The Kindred

Chapter II:  Rej

Author's Note: Whee, second chapter.  this one is a lot longer, and a lot less confusing, I think.  Anyway, thanks for the feedback (Shark).  Its good to know there's at least one person who likes my stuff.  ^^  Hope you enjoy.  P.s, fixed some grammar troubles with the second and first chapters.

The faint glow of the lantern barely illuminated the entire parchment, but Dagger dared not move it closer for fear of burning the brittle paper.  He cocked his head sideways and examined his drawing.  The appraisal lasted several minutes, until Dagger decided the Zora's head was too large. 

He reached to the corner of the small oak desk and snatched up a small, brown, leather bag.  He untied the mock-silver string and took a pinch of the contents inside.  Using the bit of dust, he scraped out the ink of the head on the paper, and wiped a smear of paper-colored paint over the mistake. 

Skim leaned back and sighed deeply, peering out the window for any signs of activity while the paint dried.  He unconsciously tied the bag again, and watched a white blur shoot past the window of the house across the plaza.  As it went, the blur made a high-pitched squawking noise, and was followed shortly by a man in his nightgown wielding a large rake.  He too was making a high-pitched squawking noise, but his was more understandable. 

            "Get back here ye damn chicken!  I'll teach ye the eat muh corn!  I'll beat the dickens out of ye!  Argh!"

            His screaming was drowned out as the chicken clucked its frenzied response.  Skim chuckled to himself and was about to turn away when a third blur caught his eye.  Kitana, the chicken-raising woman, was also in her nightgown, and chasing the old man while letting out screams of protest.  She was in her early twenties, with long, curly, brown hair, that fell about her slender neck and pretty face in bouncy spirals.  She held the bottom of her gown above her ankles to prevent it from picking up moisture off the wet grass.  She stopped, panting, in front of Skim's house. 

            The twenty-year-old boy snatched a woolen green shirt off the foot of the bed, and threw it on as he ran outside.  Skim had short black hair, which he spiked regularly but always went back to being a spongy mass of hair by mid-day. 

            "I'll get it," He said quickly as he ran past Kitana.  Skim dashed after the old man and had passed him within seconds.  The bed-clothed man had tried to make a swipe at Skim with his rake while yelling, "Don't ye rescue that chicken!  I'll tan your hide!"

Skim ignored him and kept running.  The chicken was quite fast, and was flap-running at a good twenty miles an hour.  Half the town was awake now, and stood watching from their windows.  Skim knew there was no way he would catch the chicken this way, so he took a sharp left and leapt up the ridge to the spider house.  He jumped as high as he could and snatched the drainpipe that ran off the edge of the house's roof, and pulled himself up.  The drainpipe groaned under his hundred and sixty pounds, but held firm, if not for a small dent. 

As the chicken ran up the stairs leading to the spider house, Skim made the prediction that it would head left to avoid the fence.  He bolted right to cut it off, and just as he had expected, the chicken ran right below him.  Skim jumped off the roof and landed in front of the squawking bird, and snatched it up.  It flailed madly in his arms, scratching him with its claws and pecking madly at his face.  The boy ignored the scratches and calmly carried it back to Kitana, who had moved near the tree in the central plaza with the other villagers, to watch the procession.  Skim handed her the chicken and was about to walk away, mumbling something about bandages. 

It was at that moment the old man swung his rake and would have killed the chicken, now quiet in its owner's arms, had Skim not whirled and caught the tool by the handle.  The villagers glared reprimandingly at the old man, who sheepishly lowered his head and mumbled, "Damned bird was eatin mah corn." 

Kitana touched Skim's arm, and he let go of the rake, blushing.  He scratched the back of his neck and turned to leave, but Kitana spun him around and hugged him tightly.  The chicken, squashed between the two, began squawking madly once again, and Kitana quickly let go.  "Thanks Skim," she winked at him, and a general giggling cheer went up from the crowd.  Skim blushed again, nodded, and walked back to his house.  Behind him he could hear the old man's fat wife yelling at him, "You idjit!  That bird didn't eat the corn, YOU did!  You're just too old and stupit to remember!  Go on, get out of here, and go back to the house."

The Hylian assistant sat back in his wicker chair, and made the finishing touches on the repaired head before turning out the lantern.  He threw off his shirt and left it draped over the back of the chair, and crawled under the itchy wool blanket.  He let his head sink back into the down pillow, and fell asleep. 

He didn't sleep long, however, and was awakened by a sharp rapping at his shack's door.  A faint glow came from the steps to his door, obviously from a lantern.  Skim groaned, rolled out of bed, and made his way for the door.  He was only half awake when he opened the door, but what he saw startled him enough to wake him from the deepest sleep.  Standing in the doorway of his house was quite possibly the last thing in Hyrule he expected.  A poe. 

The ghost was black with wisps of smoke trailing from its bottom.  It was roughly the size of Dagger's upper torso, and perhaps twelve hands around.  Two pale golden eyes without pupils stared at him, waiting for him to say something.  When Dagger gave no response, the spirit whipped its lantern to shine in Dagger's face.  A single gloved hand supported the lantern, without an arm attached.  The other rested at the poe's side.  Most poes had a high, cackling laugh, and did so before they spoke, but no mirth echoed from the confines of the ghost's smoky body. 

"Skim?"  Came the voice.  It was surprisingly low for a poe, it sounded almost human.  Almost.  Then Skim realized it was not the poe that had spoke, it was a shadow on his roof.  The wraith dropped to land beside him, and snarled in his face.

"Are you the. . . assistant?" 


The thing would have spat, but it couldn't.  It made do with a disrespectful pause, and a sneer in its voice as it said the word.  Scribes often outranked wraiths in the Hylian Army's hierarchy, but an assistant was a different matter altogether. 

The wraith took further of his superior rank by interrupting Skim's response with a quiet snicker.  "If you ask me, they should feed all the scribes to the keese."

The poe had caught on by this point, and was giggling quietly, its lantern swaying as its whole body shook.  Skim was about to come back with a snappy retort, when the sound of footsteps caused all three of them to turn.  Kitana stood several feet away in her pajamas, arms crossed.  She cocked her head to one side, "What's up Ski?  Who're your friends?"  She used his nickname which he disliked, but let her call him because she thought it was "cute".

The shadowy wraith turned its head towards Kitana. "The apprentice," it stressed the word, "is due for a meeting."

If Skim had been watching the poe, he would have seen it roll its translucent green eyes, regardless of its lack of pupils.  Kitana put her hands on her hips and glanced at the wraith, "He may only be an apprentice, but just tonight he saved one of my chickens." 

The two ghosts slowly turned to face each other, tried to contain their laughter, and failed completely.  The poe let out its high-pitched chittering cackle, while the wraith's laugh sounded like stale air being released from a tomb in short bursts.

Skim lowered his head embarrassedly and mumbled quietly, "You're not really helping, Kit."  But Kitana was oblivious to his pleas.  The two spirits stopped laughing long enough for the wraith to gasp out, "I can see it now, the news will travel like Din's Fire."  The poe held its hands out, thumbs touching, resulting in a box with an open top.  "Assistant Scribe Saves Kakariko Chicken.  Parade Thursday in Hyrule Town."  Both ghosts went back to laughing, until Kitana interrupted them with a sharp response.

She pointed her finger an inch from the wraith's face.  "Listen here, you stupid ghost.  If it wasn't for scribes, the Hylians would never have found out poes could be manipulated with shade oil.  Which means they would never have been able to resurrect you losers."

"But he's just an assistant, not a full scribe," the wraith protested.

"But it's the assistants who do all the field work, therefore collecting the data."  Kitana smiled triumphantly while the other three blinked at her. 

"She's got a point, you know," the poe turned and said matter-of-factly to the seething wraith.

"Shut up!  Let me kill her!"

The wraith leapt at Kitana as razor-sharp claws flashed out of the shadow matter that served as hands.  The wraith whistled through the air at great speed, until it lurched to a halt in mid jump.  Its six-inch talons barely a hair's width from Kitana's face, it howled furiously at the poe controlling it.

"Damn you!  Let me go, cursed lantern-ghost!"

The glow of the poe's eyes and lantern dimmed a bit with the strain of controlling the frenzied wraith.  The ghost weakly smiled the poe equivalent of a smile, which is a blue glow from the lantern. 

"Sorry, he's very fast, and difficult to stop when he's angry."  Not that the poe cared at all for the lives of these humans, he was just obeying the contract.  If the wraith killed any humans, there would be no shade oil for that month's pay.

Kitana slowly backed away from the blades that threatened to cut her to bleeding chunks.  She ran straight into Skim, who didn't seem to notice until she put her hand in his.  Skim let Kitana's hand fall to her side, and approached the wraith, staring wide-eyed at the talons the entire time.  The assistant scribe touched one of the metal claws, and turned to the poe, who was absorbed in trying to shoo a moth away from its lantern.

"I wasn't aware wraiths came equipped with Goron Flowsteel Blades,"

The poe looked up briefly from its struggle with the moth.  It went back to fending off the winged menace as it spoke, "Oh, yes, I put those in for extra attack power.  Rather expensive however."  The ghost frantically swung its lantern, knocked the moth out of the air, and watched its spiraling descent to the wet grass.  Its lantern burned a triumphant blue-green, and it turned its full attention to the apprentice scribe. 

"Name's Skim," the assistant said, and extended one hand.  The ghost quickly transferred its lantern to its left glove, and shook with its right. 

"Rej."