Din's Blessing

by eolianstar

Zelda: Ocarina of Time © Nintendo

Rated for suggestive themes

P a r t . e l e v e n : Chiyo

It was remarkable how, in the desert, each of the days blurred together with the next. There were no seasons, only wind and sand and crystal clear blue skies. Only the obvious yet gradual changes could prove the passage of time. Like Azhaer starting to walk and speak, or Chiyo's hair growing long. Ruca… Ruca was always the same, always so frank and transparent. Perhaps that added to the comfort of their lives.

She caught onto the routine of things, and even learned all the ways to make herself useful. In the morning she prepared the troughs and made breakfast during the time Ruca went to take the herd to graze before sunrise. Once a month Ruca went by himself to the trader's caravan, or even to the cities, to gain supplies and catch up on news from the outside world. Azhaer and Chiyo very rarely left the camp by the well, hidden away from both physical and magical sight. The stones with the sun emblems that circled the camp ensured this. They were safe here.

In the evening, Ruca told his stories and sang songs with his low, husky voice. Sometimes he showed Azhaer some of the magic tricks he knew from when he trained at the Temple of Time, as it seemed he knew a little magic. But it was so different from the magic of the Twinrova witches or of the King; most of the time there were just little spells that looked like small balls of lights that he bounced in his hands. But his songs were the most striking, as if each note of every hymn contained a mysterious power. She often saw as he sung to himself in the early morning, during his prayers, or to the sheep in those jovial tunes.

Day-by-day Azhaer began to look more and more like him. His face shone like a burnished bronze and his eyes held that strange gaze that seemed to see more than what physical appearances could show. His brow was well arched and smooth. But when he was old enough for his personality to show through, he was a quiet, obedient child who was overly eager to please her. Chiyo was often quick with him, feeling strangely more and more distant as his resemblance to his father became more apparent. Ruca was more a father to him than she was his mother, with that loud laugh and those protective, big hands. The boy loved the animals too, and so when Ruca brought home a ebony colored kitten from the traders, he was over himself with joy.

"You spoil him too much," Chiyo said as she and Ruca watched from the entrance of the tent as the young boy and the tiny kitten played with a piece of string on the rug. Ruca merely chuckled.

"I think with the simple life we live, we can afford to give him some luxuries. And also the desert mice have been helping themselves to our reserves again, so it would be useful to have cat around."

"Mother, look!" Azhaer exclaimed as the kitten batted wildly at the string dangling from his hand.

"Yes, I see," Chiyo said impatiently. But he laughed, and she found that his laughter still had that effect of stopping her in her tracks.

"What a special child," Ruca said, as if to himself.

- o -

And Chiyo continued to have that dream, the one she had begun to dream as a young gerudo guard. Of that man dressed in white linen, gazing forlornly up the walls of the fortress. Sometimes she was close to him, or sometimes far off, but she could never see his face, although he seemed to her so sad…

Sometimes she still dreamed about him too, in his black armor, casting that long shadow over her. But he was never as close to her as he had been in her dreams when she was still at the fortress, as if even in her subconscious, Ruca's stones kept her enemies at bay. When she awoke, Chiyo sometimes wondered if the gerudo were still searching for her, and for Azhaer. She wondered if he were looking for her, or if he were angry that she had escaped him, with a similar anger to the one on the night of Azhaer's birthday…

And when she tried to think about whether she still hated him, all she was left with was a confused and empty feeling.

Perhaps a little after Azhaer's turned three, Ruca came back from the trader's with his donkey saddled with supplies, but his face was hard. Azhaer had been watching the cucco chicks (holding tightly onto Night, the black cat, who was eyeing the chicks greedily) as Chiyo was gathering eggs. As she straightened and saw that the donkey and master had returned, his expression was the first thing she noticed. It was impossible not to notice.

"What is it?"

Ruca tied the donkey to the fencing and thoughtfully leaned against the saddle, wiping the sweat from his brow.

"War has been declared in Hyrule. There was a prophecy once, long ago, about the Golden Realm and the Triforce that gave its bearer the power to rule all the nations. There has been rumors that the Gate has been found, and all of Hyrule is fighting for that power."

It meant very little to her. But since it was regarding Ruca's homeland, she knew it was very important to him. Her face failed to change, ever after hearing his next words.

"But what is also disturbing to me," he continued, "is that the King of Hyrule has allied himself with Ganondorf."

"What do you mean?"

"The gerudo will be assisting the King of Hyrule in this civil war. But for the King to trust in this man… it is unfathomable. There has been rumors that he is a user of the black arts. I don't doubt it, these days, I can feel something sinister in this desert… it has to be him…"

And from that day on, she noticed how Ruca would pray longer than usual in the mornings. He was always anxious for news and sometimes tried to find excuses as to find the traders or go into the city earlier than normal.

But she closed her heart to these things. She did not think of the fortress, nor did she wonder who was the second-in-command to lead her former friends and colleagues into battle alongside their King. Perhaps some of them would die in the battle. It mattered not to her anymore.

- o -

Sometimes Chiyo wondered if Ruca wished he could go back to his people. She could clearly see how it distressed him to be idly remaining in the desert, as the war, in theory, was going on in his home country. But it was very inconsequential in their camp, indeed it was easy to forget that an outside world even existed at times. She wondered sometimes why Ruca never decided to leave and go back. There was nothing for him in the desert, only dumb sheep and a few cuccos to his name.

She came into the tent after washing clothes and found Ruca sitting by his desk, his head in his hands. There was a cloud of despair hanging very clearly around him, even she had the discernment to tell that much. But without saying anything, she sat on the very other side of the tent and began to fold clothes.

"Chiyo," Ruca said, his voice muffled, and she bristled, but didn't say anything. He never waited for her verbal affirmation, which was good because she would never give it anyway. "Do you have dreams or visions, sometimes, of things that seem so real that you can't do anything but believe that they are?"

To this, she said absolutely nothing, because she herself was unsure about her own reality.

He lifted his face out of his hands, and his countenance was troubled. And haltingly he told her of his dreams, the visions of the war and perhaps even another darkness to come, in a prophetic voice, in detail. At one point she even stopped folding to devote all her attention to listening to him. As always he was a storyteller, but the details were so real that indeed, even she found herself thinking that he was telling her something that had happened, or perhaps was happening, or even perhaps was going to happen. A divided kingdom, a bloody battle, a fleeing, dying mother and her abandoned child. And the darkness… it felt so strangely familiar.

"War was never meant to happen," Ruca ended, and lay down on his back in his sleeping space, his hand over his eyes. "The goddesses never meant for this to happen, for the Triforce to be a trophy of all this bloodshed and violence..."

And she said nothing, though she often made some bitter comment to any mentioning of the divine… by now he surely knew of her atheism. But she let it go, and he drifted into sleep. Then she merely allowed herself to get lost in the brainless routine of doing the laundry to escape once again.

- o -

"Mother! Mother, wake up!"

Chiyo woke to Azhaer's excited whisper as he shook her shoulder with both of his hands. When she was conscious enough to hear it, she registered the sound… it was like a rhythm, but not on a beat, and it surrounded them completely. It was faint at first, but then unmistakable as she sat up.

"What…"

Azhaer tugged on her timidly.

"Ruca says to come outside! Water is falling from the sky."

She got to her feet and put a woolen shawl over herself.

Outside, Ruca was standing in the shower as the sheep bleated all around him. He looked like a dark figure in the storm, his arms stretched out. The fire was a pile of blackened wood that smoldered and released a thin ribbon of smoke.

She had seen rain before, at the fortress. It was rare, but when it did happen, it fell like speckles upon the skin, the drops so tiny that one could barely feel it. The desert was so hot and dry that often the rain evaporated before it even hit the earth. This was entirely different.

It was like a curtain, as if a sheen of water had been drawn down to touch the earth. The sand sloshed about and was grey and gritty beneath her bare feet, and she felt so cold as the water soaked her completely through… but strangely the sensation reminded her that she was so astonishingly alive. Azhaer laughed his laugh and spun around, a tiny little boy glinting in the grungy downpour. Ruca turned and laughed too, the water streaming from his hair and beard.

"Isn't it magnificent?" he shouted over the din, his hands raised to catch the drops in his palms. "Can you believe it?" But she didn't answer, not out of the reluctance to share her thoughts, which usually her silence was attributed to, but out of the sheer wonder of the moment.

A few minutes later, the three of them found themselves back in the tent, drying off and making sure that everything in the tent stayed dry too. Night hid under the desk and refused to come out no matter how much Azhaer assured the cat it was safe. Ruca used some sort of magic to keep the water from soaking inside, and Azhaer jumped and waited at the tent entrance, watching the spectacle outside.

"They say it only rains like this once a century," Ruca said as he brushed off the drops from his hair. "But the best is yet to come." And the two of them sat down at the entrance to the tent, staring longingly outside, strangely unable to fall asleep. They watched until the boy fell asleep in between them. It must have been around midnight by then.

"It's beautiful," Chiyo said. Perhaps it was the most personal thing she had ever said to the half-gerudo shepherd.

"That it is," he said back, his voice hushed and curved so that she could tell he was smiling. "It somehow makes you think that the world is all right, doesn't it?"

She wouldn't ever admit it in front of him, but it did. Even for only a moment.

"It's remarkable that something like this happens only once in a hundred years. It's truly a miracle."

Something tugged at her heart, and suddenly Azhaer felt like such a weight as his sleeping form leaned against her as he slept.

"If the gods demand such a terrible price for a miracle, perhaps miracles should never happen." The words left her mouth without her thinking in a low voice.

Ruca looked sharply at her then, a strange light in those sapphire eyes. "What are you talking about?"

Chiyo was not talking about the rain.

"Oh." The two of them glanced at Azhaer who was rubbing his eyes with one hand and pointing with the other outside. "The water… stopped…"

The sky was remarkably clear when they stepped outside. Once again they were able to see the billions of stars that the desert sky always put on like a cloak. Ruca hoisted the now wide-awake Azhaer on his shoulders and beckoned Chiyo to follow.

"Come, let's go see if it's true."

"What?" Chiyo asked, tired. But he went along, stepping outside of the camp, outside the circle of safety stones. With a deep breath, she followed after him.

They followed the dipping landscape, the sand still wet and sticking to their feet as they walked along. It was a tiring walk because they had little traction in each step, but Ruca kept descending the dunes, rounding the corner of rocky terrain and natural edifices.

After a while, when her legs were aching and she was tired of hearing Azhaer and Ruca laughing, she crossed her arms.

"How much longer is it?" she asked irritably. They passed around the corner of a cliff that loomed tall above them.

And then she stared down at the sky at her feet.

The light from the stars glowed off of the pool and reflected off their clothes and skin. For perhaps a hundred feet all the way across, the black water was so still that it was a perfect mirror of the heavens above. On this moonless night, it looked as though the perfectly smooth surface of the pool was studded with tiny pearls.

If this were not enough, all a long the other bank were thousands of cream colored flowers. Thousands.

Ruca let Azhaer down on the ground, and the child ran with his arms stretched out, shouting and laughing towards the bank of flowers. The shepherd glanced over at Chiyo, and seemed to take pleasure in the expression written on her face.

"What are they?"

"It's a flowering plant that lives under the sand. When it rains like this, the buds are exposed from being buried underground. Then, they soak up so much water that they blossom. They'll dry up and die once the sun gets hot again… but they live their whole lives for this one moment, when they can at last see the stars. It's a sad story, isn't it?"

"What are they called?" she found herself asking. But very unlike himself, he didn't answer her.
The flowers had pointed petals and were the size of Chiyo's fist. They were pale and had pinkish speckles towards the center where a three or four stamens curled out. They didn't have a scent, so all around them they could still smell the rain. That seemed right.

"Mother," Azhaer said, pressing one of the blossoms in his hand against her dress, waiting for her to take it. "It's for you."

She took it wordlessly, and then looked down at the mirror on the ground.

So somewhat arbitrarily, she leaned over the waters, the flower in both of her hands.

And she gently released it onto the glassy surface, which rippled beneath the pearly petals. As she watched the lonely flower float softly in the sky all around it, Aru felt that perhaps the flower's story wasn't so sad after all.

Azhaer didn't seem upset that his gift to her had been given away like this. Instead, he gave a joyful cry and began to pick more of the flowers, to free them like small sailboats into the heavens as she had done.

"You reminded me of these flowers, though I never knew until now if they were real," Ruca's voice said behind her as she watched Azhaer busily carrying out his duty. With a start, she gazed between the flowers floating in the water and caught sight of her own reflection. A tired-looking woman with a tasseled shawl was there, her red hair falling in a long, limp braid over her shoulder. Then, she touched her face and looked at the flowers, and then at herself, her eyes lighting up as if she realized something.

And Ruca took that moment to answer her previous question.

"The chiyo flower. It means 'the hundred-year dream.'"

And she laughed for the first time in years. A short, dry laugh, but it didn't taste bitter.

"You meddling old man."

end of part eleven.

- o -

Symbolism and extended metaphor ftw.

Anyways! To close I want to mention that there are only two chapters left. Originally there was only one more left, but I felt the pacing wasn't right… actually, it still might not be right even with the additional chapter buffer BD

So please enjoy the rest! The final chapter will actually include something extra, just to thank all of you for bearing with me. So stay tuned! And please drop by a note if you've been reading! It always encourages me much more when I know there are people still out there.

Over and out!