Inherited names had been accepted as tradition gods-knew-how-long ago in the family of Lulu the First, first singer of the Indigo-Go's. Every generation, a name would be passed down father to son, mother to daughter, both if possible. As far as she'd searched, she remembered that elsewhere in her family was a name that was five or—perhaps six generations old, and Lulu the First had an older sister who was named for their mother and a chain of grandmothers. When Lulu herself laid a single egg at the top of her career, atypical but not a warning for the impending drying-up of the sea, she knew she'd started the passing of her own name, maybe for good—her family seemed to be good at producing daughters.

When that much had sunk in, its touching down produced a ripple of thrilled appreciation and comprehension of what had kept the passing of names going on so long unenforced. It occurred to her that the tradition was all about symbolic immortality. The longer a name went on in the family, the more Zoras that one name stood for, and the bigger its tribute the continuous passing became, whether or not anyone gave much thought to its source. At the same time, it allowed more and more children to be attached to one word. Zoras didn't live forever, even notably longer than most other common races, but maybe-just-maybe names could, with hundreds of lives attached to them in spirit.

She'd smiled for a little while when that much had hit her.

She'd actually gotten an exhilarated rush when her egg hatched into a speckled, limbless little tadpole of a baby girl—if anything, it was more exciting for someone like her, with a name courtesy of parents' imagination, if they gave names much weight, since it would be a chance to start the immortalizing of a brand new name. The freshness of that revelation lasted a few hours.

But those two little bursts of fascination were the last thought she really gave the tradition for its own sake. After initial excitement from realizing, ah-ha, one's finally gotten something, one is comfortable putting it down where it can blend into all other stored thoughts unless it's brought up again—but it was only never explicitly brought up again.

As Lulu the Second developed into something recognizable as a Zora, it was obvious she'd picked up her mother's most notable features: her eyes lightened to purple, the fins at her shoulders grew out fanlike, and she grew out a crownlike hammerhead structure to her skull instead of the usual streamlined tail. Lulu the First taught her how to sing and brought her along to every performance the band gave, making sure she got the perfect spot in the crowd or just backstage. Her daughter was there for what she had proudly assured her was their biggest concert ever at the Carnival of Time (rivaled by one that allegedly took place for the royal family at the Zora's Domain, a place which her daughter never went on to see. That concert was the debut of the Ballad of the Wind Fish, and from which a small pack of fans—including a young lady of Zoran heroic descent and her husband—followed the band home to the Great Bay. Big, indeed, but not nearly as festive as the Carnival of Time, and from her Lulu the First's accounts, not nearly as fun as nonstop fireworks, music, dancing, food, and playing with every race of Termina in one place).

Lulu the First never lived to see her daughter take over as lead singer of the Indigo-Go's, on account of a very suddenly-acquired and very slowly-identified illness. Those who did felt the inkling that she did watching the tadpole grow into a girl intensified—Lulu the Second was her mother again. Lulu was immortal, the both of them.

When Lulu the Second first saw her own children, all seven, hatched and healthy, she felt the same two bursts of fascination that her mother did—the first one was not for herself, of course, since her name was a hand-me-down already, even if it was a first-generation one; it was for Mikau. There were, as she'd expected, more girls than boys—five to two, which still left room for first assigning names from two parents. She carefully picked Lulu the Third, and before she could move on, Mikau had picked from the boys and given his decision with a thick and uneven tone as if they were underwater and his name was a bubble. Emotional, she thought, considering he was the one who had watched them hatch—but maybe he was feeling what passing his own name meant, too.

She already knew just how much she, personally, echoed her mother. By the time the tadpoles were ready to come home with her and their father to Zora Hall, she could pick out Lulu the Third's skull shaping and Mikau the Second's fintips taking on a yellow tint. She sang the kids traditional and first- and second-generation Indigo-Go's songs, and let them synchronized-swim and hum in a little tank on the side of the stage at shows. Mikau would sometimes play his guitar for them as a lullaby, or when they swam up the nearby stream to play at the waterfall as a family. Some songs, she recognized, but plenty she'd never heard before and wondered if he'd saved or composed just for them.

She asked Mikau just how much of themselves they'd see in their respective little counterparts watching them grow up. Something about the question apparently impressed him—he blinked hard, opened his mouth for a second, and blinked again in a daze; and the next time she saw him, he was on the cape, playing some slow Sheikah song for the kids in the water below (she asked—he said it was called the Song of Time).

He'd gotten much more quiet after the kids had been born. Contemplative.

Lulu assumed that somewhere in that contemplation, he was picturing the same things she was and along the same lines that her mother must have. Lulu the Third and Mikau the Second would take over in the Indigo-Go's when their parents retired. Lulu would develop the same siren voice as her mother and grandmother, grow into not only a jazz singer but pop star image, attract two types of admiration between Zora men and women. Mikau would pick up the knack for making the guitar gently weep, as his dad's fans described his style, dance, and lure and hook the squiggly-inside attention of the ladies even past intention. Lulu's family were guardians of the Great Bay Temple, and these kids were next in a line of not only temple guardians but warriors and champions, on Mikau's side. Mikau the Second was bound to be athletic and adventurous, a quick fighter, bold, hot-blooded, proud and willing to live up to being the son of a man who had gone it alone to the fully-guarded Gerudo pirates' fortress and sea-snake-infested Pinnacle Rock through polluted water to take his seven kidnapped children home, and who had fought to save the sea spirit in the temple. He would be a champion and a groundbreaker.

Lulu felt a new level of gladness she'd fallen for Mikau—everything was renewal. He'd been brought into her family's tradition, and she was honored grateful to have—of course, with his help—begun immortalizing in such a plain-to-see-way everything that made him who he was, that contributed to the love of everyone he talked to and the admiration of everyone he didn't talk to only because it was just about impossible to meet and greet every Indigo-Go's fan out there, one by one.

By the time that this thought was anything articulate, it was the first anniversary of the Carnival of Time's near-apocalypse. The moon was bright this time, and practically at the top of Clock Town's tower wherever an observer stood, in a sense distinctly not equal to falling short of colliding with it. The kids were big enough to come to a second Carnival of Time Indigo-Go's show, with roadies bringing along a few urns full of water for them to refresh their still-underdeveloped respiratory systems in. The band played in celebration of having lived to the anniversary of the averted moon crash to have what they had now, and almost everyone on the planet had it on their mind and celebrated the same thing. Lulu pointed the kids' attention up when the fireworks went off.

And that just had to be the last time she remembered seeing Mikau. It didn't bother her. He'd taken to disappearing from time to time even after the pirates and temple. She figured he had similar reasons. He was the born-and-bred Zora champion—maybe a year ago had been a wake-up call of sorts, maybe it had given him a need to find something of import to channel his hot blood into when music wasn't exactly the right fit. And she had been dead scared the first time, when she told him about the eggs. He'd come back in the end and from the temple after that, with best possible results. Got to have the same amount of confidence in him he had in himself.

Later, she'd think there had been an awful lot of perhapses, but this was not later.

They went home without him. They looked back on the carriage ride to the Great Bay just to see if he was somewhere close and trying to catch up, and consistently saw nothing but other carnival-goers leaving Clock Town, riding or in the case of a few Gorons rolling out across the field from the middle.

After they put the kids down for bed, Lulu let herself out onto Zora Cape—there was nobody there, and she was restless.

She let herself fall straight down into the bay and she took off like a frilled torpedo, and once in open water, spun and barrel-rolled a few times, letting her fins twirl outward, jumped and fanned them out when she felt herself slowing to the top and flattening them against her back to dive further down. She could picture it every time, and somehow it was gratifying.

At some point it struck her she was showing off, trying to make herself as unmistakable as she could to wayward fathers swimming nearby or approaching from the beach, and in a moment just a moment something steered her towards the shallows and pulled her leaping out onto dry land.

The beach was empty, or at least this stretch of it was—Like-Likes had a tendency to gather on the beach path to the waterfall at night. So Mikau certainly wasn't in the water or on the beach, and visiting the waterfall at night would have been more trouble than it was worth for a fellow who was due to come home. Certainly.

She started not-all-that-consciously wandering further inland, and pictured herself leaning against the gate at the path leading to Termina Field up through the cliffs, looking out to the palm trees that marked it. She didn't come here alone often, at all, but those flocking seagulls were there as always, she noted, white feathers everywhere...

Something else pale stood out to her against dark, lower than the sky, off one edge of the path. She felt a chill—didn't fit—and diverted herself. Not just pale, once she was close enough to really see it, but a Zora-scale blue-shine-on-white, with fins on the sides...

She full-on, full-body shuddered next. It was a Zora's mounted face.

A mask, actually, from the looks of it, though who could tell what it was made out of, but so uncanny that the most nondescript Zora in the world could have stuck their face in a mold to have it made, or had it cut off, reinforced, and preserved, even. It was uncanny enough that it felt possessed—personal, not just owned but a part of something. Not just a belonging but a piece of someone.

Out floated her hands to confirm the mask's nature with her teeth bracing together in a closed mouth. They stayed suspended in some imaginary radiated substance, waiting for a ghost-slap away for attempting to touch something they shouldn't. It didn't come so she didn't stop. Her hands drifted just a bit further forward, and in the next instant without any rushed sound or conscious movement the mask was in her hands and up against her dress as if it had pulled itself in.

It was just a mask, all right, at least as far as its composition went. It was inorganically even and smooth everywhere she touched, front and back. And she touched it thoroughly, letting her fingers run all around, turning it up and watching them and the two reflective spots painted on the black shark eyes to simulate caught-light shine, and then just those spots in subconscious expecting whoever's face she was staring into to recognize her, or vice versa, if they stared long enough. It still looked normal and felt even more possessed—but whoever she was touching through it didn't seem to mind.

Lulu thought of Mikau again and snapped her attention away from the mask. She looked up.

Then realized that the mask had been mounted on a fishbone guitar. The exact same kind as Mikau's, and there came and went a flash of incoherent excitement—but it was worn. It had been sticking upright in the sand for a while.

The Guitar of Waves, however, was an heirloom. Had he left it here on purpose and had it replicated a while ago without anyone knowing...?

Pressing the mask to her chest with one hand, she ran a finger of the other over the ribs and realized they were carved, and leaned in to inspect them. They were lyrics.

They were unmistakable ones. Mikau's rock spins on a pair of traditional songs. The funny thing was that he hadn't played either one in since before the kids were born, now that she thought about it. She'd completely forgotten about them—she giggled and smiled to herself, quick and with just enough voice to warm out the creeping disorientation and anxiety building in the lower back of her head. Like the guitar and mask together were some dubious artifact with an easy enough name and use to connect it to; but not a clue as to its source, past, and purpose. She scanned the ribs for more nostalgic songs, the two running in her mind causing her to write up the questions she had for Mikau lyrically, about the guitar, the music, and for that matter the mask.

Her eyes finally settled on the longest carved rib. Its writing was the most curt, not from end to end, but the tallest and deepest. A statement. Maybe a message. She moved her head to the side to find the best angle to read it from, where the biggest difference could be made out between the amounts of light the surface and carvings caught.

She held her breath automatically to give the delivery of a secret its due.

Here lies

Mikau, guitarist of the Zora tribe.

Mikau had last been seen at the carnival a few hours ago.

An imaginary burst of waterfall spray burst into her face and she was knocked back a step, dazed and shivering with a sharp, panicking ache in her chest from the shock. She shook her head in an attempt to throw off the feeling and breathed hard to regain her bearings as she turned and looked around. It was still a few hours after the carnival on the same night. Same amount of trees, they were the same height, the same tide as when she'd gone onto the beach, the Marine Lab just offshore was in the same condition, and she was certain there were just as many gulls as before - though for once they were starting to go away, one or two at a time directing their flight patterns a stretch at a time closer to the water. One out of everything else.

This guitar was weathered. Mikau's earlier had been in perfect condition, just the way he'd always kept it.

She remembered going the opposite way from the waterfall on the main beach from the beginning, but cold particles sprayed and froze against her scales and her blood in surges, the cold blood rushed through her ears in a dizzying roar and rushed until it boiled - she had to be blushing of all things and reactions to confusion - and she breathed it in. Her lungs and entire inside were freezing.

It was a warm night, she was healthy, why was she freezing all of a sudden? Where was Mikau, how long had his guitar been here, how long was it really since the carnival? How long had she been out here on the beach? Years? Had Mikau come back and left this while she was swimming and she'd been out long enough to catch something, maybe the same something as her mother, she was cold and too feverish to think...

Lulu dropped onto her knees, bent over the mask in the sand, and squeezed it to her hard as she could, confusion and panic surging to the top in her head with no room left to work around them and let them out, and they spilled out in sobs and the squeezing.

Her head cleared enough and her scrambled thoughts collected like water droplets.

The first fully-formed one was just another question, as to whether or not it was going to be in the nature of the name Mikau to disappear.

Edited and cross-posted to AO3.