Disclaimer: I own nothing.
This was supposed to be some big thing about what it would be like to "let go" and "control" the Avatar State, and it morphed into this. And this is one piece that I don't care if no one likes because I like it. The writing of this was the discovery of something else…just something. I hope you enjoy it, and please leave a review.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
For the first time in my life, I actually felt like I knew what I was supposed to do.
Suddenly the world opened its arms to me and smiled; and I didn't care. I looked at, all big and round with those arms just waiting to take me in and show me things I could never in my wildest dreams imagine mine. And I laughed.
I laughed. I laughed and I smiled and I danced as I never had before. I let go of whatever held me to the shore, whatever had me hanging on to dear life to the last bit of land I could find. I floated off into the ocean, sun on my skin and water all around; the only thing keeping me from the briny deep, a piece of light plywood aptly named 'sanity.'
Somewhere between the letting go and the embracing of the water, I lost 'sanity' too. And I laughed some more. It wasn't like it was that big of a loss.
I floated blindly in the water, smiling deliriously happy smiles every time another poor soul like me drifted by. We would wave at each other and maybe share a few words. Sometimes we'd even float together, grasping at each others' faces to get a glimpse of who we were.
Somehow we found out just who we were in those touches, and with an all knowing smile, we drifted on to the next. What the next even was we'd yet to understand. We just knew the immense happiness that filled us.
That was enough, really.
All I cared for when I stepped ground—wherever ground was at that time—was the wonderful feeling of knowing. It wasn't knowing anything in particular, either. Someone once asked me about it, and all I could do was smile at her.
"It's just a feeling of knowing."
"Of knowing what, though?"
"I don't know. Everything. Nothing. Something."
Many years later, she came up to me again. Same smile on her face, same confusion written beneath it. Same love in her eyes.
"Aang," she whispered my name. I smiled at her, watching the waves crash against the shoreline. "Can you tell me what you know?"
Far off in the distance, something happened. A rock crashing into the ocean, not able to hold to its cliff any longer. A bird finding another bird and they in turn creating another. A volcano erupting and new land created in the sea, ready for new life—or the same old same old—to inhabit its shores.
My hand coming up to hers, grasping tightly as it pulled her closer. "Feelings aren't told, they're showed."
And we fall into the madness again. Me, knowing the way around knowing something, and her, for the first time, letting go of the lines attaching her to the shore she's always held so close too. And we go sailing through the waters, her eyes wide and beautiful.
She meets the boatman I met before, stranded by a hurricane and dead many years now. She touches his face, soft fingers grazing the glowing blue of his tattoo, and she smiles a smile she's never smiled before.
When I reread it to try and create a comment down here for ya'll, only one thing came to mind, and it's what I'll leave you with. Take it how you will. It's poetry.
mcl