Chapter 2 – The Evening Hour that Strives Homeward
Zuko spotted Sokka by the coast, some distance from where the ship had landed, in a sheltered area protected by natural seabreak. Two people were wading into the water and a variety of supplies were piled at the shore. "What are they doing?" Zuko asked, and pointed to the area of shallows they were cordoning off with bamboo-stakes and finely woven netting.
Sokka explained, "Establishing a new sea prune farm. Gran-gran says we used to have them, but since the war no one has bothered setting any up, since the Fire Nation would just destroy them. The predators can't get through the nets, and we can toss in scraps that they like to eat. They crawl around the sand and will breed in higher concentrations like this. We'll be able to quadruple our harvest within a few years."
"Wait, but they're prunes. What do you mean 'crawl around?'"
Sokka grinned and had one of the children bring him a specimen. A slimy lump was pushed into Zuko's hands and he tried not to gag. "This is a sea prune. Rather, it's not a prune yet. It's sort of like a sea-plum right now. We usually pickle them, but you can eat it raw, too." Recovered from its shock of being moved, it began to writhe in his hands, and Zuko felt a chill of revulsion like touching a slug. "It's technically an animal."
"And you're going to farm these things? To get even more of them?" He felt his face twisting into a grimace and tried to hand it back to Sokka, who tortured him by making him keep holding it.
"Yep. We're setting aside some of our catch this summer to begin the venture. And you can be the first to seed the farm. Look, they've finished rigging the nets." Sokka waved to the worker, who was coming back onto shore with the tools at that moment. "Go ahead and toss it into that square."
"Gladly." Trying not to drop the slime-lump, he walked to the edge and frowned, not looking to get his boots wet just yet. "Can I just… toss it in from here? Will it die from the force?"
"Hey, that is our precious progenitor you're holding. Set him down nicely. Get in there."
Grumbling, he waded into the water, which might have been thawed but still felt freezing, while Sokka and the workers watched him, laughing and shouting encouragement. When he was close enough to the edge of the netting he lifted the quivering prune-wad and gave it a gentle toss. Behind him they began cheering. Zuko stuck his tongue out and washed his hands off before returning to shore, soaking wet up to his waist. Sokka handed him the basket and he returned to wade back in and dump the rest, who were nested into a lining of seaweed, sand, and pebbles. They joined their friend and would soon be busy begetting more sea-prunelets in their new home. Sokka began saying they could be dried for export and it might open up a whole new global market, while Zuko refrained from saying that the other nations might not care to buy them all that much.
As lovely as that experience was, there was yet more work for the day in store for him. After a brief chance to dry off, Sokka pulled him into the large tent with their grandmother. "Gran-gran, I've brought him."
From the way she looked at him, he was certain Katara had been wrong and her grandmother did mean to do away with him for his crimes. "How nice it is to have two strong young men around. I have just the task for you two." Zuko said a prayer to Agni as she went to the corner of the tent and brought out a canvas bag. "Those who don't work, neither shall they eat." Having said so, her stern expression melted into a smile. "Sokka will take good care of you. Have fun on your hunting trip."
"Hunting?" he replied uncertainly.
"Have you killed your own meat before, child?"
He hadn't been called 'child' for a decade. "I've gone hunting before," he said, remembering the gazelle-deer. Looking around at their tent, he understood why Sokka had been so upset about the hide being blemished. They used fur as both the exterior canvas and an interior furnishing material. It made sense, as neither cotton nor flax would have grown there, but the extent of its dominance impressed that fact further. The atmosphere of the tent had a background note of warm fur which reminded him of a forest.
"Excellent. I'm sure you'll do fine." She took the bag and pressed it into his arms. "Have fun."
The two left the tent. Zuko asked, "What did she give us?" He blinked with the sudden light to adjust his eyes.
"Snacks to hold us over. Hunting is hungry work. Lucky for you, we'll be taking sleds instead of walking." As Zuko began wondering what type of monstrosity could power a sled in the arctic, he was shown to the vehicles, wooden constructions with wheels, and at the front a team each of two arctic camels had been harnessed. The animals brayed loudly as they approached until Sokka took out strips of leather and fashioned them over each one's face to muzzle them. "Aren't they cute?"
"Not really, to be honest. Katara mentioned you use dogs to do this."
"Only in winter, when there's snow. Otherwise we would need more dogs than we can afford to keep. In summer we use these and replace the tread blades with wheels to handle the grass."
"I like the dogs better."
"We all like the dogs better. But in summer you get the camels. Hey, they're not too bad once you stop them from braying and spitting and biting."
Zuko, who had been reaching a hand towards one, pulled his arm back in alarm. "They bite? When were you planning to tell me that?"
"I already muzzled them for you, didn't I?" He rigged the sleds up to them. "Oh, we're taking two of the dogs as well."
"What are the dogs for, then?"
"To help us hunt, and keep the wolves from eating the camels. But we have to protect the dogs from the polar leopard caribou."
"This is too confusing," muttered Zuko. "Why can't the dogs just pull the sleds?"
"Because, Moronlord, there isn't any snow."
"Dogs don't need snow to walk!"
"Okay, you know what? Let's put you in this harness and have you pull a sled over bare ground, and see how far you make it. Just shut up and mind the camel urine."
"The camel wha—UGH!" He leapt back out of the way of a heavy, steaming course of yellow. "It aimed right at me!" he shouted.
"Yup. They do that. That's why we use the dogs in winter."
Zuko sat down in the saddle of his lead camel with the formation of a migraine and picked up the reins. This part, at least, resembled how komodo rhinos are ridden, and he felt more comfortable as they took off. He began wondering if they put saddles on the dogs or hooked a camel up with the dogs for winter, and didn't want to ask for clarification. It was no wonder that the Fire Nation was willing to put colonies on the Earth Kingdom but never bothered hanging around the South Pole. Sokka shouted something that sounded like 'mush' and Zuko repeated it to his own mount, and copied his movements to prompt it to begin. The camel walked with a sashay, pendulating one side to the other, and he wanted his komodo rhino back—a nice, solid, wide, steady komodo rhino that didn't aim its pee at you. The dogs yapped and barked as they raced alongside the two camel trains.
Conversation paused while he followed Sokka's lead, as speaking while riding meant a bitten tongue. The terrain was predominantly flat around the village, but far enough out it turned to low hills strangely carved, probably from the movement of ice during freeze. The entire ride he had no idea what they meant to hunt or where they might find it, as Sokka had not bothered to mention his plans, and he had the sneaking suspicion, as hours went by, that he wouldn't be sleeping with Katara again anytime soon. He grumbled and shifted miserably on the camel, which was lumpy and smelled weird.
The coastal area was flat, beaten down by the sea wind into stubby lichen and hardy grass, but inland into the hills there was brush to his thigh of woody shrubs and foliage, enough to duck behind if you crouched, and the groundlay shifted and waved to highs and lows, the latter often pooled in melt-water. About a hundred miles inland was still frozen over with snow and ice, the very southern point which never melted. The Water Tribe lived at the edge of the continent, where it was warm enough to have exposed ground a few months of the year. But over there, Sokka told him, the ice extended for further than you could survive walking across. On the clearest day peaks of snow were visible if you trekked far enough. He also realized to his ire that there were insects. They must sleep through the winter underground and hatch for summer, and he resisted the urge to fry them all out of the air. The sky was patchy grey and blue and the wind kept a chill that prevented him from ever quite being comfortable.
They stopped for a break and Zuko practically jumped him. "Where exactly are we going? We've been traveling for hours."
"Hunting, Moronlord. Go away, I have to pee." Without further ado he began to unlash his pants and Zuko hastily vacated the area, then realized he also had to go and ought to do it quickly, as it didn't seem like they would stop for long. By the time he returned to the sleds, Sokka held a bag of penguin seal jerky out for him to sample, a strip hanging from his own mouth. They sat on the sled, which was more comfortable than camelback, and took a break. They seemed to be following a gametrail through low brush, and in the temporary quiet he heard birds and animal life all around them. As the birds flitted in and out, they ducked into the low woody brush and hopped by foot inside. Without trees, they must have to nest on the ground with the brush as cover. The dogs watched them curiously but were contented with their own jerky strips, and the camels were chewing and stripping leaves from whatever they could reach.
Zuko asked, "You did this alone while the men were gone to war?"
"Yeah. It's not as dangerous as you think. The main predator to worry about is the polarbear, but they don't hibernate in winter like other bear varieties. They spend winter feasting on tigerseal and whale-walrus, while they have the ice to walk across to access them. The tigerseals come up through holes in the ice, and then the polarbear gets them. In summer, the ice is gone, so the polarbears fast. That's why we hunt in summer. Otherwise with the smell of the blood, you'd be hunted down and have your catch stolen, or become prey yourself."
It was a hard way of life compared to the ease of living in the Fire Nation where no one had to hunt for their own food. He would have respected Sokka for it, but a caterpillar was crawling its way through his hair at the moment while he gnawed the strip of jerky obliviously, and Zuko withheld that information and wondered with perverse pleasure if it would make a cocoon in his ponytail.
They continued a few more hours until he felt like it should have been approaching night in saner climes, and they made camp, setting up two small tents barely big enough to crawl into, framed in whale ribs strung with hide rubbed with oil to rainproof it. He copied how Sokka set his up and tested the frame, then was given a sleeping sack and told, "Make yourself at home. Oh, and take one of the dogs. Call Atka to you."
"Take the dog where?"
"Inside the tent, Moronlord."
"That is the third damned time you have called me that. Knock it off!"
"Then stop being an idiot. If you don't want hypothermia, you'd better get friendly with Atka."
"I don't want to sleep with the dog."
"Hey, it's either sleep with the dog or sleep with me. Which do you prefer?"
Zuko glared. "Atka, come here," he called, and the dog paced over with her eyes bright in excitement. Lying down to sleep, he got a face full of slobbery tongue once his arms were trapped in the sleeping sack and he was defenseless, and he desperately missed Katara, who usually did not lick his face. Finally the dog settled down and he could enjoy at least four hours of sleep, though he suspected Sokka had taken his full eight while Zuko lay awake due to the sun still being up.
The rocky hills created a more varied landscape, which worked to their advantage as they could sneak up on prey and not be sighted from a long distance off as would occur on a flat plain. Zuko understood why they'd gone so far out from the village, and that Sokka wasn't intentionally torturing him, although he was doubtless enjoying his misery. While the sun looked strange, almost watery and thin as the clouds perpetually tumbled in, shifting their mass like rolling waves, there was color in the land. Lichen of every hue were spotted with wildflowers. Fertile land was precious there, and not an inch wasn't covered in something.
Sokka paced around and pulled up various plants for them to snack on, sometimes including the roots, which Sokka hardly bothered to brush off but Zuko painstakingly cleaned the dirt from. Clover was edible, flower leaves and all, and he mentioned several herbs that were medicinal, which caught his attention. He had the suspicion they were related to species he was already familiar with back home, but from the thin root system capable of growing in the topmost thawed inches above the permafrost, none of the plants reached their full size and so looked completely different, perpetually in a juvenile state. Perhaps for that reason everything had the tendency to remain crisp and tender. In the Fire Nation gardens, plants had to be harvested before growing past a certain stage or they would become hard and bitter.
In the brush crawled small rodents: arctic squirrel, arctic hamsters, and voles; and with them arctic foxes, which were elusive to spot and wouldn't approach with the smell of the dogs in the area. He listed off the bird species, saying they were for the most part migratory, and that the inland birds were entirely different from those on the coast.
At a mark Sokka had them abandon the camel trains and proceed on foot, and even the dogs picked up the mood and stayed quiet, pacing carefully in stalking mode. He pulled Zuko around a crest of hill and they viewed the valley below, where a dense meadow had blossomed and was being grazed by a herd of buffalo yak. Sokka explained, "These hefty lumps of fur tend to stay in the same area year-round. A lot of the other animals migrate, towards or away from the coast—some even go across to the other islands or the south shores of the Earth Kingdom—but they stay right here. Well, here-ish, within fifty miles." Zuko thought that sounded like quite a far distance. "Katara told me she couldn't find the herd when she went hunting while I was out working in that mine. It's just as well. See those horns?" They grew curved horns cropped close against their heads. "They don't gouge, but they'll ram. They can break every bone in your body if you piss them off. Their fur is thick, too. It's hard to get an arrow or javelin to puncture it. Usually we hunt in a group, all the village men, but that hasn't been possible recently."
"Hold on. So why did we come here with just the two of us?"
"One of us happens to be a firebender. Unless you're too pig-chicken."
"I'll show you pig-chicken. Which one do you want me to nab?"
He examined the herd for a few minutes. The animals grazed lethargically. So long as they and the dogs remained quiet, they wouldn't spook, and the wind wouldn't take their scent over as Sokka had been choosy with his approach. "The fat one over there," he pointed. "I'll go to the other side and startle them. Once they're running towards you, stay here and wait for it. Keep behind this big old rock and you won't get stampeded."
Zuko didn't think the rock looked quite as big as Sokka took it for, but he was already slinking off, leading the dogs at his heels, and Zuko had no choice but to wait there alone with his ears keen for the initiation of movement. They were about as big as komodo rhinos, and he didn't like the thought of facing one. He eyed the rock and took a hand grip. Around that time it occurred to him that the buffalo-yak was about five times the size the gazelle-deer in Taku had been. He didn't like that math.
He climbed slowly and carefully to not make the slightest bit of noise and peeked his head up over the top of the rock, then waited. He could see the path Sokka probably took around to keep himself out of sight for his approach. It was the hunting style of the wolf, a pack strategy to drive the prey out and confuse them into a waiting ambush. The Fire Nation no longer had wolves, as they had been killed off hundreds of years ago, followed by dragons two decades prior, shortly before he was born. His uncle had finished the last one off. The Water Tribe, however, still lived amongst predators, which kept their senses sharp.
A loud, sudden disaster struck at the other side of the field. A boulder rushed down the hillside, causing a rockslide into the valley, which startled the herd, and then the dogs leapt into action in the form of their wolf ancestors. They raced down the side driving towards the buffalo yak. From their perception, they would confuse the dogs for true wolves, and Sokka in the background sounded off a long, piercing imitation howl which cinched the deal. As Sokka leapt out waving his spear overhead and yelling, the entire herd spooked into a run, and the dogs drove them apart from each other as they crossed the boulder-strewn ground. By the time they approached Zuko, only the fat one he'd pointed out was running for him, and the rest were several yards or further off. Herd animals kept close to each other for protection, but in a panic they lost their better reason and abandoned it to their own demise. The dogs knew just how to accomplish it.
Zuko hopped the last slope to the top of the rock and shot a comet to the buffalo yak. It had never encountered such an attack before and had no precedent for what to do. The animal skid through the loose stones stumbling as it tried to halt, then was hit in the neck by the fire, which carried all the force and vitality he could summon. It took the hit to the face and esophagus and fell down. The dogs leapt in to finish the work, biting its neck and tearing the throat out, and Sokka jogged up behind them.
"Good boy Qiqirn, good girl Atka, yes you are, yes you are." He knelt and got licked over with bloody tongues. Zuko kept atop the rock, not wanting the affection of the dogs quite at that moment. "What a catch! You're the first firebender to ever hunt in the South Pole."
The rest of the herd was gone to the hills. Zuko fetched back both camel-rigs, struggling against the stubborn beasts, and dragged them back to Sokka to load up with the yak. They two had a hard time lifting and sliding it up, and were out of breath and sweaty by the end. "Good job, you two," said Sokka, grinning ear to ear as the dogs wagged their tails ecstatic.
Zuko frowned and considered that Aang might be on to something with his vegetarianism. "Can you please wash your face now? And theirs?"
Sokka swiped the back of his wrist over his cheek and looked at the result. "This is the mark of a successful hunter, I'll have you know."
"It's gross. Are we heading back now?"
"With one empty sled? No we are not. The buffalo yak are going to remain on alert now, but we can find something else hanging around. I have just the thing in mind."
"Yeah, I'll try to contain my excitement."
He spent a second night in the tent, with the well-washed dog who was not allowed to eat the yak, in the twenty-hour sunlight. The dog wasn't nearly as smelly as he first thought, and the fur on her belly was nice and soft to run his fingers through. Atka cuddled against him, snug and secure, and he could feel the body heat pleasantly warm. Her breath, however, was another problem. Zuko wondered if peppermint would grow in the arctic and if he could entice dogs to begin eating it.
Sokka had mentioned their next target would be something called an 'arctic hippo' and Zuko was awake trying to imagine such a creature. Apparently it was more dangerous than buffalo-yaks, but Sokka was confident that they could take it on. After the show with the yak, he'd insisted on having hot tea that evening, and Zuko was regretting that choice. Daytime was warm enough, but the moment the sun set, he was reminded he was in the polar region, and certain sensitive areas were unpleasant to expose to the cold air. However, it wasn't a matter that could wait until morning, and he pushed Atka aside and crawled out of his wonderfully warm sleeping sack.
It was still light out, the very last of it, although they had gone to bed two hours ago. The air was thin and damp, largely overcast. Zuko glanced to Sokka's tent and listened for his breathing, but couldn't hear whether he was awake or asleep over the breeze. He pulled his hood up and began to look for a spot a respectful distance from camp, wary of something called a 'mink snake' which apparently loved to bite the tenderest flesh it could find and hid in the brush.
On the way back he seemed to be lost, although he hadn't gone very far, and looked around the landscape, which was without landmark of any kind and identical in all directions. It was deep twilight, and the sky was murky violet almost faded. Overhead the sky was streaked in teal and indigo, though it was not as vivid as it appeared in winter. Zuko tried one direction, then another, not understanding how he had gotten turned around. It may have been from the lack of sleep or the persistent cold temperature, but reasoning that wouldn't refind him the tents, and he didn't want to shout for help and have to live it down the rest of his life. After the initial trek out of only a minute or two, he'd spent twenty trying to make his way back and couldn't tell if he was further or closer than he'd started. Overhead, the navigation stars were obscured by clouds and the mirage-like lightbands filling their gaps. The wind shifted directions in a confusion, and the ground crunched as it approached freezing overnight, carpeted in creeping woody shrubs and coarse lichen.
He stopped. It was hard to make out in the darkness, but something was there, standing nearby and watching him. It was large and upright. He wondered if it was a polar bear, but it was a murky, dark color, and its edges were distorted almost like vapor.
An oppressing sensation numbed his legs. It lumbered forward.
Fast, light treads—four legs. Atka rushed to him, getting between Zuko and the creature. She barked furiously and gave a low, threatening growl. It halted its progression toward him.
It was hard to think. A jumble of words played across his mind. Foreign. Danger. Wrong. Cold. Isolation. Predator. Hunger.
Pain throbbed across his temples. Atka kept up her defence, but lost ground as the unknown creature resumed moving toward him.
From the same direction Atka had arrived, Sokka ran in with Qiqirn on his heels, who joined Atka in growling, both their tails raised stiff and fur standing on end. Sokka waved something in his face and shouted at him. It was like being underwater—his limbs were slow and heavy, numb from cold, and his hearing impaired with a heavy pressure distorting everything. Sokka pushed something at him. It was an unlit torch. Zuko snapped out of it and lit the end, and fire flashed in the darkness.
Sokka stood behind the dogs and waved the torch back and forth aggressively, yelling something Zuko couldn't make out. As if recalculating its chances, the creature stopped and slowly backed away from the fire as Sokka and the dogs pressed forward. After a stare-down it relented and left, although it seemed to vanish into the darkness far too quickly. Even with the torch, Zuko had never seen it clearly.
"Are you okay?" Sokka asked, and grabbed him by the shoulder to look him over. "Did it say anything to you?"
Upon the touch of another person, he regained his senses and was able to speak and move again. "Say? What do you mean, 'say?' Isn't that a polar bear or something?"
Sokka gave him a hard look. "That's no polar bear. It's something between a man and a spirit, a lost soul that transformed from hunger into that. I've never heard of one being sighted, but our tribe tells stories from the old days."
"What were you telling it? I couldn't understand any of those words."
"It was a funeral prayer. Something very, very old. I don't know what it means either, but everyone from the village learns it, just in case. It must have come out because you're not Water Tribe. It's been four or five generations since the last time anyone encountered one." His expression lightened, and he reached down to pat the dog and ruffle her ears. "Good girl, Atka. Very brave puppy. You saved Zuzu-Wuzu from getting eaten, yes you did, yes you did!" The dog slobbered in bliss under his hand and tilted her head to get a good scratch under the chin. His voice wasn't so sing-song to address him. "What, no spirits in the Fire Nation?"
"Not like that. So, arctic hippo tomorrow?"
He threw a glance back towards where the spirit had retreated. "I think we're good with the buffalo yak. Or, you know what, let's get a whale-walrus by the coast on the way back. That'll pack the larder."
"For some reason that sounds just as dangerous as the arctic hippo."
"Nonsense, nonsense. It's only dangerous if there's a tiger-shark in the surf."
He whistled and began to lead the dogs back to camp, leaving Zuko in a state of shock. "A WHAT?" Not wanting to be left behind, he stumbled ahead and kept close to him and the victorious dogs as they returned to the warmth of the tents. With the sun finally set properly and Atka's bodyheat and protection, he slept quietly and woke to Sokka making tea for them, humming a song he didn't know.
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With each sled loaded, the two returned to the village, filthy, hungry, and missing their respective girlfriends. Atka and Qiqirn raced ahead, barking the announcement of their arrival, and people came out to meet them. "As expected of Sokka," said a man. "What a great catch. We'll take it from here. Your father is over there," he said, and pointed off to the side. "Let him know you're back and well."
They dismounted and went to find Hakoda. Several children and an old woman were gathered around a hole in the ground, which dirt was being shoveled out of. Given that the ground was still frozen beyond a few inches deep, it must have been back-breaking labor to dig through. The old woman gave a shout into the hole and the digging stopped with a shunk of the shovel being sunk into the ground. From a ladder at the side Hakoda came up. "Sokka, Zuko, you're back. How did the hunt go?"
"We got a buffalo-yak and a whale-walrus. Oh, and a few bags of crab and mussels. They're still alive and fresh," said Sokka. "Digging an ice cellar?"
"Of course. We have to have somewhere to put the game you caught, don't we? It's been a while since a new one was excavated." He stepped out and wiped his brow. He was covered in sweat and dirt, with his outer coat stripped off.
Zuko had been grumbling about being put to work, but here was their own chief doing the hardest labor of anyone. He couldn't imagine his own father ever doing manual labor. Their way of life was completely different from the Fire Nation. Instead of stiffly hierarchical, they were close-knit and cooperative. He understood why Katara had not wanted any personal servant at the palace. At that time she and Suki returned from the direction of the shore and called to them. Despite how dirty he was, Katara stood on tip-toe to kiss him without hesitation. He whispered, "I've missed you so much."
"Was the trip okay?"
"It was fine."
The animals were taken away. Zuko and Sokka went to bathe and put on clean clothes. Laundry lines crossed the village in the frenzy to clean and dry everything while it was warm enough for fabric not to freeze solid, and a dozen crafts and construction projects were in the works. If they had three months of summer, they needed every second. Katara and Suki, meanwhile, had been busy with their own adventures and recounted everything to them over dinner. She was teaching Suki how to dive. For Katara, a waterbender, it was relatively easy and safe despite the dangerous and cold water, but Suki, with her athleticism and good lung capacity, managed to keep up with her, and Katara had been looking out for her. In the old days, when the Southern Tribe still had waterbenders, they had been prolific divers, but in recent generations it was too risky for nonbenders and had been abandoned.
After dinner they pulled them along to see all the treasures they had unearthed. Mother-of-pearl shells, three different pearls, a large conch, some reclaimed arrows and javelins, fishing equipment, a whistle, and other items were piled up. The two showed them off proudly. As the first dive team since the war began, they had a bounty to claim. Usual trips didn't recover a tenth of what they had, and the cold water kept all the items preserved perfectly. In addition to what fell into local waters, sea currents brought foreign items from across the oceans down to them. They had a wooden doll that must have been from the Earth Kingdom, a beaded necklace, metal tools, two knives, and an air bison whistle carved from agate. A chunk of labradorite sat beside a nautilus fossil.
The next item in their showcase wasn't as pleasant. They had an old spear of Fire make, about fifty or sixty years old, preserved perfectly without even a trace of rust in the frigid water. He had the urge to throw it back into the water. Katara, seeing his expression, had gone quiet from her narration. No matter what Zuko did from that point on, they would never be fully rid of evidence of what the Fire Nation had done there. Of all the beautiful things recovered, it didn't belong. It would have been best to leave it underwater.
Hakoda stepped beside him and took the spear. He examined it, then tested the edge with his finger. Zuko grew nervous. "This is well made," said Hakoda. "It'll make a good fishing spear."
"Surely you have something better to use," replied Zuko.
Her father grinned and said, "Well, let me demonstrate," and began walking towards the shore. Everyone followed him, and Katara took Zuko's hand and pulled him along. At the beach, Hakoda stripped off his outer clothing and boots, then waded into the water with the spear, watching the surface carefully. The water was surely cold enough to be painful, but he didn't rush, instead pacing slowly to minimize disturbance, and waited to find something. After a few minutes he paused, lofted the spear, and waited so still that he wondered if he was breathing. Then he jabbed it down.
He lifted it and showed them the koho salmon glistening silver on the spear-tip. He walked back in and passed it to Sokka to carry off. As Hakoda began to dress, he said, "Like every scrap of material we can get our hands on down here, we'll make use of it. This isn't a Fire Nation spear anymore, Firelord Zuko—it's a hunting instrument my daughter and my future daughter-in-law salvaged from the ocean. You've lost out."
He was going out of his way to be optimistic for his sake, and Zuko was willing to let him.
The extended span of sunlight was beginning to feel, rather than disorienting, pleasant.
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a/n:
Changing the sled to wheels for snowless conditions: en/articles/dog-sledding-question-answer-session