“In January, a large group of emperor penguin chicks were spotted standing on the edge of a 50-feet high cliff near Atka Bay, Antarctica, before jumping, first one by one, then in groups, into the Wedell Sea, captured by one NG photographer. These fledglings were probably driven by hunger, when their parents had already gone hunting in the sea. They would stay there for the rest of the summer season. While this may seem as a brave act, the abnormity of the scene is related to the early thawing of the sea ice. As emperor penguins are seriously threatened by global warming, their breeding cycles and migratory behaviors are bound to be interrupted, with iceburgs breaking more frequently in rising temperatures, causing hatching eggs or chicks to fall into the sea. The 2022 ‘breeding failure’ recorded by satelite images is a direct message to the world of how desperate the situation is."
Along the Ronne Ice Shelf, 29th, March, 2024
At night, an emperor chick got lost in his way back to the nest. He was an intelligent one, always knew his prey and hidden danger. He had stayed behind since he was not sure if the path was the same or not. His family and friends had assured him and moved forward, quickly vanishing from sight. He stood in darkness for a long time. It was strangly quiet tonight, with no winds and splashing sounds from the sea. The ice below him gradually became slippery, and before he made his way forward, a noise split the air, accompanied by an appalling silence for no more than ten seconds, then the world fell downwards, lasting for what must’ve been forever. The star patterns in the sky were the only scene he took with him when he fell asleep.
He had never experienced a dream so long like this. He used to look up at his parents, when he still stood between their legs, which formed a soft yet steady warm wall. They took almost no sleep. At least he thought so, since he had never seen them dozing off, except that he noticed their eyes to close for a few more seconds than usual at intervals at some point. That was the only thing he could relate with his parents until he started to search for food by himself. Most of the time his parents were seperated, and that made the days even harder. He seldom talked to them, and the silence was loud and unbearable. But even when he was grouped with other loud chicks to make themselves warm, he found himself unable to fit in. The only thing he enjoyed was the whitness of the world and the unknown beyond the horizon. He would spend most of his day staring at the sky and the far land, imagining things he couldn’t realize himself.
So when he woke up, for ten whole minutes he was too stunned to speak or move.
Berkeley Sound, 16th, March, 1834
His belly was touching the ground. He heard the waves retreating from, surging on and crashing on his feet, washing a bit of the ground away, and his belly sank to fill the void. Eyes closed, he cautiously blinked his left eye, taking in the most of the unknown situation he was in. He thought he saw the morning sky, almost the same as it had always been, though cloudier than usual. He was more concerned with what lay beneath it, an unfamiliar, undulating brown lowland, dotted with colours he had never seen before. He later decided that they were beautiful colours. The white snow had mysteriously disappeared. So did the high mountains. Suddenly something hit him from the sky. He lay still, though shocked in his mind. A second and third one fell on him, and he nearly shouted. He calmed down quickly though because he found that it did not hurt much at all. The waves came again and washed quite a bunch of sand away this time, which made his body slide a few feet away.
The sky stones were accompanied by strong wind. This reminded him of his home. When the storm came, the gale would blow off thick layers of snow, turning the world even whiter. Though the snowflakes hurt his eyes, he was rather fond of being a part the solidarity. The body walls formed by his parent and the rest of the colony stayed silent and strong against the wind, like the mountains themselves. He wondered where his family was, how long it had passed, and where he was now. Apparently this place was like no other he had been before, and somehow his sense of adventure was ignited.
When he was trying to get on to his feet, he felt his whole body like a cone of ice, stiff and unstable, like being frozen inside an iceberg for several years. His body wobbled as he walked through the small sandy beach he was now on. He planned to head to the sea to get some food first, and then go inland to explore the unknown.
Port Louis South, 16th, March, 1834
He must’ve been a couple miles away from the original spot. The current was strong, and it carried him along as he pushed his little body to feeding mode. He had hunted a couple times after his parents stopped feeding him. After going ashore, he found he was faced with different-looking groups of penguins, moving and shouting as if the summer had just arrived, or was about to end. He was not sure if they were his companies or enermies. One of the groups appeared shorter than him, even shorter when they lay on their bellies in countless burrows on the ground. Black and white stripes were dinstinct from their heads to feet, and their chicks were covered in brown fur, much unlike his grey hair. As he walked closer, some of them noticed him and were frozen in their motions. But most didn’t show any sign of fear, continuing their daily chores of resting and walking. He was assured when he saw another group, with long yellow plumes above their red eyes, hopped to meet them. Their short encounter was filled with chatting, then both groups went on in their directions. Two of them were so deep in conversation that they lingered behind.
A call behind him grabbed his attention. He turned around and a great amount of relief came over him. Thank goodness, he thought as he moved his head side to side, watching as one of his kind walk towards him. Though slightly thinner, he seemed to be exactly the same like his parents. He called back in a friendly manner, in the hope that some questions would be answered, like his whereabouts, the incident that brought him here, and perhaps, his family.
When they got closer, though, his excitement gradually turned into confusion. The penguin in front of him was not from his colony. The distinct yellow spot on each side of their heads does not match, and their beaks were different sizes. Indeed, when they tried to communicate, they could not fully understand each other. In the end, however, the emperor chick did get some useful information about this island, that it was south to a great “green" land where the sun shone brightly during winter, east to a land high and dry that belonged to giants, and north to a land so cold that their colonies only dared to approach it in summer and stared at the eerie whiteness in far distance. That some fast-swimming “ships" could be seen from the bay they were in, and the most recent one has three masts on it, and the “human" on it had traveled inland in the early morning; that one month later most of the colonies would travel north, and back again later this year; that……
A brief moment of sunshine pierced through the clouds, turning the land into a golden sea then back to brown again. The emperor chick saw the huge body of the “ship" his new friend had pointed at, illumated in the distance. Three or four small boxes, or “houses", were situated near the ship, and that’s where he was now heading to. He had to be careful not to trip over or fall into the holes covering most of the shoreline, since his head was still processing the information he had just received. Hundreds of possibilities of his current situation, and thousands of choices he could make to change them.
River on Baltic Sea 
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