Can we pretend the airplanes in the sky

[actually112]

Who| Aang and YOU
What| Aang found a lot of looseleaf paper in the bookstore from people destroying biographies. He's turning it all into paper airplanes and letting them fly.
Where| Throughout the arena
When| The first half of week one.
Warnings/Notes| Maybe violence? Will add if more come.

Aang found a lot of pages fluttering on the bookstore floor. Pages he had no way of attaching to faces, sometimes not even names--pages with secrets and sadness and violence and joy. Delicately, uniformly printed, clearly by a master scribe. It's too bad to see them all alone and destroyed.

So he piled them in his backpack, regularly pulling pages out, folding them, and setting them free into the air. They looked a little like young flying airbenders, hidden by gliders too big for their bodies.

He threw them everywhere. On the moving stairs. From the banisters. Into stores. Through the ice rink.

Let the inked papers fly.

Comments

[actually112]

"Uh, that's not very specific."

He shuffles his feet on the floor, thinking of every possible question she might be asking.

"Uh... I'm guessing you don't have Air Nomads where you come from?" He's met someone else who doesn't know what Air Nomads were. To be fair, they were all but forgotten where he came from. He tries not to think about that. "Air Nomad children aren't raised by the people who sired or gave birth to them. I don't even know who sired or gave birth to me. Infants stay with nuns until they're old enough to be weaned, then then go to their own temples to be raised by monks or other nuns. Then those people teach the children how to airbend."

Of course, she knows what airbending is. Bending is just so fundamental that it must belong to every world, like wind or water.

[keep_surviving]

Well, that sounded really, really strange. Like some kind of social experiment of something.

"And airbending is?"

She tosses the plane back to him.

[actually112]

"It's..." Uh, seriously? That's like asking what water is. How do you explain that properly? "Bending air. It's like waterbending or earthbending or firebending, but you're doing it with the wind."

He catches the airplane without any difficulty. "I'm guessing you're normally a nonbender?" Because sometimes nonbenders raised with nonbenders just didn't quite have bending as present on the mind as benders or nonbenders with benders did.

[keep_surviving]

"Okay, I think maybe I'm seeing the problem here. All this bending stuff? Not common where I come from."

She makes a cross gesture with her arms to signal no. "Not part of normal society. At all. Never even heard those words before."

[actually112]

"You haven't... well, you probably have different words for it."

How could there be a world without bending?

He swirls his arms in a way that just looks like some graceful spazzing out, but it's actually basic airbending moves. "You know, using the energy inside you to manipulate the elements? Not everyone can do it, but a lot of people can."

[keep_surviving]

"Yeh, no."

There was peoples powers back in the FAYZ, of course, but seeing as how that was limited to about 100 underage kids in the whole world that slowly killed each other off Diana didn't really want to count that.

"Not at all."

[actually112]

"How is there..."

He furrowed his brow, staring at her as if she were a difficult math problem. No bending?

"I guess you don't have an Avatar, either?"

He wasn't sure how these other worlds functioned. First, a girl told him that she had never heard of an Avatar, and now this lady was telling him that there was no bending where she came from.

How weird.

[keep_surviving]

Diana can't help but look a little amused at Aangs expression.

"I'm going to guess you don't mean for like a website, do you?"

[actually112]

"What's a... no, no, it's doesn't have anything do do with spiderflies. The Avatar is the bridge between the mortals and the spirits. The Avatar is the one who's supposed to maintain balance in this world, and who is always dying and being reborn--you don't have anyone like that? Anyone at all?"

It's strange to slowly realize that other worlds just don't have this fundamental part of harmony.

[keep_surviving]

Spider flies? The hell?

"Well, yeah, but it's just some made up stuff that people hold onto to make themselves feel better."

She shrugs, not being overly religious herself (apart from the belief that any God that does exist out there probably hates her already) she doesn't want to get this kids hopes up about it.

"Some use it to make them better people. But then others figured out how to make it gain them power and money and now it doesn't really mean anything. It's just stories we tell people to make them behave a certain way."

[actually112]

"Made up stuff?"

Aang blinks at her in uncomprehending confusion, they shakes his head with a skeptical eyebrow.

"Uh, maybe that's how it is where you come from, but not where I'm from. The Avatar's real as you and me. I've been to the spirit world before. My friend was kidnapped by an angry nature spirit once."

He could mention that he himself is the Avatar, but he doesn't really want to drop that into conversation if there's no real purpose to it.

"Do people really use stories of spirits to get money and things like that where you're from?"

[keep_surviving]

"Well, that sure sounds like an amazing adventure." There's a significant lack of enthusiasm in that sentence.

She lifts herself up to sit on a railing, swinging her legs just slightly, looking down at the confused little boy.

"Yep, pretty much. That and scare people."