Prince Zuko stood with his arms crossed, glaring out across the icy waters of the ocean. It was a frigid morning, as every morning was this near the South Pole. All around him, men and women in red and black Fire Nation uniforms went about their business, cleaning the deck, sparring, talking.
Their uniforms were well insulated, but many of them still shivered. Zuko, however, felt no chill. Unconsciously, he breathed a little deeper, letting the inhale warm him, as his uncle had taught him. Apparently it was an airbending technique that Iroh had adapted for firebending, and though Zuko didn't like to acknowledge that part, he had to admit it was handy at times.
To his right, a pair of men finished a sparring session. They laughed and slapped each other on the back jovially. He gritted his teeth, barely managing to keep himself from snapping that they should be more serious. This was an important mission, after all—perhaps the most important one of all.
Tearing his gaze away from them, he spun to face his uncle. Iroh, a pudgy old man with a balding head and a gray beard, had set up a small table on the deck. He sat cross-legged before it, a cup of tea in one hand, playing some silly tile-matching game Zuko couldn't remember the name of.
"Why haven't we found him yet, Uncle?" he demanded. "We've been out here for three years. It feels like I've searched even the most remote parts of the world, and yet we've found nothing."
His uncle looked up at him calmly. "Prince Zuko, you must be patient. The Fire Nation has been searching for the Avatar since long before you were born. Your father, your father's father, and your father's grandfather all tried and failed." He opened his mouth as if to say more, but then closed it, looking away for a moment. "I'm sure," he continued carefully, "that your father was well aware of this when he sent you on this mission."
Zuko felt a pang in his chest—a pang that reverberated through his entire body, because deep down, he knew it was probably true. His father had never loved him, and had pounced on the first chance he got to send Zuko away.
He shook his head against that line of thinking, fixing his uncle with a glare. "I will find the Avatar, Uncle. I'll find him, and then Father will restore my honor."
"No man can give or take another's honor, Prince Zuko," Iroh said, meeting his nephew's glare with a level gaze. "Honor comes from within, and only you can find it."
Zuko shook his head again and turned away. It was always the same meaningless platitudes with his uncle. Three years before, when Zuko had been banished, Iroh had insisted on coming with him on this mission. And yet all he'd done since then was try to dissuade Zuko from continuing the search.
"Prince Zuko," a voice said—not his uncle's—and Zuko turned. One of the ship's scouts had arrived. He stood next to Iroh's table, trying to angle his body so he was bowing in both Zuko and Iroh's direction at once.
"What is it?" Zuko asked. His frustration with his uncle bled into his voice, making the words clipped and irritated.
The scout hurried to rise, though he maintained a slight bow in his back. "I have a new lead that might interest you, Your Highness." He kept his gaze carefully trained on Zuko's chin, a fairly innocent show of deference that Zuko suspected doubled as a convenient excuse to avoid looking directly at his face. Or, more specifically, at the scar that covered nearly half of it.
"Go on," Zuko said, ignoring Iroh's dramatic sigh.
The scout's golden eyes flickered briefly to Iroh before landing on Zuko's chin again. "We just received reports that last night, a sky bison was spotted heading south from the Earth Kingdom, toward the South Pole."
"A bison," Zuko repeated.
"Yes, sir," the scout rushed to explain, "a sky bison. They were once the favored pets of the Air Nomads. It could be the Avatar."
Zuko's breath caught. He opened his mouth, ready to shout that the helmsman should set sail for the bison's location immediately, but before he could, his uncle spoke, his gravelly voice full of skepticism.
"Did you see any signs that there was a rider? Sky bison may be rare these days, but they're not unheard of in the wild. Could it simply have been the animal moving on its own?"
The scout turned to face Iroh more fully, pulling himself up tall and brushing a lock of black hair out of his face. "It is possible, sir, but highly unlikely. It was flying alone at night. Sky bison are herd animals, and they're not nocturnal."
Iroh paused, then looked at Zuko and shrugged in a resigned sort of way, as if to say, I'll go along with whatever you decide.
Zuko hated the sense of relief that he felt at that look. This was supposed to be his mission. Why did he still feel like he needed his uncle's approval at every turn?
"Do you have the approximate coordinates of where the animal was last seen?" Zuko asked, and the scout nodded.
"Good," Zuko said. "Run up and tell the helmsman to head a course for that location."
"Yes, sir!" the scout said, running off.
Zuko looked at his uncle. "I will find the Avatar, Uncle," he said.
Iroh's expression was hard to decipher. He seemed sad, almost pained. He patted Zuko's arm, and for once, Zuko didn't immediately pull away. "We'll see," Iroh said simply.
Katara had finally managed to get the water bubble to float when a roar broke her concentration. The bubble popped, water droplets raining the few measly inches back down to the ocean's surface.
"Sokka, that's not funny—" Katara turned in the canoe to glare at her brother and stopped dead.
Right there, ten feet from their little canoe, was a giant fluffy monster with white fur. A brown stripe ran down the middle of its forehead and formed into the shape of an arrow between its eyes. That wasn't the strangest part, though, Katara realized. No, the strangest part was that the creature was floating, its huge toes hanging a few inches above the water's surface.
"G—g—get back," Sokka stammered, maneuvering, belatedly, to position himself and his fishing spear, which suddenly seemed tiny, between Katara and the monster. "D—d—don't make me… uh…"
The creature made another sound, not exactly a roar, and moved its head to one side over and over. Like it was beckoning for them to follow? It didn't come any closer.
Katara pushed Sokka out of the way. "I don't think it's going to hurt us," she said, leaning forward.
"Then what is it going to do, Miss Know-It-All?" Sokka asked. "What's it doing here? What is it?"
The animal was starting to get a little more agitated now. It pawed at the air with its front legs and spun. No water splashed. It really was floating above the water somehow.
"I think… I think it wants us to follow it," Katara said.
"Yeah, follow it to its den so it can eat us," Sokka said. "You're acting crazy, Katara. There's no way we're following that thing." He paused, looking at it, then turned away. "It's not coming any closer. Maybe if we just ignore it and go away it'll leave us alone." As soon as he reached for the boat oar, though, the animal roared again. Sokka jumped, his fingers slipping off. The oar fell back into its holster on the side of the canoe.
"Sokka…" Katara said. "I really think we should follow it."
"Well, even if I wanted to—which I don't, by the way—it won't let me. In case you didn't notice, it just growled at me when I tried to grab the oar."
"Because it knew you were planning on leaving," Katara said, her gaze still fixed on the animal, curious. "It doesn't want us to leave, it wants us to follow."
"See, now you really are crazy," Sokka said. "You think that thing can understand what I'm saying right now? It's just a big, dumb animal."
The animal gave a snort that sounded distinctly indignant, looking right at Sokka. Sokka's eyes went wide.
"That doesn't prove anything," he said weakly.
Katara rolled her eyes and grabbed an oar, excited now. "C'mon, Sokka."
Sokka sighed. "Fine." He reached for the other oar, warily eyeing the animal, but it didn't try to stop him this time.
As they began to row, Katara heard him muttering under his breath: "Stupid fluffy monster...now you'll let me row the canoe...ugh."
Once the two of them had gotten the canoe turned toward the animal, it snorted in satisfaction and began to lead the way.
It was slow going, especially since Sokka and Katara were trying to go against the current, but after several long minutes and a twisting path through ice floes, Katara gasped.
"Sokka, look!"
They'd made it out of the maze of ice into an area of open water. A couple hundred feet in front of them, there was a single large round chunk of ice, its top lightly dusted with a coating of snow. And atop that icy platform, a boy lay face-down, unmoving.
The animal flew over to the platform and started anxiously circling above the boy, making a crying sound that broke Katara's heart. It looked over at them, then down at the boy, then at them.
"We have to help him!" Katara said.
"What do you think we're doing?" Sokka asked, rowing faster.
A short time later, the two of them were climbing out of the canoe.
Katara knelt in the snow next to the boy and carefully rolled him over. He looked to be a little younger than she was, maybe around twelve or thirteen, with a round face, his eyes closed. His dark brown hair was cropped very short, almost shaved completely, and his clothing was a plain brown shirt and pants that both seemed far too lightweight for the frigid air. A thin layer of snow coated his whole body, like he'd been lying here for quite a while, but Katara saw no signs of frostbite or hypothermia anywhere. Though much paler than Katara's own, his skin was warm to the touch, so she figured that must be its natural shade. Next to him lay a simple wooden staff.
"Is he...alive?" Sokka asked, using the dull end of his spear to poke at the boy's head experimentally. Katara pushed it away, shooting him a glare. She returned to her examination of the boy.
He was covered head-to-toe in bruises, scrapes, and cuts, but she couldn't see any serious injuries. His chest rose and fell with steady breaths. Unconscious, then, but definitely alive. Gingerly, Katara grasped his shoulders and shook him. His eyelids didn't even flicker.
"Did you crash here?" she asked, looking up at the animal. It made a sound that Katara took as a yes.
The more she sat here, the more certain she was that this was meant to happen. This boy was special somehow. She didn't know how or why, but she felt it deep within. Maybe...maybe this boy would finally give her the solution to her problem. She had to save him.
She looked over at Sokka. "We need to get him back to the village."
Sokka frowned. "Are you sure? I still don't know how I feel about this whole thing. I mean… what if this is all a Fire Nation trap?"
"What is it with you and assuming everything is some Fire Nation conspiracy? We find a boy stranded out in the middle of the ocean, unconscious, and you want to leave him here?"
"No—no," Sokka said, holding one hand up in a warding gesture, "of course not. I'm just saying the situation is a little suspicious, that's all."
"Well, suspicious or not, he needs a healer, and we don't exactly have medicine out here in the middle of nowhere. Help me carry him to the canoe." Katara slid her arms under the boy's limp body and tried to lift him. For someone so small, he was surprisingly heavy. Behind her, Sokka sighed and came forward, pushing her out of the way and shoving his spear into her hands. He leaned over to pick up the boy.
As he did, the boy's right arm flopped down at an awkward angle, pushing the sleeve of his shirt up, and Katara noticed a strange mark on the inside of his upper arm. For a moment, she thought it was just another bruise, but the shape was too perfect to be natural. It was clearly a small blue arrow symbol, no larger than her thumb. A tattoo?
"You gotta lift with your knees," Sokka said with a grin as he rose, the boy cradled with surprising gentleness in his arms.
Sokka adjusted his grip on the boy, and the mark disappeared beneath the sleeve once more. Katara looked away from it to roll her eyes at her brother. "Thank you for your wisdom, O Master Sokka. Now come on."
The two of them began to walk back over to the canoe, but the animal roared and flew in front of them, forcing them to stop.
"What is it now?" Sokka asked. "You wanted us to help him, didn't you?"
The beast grunted, then spun so its long, flat tail faced them. It lowered the tip of the tail to the ground, forming a convenient ramp onto its back.
"Oh no, there's no way we're climbing up there," Sokka said. "Right, Kata—"
Katara had already begun climbing up the tail and onto the creature's back. Now it was her turn to grin as she looked back at Sokka's shocked expression.
"Really?" he groaned.
"It'll be faster than the canoe," she said, settling in, both hands gripping the animal's fur.
"You just love putting me out of my comfort zone, don't you?" Sokka mumbled. But he followed her anyway, passing the unconscious boy up to her first before climbing up himself.
Once they'd gotten settled, the boy propped up between them on the creature's back, they waited. The animal didn't move, like it was waiting for something too.
"Uh, go?" Sokka said. "Yeehaw?"
There was another moment of silence before the beast grunted reluctantly. Then, with a huge flap of its tail, they shot into the air.
