Avatar: Things Are Not The Same As It Once Was || Book 1: The World In Flames

The girl in the iceberg

"There are no strangers here; 

Only friends you haven't met yet" 

- William Butler Yeats.

🌊⛰🔥🌬

Third Person POV

A beam of light shot to the sky, showing the world that something powerful and hopeful has returned, the avatar. A few miles away an iron ship, that belonged to the Fire Nation, was roaming the water, shoving the ice out of it's path. On board the ship, a teenager with military uniform and no hair, except from his ponytail, on the deck looking at the beam with hope and His name was Zuko, he was the prince of his nation until he was banished and he would always remember that day, with the scar that stain his face.

"Finally." he spoke with determination written on his face. "Uncle, do you realize what this means?" He turned to a slightly rounded older man with long grey hair with a small top knot and a beard that looked like it had spikes at the end of it. His name was Iroh. "I won't get to finish my game?" he answered his nephew calmly while looking at the table with concentration. He was playing a solitaire game with the symbols of the main elements engraved on the wood.

"It means my search is about to come to an end." The younger man said while turning back to the light that was slowly fading away. Iroh gave out a sigh showing that he was not interested with this new information. "That light came from an incredible source! It has to be him!" Zuko looked at his uncle again, pointing his arm towards the light. His voice was rising due to his own uncle wasn't being as interested in this as he was. "Or it's just the celestial lights. We've been down this road before, Prince Zuko." Iroh gestured to the sky then looked back to his game, focusing on where he would place the tile with the symbol of the air nomads on it. "I don't want you to get too excited over nothing. Please, sit. Why don't you enjoy a cup of calming Jasmine tea?" he gestured to the table in front of him.

This made the prince furious with his uncle. He turned to face his uncle once again "I don't need any calming tea! I need to capture the avatar!" He then turned to his crew shouting orders to set course to the source of that light, but the crew were too busy looking at something that made them curious about the object. "What are you all looking at?!" Iroh stood and walked away from his table to stand next to his nephew. Zuko turned to look at where his crew and uncle was gawking at and he saw an iceberg, connected to a little island of snow, heading their way. The iceberg was glowing and looked like there was something trapped inside.

"Stop the ship!" Zuko ordered the helmsman and got his crew to work again to stop the vessel. Iroh started to look at the iceberg with more focus and gasped when he realised there wasn't just something in the icy ball, there was a figure sitting in a meditation pose and their hands as fists connected. There was something frozen in pose that looked like it was circling around the mysterious being. "What is it, uncle?" Zuko asked, noticing the sudden gasp from Iroh. "There is someone in that iceberg, we need to get them out." Zuko looked at the iceberg, then at the crew, then his uncle.

"Uncle, you with me. The rest of you, get the ship ready for departure when we return." Iroh gave his nephew a slight nod while the crew got ready for anything that will come from the ice ball.

~~~

Zuko's POV

As uncle and I stepped towards the berg, the more the image of the being was clearer. "Zuko, remember your training." I nodded telling Iroh that he understood. We both placed their hands on the ice and steam was forming around it. The top half of the berg was slowly melting and the beings inside slid to the bottom of it. It took less than what we thought it would take to melt through the top half of the ice wall. Then a powerful gust of wind came from the ball that nearly dragged us off the block of ice.