"You've been three people," said Tatl. "You've been three different people, and you're about to be a fourth. They haven't even noticed." Tatl chuckled.

The Bar Latte's purple-pink lights bathed its stage and staircase in gauzy ambiance. On the floor below both, sober, bug-eyed Toto and inebriated, heavy-lidded Gorman fought to hold their ground in the presence of the other. The former: a band manager eclipsing catastrophe in his twilight years; the latter: an emerging leader shriveling in the harsh dawn of his career.

The bartender polished a glass from behind the micah studded bartop with one dewy eye on the two of them, and then another on Tatl and her mysterious companion. The towering copper and glass tanks at his back held plaques above their taps- Chateau Romani araka, koumis, cream- but they held pale purple-pink light instead of anything to drink. The tourists may not be around, but the locals certainly had no problem letting the moon pressure them into becoming patrons in their place.

Cremia's delivery was scheduled for tomorrow. She wouldn't make it.

The bartender watched as Darmani's mask came off beneath the shadows of the bar's entrance and leave a Hylian boy behind. He'd seen his young customer become a Deku child, the Deku child become Mikau, and Mikau become Darmani. Provided Toto and Gorman didn't notice, any real obfuscation would be disingenuous.

Tatl re-emerged with her companion, now disguised only as himself, and spared the bartender a nod as they approached Toto.

"Excuse me, sir," her companion said. "I understand you were conducting a sound check? I can play, should you need me."

"He plays clarinet," interjected Tatl.

"Ocarina," he corrected.

"Like I said. Flute."

"Ocarina."

"Oboe."

"Ocarina," he emphasized.

"Yup. Pipes."

He paused. That was true, in a sense. The ocarina became a set of pipes in the Deku child's hands, yes.

Then, suddenly, it occurred to him that Tatl may actually believe that the instrument changed forms for everyone who played it, on its own whim. He turned to her with a question behind his pursed lips.

Toto's flippered tail swished behind his bent back. "Ah. Yes, yes." He looked to the stage. "You play ocarina? Could you take the center for me, please?"

Tatl snickered as the two of them took the stairs.

"Again! He fell for it again!"

He stuffed her into his hat and looked to Toto.

"Wonderful," said Toto. "You're melody, so you'll play this for me." He produced a piece of parchment from his vest and pointed at the five-line ledger spreading across its surface, just as he had with all the other parts. "Think you can do that?"

He squinted at it from the stage apron, and felt his skin turn to ice. Mikau could read music, Darmani could read music, and even the Deku child could, to a degree, but without their help, he was left with only scraps of lessons taught to him by the princess, and by Navi. He'd forgotten who he was, and who he wasn't. As himself, he knew very, very little.

He might have been called hero in the mouths of people who barely knew him, but, truthfully, without someone else to hide behind, he was naked, and squirming in his own skin.

"I," he said, swallowing, "I have to hear it."

From the bar, Gorman guffawed. The lights from the bar flashed from pink, to teal, to red, and dyed his ruffled collar and embroidered sleeves so they matched the flush of his cheeks.

"Stupid kid can't even sight read!" he said. "Amateurs! Ha!" He slammed his fist on the bartop. "The great Toto, reduced to working with a snot-nosed kid who couldn't even recite his alphabet if he tried!" He slammed his hand again. "Ha! Ha ha! Ahahahaha!"

Toto's bulbous eyes closed in slow agitation.

Gorman was right. The blacktop of the stage may as well have been a void swallowing him whole. He knew all the letters, and he knew how to use them, but nobody ever gave him an order to put them in.

He grew up a child of the forest, and then a maverick abomination- not a Hylian child, and certainly not with an education. He could gut a rampaging beast, make medicine out of every herb and berry in the Kokiri forest, and identify every poisonous mushroom in the Woods on sight, but he couldn't tell you their names. At least, not with names anyone outside of the Kokiri would recognize.

He knew a lifetime of things, but he had no way to communicate them to anyone else. He was ephemeral, faceless, nameless, voiceless. He was a legend passed down in vague whispers, and nothing more.

"Stupid kid," said Gorman. "Playing at fantasies like you think you're hot shit."

Tatl emerged. "Shut up," she told Gorman. Her voice was as clear as a bell, and just as alarming.

"Make me!"

Tatl turned to Toto. "He can play. Let him hear it."

Gorman harrumphed and turned his stool so his back was to the stage. It complained with an awesome and temperamental creak.

Toto blinked, once. Slowly. The tiny, metallic fins resting on his flat upper lip reflected the lights like sheets of glass. On a human, they might have been called a moustache.

"Alright," said Toto, and he croaked out four notes.

A long time ago- a year ago, but also seven- Saria used her ocarina as her voice. Anything she sang, she could mimic in pitch perfectly. Anything the birds sang, she could play with skill. Anything anyone ever said to her, she could express the heart of it without a single word. The Kokiri revered her. They whispered that she was so good, she could make the heaviest heart forget its troubles and dance like a feather on the wind. She was so good, she could enchant the dark heart of the Lost Woods. She was so good, they said, that the entire world would have no choice but to preserve her talent forever and ever and ever.

She said that, as good as she was, her dearest friend and protege was even better. He was so good, he could hear the music in the trees before the wind even asked them to make a sound. He was so good, he dreamed that color and song were one. He was so good, he could pry out the song trapped in someone's heart without a word, if you let him.

He was so good, they feared him. That was when his ocarina was only basic, earthen clay, not royal and mysterious blue.

He was given the first four notes, but when he finished them, he didn't stop. He finished the phrase, and he would have kept going had he not opened his eyes to find Tatl, Toto, and the bartender staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at him.

Then, Gorman's glass clinked on the counter, and the spotlight fell to his turned back.

"Oh," he said. "That melody…"

Slowly, gradually, his shoulders began to shake, and sobs floated from his mouth. "That melody!" He hung his head. "That melody brings back… so many memories."

Toto turned his eyes to Gorman, and something like a smile pulled at his lips. From across the counter, the bartender mirrored him.

"Toldja he could play," Tatl said. Then, she flitted to her companion's side.

"You really do have strange powers," she whispered. "I've seen you make yourself into empty shells, but they've never moved before. How did you do that?"

He blinked. "Do what?"

She frowned. "On stage. There were four of you. Or, well, one in the form of every mask. You began playing the Ballad, and they appeared out of nowhere."

"Oh," he said. Then, he said, "I don't know."

"Aren't you frightened?"

"Of what?"

Tatl gestured to the ocarina. "Of that. Of the instrument. Of your power. It's like the Song of Time- you said it used to not do what it does now. That instrument. You say it's an ocarina, but what if it isn't? It becomes pipes, drums, a guitar… doesn't that frighten you? The unpredictability of it?"

The Ocarina of Time was a gift imposed upon him against his will, and something he was obligated to return. The only thing he wanted less than the instrument itself was to face its rightful owner. However, he could no sooner have let the Skull Kid take off with it than he could strip himself of his own skin.

"It's something I cannot bear to have, but cannot bear to part with," he said.

Tatl snorted. "Cryptic," she said. "Figures."

"I can't explain it any better than that," he said. Just as he was a legend, so was it. It couldn't make a sound without someone to play it, and he was useless without a mouthpiece. If courage were a physical object, he felt sure it would be in the same shape and color.

"The point is," he said, "I can't get rid of it."

Whatever Gorman and Toto's conversation was about, they finished it. Gorman's chair creaked again as he turned from the bar. In his hands was a replica of his own tear-stained face.

"I'm sorry I booed you," said Gorman, and surrendered himself.

Tatl took the mask in with a judgmental stare. "What's with these creatives making masks of their own faces? First Kamaro, and now you. What kind of parent lets their kid grow up to have that kind of ego, huh?!"

He clamped a hand over Tatl's mouth- which almost knocked her out of the air- and accepted the mask.

"Thank you," he said.

Gorman nodded, and then turned back to the bar. "It's hard, leaving everything you know to go forge your own way," he muttered. "It's hard, making decisions for the people following you. It's all hard."

He couldn't speak to the latter, but the former, he knew all too well. Oh, wasn't it, though?

Toto patted Gorman on the back, and ordered a drink.

The bartender obliged, and then took up his task of polishing glasses. He kept one eye on his work, but the other was still on his little patron.

Tatl nudged her companion. He stepped forward.

"Um," he said, "that is, ah, excuse me. You wouldn't have happened to know of a thief- I mean, know of a grinning man named Sakon who frequents the neighborhood, would you?"

The bartender shook his head. "Sir, I would be happy to talk to you, but please. I must ask that you wear your proof of membership while in the establishment." His dewy eyes twinkled. "Latte is a serious establishment, you understand."

He scrambled for Romani's Mask, and hurriedly pulled it over his head. Tatl adjusted the black and white ears until it sat straight on his head and he could see beneath the snout.

The bartender's bushy moustache turned up on the left side as a lopsided grin spread across his face.

"Much better," he said.

Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading! We've covered more masks than I thought we had so far, huh! Anyways, as always, I appreciate your feedback. You guys keep this thing going!