[Completed] A public menace

[Saaga Sun]

The sky was a shade of bright crispy blue with only a few clouds dotting it here and there. Even with the sun shining the air was slightly chilly thanks to the cold north winds blowing from the sea. The wind would sing a sad tune as it blew through the trees and made the leaves rustle and branches groan wearily.

Saaga loved this sort of weather. She could feel her cheeks flush as the wind blew on her face, tussling her hair and making it look even wilder than it already was. The old man sitting opposite her didn’t look to be enjoying the breeze nearly as much as she did, letting out a disgruntled huff every time it almost blew his hat off. Playing paisho on a windy day like this was a challenge in itself, as the wind could have easily taken off with the tiles.

Saaga rubbed her chin with her forefinger and carefully thought about her next move. Her eyebrows settled into a slight frown and then relaxed, just as she placed her next tile on the board. She smiled and took a sip of tea, although the drink had already turned cold.

“You play a tough game young lady,” the old man said and grinned, showing her a nearly toothless spectacle as he made his move.

“Only because you go easy on me sir,” Saaga laughed and raised an eyebrow in a moment of confusion. She had not expected a move like that. She pursed her lips into a thin line and eyed the board carefully looking for a way to turn the tables. Her opponent had pretty much cornered her and thinking back on her last few tile placements, she might have accidentally given him a hand.

Eventually she gave out a little sigh and chuckled, rubbing her forehead slightly embarrassed.

“It seems I lost this one,” she said and the old man leaned over to shake her hand.

“It was a very good effort. Same time next week?” he replied, smiling so sweetly Saaga could see the dimples in the corners of his mouth.

“Definitely,” she agreed and helped the man clear out the tiles and place them inside the foldable paisho board before taking her leave.

She walked through the park at her own pace, taking in the scenery. In the pond nearby she saw a group of turtleducks swimming around and quacking every time a person would pass them by. They were obviously begging for food. Saaga looked around to see if there were any park personnel around and then made her way over to the pond.

She sat down and searched her shoulder bag in the hopes of finding what was left of her lunch. When she found the half eaten spring rolls, she started crumbling them and threw small bits in the pond for the turtleducks to eat. As the animals started flocking over, she smiled and threw another batch of food for them. They were incredibly cute.

And just then, as she was just starting to enjoy herself she heard someone come up behind her. Eyebrows raised and eyes wide she turned to look who it was, afraid security had come over to warn her. She didn’t think feeding the animals was in the park rule book.

[Tahrro Gao Zhai]

Somehow he had lost it. The only thing he had left of the mother he had never known was somewhere in Republic City, either still unclaimed or already in someone else’s possession. Tahrro had searched all night, dawn had come as a surprise, and now he was full into the day and still searching. There were only a few places left he could still think to go to, hoping against hope the silver wrist-chain could somehow still he there and had escaped detection. The wind seemed fierce to his sleep deprived eyes. Since arriving to Republic City it felt like he never got to sleep anyone, between his two jobs, an internship and the troubles he was having.

He drifted through the park like a hungry ghost, but a noisy one at that. Tripping on a rock strategically placed as a bonus trial in his path by fate, he stumbled forward and caught himself onto a near-by tree, scraping his palm on a sharp protrusion on the rough bark. With a slight quiver, he raised the hand to inspect the damage and noticed the bleeding. The scent of his own blood was nauseating. An infection was the last thing his jobs would welcome. Why oh why had he never learned healing. Oh right, he had been too busy playing vigilante with the world’s bandits.

As his inner voice criticized everything about his past and present lifestyle, he decided to let the wound be for now. It wasn’t deep enough to pose a real concern and splashing water from the river onto it was the most sanitary idea his tired mind could cough up, so he passed. Possessed of a temporarily one track mind, he advanced to the spot where he had sat by the pond, and noticed the young woman currently there only before running into her, so trained had his eyes been on the grassy ground.

Abruptly, he stopped, raising both hands to steady himself, then self-consciously lowered the slightly bloody one back down. He wouldn’t know how to explain that, considering he looked like hell, with dark circles under his eyes, a facial pallor worthy of sickness and various spots of dirt and mud patterning his dark blue and cream clothes from the placed he had crawled into in hopes of finding what he had lost. There were so many potential places it could have dropped. He could probably pass for a cleaner bum.

“Er… don’t mind me, I just lost something, possibly here.” He gestured to the area around them at large. “You wouldn’t happen to have found a silver wrist-chain in the grass, would you?” His blue eyes bore into her, slightly peering from the strain of daylight and sustained consciousness. The variation of color between her own visual orbs just made his peer stronger, convinced he was seeing wrong, but trying to focus on the matter at hand.

The trickle of blood coming down his little finger felt warm.

[Saaga Sun]

Saaga looked at the man, straining her neck to see him better as he was standing directly behind her. Her mouth hung open and her eyes took in the shoddy overall appearance of this stranger. He might have been easy to look at if not for the fact that his clothes were sprinkled with dirt, his skin looked positively ill and his eyes were bloodshot and circled by dark shadows. He looked absolutely ghastly.

Saaga threw the rest of the food crumbs to quacking animals and stood up, wiping her hands on the rough fabric of her baggy trousers. She turned to face the man and gave him an apologetic look.

“No, I have not. Sorry,” she replied and tilted her head a little, her mismatched eyes going over the man, from his face to collarbones and down to his toes and back up again. She wondered if she had looked like that the day she’d stumbled down on to the docks of Republic City, dragging her weakened mother and a band of ragged refugees in tow. She could not help but feel sorry for the man.

“I don’t mean to offend you, but…you look awful. You should sit down for a moment and drink something. You look like you’re just about ready to collapse,” Saaga said, biting her lip and regretting her words not even a full second after she’d uttered them.

For all she knew, she could be talking to a harmless homeless bum, but then again the man could be someone else entirely, like a cutpurse using her good will to his own benefit.

“No, he would not rob me in the middle of the day. We’re in a public place after all,” she thought to herself looking around to make sure there were people in shouting distance.

[Tahrro Gao Zhai]

So she hadn’t. He took her word for it, immediately directing his tired eyes to the ground. There was still a chance it could be in the grass. If only he didn’t feel so dizzy with sleep and hunger. When she spoke up again her suggestion only partially made sense, since there was no water on him. In his haste to leave his small dwelling he had forgotten to take the water pouch he always used for bending. His inner critic was having a field day pointing out the various aspects of his foolishness.

“Can’t sit down. I need to find it.” With that he bent down with some lack of balance and started running his fingers through the grass. There was strained determination in his eyes. “It’s important.” His actions painted some blades of verdure scarlet and his palm stung. “Ah.” He looked at the wound in his hand again. He had forgotten about that. All in all he must have seemed quite odd in his calm and focused agitation.

“I’ve been out all night,” he informed without meaning to and clenched the wounded hand into a fist. Flashbacks of his childhood home assaulted him suddenly. The portrait of his mother on the wall, smiling at him motionlessly, permanently, with inexplicable warmth he could feel even though he had never known her. “I need to find it,” he insisted again, dragging his good hand through the grass anew with more urgency.

He felt sick, tired, hungry, thirsty, angry, but he would let none of those register. If he acknowledged them for one moment he would just lay on the grass and pass out. “It’s all I have of her,” he reminded himself of his motivation out loud, forgetting he had company. Of all the thoughts that ran through his head, not one of them considered the possibility of asking for help.

[Saaga Sun]

Saaga observed the man as he bent down on the grass, palms groping the green blades in a desperate effort to find something. She was growing more worried by the minute and the things this man was saying were not helping her feel any less agitated.

When he yelped she was slightly startled and went closer to have a look. The sight of blood made her frown and without ceremony she stuck her hand in her trouser pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief. She knelt down in front of the man and grabbed his hand, stopping him from further groping the grass. She wiped the blood with the cloth and watched as the pure whiteness became dotted with red.

Once his hand was less bloody, Saaga stood up leaving the handkerchief on his hand as a sort of makeshift bandage. She rolled up the sleeves of her jacket, kicked her wooden sandals off her feet and then knelt down again to help this stranger in his search. The poor fellow would have no luck by himself, she figured. He looked as though he’d fall asleep any minute.

“I’ll help you find it then. What does it look like?” she said and felt the moist grass with her hands and keeping an eye out for something shiny. A few blades of grass immediately stuck halfway inside her metal thumb and cursing under her breath quietly, she removed the thing and hung it from her neck. She’d manage without it just fine for now.

“Do you remember where you saw it last?” she asked him, as she crawled on the ground on all fours like an oversized toddler, her trousers turning green from the knees. What a sight they must make, she thought, looking around and seeing a couple of people walking by and snickering at them.

[Tahrro Gao Zhai]

His hand was suddenly robbed from him and dabbed with something so white it reminded him instantly of untouched northern snows. It stung and his hand tensed. Motionless and on his knees he was forced to sober to the reality of her presence as she tended to his carelessness. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had done him an unsolicited kindness, unless he counted the time someone had lingered by his side briefly when he had been knocked unconscious, but that could have been mere curiosity.

It was now that he noticed her metallic appendage. A metal left thumb was literally strapped to her hand. Silently, he wondered how she had lost it. Before he could form another thought the warmth of her hands was gone and he was left staring at an improvised bandage. “Thanks,” he remembered to say before returning to the search, keeping the napkined hand out of it.

She was on her knees again and intending to help. His first reaction was to tell her he didn’t need it. Tahrro didn’t enjoy being indebted to someone, for whichever reason or in whatever proportion. Stopping himself from continuing down a path of utter idiocy, he replied to her question instead. “A chain bracelet, thick silver links, one of them the shape of a coin with a water tribe symbol on it.” As if she would have to differentiate it from other random silver wrist-chains in park grasses, but specificity couldn’t hurt. Her metal thumb dangled from her neck now.

“No.” When next he looked to her she was feeling around on all fours too. Well, technically he was doing the limp wolf routine. “I don’t know when or where I lost it, I just noticed I didn’t have it anymore when I got home.” So that should make him less of a bum. “So far, it’s not at my workplace, not on the way I took home and if it’s not here then the only place left is Narook’s Noodlery.” So maybe he had looked through the sewer too a little, he didn’t feel the need to mention that, even though his clothes couldn’t help blab about it.

He tore some grass from the ground. “You don’t need to help me, you know, I wouldn’t want to keep you from your schedule.” Conversation was sobering him a little and distracting him from his condition. If he could just find the precious heirloom, he didn’t even mind if he didn’t make it all the way back home. It was nice not to be on two feet.

A wave of dizziness blackened his vision and he stopped fumbling around and closed his eyes powerfully, good hand anchoring onto a fistful of grass. He didn’t recommend not sleeping for two days in a row and working your hands off in between that. When he opened his eyes the ground was still swaying. “Do you… mind searching while I sit down for a moment?” And by that he meant collapse right there and then. Hopefully briefly and without losing consciousness.

[Saaga Sun]

Crawling on all fours like this reminded Saaga of her childhood. She had often played with the boys in her village and crawled through mud and climbed trees, not to mention hidden herself in haystacks during a game of hide and seek. She had thought of marrying one of those boys one day and surely her father would have approved no matter how protective he had been of her. Now those boys were as dead as her dear father.

Listening to the man’s voice Saaga thought it had a pleasant ring to it, even though she could detect a slight slurring of words here and there. No doubt it was due to his tiredness, since he didn’t seem otherwise inebriated. She made mental notes of what he told her and wondered if he’d spent a lot of time searching for it already. Most likely he had.

“Why would that trinket be so important he’d risk his health to find it? And here I am, getting dragged into his pace and helping him…We must both be out of our minds,” she thought to herself but dared not voice her opinion. It was not like someone had forced her to help, it was her own choice. No matter how inconvenient.

“Oh, I know I don’t have to. But you look like you could use some help. I’ve been in a situation where I needed help and nobody was there to give it to me. I’m not going to be like that,” she said with determination and continued her search.

She stood up for a while, walking and feeling the ground with her feet, but all she felt were pebbles and dirt and grass. She wanted to help yes, but at the same time she wondered what she’d gotten herself into. They could be searching through the night for all she knew.

“What a way to spend my day off,” she thought to herself and chuckled.

“Do you… mind searching while I sit down for a moment?” she heard the man say and replied by waving her hand nonchalantly. Of course she would keep looking. She didn’t like leaving something half done or doing something half assed.

[Tahrro Gao Zhai]

The green juice of trodden grass was painting over the dirt and mud that already decorated his beige pants. He needed to find that bracelet, no matter what it cost. His father had shared the story of its ancestry with him when he had been a mere boy of ten, the day he had received it as a birthday present. It had belonged to his mother and his grandmother before her and his great grandfather before that, the original creator. It had taken him five years to finish it and two before that to afford the material. He had wished to give something special to the one he had set to marry and hadn’t asked for her hand until the last detail of his work was done. The proposal was a story in itself but Tahrro’s thoughts focused away from it because it reminded him of his own failed engagement.

At least he had never given her the bracelet. Tahrro frowned. He had lost it instead. The hope he had of finding it was dulling with each unsuccessful combing of grass. A deep void was expanding in his stomach. “Fortune doesn’t favor you my friend, for now you are truly lost.” The words of his once best friend came to mind without warning. The words he had said the day he had sold him to bandits for a half of the profit when Tahrro was returning to the Northern Water tribe with the money from selling the house in Ba Sing Se after his father’s passing. Narhi had come with him, but left just before he did with an excuse he no longer remembered only to await him on the path with a bunch of thugs.

When she replied to his question he was glaring at the ground, but the words made him set aside the short trip down dark memory path. So she had chosen to be better than the careless crowd that hadn’t favored her with acts of kindness. “I should count myself lucky, then.” For once.

They had already covered most of the general spot he had chosen that day. When she casually signaled he could take his rest he lowered onto the abused grass and sat on his back, an arm going across his face to shield his eyes from light. “If you can’t find it further to your left near the pond and across the side towards me to your right, then stop looking, it’s not here.” He sounded like he had already given up, his tone bitter through the veil of exhaustion, the thread of hope he had been clinging on to snapped. He couldn’t imagine not noticing it drop at the Noodlery, and if it had, someone would have found it by now.

As he abandoned hope and relaxed, he became aware of everything that bothered him, from the headache that throbbed in his temples to the sting in his palm. He wanted to sleep but clung to consciousness out of self-outrage for requesting help. “What was it?” He found himself asking. “What did you need help with when no one extended a hand?” There was a slight pause. “Feel free not to answer.” Tahrro didn’t appreciated it when people pried into his life, and he didn’t intend to be one of those people.

“My name’s Tahrro, by the way.” Since they had come this far, might as well introduce himself. A fierce wind nibbled at his skin and rushed through his messy hair, the tie it was caught in almost halfway slid down its length. He would probably lose that in the grass too by the time he got up. “Also, I don’t normally look like I climbed out of bison’s mouth after living there for a week.” Even his jokes sounded bitter. “Sorry you had to witness it.”

[OOC: Feel free to decide if she finds the bracelet or not!]

[Saaga Sun]

The soles of her feet had turned a shade of greenish brown and dirt was getting under her toenails. She probably looked like one of those earthen spirits her mother had often told stories about. With a mere step of the foot they could turn winter into spring and bring life to the withered earth. As a child she had pretended to be a spirit like that, just as much as she had pretended to be an earthbender. Oh the disappointment, when neither of her childish fantasies was true and she had to wake up to the reality of being just a normal girl.

Saaga groped around the area but could not find anything. Finally she stood up and started looking around. There were trees and bushes in the walking distance and small birds were flying amidst the branches. If the bracelet was not on the ground, maybe someone had taken it. Or something. After messing up her clothes, she sincerely wished to find it and embraced all the optimism she could muster. She needed to think outside the box. Where could the bracelet have gone, if it had not been picked up by some undeserving runt.

Somewhere behind her she could hear the man speak and stretching her arms and legs, she came closer to him. She wanted to ask him something anyways.

“Oh…It’s a long story really. You’d fall asleep listening to all the boring details,” she said with a sad smile, though her voice gave no indication of grief.

“The short version is, I nearly starved for two months after coming to this city. No one would hire me and I lived in the streets. Guess it was maybe more than two months now that I think about it. But I guess I wouldn’t be able to appreciate what I have now, if I didn’t have to drag myself up from the pits,” she told the man and crouched down to meet his eyes.

Her sob story wasn’t something she shied away from or tried to hide in any particular way but she was also not comfortable in blabbing out all her hardships to a complete stranger. Well, except now she guessed she atleast knew his name.

“I’m Saaga. It’s nice to meet you even if you’ve crawled out of a bison’s mouth,” she introduced herself as well and jokingly patted Tahrro’s shoulder.

“Have you looked in the trees? There’s quite a few nearby and this park is a haven for filchpies,” she asked then and pointed into the direction of some of the closest trees, where she could see the rust colored birds with their blue caps diving towards the ground and then flying back up again.

[Tahrro Gao Zhai]

Tahrro removed the arm that covered his eyes when she squatted by his side. “I see,” he replied simply to her short confession. He could sympathize with her lengthy dance with hunger although the circumstances for his had been somewhat different. Now that he saw her face again, he decided her eyes really were mismatched. He could barely urge his to remain open. “Sorry to hear it,” he added as an afterthought but even winged, ring-tailed lemurs could tell he wasn’t the type to be shocked to hear of her past distress and, with doe eyes, take her hand and empathize with the tragedy of it. His world hardened eyes could relate.

He got a shoulder pat and decided to push himself into a sitting position. The world was still a mild haze but the break had restored a small portion of his strength. He stared a listless stare. “You’re quite kind, aren’t you,” he commented, searching her eyes for any sign of evidence against it. To his considerable paranoia, it was still plausible to wonder what she hoped to gain from helping him today. Drumming his fingers against the napkin that served him as bandage he tore his probing gaze away. “Likewise, I’m sure,” he said, lacking the friendly chime her tone had had, but not exactly being dishonest. “I appreciate your help.” And that much was true.

When she mentioned filchpies his eyes briefly glanced up. “No, and I’ve a hard time believing birds would have run off with it.” Did they really do that? Tahrro knew as much about filchpies as he did about how firebending felt. Shoving himself back into a standing position he started walking towards the cluster of trees she had bathed in spotlight. “Only one way to find out.”

A walk that reminded of drunks brought him to the first tree. There was no circumstance where he could hope to climb that and come down in any other way but free-fall so he just scanned the branches from his low position. “Do you believe in fate?” He asked, as sudden as the first lightning to crash down from a storm cloud, in the same lusterless tone that colored his day. He peered into the treetops as they swayed to the touch of wind. “Also, what brought you to Republic City and how long ago was that?” Tahrro assumed she already understood he didn’t demand answers, just posed questions she was free to ignore.