Chapter One
Ruto Paints
17 Farore's Moon, 3711
It was time to paint.
Ruto stroked, her unblinking eyes following her brush intently. Something was taking shape, as it always did...
Once more, Link appeared.
The plains of Hyrule Field rolled into their majestic, glorious, view, as did the newly restored Hyrule Castle in the North, and Epona stopped suddenly to snort and to eat breakfast. Link jumped off his horse, giving her a good pat, and splashed himself well with the water from Zora Stream. Had he been on the other side of Hyrule, he would have liked to catch the clouds of steam rising off Lake Hylia, but not today. He had a lot to do. He didn't know what, exactly, but he had things to do.
First of all, shaving.
He liked shaving. He'd cast Nayru's Love to protect himself from nicks and scratches, and from then on, it was just a matter of taking out his razor and cutting off loose hairs.
Second of all, clothes. He stripped down and washed his clothes in the water, clean and fortified every day by the Zoran population.
Third of all, bathing. While the clothes dried, he washed himself in the water. The water was quite cold, icy, almost, and he would have preferred the Lake, which was where he'd bathed yesterday, but today he needed to be near the stream.
Fourth of all, dressing. Nabooru wrinkled her nose when she saw him on account of this, having only three outfits, and Zelda was constantly begging him to buy new clothes. He wouldn't. What was more, he couldn't. There was something important, deathly important, about Kokiri Forest and his Kokiri tunic, and he knew he should leave, he was eighteen years old now, he couldn't live with children anymore, he couldn't wear the same clothes all the time, it wasn't right, as Zelda said naggingly, as Ruto said quietly, as Nabooru said loudly. Impa stayed quiet.
Darunia... Link hadn't seen Darunia for a while. Something about Darunia did not sit well with Link. Link didn't like the Gorons that much. He didn't like the Zoras that much, either, actually. They were too extreme, both of them. The Gorons were literally too humble, too Earth-dwelling, to a point where it made him uncomfortable, and their childlike innocence was not endearing. The Zoras, on the other hand, could not be more of the opposite of the Gorons. Ruto seemed to be the only sane one of the bunch, and she was their Princess, which was saying a lot.
Then there was just Link. Once more, he was an outcast. His fairy had left him, Navi had left him, and she had never, ever, returned. For some reason, he was still bound to Kokiri Forest, yet he couldn't live there. The children didn't tease him anymore, but he couldn't seem real living among ten-year-olds. Saria was his friend, but that was about it. He felt sorry for them, horribly sorry, but not as sorry as he felt for himself.
He pleasured himself every day, but he didn't know what to. And every time he came, he would burst into tears. He told nobody. It was right there, in the Hylian scriptures, under lying with men and beasts and family and children, that pleasuring yourself was sin, sin, sin. The worst part about it was that again, Link didn't know what to. He was aroused, but by nothing, by air, and sitting, and sleeping. He feared it was Epona. He didn't really think it was Epona.
Ruto came into the equation. Inter-species marriage was obviously illegal, so their marriage had never come into being. It had occurred to him, once, how desperately in love with him she must have been to try and break that rule, but he had dismissed it--she must have made a mistake.
His only pleasure--and even this he was desperately ashamed of--was killing. Killing demons and once-minions of Ganondorf. It almost relaxed him, to see a blue Tektite fade into the air, to rid the land of impending evil. Yet there was something wrong about it all. He was the Hero of Time, and he was charged with ridding the land of monsters.
Why were they monsters? There were schools of Octoroks and Tektite dens and Peahat--well, Peahats were relatively solitary. They had never been known to attack a village...
They did always attack you. Always. Self-defending animals only attacked when they really had to. Most of the time, they ran away. And the monsters even attacked those. Why did the monsters exist? Was it because of Ganondorf? Why did the evil take form in Hyrule?
Link came.
Ruto stopped, exhausted. She didn't know if her visions were true, and even then, she did not feel well, prying so much into Link's brain. She, obviously, did not judge him. The reason the Hylians were not at peace with the Zoras (and especially the Gerudos) was because both groups were "pagan" (specifically the Gerudos, to which they added "witches"). A typical Zora would have judged him, but not for the same reasons as the Hylians. The early Hylian missionaries had been successful with the Gorons, but not with the Zoras, and obviously not with the Gerudos.
Well, the Zoras were no longer at peace with the Royal Family. The Castle, if not the Archdeacon Priest, had accepted the Zoras' unwillingness to convert, and Ruto remembered the days when the Zora Waterfall had reacted only to Zelda's Lullaby, the secret Royal melody. Subsequent to the war and the Hylians imposing their religion, King Zora had angrily changed the song to the Serenade of Water (the Royal Family did not know this song, but Link did). Zelda did, too, actually, but Ruto didn't tell her father this.
But she needed to help Link, desperately--she didn't have Zelda's telepathic abilities, at least not enough to contact him directly.
She lifted her brush again. Maybe Nabooru...
Nabooru woke up, suddenly, with a sharp breath. She looked around, bewildered, and gradually her senses become known to her. She silently watched the harsh Dinbeam of the Desert Colossus entering through the square hollow in the right-hand stone wall. She felt a tickling between her breasts and turned to Valja, who grinned and gave her a slow kiss on the lips.
"Good morning," she said, and kissed her again. Then she looked up at the smiling Nabooru's flaming orange eyes. She added, "My Queen."
"My Queen," said Nabooru, rubbing Valja's shoulder.
"We're each other's Queens," they said together, and giggled. Nabooru fingered Valja's freshly-branded wedding band, a sense of pure rest and peace entering her body as she did so.
"This won't help Hylian relations, you know," said Valja, grinning. Nabooru adored her grin. Like most Gerudos, Valja had an almost cartoonish face, full, fat, lips, exuding sex and power, sometimes purple, sometimes white, but mostly Valja used a color that was almost a strange mix of emerald and maroon. Her eyes, her lips, her tits... everything about Valja was big except her actual frame, and it was a running joke among Nabooru's people that it was a coincidence that Nabooru's new bride just happened to be the sexiest woman alive. Her skin surged with heat and was a rich golden color, hearkening back to a more pure bloodline of Gerudo--most Gerudos had developed the pale white skin of their Hylian fathers.
But she did love Valja.
Nabooru grinned back. "Please. They'd find a way to complain even if I become a born-again."
"So what are we going to do today?" said Valja, still tracing a line around Nabooru's nipples. "More noony," she said, answering her own question.
Nabooru laughed. "Not all day, sillypants."
She wouldn't have believed herself not three months ago. Marriage was a Hylian concept, an archaic, mainstream, thing, trapping a man and a woman together for every other reason but love. A marriage between two women had never been done before, not even among Nabooru's people. Technically, extremely technically, the Hylian Scriptures did not forbid it, but this was only because they were too sexist and corrupt for their own good. It forbade relations between men. All the forbidden sexual practices only pertained to men.
And yet, the Gerudos needed to continue. The outcasts, the ones who slept with men for pleasure, typically never returned, and obviously the Gerudo had that fucked-up gene, the one where one man was born every hundred years. And the last man who had been born was...
Ganondorf.
Nabooru's mind always went blank when the name entered her mind. Something about him terrified her beyond her soul, beyond her blood, beyond her pride as a Gerudo woman.
She knew she had to fix the population decrease. In the past, the women had gone to the city to market themselves as prostitutes, using various magic spells to disguise themselves, but this practice had grown out of popularity. None of the Gerudos wanted a dick in their cooch. This was a problem.
A spell?
"Val," said Nabooru. "We have to save our people."
"Nab, please," said Valja breathlessly, plunging Nabooru's head back down.
She would perform the greatest Gerudo act since Queen Namoria's emancipation of the Hylians.
Or it would be her undoing.
She painted, she painted, she lifted the brush, she put it down, it was her life, her life, to go on, she was failing, she knew that. Her life was a mess. Her father grew older and older, and fatter and fatter, and with each day passed, she knew she wasn't married, and she knew the Zoras knew she wasn't married, and all that she knew was that she wasn't married to Link, all because of the stupid, stupid, law. They didn't have to have children. She was fine with that. She moaned. Obviously the rest of the Zora, and especially her father, was not.
She thought of the Sages, of their time together, of Princess Zelda, of Chief Darunia, of Impa, of Queen Nabooru, of Saria, of Rauru, who was dead, and, of course, of Link.
Of Link was nothing new. Obviously. One only had to step inside her chambers to know what she thought of Link. Paintings and paintings, not all of Link, some of fairies, of Zoras, of her mother, but mostly, mostly, mostly of Link, shooting arrows, killing monsters, riding Epona. Of course, no one would know what she thought of Link. No one ever had to come in here. She left, three times a day, for meals, because it was her duty.
And her father had married. She didn't know how, her father was so ghastly and bulging, and his wife, her new "mother", Mykiss. There was celebration, of course.
She didn't care.
Why did her life seem so stale?
It would seem so much easier, so much more real, if she didn't spend her days as the Princess of Zora's Domain, of the Zoras. The Sage of Water, moreover.
The Sage of Water. She preferred not to think about being the Sage of Water. Not to say no one believed her; she hadn't tried everybody. She didn't care. She'd told her father, and that had been enough. He believed the actual story of the Imprisoning War only up to the point that Ruto had helped save Hyrule. None of the Zoras were expected to keep up with the ridiculous story of the Hero of Time's Arrows of Light, of the prophecy of the three Triforces finally coming together being fulfilled. All that mattered was that Ganondorf had been destroyed, and that Link and the leaders of all the sentient races of Hyrule had banded together to destroy him.
Unfortunately, all the sentient races of Hyrule had not banded together.
Saria, the Sage of the Forest, a little Kokiri girl from the Lost Woods.
Darunia, the Sage of Fire, the Chief of the Gorons of Death Mountain.
Impa, the Sage of Shadow, the only known remaining Sheikah, of the eerie Kakariko Village.
Nabooru, the Sage of Spirit, the Queen of the Gerudos from the western valley.
Rauru, the Sage of Light, a mysterious old man living in the Chamber of Sages.
Zelda, the Seventh Sage, the so-called bearer of the Triforce of Wisdom and the daughter of the King of Hyrule.
Link, the Hero of Time, and the so-called bearer of the Triforce of Courage.
And she, Ruto, the Sage of Water, the daughter of King Zora of Zora's Domain.
All the Zoras resumed their lives, untroubled by the rumors of how they'd been freed, waiting for the day their Lord Jabu-Jabu would finally return.
Princess Zelda...
Zelda walked. She walked lightly, the edges of her royal dress concealing her shoeless feet. It was dragging on the ground, but who really cared? She knew she'd catch it from Impa later, she thought to herself. It was freeing, somewhat, walking with no shoes, not picking up the tresses of her dress.
Something caught her eye as she walked past a tree, a flash of gray, sticking out in the greenery of the new Castle of Hyrule, and she narrowed her eyes. She pulled apart a bush to reveal a Stone of Gossip, one of those Sheikan clocks and some of the only remnants of their race (aside from Impa, of course). Zelda kicked it, mostly out of boredom. It jiggled cartoonishly for a moment, then stopped and the time, 7:34, rang in Zelda's head. She closed her eyes. 7:34.
What about?...
She remembered hearing something about a mask with the Sheikan symbol on it, that eye, that revealed the secrets of the Gossip Stones. She wondered if she could harness it with her telepathic abilities. Zelda clapped her hands and looked at the Gossip Stone.
That eye...
Zelda began to feel slightly uneasy.
The outline around the red eye seemed more defined now, and seemed to be growing... not bigger, but more, more, forceful, piercing, and Zelda cried out, suddenly.
They say that, contrary to her elegant image, Princess Zelda of Hyrule Castle is, in fact, a tomboy!
And the eye was completely normal again and the voice left Zelda standing there, blinking. Then he found herself inflating with rage. What kind of a WORD was that, anyway? What was that supposed to mean? And why did it sound so excited?
Zelda paused, brought her chin up, and bit down. She dusted off her dress. She really wasn't a tomboy. She marched back towards her tower to get her shoes and to clean off the bottom of her dress.
Ruto frowned. Okay, so the princess wasn't involved in anything interesting.
An impish smile tugged at her lips. What about Link?
She took the still drying portrait of him out again, positioned it on the easel, and began to paint...
Link rode, silently, Din rising ever higher behind him, Epona trotting patiently towards Kokiri Forest. Why was he returning? The point of his days was to get away, get away from that place, to keep himself from thinking about the children, their purpose, their fate, his fate.
Kokiri Forest.
Farore.
What were those children? Were they cursed? Were they even children? They couldn't answer any of his questions...
Okay, maybe Zelda was more interesting.
"Princess, your father requests your attention at sixteen of the clock tomorrow," said Impa, after knocking.
Zelda smirked from her desk, still holding a quill over a piece of parchment. "I see he doesn't seem to request my attention anytime else."
Impa said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Zelda bit. "Why?"
"The King has organized a meeting among the leaders of Hyrule. You are to be there."
Zelda perked up. "Who's going to be there?"
"I should imagine, the leaders of the Zora, the Goron, and the Gerudo."
Zelda waited. "Is that it?"
"I believe so. Were you expecting anyone else?"
Zelda shrugged. "I don't know, I... is it just the leaders, or their families, too?"
Impa opened her mouth, then stopped. She thought, considered, and spoke. "The Zora King Zora, the Zora Queen Mykiss, and the Zora Princess Ruto. The Goron King Darunia, the Goron Queen Fila, and the Goron Prince Link. The Gerudo Queen Nabooru." At this, Impa shut her mouth, and she shut it well, eyeing Zelda.
Zelda bit down on her jaw equally as hard. "That foolish man," she said, turning back around to her desk.
"You're just lucky I didn't tell his Majesty where you went last week," said Impa. "He could have had you arrested for treason."
Zelda spun around. "What in Hyrule has been with you lately?"
Impa's eyes flashed. "The question, Griselda, is what has been with you!"
"What do you mean, been with me? Because I went to Nabooru's wedding? That's what's with me?"
"You are representing your father, my Princess, and the entire Royal Family," Impa said thinly.
Zelda screamed. "I'm representing ME! Nabooru is my friend. She helped save HYRULE, Impa! She was a fellow Sage, Impa, I don't know how you can treat her this way!"
Impa said nothing. She watched Zelda, silently, nothing going through her head, too much, too much there to even take shape.
The Sage of Shadows's brain was filled with shadows.
Ruto breathed. An invitation to the castle. Hyrule Castle. She knew Hyrule was in turmoil... maybe it was just normal, maybe nothing would ever be perfect. Even before the Imprisoning War, as a child, she knew things hadn't been well. Even before Lord Jabu-Jabu had been cursed. Was that before the Gorons had been converted to Hylianism?
The Gorons.
Darunia, then she would paint Saria. Then, Rauru.
Sweat poured readily down Darunia's back so one would have thought it was raining. But it wasn't. He was sweating. He was climbing a mountain; necessary Royal Goron business was all that it'd said in the letter he'd left to Link and Fila. He wasn't climbing Death Mountain. He wasn't even in Hyrule anymore.
It had all started about five weeks ago, when that mysterious puppy had arrived in Goron City. The puppy was almost solid rock, and there had been a bustle of screaming when Lagoron tried to eat it only to find out it was alive. He brought it before Darunia.
The puppy made no sound. It was black, and at first Darunia thought it was a statue of some sort. But then the puppy jumped into Darunia's arms and a--what you would call a tongue-- a cold, dry, tongue--protruded out of what you would call its mouth, and licked Darunia's face. Darunia, taking advantage of his telepathy as a Sage, read the dog.
Rock. Land. Ancient. Evil.
Darunia didn't know about an evil being, per se--he had believed Ganondorf did evil things, and even that he was possibly the King of Evil, but merely that he was misguided--but he did know about evil. And he didn't believe that this puppy had been cursed.
The puppy had then burst into an array of molten rock, leaving Darunia alone in his chambers. So he left, leaving Fila and Link the note. He hadn't been back in four weeks. He'd gone down the other side of Death Mountain, searching, and making notes, and making maps, and searching.
Now he was climbing a mountain.
It was cold, much colder than Hyrule and especially Death Mountain. To put this in perspective, to Darunia it was cold, but to humans it would have been quite normal. Gorons are used to high temperatures, bathing in the molten lava of Death Mountain Crater and enjoying the sulfur fumes that are exuded from the mountain. This area was not good for Darunia. He was not climbing an active volcano. Soon it would become too cold even for humans. A strange, white, substance would begin to fall very soon.
Saria wondered, wondered, sat in her house and wondered. She suddenly became angry. Her very title demanded knowledge. So why didn't she know?
She would have to ask Link what he'd been doing for the last seven years.
But no, it was more than that. What was she? The other children were just that--children. Even Mido hadn't seemed to grow up. Nobody grew up. The Twins, the Know-it-all Brothers, the children had continued their sunny days in the woods, momentarily interrupted by the demons of the Forest Temple, a scary time for all, albeit, but only scary. Then it was back to their simple lives, occasionally noticing that Link was gone, had never come back, and this new man, this other man, had come, and he had not turned into a Stalfos, not yet, anyway.
Saria had not grown up physically. But she had grown up in her mind. She couldn't remember a time when she had not been herself, when she had not been green-haired, when she hadn't been playing with the Twins. And yet she remembered Link, the day he'd come, the day that Hylian woman had come to the forest, as if it were only yesterday...
Saria had woken up, with a start, and she sat for a moment, her breath turning to mist in the early morning air. She swallowed and woke up Bagu. He jumped and flew up to the ceiling, illuminating the room, and Saria screamed when she saw blood on her floor, leaking steadily from a robed figure. She stopped screaming, watching the blood pool out from the body, and cautiously lifted her bedcovers. She gave a sharp shiver in the cold, and she saw her breath again. Bending down, she reached a trembling hand towards the figure and quickly pulled the hood off.
It was a human, Saria was sure of it, but anything else was hard to discern. The hair was matted against the human's skull with drying blood. After a few moments, Saria realized she was still watching, and snapped to Bagu. "Bagu! Get... tell the Great Deku Tree! Go to him! Quick!" This was too important for Saria to worry about a moment's pain from being far away from her fairy. Bagu, after a moment's hesitation, zoomed out of the house, and Saria was bathed in darkness once more and the vague, dull, pain, in her stomach started, the feeling one got when far away from her fairy.
She lit a lantern (this was before she had her Forest Sage powers) and stopped breathing. Now there should have been no other sound. It was deathly quiet, except for a quiet--no, muffled, mewing--sound coming from the body. Saria crouched down again and listened. It was louder. She reached out, blindly, and felt until something caught in her hand, almost ball-ish. Carefully, Saria kept her hand there and brought her other hand in to explore. Not twenty seconds later, she was standing, holding a wailing baby wrapped in a colorless blanket, not sure entirely what to do.
Bagu flew back in. "He--" Bagu skidded to a stop in the air. "What on earth is that?"
Saria looked down at the crying mess she held in her arms. "I really don't know." She looked back at Bagu. "What'd the Deku Tree say?"
"He said to take the body to him. He told me to help you." Bagu crossed his arms. "It looks like I'll be doing most of the work, though."
Saria nodded, somewhat deadly. Bagu frowned. "Okay, let's do this." He flew down next to the body and rubbed his hands. Before Saria could blink, Bagu had the body hovering in the air at exactly her height.
Saria and Bagu stepped into the aurora. Without a word, they had made their way to the Deku Tree.
Now Saria breathed and remembered the body floating in front of the Deku Tree. Her cloak--for it was a woman, they discovered as her cloak fell on the ground, and the Deku Tree, without a word, the entire ceremony went by wordlessly, cleaned her until she was shining and naked. She was beautiful, Saria thought. She remembered looking down at the baby after the woman was safely entombed in the ground before the Great Deku Tree and placing a tender finger on his nose, quieting him. He was a big baby, fat, crying, bawling at the top of his lungs, almost as if he knew what had happened.
Link us.
Impa sulked.
She didn't call it sulking, of course. Nobody else would have, either. To see the great Impa sulking would be like... like a Kokiri expressing sexual desire.
It wasn't done, was the point.
She didn't know, she didn't understand, and it wasn't like she alone in her confusion, either. People generally agreed that... acts... between two women or two men were sick, abominable; perhaps there had been some abuse in the perpetrators' pasts.
But two women getting married was beyond the pail. It couldn't, wouldn't, make a dent in Impa's mind. A man and a woman loved each other. That was how it went.
Except if you'd decided to be chaste, like Impa.
A formal letter from the Gerudo Valley had arrived, just minutes ago: Nabooru, politely declining the invitation to the Castle unless her wife, the Queen Valja, was invited to attend as well.
The Queen Valja. Ridiculous. Absurd. It was a joke. The only part that confused Impa was that Nabooru was deathly serious. Although she was a free spirit, the Sage of the Spirit Temple, for Din's sake, she was deadly serious about things that mattered.
Impa secretly thought that all relations were sick. She wished there was another way for animals to repopulate themselves, but there wasn't, and the only thing she could do was to not engage in it herself... the world would keep turning. This conceit was closely echoed by the Archdeacon Priest, similarly chaste, and the enforcer of all religious law in Hyrule. The two were friendly enough, which was certainly saying a lot, considering the Archdeacon's position, but Impa felt he was a little fanatical. He, of course, held a fierce hatred for the Gerudos. Also, which did not surprise Impa in the slightest, he held a deep disregard for the Zoras, especially now that King Zora had cut all ties from the Royal Family after the events of the Imprisoning War. As for the Gorons, the Archdeacon had sanctioned the successful mission sent to them, but the Zoras had rejected these missionaries and agreed to make peace with the King by means of a policy of tolerance. Of course, the Archdeacon had been furious.
Impa sighed. The Archdeacon had his own problems to deal with. This wasn't it for her, not by a long shot. That boy...
A knocking sound came from the door of Impa's stateroom. "Lady Impa?" A soldier's voice echoed out from the hallway. Impa breathed, composed herself, and said,
"Come inside."
The soldier opened the door and bowed. Standing next to him was a boy, about sixteen or seventeen, with white hair and red eyes, and although Impa couldn't explain why, her breath caught.
"This boy requested to see you, my Lady. Young Kasuto claims you're his mother." The soldier bowed again and left the room.
Impa set her jaw and turned her attention to the boy.
"I am sorry, my Lady, if I've interrupted you," the boy said, dropping to a knee.
"Get up," said Impa, more harshly than she'd intended. "I'm not the Princess." Her eyes fell on his style of dress. "Yes, that makes sense," she said, eying a maroon vest and a sort of royal blue loincloth that descended to the boy's knees. She felt a smile tugging at her lips, but she refused herself to smile. "Your hair gives you away."
The boy put a hand in his shockingly white hair, grinning somewhat self-consciously.
"What of Mobiru?"
Kasuto blinked.
"Your father," she said, hissing the last word.
Kasuto's manner changed immediately. He watched her carefully for a moment before saying, "I know. He died."
Impa nodded. "I see." Her mouth shut. She said nothing else.
Kasuto, resilient, opened his mouth. "I came to serve the Royal Family--"
"The Royal Family will not be attended to by a Gerudo," Impa said, closing her mouth tight again. Her mouth worked, and she turned around. She just met this Gerudo boy, this was ridiculous--
"But..." Kasuto fell silent. "But it's my duty," he resumed quietly. "As a Sheikah."
"Look at yourself," said Impa, still turned around. "You're not a Sheikah, you're a Gerudo." The word 'Gerudo' came out with a slight curl of her lip. It was subtle, but Impa heard it, and obviously so did Kasuto. Impa didn't care anymore. She refused to let herself care. "Go back to your tribe, boy. I'm sorry, but you are not welcome in Hyrule." Impa turned around and guided him, steelily and with a gloved hand on his back, to the door. Kasuto turned around. Impa wouldn't see his expression. "And tell no one who your mother is!" She closed the door roughly in Kasuto's face.
His face was not in her memory.
Darunia didn't know why he was climbing. But he climbed, he climbed, and flashes of people came to his eyes, breaking the blinding white of the blizzard that obscured his vision.
A woman, beautiful, of course she was beautiful, she was Fila, her eyes held a skeptical, toothy smile, smart and sharp, and her head was round, very round, and she was smooth, very smooth.
Link...
A boy, barely seven, almost like a smaller version of Darunia himself. His spikes were just beginning to come in, and Darunia felt a small pang at this memory. Where was he? He almost regretted putting his wife and son through this, not just the journey he'd embarked on, but putting them through being the wife and son to a Fire Sage.
And Link brought on... Link. A human, of course, not pure white, but almost, much lighter then Darunia and the rest of his people. Hair, darkish blond, and those clothes, even unlike the King's clothes and Zelda's clothes or Nabooru's or Impa's or Saria's... actually, they were quite similar to Saria's. All of their clothes were quite different.
Link, his Sworn Brother. He even felt a stab for him.
Darunia almost fell out of sheer surprise. His fingers fell far, very far, into those cursed crystals whose nature Darunia accepted as an example of the Gods' magic.
Flat land. Flat, snow-covered, land, but flat land.
Thank Din.
He pulled himself up easily, but carefully, because his vision was still impaired by the blinding whiteness of the snow. He couldn't even begin to wonder to which Goddess the snow's nature was attributed. (It was Nayru, but he didn't know that. Ruto would have known it, but to be fair, she thought the same of lava as Darunia thought of snow.)
To Darunia's great relief, the snow stopped very suddenly, revealing a sort of clearing, the top of the mountain, and not five feet in front of Darunia lay the yawning mouth of a small cave. Darunia walked in, ducking under to fit, and the cold disappeared behind him. He let out a deep sigh of pure, uninhibited, relief.
However, the light did, too. He performed a bit of magic and illuminated the room, revealing a shallow pool of water, steam rising steadily from it.
Hot springs. A wild grin spread over Darunia's face.
"Sage of Fire!"
The voice didn't seem to come from anywhere, yet something in Darunia knew in his heart it was coming from beneath the hot springs. Darunia balled his fists up and roared with all the might of a Goron, "I am the Sage of Fire! Show yourself!"
"I have no form, Sage of Fire. I am pleased you received my gift."
Darunia said nothing.
"I wish to ask a favor of you. I want you to take me back to your land, the great land of Hyrule."
"Who are you?" said Darunia, his suspicion mounting.
"I have no name." Darunia realized the voice had no qualities, none to speak of, and it wasn't even speaking a language. Was he even hearing it?
"What are you?"
"You will find out when you take me to Hyrule," the voice said. "And so will I."
Darunia quickly realized he had no choice. His legs felt wooden, and he suddenly felt sad, deeply sorrowful, and he bit down on his jaw to keep from exploding into tears. He had to leave.
He turned and walked out of the cave. He climbed down the mountain. Then he slept.
All of them were sulking, Ruto realized. Well, most of them. She, Ruto, definitely was. Impa was. Link was. Saria... was. Nabooru... sort of. Darunia, no. He had a purpose.
Rauru was gone.
Ruto wasn't too upset about this. The old man had not been very bearable. Then again, their time as Sages seemed to be incomparable to time spent in Hyrule. She'd awakened, completely fresh and resolved to spend the rest of her days as an incorporeal being protecting the Water Temple and praying to the Goddesses.
It frightened her. She didn't tell her father this part for that very reason.
She wondered where Link had gone, for those seven years.
She shook her head and moaned. Morning could not come soon enough. Then, the banquet.
Social contact.