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Sokka wasn't very happy about it, but he was awake. It was summer, normally a prime time to see exactly how late he could sleep in before conceding defeat to daylight, but Gran-Gran didn't need to handle all of this herself. Even if she and Dr. Yugoda did insist on handling it at ten past eight in the morning. Aang was very deeply asleep when Sokka looked into the guest bedroom, and looked likely to remain that way for several more hours. It hadn't been worth trying to get Katara up, the way she was likely to start crying all over again, so he and Gran-Gran were the only ones up when Yugoda made a rare house call. Sokka had thought he might

Zhao was backing away. Aang could see it, just like he could see that the Yu Yan never pointed any of their arrows at Zuko. For a minute, it looked like it was going to be over. Zhao had turned away to talk to the Yu Yan, and Zuko was going to get on the motorcycle and leave. That was when a car edged up to the curb. Its headlights were almost blinding after several minutes with just the dim light from the motorcycle. The rumble of the motor was all that Aang could hear until a door opened and closed. Moments later, Ozai stepped into view. Aang had seen Ozai on the news a few times, and once he had come to Aang's school to talk about how pe

Motorcycles weren't all that bad, but it wasn't very exciting. Zuko was barely going fast at all, and it seemed to Aang that someone on a bicycle could move faster. The small red motorcycle had a signle headlight, but Aang could barely see anything. Zuko was nearly twice his size, for one. If that hadn't been enough, the visor on Aang's helmet was tinted so dark that things might have looked dim in the middle of the day. At night, he could barely make out the moon past the trees. The street lights still weren't on, and nearly every house that they passed was completely dark. He only recognized Katara and Sokka's house when he saw the moonlig

Aang didn't know how long it had been since he stumbled into the backyard to sit under the moon-peach tree. It was where he always sat when someone had bullied him at school or when he wanted to ask Gyatso something serious. They were never going to have one of those talks again, where Gyatso made everything better like it was the easiest thing in the world. Aang knew. He didn't have any evidence, but that didn't matter. All of the little tiny pieces had come together, and all of them meant that Gyatso was gone.   He probably should have spent more time thinking that it couldn't be true, but Jet would never lie about that. No one

Sokka definitely wasn't impressed with Aang's favorite teashop. The place barely had room for three round tables, and one of those tables was covered by an elaborate circular gameboard with dozens of painted tiles in no order he could understand. The jerk working there had been standing behind the waist-high green counter for the first few minutes, but had spent most of that time looking at Katara. Aang said hi first, because he knew the cocky jerk with the long straw of wheat hanging out of his mouth, and that seemed to be the invitation for Jerk (it was close enough to Jet) to sweet-talk Katara into trying Aang's favorite kind of tea. Aang

Aang walked down the exact center of the sidewalk, taking precisely three steps for every square of cement. He held onto the straps of his backpack as if the white-knuckled grip was the only reason he wasn't airborne. He had known it was weird to have two lessons in a day, because Gyatso said that practicing too long would exhaust him, but he'd expected the second lesson to be just like the normal ones. Gyatso would show him a stance, and Aang would copy him until it felt right, and then at the end they'd just play around and do flips and see how long Aang could keep himself off the ground using an air scooter. No one at school believed that

An ambitious scientist brought bending back into a world that had forgotten the elements, but had no idea what he had started. Four years after the first of the new firebenders, and twelve years before the story begins, an Avatar was born. The Avatar Project: Chapter One The home was nearly mute. For several long moments, the only sound was of a brush against paper. It was unusual, but the man seated at the kitchen table didn't look around to see just what had caused the odd period of quiet. Instead, he twirled a finger, letting a small breeze ghost across the surface of a letter written in perfectly neat calligraphy. When the ink was dry,