Three weeks of constant training was starting to take its toll. He'd been pushing himself every single day—morning exercises, afternoon form practice, evening meditation—without taking any real breaks. The preserved food stores in the temple were running low, and what remained was bland, unsatisfying stuff that left him constantly hungry.
He woke up that morning feeling like absolute garbage. His muscles ached in places he didn't know could ache, his head was pounding, and the simple act of sitting up left him dizzy and nauseous.
"Come on," he muttered, forcing himself to his feet. "Just push through it."
But his body had other ideas. The moment he tried to start his usual morning routine, his legs gave out beneath him. He hit the stone floor hard, skinning his palms and jarring his already-aching head.
"Shit," he gasped, rolling onto his back and staring up at the cracked ceiling. Everything hurt. Not the good kind of muscle soreness that came from productive exercise, but the deep, bone-deep exhaustion that meant he'd pushed way too far. He was clearly too bored to stay still, as there were no entertainment functions in the old temple.
He lay there for what felt like hours, too tired to move, too stubborn to admit he needed to rest. The hunger gnawing at his stomach made everything worse. The old crumbling grain cakes and the preserved food the Air Nomads had stored were nutritious enough to keep him alive, but they weren't enough to fuel the kind of intensive training he'd been doing.
What he really wanted—what his body was craving—was meat. Protein. Something substantial that would actually satisfy his hunger instead of just taking the edge off.
Through the broken roof, he could hear birds calling to each other. Small mountain birds that nested in the temple's upper reaches, chirping and fluttering around without a care in the world.
The thought crept in slowly, guiltily. He could catch one. Kill it. Cook it. Get the protein his body was screaming for.
But the thought of killing an animal felt foreign, even more the Air Nomads had been vegetarians. Peaceful people who didn't harm any living creature. Wasn't it wrong to kill something in their temple, in the place where he was trying to learn their art?
His stomach cramped with hunger, and he suddenly stopped caring.
It took him most of the morning to work up the energy to actually try. He was weak, shaky, and had zero experience hunting anything. But desperation was a powerful motivator.
The birds were small, about the size of sparrows, and they seemed to have no fear of him. Why would they? Humans had been gone from this place for a hundred years. He was probably the first predator they'd ever encountered.
His first few attempts were pathetic. Throwing rocks that missed by miles, trying to grab birds that easily fluttered out of reach, setting up crude traps that caught nothing but his own fingers.
But hunger made him persistent. On his seventh try, using a loose stone and what might have been the luckiest throw of his life, he actually connected. The small brown bird dropped like a stone, dead before it hit the ground.
He stared at the tiny corpse for a long moment, feeling a weird mix of triumph and guilt. It was just a bird. People killed animals for food all the time. But seeing it lying there, so still and small, made something twist in his stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.
"Sorry," he said quietly, picking up the bird. "but I want your body."
Preparing it was harder than he'd expected. He had no idea what he was doing, and the whole process was messier and more disturbing than he'd anticipated. By the time he had it cooking over a small fire he made from a blurry memory of starting a fire, his hands were shaking and not just from exhaustion.
But when he finally ate it, the relief was immediate and overwhelming. The rich taste of actual protein even without salt, the feeling of substantial food hitting his empty stomach—it was like his body was thanking him with every bite.
For the first time in days, he felt almost human again.
That afternoon, riding the high of having good food in his system, motivated enough with his small meal he decided to try the airbending forms again. Maybe it was the protein, maybe it was pure coincidence, but something felt different.
He started with the basic sequence he'd been practicing, the one that had felt so natural a few days ago. The movements came easier now, his body remembering the flow even in his exhausted state.
Breathe in. Extend arms. Shift weight. Breathe out.
The rhythm was soothing after the stress of the morning. His breathing deepened, his movements became more fluid, and for a moment he felt that same sense of harmony he'd experienced before.
Then, on the fourth repetition of the sequence, something changed.
As he swept his arms in the final gesture, breathing out slowly, he felt a tiny stirring in the air in front of his hands. Just the barest whisper of movement, like the faintest breeze.
He froze, arms still extended, hardly daring to breathe. Had that actually happened, or was he imagining things?
He tried the movement again. Slow, controlled, focusing on the sensation of air moving past his palms. And there it was again—a tiny shift in the air current, barely perceptible but definitely real.
"Holy shit," he whispered, staring at his hands. "Did I just...?"
He tried again, more deliberately this time. The sensation was incredibly subtle, like trying to feel the difference between two nearly identical fabrics. But it was there. A tiny stirring of air that responded to his movement, his breathing, his intention.
It wasn't much. He couldn't create gusts of wind or blow out candles or do any of the flashy stuff he'd seen in the show. But he could feel the air, could sense it moving in response to his gestures.
After three weeks of nothing, it felt like a miracle.
He spent the rest of the afternoon experimenting with the sensation, trying different movements and breathing patterns to see what worked. The effect was always small, always subtle, but it was consistent. When he moved his hands in certain ways while maintaining proper breathing, the air moved with him.
The key seemed to be not forcing it. The harder he tried to create a dramatic effect, the less responsive the air became. But when he relaxed, when he focused on the flow and rhythm of the movements instead of the desired outcome, the connection felt stronger.
By evening, he was exhausted again, but it was a good kind of tired. The kind that came after doing stretching exercises in a rest day of a gym enthusiast, it kinda just felt that way (how'd he know? he doesn't, I do).
He sat in his usual spot, looking out at the mountain landscape through the broken temple wall. His body still ached, his hands still smelled faintly of bird blood, and he felt guilty about breaking his unspoken promise to honor the Air Nomads' peaceful ways.
But he'd also made his first real progress toward airbending. After weeks of frustration and failure, he'd finally felt that connection, that sense of the air responding to his will.
"It's not much," he said to the empty air. "Barely anything, really. But it's a start."
The mountain wind picked up, flowing through the temple ruins as it did every evening. But tonight, for just a moment, he imagined he could feel it differently. Not just as air moving past him, but as something he could potentially interact with, influence, maybe even control.
Tomorrow, he'd take a rest day. Let his body recover from weeks of overtraining. Eat better, sleep more, treat himself with the same care he was trying to learn to treat the element he hoped to bend.
But tonight, he allowed himself to feel proud. He'd taken the first tiny step toward becoming what he'd chosen to be. It had cost him more than he'd expected—his vegetarian principles, his naive confidence, his illusion that this would be easy.
But he was finally, truly, beginning to bend air.
The wind whistled through the ruins, and this time, he was almost certain it was welcoming him.
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AN: I got nothing against vegans actually, I just love protein, no, no gym dust protein but anyway, just didn't want to say that word since its got memes around it.
Found it funny to do a little extra comment about him eating meat. Anyway ciao!