Disclaimer: I don't own Legend of Zelda. I also do not own the rights to G. Bruce Knecht's "The Proving Ground", though I do own a copy of his book and read it over and over and over.

Another random oneshot. Wind Waker Link must have been what, twelve at the most?

I'll tell you now, the first part has waaay too many adjectives, despite my attempts to control myself, and the last bit feels disconnected in my opinion, partially because I had to save and come back to it and I am one of those people who is utterly hopeless at writing if they aren't feeling it. (Which is bad in my opinion. At the very least, annoying.) Although I hope my woes won't detract from the reading; I hope you all enjoy this, at least.

"I wanna be as big as you, Link!"

"Someday I'm going to be able to jump that far!"

"How can you run so fast and so far? I want to be able to do that too, someday!"

"Big brother, one day I'm going to be as brave as you!"

Gale-force winds tossed Link about in all directions on the small floor of the red wooden boat, totally exposed to the elements. And tonight, on this endless stormy night, it seemed that the elements were trying to expose him. Tear his skin off with biting gusts Impale him with freezing raindrops, sharp as knives. Blind him with serrated flashes of light across an otherwise nearly-pitch black sky. Link gripped the handle of the King of Red Lions' rudder as hard as he could, knuckles turning white. It was his only anchor to the flimsy boat, physically and emotionally. Link's heart was the only thing he could hear above the roar of the wind and the crash of ten-foot-high waves all around him. All communication between him and the King of Red Lions was lost to the wind (that he supposedly had the power to control, he thought bitterly; not even the Wind Waker could lull these gales to sleep) before the thought to form words and then project them into the turbulent air was even conceived.

Even on a calm, bright day, with no clouds in the sky as far as the eye could see in all directions, the size of some waves that Link rode up and down the sides of sometimes managed to exhilarate him. Sometimes a playful gust of wind would momentarily force him to adjust his balance, but in the waking world when he could see, it was all a game of sorts. Even on days with storms, the wind chose not to ally with him but never made him its enemy, although the waves let themselves play a little rougher, a little freer.

But this night (a neverending night, according to the King of Red Lions), monstrous walls of water rose up out of the darkness before disappearing just as frighteningly into the abysses all around the boy and boat, sometimes drenching Link to the bone in bitter salt spray, sometimes not. Sometimes the ocean waves would let the rainclouds soak the Hero for them. Both would allow the wind, now a monster without a face but the most terrifyingly thunderous voice in the world, to batter the child with frigid nighttime air. Sometimes they threw in their lot with Cyclos and made nightmares of wind spiral up and up, around and around, invisible but for the seafoam they sucked up into their hollow gullets. Already, smaller updrafts had spun the boat around three times that night, forcing Link to correct his course frantically, and once a giant cyclone threatened to consume him and the King of Red Lions whole.

And the Gyorgs...

Amid walls of water, sheets of torrential rain, and invisible phantasms of wind, the sharks stalked every knot the boat covered. They would cut the surface of the water silently with their giant dorsal fins, slice through the water ahead of the boat, and then, with a telltale splash that Link almost hated more than the crashing waves, would leap into the air, flaunt their size for one moment and then make a beeline for the ship, trying to ram the hull mercilessly, then make a feast of overthrown passenger, quicker and cleaner than vultures.

(And though they were barely larger than Link himself, their forms were quite menacing when they suddenly shot up into the darkness of the night and you couldn't tell where shark ended and night began and it was even scarier when lighting shredded the sky once right behind one and oh gods...)

Link couldn't take it anymore.

The endless night terrified him. The wind and rain made him want to curl up into a little ball of miserable child and wait out the storm. The waves paralyzed him and forced him to move, move. The Gyorgs triggered his impulse to yank violently up on the rudder and leap over them, each one of them in their giant packs sending his heart racing and he had to dodge the waves ten times taller than he while he dodged the sharks and the cyclones and it was dark and he couldn't see and not even the King of Red Lions could help him and he was scared and this was too much and he just wanted everything to go away...

How much further away could Windfall possibly be? They'd have to have been sailing for hours now.

Maybe the wind made a snack of his sail. Maybe it used hands that weren't hands to turn him around, giggling in the darkness as the Hero of Winds traveled forever, lost in the eternal night. Maybe the universe hated him.

It probably did, making him travel unarmed amidst a stronghold of deformed monsters, making him jump at every little noise, making him work so hard for nothing but a one-way trip over the ocean, making him climb single-handedly to the top of the tallest mountain in the world amid fire and brimstone, making him learn how to fly so he could crawl around alone inside an overgrown weed while the inner workings of the plant tried their hardest to do him in, making him travel yet further only to find out that he needed to travel yet further only to find he need to travel yet further once again, in total darkness, with no one to talk to, no one to help him, no one to offer him warm embraces that shielded him from all the powers in the world or words of compassion and tell him everything would be alright.

No, because he needed to find Nayru's Pearl so he could take it and Din's Pearl and Farore's Pearl somewhere, do something else, and then save his sister. And he had to do it alone. On the wide, endless ocean that seemed determined to kill him. Lost in the eternal night.

Fate hated him.

Dimly he thought he heard the King of Red Lions move his wooden jaw to say something, but the wind howled wildly over him. Link tried in vain to grasp onto syllables, catching nothing. Sliding further and further away. The night was too much for poor Link. Hero he might be destined to be, but he was but a child, a child trapped in the worst terrors of his minds amid the worst horror of the physical world, by himself on night-shrouded, storm-tossed seas, drifting on an ocean of hopelessness and fear that pushed him forward even as his mind tore him apart in all directions. The King of Red Lions, close as his ornamental head was, could offer no solace. Aryll waited, unknowingly and afraid, at the top of a tower saturated with evil. The pirates drank the night away and made merry, with only one among them sparing a sparse thought for him amid the festivities. The Outset villagers huddled in their cozy homes waiting out the storms like families did, together, and perhaps only one among them would think of him and wonder where he was now. Yet Link had no doubt that his friends and family were all worried about him, loved him, and would offer him comfort in a moment's notice. If they were there.

He had everyone in the world, but in the heart of the neverending hurricane, all he felt was alone.

I like my flowery language too much. *dies*

So, since Link's only twelve, and courage doesn't mean not having fear, don't you think it would have traumatized the poor guy? I mean, when I play through that part, you can barely see what's happening, and you are bound to past Cyclos at least once, and Gyorgs and Octoroks stalk you all the way from Windfall to Outset, and if I were Link I'd think it's pretty damn scary... doubly so if I heard "The Great Sea is Cursed" playing while I tried to concentrate on sailing.

That makes me doubly bad since I didn't know how to proceed for a while and literally sailed all over the sea during that part of the game. Link must hate me for that. (It's also because I like the storm and the music...)

Some of the description of the Great Sea was inspired by (but in no way quoted from so don't get on my case about plagiarism) a great book called "The Proving Ground", by G. Bruce Knecht. It details the terror of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race in Australia, a year in which a huge cyclone passed through the Bass Straight separating the Australian mainland from Tasmania and Sydney from Hobart. Of the 115 boats that started the race, only 43 made it to Hobart. It's a great book and I highly recommend it.