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English
Series:
Part 1 of Pernese Miniature Dragons Adopt Agni's Human Dragon
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Published:
2021-12-25
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728
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1/1
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32
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Tiny Dragons for a Human Dragon

Summary:

Zuko rescues and hatches a firelizard nest.

Notes:

This Zuko is inspired by Vathara’s Embers and the idea that if he’d spent 3 years hunting for the Avatar, he’d have gotten involved with spirits and their messes a lot. If something seems off from cannon, assume it falls under one of these umbrellas if I don’t explain it.

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

Zuko cursed under his breath as he stumbled along the beach. He’d been here for several days already and had seen neither hide nor hair of anyone else. He didn’t recognize any plants either and had been forced to attempt to catch and eat some of the creatures, which were unidentifiable and had too many limbs, and plants. 

Dealing with the creatures had turned out better than the plants. The good news? Turned out, despite the unidentifiable animal life, he was not in the Spirit World, so he had his bending. The bad news? He’d sailed the entire world for three years and he’d never seen anything like that weird six legged scaled fire ferret. Oh, and the blasted gray masses that fell from the sky, consuming everything except the rocks and sand.

Once he’d gotten back, he was going to have a serious discussion with Uncle about asking favors from the spirits. It never turned out well for him and Uncle rarely had to deal directly with the consequences. His crew on board the Wani may have complained about his luck, but he knew better. Zuko had caught his uncle praying more than once before Zuko specifically and the crew in general had been caught up in spirit tangles.

Shortly after he’d woken up wherever he was, he’d discovered both that despite the freaky animal life, he could still bend and that there were small dragons here. Both discoveries were simultaneous. He’d seen the small creatures breathing fire at the writhing gray mass that looked like it was absorbing the plant life on the shore and had acted reflexively. For once in his life, it didn’t backfire in his face, literally or figuratively. 

He had also found what looked like an abandoned nest on the shore. Some of the eggs appeared to be damaged and at least one had been broken open, a tiny bronze dragon lay amongst the fragments. So Zuko had gathered them up and found a safe place for them. The teenaged firebender had spent the next several days hunting in preparation for the eggs hatching. The dead dragonling had appeared to be fully formed, so the eggs he’d rescued must be close to hatching. 

Zuko also made sure to run fire over the eggs at least once a day. He had noticed how the eggs seemed to absorb his fire when he did, and had quickly started making a small fire to pull from. Whenever he pulled flames from the fire to run over the eggs, the flames flickered to other, more diverse, colors. It surprised him.

The wood he’d managed to collect was piled outside of the cave he’d found, as he’d needed more than he’d thought. It was just less strain on his chi to use already existent fire and he had already dealt with that gray mass twice . Agni, it fell from the sky! The second time, he’d passed out in front of the cave from chi exhaustion, as he’d been in the middle of smoking his most recent catch at the time. He didn’t want that to happen again. 

After dealing with the wood he’d gathered and smoking the day’s catch, Zuko went to his little fire pit and ran his multicolored fire over the eggs before settling in to meditate before going to sleep for the night. 

Just before he could put out the fire, he heard a crack. Turning quickly, he saw the eggs starting to tremble, one of them had a small crack. His eyes widened as much as they were able and he scrambled to grab one of the poorly stitched together bags of poorly tanned hide full of the meat he’d been smoking. He quickly sat back between the fire and the nest, reaching for the fire and running it through the eggs one last time, watching as they all started rocking more violently, more cracks appearing in the eggs.

Following long hidden instincts, Zuko tore the meat into smaller pieces and crooned encouragingly at the eggs. In a surprising amount of time, too long and too short at once, a small flock of dragons gathered around him, having devoured every scrap from that first bag.

Inside the nest, were nothing more than broken eggshells, every egg having hatched a small dragon.

 

 

 

(1 gold, 1 bronze, 2 brown, 3 green, 2 blue, 1 white)