Undertow wasn't used to the surface, yet, so when he tried to spin around to face Iceheart again, he wasn't paying attention to the surf. It washed gently in at the same time that he turned, and he wound up flailing upside-down for a moment before managing to right himself, blinking.

He offered Iceheart a foolish grin. "Oops." He cast his mind back to what she had been saying. "So... magic can... hurt, in different ways. Or do different bad things?" he half-stated, half-asked. It was a thoughtful comment; he was trying to imagine what else it could do. What if one of them made too much ice around their feet and just... got stuck in it, or something? He shuddered at the vague thought.

"Thanks--I think you're right. Someone helped me when I first hatched, too." He went silent, for a beat, lost in memory, before looking up and blinking. The rainbow lights cascading down his flanks shimmered brightly. "I'll still try to get one, though! I'd feel bad if I didn't." He... wasn't sure why he would, but he just felt that way. But--maybe Iceheart knew? She seemed to know stuff. "Do you know why I'd feel bad? It's weird." He'd never felt guilt, before. He'd never had a reason to, but now he felt it.

Maybe it was the magic backfiring on him, still?

"And yes, I think we're friends?" He considered. He wasn't entirely sure on his definitions of some things, yet. And Iceheart was his first real friend. But... "We talked a little and we like each other--um. Do you like me?" he hastened to ask (entirely innocently), worried he'd gone too far. That was what friendship meant, right? Hanging out with those you liked?

"I do want to be," Undertow added. "I'm--I just want to make sure I'm doing it right?"

Undertow stared at the fish-spearing in blatant awe. When she had pulled it back, and off the spine, he blinked at her and struggled to catch up again with the conversation. He'd been listening, but her magic had wholly distracted him. He wanted to learn that, too! If only to be more useful, more helpful to his friends. Speaking of which...

"Maybe? Uh, just in case, maybe--we can be a new kind of friends. Like... Land-and-sea friends. Except..." He drifted to and fro in the shallows as the water gently surged and retreated, thinking. "That's kind of a bad name. I need--we need a better one. But I'm glad you like me." There was no guile or sense of polite conduct; he was a kid, and so he stated the truth with gentle joy. He was glad she liked him. Nobody had ever disliked him, as yet, but it was somehow a relief to hear it anyway.

But... she was doing all the work, and that didn't feel like a 'friends' thing. "Hold on," he said, and turned to plunge down into the water again. Surely his magic was done backfiring now; he'd try to pull his weight. As a friend.

He was quick in the water, surprisingly so. Even at a 'slow' sinuous curl he outpaced some fish, and once he'd spotted a school, his dart forward was lightning fast. He shot up alongside it, and the water just around his jaws and limbs went ice cold for an instant; the fish immediately seized, going still in the water, shocked by the cold. A moment later Undertow had it firmly in his jaws, and his head--fish in teeth--breached the water as he snake-swam his way back to Iceheart. He crunched it so it was really dead (they had a tendency, he'd learned, to swim away otherwise) and dropped it carefully at her feet. "Here!" he offered, happy to finally contribute something.

Even if 'something' was just another fish.

He watched the graceful-looking, soft-furred dragon gulp down the fish whole, staring. It wasn't that Undertow hadn't eaten like that, of course, but--it somehow looked wrong on her. He'd expected delicate picking at it, or something, but after a moment he mentally shrugged it away and accepted that beautiful fur-dragons could in fact choke a fish down whole. And that was okay.

"Maybe," he agreed, fairly cheerful. He hauled himself back onto land, halfway, his heavy little body snake-squiggling into the gravel before flopping awkwardly there. "I don't--I mean, I met someone? But underwater and I don't think they talk?" He started to get worried, but then the obvious question rose in his mind, and distracted him. "Do you?"

He chewed that thought over for a moment.

"If you don't, maybe we can find people? Either someone who knows about friends or--maybe more friends." It was a tentative, uncertain thought, but if one friend was good, more was better--right?