A/N: This is an extended and improved edition of the first one-shot I ever wrote, originally titled 'The Island of the Windthrowers.' This edition of the story will have at least three, possibly more chapters. Enjoy! Or don't. Your choice. :D

The sun was just beginning to shed its pink rays over the horizon as Appa collapsed on the beach of a vacant and uninhabited island. A ways from the mainland, it was a good place to rest for a day without the risk of the bison being discovered, and after much debate, the Gaang finally agreed to land there.

Toph, despite her outward indifferent appearance, and never quite having gained a stomach for flying, was the first to the solid, yet sandy ground. She stretched her arms above her head lazily, yawning loudly and falling back on the warm dark sand of the beach. With a soft swish of air, Aang was beside her, Sokka and Katara following suit. Sokka yawned, pulling his meteorite-metal sword and sheath off his shoulder and laying it over him as he lay in the sand.

"Man," he mumbled, resting his head on his hands as he stared up at the brightening sky. "I can't believe we've been flying for almost two straight days!"

Katara, who was fingering her long, thick brown hair restlessly, lifted her cool blue eyes to stare at her brother. "I know," she agreed, her voice betraying the exhaustion everyone felt. "And the invasion is only a week away. I hope we make it in time."

This roused an unexpected nervous chatter from Aang, who sat up abruptly, and who clearly thought he wasn't ready for his upcoming tangle with destiny. "A week away? Well, of course it's that close. The invasion is in seven days. Great Earth Kingdom! Is it really that close? Momo…!" The faithful flying lemur landed on his shoulder as he continued to babble, until he was talking so fast that no one, not even Katara, who was usually fairly skilled at deciphering the Avatar's incessant jabbering, could understand him.

Toph, growing exasperated with her pupil's noise, shifted a large amount of sand and clumsily threw it at the twelve-year-old Avatar. (Toph is not really a very good sand-bender, but we can give her credit for using something softer than her fist)

Sand suddenly filling his ears and mouth ceased Aang's senseless gobbledygook and he began coughing and spitting out the salty, volcanic sea grit. Once he regained the power of speech, the young Avatar retaliated. "Hey! What was that for?"

Toph closed her eyes, her hands behind her head, lying flat on her back on the sand. "Calm down, Twinkletoes," she commented, any other words she was planning on saying drown out in an enormous yawn. The two Water Tribe siblings took up her yawn, and Aang couldn't resist the urge that overcame him. The airbender collapsed with a sigh onto his back, still with his mouth wide open.

A loud hoot from a distant ship's whistle brought everyone back quickly to wakefulness. All four sat bolt upright, staring out upon the water, sudden panic glowing in their eyes. "What was that?" Aang asked pointlessly. The gang suddenly realized how exposed they were on the wide strip of beach.

Katara was the first to reply. "I think it was a cargo ship's horn. We should probably move into the forest. Appa is a little too exposed here—he sticks out like a sore thumb against all this dark earth. And, within sight of the mainland, it's dangerous, too." Appa moaned softly in agreement.

Everyone gathered themselves and moved quickly up the beach and into the sparse tropical forest that provided sufficient cover for their ten-ton flying bison. Though the ground sloped slightly uphill, sprouting a tall peak in the relative center of the island, the going was pretty easy. Tossing their things upon the sandy earth in the middle of a small clearing once they felt they were a good distance away from the shoreline, the team collapsed yet again, ready to sleep.

In a comment that was randomly and quite annoyingly out of place, Sokka, upon collapsing on the ground, stated, "I'm hungry."

Aang, Katara, and Toph covered their faces with their hands and groaned. Sokka stared at the trio moaning before him. "What?"

Toph rolled her sightless eyes. "You're always hungry."

"Well?" Sokka replied indifferently. "So?"

It was Katara's turn to roll her eyes. "So you're not getting anything to eat. We're going to be short on rations soon if you keep eating like a hogmonkey in a banana tree."

Sokka's only reply was to cross his arms and grunt; a gesture in which he considered 'manly.'

Aang snickered, recalling how similar Katara looked when she did the exact same thing.

Sokka ignored any further ridicule and rolled over on his side, his back facing the other three. Before long, he was snoring softly, a good indication that he was asleep.

Sighing, his sister curled up with her cheek to the cool sand and closed her glittering blue eyes.

The twelve year old earthbending master followed suit after a minute, and soon all three were breathing softly in the calm oblivion of sleep.

Aang lay on his back, staring through the gap in the trees overhead, where the gray, star-sprinkled sky was slowly transforming into a lighter rosy hue. Momo leapt from the sand and landed on the young airbender's chest, curling up to sleep. Aang patted the lemur affectionately.

"Guess it's just you and me, Momo," he whispered with a wane smile. The lemur only snored in reply. Aang sighed heavily, his silver gaze lifting to the ever-brightening morning sky.

Aang wasn't sure why he awoke. But when he did, he found himself staring at the mid-day sun, filtering its rays between the spaces in the thick foliage down into the shade, where it warmed his face. He blinked rapidly; the bright sunlight obscured his vision. He sat up, stretching and yawning.

The young airbender rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked around. Beside him, Katara, Sokka, and Toph were still asleep, breathing softly. Appa was snoring his great bison snore a few yards away, and his massive frame cast a sizable shadow upon the rest of the group. Momo was nowhere to be seen.

Lazily, using his airbending as a support, the Avatar floated to a standing position. Aang glanced around once more. The glade was quiet…really quiet. No twitter of birds or consistent whine of insects…or even the occasional shish of the wind through the treetops. Unnaturally quiet.

Weird… The young avatar thought, puzzled. Where is…?

Aang's puzzled thought process was broken by a very loud, very lemury screech. Momo leapt out of nowhere, landing on an unsuspecting Aang's shoulder and hissing with fury fueled by fear. The young Avatar spun around and immediately assumed a defensive stance. Aang heard a loud hiss of gathered sand, a swish of water, and a metallic shing of a meteorite sword being pulled from its sheath behind him, and knew his three companions had wakened.

Crouching not five feet from him was a boy—very young, around the age of five. He was dressed in a tunic and shorts made of some sort of woven, green material that uncannily resembled the leaves of several trees lining the outer edge of the grove. His gray eyes were dilated in surprise and fear, and in his hand he clutched a thin, long staff.

Beside him stood an odd creature, something that appeared kin to a badger-leopard, but much smaller, perhaps a baby. The creature growled, baring its tiny, pointed fangs, and the boy was frozen, eyes livid with terror.

"It's okay, we're not going to hurt you," Aang heard Katara's soft voice behind him. The young airbender stepped back slowly and cautiously, until he was beside his three friends. Then he heard Katara's voice again, this time it was slightly frustrated.

"Sokka! Put that sword away! You're scaring the poor kid!"

The Water Tribe warrior lowered his sword, but didn't sheath it. His ice-blue gaze was frustrated. "Katara, don't be so naive! What if he has angry friends?"

As if on cue, the terrified boy bolted back into the forest in a breath of wind, springing from tree-branch to tree-branch like a squirrel-mouse.

"What do we do now?" Toph allowed the small, deformed black stone she was holding drop back to earth and stood straight. "Should we let him go?"

Katara stared after the strange boy worriedly. "I don't know. He's got to have a village somewhere. Maybe we should look for it."

Aang disagreed. "Katara, this island is pretty big, and it's covered with dense rainforest! We would be wasting our time to go looking for it!"

"Yeah," Sokka commented. "The best thing would be for us to just leave."

"But did you see him?" Katara protested. "Did he look like a killer to you? He was only like five years old! And what if he is here alone? What if he's stranded? What if he ran just because he was afraid we would hurt him?" She stared pointedly at Sokka's drawn sword.

The Avatar shrugged, glancing at Sokka. "She does have a point."

"Point, Shmoint!" Sokka brushed off Aang's statement and blatantly pushed forward in his argument, gesturing wildly. "We only have a week to get to the rendezvous point, to meet up with Dad! We don't have time to go gallivanting around looking for a boy who could have parents that can attack us!"

"Sokka…" Katara begged, before she was cut off by her stubborn older brother.

"Katara, you're impossible! Come on, let's go while we can!" Gesturing with his blade, he grabbed one of Appa's horns and swung up. His three companions stared up at him resignedly but didn't move. "Come on!" he repeated.

Momo, who was still sitting on Aang's shoulder, suddenly twisted around with a growl. A rustling in the bushes gave only an instantaneous warning before the green warriors fell out of the trees, ambushing the group and overpowering them. Sokka, conscious for longer than the other three, yelled out as he was attacked with huge wooden clubs and forced down by blows that seemed to come from nowhere, "WHAT DID I TELL YOU, KATARA?! OW!! HEY—," he was hit over the head with a crude club and fell to the ground, out cold.

When Toph woke up, she opened her sightless eyes, and her head swam with pain, and she felt like she had been slammed against the wall of Ba Sing Se several dozen times. She sat up, wobbling shakily, and felt around. It took a moment for her to determine that she was in some kind of bamboo cage, hung suspended from the ground. As her mental vision cleared enough for her to see slightly, she could tell that her other three companions were in the same cage, still unconscious. She kicked out, catching Sokka in the thigh. He moaned an opened his eyes.

"W-where are we?"

"How am I supposed to know? I can't see when we're up in the air!"

"Geez, take it easy, Toph."

"How high up are we?"

The warrior peered out between the stout bars of the cage, and glanced downward. He gulped, and glanced back toward his blind companion.

"On second thought," Toph muttered, remembering a usually subtle fear of heights suddenly, as if it had punched her in the gut, "I don't want to know."

Another moan from across the cage reached her sensitive ear. "Aang's coming around," she stated. Sokka turned toward the airbender, who sat up slowly, clutching the huge bump on the back of his head.

"Ow, I thought having hair would make it hurt less when you're hit, ugh…where are we?"

"I don't know," Sokka replied, looking around, his mind clicking crazily as he tried to decipher an avenue of action. The cage they sat in was suspended from an enormous tree, and it seemed they were very near the top. The bough they hung from was at least twenty feet above their heads, and they were secured to it by a stout-looking but rusty old chain. The warrior tried to calculate the distance it was and the time it would take to climb. After a moment, he shook his head. Only Aang would be able to make it that far very easily, and without being able to see, Toph would have more trouble than the attempt was worth. Nor were there any branches growing close enough to where they could jump if they managed to even get out of the cage. He glanced back at the others, and announced with a voice that said 'I told you so', "But I do know this is a result of not just trusting me and leaving this island when we should have."

Aang rolled his eyes.

Katara, lying in the corner, rolled over and groaned. She sat up slowly, massaging her temples. "Uhhh…" she moaned, looking around at the others within their confinement. "Well…" she began, "It looks like we're all in the same boat."

"You mean the same cage," Toph remarked humorlessly.

Sokka laughed. Everyone stared at him with raised eyebrows.

"What? It was funny!"

Katara and Aang continued to stare at him, and Toph rolled her eyes.

"Hmph…" he grumbled, crossing his arms. "No good sense of humor."

"What are we going to do now?" Aang pushed forth the problem facing them. "This wood is weird," he struck it with a fist, made pained a face, and shook his hand. "…and very hard," he added.

"Katara," Sokka spoke directly to his sister, coming out of his sulk as he thought of something. "Do you still have that water? I think they took away my sword."

"Yeah," Katara nodded, pulling it out.

A sudden violent shaking of the cage threw everyone to the floor, and Katara almost lost the small container. A strange voice from above rang through their ears. "Isn't any water that'll break this confinement!"

The companions peered upward. A boy, about Sokka's age, or a little older, sat perched leisurely on top of their single cell. "And there isn't any Fire Navy soldier that'll live to tell the world that we're livin' here."

Toph blinked in bewilderment. "Where did he come from?" she whispered to Katara, who shrugged helplessly.

Suddenly the cage rocked once more as a girl landed on the top of it. "Brother," she rolled her silver eyes. "What did mom tell you about teasing the Fire Nation soldiers?"

"But we're not Fire Nation soldiers!" Aang looked upward pleadingly at the two siblings, who exchanged 'that's-what-they-all-say' glances. "No!" Aang begged, "Seriously, we're not! Look!" He motioned toward Katara, and she flipped the lid of the small water container she was carrying. Aang bended it out and swirled it around, in and out of the cage bars with fanciful flicks of his wrists, hoping it would awe them enough to convince the two skeptics of their claim.

"Whoa!" the girl said, on her hands and knees, peering over the edge. "How did you do that?"

Her brother made a rude sound. He sat leisurely, leaning up against the chain with his arms crossed. "As if pretty water tricks will make us believe you." But his gray eyes betrayed that he was interested.

Katara slowly took the water from Aang and bended it back into its container. "See?" she said. "And Toph," she motioned to the dejected blind master who leaned against the bars in a sulk, "Is an earthbender. Please. Can you let us out? None of us are from the Fire Nation."

The girl cocked her head toward the teenage boy. "They can move water! Have you ever even heard of that?"

The boy made the rude noise once more. "Don't let them fool you!" he said, unconvinced. "They're Fire Navy sailors or they wouldn't be here." And to the surprise of all four prisoners, he stood and jumped from the cage to an adjacent branch ten feet away with a whoosh of air. The cage again rocked violently, but the girl didn't seem to notice. Aang, finally realizing who they were, grasped the cage's bars with excitement. "Your brother is an airbender!" he cried.

The girl seemed confused for a moment, but then realization dawned on her young face. "Ah, you mean windthrowers. Yes. We all are."

"Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

"I…don't know. I think we've always been here. As long as I have lived, anyway."

But Aang was persistent, and Katara, catching on, helped Aang to press from the girl all she knew. She and her clan had been on the island for generations. The legend, told by the village storytellers and historians, was that they were survivors from an ancient civilization, and they escaped from a Fire Navy ship passing the island to dock at the mainland. No one on the island much believed the myth, but it was still taught, nevertheless.

The island had fresh water and an abundance of good food, and they had no where else to go, so they settled and adapted. They hunted the wild, clove-hoofed goat-deer that roamed the eastern tip of the island. Their home was in the trees, but they cooked and held celebrations in an enormous underground cavern under the mountain.

After a few decades of living in peace, firebenders came to the island, trying to clear the forest and settle it for their own. So they viciously attacked, and killed all but two sailors, who barely escaped with their lives in a dingy and rowed to the mainland.

Apparently word got out that there were vengeful ghosts on the island, and all people—settler or soldier—who braved the place 'mysteriously disappeared.' But in fact, the girl told them, they were simply killed, so no one would betray their presence living there. The island hadn't been disturbed in years, partial thanks to the Fire Navy superstitious lore, and partial thanks to a score of lookouts posted facing every direction on the mountain top.

"…so," the girl finished after nearly an hour of talking, "that's why you're going to be executed at sunset tomorrow."

"Can't you do anything to stop it?" Toph pleaded.

The girl shook her head sadly as she stood up. "No, sorry. But I'm sad that you will have to be killed…you guys are nice Fire Nation soldiers." With a wan smile, she sprang away.

Aang slid down to the flood of the cage, shaking with excitement, fear, anxiety, and immense relief, all at the same time. "I'm not the last airbender!" he exclaimed. "Some of them escaped! They found a place to live and thrive here, where the war couldn't get them!"

"That's great, Aang," Katara placed her hands over the airbender's shoulders in a hug, sounding genuinely happy, but for some reason, deep in her own subconscious, something was uneasy.

Toph crossed her arms. "Yeah, sure, great! Hooray, we found your long lost people. But that doesn't change the fact that we're going to be killed because they think we're firebenders! And way up here I can't exactly prove them wrong!"

"I can, though!" Aang explained. If I could only get free of this cage, I can prove I'm an airbender!"

Sokka, ever the one to point out a problem, commented, "That's great, for you, but how are you going to prove that we're not firebenders?"

"With any luck," Katara pointed out, "He already did." She flicked her wrist and sent the water container flying toward her brother. He caught it.

"Well…" Sokka whined, searching for another flaw in their vague plan, but finally had no real answer to give.

"Okay, then," Katara nodded toward the Water Tribe warrior, and he flipped the container open. The water came flowing out and shot, with substantial force at the bamboo. It made the tiniest hint of an impression on the stout wood. Katara sighed and swirled the water back toward her. "We better get to work."