The Air Nomads

Katara grinned.

    There are infectious grins, and then there are potentially epidemic level grins. This was the latter, the sort that had the potential to leap from person to person in the space of seconds and infect entire continents. As it was, the only person close enough to catch was her husband.

    Aang grinned too.

    And then, he leaned over and poked her.

    "Aang!" she said, slapping his finger away.

    The Avatar grinned again, although this was a substantially less virulent one. "But I want to feel it." he said.

    She sighed, but went on smiling. Aang had grown up. Physically he had grown up a lot. She remembered the day, years ago, when she had pulled him out of the ice. She had towered over him then. Now the situation was reversed, and she rested her shoulders against his chest, while he touched his cheek to her forehead. He had grown up, mastered his abilities as the Avatar, and just about saved the whole world- with a little help from his friends. He had even stopped riding giant Unagi to impress her.

    But part of him would never grow up. There was an immortal child inside of him that was the source of his almost naive hope. And his sense of humour- which was never exactly mature. But still, there as a big kid inside him and, Gods help her, she loved him all the more for it.

    And now, there were several big kids inside her, and she loved them just as much.

    "Ow." she muttered.

    But maybe she'd love them a little bit more if they'd stop kicking.

    "Touch but don't poke." she said, taking Aang's hand, and placing it upon her stomach. She guided him into the gentle motions of rubbing that came naturally to her. The smooth back and forth movement that soothed her skin, and with any luck, the children inside.

    Aang giggled. "I can feel them kicking." he said, as another surged out. "It's hard. Do you think that means this one's a boy?" he asked, pausing momentarily to point at her belly. In Aang's head, zones of it were divided off into separate babies. Katara had a rough imagination of the same thing, but the two didn't exactly match up.

    "You think because she kicks hard she'll be a boy? Girls kick hard too." she said, elbowing Aang playfully in the ribs.

    Aang frowned and tried to think of some retort to that. He didn't get very far.

    "I'm sure one of them's a boy, anyway." Katara said, giving him another smile. Aang wanted a son. It wasn't that he disliked girls, or preferred boys for that matter. But he worried that any daughters they might have might take after their mother too much to play. And he very much wanted to play with his children.

    It was the secret hope of Aang, and several hundred generations of fathers before him, to have sons in order to keep on playing games that, by rights, they were far too old to play. Already he got strange looks whenever he tried to play air ball, although part of that was because he was the only Air Bender around to play it. But part of it was really because of his age. Katara had even tsked on one or two occasions. And then there was nothing for it. They just had to have kids.

    Kids, plural, being the operative word.

    Katara began rubbing the areas that Aang wasn't covering. There were a lot of them. No Air Benders had been born in a hundred years, and now it looked like they were queueing up. Katara was a very big, very round pregnant lady. It was funny, she had disguised herself like this many years before. Back then she'd been so busy worrying about being burned to death by a zealous Fire Bender that she didn't have a moment to pause and think about when she'd look like this for real. Now she had a very big, very real belly growing out of her waist, and she couldn't be happier.

    This was rather literally true. People usually say this and don't mean it. Normally people would say that they couldn't be happier about being pregnant... except for bumping into things. Except for having clothes that made them look like a sky bison in linen. The thing is, most people don't realise that happiness is punctuated by annoyances. They're sort of like landmarks. The only way you can know that you're really really happy is when you knock over a vase with your belly and realise that you aren't any more. Then you clear it up and go back to being happy. Otherwise you just get bored very quickly and it sort of wears off.

    But between all the little inconveniences and the knowledge that some day soon she'd be a mother, Katara really couldn't be any happier.

    "How does it feel?" Aang asked.

    Katara would have sighed- it was the umpteenth time he'd asked- but his curiosity was cute. "Funny." she said. "It doesn't feel like having a baby."

    This confused him. "... huh?"

    "It feels a bit like being... very very fat." she surmised, and nodded.

    Aang was frowning now, and scratching at his bald head. "It can't feel like being fat. You're pregnant. It's different. It's got to feel like... like..." he struggled for words. A Language Bender he was not. "Like being pregnant."

    Katara giggled.

    Aang could make tornados in the palm of his hand, walk across stormy waters, make mountains under his feet, and create searing flames in a valley of ice. But he couldn't get his head around making babies. It fascinated him, and amused Katara. Of course, as his wife she knew a hundred and one other things that he couldn't do- like remember to put his dirty dishes away after dinner- but this seemed to be the only one they were both well aware of. Katara could make little tiny people inside of her, and though he might move heaven and earth, Aang could never do the same.

    The miracle of life, he called it.

    Katara had a much more down to earth view. After all, she had been practicing midwifery since before she met Aang. She had seen lots of pregnant women before- although none of that could really prepare her for the experience herself. But most of the time there was nothing miraculous about it. Certainly, it didn't seem to be an astounding, soul shaking phenomenon when you were woken up at six in the morning by your nausea. Or when you were using your water bending master talents just to stop your bladder from exploding. Her belly was such a permanent fixture in her day to day activities that she never stopped to say "Gosh, to think I'm creating new life in my womb, what a wonderous ability!" If she did, she wouldn't get anything done for the whole day.

    But then...

    "Don't you feel like- like there's a new life- and it's growing up and- and-" Aang went on, now rubbing her with altogether more enthusiasm was required.

    Katara smiled, and touched his hands again. They both stood, cradling her stomach.

    It didn't seem very miraculous, except on very rare occasions when Aang was beside her. And then, then sometimes she remembered that she was making little people, and she was going to meet them soon. Then it suddenly seemed like a miracle.

    "Only", she said, "When I'm with You."