Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction ❯ The Mother Who Couldn't Be ❯ Marching Home ( Chapter 4 )

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

Disclaimer: I don’t own Avatar: The Last Air-bender, the very talented team of Mike and Brain own the show and characters. Umaio, her parents, Fiyo, Fana, Hitsi and Elnan are my characters please respect that. If you wish to use them please talk to me about it and give me credit for them. The rating maybe wrong but I did try to get it right.

By: year of the snake (at fanfiction) aka. crescentmoon (at mediaminer). And now Opal-Dreams on DeviantArt.


The Mother Who Couldn’t Be
Chapter Four

One day she got a note she had felt was coming just by the shear intensity if the tenseness of her heart’s messages.
Dear Sister Umaio,
This is Gyatso. I am so sorry to say that your son has disappeared. He left during a huge storm days ago and has yet to return. I am searching for him right now.
The other monks think it’s a bad idea to tell you about Aang’s disappearance. But you are his mother and love him. You have every right to know.
I know this news will be hard to take, and I was supposed to be watching out for him. Please forgive me! I didn’t mean to lose him.
At this hard point in your life I must ask if Aang came to you. I haven’t told him about you yet but maybe he found out in spite of that. So please keep an eye out for him.
Again I plead for your forgiveness. I will be out searching until I find him.
Your friend,

Gyatso.


There were watermarks on the paper and Umaio had dropped the note after she read the second sentence. She had had to pick it up again to finish.
Umaio ran to the room the nuns shared and began to pack her few items. She then realized how foolish it was to act so rashly. She still wanted to rush out after her son but she would wait and if she hadn’t heard back from the temple or seen him she would be out there looking.
She wrote back to the Southern Air-Temple telling them of her plans. The paper was more covered in long dry tear marks then they had ever seen before. It made many of her words illegible.
Deep in her heart she knew that Aang was lost to the world. He was alive but un-findable, unreachable. She could feel it through their bond. Her tears fell and when the other nuns found out what happened they excused her from her duties for a few days. Her heart ripped knowing that there would never be a reunion between them. Her heart broke in her chest and left sharp digging shards of crushing black holes in her chest and abdomen. Her chest and throat convulsed under the pressure trying to push its way out and suck everything in.
Umaio barely managed to wait a week before heading out on a borrowed bison. The bison was one of the retired mother bison that the Eastern Air-Temple retained after her soul-buddy had died.
Umaio flew straight from the Eastern Air-Temple to the Southern Air-Temple. She didn’t stay there long. Only long enough for her bison to eat and rest then they were off again.
Umaio directed Barabasi, the bison, in the direction that her heart told her to go. Going even farther south, towards the frozen waters of the end of the world. Her heart recognized the signals of her son even if her eyes and mind knew none of them. After all holding someone next to your heart of nine months bonds you to them in a way nothing else can, bonds your heart to them in the most powerful way imaginable.
“What’s that?” Umaio whispered. She brought the bison down into an icy fortress. No not a fortress a small walled city made of ice. It was the Southern Water Tribe. There she found Gyatso.
Water-benders much like Umaio have a weakness for children. If a child is in danger they feel they must do everything in their power to help the poor thing. So Gyatso was able to convince many to help within a few seconds.
Thus they set sail on the watercraft of the water tribe. The captain of the ship Umaio boarded was a hard man. But his heart was a gem.
The captain was constantly on deck trying to help the grieving mother. Here are some of their interactions together.
“Woman are you cold?”
“No.”



“Woman you need to eat.”
“I will not leave this spot until we find my son.”
After this her meals were brought on deck to her.



“Go back he is back that way I can feel it.”
“We have checked there ten times already because you can feel him there.”
“That is where he is, my heart tells me so.”
“Fine.”



“Woman you need your rest. If you don’t rest you will get sick.”
“If I rest I may miss him. I will stay like this until he is found.”



“Woman! You are sick! Get below deck so you can warm and begin to heal!”
“No!” Umaio yelled. Then she proceeded to hack for three minutes.



“Go over there captain. That is where he is.” she whispered under her sore throat.
“Woman I am sorry but we have gone over that spot for three days the only way he is there is if the codfish are nibbling his flesh from his bones.”

That third day Gyatso landed on deck to check on their progress. Seeing the state Umaio was in he had to make a tough call. Should he stay and continue looking for Aang or should he save Aang’s mother’s life by taking her to a warmer climate and getting her well again. If she stayed here much longer the damage would not only be permanent but also grow unstoppably worse.
In the end he grabbed Umaio and forced her to leave the search behind. She was killing herself without sleep and sufficient heat, and with very little food. Umaio didn’t like that; she screamed that her son needed her. But it had been three days, if he had been here that long there was no way he was alive. She was and she was his mother thus Gyatso would do this one last honor to Aang and for Aang he would put what he wanted behind and he would save the woman who gave him birth. He would give up his quest for Aang and pray for his safety and that he would return soon. Gyatso knew that Aang would only return when he was ready to.
Umaio was near death but the healers Gyatso found in the warmer area he went to healed her to as close to prefect as they could get her. They had to amputate two of her fingers and four of her toes because of the frostbite she had ignored. With the one foot she was lucky not to need it cut completely off at the ankle.
It was nearly mid-summer again when Umaio was on her feet. She had to learn how to balance with her missing toes but she did it quicker than they thought she would. When she was better Gyatso went back to the Southern Air-Temple. He wished that when Aang returned he would return there. He had become very solemn with the acceptance that Aang was gone.
As soon as she could walk she was gone again looking for her son. But now she didn’t think she could trust her heart and wandered aimlessly through all the places she ended up. She was hoping someone had seen him.
She met Fiyo again on her travels. He was miserable. He gotten into the same kind of trouble he had with her but was unable to escape this time. He had become a hen-pecked husband who abandoned his dreams many years ago. He even gave up flying because his wife didn’t like it.
Fiyo recognized her and talked to her a bit.
Fiyo was dressed poorly. His hair was grease and so messy no comb or brush in the world could get through it. There was no way that even his eyes would make her get the connection from his young self to this worn down grimy man. If he hadn’t told her she would have never known it.
“Wow! Umaio is that you?”
“Do I know you?”
“Yes! I’m Fiyo I was…”
“My betrothed, I remember.”
“Oh… Well… Um… That is… I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. I don’t have the time to talk to you Fiyo.” She began to walk away but…
“Please just talk to me for a little bit it’s been a long time since I talked to someone I knew when… I was happy.” He slowed what he was saying way down as he got to the end like he was saying something he didn’t mean to say but once he started couldn’t stop.
“Fine, just for a couple minutes.”
“Thank you!”
Seeing him like this was unexpected and unnerving. He was so different.
“How have you been these... what was it twenty years?”
“It’s been thirteen years. And I have been as well as someone who was pregnant and jilted can be.” she answered.
“Oh… Whatever happened to the little tyke? Is he here with you?”
“No. He was in training with the monks at the Southern Air-Temple…” She didn’t get to finish before he moved on.
“That’s good, so he was an air-bender huh? Great! And what have you been doing?”
“I became a nun.”
“A pretty thing like you! What a waste! I should’ve married you when I had the chance.” he continued.
Umaio got the feeling he didn’t get to talk often anymore. “Yes you should have.” She gave him a glare. “But that is the past and I am busy. Goodbye Fiyo.” She waved forgetting she was missing two fingers on the hand she used.
Fiyo grabbed her wrist before she could escape. “What happened here?”
“Let go of me! You have no right to touch me in such a way!” Umaio slashed her hand away. “I lost my fingers due to frostbite when MY son ran away from the temple. Now I really must go and continue my search. Goodbye.” She said that goodbye with so much power and finality Fiyo could do nothing but watch her leave.
The twenty-six year old continued on her travels. And never found who she was looking for.
A month exactly after Umaio had healed the fire nation attacked and destroyed all the air-nomads. When Umaio heard she was grateful that Aang had disappeared. Now instead of wanting him found she began praying he never would be found. Umaio hoped that he would never see this war. That his life would be untainted by the fear the fire-benders had brought to the world.
Umaio decided it was time to head back towards the Eastern Air-Temple. She knew about the records that the temples held on her people and if the fire-benders had the sense to read them before burning them they’d be looking for her. Especially because her son was the avatar and he had not been found. She had heard that many people believed the avatar was with his mother now and she was hiding him somewhere safe.
Umaio hoped that she’d make it to the Eastern Air-Temple before getting caught so she could leave a letter she would soon write for Aang to find. She’d put it in the bison barracks because she knew Aang loved animals. That was one of the things Gyatso had told her when she was recovering.
One day and night she had to hide with the bison. She hid in a cave to avoid the fire-nation soldiers. It was then that she wrote her letter to Aang and to a lesser extent the world.
The next day she left the cave. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her hair was a mess and her nomadic clothes were dirty but she wasn’t too far from the temple.
She flew up on the bison and walked in the barracks. Then she went into the temple keeping the bison near her. The quiet was strange and disturbing. She never walked out.
A few fire nation soldiers had been camped nearby. They saw the bison when it flew up and they had come after it.
One of the soldiers was impressed by the young nun when she stepped in front of the large beast and took on their full attack. The bison flew away but not before getting one of the soldiers with its horn.
Umaio flew into the mural of the sky-bison from the blast of fire she took. Her mouth overflowed with blood from her tongue when she bit it after hitting the wall. She died within seconds.
The soldier she had impressed later came back secretly. Wrapped her body in a sheet and burned it, the smoke and ashes rose in the heavens, something only her spirit did in life.




Nearly a hundred years later a young man picked up her letter. It was old and torn but he found it in rotting hay and collapsed splintered wood. He told not a soul about his find not wanting his nation to know this little secret yet. They weren’t ready for it.
Then that young man died in war, one of his own men did the deed. Then that same man blamed the earth-benders they were fighting against.
The boy’s father was delivered the things he had in his pockets when he died. And a long mother’s letter among them brought the man much comfort in the death of his boy. It was slightly bloodstained yet it also helped change his perspective on the war his nation had brought into the world.
“…Brave soldier boy come marching home…”
~The End~

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Here is the end. This ending is… you can finish that sentence for me.

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