Disclaimer: The Legend of Zelda series do not, repeat, not belong to me. They rightfully belong to Miyamoto. (May he continue to make exellent games for the rest of his days) What does belong to me are Cleo, Finn, Joseph, Emetaly, Pacha, Paulo, Prince Hasan, Abner, and Oi and Ollo.
Chapter 37
Right after she froze Oi and Ollo, something alerted Cleo's senses. She looked around her, feeling some kind of presence close by. It wasn't hostile, she could tell, but she'd best keep her eyes out for whatever was approaching. Then red eyes appeared, glowing softly yet penetratingly through the thick, heavily falling snow. Slowly, a large white moving shape appeared, becoming more and more visible. A polar bear, perhaps? But then she saw something thin and branching above its head, two of them. In careful tottering steps, it approached Cleo as though coming to greet her and then stopped before her.
It stared at Cleo and she stared back. She approached it slowly, somehow knowing it had come for her, and reached out to stroke the pure white fur of the caribou. It made a snort, steam shooting from its nostrils. Cleo put on the fox mask to transform. Once she had become a fox did the caribou speak in the calm, soothing voice of a woman. "Will you follow, young one?"
"Yes... Wait, just a moment." Cleo took her mask off and turned her attention back to Oi and Ollo who were still frozen. She held the Master Sword up straight to summon a Skyward Strike and swung at the ice. In a flash, the ice shattered, freeing the twins. They were unconscious. Cleo lifted them both up, one under each arm and carried them to the caribou.
"What are you doing with them Cleo?" Kaepora asked.
"They're coming with us." She draped them on the beast's back.
"Hoo? Are you sure about this?"
"I won't leave them to die... It is against one of the virtues." Kae shrugged, but also nodded in understanding. Cleo changed back into a fox. "I'm ready to meet the last sage."
The caribou nodded. "Try to keep up." It turned around and immediately took off with surprising speed. Cleo sprinted after it, running just as fast. It turned this way and that in an odd pattern, obviously knowing the hidden path that no other living thing knew about. She kept her eyes on it, not daring to slow down. One wrong turn and she would be lost again and probably wind up back where she started. Without warning, the caribou, along with its comatose passengers, ever so gently faded away like a ghost.
"Wait! Wait, don't go!" In one sudden, flashing instant... the blizzard stopped. And a second after that, all the snow in the air was gone. Cleo looked all around her, there was not a trace of the caribou or the blizzard, nothing but a flat bare plain of ice underneath a clear black sky filled with stars. The weather changed so fast, it was unnatural. It was like it had never really happened, like it was an illusion.
"Do you feel that Cleo?" Kaepora asked in wonder.
"...Yeah... I do. The aura of Hyrule itself is here."
"This must be the explanation to this phenomenon. The blizzard was like a hurricane and we're standing in the eye."
Cleo changed back to a human, drew the Master Sword and walked forward, dowsing. Faster and faster it beeped, until it revealed a plaque made of ice. On it were the Hylian words: Leave four seasons at the gateway to everlasting time and greet the father of days long past, for the giving of gifts leads to the receiving of happiness.
"This must be it... Now if I could just figure out what it means." The first part was very confusing and she was unsure if it had something to do with manipulating time. The last part was surely some kind of clue, about gift giving. But how does she give different seasons. Cleo spent the next twenty minutes sitting in front of the plaque, staring at the symbols of the four seasons on each corner, and thinking over this riddle. Finally, "I think I know what I have to do."
She took off her backpack and rummaged through her inventory until she brought out the four most useless items, which turn out to be the most valuable. She took out the stuffed rabbit and placed it on the symbol of spring, then the chinese kite on fall, Mr. Willoughby's snowglobe on winter, and her re-inflated beach ball on summer. In a moment, the plaque started glowing, liquefying and reshaping into a stairwell.
"Hootie Hoo! You did it!" Kaepora began flapping his wings in excitement. "It was a very lucky coincidence that you had those items." But Cleo was not at all sure that it was a coincidence. Each time she had come across one of those items, a voice in her head told her to take it, a voice she knew was her conscience. All her life, whenever she heard it, it never sounded like her own. Instead, it was monotonic yet melodic. In fact... it was the same exact voice she had in her dreams.
Putting that thought aside for now, Cleo went on down the stairs (after retrieving the bunny and snowglobe).
After walking through a dark tunnel, she came back out to an astonishing sight. There was a huge town underneath the ice and all the residents, she noticed, had long ears. They were no doubt Hylians. As she passed them, they would stop at whatever they were doing and gather to see their new visitor. "Go get the elder!" she heard one member of the crowd call out over the curious murmuring.
One Hylian girl walked toward Cleo. "You are the child of the prophecy, are you not?" Cleo nodded and pronounced her name. "Come with me." As she lead the way through town toward a residential building, someone came bursting out of the door, catching her by surprise.
Cleo stared, not believing what she was seeing and he stared back, also not believing his eyes. They looked at each other for half a minute in stunned silence. "... ... ...SK?"
"CLEOOOOOOOOO!" The skull kid ran at her and glomped her. She nearly fell in the snow. "CLEO! CleocleocleocleocleocleoImissyouImissyouImissyouImissyouImissyouImissyou!"
Cleo laughed out loud, hugging him back. "What are you doing here, you nut?!" Then another merry laugh, one from a wise elder, was added to the pair's. They turned around and saw another Hylian standing above them, wearing a red fur-trimmed cloak, smiling warmly at them from beneath his white beard. It was the final sage.
"You have a very devoted friend Cleo. He has been valiantly supportive of your cause."
SK's face fell. "Yeah, but I failed. I couldn't protect the princess for long."
"I take it you have quite a story to tell," commented Cleo.
"Perhaps we should discuss this over cocoa. You must be quite thirsty after your long trip."
Cleo Hayster... the time is near...
Through the trials you had to face thus far, you never wavered... even when things seem bleak...
Although there were times when you had doubt, you pressed on... all because of the prophecy...
You know what you have to do to fulfill it... the only question left is why were you chosen in the first place...
That answer might be just around the corner...
As you sip your cocoa, SK retells the tale of his daring, wit, and trickery to save Princess Zelda... only to fail in the end...
In turn you told yours of all the hardships given to you...
Three circlets... seven sanctuaries... only one more remains...
...and then the Death Eye...
Can you face it?... Will you survive...
The secret... may lie inside you...
The secret... that will reveal all...
Cleo Hayster... ...It is time to awaken your soul...
"So they weren't always bokoblins, huh?" The said bokoblins were still unconscious, their blue and green caps were off for the first time, revealing their white hair. Both of them had long, pointy pompadours. "I swore I've seen that hairstyle before," and Cleo had a pretty good idea who the human might be.
"Cleo, there's something you need to know about Zelda. I know what Ghirahim's planning, he's going to use her as a sacrificial vessel for the Death Eye."
She looked at SK in dread. "Are you sure?" The skull kid nodded grimly. "But why?"
"I hear that the Death Eye is purely chaotic," Kaepora guessed. "It is without logic or reason, so he needed Zelda's human mind and body for the dark entity. Otherwise, it'll just go on a rampage. And once it possesses her, it will become truly self-controlled."
"We cannot waste any more time." They looked at the doorway. Nicholas was standing there, apparently ready to go. "The Mayan calendar is almost complete. So we need to get going."
SK cocked his head. "Mayan what?"
Cleo rolled her eyes. "Slow on resent events, aren't ya."
"Well, what can I say? I live like a hermit." He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, with his hands behind his head.
"Can you do me a favor? When they wake up, tell them about their curse. They need to know the truth."
"Sure thing Cleo," said SK in a salute.
Nodding back, Cleo followed Nicholas outside with Kaepora. They went to the town square. Nick spread his arms out and a spell circle appeared in the snow. "The Sanctuary of Water awaits. Are you ready, Cleo?"
"Yes." For the final time, she played the Song of the Heroes and they were all surrounded by a swirl of color, light and sound.
Finn found all of the essentials that he could find and might need and packed them in his trunk. "Whatever crazy thing you're doing Cleo, just hold on until I get back." After that phone call, he needed to get home quickly and hopefully learn what's going on and be able to help her.
He looked all around his apartment for anything he might've missed and in his haste, he bumped into a book shelf and a dusty box at the top tipped over and fell on his head. "OW!"
He spat and sneezed as the contents flew and fell all over the place. They were papers and crafts from long ago. Cursing to himself, he stooped down to pick them up. But then he stopped... there was one piece of paper that caught his eye. It was a childhood drawing of a girl (a fairy perhaps), she was blue with rippling wings on her arms, one wing blue, the other violet. He remembered this drawing, it was Cleo's when she was only three, he had completely forgotten about the picture. But now that he remembered it, he realized what was weirdly off about it.
"Is that Fi?...! But Skyward Sword didn't exist yet, how did she know abo-"
"You know, I do find that sketch rather tacky. But then again what can you expect from that unimaginative sister of yours."
He spun around towards the speaker, mouth agape. "No way..."