Hello, hello. Here is another little holiday fic. This time the holiday I'm featuring is Yule, the winter holiday that Christmas did a rip off of. Enjoy, with my love!
And of course, disclaimers, Link and Zelda and Super Smash Bros Brawl are not miiiiiiiiiine. And neither is Yule, I'm very sure everyone already knows.
Link looked like he was doing his Christmas decorating to everyone else at Smash Mansion. But he wasn't. He was busy decorating in the way the Kokiri had done every winter solstice. Zelda watched him in a strange manner.
"Aren't your Christmas preparations a bit early, Link?" She sat down on one of the room's two chairs at the fire place. "After all, doesn't one put up the tree and decorations on Christmas Eve? At least, that's the way we do it in Hyrule." She couldn't help but stare at the odd things he was putting up.
"Well Christmas comes later," Link said handing her an orange and relishing her gaping expression.
"An orange?" It was all she could manage as she stared from Link to the fruit and back again.
"Of course," the hero chimed cheerily as he placed a stalk of wheat dusted with flour on the mantel piece beside some holly. "You can't mean to tell me that you've never heard of Yule?"
"Yule?" Zelda echoed. "No, I haven't. What is that?"
"It's the holiday of the winter solstice," Link was dragging a good-sized log to the fireplace. "It's what the Kokiri celebrate instead of Christmas, which, if you didn't know, was strongly based off of Yule."
"I see," Zelda eyed him. "Do you need help with that? It looks heavy.."
"Nope, perfectly fine!" He grinned at her, showing his teeth. She loved those teeth, slightly crooked as they were. It made him less perfect, and in a way, to her, more wonderful than if he was the sort with perfectly formed fake-looking teeth. She couldn't resist the urge to smile back. He made her want to smile.
"Tell me more about Yule," she said, beginning to peel her orange.
"Alrighty then," he was pushing the log into place and putting a burnt-out log atop. "Well Yule basically celebrates the day of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year."
"That's a strange thing to celebrate," Zelda mused, placing a piece of orange in her mouth.
"But wait, there's more!" Link waggled a finger in her direction. "You couldn't possibly have thought that all. The reason they celebrate it is because every day after the night of the solstice the sun begins to climb higher and higher into the sky. The days get longer little by little after that. Generally it is the goddess Din that is thanked for the coming of spring and the revivening of the world."
"Interesting. And it's reviving, not revivening, Link. There is no such word."
Link scratched his chin as he chewed this for a moment. "Who cares," he waved a hand. "Now there is such a word because I made it up." He was using the old burnt log to light the new one. It slowly but surely began to burn, and then burst into flame.
"So then.." Zelda trailed off, looking up at Link, who was staring into the fire.
"Mmm?" He said, still staring into the flames.
"Why are you burning a log?" She raised her eyebrows at him.
"Oh, um, good question," Link turned to look at her. "It's a log of the Yule tree, the holiday's greatest symbol, symbolizing the newborn sun."
"Hmm," Zelda said, examining the now-burning Yule log. "Is it customary to give gifts on this holiday?"
"Indeed," Link said with a mischievous smile to his voice.
Zelda looked up at him. He had climbed up onto his chair and was pinning some sort of plant tied with a red ribbon to the wall. It was a dirty yellowish green with tongue-shaped leaves and pale yellow-tinged white berries. It hung straight down from the red ribbon which clasped three of these small branches together. He stepped down.
"And I know just what to give you since you are sitting directly under the mistletoe, Princess." He bent over briefly to kiss her cheeks, then pulled back smiling.
"In that case," here Zelda smiled at him innocently, "You're under it too." She stood, looping her arms around his neck, and kissed him.
I won't say where~ You can imagine that for yourselves as you would like it.
Anyway, thanks for reading. My apologies on the inaccuracy of Yule traditions - I have never celebrated it but I thought it was cool when my brother told me about it.
