31_days | [SEPT 8] [AVATAR] [DRAGONBERRY]

Title: Dragonberry.
Day/Theme: September 8: nourish your own ruthlessness
Series: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Characters: Aang, Gyatso
Rating/Warnings: G

When Aang was ten years old, slurping his way through a bowl of thukpa, squishing thick rags of noodle against the roof of his mouth, he nearly swallowed a dragonberry. For a dizzying moment he felt something hard scrape against his tongue, twist and spike against his teeth. Then he breathed out as hard as he could and the berry shot out of his mouth along with a thin spray of broth, half-chewed noodles, and shreds of greenery. It skidded to a halt about ten feet away, black and shiny against the stone of the courtyard.

“Aaaang!”

Lobsang and Rinchen and the others scooted away from him. Lobsang picked a length of noodle delicately off his front.

“Pretty impressive,” he said.

Behind him, the berry rattled across the flagstones.

Aang wiped his mouth and approached it gingerly. He gave it an experimental poke with his staff.

Lobsang rolled his eyes.

“Oh, come on, Aang.”

He reached over to pick it up. And the dragonberry exploded in a spray of fine scarlet filaments, fleshy red tendrils, shoots of yellow from the centre. Lobsang jerked his hand back, but it kept moving, twitching its way across the pavement. Aang tipped out the rest of his broth and slammed his bowl down over it. It scuttered around inside. He grinned.

“It’s like a baby spider crab!”

“Um, Aang? What is it?” Dorje, one of the new arrivals from the Eastern Air Temple, was still hanging back, twiddling his fingers together.

Aang, busy sliding a tray across under the upturned bowl, wished not for the first time that people would understand that his master’s tattoos, still tight and fresh and prone to catching him by surprise out of the corner of his eye, as if bits of him were very cold or underwater, did not make him an expert on anything other than airbending. But still.

“It’s either a weird kind of flower, or a new pet,” he announced, presenting his tray-bowl arrangement to the world, little scrabbling sounds coming from inside. “Gyatso will know!”

“What would have happened if you’d swallowed it?” someone asked.

“Well,” said Aang, “I didn’t.”

Lobsang, preparing to drop a piece of noodle down his back, suddenly looked thoughtful.

Gyatso was perched up under the wind wheels on the southern cliff-face, still as a statue apart from his fingers telling his beads. Neat cakes of bison-dung lined the cliff-side, drying in the long afternoon sun, ready for winter fuel. Appa, big enough now to carry two people with ease, cocked an eye at them, huffed a breath.

Above Gyatso, the wheels creaked gently, tattered lengths of cloth and paper streaming out as they turned, letting the worries and cares bought by pilgrims to the temple fly away into the high air.

“... and then it started moving around like it was alive and I put a bowl over it and here it is,” Aang finished, and presented the tray to Gyatso like an offering. Gyatso, too, looked thoughtful.

“I think I’ve heard of something like this. It’s called a dragonberry.”

“What is it?” Lobsang asked, prodding at the bowl.

“A message, I suspect,” said Gyatso, half under his breath. He shook his head, smiled.

“I think I would file it under ‘new pet’, myself. You’ll need to keep it somewhere closed off. And it likes meat, I’m afraid, so we may have to come to an arrangement with one of the people who sell food to the visitors.”

“Sure!” Aang paused. “Dragonberry? That sounds Fire Nation-y.”

Gyatso nodded, bowed his head. Rose to his feet.

“Boys. I have to pay a quick visit to the kitchens. Don’t let it out until I get back!”

And he was gone over the edge of the cliff, glider in hand.

Aang and Lobsang looked at each other, shrugged. Appa flopped his tail out, sending the wind-wheels whirring.

Gyatso came back that evening with, Aang noticed, a tear in his sleeve.

They arranged the dragonberry in a box of its own, fluffed up and, as far as they could tell, happy enough, feelers licking at some scraps of pigchicken meat from a helpful food vendor down at the pilgrim’s camp.

“I’m not sure how long they live, Aang. So don’t be surprised if it doesn’t make it, yes?”

“Ok.” Aang looked up at Gyatso. “What do you think it was doing in my soup, anyway?”

“Nothing permanent, young master airbender,” said Gyatso, eyes crinkling. He paused.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, how about a trip to Omashu in the next few days? Your friend with the funny hair would be happy to see you.”

“Sounds pretty good,” said Aang.

He curled himself up into bed, wondering what Gyatso had meant by his not-an-answer.

In the night, he dreamed of dragonberries, great feathery clouds of them, bouncing down the spires and cliffs of the temple, piling in deep red drifts around the meditation hall, falling from the sky like snow.