The Northern Air Temple

This article is about the chapter from The Dawn of Yangchen. For other similar uses, see Northern Air Temple (disambiguation).

"You cannot bring your spies into the temple."
"[...] First off, we're not in the temple proper right now, [...] Second, he hasn't started spying for me yet, so as far as anyone's concerned, he's only my guest. Third, look around us. We're drowning. This is one city out of balance, never mind the world. I need him."

— Yangchen and Abbott Sonam debating the merits of bringing Kavik to the Northern Air Temple.

Template:Chapter infobox"The Northern Air Temple" is the fifteenth chapter of The Dawn of Yangchen.

Overview

Using forged documents and an assumed identity to exit Bin-Er, Kavik leaves for the Northern Air Temple to rendezvous with Yangchen. Once there, Kavik proves his moral fiber and ingenuity to his new boss and the temple's abbot by helping Yangchen save the life of a wounded refugee.

Synopsis

En route to the Northern Air Temple, "Jingli", the alias Kavik is using as part of his disguise, watches over one of the supply wagons delivering goods to the Air Nomads. To his community in Bin-Er, Kavik's absence is explained away as him recuperating from an illness contracted from one of his disreputable errands, while his mother and father keep his true location a secret in their belief that he was isolating himself for mental and spiritual training in his role as Avatar Yangchen's new companion. The waterbender's traveling companions meanwhile, a group of local business owners given special dispensation to leave the city in the years since the Platinum Affair and donate unsold supplies for their own spiritual edification, seem unconcerned with the journey ahead, with Kavik speculating if their dispassion would extend to the people in the city desperate to have the same freedom of movement. Though Kavik was uncomfortable with assuming another person's identity for this part of his mission, Yangchen had reassured him beforehand that his alias was both completely artificial and extremely expensive to create. His stress continues to mount as the caravan reaches an Earth Kingdom checkpoint; for Kavik, his fears of monstrous, imperceptible Earth Kingdom soldiers that manifested when he first entered Bin-Er as a child have now morphed into terror of what the guardsmen, rash and unpredictable as other regular people he has dealt with, might do. Kavik can only hold his breath as the soldiers inspect the group's cargo, and contain his screams as they look over his forged travel token. Despite Kavik panicking on the likelihood of him getting caught, the soldiers clear him and the rest of the caravan to proceed. The Water Tribe youth marvels at how Yangchen fulfilled his seemingly impossible desire to leave the city, likening her actions to a blessing. Kavik's awe quickly turns to resentment, however, as he reminds himself that his departure is only one part of the Avatar's plan, and that his parents still remain trapped in the city.

The caravan moves from the open ground at Bin-Er's outskirts up to rocky trails along the mountains, with Kavik using his waterbending to protect his wagon's jostling pots from hitting each other. After five days along the road, the wagon train reaches a valley where, rising out from the mist, stands the Northern Air Temple. While the waterbender and several other novice crew members stare at the site in reverence, Kavik's driver, Choi, informs him that they will not be traveling to the temple, as it is unreachable by foot or wagon. Instead, the caravan proceeds to a small village in the valley to unload their supplies. As he helps move the various jars of foodstuff, Kavik is shocked not only by the number of Air Nomads he sees, comprising about a third of the settlement's population by his tally, but also, in his estimation, the atypically normal way the monks, nuns, children, and elders of the wandering nation go about their daily lives, and the casual interactions they share with each other and the other residents of the village. While waterbending another jar down, the errand runner asks Choi about where the rest of the village's population comes from, only for the driver to state that, while not airbenders, the residents came from different places to help farm and provide to the Air Nomads what crops could grow in such a mountainous area, and that similar settlements can be found at the other air temples.

With the aid of Kavik's waterbending, the Bin-Er residents' goods are deftly offloaded ahead of schedule. In appreciation, Choi gives the waterbender a chance to tour around the village, with a reminder to behave himself given their proximity to a sacred temple. Kavik takes no more than a few steps away from the wagon before an Air Nomad child approaches him with a plate of baked confectioneries. Not wanting to be disrespectful and reject such a gift, Kavik takes and bites into a fruit pie with sweet yam filling. The boy, however, lingers, holding up a bowl of coins in the expectation of payment. As the Water Tribesman manages to pull out a silver piece from his clothes, the boy informs Kavik that he cannot make change based on the coin's value, that all proceeds go to the local hospital, and, while gesturing toward the stone building, that the Avatar is waiting for him inside. Unnerved, but accepting the child's word, Kavik drops a coin in the bowl and heads toward the hospital.

Using his ability to quickly estimate numbers, Kavik is able to tell just from the outside that the hospital is double the size it should be given the village's population. After taking a moment to investigate the entrance for traps, Kavik enters the hospital; inside, a small number of Air Nomads attempt to provide assistance to the bedridden individuals filling the room, all of whom, as Kavik notices, have symptoms related to being dangerously exposed to frigid temperatures. Despite the attempts of incense burners and a monk cycling fresh air through the windows with his bending, the scent of decay, and his associating it with the stench of Bin-Er, is hard for the errand runner to bear after getting to take in the fresh mountain air for several days. The waterbender spots Yangchen moving from patient to patient, trying to heal them as several Air Nomads accompany her. One of them, a mustached senior monk, meets his gaze, with Kavik being unsure if the wrinkles around his eyes signify friendliness or disdain. The monk returns to conversing with Yangchen about matters Kavik assumes are of an important spiritual manner.

In truth, the senior monk, Head Abbot Sonam, is incredulously reiterating in the faintest of whispers to Yangchen that she cannot bring Kavik, a spy, to the Northern Air Temple. Keeping her eyes on her task, healing a feverish, unconscious woman, Yangchen draws fresh water from an attendant's bucket, applies the glowing liquid to the woman's forehead, and counters to Sonam that none of them are standing in the temple itself. Furthermore, she states that, while Kavik has not started to spy for her yet, she needs him as part of her efforts, telling the abbot to look around at how the Air Nomads' are flailing to deal with the imbalance generated by just Bin-Er's problems on their own. Sonam is unconvinced, however, that involving the temple with foreign crises will deescalate the situation, and warns of the consequences if the other nations' leaders learned she was using the air temples as her bases of operation. Yangchen elects not to respond, instead applying a fresh portion of healing water to her patient. Though Sonam suggests Yangchen move on to another person in need, the Avatar refuses, believing the woman's condition will improve, internally pleading for the woman to fight alongside her. Her hopes prove to be in vain, as the woman's limbs start to spasm uncontrollably. Unable to move her hands away for fear of losing her patient completely, Yangchen yells out for a full tub of water to submerge the woman in, only for another attendant to respond that all the hospital's tubs are currently in use. With the woman's convulsions become more violent, Yangchen can only curse under her breath.

Clearing the way to her, Kavik struggles over to Yangchen's side, unprompted, with a large volume of water she realizes he drew from the snowmelt outside the hospital. At her direction, Kavik encompasses the woman from her neck down to her toes, keeping her head exposed and limbs stable, while, in tandem, Yangchen uses her own waterbending to make the liquid glow and heal the inflammation affecting the woman's body. At the sight of her bending working in concert with his, Kavik's gasps, a reaction, Yangchen imagines, is brought upon by the excitement of potentially bringing about a miraculous feat, and the bond of life he now shares with the Avatar and their patient. After a few minutes of their combined efforts, Yangchen has Kavik suspend both water and patient in midair while she works from underneath to treat the woman's spine, with Sonam pitching in by drying Kavik's brow and giving him an approving nod despite his earlier misgivings. Sensing that the woman's fever has broken through the reverberations of the water, Yangchen lets Kavik lower the woman down to her bed and disperse the water into several buckets placed around them. The waterbender collapses forward onto an empty corner of the bed, exhausted, but raises his head up, elated at the experience, his first as he admits, of reviving someone in such a way.

While the Avatar basks in Kavik's joy at saving a life, and compliments him for his good work, the formerly feverish woman wakes up and asks where she is. Taking her hand, Yangchen assures the woman she is now safe and close to the Northern Air Temple, and tells her to rest once the woman becomes shocked after recognizing her as the Avatar. Tearfully thanking and blessing Yangchen, the woman asks if she knows where her son is. After noticing the lack of any children in the surrounding beds, the Avatar turns to a suddenly pale Sonam, who relays that the woman was found by a patrol on the mountain trails unconscious and alone, but the woman insists her son was with her when they escaped Bin-Er, and once again asks where he is. Yangchen asks Kavik if he saw any signs of a missing person while traveling to the village, but Kavik only shakes his head, his face drained of the jubilation he was feeling moments ago at the likelihood of the child's survival, a calculation Yangchen realizes he made based on his own experiences in the similarly hazardous environment of the North Pole. Desperate, the woman finds the strength to rise from her bed and grab Yangchen's robes, pleading for the Avatar to tell her where her son is.

Production notes

Series continuity

• While describing the training exercise of waterbenders creating and shaping a shared current of water, Yangchen notes how many bending sifus regard waterbending as the most communal of the four bending arts. In the episode "Bitter Work", Iroh also makes reference to the strong sense of community members of the Water Tribes share.