Avatar: Blank Slate | Chapter (1) (Patreon)

I was tired, a kind of tired that came from a long day of training, or from running too far under the sun, or from staying awake too late watching YouTube shorts.

There were sirens somewhere in the distance. Fire, too. I could smell it before I knew what was happening, sharp smoke clawed at my throat, filling my lungs, making every breath sting. The world around me was in turmoil, as if I were sinking beneath it, drifting farther and farther from everything I knew.

Then, suddenly, there was cold.

A cold that came from winter air or wet clothes. So extreme was the cold that it felt as though thinking ceased. It wrapped around me, held me still, and for one strange moment, I thought that maybe this was peace. Maybe this was what it felt like to die.

But then the cold changed.

A warmth spread through me, slow at first, then stronger, gentle and steady, like a hand resting over a fevered brow. It was comforting in a way I could not explain. I felt as though I were being carried somewhere safe, somewhere far away from smoke and shouting and pain. My mind floated in and out of awareness, catching only fragments.

An old man.

That was the first clear image.

He stood before me in my thoughts, elderly and wise, dressed in robes that seemed familiar even though I could not remember why. His face was calm, almost sorrowful, and his mouth moved as if he were speaking to me. I could not hear the words, but I had the strange feeling that he was saying my name.

My name.

The thought should have meant something. It should have been simple. Yet when I reached for it, there was only emptiness.

Who was I?

The question echoed through me, unanswered. I tried to hold onto the image of the old man, but it slipped away like mist. I was left with nothing but the warmth, the cold, and the growing sense of unease..

Then I heard voices.

At first, they were faint, like whispers in the wind. Then they grew louder, layering over one another until they became a chorus that seemed to fill my skull.

"Wake up, young Avatar."

The words struck me hard, causing a deep sorrow to settle within my chest.

I wanted to scream at them to stop. I wanted silence, anything but the pounding pressure building behind my eyes. The voices kept coming, relentless and insistent, as if they had all agreed that I would not be allowed to rest until I listened.

My head throbbed. My body felt hot now, far too hot, as though the warmth inside me had become a fire of its own. The pain sharpened, sudden and bright, and then one voice cut through the others with a force that made everything else vanish.

"Wake up, Aang."

My mind went blank.

For one impossible instant, there was nothing at all—no cold, no warmth, no smoke, no voices. Only a single thought, clear and fierce, burning through the emptiness like a spark finding dry wood.

To live.

To fight.

To do my duty.

The words were raw, even if I did not understand them. My duty to live and fight. They were not memories exactly, but more of a purpose of something I had always known. Something important. Something I had lost.

But what was my duty?

What was I supposed to do?

What was I?

The questions came too quickly for me to answer them. Exhaustion crashed over me all at once, so heavy that I felt myself slipping again. I was weak. Defenseless. The world spun, and I could hear voices around me, but they were distant now, blurred by the pounding in my ears.

My eyes opened slowly.

A harsh light flooded in, blinding me for a moment. I blinked against it, squinting until the surrounding shapes began to settle into something recognizable. The sky was bright and endless above me, a brilliant blue so clear it almost hurt to look at. The sun warmed my face, and for a moment I simply lay there, breathing, trying to understand where I was.

Then I saw a figure standing over me.

She was holding me carefully, as though I might break if she moved the wrong way. Her arms were warm around me, steady and protective. The gesture was so gentle that it made something ache in my chest, though I did not know why.

Was this my mother?

The thought came unbidden, strange and uncertain. I did not know what a mother was supposed to feel like, or whether I had ever had one. My memory flickered again—dark clouds, a storm raging overhead, a young boy screaming—but the image shattered before I could grasp it.

I looked back at the figure above me.

She was young, with tanned skin and bright blue eyes that seemed almost impossible against the sunlight. Her brown hair was braided neatly, with little looped sections that framed her face. She looked kind. Cute, even though I did not know why that word came to mind. There was something lively about her, something sharp and curious.

Her lips moved.

I could not hear her clearly at first, only the shape of her voice, soft and concerned. She was speaking to me, asking if I was all right.

I tried to answer, but my thoughts were still tangled. My mouth felt dry. My body felt strange, weighed down by fatigue and a vast emptiness. I managed only to stare at her, trying to make sense of the world around me.

She asked again, a little louder this time.

"Are you okay?"

I swallowed and looked around. The ground beneath me was covered in snow and ice, though I could not understand how I had ended up there. The air was cold, but not painfully so anymore. The warmth returned from before and lingered inside me, faint but steady, like an ember refusing to die.

I finally found my voice.

"Where am I?"

My words sounded rough, as though I had not spoken in a very long time. Maybe I hadn't. The girl blinked at me, then glanced over her shoulder as if checking whether someone else had heard me.

There was another voice nearby, deeper this time, probably male, though I could not make out what he was saying. The words were muffled, lost in the wind and the ringing still lingering in my ears.

The girl looked back at me, her expression shifting into something halfway between disbelief and amusement.

"You were inside an iceberg," she said. "How did you end up there?"

I stared at her for a moment.

Then, despite everything—despite the confusion, the pain, the emptiness where my memories should have been—I let out a short snort of laughter.

It was absurd.

An iceberg?

How could anyone survive being trapped in ice like that? It sounded impossible. No one should have been able to live through something like that. The thought was so ridiculous that for one brief moment, I almost forgot how lost I felt.

The girl raised an eyebrow at me, clearly unimpressed by my reaction.

"I'm asking the questions," she said. "I'm the one who saved you from the ice. Now tell me your name."

My name.

The word settled over me like a stone.

I searched my mind again, hoping something would rise to the surface. A memory. A feeling. Anything. But there was only that same blankness, vast and silent. I did not know who I was. I did not know where I had come from. I did not know why the voices had called me Avatar, or why the old man in my mind had seemed so familiar.

I only knew that I was here.

Alive!

The girl waited patiently, though I could see the curiosity in her eyes. She was trying to understand me, just as I was trying to understand myself. The wind tugged at her braids, and the sunlight caught in her blue eyes, making them shine.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came.

For a moment, panic flickered through me. If I did not know my own name, then what was left of me? Was I truly nothing more than a body pulled from the ice? A stranger with no past and no place in the world?

The thought frightened me more than the cold ever could.

So I did the only thing I could think to do.

I said the first name that came to mind.

"My name is Aang."

The words felt strange as soon as I spoke them, as if they had been waiting for me all along. The moment they left my mouth, something inside me flushed with agreement, a sense of recognition.

The girl studied me for a long moment.

"Aang," she repeated, as if testing the sound of it.

I nodded, though I was not sure why. The name felt right. That was enough for now.

She smiled then, just a little, though I could still see the confusion in her face. "Well, Aang," she said, "I'm Katara."