A Handful of Dragon
The day started with a dropped ink pot and a writing brush that looked like a toddler had used it as a teething ring. Zuko hoped he wouldn't have to add dealing with rat infestation to his list of Fire Lord duties.
He soaked up the mess with old rags, which turned out to be the itchy robes he'd chucked this morning into a corner of his office and had forgotten about, and called for new brushes and the laundresses to please not become angry with him for the stains. ("Of course, my lord," said the attendant on duty to his first request, "…" to the second.)
Next, Zuko went for a walk through the garden, intent on taking a break while his office was set to rights, since there was barely any time in his hectic schedule to stop and smell the roses, as uncle would have said. Taking the expression literally, Zuko wandered along the edges of his personal sanctum, inhaling the scent of freshly bloomed spring flowers.
Excited quacks from the turtleducks by the pond turned out to be not quite happy sounds as he drew nearer. Frantic and losing a few feathers in the process, the fluffy animals scattered before Zuko even reached them. They were used to his presence and his daily bread sacrifice at their wet altar. (A loaf a day kept an angry momma duck at bay.) Yet, they swam and ran into different directions, waddling all over the garden and away from Zuko like there was a hellhound on their heels.
If not even the ducklings were in the mood for cuddles, this day was truly tailor-made for the trash bin.
As if to prove his point, an apple dropped onto his head while he was walking under the tree's sweeping branches. Automatically, he looked up, scratching his smarting head, but there was nothing conspicuous to see, just red blotches of apples in a sea of green leaves. The fallen one he picked up from the ground now was not even fully ripe. At least it hadn't been nibbled on by vermin like the five others littering the ground, their waxy skin showing tiny bite marks.
Zuko grumbled about having to contact a rat catcher but nonetheless bit into the too tart apple in his hand and went back to his office to continue the thankless job of being the voice of reason, which, as he could have told his advisors, was not his forte.
During his desperate attempt to finish his newest letter to the Northern Water Tribe's Chief and his never-ending search for a diplomatic way to say, "Dear bigoted and constipated ass, stop stalling and sign the trade treaty," Zuko's day took another step down the stairwell to hell.
His chandelier tried to assassinate him.
Accompanied by a sound not unlike flapping wings, it crashed from above without warning and caught on the massive office desk's corner, missing Zuko by a meter but still spraying him with crystal fragments and forcing him to put the burning candles on it out while he was still reeling back.
He'd never liked the poncy thing anyway.
That aside, the crux of the matter was still this – nature and architecture were conspiring to dethrone him.
And uncle Iroh kept saying that he was paranoid. (Just because you were paranoid didn't mean that no one was out to get you. Life could give you both. As a treat.)
Evidence, in the form of glittering shards, lay at his feet while something knocked against the plafond. Once again today, there was nothing to see. The room's high ceiling was painted with flames, dragons and mighty meteors – same old, same old – and the balustrade of the built-in library farther in the back gleamed in polished mahogany.
He was about to call for a servant when a scroll sailed past his face. Just in time to block the next one, Zuko turned and threw his hands up to shield his face.
Scrolls came flying, though not always straight at him, as he found out quickly. Some whooshed over his head in a wide arc, some thumped to the ground almost directly under the banister, some crashed sideways into the wall. It was a tornado of paper, golden clips and words older than Zuko's forefathers.
As far as he could see through his raised hands, they came from one place among the shelves and as always Zuko dived right into the eye of the storm. Dancing through the incoming scrolls, evading them with leaps and defensive crouches, he hooked his hand into the underside of the balcony, because why take the easy route when he could shimmy up there like a hog-monkey. With one great push, he swung himself over the handrail and landed upright in front of the offending shelf.
He squinted and there, smack in the middle of all that mayhem, was a fast moving speck of red, a color that was not uncommon in, well, his whole nation.
Sidestepping General Zho's Compendium of Extinct Flowers that was hurtling towards him, Zuko summoned a fire ball to his right hand and prepared for weird shit to happen because it was his life and he wouldn't be surprised if he ended up facing a shrunk assassin.
Upon closer inspection, Zuko could say with certainty that the culprit was indeed something that was normally bigger, in his limited experience, and maybe, probably, eh, not here to kill him. Not intentionally, at least.
The small creature full of glistening scales, with a spiked tail flopping about, which it used to whip books from their designated places, might have been a lizard, he guessed. Up to the point when the little devil sneezed and set the whole Rice Cultivation in the Earth Kingdom section on fire. Not a big loss, and if Zuko ever had to fumble through another mind-numbing conversation about the right way to fold rice packaging, he could always point to the charred remains on the shelf and tell them oops, research impossible.
With an elegant wave of his hand that would have made any waterbender proud, Zuko extinguished the flames and thrust his free hand out to grab at the wee thing trying to scuttle behind the remaining books. Zuko had its neck in his hand before it was able to vanish.
He carefully pulled the animal out, its claws scratching along the wood under its feet like nails on a chalkboard. Smoke was coming out of its nostrils but no fire, so Zuko lowered his right hand and used it instead to tilt the animal's head up while its wings flapped uselessly in an attempt to gain traction. Before, it must have tucked them close to its body because Zuko was ninety-nine percent sure he would have noticed if there was a flying menace around. Or not. The thing was bold, trying to nip the fingers under its chin with very small but pointy teeth.
That cleared up one thing, though. This was not a lizard.
Dragon, screamed Zuko's mind, elated. Newly hatched if he had to guess from how miniscule it still was, which begged the question, "What the hell?"
He'd been told that Ran and Shaw were the last dragons and…oh, apparently one of them was a girl dragon, okay, good to know.
Yellow eyes blinked up at him, the small body no longer convoluting, wings keeping still. Exhausted, the baby tried to curl up in Zuko's palm.
He let go of the dragon's wings to present it with a bigger bed to flop into.
Zuko had a baby dragon in his hands. That was, he wasn't sure what it was, but part of it was mind-blowing. He held the future of dragonkind in his rough and ink-stained hands. Talk about responsibilities.
Tendrils of smoke curled around Zuko's fingers as the baby sniffed at him, not happy to be kept from destroying the Fire Lord's private library. Must have been fun…and so flammable.
A crooked smile took over Zuko's face, so sudden, he could feel it pulling at his scar.
Well. He gazed once again into big and glassy eyes, his own face reflecting in them.
It was time to write a message to the sun warriors and see if Ran and Shaw wanted their baby back.
.
.
.
They didn't want it back. Or better, they didn't want him back, as Zuko had been forced to find out when the little critter had decided to take a nap on his face. The things he'd felt. The things he'd smelled.
In the week it had taken the messenger hawk to come back with a lengthy, wordy and really blown-up letter telling Zuko in no uncertain terms that he was to keep the last dragon baby (for now; apparently mommy and daddy were busy) whose name was Druk, the dragon had destroyed the calligraphy section, peed on Zuko's favorite set of training clothes and incinerated his painstakingly crafted letter to the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe. So much for that. Back to the drawing board.
The sun warriors might have named the little shit Druk, meaning thunder, with Agni's blessing (Dear Fire Lord Zuko, it was predestined that you care for this dragon! "By whom?!"), but ankle biter might have been a more apt name, in his opinion.
Casting a glance at the closest corner of the room as he rewrote his proposal for a better Northern Water Tribe-Fire Nation treaty in the comfort of his own chambers, Zuko smiled.
Druk happily gnawed away at his last good pair of shoes, content with his lot in life.
Splendid. If the baby dragon was in an exceptionally good mood, he might let Zuko pet him.
As if by command, Druk purred.
Seemed like it was Zuko's lucky day.
Thanks for reading!
This might become a series, I'm not sure yet. (Is there a way to make something a series on here or will it be a chaptered fic, who knows! lol)
But anyway, feedback is love! :D