Chapter 77: A Sanctuary in Smoke
For Aang, the world had finally begun to right itself. The lingering horror of the burned forest, the searing memory of Katara's pained cry and the sight of her blistered hands, the crushing weight of his own failure and fear, it all began to lift the higher Appa climbed. The air grew thin and cold, tasting of ice and ancient stone, a flavor he had not realized his soul had been craving for a century. This was his element. This was home.
He stood tall on Appa's head, his staff in hand, the wind whipping at his saffron robes. Below, Katara and Sokka huddled amidst the saddle's furs, the latter shivering dramatically.
"Are you sure this is the right way, Aang?" Sokka called out, his teeth chattering. "I think my eyebrows are frozen. Can eyebrows freeze? Because mine feel frozen. This is the kind of vital survival information they never teach you in the South Pole."
"We're close, Sokka! I can feel it!" Aang shouted back, his voice buoyant with a hope that had been absent for days. "The Northern Air Temple! It's one of the four great sanctuaries. It's going to be… perfect. Just like it was. Untouched. Serene. You'll see!"
Katara smiled up at him, her hands, now healed thanks to her own healing abilities, tucked warmly into her sleeves. "I can't wait to see it, Aang. A real piece of your home."
"Yeah, great," Sokka muttered, pulling his parka tighter. "Serene. I'm hoping for a nice, serene, indoor fireplace. With a spitted roast boar. A serene, roasting boar. That's my kind of spirituality."
Aang just laughed, a free, joyful sound that was carried away by the mountain winds. He urged Appa higher, navigating through a labyrinth of jagged, snow-dusted peaks that pierced the sky like stone spears. He moved on instinct, a homing pigeon drawn to a roost it had never seen but knew in its bones.
"There!" Aang cried out, pointing excitedly. "Just beyond that ridge! That's where it is!"
Appa bellowed a low, echoing groan and surged forward, clearing the final, towering ridge. The valley beyond opened up before them, a breathtaking panorama of interconnected peaks and deep ravines, all carved from pale, elegant stone. And there, nestled into the very face of the mountain, was the Northern Air Temple. Its architecture was a marvel of grace and impossibility, with sweeping, curved spires and wide, open pavilions that seemed to float, defying the very pull of the earth. Aang's heart swelled until he felt it might burst.
But then, his smile faltered.
His eyes, sharpened by a hundred years of absence, saw what should not be.
"What… what is that?" he whispered, the joy in his voice draining away.
A thin, grey tendril of smoke was rising from the heart of the temple. Then another. And another. Soon, they could see multiple plumes, a dozen or more, coiling up from the sacred courtyards and pavilions to stain the pristine alpine air.
"Smoke?" Katara said, her voice laced with confusion. "Why would there be fire? I thought the Air Nomads…"
"We didn't need fire," Aang finished, his voice tight. "Not like that. We had steam vents, geothermal springs… not… not smoke." The word was dirty in his mouth. Fire was for light, for ceremony on rare occasions, not for this… this industry that scarred the sky.
Sokka, his chill forgotten, leaned forward, his warrior's instincts kicking in. "Okay, that's not good. That is definitely not the 'untouched serenity' you were promising. That looks… inhabited."
Aang didn't answer. He urged Appa into a slow, cautious descent, his eyes fixed on the temple below. The closer they got, the more his confusion and dismay curdled into a profound, gut-wrenching sense of violation.
The beautiful, flowing lines of the temple were broken. Everywhere he looked, the elegant stonework was marred by crude, boxy additions cobbled together from wood and rough-hewn rock. Strange, metallic structures jutted out at awkward angles. He could see lines, ropes and crude pulleys, strung between the ancient pillars. The wide, open-air courtyards, designed for meditation and airball, were now cluttered with piles of timber and strange, tarp-covered shapes.
"It's… different," Katara said softly, trying to find a diplomatic word for the desecration unfolding before them.
"Different?" Aang's voice was hollow. "They've… they've built shacks on the Meditation Plaza. Look! They've blocked the Wind Tunnels!"
Appa landed with a soft thud in a large courtyard that had once been a place for young airbenders to practice their gliding. The stone was cracked and stained. The air, which should have carried only the sound of the wind and the distant calls of sky bison, was now filled with a discordant symphony of alien noises. The clang of a hammer on metal. The distant shout of a voice that was not a monk's chant. The squeal of an un-oiled pulley.
They dismounted, Aang moving as if in a trance. He walked slowly towards the center of the courtyard, his staff held tight, his knuckles white. He reached out and touched one of the ancient pillars. The stone was cold, but it felt wrong. It felt wounded.
"Hello?" Katara called out, her voice echoing strangely in the polluted silence. "Is anyone here?"
For a moment, there was no response. Then, a head popped up from behind a low wall. It was a man, his face smudged with soot, wearing thick, earth-toned workman's clothes. He stared at them, his eyes wide with surprise, then with a dawning curiosity. Then another person appeared, a woman carrying a basket of laundry. Then a child, peeking out from behind her mother's skirts.
They were not Air Nomads. Their clothing was heavy, practical, woven from wool and cotton, not the light, flowing silks of the airbenders. Their faces were ruddy from wind and sun, their postures grounded, earthbound. They were Earth Kingdom people.
"Who are you?" the soot-smudged man asked, his tone not hostile, but deeply cautious. "What are you doing here?"
Aang stepped forward, his heart pounding a frantic, painful rhythm against his ribs. "I am Aang," he said, and the name felt insignificant. "I… I am an Air Nomad. This is my home."
A ripple of murmuring went through the small, gathering crowd. They looked at his arrows, his staff, his robes, with a kind of bewildered awe, as if he were a character from a legend stepped directly into their reality.
"An Air Nomad?" the man repeated, his brow furrowed in disbelief. "But… they're all…"
"I've been away," Aang interrupted, his voice strained. "What… what are you all doing here? What have you done to the temple?"
The man's expression shifted from confusion to a defensive pride. "What have we done? We've made it a home. Our village was destroyed by a flood. We had nowhere to go. We found this place, empty and falling apart, and we fixed it. We made it livable."
"Livable?" Aang's voice cracked. He gestured wildly at a nearby wall where a beautiful, faded mural of flying bison had been partially chiseled away to make room for a wooden support beam. "You call this livable? You've ruined it! You've filled the silence with noise! You've blocked the winds with your… your things!"
The crowd grew, their faces now hardening. This strange, angry boy was not a mythical savior; he was a threat.
"We saved it from crumbling into the ravine!" a woman shouted from the back.
"It was a ghost town!" another man added.
"We needed a home!" a child's voice piped up.
Aang felt their collective gaze like a physical pressure. He was an outsider in his own home. The sanctuary he had dreamed of, the last untouched piece of his world, was gone. Not destroyed by fire, but dismantled, repurposed, and occupied. It was a different kind of death, one that was somehow more painful. He stood there, surrounded by the ghosts of his people and the living, breathing proof of their extinction, and felt more alone than he ever had in the iceberg. The soaring hope of his approach had crashed into the hard, ugly reality of the discovery, and the shock of it left him utterly, devastatingly silent.
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