Yang Lo was cold. The Last thing he remembered seeing was the thrashing sea, threatening to swallow him into an early grave, but he was alive. Yang reached up to soothe his pounding head as he surveyed the situation- which was as bleak as they come.
Though his eyesight was perfect, he couldn't see the ship anywhere, not even dead men littered the seascape in front of him.
Must have been the currents that swept them away, he thought.
Or they swept me away, he thought, secondarily. He didn't want to think about which possibility was worse.
As the shock of life went away, the bitter pain of the cold came in high tide. It bit at the young man's fingers like the jaws of an angry, giant turtleduck. Yang mustered up what fire he could from his belly and blew it into his hands, warmth blossoming within them, and spilling out onto his face and forearms.
That fire wouldn't keep him warm forever, though, and he knew that. He had to keep moving. He spotted what looked to be an ice cave in the distance; some two hours away, by his estimate. It was the longest walk he had ever taken
The only thing that got Yang's mind off the cold was the severity of his situation. The more he thought about it, the more hopeless it was. He was stranded on a big block of ice, surrounded by frigid waters he wouldn't last ten minutes in, and the only humans for the next thousand miles were those savages in the Water Tribe.
The Water Tribe. He hadn't thought about the possibility that he might be captured by them. Memories of the Captain's conversation rushed back, along with the eerie smell of hog-monkey stew. Yang shuddered at the thought and walked on.
By the time he reached the ice cave, it would have been what Yang could have sworn was supposed to be night time, but the sun was still awake. Truly, the South was a mysterious place.
Conversely, the cave Yang Lo had found for himself was rather mundane; the area wasn't soaked in the blood of defenseless animals, nor littered with the bones of humans come to tread here past, so it was safe enough to sleep in, at least for the night- er, time being.
Far from tired, Yang decided to test out the survival skills he was taught in training. Sadly for him, most of these techniques (and the most useful ones) relied on him having materials, which he had none of. If he was going to live, he would have to search for the crew, or their remains, anything that could be of use.
Yang went out till he saw the ocean again, maybe an hour's walk. He couldn't tell if he was relieved or horrified when he found the remains of the ship, and its crew.
Drowned Fire Nation soldiers littered the water, a gruesome reminder of how alone Yang was. He pulled whom he could out of the sea, and stripped them of whatever clothes wouldn't make them wholly indecent. Yang then gave them an unceremonious burial at sea. Were he powerful enough, he would have cremated them, but his fire was barely enough to keep him alive.
The ship itself was in obvious disrepair-being slammed into an iceberg doesn't do much good for a hull-but the broken piece of metal that drifted towards him would do for a weapon. Yang tore at the clothes of his dead brethren, and tied a strip around what he deemed to be the handle. Like the cave, it was a temporary solution to a rather permanent problem, but it was what he had.
The trek back to the cave wasn't as exhausting as Yang would have hoped- the sunlight still kept him awake, so when he got back, he meditated. Yang was always rather good at clearing his thoughts, it just came naturally to him to shut off his brain, to not think of anything, and to just be at peace. All good things must come to an end, however, and, too soon, the cold was more trouble than meditating was worth.
The clothes that hadn't been commandeered for handle material were used either to fashion Yang a sleeping rag, or a campfire. Between those two, Yang was actually quite warm. Warm enough, at least, to drift off into uncomfortable, but not unbearable, sleep.
Yang dreamt of his family.