Dragon At Heart

Chapter 30

30. The Avatar's Dragon

Zuko took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the iceberg. He had carefully placed his long, curvy body around the peak, front legs gripping one side while hind legs gripped the other, dividing his weight as evenly as he could, so as not to accidentally topple the thing over. These precautions appeared to be unnecessary, however. Despite Zuko's increased body mass, the enormous floating chunk of ice didn't so much as sway under his weight.

Uncle had told the Prince years ago, when they'd been searching the South Pole for the Avatar for the first time, that the part of an iceberg one could see above water was only a fraction of its true mass. From a sailor's perspective, this meant keeping a respectful distance to the deceptively calm looking floaters. Although Fire Nation ships were built to endure direct hits with ice sheets, even they weren't unbreakable, and no one really wanted to risk a shipwreck in the Arctic.

After all his years spent at sea, Zuko was confident he could navigate in the type of treacherous waters Earth Kingdom ships wouldn't think to enter, but flying and landing in such an environment was a new challenge.

Zuko had been flying three days now, and after he'd left the last patches of solid land behind him yesterday afternoon, the landscape had changed drastically. Since there was nothing else to land on, within his considerable line of sight, than icebergs or the icy water itself, Zuko had eventually figured he'd have to take his chances. So far, things had gone fine, though. No unintended dips.

From what Zuko had gathered, despite their fiery reputation, dragons were good swimmers. It made sense, considering they were natural inhabitants of an archipelago. Zuko was a great swimmer in his human form, able to hold his breath unbelievably long if he needed to. So, the reason he was reluctant to land on water wasn't that he disliked water, in any of his forms. No, it was more to do with how cold the ocean was.

Unlike an air bison, Zuko did not have a thick fur and enough body fat to protect him from these kind of water temperatures for long. The air, cold as it was, was more bearable: large animals could maintain body heat better than small ones, after all.

Still, this was far from an ideal environment, even for his tough dragon exterior. Having a long, skinny frame meant Zuko had much more skin exposed to the chilling wind than most animals his size, and he had to maintain a higher body temperature in the first place. His dark skin absorbed heat from the sun well, but did nothing in the way of camouflage.

Oh, come on, you can do this. Zuko thought, and shook his form a little to shake away some fluffy snow that had fallen on his back. Roku's spirit animal was a dragon, and Roku spent four years in this climate studying waterbending. Pleasant or not, dragons can survive here.

There was one feature dragons had, though, that Zuko found extremely useful here: big claws. Even before embarking on this journey, he had presumed they would come in handy when hanging on to slippery slopes, but it turned out they were also useful for other things, most noticeable fishing.

It had taken Zuko a while to figure out how to catch fish mid-flight, but he had been determined and well-motivated, and had eventually gotten the hang of it. Turned out his instincts did most of the work for him if he just let them. He was still no expert, but, thankfully, no one was handing out points for style.

Zuko hadn't been dragon long enough to start hunting on the previous times, but before he had left Earth Kingdom, Uncle had insisted he take good care of himself and keep up his strength. Zuko had brought some supplies with him, but they were for emergencies. In the same magical way that the transformation didn't destroy his clothes, the supplies had magically disappeared when he transformed, but would return when he turned back to human. Zuko couldn't access the supplies without shapeshifting, though, so that really was more of a back-up plan.