Not Too Far from the Yew Tree (an ATLA fanfiction)

Red

The moonstone charm hung from the ribbon by a gold fastening. Zuko toyed with it, tracing a fingertip over the carving, while staking out the train platform half a block away. Partially hidden behind a building's porch, he could hear and feel the train's approach as stone ground against stone and sent vibrations through the immediate area. Some of the more shoddy structures quavered and shutters clattered. It stopped and the passengers deboarded into a crowd which spilled into the streets. This was the third arrival of the morning. He searched for the blue dress in the crowd, he searched for that dark hair bound in a foreign style, a braid, a waterskin, but saw none of them. She wasn't there and it was the second day of not having found her.

Zuko slid the charm off the necklace and pocketed it, then slipped the notepaper out. Tidy writing was folded inside it. He read it over once more then added the blue ribbon, bare of its stone, and took the package up. Outside the civil center were the usual crowd of people with nothing better to do, having no hope and no prospects. He walked up to an old man pushing broken paisho tiles around the dirt in lieu of a board, who looked up vacantly, and said to him, "There's a young woman who works here, a Water Tribe girl who started coming a few weeks ago. Give her this. Don't open it." He handed over the slip of paper containing the ribbon. "Don't tell her who gave it to you. You don't know, and you never saw my face." He tossed a silver coin after it, which landed next to a game tile so ragged he couldn't tell what piece it was supposed to be.

He went for lunch to the Middle Ring and sat a long while with a pot of tea after he'd finished the meal, ordering two more pots after. The staff were beginning to grow irate that he was occupying a seat so long, but if they wanted their payment they couldn't say a word to him, and Zuko focused on the tea to keep his mind collected until evening. It was bitter. They'd used water too hot for the tea type and it had overbrewed. There was a pungent sting on his tongue that put him in the right mood for the business. He ordered an appetizer of spring rolls to snack on to keep the owners off his back and did some people-watching at the little cafe, marveling that not one of them realized a firebender was sitting a few tables away, like a tiger sitting between the edge of a forest and a roadside. In evening he paid and left back to the Lower Ring by train, then went to his position.

Light slanted in golden hues through the broken windowframes around the upper story of the paper mill, huge vertical windows designed for ventilation from the fumes and steam, empty and open to the sky. The interior was built like a large warehouse with an open floorspace. At the wall were a series of water tanks and channels with filter sections. Powder-coated sacks were piled in another area from the chemicals they had used to treat the paper, which had seeped out over time causing white rings of mineral deposits to crust across the cement floor. Two large dumpster bins were against a wall near a broken square hatch which the loaders had used to dump in rags, and scrappy bits of fabric were strewn around the area from rats and birds nesting in them and picking through.

Rag-sorting tables were adjacent to the bins, covered over in two inches of dust and filth. In the middle of the floor were arranged a dozen stamper machines, resembling small wooden ballistas, all connected with a cog wheel which looked like a long, round log with prongs extending radially. Along this ran a beam over the length which channeled water from the tanks into the presser frames. Above the main workfloor ran a partial loft where drying racks were hung with thick spiderwebs and remnants of birdnests. Among the forest of equipment Zuko could choose where to conceal himself, and the lower floor was entirely bordered with windowless brick outer walls excepting the doorway, where broken hinges left the door resting ajar.

The building had become outdated a few decades ago, succeeded by a new factory built elsewhere, and subsequently been abandoned. The air was thick and stale, and residue from the minerals and acid-washes left a chemical odor with undertones of pest infestation and woodchips.