Cup Runneth Over

Aang rubbed his temples as he exited the council office. For weeks he had been trying to talk them down from erecting a statue of him in the bay, on a small land mass nestled between Air Temple Island and Republic City. It was an embarrassing proposition, primarily because he already had an entire island to be remembered by just across the way. He'd much prefer a modest figure of himself at the temple, similar to what he'd known Gyatso to have.

He tried, for the past several days, to convince them that the person who ought to be immortalized in copper was Katara. She was the person who made it possible for Aang to end the war, more than any of the rest of his friends. She broke him out of the iceberg, revived him from the dead, and carried his heart in even the darkest times. And on the subject of her accomplishments, she single-handedly dismantled the Northern Water Tribe patriarchy, she was a master waterbender, and now she was growing a healing practice in Republic City even while also being a mother. She was brilliant.

And yet she didn't have a statue, which was unfathomable to Aang.

He snapped his glider open and took off with a huff. He was eager to see her and calm his agitated nerves from the stupidity of it all. Today's meeting had gone over time by a few hours from their arguing. While it seemed strange to Aang to put such a large dedication upon an entirely unwilling subject, the council insisted that it was something they and the city sincerely wished to do as a gesture of gratitude to him. They were impossible to reason with, and they were increasingly interpreting his refusals as arrogance. He'd been forced to concede, at least for the day.

But he hated it. Katara deserved it, not him. They wanted to put it in the bay, in the middle of the water. Katara was water itself. She was the push and pull of time, the flow of vigor in his veins, the nurturing embrace of life.

The drizzle of summer rain that dampened his clothes as he flew only validated his inner monologue. She deserved to be worshipped.

Katara carefully closed the bedroom door leaving it slightly ajar, still wary of how easily Bumi had gone to sleep. He'd been sleeping well for a couple of weeks, despite Katara nearly weaning him from breastmilk. He'd been holding fast to his bedtime feedings, clinging to that last bonding ritual, but tonight he seemed to have finally forgotten his habit. Maybe it was a perfect storm of him skipping his afternoon nap, a late dinner with some tasty new solid foods, and the rainy weather making the entire day sleepier. Or maybe, she thought with a wince, he was simply ready to move on from it.

Whatever it was, Katara now found herself with an unpleasant pressure in her breasts. Until now, she'd managed to wean Bumi by stretching out time between feedings, but never by an entire night of sleep. The thought of enduring the discomfort all night was not at all attractive.

She made her way up toward the top level of the air temple living quarters, one level above their bedroom. It was an attic, really, but rather than storing seasonal items or collecting dust, Aang had put it to a rather creative use. Attics are quite boring and a little spooky, so it was the perfect place to hide things from the acolytes and from their children, once they were toddling around on their own. In other words, it was the perfect place to hide sex paraphernalia.

This is what led Katara there to seek out something to relieve her discomfort. She vaguely remembered a box of unfavored or broken sex toys, but she wasn't sure what was in it. She was resigned to the reality that she'd have to manually express her milk, but she hoped there was some kind of suction toy stored away that would make it easier.

She reached the top of the stairs and opened the door, grateful for the window that let in enough moonlight that she wasn't startled by the vines hanging from the rafters. They'd been a gift from the foggy swamp tribe. When Huu had heard gossip that they were trying to get pregnant a couple years ago, he'd given them some cuttings of a vine that was supposed to increase fertility when consumed as tea. He warned them that it might grow faster than they could drink it. And then, partly as a joke, he claimed that that was why it worked so well.