I watch as the smoldering sun sinks below the horizon line, its final grasping brightness staining the landscape with bloody crimson and too-bright pink. He sleeps off to the side, back to me, head tucked under, and fists curled against his chest. For a moment he is vulnerable, his extra two feet no more intimidating than a grand cloak. Had we confronted him like this, I am not sure I would have been able to kill him.
The burns on my hands itch and ache, their silvery sheen tinged an unhealthy light blue. I received them from a creature made of nothing but Light, the creature that tore open the wall between Light and Twilight.
Echoing screams still throb in my head, pulsing against the back of my eyeballs and winding down into my stomach. I'm lucky I haven't eaten in some time, else my insides would be in turmoil. I try and fail once again to push the memories from the forefront of my mind, if only for a moment.
"You seem to be in a good deal of pain." I glance up from my hands and Ganondorf's eyes are open, staring straight at me. I pull the cloak tighter around me, though it doesn't really fend off the sun any better than it does his gaze, and frown at him.
"I don't really see how that's any of your business, anyway. I can watch after my own health, thank you." My reply is a bit a more standoffish than I intended, but he just shrugs and sits up, wiping the grit from his eyes. Night is perhaps a better time to travel in the desert, when the body needs to keep warm in the cold sands and the blindingly bright sun isn't overhead. I have no complaints; with no sandals, the sand would have eaten the skin from my feet. Even now, as the sun is nothing but a mere shadow on the horizon, the sand still hisses with midday heat.
"I suppose it isn't, then." He pulls his ragged shirt over his head, even if the limited cover won't provide him much heat in the chilly night. From the clothes he is wearing, he would be named a pauper anywhere else. Ragged holes line the edges of his thinly sewn pants, the soles of his sandals worn near away. Without the bulky decorative armor, the tattoos of his people gleam black in the sun; a scorpion crest with eyes a murky violet curls on his chest, the stinger menacing enough to be real. Even here though, I see the scars, lines criss-crossed back and forth over his skin, as well as the ugly indentation where the sword of the sages once pierced.
With the sun set, I climb to my feet without fear of injury. Even in the shadows, the heat had been near unbearable, but the night carries blessed relief. "I hope you know where we should start, because I haven't been here for seven years, and the desert is surprisingly empty of landmarks."
"Of course I know the way," he mutters, nearly under his breath. "I grew up here. You just have to know how to read the sands. But you are the ever famous Twilit Lady, aren't you? You wouldn't know a star from an oil lamp."
I ignore him for a good portion of the trip. But he's right; the stars above jumble like fireflies over Lake Hylia, and I cannot pick out the individual constellations at all. The going is rough; the sand shifts constantly beneath our feet, and I nearly fall several times. Cold brings our breath into visibility, puffs of air streaming against our faces in the still night air.
With a steady rhythm established, though, I retreat into my mind, only paying Ganondorf attention enough not lose my way. My thoughts turn to Link; he too had been thrust into the Light world. I saw it happen. But where was he? Why had we not landed in the same place?
But perhaps it was better if he was lost, trapped in the Twilight Realm for seven years of his life. I had often overheard him saying that he did not regret it, but I think this was a lie. We're friends, closer friends than I have ever been allowed to have as candidate for the seat of Twilit, but his life is here. The Twilit Realm is not made for humans, whether they be Hylian, Gerudo, or Ordonian, and neither are they made for it. Years of no Light petrifies anything of the Light Realm. It had been happening to him; he would have never been Twili, but neither would he ever quite be fully human again.
Tucking the robe closer to my body, I banish the thoughts from my mind. All that matters now is finding a way home, and there is no way here in the desert. I know of course Princess Zelda has resources, but even then, will it be enough? Even with her extensive control of sorcery and other sorcerers, she would no doubt have very little to do with anything Twilight.
"Feeling rather stoic?" His voice jolts me from my thoughts, and I catch a smirk on his face out of the corner of my eye. The sun has near reached the horizon, and I can feel the beginnings of heat creeping into the desert wind.
"It wouldn't matter either way, would it? None of your business!" I huff between tight lips, tugging the robe around myself a bit tighter. It wasn't made for protection, just for decoration, but in the coming desert I have no other way to hide from the sun. "Let's just keep walking. We still have darkness we can use."
He casts a critical eye in my direction, folding his massive arms. "And risk getting caught where the sun shines on the sand like a mirror? No, I don't think so. The only shelter for a good ten miles is this right here," he motions to a pile of rubble and tent poles strewn over the ground nearby, "And I doubt you want to roast like a cuccoo in the sun."
I have to concede. He's got me cornered this time. "I guess not... But it makes me nervous. All this stopping. I'm wasting time; my people need me."
"And I need sleep if I'm going to do the battle march across the desert, even if you don't, Twilight woman." The sand hisses as his feet kick it across the stones of the rubble, and I marvel at how well these ruins have held up. They weren't new a good hundred years ago, and they certainly aren't now.
It appears to be the concave remains of an arch, the upper portion supported now only by one of the enormous beams. Carvings in Gerudo riddle the sides, though they are in a dialect I cannot read. More than likely warnings from the pictograms; pictures of people impaled on spears and giant scorpions. "I'm assuming your people stayed here before they toppled."
"Perhaps." I glance in his direction, where he's settled into an indentation in the sand beneath the arch. "When I was still part of them, we were a nomadic people, chasing the best of the leevers and the water over the desert. I was often told of their sedentary predecessors, of the great fortresses they built. They were like giants to me, as a child."
I run a hand over the stone letters as I settle down across from him, enamored with the details. "But what could make them change their ways so suddenly?"
He shrugs, hand waving dismissively. "It was never spoken of. I suppose if I had stayed on longer, I would have been taught, as much of our... ah, less admirable times of history. The scattering of the One Family was part of that period, and I think Nafira was ashamed of it." He chuckles, and I cock an eyebrow at him. "Nafira was ashamed of much, I suppose, being my teacher."
"I can't say I know much of the Gerudo royalty, surprisingly. As a candidate for Twilit, I learned about Hylian government, and where the great Shiekah of west came from, and how they serve the Hylian system, and why the Ordonians do not include themselves in Hyrule, but the Gerudo are very much a mystery to me." I pull the robe closer to my face, glowing eyes casting light across my knees in the still dim light of dawn. "Which is strange considering your people kept watch over the Mirror for so long."
He looks off into the sands for a good few minutes, hands draped across in relaxed position. It's comical on him, such an informal, simple, human gesture that I puzzle over it. He's such a big man, like the Power he once held made him grow beyond his boundaries. I never saw him as a man, a person, before, because of his actions, of the way he behaved, as though he wanted people to think him some sort of specter or demon. What was there to gain from destroying Hyrule? Ganondorf would never have explained, but this man... He was not the same.
But I steel myself; I can't allow him to get to me. I know he is a monster. I've seen what he's done to my people, and no one with any semblance of a heart or even a conscience could wreak that kind of devastation and pain. It boggles my mind, to think that people exist capable of such things, but what do I know? The Realm of Twilight was a shelter; our ancestors were thieves and murderers, but very few humans in this world were as unafraid of danger as the Twili are.
"The Hylians call me king, but that is far from what I was." My attention snaps back to him when he speaks again, and I focus once again on his face. He glances at me, then back at the sands. "The word we use to refer to the male Gerudo is more akin to brother, I suppose, or teacher. There have been Gerudo men before that misused their position, but in essence, we do very little ruling and much more record keeping."
"So you're a glorified librarian," I say, grinning at the thought, but he shakes his head.
"It's a bit more than that. The king—or a closer translation is Son of the Sand—is responsible for maintaining tradition. He is the overseer of initiation rites, he asks the great goddess of the sun to bless births, he teaches the history and language of the Gerudo to the children." The expression on his face suggests he is struggling to explain, and I can understand. Explaining the position of Twilit is difficult, and I imagine this is as well.
He draws a circle in the sand, then another and another. They interlock, with a space in the middle being the only shared region. He points to the first and says, nearly to himself, "Imagine that there are three very broad jobs of the Gerudo. We have fighting, mostly in wars and defense, care of the home such as hunting and childrearing, and then knowledge keeping. No one Gerudo does all three; there are some that defend, and some that hunt, while others study history. All Gerudo are of course raised to fight, but not all of them do so as their main duty to our people."
He motions to where the circles all connect. "One does, however, and that is the Son of the Sand. Once he reaches fourteen, he challenges another Gerudo to fight. If he can defeat her—the woman must be his senior by at least three years, and have achieved a rank higher than novice in defense—then he is considered an adult. He keeps track of all of the history of the Gerudo then, and shares it with his people. Before his coming of age day, he learns a good deal of it, but as long as fourteen years is, he will have not learned it all by adulthood."
"Then your people are a strange one, to have carried the meaning of king so far from what it was," I remark, tapping the stone wall.
"No, that was the Hylians. They have this strange misconception that to be single is to rule, I suppose. Or else they believe that the women of my race are weak and must be carried by a man. They are queendom, so I still do not understand much of their patriarchal ideas on this." He frowns, rubbing the circles away.
A voice suddenly sounds behind him, and I turn to the side to look up the blade of a very sharp sword, held by a very tall, very muscular woman in a wrap of scarves and cotton the color of sand. "Looks like we agree on that much, Ganon. The males usually are the weakest." The Gerudo woman behind Ganondorf to whom the voice belongs grins like a skeleton, her black clothes making her appear like death. "It's a good thing I've found you, or you might have died in the desert. Amiran! Help the shadow woman up. I think a visit to camp is in order."