Chapter 12

The woman standing in front of Daphnes looked so much like his mother had ten or twenty years before that the Hylian general was speechless before her, going down on one knee head bowed clumsily forming the three triangles around his head and shoulders with his three fingers ending in the center of his chest above his heart that every Hylian child was taught, though he had never done so before.

"My Lady," He said, fear creeping into his voice. "How may I serve you?" Every doubt he had ever had, and every word he had spoken against Hyrule's deities came crashing back through his mind, and he felt the weight of each in her presence.

"Is this how a grandson greets his grandmother?" Nayru asked him, a maternal affection ringing her voice. She walked forward, little bursts of light and white flame emanating from her form. Gently placing two fingers under his chin, she lifted his face until he met her gaze, then took his hand and brought him to his feet until he stood before her again. "You traveled all this way and fought through monsters born of your own fears to speak to me." She told him as only a mother or grandmother could. "So, grandson, let us talk." She folded her hands patiently in front of her.

"Uh..." He tried to speak, "My mother... your daughter is dying. The doctors can't cure her." He said, trying not to stumble over his words.

"I know this." Nayru told him sincerely. "There hasn't been a day which has gone by since my daughter took mortal form again that she has not occupied my every thought; she and her family, including you, my grandson."

"But... But if that's true, why don't you cure her? Surely, my Lady you have the power?" Daphnes asked, almost pleading.

"Yes, that is true. I have the power to cure her. But then what? She is nearing the end of her mortal life no matter whether I cure her or not." She sighed, and brought her hand up to caress the side of his head. "You look so much like your father, but you have your mother's eyes, did you know?" She asked wistfully, then her tone became more serious again as she took her hand away. "Curing her now would only prolong the inevitable. In twenty or thirty years, she would be facing the same problem again."

"Yes, but twenty or thirty years..." Daphnes began to protest.

"Is but the blink of an eye when you consider how long we have existed, dear one. My concern is for more than her physical life, Daphnes." Nayru told him.

"So it's true then." Daphnes said. It was a statement, not a question. "She really is the goddess, Hylia. And my father really is..."

"The Hero. Yes. It is true, every story you have ever heard from them." She confirmed. "Actually, there's a great deal they haven't told you for fear they wouldn't be believed."

Daphnes felt something wet on his cheek and raising his hand to his face he found that his eyes were watering, and a tear had spilled from his eye as he tried to come to terms with what he was told. And then he realized everything they had told him had been the truth, including his parents' main problem right now.

"But why, then, did you block their ability to rejoin you where they belong?" He asked. "My mother doesn't have much time left. Why won't you help them?"

Nayru closed her eyes as if she was debating how much to say. She took in a deep breath and let it back out slowly. "I could do that too. But then what happens if they are able to rejoin us and another crisis occurs here in the mortal plane?"

"What do you mean?" Daphnes asked. "I don't understand."

"I know, dear one. Let me try and explain. As my grandson, I owe you that much at the least. Once upon a time, and still to this day, it has been our highest law not to interfere with the free will of those less advanced than we are. This was the original cause of the war between your parents and the one you called the Demon King. When he sought to enslave your people, your mother intervened on the behalf of all mortals and entered the mortal plane again to defend all of Hyrule's people against him. Your father followed suit to protect and defend her. And so the cycle was for thousands of years until it was broken almost three hundred years ago." Nayru explained.

"So every child of Hyrule knows this." Daphnes said.

"But what every child may not know is that once Demise was slain, Farore, Din, and I agreed there was no more reason to enable their continuous re-ascension and rebirth to protect this land. We had made an exception to our law for ten thousand years and it wrought havoc and disaster across the face of this world for millennia." She continued.

"But wouldn't it have been worse had you not?" He asked.

"And that was our justification for it, dear one." She agreed. "And so we permitted their re-ascension one last time over two hundred and fifty years ago. And then a new threat, a new 'Demon King' came to this world, one we had not encountered before. My daughter reacted without hesitation, and her husband followed after her as he had always done. This was when the three of us realized that unless something changed within your parents, the cycle for them would never be broken. Your mother's greatest weakness is her attachment to this world and its people. Your father's is his attachment to your mother."

"I would not see that as a weakness, my Lady." Daphnes told her. "Love and compassion are never weaknesses."

Nayru smiled. "No, they are not. But your parents have suffered for these attachments. You yourself have heard your father's cries in the night from the terrors he experiences as he dreams. All that he has faced has bred a shadow within him that only grows worse with each reincarnation. Your mother is not far behind, though she hides it much better. If they cannot give up these attachments and allow your people to evolve, make mistakes, and continue on their own I fear that their cycle of suffering will continue for eternity and none of the three of us want that for them. They are too dear to each of us." Then her voice changed and there came an emotion that colored it as the goddesses own eyes began to tear. "No one wants her to rejoin us more than I, Daphnes. But would you have her do so if it meant condemning her to an eternal existence of pain and suffering?"

Daphnes's heart was torn as he understood what she was saying. "No." He said. "I wouldn't want that for anyone, least of all mother and father." He then asked, "What can I do? What must I do to save them both?" His expression took on a resoluteness, a determination that Nayru had seen so many times before in the man's father. He would jump into the depths of shadow and twilight if it meant saving those he loved.

"This is a battle within their own hearts, my grandson, that only they can face. There are many roads that travel the path of ascension, but one must walk that path themselves. No one can walk it for them." She told him.

"And what happens if they can't find their way on their own?" He asked, a fire beginning to build within him. "Do you leave them to oblivion?" That last question came out sharper than he had intended.

"Have faith, Daphnes." Nayru told him gently, though she didn't answer the question. "I only want what's best for everyone."

The music played joyfully as though there wasn't a care in the world as Gaepora approached the stone bench on which sat the unusual woman slowly and reverently. "Your grace?" He asked, assuming her to be the Sage. "Saria?"

The playing stopped as the ocarina came away from lips of the attractive woman with the flowing green hair. Those well shaped lips formed into a playful smile. "I have been called that before." She said with a giggle. "And you are Gaepora, son of the Hero." Her green eyes were bright and mischeivous. "And of the Princess." She added.

"Yes." He said. "They're why I'm here, your grace."

"Are they now?" She asked. "You mean you didn't just come to see me? I'm hurt." She teased. "I get so few visitors here."

"The moblins may have something to do with that, your grace." He responded, trying to "feel" her out.

"Well, you're here now, let me look at you." She said, nearly bouncing to her feet. She stood eye to eye with him as she looked him over, walking in a circle around him and then stopping in front of him again to stare into his eyes which were blue like his mother's. It felt uncomfortable and awkward.

"So, what about your parents did you want to see me about?" The woman asked, placing her feminine hands down in front of her waist, the ocarina still grasped loosely by them.

"Your grace, my mother, the Princess, is dying." He began.

"All mortals are dying. That is why they are called mortals." The woman replied, a playful twinkle in her eye. "Or did you not know this?" An expression came over her face as though she had just realized that might be a possibility.

"Your grace, please." He continued, trying to keep himself from becoming angry. "I'm here to speak with my grandmother, the goddess of this temple about her condition."

Now the woman looked confused, and then she whispered conspiratorially, "If your grandmother's a goddess, then shouldn't she be able to hear you no matter where you talk to her?"

"Yes, that's true, but," he became frustrated. "But she hasn't talked to anyone about this. She hasn't responded to us."

"Have you tried talking to her?" The woman asked innocently, a sincere expression on her face. "That's usually the first way to start a conversation." She whispered as though it might be new information to him.

A headache was beginning to form behind Gaepora's eyes. He didn't know if it was from the lack of sleep or the clearly Kokiri woman in front of him. He reminded himself that this was a Sage who was at least a thousand years older than he and she spent all of her time alone here in the temple compound. She was entitled to a few eccentricities. He took a deep breath and let it out to try and calm himself down.

"Your grace..." He searched for the words to say to make the woman understand the seriousness of his mother's condition. "My mother's ability to ascend on her own has been blocked. I've come to ask the goddess to allow her to..."

"Why?" She asked as though in shock.

"Why what?" He replied in confusion.

"Why was her ability to ascend blocked?" Her eyes were wide as though it was the worst thing that she could think of. "She must have done something awful."

He had been about to say that he didn't know why. None of them did. But that wasn't true. He had heard that story too. "It was because she interfered with mortal affairs as a goddess in front of the whole world, or at least as many as were watching the television at the time. The rules she incarnated under stated that whatever she did had to be as a mortal." He conceded, feeling a bit deflated.

The woman stared at him, her eyes wide blinking at him, her mouth open. "Oh." She said, closing her own mouth with the back of her hand. "Well, that would do it then. It sounds like she broke the rules and got exactly what she was told would happen if she did." She crossed her arms over her breasts and struck a pose.

"Yes. I suppose that is true." He replied, feeling both patronized and rebuked. He then said, "But she was also told that if she and my father stayed out of interfering from mortal affairs they would be allowed to ascend again."

"And have they?" She asked as though a teacher asking a schoolboy a question in class.

"Yes." He said in exasperation. "For the last four and a half decades they've been goat ranchers on the backside of Ordon. She gave up the throne my..." he hadn't ever used this term for the king before he realized, "half-brother now occupies in order to comply with the judgment of the goddesses. She's lived in seclusion with my father out of the public eye as much as possible for this very reason."

"But has she let go of interfering in mortal affairs?" Saria asked, the tone of her voice changing. The playfulness seeping out of it. "It seems to me that's the real question. If she were to ascend again, would she stay put? Or would she be reborn again at the first sign of a bad wizard? Hmmm? Can she remain content in the realm of the gods without pulling your father back from his well deserved rest to relive nightmare after nightmare again, and again, and again? Can she let those people on this plane of existence mature and evolve on their own without trying to protect them from every little Demon King that comes through. They can't you know, with someone always around to do it for them."

"So the goddess is just going to let her cease to be when her body fails?" Gaepora couldn't believe what he was hearing.

Saria bent over just a little and whispered in his ear, "Why don't you ask your grandmother yourself?" She then walked back to her stone bench.

Gaepora was stunned. The Sage seemed so cruel and heartless as she reclined again on her bench and began to play the bouncing, carnival like tune on her brown and green ocarina. Her forest green eyes watched him as she played. He had traveled all that way only to be mocked and ridiculed by a heartless Sage who clearly had no interest in helping his mother. He turned away from the attractive yet cold woman not knowing what to do next.

"Farore," He called out, tears forming in his eyes, "if you can hear me over this damned ocarina, please. I need to talk to you. Please, help my parents. I'm begging you, grandmother, and I know and believe now that you are my grandmother. Please speak to me."

The ocarina playing behind him stopped and everything in the forest went dead quiet.

"I always hear it when my children call out to me." Came a more mature, motherly version of the voice of the Sage behind him. "And that is the first time I've heard anyone call my ocarina 'damned,' grandson. Perhaps you might care to explain?"

Gaepora's heart nearly stopped beating in his chest as he froze where he was. No... he thought, as he slowly turned around. The Sage stood a few feet from where he had been standing, but it looked like she had matured about thirty years as streaks of grey ran through her forest green hair, and laugh lines creased her otherwise flawless face. Flickers of light and white flame ran along the outline of her form.

"Farore..." He said as he faced her. "Grandmother?"

"I believe we've already established that, dear boy." She replied.

Without knowing what else to do he fell to his knees, head bowed in front of her. "My Lady, I... I'm sorry... I was upset. I didn't mean to..." He tried to apologize.

"Don't apologize." She told him. "I said it was the first time. I didn't say I was upset about it. You were honest about how you felt. Honesty goes a long ways with me, Gaepora."

"Yes, my Lady." He replied, head still bowed.

"And get up off the ground, dear boy. I may be your goddess, but so is your mother and I have never once seen you on your knees or prostrated before her." She told him, closing the distance between them and taking his hand to raise him to his feet. "You are my grandson. Do you really think I'm going to smite you for insulting my ocarina?"

Gaepora shook his head, not knowing how to reply otherwise.

"Good boy." She told him.

"You said you were Saria." He managed to get out.

"No. I said I have been called that. And so I have in your distant past. Many times as a matter of fact when I had to take a more mortal disguise in order to raise my son properly. No matter what woman might have been chosen to bear him as a child, he has always been, and always will be, my son." She said with a fierce protectiveness that could only come from a mother's heart.

"Then why are you allowing him to risk oblivion?" Gaepora found his courage to speak.

"My son has already found a way to unblock his own path to ascension." She responded with something like pride. "I may assist him when he needs it, but I cannot fight his battles for him. What kind of a mother would I be if I did? He would remain scared and unable to be the Hero he was born to be. He must have the courage to press on and fight through to the end. I have faith in him that he will succeed in this last quest."

"And my mother?" Gaepora asked.

"You already know what she needs to do before she is able to ascend on her own again. So does she. The question for her is whether or not she's able to truly come to terms with what she needs to do before the end. This isn't a battle I can fight for her either. Not even my son can rescue her this time. She must win this on her own, or else they will both suffer for eternity. I won't allow him to suffer like this any longer."

"How can a mother who claims to love her son be so cruel as to be willing to let him cease to be?" Gaepora's anger was lit within him.

"I am willing to allow this 'because' I love both my son and Hylia." She responded, anger rising in her own voice. "Tread carefully. My grandson you may be, but my patience is not infinite."

"So that's it then. You won't help them." He said. It wasn't a question.

"I 'am' helping both of them, dear boy." She sighed. "As a father you should already know that there are times the best way to help your children is to let them stumble. Let them put their hand in the fire to learn not to get burned. Let them make mistakes to learn from them. There are times the only way to help them is to take your hands off completely and watch as they stand or fall on their own. If you don't, boys will never become men, and girls will never become women. We have aided their continuous re-incarnation for then thousand years because we agreed it was a necessity. Now it is time for them to choose once and for all. When my son and his wife truly need my help, then I will be there for them. Always, my grandson. I have never stopped watching over them and I never will. I can do no less. I am the Hero's mother." She then told him, "Maybe it's time you had as much faith in the Hero and the Princess as Din, Nayru, and I do."