Dragon At Heart

Chapter 25

25. A Night Out

"Dragon Warriors?" Uncle asked.

"Those are the exacts words Tuli used", Zuko shrugged, "Do they mean anything to you?"

Uncle stroked his beard, looking thoughtful: "No. Unfortunately I have never heard of such a thing."

The Prince looked down and sighed.

Zuko and Iroh were standing on the deck of the ship. The younger man was leaning against the railing and looking at the scenery passing by.

Now Zuko turned his gaze down at the water swirling in the ship's wake. It looked playful and innocent and sort of reminded him of a certain Air Nomad.

"...But", Uncle went on, "I do know someone who might know more."

Zuko looked up again, his eyes wide with surprise.

Could Uncle be talking about... Could he possible mean... the original firebenders?

"Do you mean we should", Zuko quickly glanced around to make sure no one but Uncle would hear his next words, "go look for dragons?"

The Prince was more excited by the thought than he had expected himself to be. Ever since Iroh had revealed to him a few weeks back that dragons weren't completely extinct, he had had conflicting opinions about it. A part of him feared that if he ever met real dragons, they would reject him.

However, meeting a dragon would be pretty awesome. Also, Tuli didn't have a problem with Zuko, so maybe that was an indication that living dragons wouldn't spit fire on him, either.

Uncle turned to Zuko, looking mildly surprised: "Uh, no, that's not what I meant."

Iroh began to explain: "Most of my knowledge on dragons is based on that meeting I had with two old firebending masters decades ago, as I already told you. And yes, Ran and Shaw might understand your situation better than anyone else. They might even be the only living beings holding the answers we're looking for. However, there are reasons why we shouldn't go look for them. At least not yet."

"First", Iroh sighed, "I gave an oath never to reveal the last dragons' whereabouts to anyone. However, taking in consideration your most unusual situation, I think even the Sun Warriors might be okay with me bending the rules on that one."

"A more pressing reason is the distance. The old dragons reside in the Fire Nation. So long as you are banished we can't just sail in. Also, they live virtually on the other side of the world. Even if we got past the blockade without difficulties, the trip there and back would take weeks, perhaps even months."

Zuko nodded. He understood what Uncle was getting at: "You're right. If we wish to keep both Zhao and the Air Nomad more or less within an arm's reach, we can't just sail to the opposite direction and disappear for months."

Uncle nodded.

They had already agreed that although Zuko was no longer actively trying to capture the Avatar, it would be foolish to presume that it was suddenly safe to let the Air Nomad run around doing whatever he wanted. The kid was still a potential threat to everyone's safety and, as such, his actions had to be monitored closely.

Also, Zhao was still after the boy.

Since the Admiral had become no less dangerous in the past few days and they still didn't know what his secret plan exactly was, it would've been foolish not to keep tabs on him as well.

So, for now, the plan was to keep heading north and to try in the meanwhile learn more of the Avatar's and Zhao's plans. Also, as Uncle had just brought up, now they finally had time to really look into the whole dragon thing.