terajk

Title: Impermanence
Rating: PG
Characters: Aang, Monk Gyatso
Word count: 540+
Summary: In which Aang meditates on impermanence. For my "breathplay" square for

kink_bingo
Content notes: Underage, kink as part of a religious practice

Meditation, Aang thought, was a way of making friends with your body. It was better to listen than to talk, even if he sometimes got excited and wanted to show it the funny face he thought up or how he could turn their eyelids inside-out.

But no. Listening was what a good friend should do.

Sometimes his body would say I wish we were on our air scooter right now, and he would put that wish away for later. Or he might think about air: how it was everywhere and nowhere, nourishing and yet impermanent (so like the impermanence of all living things, Monk Gyatso said). He’d concentrate on the way it flowed through him, brushing against the little hairs in his nose and filling his stomach like a big bowl of rice would. Then there was the warmth that swirled out from his middle as he let the air go, making his chest fall like the stack of fruit pies he made last week. (He hadn’t known that board was rotten.)

And there was nothing he could do about it now, except send the thought away, like a balloon. Goodbye, thought-balloon.

So. Impermanence. The air he was filling his lungs with now was different than the air he’d just breathed out, because air was always moving, always changing. This was the thing about airbending: you weren’t so much controlling the air as…well, “making yourself a vehicle for its natural flux” is how Monk Pasang would put it, but Aang thought of it like dancing. It was allowing something else to move you.

For this reason, keeping air from moving seemed unnatural. “Are you sure?” Monk Gyatso had asked him when he’d brought it up. “Death seems unnatural to many people, Aang, but it’s as much a part of life as breathing. It’s essential to us all.”

“Like fruit pies?” Aang had asked, thinking of his training (and also their tastiness).

Monk Gyatso laughed. “Well, fruit pies are certainly useful. But essential is something else. Perhaps you should examine it during meditation.”

So he did.

Perhaps air was one of those things that was useful, but not essential. What would happen if he stopped air altogether? Well, not that (who would want to do that?), but if he stopped breathing, maybe? Maybe it was like preparation for death.

He gave it a try.

After Aang let the air out of his mouth, warmth spreading from his tummy to the tips of his fingers, he just…stopped. His chest got all twitchy and wanted to heave, but he kept still. I am impermanent, he thought. He clamped a hand over his mouth, pinched his nose shut with his thumb. Soon there was heat in the fingertips of his free hand, and he felt the blood pulse in his temple. He counted: One. Two. Three. Even dying, he kept changing.

Except he wasn’t dying, because then he moved his hand and took a great, deep breath that swept all the clutter from his mind. The air--his existence--was brighter, clearer than it had been before. He understood what Gyatso meant by “essential” a little better now. He also thought that if stopping his breath really was preparation for dying, he could use some more practice.