Road to Ba Sing Se | Zuko

06

❃ Unwanted discoveries ❃

Keya was out wandering the next day in search of food. Back at the shack, Zuko was fast asleep after a long night of watching his uncle. The boy had collapsed out of sheer exhaustion only a few hours ago. Once Keya was certain that he was asleep, she grabbed her hip pouch and left to forage as she so often did nowadays. The girl left her other possesions behind.

The woods nearby were rather barren, so it took Keya a bit longer to find the right stuff. As a matter of fact, it even took her a while to find anything at all! So far she had only been able to find some (rather sour) berries. Thankfully, a small dumpling weed sprouted out from between two boulders.

"Ha! Mushi will love this!" Keya walked over to the green plant and plucked its tiny legumes, before realising her mistake.

"Iroh. His name is Iroh, Keya. Don't forget..." She mumbled softly. Although the sting of finding out that her friend had not told her his real name had long since faded, adjusting to his new- or old?- name still took her some time.

After taking the dumpling weed's legumes, Keya calmly strolled back over to her temporary home. The girl hoped that she'd be able to get back in time to be there for Iroh once he woke up. Perhaps she could prepare some tea for the old man... She had seen him do it a couple of times now, anyway. How hard could it be?

Back at the shack, Zuko had just woken up from his deep sleep. The teenage boy rubbed a callous hand against his unscarred eye (he had learned through experience not to rub the sensitive skin around his other eye). He sat up and looked around, making sure to check on his wounded uncle. Zuko sighed in relief when he noticed his uncle's deep breaths and soft snoring. It looked like Keya had been right; he would be fine.

As soon as the young girl crossed his mind, Zuko noticed that the shack was rather empty. She was gone! Usually, he could hear her annoying hums sing some strange Earth Kingdom tunes. But now, the sounds of birds and his uncle's snoring seemed rather boring without her voice filling the air.

For a scary second, Zuko thought that she may have left him during the late hours of the night while he was asleep. It wouldn't be the first time that something like that had happened to him. However, he quickly spotted her worn rucksack propped up against the wall with her cloak still on the floor from when she had rested on it the night before. Perhaps she had simply gone off to scout the area, he figured with a sigh.

In the meantime, the banished Prince decided to prepare some tea for his uncle. Zuko scavenged through his uncle's stuff to find tea leaves and spark rocks. He managed to find some leftover jasmine tea in his uncle's bag, but struggled with finding the spark rocks. Where had Keya left them? He wondered as he thought back to the day before. He remembered quite clearly that Keya had stored them somewhere. He just couldn't remember the exact spot.

Zuko quickly grew impatient. He tried to calm himself down with breathing exercises, but found that he didn't have the will to wait without his uncle's guidance. It had been a long, exhausting week after all. And Zuko was never the type of person to wait and struggle when the answer lay right in front of him.

"I'm a fire bender" he scoffed to himself "and the girl is gone anyway... What am I doing trying to find spark rocks of all things?"

He stood up and shook his head. Perhaps his uncle's hospitable ways had rubbed off on him. Since when did he care about what some travelling girl thought about him, anyway? The whole thing seemed ridiculous to the frustrated teen.

Zuko grabbed some leftover firewood from the pile that Keya had collected for them the night before and stacked the sticks on top of one another carefully. He made sure to place the smaller, and thus more easily burnable, sticks at the centre of his pile. The larger ones were piled on top of the smaller ones, leaving the solid structure with enough airflow and wooden fuel to burn easily. After constructing his pile, Zuko carefully placed his uncle's tea pot and pot holder over the fire.