Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction ❯ Naming Day ❯ An Ang ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Naming Day

Chapter 2 - An Ang

Although he never knew it, his given name was Qing, or “celebration.”

He was the eldest son and only child born to a poor young couple living in a small village located at the base of the legendary Song Mountain, home of the Southern Air Temple. His father was a farmer who owned a small patch of land on which he grew vegetables and raised livestock, and his mother was a local seamstress who mostly performed patchwork and other mending jobs for the neighbors. While the two had little money and often found it difficult to even get by, they were in love and happy with their simple lives, and the addition of a child to their small but warm family was a very welcome event to them indeed.

He never knew it, but to his parents, he was more important than the sun and stars.

Fate, however, can be cruel. His loving parents didn't live long. Before he even reached his first birthday, the small village was ravaged by a terrible wave of disease. Blood sickness, the villagers called it. It was highly contagious and extremely deadly, and its victims oftentimes suffered through days and days of horribly bloody and painful contortions before the disease ultimately claimed them.

Miraculously, he survived.

Sadly, however, he was the only one from his village who did.

When the monks descended the mountain to bury the dead and lay their spirits to rest, they were surprised to find him bundled up in his crib - cold, hungry, and crying - but alive. They took him in and nursed him back to health. However, because there were no records in the village of who he was or where he came from, they knew nothing of his parentage or of his name, and so the boy named Qing was lost forever.

Little did he know that one day, a man named Giatso would give him a new name, and that this new name would suit him much more than the old one ever could.

An Ang, they would call him.

The soaring peace.

===============================================================

He remained nameless for almost an entire year. Most of the monks simply referred to him as xiao di, or “little brother.” As he was the youngest resident living in the monastery, it was a fitting nickname that described his relationship with the others fairly well. While he remembered very little of this time, he nevertheless did remember how unconditionally his new family accepted and welcomed him into their home. There was never a question that he belonged with them, and for that, he was grateful.

One day he remembers with almost impeccable clarity. It was the summer that he turned two, when the other air nomads were excitedly preparing for the arrival of someone named Giatso, a man who had spent a two year period training the disciples of the Northern Air Temple. He was playing by himself in the sunny courtyard when an elderly man with the tattoos of a master approached him. The old man cheerfully offered him some icing off of a freshly baked fruit pie, and with the first taste of the sweet, gooey icing, the two of them formed the beginning bonds of friendship.

Then, two months before his fourth birthday, he accidentally sent himself flying over a hundred feet in the air with a particularly violent sneeze.

The monks began his airbending training immediately. That and, after they allowed him to have his pick from a room filled to the brim with toys, they put him under the exclusive tutelage of the esteemed monk Giatso. His life, for a while, was simple and happy. He enjoyed being Aang, pupil of Giatso and the inventor of the Air Scooter. He enjoyed spending seemingly endless, happy days as Aang, companion of Appa and expert fruit pie baker extraordinaire. He enjoyed having no greater care in the world besides thinking on how to fulfill his responsibility as the temple's official prankster, the one the other disciples had chosen as their leader in duping the elderly airbending masters.

Then one day, everything changed. The elders ordered an assembly of the high council, and in a blunt and ruthless meeting, he was informed that he had never been just Aang at all. Everything that he had been up to that day - who he was, what he liked to do, his entire identity - was crushed under the weight of the news they had kept from him for all these years.

As it turned out, he had always been Aang and, simultaneously, the Avatar.

All this time, he had been the next master of four elements.

He had been the savior of the world.

And, with the crushing weight of the world and of Fate on his shoulders, he finally realized how much he missed just being himself.

===============================================================

Author's Notes: Aang's name as written in Chinese is made up of two characters. The first, an, means peace or calm, while the second, ang, means to soar or fly. The characters for Aang's name are taken from Book 2, Episode 15, “The Tales of Ba Sing Se”.

Song Mountain, or Song Shan in Mandarin, is the name of a real mountain located in the Henan province of China. I chose to borrow its name for this chapter because it is the home of the Shaolin monastery, one of China's oldest and most revered Buddhist temples. The monks of the temple are famous all over the world for their lifelong dedication to the Buddhist religion and also for their incredible martial arts abilities. I felt that the home of the Shaolin monks would be a fitting parallel for that of the air nomads since both groups live simple and honest lives dedicated to self-exploration, discipline, and the search for enlightenment.

===============================================================

Disclaimer: Any and all characters belonging to Avatar, the Last Airbender are the legal property of Nickelodeon.