into the Elders’ room and looked over the rows and rows of toys. A few standouts played with an Avatar relic, but never more than one. Most of the boys were very good about the circumstances - they would choose their toys, play with them until they were done, and then return them to the cloth rows, dismissed. Not the Avatar.
Noon came and went. The boys broke for lunch and the council convened among themselves. Were any of the boys who’d picked a relic drawn to one over any other? Would they count it if the boys ignored the other items?
Abbot Namkhai seemed to think it was all good fun. Everyone else was growing a little grouchy with no break for lunch for them.
The boys resumed their trips to the Elders’ room a bit after that. A few false starts, but the longer the selections dragged on, the fewer boys who even glanced at the relics, the more it seemed that Lo’s prediction would be wrong.
Aang came to them late in the afternoon. Gyatso was the only elder on the council with a pupil selecting, and Aang ignored any and all propriety to run up to Gyatso and hug him, chattering about how he’d actually spent the morning in the stables with Fengmi and how when he got a bison of his own they’d never be apart. Just seeing his little student, so happy despite the air of resignation in the room, made Gyatso feel a little lighter. Rather than Abbot Namkhai, who - spirits bless him - had explained the process to every boy they’d seen, they permitted Gyatso to explain the rules to Aang. Four toys can be picked. You play with them as long as you like. When you’re done, return them for the next boy. Aang nodded, and turned, looking at the sea of objects in front of them.
He picked through the rows of toys, running down each path with enthusiasm. He picked up many toys. The first one was a top with the waves of the Water Tribe emblazoned on its face. Tsering sat back with a disappointed sigh.
He spun it, but left it twirling in its original spot, continuing down the line. Gyatso smiled at the fun he was having. He picked up a lock toy, next, turning it over and staring at its many corners. Tsering’s face, impossibly, grew even more sour. The day had been long, and it appeared it would also be fruitless. But Aang put that toy down, too, and hopped over one of the cloth rows. He picked up a clay egg, filled with uncooked rice, and gave it one rattle before putting it down, too.
Then, he picked up the drum - the Water relic. Gyatso saw Tsering sit up straighter, leaning forward to watch, especially as Aang tucked the drum into the crook of his elbow, taking it along as he continued to search - the first he hadn’t put down.
Another false alarm came in the form of a wooden doll, whose face spun around an axis to either smile or frown, but she remained in her spot, her face smiling out at the sea of toys.
Aang picked up a diabolo, attempting to cast it on its string but failing. He frowned and set the item down with a disappointed shake of his head. Gyatso held back laughter at the serious gesture. He picked up a few other items, looking them over carefully and then setting them down.
Then came the clay turtle. The whole council stilled as Aang picked it up, turned it over in his hand, and tucked it, too, into his arm. The Earth relic.
Gyatso frowned. Two. Two relics. It would be a coincidence, he was sure.
Then he went straight for the wooden monkey. Gyatso watched him navigate through half the rows, ignoring thousands of other items to walk directly to where it sat, pick the monkey out, and take it with him without a second examination. Gyatso leaned forward, pressing his hands to his face. Three.
Though it’d mean a long and fruitless day, Gyatso said a silent prayer for Aang to pick something else. Any innocuous little toy. Ignore the whirligig. Ignore the whirligig.
At one moment, Aang leaned over and cast a die, but left it behind. He’d looked over many of the toys but only took three with him.
Aang sat near the back of the rows, setting his selected toys carefully down in his lap. Gyatso watched as he leaned forward, picked up the Air relic, and pulled its string, releasing the little wooden dragonfly into the air. He laughed, the sound high and clear.
Next to him, Tsering laughed too.
“Wonderful choices, Aang,” he said, voice pleased.
Aang grinned from where he sat, and then reached out a hand and twisted his wrist in a circular motion, a cushion of air appearing underneath the wooden dragonfly and sending it further into the room, twirling around where they all sat beneath the umbrella. Gyatso vaguely felt it circle around his head watching Aang laugh as it came back around, bright in the late afternoon sun. His face delighted, his chubby hands still holding the other toys carefully on his lap. A little child, doomed.
Doomed! He thought, shocked at his own mind for supplying the word. What drama, when the role Roku took was precisely his own, no one else’s. No one more able to forge their own destiny than the Avatar. No one less able, either. A life of their own until sixteen, then pledged to the world. To guide it and to bear its burdens. Casting off the burden of the world was one of the greatest achievements an Air Nomad could reach, to be unbound to the phenomena of the physical. As much as the Avatar was of the Spirit world, they were also bound inextricably to the physical.
“How many of his core milestones has he hit, Gyatso?” Tsering asked beside him.
The question brushed past him. Aang stood, gathering the toys in his arms and walked up to where the Elders sat. He approached Gyatso, and peering seriously down at the toys in his arms, selected one and handed it to him. Mechanically, Gyatso stretched out his hand and took the offered toy, the monkey. The Fire relic.
Oh. Roku was laughing at him.
“Thank you, Aang,” he said, voice thin.
“You’re welcome,” he chirped.
He peered down at the other toys in his hands.
“Aang, would you please show us the dragonfly again?” asked Dawa. Aang grinned and nodded, running towards where it’d fallen to the ground further into the room, one arm holding his chosen toys close to his chest.
“This is excellent. And to have bonded with you, Gyatso?” Tsering said, low so Aang would not hear. “It is indisputable.”
Abbot Namkhai nodded, his gnarled, arthritic hands reaching out to where Aang had taken a seat in the far end of the room, playing happily with the whirligig. “We have found our Avatar.”
Gyatso watched the dragonfly spin in the air and said nothing.
“I recommend he be placed on an advanced learning track, now that we’re aware,” Tsering said.
Dawa cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should make our plans once Aang returns to the other boys,” he said carefully.
“He showed skill when bending the dragonfly. An excellent sign. How closely is he tracking with the advancements of his peers?” Tsering continued obliviously. Abbot Namkhai nodded along as he spoke.
“Gyatso - would you like to step outside to gather your thoughts?” interjected Dawa. His voice was neutral but his eyes were kind. Gyatso nodded, getting to his feet and walking out to the verandah, settling his hands on the white stone of the wall. In the courtyard below, a few of the older children were running, nearly tumbling over one another on their way to play airball.
He took a seat in a meditative position and pressed his fists together, breathing in to the bottom of his lungs. Strong emotions were a part of being alive. It took skill to acknowledge them and feel them without allowing them to weigh the spirit down. Gyatso pictured his anger and sorrow as a little flying lemur, caught in vines and hissing, biting out with thin, sharp teeth. Needing kindness and a smile and to be freed. He breathed out.
There was no sense in agonizing over something that could not be changed. Aang was his little student, whose big cheeks and toothy smiles and charming turns of phrase made his heart well over with affection. Roku was his dear friend, with whom he shared adventures and arguments and laughter, whose death was still a bruise on his spirit. They were both the Avatar.
He imagined the through-line, the threads of love and experience weaving together. Aang was the Avatar.
There would be no ordinary life in store for him, no peaceful monasticism, no simple travels of a nomad.
“Monk Gyatso?”
He opened his eyes.
“May I sit with you?” Dawa asked.
Gyatso nodded. Dawa took a seat, cross legged on the ground next to him.
“I’m certain this must be a shock for you,” he said, voice a deep rumble.
As the boys in the courtyard left, a silence fell over them. Gyatso watched as one of the little partridges emerged from a bush and ran across the stone of the temple, its colors bright.
“The longer I think about it, the less it is.” He looked up into the sky where three of the bison were circling one another. “In knowing Roku I came to know quite a bit about the ones who came before him. Kuruk, whose dear friend was Kelsang. Kelsang, who mentored Kyoshi. Kyoshi, who traveled with Sister Disha. Sister Disha, who taught Roku. Roku, who was my friend. I, who am Aang’s guardian.” He looked over at Dawa and gave him a smile. “No. I cannot be shocked by this.”
Dawa didn’t answer. For a long moment, they sat together. A peal of laughter from the airball court, out of sight from where they sat, floated up to them.
“The life of an Avatar is fraught. It cannot be anything else, when it is so defined by conflict. I know no mistakes have been made. I am just sad,” he confessed quietly.
It was a great honor by the spirits. To be uncertain of it in any capacity, let alone saddened, may reflect poorly on him. But feigning joy in this moment was not possible.
“My brother, you are forgetting your teachings,” said Dawa simply. Gyatso turned an incredulous look on him, but Dawa stared out into the sky. His eyes didn’t catch on the bison or the boys or the birds.
“I worry that in the years since Roku’s death, you’ve come to mythologize the Avatar. To think of them as something apart from all others in a way you never did to Roku. But in doing so you’ve done violence. You have separated humanity and the Avatar. And you’re feeling now as if that violence has been done to Aang, that his destiny has stripped him of his humanity. But there is no separation. The Avatar is human, like all of us. You have separated the Avatar into a category of their own, of a person whose life is defined by violence and conflict. But you do not know this. It could very well be that everyone in this world meets a violence Aang never does. Forget this separation. Recognize it for the illusion it is.”
Gyatso sat with the man’s words. Jinpa’s The Lives of the Avatar has been a pillar resource for him, as a companion of Roku. In it there were stories of wars averted, tyrants toppled, dark spirits defeated. But there had also been stories of adventure and love, and long stretches of years between entries that spoke of simplicity. Of the mundane. Conflicts, yes, but also happiness, and times of little note, just as everyone lived. For a few minutes, they embraced silence together, Gyatso’s eyes lifting from the stone of the temple to watch the clouds in the sky beyond them.
“Thank you. I suppose this is why you’ll end up our Abbot one day, Dawa,” he eventually said.
“If so,” Dawa replied, giving Gyatso a genuine smile. “Your boy is waiting for you to return him to Gopal.”
Gyatso nodded and stood to return to the Elder’s room.
“And Gyatso?”
He turned to face Dawa again. The man furrowed his bushy unibrow. “Do not hesitate to push back on Tsering. I anticipate you two will balance one another’s scales, when it comes to Aang.”
Gyatso simply nodded again, turning back to enter the room. Aang lifted his head as he came back inside, his face brightening. Gyatso looked at his smile, his fat cheeks, and felt his heart well with affection.
He held out a hand to Aang.
“Come now. I believe Gopal still needs your help in the orchard.”
Aang sat the toys aside and ran to him, forgetting them. He took Gyatso’s hand and allowed himself to be led out of the Elder’s room, and they walked out into the halls together just as they had that same morning. Gyatso brushed his thumb over the back of Aang’s hand. One day it would feel the pain of the tattooist's needle. One day it would bend water and earth and fire. Today, here and now, it would pick apples.