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quillthrillswriting · 17 hours

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actually crying over this interaction katara has in my fic on kyoshi island where she realizes how nice it is to have girlfriends

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

“Guess what your brother’s up to…” Ayiti was beaming, barely holding back her laughter now.

“Spirits, I’m not sure I even want to know.” Katara rolled her eyes, carefully curling up the centuries old paper in front of her and tucking it alongside the others in her cloth satchell. “What, did he accidentally get a sword stuck in some important monument after bragging to some poor unassuming villager about his swordsmanship?”

“Better.” Ayiti’s eyes flashed with amusement as she settled into the plush stool opposite Katara. She reached forward, hands resting on the varnished wooden table as her elegantly almond shaped nails drummed rhythmically in anticipation. “I missed his grand entrance, but apparently, he’s been set on helping us poor, untrained Kyoshi warriors! He pranced his way in, going on and on about how he’s the best warrior in his tribe. I got there just in time to see Suki wipe the floor with him.”

Katara groaned in embarrassment, burying her head in her hands as she slumped against the table.

“No, no, you don’t need to be too embarrassed for him.” Ayiti rested a comforting hand on Katara’s arm as the Water tribe girl looked up, her scepticism apparent in her expression. “He was actually pretty sweet after Suki humbled him. He said he was ready to learn, that he had been overly cocky when he came in.”

Katara wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound like the Sokka I know.”

“We were surprised too! He let us paint his face in the traditional style of Kyoshi warriors, even put on the armoured gown too!” Ayiti giggled again, remembering. “Although he was a little embarrassed when Aang saw him in it. I think Sokka interpreted Aang’s attempt to compliment him as Aang poking a little fun at him.”

“What’s Aang been up to, anyways?” Katara tried to make the question seem thoughtless, throwing in a shrug to accompany her words, but Ayiti’s shrewd expression saw right through her.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” She crooned, a teasing grin on her face. “C’mon, you’ve gotta get your mind off of the Avatar, and you’ve had your nose buried in scrolls the whole day. Let me show the future Waterbending master around my little old village.”

Ayiti helped Katara gather the rest of the scrolls and drop them off in the guesthouse, then dragged her between the different stalls, chattering animatedly. Katara had never really gotten to have a girlfriend her age, and she couldn’t believe all that she’d missed out on. For once, she felt her age. Back home, she took care of so many of the village kids whose parents had been lost to fire nation raids. She felt like it was her responsibility, that it was the least she could do, and she did enjoy it.

But perhaps she hadn’t quite grasped what it had taken out of her.

For every hour Sokka spent hunting for food and training to be a warrior, Katara spent parenting children, washing laundry, cooking, cleaning, repairing homes and weapons. She wished for maybe the millionth time that she and her brother had been able to have proper childhoods, present parents to lift that burden from them. She remembered Aang reminding her that she still was a kid.

Here, walking around the market with Ayiti, she slipped into conversation excitedly, the two’s conversation oscillating between mentions of what the war had taken from them and more lighthearted teasing, and she was beyond grateful for the simplicity of a friend who saw her.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

♥ this will be coming out along with the rest of ch4 on wednesday! check out the first three chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->

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quillthrillswriting · 13 days

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sooo.... anyone else ever wondered how different ATLA would have been if aang had been frozen at age 16 instead of age 12?

yeah... me too 😌 my new fanfic "the teenager in the iceberg" follows the events of the show, but with only aang aged up, while everyone else remains their canon age.

also...cmon....how funny is it to switch zuko and aang's iconic dialogue to "you're just a teenager!" "...so are you?"

this idea was originally inspired by the talented @allgremlinart's aged up aang drawings, so please go show them some love!!:)<3

enjoy the excerpts from chapters one and two!

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Aang chuckled, pushing himself up with his hands on his knees. He was… taller than Katara had realised, taller than Sokka. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck, turning to look over his shoulder at the remains of the boulder-sized chunk of ice he had just been blasted out of. “Aang. My name’s Aang.” He hesitated, momentarily seeming to puzzle something over. “And honestly? No clue. Don’t remember how me and…Appa!” He yelped, suddenly scrambling back over the hill of ice and snow. Katara followed him without thinking, and Sokka, grumbling under his breath, followed moments later.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

“So, you’ve brought a monster to invade the village, then? You’re some incognito Fire Nation soldier sent in as an undercover scout? Well, I’ll have you know that I’m the village’s strongest warrior, a-”

“The only warrior,” Katara chimed in, lightly elbowing Sokka’s side, earning herself a responding glare.

“The strongest warrior.” Sokka reiterated. “And I don’t much like firebenders.” He added the words pointedly.

“Ah.” Aang titled his head. “That’s a shame. Some of my closest friends are Fire Nation.”

“Of course they are,” Sokka glared, hunching over into a defensive position and adjusting his fishing spear until it pointed directly at Aang.

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Katara still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Aang. The Water Tribe boys had always been all flashy muscles, seal-jerky breath, and overconfidence, so Katara had never seen someone move, carry themself, the way Aang did.

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Katara had admittedly forgotten how much fun penguin sledding was. “Spirits, I haven’t done this since I was a kid!” she called to Aang as he raced past her, surprisingly skilled considering that he’d never even seen a penguin until half an hour before.

“You still are a kid!” He called back over his shoulder. “A kid who’s losing this race, badly !”

Katara’s competitive streak reared its head, her eyes narrowing as Aang stuck out his tongue. She sat up slightly, no longer gripping the penguin’s fur as tightly. “You wish!” She shouted back the words as she raised her hands, breathing deeply. Her hands moved through the positions she had practised from the few bending scrolls the tribe still held on to, and before Aang knew it, the snow in front of Katara turned to ice, and she shot past him as his own ice trail suddenly became dry snow with too much friction to slide on.

She made it to the bottom of the hill, beaming, breathing heavily. The wind had whipped her hair out of her bun, and she knew without checking that her hair must have looked like a lion-turtle’s mane. She watched as Aang made a show of drying himself off with a gust of wind that he then redirected at her, messing up her curls even more.

“You’re a cheater !” Aang gasped, mockingly clutching imaginary pearls at his throat. “I demand a rematch.”

Katara strode past him, only turning her head to cast him a smug smirk. “Maybe you’re just not as good of a penguin sledder as you thought .”

“Oh, not so fast!” Aang grabbed her wrist, tugging her back towards him, and she internally questioned why the momentary brush of their skin made her heart flip. He tried to trip her, she tried to flip him, and they both ended up on their backs in the snow, giggling, cheeks and noses bright pink from the cold.

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“Trouble sleeping too, huh?” Aang cocked a grin, tilting his head to Katara. She kept her eyes fixed upwards, trained on the moon and the stars, worried that if she looked away, she’d end up staring into his eyes like a weirdo.

“I always feel so awake with the moon’s light on me. Sleeping under the stars has never really been a thing that works. It’s too energising, too… too much. It’s hard to explain.”

“No, no… I get it. I feel the same way in a windstorm, all those breezes and gusts of wind, it feels… exhilarating.” She watched through her peripheral vision as he looked up at the moon. “In times of war, I think we all tend to forget how spiritual bending is at its core. I’d say it’s a good thing that you’re in touch enough with the origins of your abilities to feel the moon’s pull tug at you just as much as it does on the ocean.”

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Aang smiled back. “Now is our time to try to make up for that. I can’t bring back everyone who was hurt in this war, and you can’t bring back your mother, but together, the two-, three of us can make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

“I’d like that,” Katara exhaled, her breath calming down and tears dissipating. The two spent hours talking back and forth, exchanging the stories of their respective childhoods. Katara learned that Aang had invented several new bending moves and had been a big fan of fruit pies, while Aang learned that Katara had always been the bossier one between her and Sokka and that she had almost chipped a tooth on seal jerky when she was six. They continued talking back and forth in increasingly hushed tones until the world faded away under the cover of clouds and sleep.

Katara awoke to the loud shout of her brother.

“Wakey wakey, lovebirds!” he yelped, chucking a rock-hard stick of seal jerky at both of them.

“Ouch, Sokka !” Katara snapped at him, rubbing her head at the spot where she had been hit, before realising that she was leaning against Aang and immediately jumping away, blushing furiously.

♥ check out the two chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->

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quillthrillswriting · 8 days

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sooo.... anyone else ever wondered how different ATLA would have been if aang had been frozen at age 16 instead of age 12?

yeah... me too 😌 my new fanfic "the teenager in the iceberg" follows the events of the show, but with only aang aged up, while everyone else remains their canon age.

also...cmon....how funny is it to switch zuko and aang's iconic dialogue to "you're just a teenager!" "...so are you?"

enjoy the excerpt from (the upcoming) third chapter!! updates every wednesday!!

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Aang led the way through the temple, and Katara winced at every single skeleton that lined the halls of the stone pathways carved through the sacred building. Aang couldn’t look at them, didn’t let himself look at them. Katara didn’t blame him for it. She hadn’t been able to look at the handful of bodies left after every Fire Nation raid, and yet, here were the bodies of all of his people, his entire culture.

She was snapped out of her spiralling train of thought by the screech of stone against stone as Aang funnelled air through a complex looking lock system, the gears driving it creaking from disuse. Sokka and Katara flinched, but Aang stayed still.

The door opened to hundreds, if not thousands, of stone statues, gazing unflinchingly back at them.

Sokka dropped into a defensive position out of habit, as if the statues would lunge toward them at any minute, and Katara just rolled her eyes and giggled at her brother, pushing past him as she stepped towards the statues in awe. Weaving between them, she stopped at one of a woman with traditional water tribe clothing that made her heart twist with homesickness. She felt Aang standing behind her, his exposed chest through his one-shoulder robes radiating heat in a way that made her face flush with colour.

He reached up over her to brush a finger against the statue’s delicately carved hair. “She has your little…hair thingies.”

Somewhat unconsciously, she reached up to brush her own loops of hair, grazing the white bone-beads with her ring finger. “I didn’t realise the great Avatar paid attention to things like that.”

A teasing smile spread across Aang’s lips. “I think you’ll find that I’m a very attentive person.” He said the words innocently enough, but the way honey seemed to wrap around every syllable caught Katara off guard, sending warmth spreading down her spine as she momentarily forgot how to speak.

Aang grinned again, looking as though he was about to add something, before a chittery, squeaking noise echoed through the room, bouncing between statues. “What was that?” Sokka yelped, jumping away from the statue whose armour and sword he had been examining. The screech of metal against stone sounded from somewhere on Sokka’s side of the room, and both Katara and Aang quickly wove between statues to join him, all three tensing.

From between the statues, the sound got louder, and a helmet dragged between the sculptures, moving haphazardly as it scraped against the floor.

“GHOSTIE!” Sokka yelped, jumping backwards as he pointed an accusatory finger at the helmet. Katara stayed silent, visibly pale. Aang looked back at the two of them, then faced the helmet again. He stepped through those same strange airbending forms, his movement ending with the sharp expulsion of wind from his fist. The helmet blew away, clattering against the stone, revealing….

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

♥ check out the two chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->

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quillthrillswriting · 12 days

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it's that time again...next ch of "the teenager in the iceberg" sneak peak!!!!!

kinda CW??: discussions of the air nomad genocide, loss of loved ones

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

When he opened them again, all Katara could see were glowing eyes, blazing bright. Blazing with anger.

She barely had time to think before the wind began to whip around her and Sokka, sending leaves swirling. Sokka ducked under a couple larger branches that had broken off of the nearby fruit trees, dead and unused. Trees that had probably supplied the fruit for the Air Nomad’s traditional pies over a century ago. Aang’s tattoos and eyes were blazing blue now, glowing so brightly that it hurt to look over at him. Sokka ducked behind a stone, hoping it would provide cover as he beckoned to Katara to do the same.

But Katara refused.

Aang needs my help, she told herself as she pushed against the winds Aang sent in every direction. Aang needs my help. She repeated the mantra over and over, until she’d finally pushed past the grassy, bone lined field and gotten within what she hoped was Aang’s hearing distance.

“AANG!” She shouted up at him as he began to levitate, a sphere of air and rock encircling him. She barely even recognized him this way, anger distorting his features, his muscle defined by the light emulating from him. All she could see was that rage and anger and pain, and all she wanted was to get close enough to pull him out of it. With the winds picking up the way they were, Katara struggled to stay on the ground. Still, she had to. Aang needs my help. She felt a hand at her back, and Sokka was there, trying to help get through to Aang.

She cleared her throat, calling out to him again. “AANG! Please, I know that you must be feeling grief, and guilt, right now beyond anything anyone could imagine." She coughed, the winds stirring up dust that caught in her throat. "You may be the last Airbender, but your people, their love and teachings, live on through you. They wouldn’t want this for you!”

Sokka joined her. “They wouldn’t want you to succumb to grief and rage!” He shouted. “Believe me, I get why that would be tempting, but… they would want you to work with those who care about you make sure no one has to experience this again.”

Katara nodded frantically, looking back to Aang. “Please, Aang, come back to us. We care about you!” She exhaled shakily, looking away for a moment before looking back. “Please, come back to me.”

For a second longer, Aang stayed there, hovering in the air, until the light coursing through him abruptly shut off, and he began to fall to the Earth like a shooting star.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

♥ check out the two chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

not sure if you want to check it out? check out the lovely reader's comments!! (i love all of u comment ppl<3) 🤭

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quillthrillswriting · 7 days

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"why are you so quiet, what's on your mind?"

"oh, nothing, just aang admiring katara without realizing he's in love with her"

guys, i am SO excited for tomorrow's new chapter of "the teenager in the iceberg" there's gonna be some great moment & generally im excited to start progressing past the first few episodes

here's a teaser excerpt!

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Sokka immediately jumped off, almost kissing the sand in relief, and Aang followed close behind. Katara moved to stand up and join them, but a combination of that nerve-sick feeling and a bit of light-headedness had her slipping a little, stumbling off the saddle. She would’ve landed face-first in the sand, but Aang smoothly caught her with a current of air, then offered a hand.

Once she was safe on the ground, Katara blushed, embarrassed that she’d lost her balance that easily. She moved to tell Aang, only to have Sokka take one look at her and burst out laughing.

“What?!” She snapped, suddenly overly self-conscious.

“Your hair!” He cackled, a shaking finger pointing at her. Confused, Katara reached out her hand to draw a tendril of water from the cold morning sea. She concentrated, forming it first into a sphere and then a flat oval, then stilled the water so that she could see her reflection…

Only to drop the water in surprise when she finally saw what Sokka was talking about. Her carefully done hair was snarled around in its braids, bits of it loose and bits of it still intact. She huffed in annoyance, then fished out a small glass mirror and her hairbrush.

“Aang,” she said distractedly, “could you hold this for me?” She handed him the mirror.

“Y-yeah, no problem.”

She tugged out her hair ties, flipping her head upside down for a moment to make sure that it had all gotten loose, then she gingerly tugged a few tendrils of water from the nearby ocean and wrapped tiny streams around her hair, tugging out the crimped braid pattern and reviving her curls. Then, she carefully bent the remaining liquid back out.

She couldn’t see his face through her thick hair as she stood back up, but from his voice, Aang seemed impressed. “I get that you haven’t been able to learn any big combat moves, but for someone whose bending is self- taught, you sure have a pretty good handle on these smaller things.”

She properly flipped her head up now, curls and waves bouncing around her face. Her dark brown locks shone with honey-toned highlights, all different shades of caramel and chocolate sparkling as they framed her face. She reached up, gently twisting and clipping a few strands out of the way, but a few wayward pieces still fell forward, gently brushing against soft, full lips and smooth skin. Aang awkwardly froze for a moment, caught off guard by how different she looked when her hair was loose and free. He had a weird urge to tell her so, but bit his tongue, instead focusing on her answer.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

♥ check out the two chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->

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quillthrillswriting · 6 days

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sooo.... anyone else ever wondered how different ATLA would have been if aang had been frozen at age 16 instead of age 12?

yeah... me too 😌 my new fanfic "the teenager in the iceberg" follows the events of the show, but with only aang aged up, while everyone else remains their canon age.

also...cmon....how funny is it to switch zuko and aang's iconic dialogue to "you're just a teenager!" "...so are you?"

this idea was originally inspired by the talented @allgremlinart's aged up aang drawings, so please go show them some love!!:)<3

enjoy the excerpts from chapter three, that just dropped this morning!

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

Katara watched Aang take one last, painful look at the temple, then turn to the sky ahead, lit up in shades of orange, pink, and gold. She swore she could see arrows in every cloud, arrows like the ones inked across Aang’s body, and the gentle breeze that carried the crisp night air towards them seemed to wrap around them like a loving spirit.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

“...You have no idea where we’re going, do you?” Sokka sighed, turning the map that was held against Appa’s saddle with a couple of rocks toward himself. “I’ve been charting our progress, and it’s starting to look more like a scrap of paper a toddler is practising circles on than a navigational tool.”

“C’mon Sokka, I’m an Air nomad, travel is in my blood. I have a very strong internal compass. Besides, you’ll find that as a nomad, I’m a master of evasive manoeuvring.” Katara raised an eyebrow, looking up from her spot near the back of the saddle as she stitched a rip in Sokka’s pants. “Besides,” Aang continued, typical teenage boy overconfidence emitting from his tone of voice. “I know it’s near water.”

Sokka leaned over the edge of the saddle, eyes scanning the blue expanse below them that stretched as far as the eye could see. “We must be getting close then,” he scoffed, his tone dripping in sarcasm as he slouched back into his spot across from Katara.

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“Aang,” she said distractedly, “could you hold this for me?” She handed him the mirror.

“Y-yeah, no problem.”

“I learned most of the smaller things from helping Gran-Gran.” Katara’s eyes sparkled, clearly caught up in a vision of home as she reached up to brush up her hair. “ As she’s gotten older, her range of mobility has started leaving her. It’s not really comfortable or safe for her to stoop over to wash her hair, so I learned how to bring the water to her and wash it while she was sitting up, then I learned how to dry it for her fast.”

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Sokka yelped, his voice defensive and offensive all at once. “There is no way a bunch of girls in cutesy makeup and dresses managed to tie me up.”

“Awe, you think our makeup is cutesy? How sweet .” The girl's voice was crooning at first, sweet and gentle, but Katara could see from the way her muscles flexed as she held Sokka by the collar that there was venom hiding behind those words. She was right. “Throw him to the Unagi.”

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“Katara, c’mon, we’re supposed to be sticking together, where are you going?” Aang tugged at her arm until she was facing him, looking at her earnestly as if he hadn’t basically been flirting with all of those girls back there.

The words came out before she could stop them. “I thought monks weren’t supposed to go around flirting with any random girl, and they’re definitely not supposed to go around catering to a village full of fangirls.”

Aang raised an eyebrow, his expression teasing in a way that made Katara want to splash the smirk off of his face in a wave of water. “You sure have a lot of opinions on what you think monks are supposed to do, considering that I’m the only one you’ve ever met.” He shifted his weight, leaning in a bit closer. “Matter of fact, maybe it's just that you have a lot of opinions on what you think I’m supposed to be doing.”

Katara stiffened at the memory of the words that Sokka had just said minutes before. “Why would I care what you’re doing? I don’t. ”

Aang shrugged, reaching past her to grab a papaya and biting into it. After swallowing, he reached into Katara’s satchel, his hand brushing her waist as he pulled out some coins and quietly thanked the vendor. “Keep telling yourself that, Katara.” Hearing her name from his lips did something to her, but she kept her gaze level, eyes blazing with flame until Aang backed off.

⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩

♥ check out the three chapters of this (ongoing) fic & my ao3 here! ->

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