1 Spinning Slash, Chapter 3: No Idle Tears
"What, are you a fish? Don't let your mouth hang open like that. It makes you look funny, Miss Claire."
"Oh… I suppose… you're right…" at which she promptly closed her jaw.
This has to be a dream, she thought to herself, a very strange and twisted dream. There was no way, in all of heaven and Hyrule, there could be even the least possible smidgens of relation between those two. None. She could list as many reasons as there were, she was sure. First, there was size. No one that small could have come from warrior blood. And let's not forget strength. Whether it was just another factor of being tiny or not, Posie was not very powerful. She could barely lift a small rock, it seemed. And who could possibly deny attitude? If children really did pick up things from their parents, then what could Posie have learned from him? No being brave. No smart-alec wisecracks. And she definitely hadn't gotten that babyish innocent way of asking questions from him.
But those eyes…
No. She firmly told herself no. It had to be a trick. Something to get back at the other kids for teasing her. She'd asked him to play the part. It was a joke; a gag. Posie's real father wasn't coming at all, she was sure, because Posie had expected everyone to fall for her marvelous little trick. Well, Adalia Claire wasn't falling for it, that was for sure. She could see right through this wonderful little trick. Besides, if it was true, then why had Randy freaked out when Link had appeared? Wouldn't they be acquaintances? At least remotely friendly with each other?
"Well… I suppose the gig is up, isn't it?"
Randy's deep throated growl jolted her back into reality with the effect of a bucket of ice water. The gig was up, causing her to give a sly little smile. So she was not alone among the intelligences. Finally, some other adult realized what was going on and was going to speak up. Good thing, since she would despise having to be the one to embarrass Posie in front of her peers. She had always thought Link was a bit too cocky for his own good. An exposé of his little sham would do him well. No blame on Posie, of course. Even in the worst of their times, she could never be too hard on a child.
"Yeah. I s'ppose it is." Link vaulted himself up on his hands and brushed the dirt from the front of his tunic. He looked down at Randy, for quite possibly the first time in his life, and smiled. "But it was a good one, though. Too bad it had to foul up like that. It would have been hilarious."
"Yeah." Unwittingly tightening his deathgrip around Elaine, causing her to cough from a slight lack of oxygen, he looked off dreamily at the back wall.
No. Wait. This was very wrong. Very wrong. Link and Randy were partners? This had been some sort of joint effort? But then the whole episode that had started the contest had been an act. But that meant they knew each other. Which meant that they were friends. Which meant…
"EEEEEYAAAAAH!" Hands flying high in the air, Miss Claire ran screaming to the door out into the playground, banged it open with a CRACK that exactly timed with a burst of lightning, and sprinted out into the freezing cold drench that tumbled from the sky.
"What's her problem?" asked someone's father in the back. After Posie had been scooped up from beneath the tumbling shelves by Link, he had immediately turned back to his in-depth discussion of the weather with his wife. He quite clearly had no idea what had just taken place in the previous thirty seconds or so. It wasn't that he didn't care, it was just that he wasn't really interested in what Link did. As soon as he had seen that the girl was safe, as far as he could be concerned, the show was over.
There was a vacuumed silence in the room for about a minute, and then the doorway swung open. Holding the door ajar with a stiff, goose-pimpled arm, Miss Claire had a tense, exhausted look on her face, tiredness pouring from her eyes and the deep sound of her breathing. Muddy, rain-soaked curls were flat against her scalp and loose hairs stuck out at odd ends. A black streak oozed down one of her cheeks, indicating that the mascara she had applied that morning had not survived the rivulets she had subjected herself to. She was pale, in a sickly sort of sense, except for her nose, which was glowing pink. She inhaled; exhaled; stuck her arms to her sides in one swift motion and promptly marched over to the fallen furniture.
"Will someone please assist me to put this bookshelf back the way in belongs?"
Her voice had an annoyed murmur to it with which Link did not care to mess; but he knew that as it was partially his fault, not lending a hand would be impolite. So he scurried away from Randy to the top of the shelf and gave it a vault from below.
"Thank you." It was flat and somewhat curt, but a thank you was a thank you was a thank you. Miss Claire sighed and added her own measly bit of strength to shove up the shelves, not looking up at Link's slightly worried face.
"Well, we certainly got off on a bit of a bad foot, didn't we?"
Miss Claire gave her reply more to the floor than to Link himself. "I'll say."
"That whole thing was really stupid of us… me an Randy…" The case settled back into its normal spot, an array of books and leftover splinters from the table's crash scattered below. "I mean… all we wanted to do was make people laugh. The whole… the whole contest thing was never supposed to happen. We planned for every imaginable thing that could wrong, or so we thought, and yet we never thought of that. If it were Posie and Elaine in our places, instead of us, I can almost guarantee you they would've caught that. I don't care how much smarter adults supposedly are, children are indefinitely wiser. They haven't developed a ridged, one-way way of thinking yet."
"Perhaps."
"I'm such an idiot sometimes." He groaned, more from emotional stress than anything else, slapping his arm against the case's newly roughened side and pressing his forehead into it. He sort of shook and rolled his head over that arm, eyes closed in contemplation. "Honestly, if I had one rupee for every time I've leapt before I've looked, I might as well be buying out Ebridane this minute. And you'd think everything, from consequences to pain to electrocution would have taught me by now…"
Miss Claire's eyes widened a bit and she pursed up her lips at the last phrase in Link's sentence, but rather than ask by how he was electrocuted and what that had to do with making stupid decisions, she actually felt sorry for the big lunk and grumbled out something along the lines of a compliment. "Well, if it weren't for some of your hasty decisions, Hyrule might as well be a blackened cinder by now. I think you're mistaking some of your quick logic for bad choices. There's a great difference."
"Yeah. If something good happens, it's quick logic. If something bad happens, it's a bad choice." Miss Claire winced at the tone at which Link almost snarled these words, and not because they were overly sarcastic. But because he sounded perfectly serious. Dead serious, in fact.
Some people might refer to the obtaining of such information as a "stab in the chest." But Miss Claire could more accurately sum this up as a "slit to the throat:" a slowly dripping wound, starting out almost numb, the agony gradually increasing as more and more blood(or, in this case, realization) surged forth. With a gash in one's heart, one could quickly pass on in a matter of minutes. Likewise, one could much easier get over such "stab in the chest" understanding. But with a "slit in the throat," pain was ongoing, the damage caused never truly enough to kill instantly. Was it really possible that this magnificent hero, the great savior of this majestic kingdom, could be so negative and pessimistic? Goddesses be sent to the deepest abyss of the Dark World, who cared if the man was somehow in the bloodline of the tiniest child she had ever known? How in the world had he adapted such a dark train of thought?
"You… you don't really mean that though, do you?"
His arm dropped casually to his torso. His eyes were still fixated on the carpet beneath the soles of his boots. "In my business, that's the nearest thing you get to truth. 'Cuz let me tell you, in the world of the warrior, there isn't much to depend on as fact. I mean, look… about ninety percent of those guys in the army are single. They don't have families to keep them bogged down, no one extra to get upset if they somehow fall in combat. And the majority of those who do get married drop out, permanently. Most guys just can't take the anxiety of having to always come back to someone. And yet, look at me. Not only am I married, but I also have my daughter. I've only seen about five other guys in the ranks who have kids. Not counting Igre," he said, making an aimless side reference to the renowned Minister of War, "but then again, all of his sons are knights and his wife died recently. He doesn't even fight anymore, to my knowledge. Everything is status quo, and yet everything is defiant. The whole business contradicts itself."
Well, Miss Claire certainly couldn't find a good reply to that! His argument seemed to be reasonable. And yet… well, he still didn't seem to be the sunniest fellow on the block. Every time she'd read about him or listened to talk of him or heard of his latest good deed, he was always portrayed as a cheerful, humorous, playful sort of fellow. Randy had even called him "fun-loving!" Was all that only a cover for his inner nature?
Or vice-versa?
"So… perhaps we should introduce ourselves properly, then." From the spectator's seat, the roles had reversed. Link now refused to give even so much as a glance upward, but Miss Claire gazed on, proud and steady. "I am Adalia Claire, the teacher of this school. Please look me in the eyes and tell me who you are."
Link slowly raised his chin to stare ruefully into Miss Claire's stare. His head was almost, but not quite, level with hers, and he barely opened his lips as he spoke. His face was nearly covered by his loping bangs. "Oh, c'mon, you know who I am. Seriously. Link, Hero of Time, Savior of Hyrule. Mr. Mighty Warrior. The list goes on and on." He sounded as if he had been holding his nose to prattle of the list, like he was mocking his own title. Riddled with sarcastic awe. How different this man was proving to be, from everything she had heard! The gossip that danced from ear to ear across Hyrule had told her that Link was a proud one, glad to retell, in every bloody detail, how exactly he had conquered Ganon and saved Hyrule those many times. And yet, here was that same heap of flesh, blood and bone, going about his amazingly high rank in the Royal Court and supreme fame as though it were all some joke.
"Well, to be honest, Link Hiro Blade, but, I'm sure you could at least figure out that last part by yourself. I mean, you know—Posie Blade, Link Blade… no, wait, that's backwards—Link Blade… no, hold on… oh, never mind. I think you get the picture."
"Quite." Miss Claire was slightly bewildered, and therefore more subdued. She thought it might be best to adopt the same attitude, temporarily, as her conversational opponent. So she was slightly sarcastic, a bit aloof, and almost mumbling in her reply.
"Yeah. You know, another thing I'm bad at it phrasing things. But, I suppose, when you're as stupid as me, that sort of thing is what comes naturally. I mean, look, the other day I did the most idiotic thing: I just decided randomly to throw myself at the floor."
Play along with him, she urged himself. Warm him up before you cheer him up. "That is pretty dumb."
"Yeah," he coughed—or was that a chortle?—back. "But what's even stupider is that I missed."
Miss Claire's eyes widened; she drew back and placed her hand up against the side of the bookcase. Link snorted, make a few quick breaths, and raised his head high, laughing himself into hysterics. Was this some sort of grim emotional overload from some bad pun of a personal insult?
"Ha… ah… ok, I'm fine." Link stopped, hand over his chest as he panted. "No, that's got to be the most idiotic thing I've ever done. That joke is so old that, next to it, Father Time looks like a baby."
She could almost hear the comedy-club drumroll as several of the closer folks in the knot of people started to chuckle. She rolled her eyeballs at the terrible gag, but couldn't help but crack the wispiest traces of a smile. Now this was more like the Link she knew. Everyone had a dark side, she now politely reminded herself. A shadowy edge. A part of them that would never see the joyous light of day again and couldn't care less if it did. His was only breaking through for a moment, as everyone's did when depression creeped from its bed of balefire and slid into their soul. But the Link that was, an orb of light and happiness, could so quickly consume that pale shadow that hardly ever could it damage him, and never would it utterly destroy him. Now it shone as clear as daylight that the word "pessimism" wasn't even capable of being in his vocabulary. As she might have put it to the children, that earlier episode had just been a "sadness moment."
"I don't suppose I can disagree, Mr. Blade, but it certainly does get glowing reviews." Ever expanding was that miniature smirk, now practically a grin that invaded both of her cheeks with swelling laughter. All the bad tempers that had fallen with the rain now shattered under the shaft of daystar that trickled through a rupture in the cloak of gray. Sparks of hope glimmered beneath the iris of every eye.
"Oh, kindly, Miss Claire, do call me Link." Now his voice was lathered with faux culture, with a dollop of a faulty English accent. "After all, it's only what all my friends call me," plenty of sour emphasis on "friends." "And it's not like we're in any sort of formal occasion here."
The grin shifted to one side of her face as she narrowed her eyes in (good humored) annoyance. "Fine then, Link, O Great One. You want fries with that?"
He gave a modest snicker as he folded his arms and looked off into space. "I'd say this preface came off a good deal better than the one before. Wouldn't you?"
"Much. Though I must state that you're little skit was certainly a mite more interesting that the normal parent's commence. Normally it's just hey, how do you do, I'm such-and-such's parent, then they go off to chat with the rest of the crowd until the games get under way. You at least provided a bit of entertainment."
"Randy's idea, wouldn't 'cha know. The guy's full of 'em. One of his strong points. Perfectly compliments his weak spot. And that's that he's full of 'em."
"Like you and your never-ending supply of terrible innuendoes?"
"Yeah, exactly like… hey!"
Miss Claire gave a soft snigger-breath, a sort of laugh that wasn't really one at all. Just a couple of breaths in a pattern like a giggle, an indescribable thing really. "Maybe you aren't such a bad fellow after all, Link. From what I've heard, Posie seems to like you well enough."
"Yeah." Link gave a gentle, dreamy sort of smile, and turned around to where Posie had run off several minutes ago. She and Elaine had pulled out a box of wooden blocks and were building a tower with Randy, who could help them pile the squares and triangles as high as the ceiling presuming they could find enough of the colored shapes. "I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm bragging or anything—"—he shrugged—"—but man, she is one great kid. Really loves me. Well, yeah, so does just about every kid on this entire continent, but… because I'm me, not because I'm me."
She was still mulling over the complexity of that statement as he continued. "I mean, she couldn't care less how many times I've saved Hyrule, or that I know the princess, or that I'm this super-powerful warrior dude who's got some ultimate destiny to be the champion of virtue as we know it. She cares that I'm there to wish her good night, or to read her that book she loves so much, or to play some game with her. Of course she admires what I've done, but… only because I'm her dad. If I weren't some relative of hers, she probably wouldn't care less."
"You think so?"
"I know so."
"How can you probably know something?"
"Don't ask me. Just call it instinct. I can tell eighty percent of the time exactly what's on her mind. She may often wear a padlocked cover, but once you get to know her you can read her like a book."
"Really? Padlocked cover, eh? I've never seen the traces of anything of the like. Was always perfectly your exact opposite."
Link returned a look that was almost smug. "Yeah, I know the routine of which you speak. Cowardly, timid, babyish little Posie, the perfect picture of innocence? What a great ploy. Couldn't have come up with a better one myself. How about outgoing, spunk-filled, wise beyond her years Posie who is attracted to trouble like a paper clip to a magnet? She hides behind that veil so even those who look beyond her size won't associate her and I. The whole fame thing never went well with her."
Miss Claire could hardly believe her ears. What sort of gene affected the pools of this family, exactly? First, she finds Link making like some sort of depressed gothic poet, now she found Posie to really be some sort of dynamo. What was next? She massaged her forehead, making an "uhhg" noise in her throat and coughing. Still, she had to fight through her frustration and at least try to continue conversation. Breathe, her mind hissed, breathe.
"Really? You'd have think should wold have gotten used to it, it being something she's always had to live with, right?"
"Not always, Adalia, not always." She almost jumped a foot into the air at hearing someone other than her boyfriend Pejin use her first name. I've been working too hard at this job, she could feel her soul snigger. "My wife and I made the firm decision that we would not expose her to my fame until it was necessary and we thought her able to comprehend it. Most children would immediately assume that, because one of their parents was famous, it made them more special than others. Wouldn't you agree?"
"It's an unfortunate truth," she sighed. "Posie always bragged about how wonderful you were, but... she never mentioned any first names, or said precisely why. It's almost a relief to find that you're… well… you. You catch my drift?"
"I most certainly do, and I can sense the pervasion in your voice that indicates that you've dealt with the sort before."
"Charles Rendelholfe…" She drooped her head, laughing with exhaustion. "That peacock; and I was unlucky enough to get stuck with him in my first year of teaching," she lamented. "Good old Igre's children certainly do take after their father…"
"I have come to the conclusion that something in the Rendelholfe bloodline causes nearly all Rendelholfes to be conservative, cocky, and extremely narcissistic." His voice wavered a bit, and pulled out a casual, naïve expression. "But, don't ask me, I'm just biased because I have to work with the great rooster king of them all." He shrugged, almost as if to ask a question.
"I pity you, but back to what we were saying…"
"Ahh, yes, on how we handled the issue of my reputation… well, we managed to keep the hearsay from her ears for a good two years, I can tell you that. But, children will be children, and children will scamper off on their own, and children will hear things that they aren't supposed to." His expression fell as his eyes half closed. He lowered his speaking volume, versing confidential matters to Miss Claire and Miss Claire only.
"One day she escaped from those entrusted to her care," sneezing something that sounded like Nhavihuh!, "and somehow managed to find her way, without being noticed, to the forest close by where we live. She happened to encounter a group of wandering hikers who had gone for an bit of an excursion to those Lost Woods and gotten, well, lost. They were talking among themselves, about the trip and the food they had brought, mostly, but also of a recent happening in which this very village had been retrieved from the grip of a particularly nasty rouge Wizrobe by a certain yours truly."
"I remember that…" mused Miss Claire, comprehension-laden words denoting that it was fine for the man to proceed. "Had to evacuate the village, and most of the poor children were scared out of their wits. Thank the Goddesses none of them we hurt."
"Well, you can imagine the curiosity that scrambled into her thoughts when she heard dear old Daddy had saved an entire village, so she ambled her way on back, got a telling off from her babysitters(who shall remain nameless), and then was pumping us full of questions the instant my wife and I returned back from our errand. Well, we just couldn't leave her wondering there!"
She remained silent, but scrunched her face and pulled back her lips in an expression that spoke of pain.
"So, we worked out an agreement with her that I would take her to Hyrule Castle Town so she could see a few things," Link told. "Luckily I have one of the quickest means of reaching the town pretty much permanently at my disposal, and it ends up in a fairly secluded place, too. Just so long as you don't try to go on a Sunday morning." Naturally, this means of reaching the town was through the Prelude of Light, and it would take its player straight to the Temple of Time should they wish. Of course, appearing straight in the middle of the hall in the middle of the Sunday service was certainly not going to get you any privacy, if not draw you a bit of unwanted attention. But any other day of the week was fine, even if the sudden downfall of a cyclone of yellow sparks that brought Link to the dais marked with the Triforce emblem did give Rauru a bit of a start.
"Of course, it was a disaster. The instant I appeared inside of the marketplace, I was swamped by people," Link vehemently waving his arms to indicated the struggle and confusion of the gaggle of gawkers that came to awe themselves with him. "Poor Posie got lost underfoot. She had no idea what was going on. Got lost out there. It's such a big place, especially when you're two years old and triumphed by a pigeon. Well, OK, so maybe she was a little bigger than a pigeon, maybe the same size, I can't remember exactly…"
"So she's always been this small? In comparison to others her age, I mean?"
"Yeah. Weirdest of all her quirks. Born not much bigger than my hand. Never actually thought she'd stay that way, though… but where was I? Ah, yes… well, you see, what happened after that, I'm not totally sure, because she couldn't talk very well back then, but that's a given… it seems she managed to stumble off into a back alleyway and come across another child who was lost."
"Ah. Birds of a feather flocking together. On accident, I suppose. But what I'm guessing is, they both managed to communicate to each other, in their two-year-old-ish way of doing things, that they had both gotten separated from their parents and wanted to find their way back. So they banded and started looking together."
"Precisely." Link nodded. "Now me, I was in hysterics. The second I noticed she wasn't clinging by my leg, I positively shrieked with fright. Now, imagine what those people thought, seeing the great Link just freak out like that. I'm supposed to be unflinchable. But I was right then and there. Only they didn't know that, because none of them had bothered to look down and notice I had brought a tag-along. So they backed up good, and I took the time to make a break for it. And, not looking where I was going, careened straight into roughly 300 pounds of muscle, armor, and man, waving his spear like the air was full of nasty, stinging little poisonous insects and bawling like a baby."
"I heard that!" A low toned, almost guttural voice echoed its complaint from almost out of nowhere, and, interrupted from their conversation, Link and Miss Claire whirlwinded around to face the bass man delicately balancing blocks atop a tower. "For your information, I was not 'bawling like a baby,' I was tearing like a man. And I kept my spear firmly by my side as all guards a trained to do unless in an emergency that threatens the whole of the town, thank you very much!"
Miss Claire slid her arms into a knot across her chest and twitched the edges of her lips. "I take it this has something to do with how Elaine and Posie met, am I correct?"
Randy shrugged. "You basically summed it up right there. They find each other, we find each other, we try to find them, they try to find us, we end up colliding with them as well as several other townies in this big spill from an ice cream vendor's cart, Link gets all protective-father- like with Posie, everyone goes 'Awwwww…' and then wants to know, then Link explains his famous-ness. End of story."
"Well, that wasn't all the story, though. You completely forgot the fact that nearly every place you went, we had already been, but you had been just minutes too late." It was nonother than Posie who made this whipish, sardonic comment that frankly made Miss Claire jump nearly a foot into the air at hearing the child use this tone. Not because it was overly rude, but because it was so unlike the Posie she was familiar with. But Link had warned that, under the surface, she was a completely different person. Perhaps having her father there, for his warmhearted support and protection was enough to corrode the barrier she established about herself to cut off ties with his world. Maybe now that the extent of her now so- small world knew, she had nothing to be afraid of. Indeed, in this company, it was a indisputable feather in her cap. Assuming that this company had been paying attention. It wasn't evident any of them were. Well, so long as no one else was queuing for her immediate attention, Miss Claire had a conversation on her plate that might as well be finished.
"Well, such a number of things I've learned about you today, Link… I didn't even know you were even married in the first place."
"Well, after Ganon got his face beaten into the ground fairly well, it wasn't like he was going to be a major problem for a while, which made getting married a fairly safe bet. Oh, sure, I still save all your average Joes and Jans, and I make sure your villages don't get eaten, but honestly, Royal Protector is a cushy job nowadays. Especially accompanying the royal personas to fancy banquets in other kingdoms and countries in Ebridane. Ooh, especially that one the Toadstool family of the one kingdom had. But seriously, can you really expect me to stay chaste from love all my life? Everybody needs somebody. Even me."
"Well, yeah, I mean, I suppose there's truth in that. But, I mean, I thought you liked that Princess or something. But that obviously isn't true now, because you're married and not the new King of Hyrule. So who exactly is your wife?"
"Chlorine girl."
"Nobody asked for your opinion, Mr. Randal Jacob Parkerstine." Miss Claire couldn't help but notice that the was Link snarled, you would've thought he'd been insulted instead of his wife. Besides, she wasn't around to hear it. Why would somebody call anyone "chlorine girl" girl, though? Did they enjoy going swimming? But how was that an insult? Unless, of course, they had overly green hair.
"Hey, it was only a joke. You don't have to hang on that woman's shoulder, protecting her from every little bit of harm and every less than well-bred ne'er-do-well out there. Honestly. Just because she's a little less than in touch with the outside world…"
"Well, in case you haven't forgotten, my so-called best friend, I have a sword and I know how to use…"
"Hey, hey, take it easy, you two!" Miss Claire fluttered her hands in an up-and-down motion, making a "tone down" indication to the fighting men. "We don't need a real fight. There's nothing wrong with being a little protective of someone you love so long as you don't get obsessive about it. Heck, my boyfriend acts the same way. But please, don't banter over it. Like I said, about you guys being grown men… though I'm not so sure about that now; you seem to act like big kids."
Link gave a deep, belly laugh and knelt to the floor, scribbling a pattern of reverse carpet hairs into the ground on his knees and elbows over to where Posie and Elaine were precariously tipping blocks into the edge of the amazing wood-brick spire, which was waxing to amazing proportions and even elaborations. A single block no longer provided a decent base of support, so now it had the foot of a castle, and the tower itself had expanded to being several blocks thick. And impressive piece of construction work, architecture, and sculpture all in one—at least, to a five-year-old.
"Humans either state the blatantly obvious or never realize it till the last minute, and Miss Claire I must find you guilty as charged of the latter." He found a stray little purple cube, slightly smaller than the rest of the clique and etched with images of large and small P's, and gave it an encouraging scoot to rejoin the crowd that was nestling around Posie's knees. It gave a click of delight as it settled peacefully in a niche formed between a foresty, youthful green S and a silver-flushed L that looked both as if they could use something to hug. Their paints instantly seemed to brighten as their tiny and not-quite-matched comrade slid into it place. It seemed consumed by the tumble of the squares around it, but determined not to be lost and thrown into the dustbin of tower material. It in fact seemed to be shifting upward, causing that little couple who had so merrily taken that small misfit piece into their empty cranny to glow with the strange paraphrase of delight only shown in the class of inanimate objects known as toys. And yet, were these toys, or was this a living metaphor of society? There the two of them rested, and here they watched, or yearn to someday watch, as the hand of destiny reached from above to pluck their little girl up from the rabble of society and place her atop the tall tower of the world's champion…
"The two of us ARE just big kids… there's no such thing as a man, you know, just a little boy in a man's body. Of course, we're a bit more responsible and a tad more sensible than little boys, but, that's a moot point." He selected that little misshapen violet block and deposited it tenaciously on the top of the teetering, gnarled tower just as the entire stack came plummeting to the floor. Posie shielded her face with her arms and was biffed and battered by the avalanche of little wood cubes that came diving from what would be the high heavens to her. Shaking away those that huddled in the cranny between her neck and her shoulder and a few that had caught in her sunbeam-flushed, spider floss hair, she turned her head to Link and brushed away motes of imaginary dust from her crinkled tunic front as a signal that, while a tad imping, the rain from above had not done her any general damage.
"Ah. That's my Posie. Nothing fazes ya, does it, kid?"
Miss Claire scuffed her throat in a bit of obvious disagreement, but Posie just smiled and nodded like a marionette, announcing proudly, "No siree! Nothing gets to Posie Cassandra Blade! To or through; I'm as tough as they come!" She paraded like the head lioness of a pride about her fallen faux fortress, waving an imaginary baton and stamping the imprint of her boot into the floor's weave. She even began to hum the Hyrulean national anthem as she marched, though it was a rather buzzy and almost excruciatingly treble rendition. She only seemed to know that one single, famous refrain, droning over and over again, "Do doo, doo dah dee dee dah! Dah dee da dum, dee dah dum, dee dah dum, dee dah… dee dee daaaaa…"
Link's face was pinched, but in laughter, as he stretched out one crisscrossed arm and clamped it gently but in encumbrance upon Posie's shoulder, so small and steep that there was hardly anything to grab hold of. "That's quite enough, love, though I found your version of our nation's anthem in B flat simply stunning." Naturally, he spoke taintedly, squeezing every last bit of sarcasm he had congealing in his personal store out for the purpose of upholding his reputation as the single most annoying and yet friendly person on the entire continent.
"So naturally," Posie laughed back, inflection so oddly mature it was unnerving, "I shouldn't quit my day job."
"I didn't know folks your age could get day jobs," Link tittered as he skittered Posie over to his side with a few taps on her back and a tug or two on her folding tunic collar.
"Hey, I also do parties."
It was all Miss Claire could help to sigh softly and prop herself up against the wall, two dream-ridden orbs nodding back into their sockets with a contemplating sanguinity. Posie really was a different child when she had that swashbuckling, wisecracking, youth in his own sense lurking close at hand. Miss Claire had no trouble identifying where the unconditional love lied between those two—walking the thin, yet endlessly wide, heartstring of family that gave them a common bond. Nothing but an honest, even if it was light, affection could draw out that rumpled, high- tipped beam of delight that spread over Link's face as Posie dove into his embrace and snuggled up against his front. But this certainly wasn't a mild warmth, it was a brilliant pyre, chuckling as it noshed at the common blood that fed it, opening its saffron maw across its crimson face to spew the embers that were every laugh and smile they shared, every good time that burrowed and dwelled within their hearts. In layman's terms: It was evident that Link truly loved his daughter.
"So, kid, whaddiya say… show me the crowd. Introduce me to the gang. You know… I mean, you must have some friends in class, right?"
Posie withdrew from Link's front and made a face. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder, then mumbled, "Welllll… first, I got a bone to pick with one of the kids. Ringleader of the 'In' crowd. He's in need of a serious cutting-down-to-size."
Link laughed. "Oh, one of those. Well, world could always use less of those sorts of attitudes. Go ahead, do whatever it is you need." She slid off his lap and began to weave her way through the crowd, looking for a particular red-head boy in overalls whom had put her down one too many times. Now, it was her turn to laugh! He must be feeling pretty sheepish right now, she was thinking to herself. Surely, he wouldn't dare pick on her now! All she would have to do—the instant he began to retaliate, just give him the old evil eye and say, 'I'll tell my daddy on you!" Now, if that didn't make him creep like the slug he was back under the pile of dead leaves from whence he came, she didn't know what will! He was lurking near a small stack of books when she found him, sulking with his hands in his pockets and a scowl hastily scrabbled across his face.
"So, Tony Barakos, who's doing the laughing now, huh?" She slunk up behind him with a sort of exaggerated, scuffling stride, dramatically shooting one foot in front of the other, than leaning forward almost to the point of falling over when suddenly, almost as if it was beyond her control, out would come her other foot, catching her in the nick of time. Her eyes were narrowed, her mouth was crimped in a snicker, and her entire expression radiated a smug demeanor not totally unlike the one Tony himself often bore. She craned her neck to look up in his face, though finding her way beneath it had involved weaving beneath the slouch of his back and the drag of his limp elbows.
"Yeah, well…" He sounded deflated and weary. "Maybe I misjudged your dad, but a wimp is still a wimp is still a wimp. You're a midget, you'll always be a midget, and I really couldn't care less. Blast you, Posie, what'd I do to be cursed with your presence?"
"Ooh, you actually used my first name for once. I'm SO totally frightened."
"Eh, might as well. It's just as fruity if-not-fruitier-than anything else I could think of to call you. Where'd your parents get nutzo enough to name you a thing like that, huh? Maybe if Link weren't your dad, but honestly, is he really as crazy as he would seem by you?"
"FYI, I happen to very much like name and it was in fact Daddy who gave it to me. What's it to you?"
"Daddy? DADDY?! DADDY?!?! Someone please pass the Q-tip, I must be hearing things." Tony motioned upward to his ears and made a twisting motion with his arms. "Does that man honestly tolerate such a degrading nickname? Honestly, I'd thick he would positively explode at being called such a degrading and childish name."
"He doesn't care. He says that just as long as I'm his baby girl, I can call him whatever I like. Why? Is your father such a stiff and uncaring…"
"Baby girl? Good Goddesses, does your entire family have a sappiness gene? Whatever happened to the undefeatable king of swords? The mega-macho hero of time? He can't just melt like that every time he gets around you, can he?"
"I've obviously never seen him when he's not around me, so I wouldn't know, would I?"
"Oh… go. Just go. Your mushiness is starting to warp my innards."
Feeling victorious over the brat for the first time since they'd met, Posie stalked away.
Tony sighed, out-sardonicked, out-witted, and generally bearing the burden of a tired mind. He pursed his lips and then bit his lower one with a bucktooth, licking at white, chapped flakes of skin and flesh and raking the crusty surface into even deeper submission. A white, depressed flicker trembled in the corners of ebony eyes that, had they not been so full of malice and ill will, would be utterly charming. A tender, smooth hand laid itself upon his shoulder, and he craned his neck to look up to the young woman with a cascade of midnight undulating from her scalp and dark, outsized pools glittering just beneath her forehead. Her skin was pale, her form slender, her lips thin but full at the same time. Her fingers were graceful, but stub-nailed, what could be considered the only fracture amidst a showering of beauty.
"Honey… you know, you aren't going to make a great deal of friends if you don't learn to treat your peers with respect. Especially if you point out glaring differences and make a mockery of them."
"Ehh, what good is she to me anyway? Not like she matters, or will ever matter, for that point, in the long run to me, or anybody."
"Now, darling, you don't know that. You don't know that at all! Besides, she matters very much to her family, and as long as she can make them happy, she might have well made the world happy. Even if not everyone likes you, I still love you. Though that doesn't mean you should show such disregard to others!" His mother scolded him firmly, curting up her face until there were only slivers left of the gaping abysses of her eyes, and she had almost no visible lip left at all. "What do you have in for that poor girl, anyway? It's not her fault she's so small. It's not anyone's fault at all."
"So? You told me that you didn't like Link. Now that everyone knows that he's her dad, why can't it be natural that I don't like her?"
"Now, sweetie…" Tony's mother rose to her feet, supported by even, dainty legs. "There's a great difference. Link did something that… well… that hurt me very badly, something I haven't been able to get over for a long time. But even I don't hold a grudge, because even though he… broke a very serious promise to me, I really don't have any reason to be upset over it anymore, because I have you and you're what matters." She knelt to the floor and scooped the slightly indignant little boy up into her arms, rocking him softly back and forth upon her knees an almost lulling him into a state of sleep. Eventually, though, he realized he was about to drift off and instantly began to push himself free, shaking his head so much that one could almost see his freckles flying off of his face and splating up against the walls. "Mooom! For crying out loud, I'm five years old for the Goddesses' sake! I'm surrounded by my classmates! Don't embarrass me," and he promptly splayed her arms aside and leapt to the floor.
Even though her shape was a bewildering one, if Link had seen the face she had made at the precise moment he would have seen right through her in nanoseconds flat. Brushing a loose strand of hair from her face, she grunted to a stand and turned her attention to the throng that now buzzed anxiously about the frazzled teacher, who was busy dashing out instructions and trying to pull together all the stragglers so that the games could begin.
Kids, she thought and pushed her way to the center of the mob, can't understand a word of their logic, and scarily enough they get most of it from their parents.
***************************
In the end, it didn't turn out as badly as Miss Claire had originally thought it would. Though the day had been cut a tad short by the events of the morning, they managed to botch and bumble their way through every event, though some had proved a bit more difficult to deal with than others. Thankfully, the wind's breath had dusted the sky free of clouds, for a few of the planned events dealt with water and with it the chance of spills, which she did not want tainting her walls or carpet. Especially the problematic water balloon toss, which in the end counted for nothing besides good, clean fun.
First there was the fact that Posie was much too small to catch a full water balloon at high velocity, and it would be an unfair advantage to give her a half-filled balloon, for Link was very much normal sized and would have an easy time catching and keeping hold of a balloon that still retained much of its original stretch. How much of an advantage it would really be, though, Miss Claire was unsure, as it proved, while Link tried to assist in filling the many balloons, that the grain of chain mail that was upon Link's gauntlets was fatal to the surface of fragile polymer. So they decided to sit out, which would mean they would have to obtain double the points the next game they won. Then Krissi went and complained to her mother that she was wearing a brand new dress that she didn't want to get wet, so then they retreated to the sidelines and had a similar rule applied. Tony's mother, who had given her name as Hirodea("Though oddly unsure about it, she was," quoted one of the fathers) went positively ballistic at the mere thought of getting soaked, and several more simply quit. It turned out to be, for the first time in the kindergarten's four- year history, an optional event, as giving the double-score rule to so many was simply a pain in the neck and could more easily be managed in a fell swoop.
At the end of that long and tiresome round of games, there was a three-way tie: Tony and his mother, "Hirodea," Elaine and her father, and, as most everyone had expected, Link and Posie had all cleared the rounds with the same figure, and now Miss Claire fished through a hat full of slips of paper to determine the tiebreaking event. "Lies and ties, a tragic tale, mystery tool caught in pool of the scale!" was an ancient Hylean saying, rather cryptic but deciphered by most as "It's been right under your nose all this time, but unfortunately that's in the dragon's keep." That was how she felt about the meaning of this trolling day—it meant something, deep down in there, but the trek to find it was long and dangerous. Her fingers finally found an aura around one of the pieces that suited them, and they stole it from the cap so that the anxiety under pressure that was definitely subliminal amongst the crowd could be released. She thankfully kept a steady store of tiebreaking incidents in her office for all occasions, though there were a few she would toss into the salad especially for Parent's Day.
She read the Cucco-scratch handwriting to herself and groaned: One of the Parent's Day specialties, this particular card called for the family teams in question to each demonstrate some tradition from their kindred, and it would be judge on how accurately the child could copy what their parent did. There had been troubles with this one, in the past: last year's experience came vividly to mind, with—she did not even want to think about it. But, she intended to play fair and by the rules she herself had spent several hours slaving over, and she would not, no matter how much she was tempted to, place the card back, shake the hat and draw again.
The faces that were returned to her by the six participants did not boost her confidence any. Tony and Hirodea began to feverishly chitter about anything in their family that could vaguely be considered a "tradition" that could be performed in the class; Elaine and Randy on the opposite hand had stockpiles of trivial little traditions and began to dissect which ones would be best, and Link and Posie just stared at each other, both with obviously one thing on mind that twisted their looks to think about.
Each of the three groups retreated to a corner in order to discuss.
"Alright. It's obvious. You're thinking what I'm thinking, I'm thinking what you're thinking, neither of us is happy with it but it's all the ammo we got. Capiche?"
Posie gave a sour nod. "Right. Umm, there's no chance of, uh, anyone getting hurt in this, is there?"
"Nah. I wouldn't dare give the thing full power in a crowded area. Besides, there's a big difference between a sword and a stick. As long as folks stay back and I pick a fairly brittle branch, no one's gonna get burned. Besides, it isn't even a really fire, just an energy swipe that looks like one. Y'know?"
"I know," and Posie shuffled her feet in waiting. The moment of truth approached—though it pressed against the back of her throat more like the black cloud of deception.
Tony and Hirodea renounced the match as soon as it began, stating that they were at a loss for finding any sort of tradition. Randy and Elaine took their stage and Randy demonstrated a strange, meticulous dance that seemed a cross between soft-shoe and a whirling dervish, which Elaine mimicked perfectly and with an added grace Randy's dolphin feet would not allow. Link, returned from the outside and with a small, sopping branch in his hand, made his way through the center of the crowd.
"Lady, gents, children," his voice cracking embarrassingly, "What I am about to demonstrate you have no doubt seen before or at least heard described, it is a very old trick and a very famous one, too. I come from a family of warriors, the first of my kinsmen eons ago being blessed by the Goddesses with this very stunt. An ancient sword technique, passed down through the generations by the Blades and really not needing any sort of weapon to accomplish. Much to our convenience. Please stand back, there is a minimal risk involved but I will take precautions. Now, I present you with my trick…"
Link gave a small cough and assumed a stance, spreading his legs for balance and holding the branch out to his side. At first, nothing happened, but then they noticed small sparks of a bluish energy flowing down Link's arm and gathering around the branch. A corona of silvery cerulean light encircled the twig, turning it into a vein of metal trickling through a mountainside. The air turned thick and stuffy, a sudden haze of humidity present. The rest of the room seemed very dark compared with the branch, and a low, throbbing hum chirped on in the new-fallen silence.
Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over, and Link was suddenly a fast-moving tornado of green, tan and shimmering light. They tasted lightning in their mouths and felt the sudden burst of heart of the energy's release, and then the twig was just a twig and Link was just Link, standing there with only a few wind-blown dregs of his hair clinging to his face to indicated that he had ever moved.
There was a modest round of applause.
Link bowed and nodded and continued his miniature speech from earlier. "Yes. I thank you all! Now, as one might expect, I am not about to let the buck stop here, if you prefer clichés. Even though she may be a girl and rather small at that, do not underestimate Posie. Her strength is great, considering. And I'm sure, if she tries, that she can also pull off that stunt! She has not been training and trying for more than a year for nothing! Correct, Posie?"
Posie, who had been standing against the wall through the whole ordeal, suddenly lost her enraptured stare and became very interested in the toes of her boots. "C-c-correct," she stammered. She had behind her a similar stick, but it now hung idle down her torso. With a sigh and a sniffle, she pattered softly to center stage, then proceeded to hold off the switch to her right.
Nothing happened. No brilliant wash of power, no congealing atmosphere, nothing at all. But still she concentrated. And oh, did she concentrate! Her eyes were pinched tight and her forehead was bunched, and her normal smirk was a determined leer. So tense she was, tremors ranging from mild to massive inhabiting every inch of her body. She would not force herself to spin! She would let it happen, as Link had told her. But most of all, she would not give her classmates reason to jibe! She would fiercely discipline herself until she could do it properly!
It was in vain.
The small tree limb was out of her hands in an instant, and dazed, she fell to the floor. Tears were racing down her cheeks before Link could come running to her side, and sobs escaped her mouth in torrents. She had cracked before, but this was the first time, in public, she had ever truly broken down, and she wasn't even a smidgen embarrassed when she was being cradled in Link's arms, rocking slowly back and forth as he hummed a soft, choppy, and yet oddly melodious tune.
"Shh. Posie Cassandra; no need to cry. All of us have troubles, and all of us get frustrated. It is good to cry sometimes, for tears are the way in which the heart rids itself of sorrow. But there is no need for this. No idle tears."
"No idle tears," she repeated softly.
"There's a good girl," he said as he raised his finger to brush away the fiery drops as they seared her face. "Sometimes failure is better than success. It tells you exactly what you need to work on. Do you understand, Posie?"
She nodded into his tunic.
"Good. And, anyways, you should be happy for Elaine. After all, I'm fairly sure she and her father won."
"I'm not so sure," sighed Elaine. "After all, even though I performed the dance better than Posie the slash, she tried awfully hard. I think she deserves something for perseverance. Righty-o, Miss C?"
Miss Claire beamed happiness. "I couldn't have said it better myself, Elaine. A special award this year, I think, to Posie Blade for being so persistent and never giving up. What do you say we end the day with out awards?"
Link nodded, but then he just a quickly shook his head. "Thanks but no thanks. This kid's one who seriously needs a breather. She's had a rough day, and I think she and I both could use a rest. You don't mind, do you, kid?"
But Posie had already curled up in Link's arms and had closed her eyes, safely away in a peaceful oblivion of sleep.
"That settles it, then." And the two Blades were out the door and away.
"What, are you a fish? Don't let your mouth hang open like that. It makes you look funny, Miss Claire."
"Oh… I suppose… you're right…" at which she promptly closed her jaw.
This has to be a dream, she thought to herself, a very strange and twisted dream. There was no way, in all of heaven and Hyrule, there could be even the least possible smidgens of relation between those two. None. She could list as many reasons as there were, she was sure. First, there was size. No one that small could have come from warrior blood. And let's not forget strength. Whether it was just another factor of being tiny or not, Posie was not very powerful. She could barely lift a small rock, it seemed. And who could possibly deny attitude? If children really did pick up things from their parents, then what could Posie have learned from him? No being brave. No smart-alec wisecracks. And she definitely hadn't gotten that babyish innocent way of asking questions from him.
But those eyes…
No. She firmly told herself no. It had to be a trick. Something to get back at the other kids for teasing her. She'd asked him to play the part. It was a joke; a gag. Posie's real father wasn't coming at all, she was sure, because Posie had expected everyone to fall for her marvelous little trick. Well, Adalia Claire wasn't falling for it, that was for sure. She could see right through this wonderful little trick. Besides, if it was true, then why had Randy freaked out when Link had appeared? Wouldn't they be acquaintances? At least remotely friendly with each other?
"Well… I suppose the gig is up, isn't it?"
Randy's deep throated growl jolted her back into reality with the effect of a bucket of ice water. The gig was up, causing her to give a sly little smile. So she was not alone among the intelligences. Finally, some other adult realized what was going on and was going to speak up. Good thing, since she would despise having to be the one to embarrass Posie in front of her peers. She had always thought Link was a bit too cocky for his own good. An exposé of his little sham would do him well. No blame on Posie, of course. Even in the worst of their times, she could never be too hard on a child.
"Yeah. I s'ppose it is." Link vaulted himself up on his hands and brushed the dirt from the front of his tunic. He looked down at Randy, for quite possibly the first time in his life, and smiled. "But it was a good one, though. Too bad it had to foul up like that. It would have been hilarious."
"Yeah." Unwittingly tightening his deathgrip around Elaine, causing her to cough from a slight lack of oxygen, he looked off dreamily at the back wall.
No. Wait. This was very wrong. Very wrong. Link and Randy were partners? This had been some sort of joint effort? But then the whole episode that had started the contest had been an act. But that meant they knew each other. Which meant that they were friends. Which meant…
"EEEEEYAAAAAH!" Hands flying high in the air, Miss Claire ran screaming to the door out into the playground, banged it open with a CRACK that exactly timed with a burst of lightning, and sprinted out into the freezing cold drench that tumbled from the sky.
"What's her problem?" asked someone's father in the back. After Posie had been scooped up from beneath the tumbling shelves by Link, he had immediately turned back to his in-depth discussion of the weather with his wife. He quite clearly had no idea what had just taken place in the previous thirty seconds or so. It wasn't that he didn't care, it was just that he wasn't really interested in what Link did. As soon as he had seen that the girl was safe, as far as he could be concerned, the show was over.
There was a vacuumed silence in the room for about a minute, and then the doorway swung open. Holding the door ajar with a stiff, goose-pimpled arm, Miss Claire had a tense, exhausted look on her face, tiredness pouring from her eyes and the deep sound of her breathing. Muddy, rain-soaked curls were flat against her scalp and loose hairs stuck out at odd ends. A black streak oozed down one of her cheeks, indicating that the mascara she had applied that morning had not survived the rivulets she had subjected herself to. She was pale, in a sickly sort of sense, except for her nose, which was glowing pink. She inhaled; exhaled; stuck her arms to her sides in one swift motion and promptly marched over to the fallen furniture.
"Will someone please assist me to put this bookshelf back the way in belongs?"
Her voice had an annoyed murmur to it with which Link did not care to mess; but he knew that as it was partially his fault, not lending a hand would be impolite. So he scurried away from Randy to the top of the shelf and gave it a vault from below.
"Thank you." It was flat and somewhat curt, but a thank you was a thank you was a thank you. Miss Claire sighed and added her own measly bit of strength to shove up the shelves, not looking up at Link's slightly worried face.
"Well, we certainly got off on a bit of a bad foot, didn't we?"
Miss Claire gave her reply more to the floor than to Link himself. "I'll say."
"That whole thing was really stupid of us… me an Randy…" The case settled back into its normal spot, an array of books and leftover splinters from the table's crash scattered below. "I mean… all we wanted to do was make people laugh. The whole… the whole contest thing was never supposed to happen. We planned for every imaginable thing that could wrong, or so we thought, and yet we never thought of that. If it were Posie and Elaine in our places, instead of us, I can almost guarantee you they would've caught that. I don't care how much smarter adults supposedly are, children are indefinitely wiser. They haven't developed a ridged, one-way way of thinking yet."
"Perhaps."
"I'm such an idiot sometimes." He groaned, more from emotional stress than anything else, slapping his arm against the case's newly roughened side and pressing his forehead into it. He sort of shook and rolled his head over that arm, eyes closed in contemplation. "Honestly, if I had one rupee for every time I've leapt before I've looked, I might as well be buying out Ebridane this minute. And you'd think everything, from consequences to pain to electrocution would have taught me by now…"
Miss Claire's eyes widened a bit and she pursed up her lips at the last phrase in Link's sentence, but rather than ask by how he was electrocuted and what that had to do with making stupid decisions, she actually felt sorry for the big lunk and grumbled out something along the lines of a compliment. "Well, if it weren't for some of your hasty decisions, Hyrule might as well be a blackened cinder by now. I think you're mistaking some of your quick logic for bad choices. There's a great difference."
"Yeah. If something good happens, it's quick logic. If something bad happens, it's a bad choice." Miss Claire winced at the tone at which Link almost snarled these words, and not because they were overly sarcastic. But because he sounded perfectly serious. Dead serious, in fact.
Some people might refer to the obtaining of such information as a "stab in the chest." But Miss Claire could more accurately sum this up as a "slit to the throat:" a slowly dripping wound, starting out almost numb, the agony gradually increasing as more and more blood(or, in this case, realization) surged forth. With a gash in one's heart, one could quickly pass on in a matter of minutes. Likewise, one could much easier get over such "stab in the chest" understanding. But with a "slit in the throat," pain was ongoing, the damage caused never truly enough to kill instantly. Was it really possible that this magnificent hero, the great savior of this majestic kingdom, could be so negative and pessimistic? Goddesses be sent to the deepest abyss of the Dark World, who cared if the man was somehow in the bloodline of the tiniest child she had ever known? How in the world had he adapted such a dark train of thought?
"You… you don't really mean that though, do you?"
His arm dropped casually to his torso. His eyes were still fixated on the carpet beneath the soles of his boots. "In my business, that's the nearest thing you get to truth. 'Cuz let me tell you, in the world of the warrior, there isn't much to depend on as fact. I mean, look… about ninety percent of those guys in the army are single. They don't have families to keep them bogged down, no one extra to get upset if they somehow fall in combat. And the majority of those who do get married drop out, permanently. Most guys just can't take the anxiety of having to always come back to someone. And yet, look at me. Not only am I married, but I also have my daughter. I've only seen about five other guys in the ranks who have kids. Not counting Igre," he said, making an aimless side reference to the renowned Minister of War, "but then again, all of his sons are knights and his wife died recently. He doesn't even fight anymore, to my knowledge. Everything is status quo, and yet everything is defiant. The whole business contradicts itself."
Well, Miss Claire certainly couldn't find a good reply to that! His argument seemed to be reasonable. And yet… well, he still didn't seem to be the sunniest fellow on the block. Every time she'd read about him or listened to talk of him or heard of his latest good deed, he was always portrayed as a cheerful, humorous, playful sort of fellow. Randy had even called him "fun-loving!" Was all that only a cover for his inner nature?
Or vice-versa?
"So… perhaps we should introduce ourselves properly, then." From the spectator's seat, the roles had reversed. Link now refused to give even so much as a glance upward, but Miss Claire gazed on, proud and steady. "I am Adalia Claire, the teacher of this school. Please look me in the eyes and tell me who you are."
Link slowly raised his chin to stare ruefully into Miss Claire's stare. His head was almost, but not quite, level with hers, and he barely opened his lips as he spoke. His face was nearly covered by his loping bangs. "Oh, c'mon, you know who I am. Seriously. Link, Hero of Time, Savior of Hyrule. Mr. Mighty Warrior. The list goes on and on." He sounded as if he had been holding his nose to prattle of the list, like he was mocking his own title. Riddled with sarcastic awe. How different this man was proving to be, from everything she had heard! The gossip that danced from ear to ear across Hyrule had told her that Link was a proud one, glad to retell, in every bloody detail, how exactly he had conquered Ganon and saved Hyrule those many times. And yet, here was that same heap of flesh, blood and bone, going about his amazingly high rank in the Royal Court and supreme fame as though it were all some joke.
"Well, to be honest, Link Hiro Blade, but, I'm sure you could at least figure out that last part by yourself. I mean, you know—Posie Blade, Link Blade… no, wait, that's backwards—Link Blade… no, hold on… oh, never mind. I think you get the picture."
"Quite." Miss Claire was slightly bewildered, and therefore more subdued. She thought it might be best to adopt the same attitude, temporarily, as her conversational opponent. So she was slightly sarcastic, a bit aloof, and almost mumbling in her reply.
"Yeah. You know, another thing I'm bad at it phrasing things. But, I suppose, when you're as stupid as me, that sort of thing is what comes naturally. I mean, look, the other day I did the most idiotic thing: I just decided randomly to throw myself at the floor."
Play along with him, she urged himself. Warm him up before you cheer him up. "That is pretty dumb."
"Yeah," he coughed—or was that a chortle?—back. "But what's even stupider is that I missed."
Miss Claire's eyes widened; she drew back and placed her hand up against the side of the bookcase. Link snorted, make a few quick breaths, and raised his head high, laughing himself into hysterics. Was this some sort of grim emotional overload from some bad pun of a personal insult?
"Ha… ah… ok, I'm fine." Link stopped, hand over his chest as he panted. "No, that's got to be the most idiotic thing I've ever done. That joke is so old that, next to it, Father Time looks like a baby."
She could almost hear the comedy-club drumroll as several of the closer folks in the knot of people started to chuckle. She rolled her eyeballs at the terrible gag, but couldn't help but crack the wispiest traces of a smile. Now this was more like the Link she knew. Everyone had a dark side, she now politely reminded herself. A shadowy edge. A part of them that would never see the joyous light of day again and couldn't care less if it did. His was only breaking through for a moment, as everyone's did when depression creeped from its bed of balefire and slid into their soul. But the Link that was, an orb of light and happiness, could so quickly consume that pale shadow that hardly ever could it damage him, and never would it utterly destroy him. Now it shone as clear as daylight that the word "pessimism" wasn't even capable of being in his vocabulary. As she might have put it to the children, that earlier episode had just been a "sadness moment."
"I don't suppose I can disagree, Mr. Blade, but it certainly does get glowing reviews." Ever expanding was that miniature smirk, now practically a grin that invaded both of her cheeks with swelling laughter. All the bad tempers that had fallen with the rain now shattered under the shaft of daystar that trickled through a rupture in the cloak of gray. Sparks of hope glimmered beneath the iris of every eye.
"Oh, kindly, Miss Claire, do call me Link." Now his voice was lathered with faux culture, with a dollop of a faulty English accent. "After all, it's only what all my friends call me," plenty of sour emphasis on "friends." "And it's not like we're in any sort of formal occasion here."
The grin shifted to one side of her face as she narrowed her eyes in (good humored) annoyance. "Fine then, Link, O Great One. You want fries with that?"
He gave a modest snicker as he folded his arms and looked off into space. "I'd say this preface came off a good deal better than the one before. Wouldn't you?"
"Much. Though I must state that you're little skit was certainly a mite more interesting that the normal parent's commence. Normally it's just hey, how do you do, I'm such-and-such's parent, then they go off to chat with the rest of the crowd until the games get under way. You at least provided a bit of entertainment."
"Randy's idea, wouldn't 'cha know. The guy's full of 'em. One of his strong points. Perfectly compliments his weak spot. And that's that he's full of 'em."
"Like you and your never-ending supply of terrible innuendoes?"
"Yeah, exactly like… hey!"
Miss Claire gave a soft snigger-breath, a sort of laugh that wasn't really one at all. Just a couple of breaths in a pattern like a giggle, an indescribable thing really. "Maybe you aren't such a bad fellow after all, Link. From what I've heard, Posie seems to like you well enough."
"Yeah." Link gave a gentle, dreamy sort of smile, and turned around to where Posie had run off several minutes ago. She and Elaine had pulled out a box of wooden blocks and were building a tower with Randy, who could help them pile the squares and triangles as high as the ceiling presuming they could find enough of the colored shapes. "I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm bragging or anything—"—he shrugged—"—but man, she is one great kid. Really loves me. Well, yeah, so does just about every kid on this entire continent, but… because I'm me, not because I'm me."
She was still mulling over the complexity of that statement as he continued. "I mean, she couldn't care less how many times I've saved Hyrule, or that I know the princess, or that I'm this super-powerful warrior dude who's got some ultimate destiny to be the champion of virtue as we know it. She cares that I'm there to wish her good night, or to read her that book she loves so much, or to play some game with her. Of course she admires what I've done, but… only because I'm her dad. If I weren't some relative of hers, she probably wouldn't care less."
"You think so?"
"I know so."
"How can you probably know something?"
"Don't ask me. Just call it instinct. I can tell eighty percent of the time exactly what's on her mind. She may often wear a padlocked cover, but once you get to know her you can read her like a book."
"Really? Padlocked cover, eh? I've never seen the traces of anything of the like. Was always perfectly your exact opposite."
Link returned a look that was almost smug. "Yeah, I know the routine of which you speak. Cowardly, timid, babyish little Posie, the perfect picture of innocence? What a great ploy. Couldn't have come up with a better one myself. How about outgoing, spunk-filled, wise beyond her years Posie who is attracted to trouble like a paper clip to a magnet? She hides behind that veil so even those who look beyond her size won't associate her and I. The whole fame thing never went well with her."
Miss Claire could hardly believe her ears. What sort of gene affected the pools of this family, exactly? First, she finds Link making like some sort of depressed gothic poet, now she found Posie to really be some sort of dynamo. What was next? She massaged her forehead, making an "uhhg" noise in her throat and coughing. Still, she had to fight through her frustration and at least try to continue conversation. Breathe, her mind hissed, breathe.
"Really? You'd have think should wold have gotten used to it, it being something she's always had to live with, right?"
"Not always, Adalia, not always." She almost jumped a foot into the air at hearing someone other than her boyfriend Pejin use her first name. I've been working too hard at this job, she could feel her soul snigger. "My wife and I made the firm decision that we would not expose her to my fame until it was necessary and we thought her able to comprehend it. Most children would immediately assume that, because one of their parents was famous, it made them more special than others. Wouldn't you agree?"
"It's an unfortunate truth," she sighed. "Posie always bragged about how wonderful you were, but... she never mentioned any first names, or said precisely why. It's almost a relief to find that you're… well… you. You catch my drift?"
"I most certainly do, and I can sense the pervasion in your voice that indicates that you've dealt with the sort before."
"Charles Rendelholfe…" She drooped her head, laughing with exhaustion. "That peacock; and I was unlucky enough to get stuck with him in my first year of teaching," she lamented. "Good old Igre's children certainly do take after their father…"
"I have come to the conclusion that something in the Rendelholfe bloodline causes nearly all Rendelholfes to be conservative, cocky, and extremely narcissistic." His voice wavered a bit, and pulled out a casual, naïve expression. "But, don't ask me, I'm just biased because I have to work with the great rooster king of them all." He shrugged, almost as if to ask a question.
"I pity you, but back to what we were saying…"
"Ahh, yes, on how we handled the issue of my reputation… well, we managed to keep the hearsay from her ears for a good two years, I can tell you that. But, children will be children, and children will scamper off on their own, and children will hear things that they aren't supposed to." His expression fell as his eyes half closed. He lowered his speaking volume, versing confidential matters to Miss Claire and Miss Claire only.
"One day she escaped from those entrusted to her care," sneezing something that sounded like Nhavihuh!, "and somehow managed to find her way, without being noticed, to the forest close by where we live. She happened to encounter a group of wandering hikers who had gone for an bit of an excursion to those Lost Woods and gotten, well, lost. They were talking among themselves, about the trip and the food they had brought, mostly, but also of a recent happening in which this very village had been retrieved from the grip of a particularly nasty rouge Wizrobe by a certain yours truly."
"I remember that…" mused Miss Claire, comprehension-laden words denoting that it was fine for the man to proceed. "Had to evacuate the village, and most of the poor children were scared out of their wits. Thank the Goddesses none of them we hurt."
"Well, you can imagine the curiosity that scrambled into her thoughts when she heard dear old Daddy had saved an entire village, so she ambled her way on back, got a telling off from her babysitters(who shall remain nameless), and then was pumping us full of questions the instant my wife and I returned back from our errand. Well, we just couldn't leave her wondering there!"
She remained silent, but scrunched her face and pulled back her lips in an expression that spoke of pain.
"So, we worked out an agreement with her that I would take her to Hyrule Castle Town so she could see a few things," Link told. "Luckily I have one of the quickest means of reaching the town pretty much permanently at my disposal, and it ends up in a fairly secluded place, too. Just so long as you don't try to go on a Sunday morning." Naturally, this means of reaching the town was through the Prelude of Light, and it would take its player straight to the Temple of Time should they wish. Of course, appearing straight in the middle of the hall in the middle of the Sunday service was certainly not going to get you any privacy, if not draw you a bit of unwanted attention. But any other day of the week was fine, even if the sudden downfall of a cyclone of yellow sparks that brought Link to the dais marked with the Triforce emblem did give Rauru a bit of a start.
"Of course, it was a disaster. The instant I appeared inside of the marketplace, I was swamped by people," Link vehemently waving his arms to indicated the struggle and confusion of the gaggle of gawkers that came to awe themselves with him. "Poor Posie got lost underfoot. She had no idea what was going on. Got lost out there. It's such a big place, especially when you're two years old and triumphed by a pigeon. Well, OK, so maybe she was a little bigger than a pigeon, maybe the same size, I can't remember exactly…"
"So she's always been this small? In comparison to others her age, I mean?"
"Yeah. Weirdest of all her quirks. Born not much bigger than my hand. Never actually thought she'd stay that way, though… but where was I? Ah, yes… well, you see, what happened after that, I'm not totally sure, because she couldn't talk very well back then, but that's a given… it seems she managed to stumble off into a back alleyway and come across another child who was lost."
"Ah. Birds of a feather flocking together. On accident, I suppose. But what I'm guessing is, they both managed to communicate to each other, in their two-year-old-ish way of doing things, that they had both gotten separated from their parents and wanted to find their way back. So they banded and started looking together."
"Precisely." Link nodded. "Now me, I was in hysterics. The second I noticed she wasn't clinging by my leg, I positively shrieked with fright. Now, imagine what those people thought, seeing the great Link just freak out like that. I'm supposed to be unflinchable. But I was right then and there. Only they didn't know that, because none of them had bothered to look down and notice I had brought a tag-along. So they backed up good, and I took the time to make a break for it. And, not looking where I was going, careened straight into roughly 300 pounds of muscle, armor, and man, waving his spear like the air was full of nasty, stinging little poisonous insects and bawling like a baby."
"I heard that!" A low toned, almost guttural voice echoed its complaint from almost out of nowhere, and, interrupted from their conversation, Link and Miss Claire whirlwinded around to face the bass man delicately balancing blocks atop a tower. "For your information, I was not 'bawling like a baby,' I was tearing like a man. And I kept my spear firmly by my side as all guards a trained to do unless in an emergency that threatens the whole of the town, thank you very much!"
Miss Claire slid her arms into a knot across her chest and twitched the edges of her lips. "I take it this has something to do with how Elaine and Posie met, am I correct?"
Randy shrugged. "You basically summed it up right there. They find each other, we find each other, we try to find them, they try to find us, we end up colliding with them as well as several other townies in this big spill from an ice cream vendor's cart, Link gets all protective-father- like with Posie, everyone goes 'Awwwww…' and then wants to know, then Link explains his famous-ness. End of story."
"Well, that wasn't all the story, though. You completely forgot the fact that nearly every place you went, we had already been, but you had been just minutes too late." It was nonother than Posie who made this whipish, sardonic comment that frankly made Miss Claire jump nearly a foot into the air at hearing the child use this tone. Not because it was overly rude, but because it was so unlike the Posie she was familiar with. But Link had warned that, under the surface, she was a completely different person. Perhaps having her father there, for his warmhearted support and protection was enough to corrode the barrier she established about herself to cut off ties with his world. Maybe now that the extent of her now so- small world knew, she had nothing to be afraid of. Indeed, in this company, it was a indisputable feather in her cap. Assuming that this company had been paying attention. It wasn't evident any of them were. Well, so long as no one else was queuing for her immediate attention, Miss Claire had a conversation on her plate that might as well be finished.
"Well, such a number of things I've learned about you today, Link… I didn't even know you were even married in the first place."
"Well, after Ganon got his face beaten into the ground fairly well, it wasn't like he was going to be a major problem for a while, which made getting married a fairly safe bet. Oh, sure, I still save all your average Joes and Jans, and I make sure your villages don't get eaten, but honestly, Royal Protector is a cushy job nowadays. Especially accompanying the royal personas to fancy banquets in other kingdoms and countries in Ebridane. Ooh, especially that one the Toadstool family of the one kingdom had. But seriously, can you really expect me to stay chaste from love all my life? Everybody needs somebody. Even me."
"Well, yeah, I mean, I suppose there's truth in that. But, I mean, I thought you liked that Princess or something. But that obviously isn't true now, because you're married and not the new King of Hyrule. So who exactly is your wife?"
"Chlorine girl."
"Nobody asked for your opinion, Mr. Randal Jacob Parkerstine." Miss Claire couldn't help but notice that the was Link snarled, you would've thought he'd been insulted instead of his wife. Besides, she wasn't around to hear it. Why would somebody call anyone "chlorine girl" girl, though? Did they enjoy going swimming? But how was that an insult? Unless, of course, they had overly green hair.
"Hey, it was only a joke. You don't have to hang on that woman's shoulder, protecting her from every little bit of harm and every less than well-bred ne'er-do-well out there. Honestly. Just because she's a little less than in touch with the outside world…"
"Well, in case you haven't forgotten, my so-called best friend, I have a sword and I know how to use…"
"Hey, hey, take it easy, you two!" Miss Claire fluttered her hands in an up-and-down motion, making a "tone down" indication to the fighting men. "We don't need a real fight. There's nothing wrong with being a little protective of someone you love so long as you don't get obsessive about it. Heck, my boyfriend acts the same way. But please, don't banter over it. Like I said, about you guys being grown men… though I'm not so sure about that now; you seem to act like big kids."
Link gave a deep, belly laugh and knelt to the floor, scribbling a pattern of reverse carpet hairs into the ground on his knees and elbows over to where Posie and Elaine were precariously tipping blocks into the edge of the amazing wood-brick spire, which was waxing to amazing proportions and even elaborations. A single block no longer provided a decent base of support, so now it had the foot of a castle, and the tower itself had expanded to being several blocks thick. And impressive piece of construction work, architecture, and sculpture all in one—at least, to a five-year-old.
"Humans either state the blatantly obvious or never realize it till the last minute, and Miss Claire I must find you guilty as charged of the latter." He found a stray little purple cube, slightly smaller than the rest of the clique and etched with images of large and small P's, and gave it an encouraging scoot to rejoin the crowd that was nestling around Posie's knees. It gave a click of delight as it settled peacefully in a niche formed between a foresty, youthful green S and a silver-flushed L that looked both as if they could use something to hug. Their paints instantly seemed to brighten as their tiny and not-quite-matched comrade slid into it place. It seemed consumed by the tumble of the squares around it, but determined not to be lost and thrown into the dustbin of tower material. It in fact seemed to be shifting upward, causing that little couple who had so merrily taken that small misfit piece into their empty cranny to glow with the strange paraphrase of delight only shown in the class of inanimate objects known as toys. And yet, were these toys, or was this a living metaphor of society? There the two of them rested, and here they watched, or yearn to someday watch, as the hand of destiny reached from above to pluck their little girl up from the rabble of society and place her atop the tall tower of the world's champion…
"The two of us ARE just big kids… there's no such thing as a man, you know, just a little boy in a man's body. Of course, we're a bit more responsible and a tad more sensible than little boys, but, that's a moot point." He selected that little misshapen violet block and deposited it tenaciously on the top of the teetering, gnarled tower just as the entire stack came plummeting to the floor. Posie shielded her face with her arms and was biffed and battered by the avalanche of little wood cubes that came diving from what would be the high heavens to her. Shaking away those that huddled in the cranny between her neck and her shoulder and a few that had caught in her sunbeam-flushed, spider floss hair, she turned her head to Link and brushed away motes of imaginary dust from her crinkled tunic front as a signal that, while a tad imping, the rain from above had not done her any general damage.
"Ah. That's my Posie. Nothing fazes ya, does it, kid?"
Miss Claire scuffed her throat in a bit of obvious disagreement, but Posie just smiled and nodded like a marionette, announcing proudly, "No siree! Nothing gets to Posie Cassandra Blade! To or through; I'm as tough as they come!" She paraded like the head lioness of a pride about her fallen faux fortress, waving an imaginary baton and stamping the imprint of her boot into the floor's weave. She even began to hum the Hyrulean national anthem as she marched, though it was a rather buzzy and almost excruciatingly treble rendition. She only seemed to know that one single, famous refrain, droning over and over again, "Do doo, doo dah dee dee dah! Dah dee da dum, dee dah dum, dee dah dum, dee dah… dee dee daaaaa…"
Link's face was pinched, but in laughter, as he stretched out one crisscrossed arm and clamped it gently but in encumbrance upon Posie's shoulder, so small and steep that there was hardly anything to grab hold of. "That's quite enough, love, though I found your version of our nation's anthem in B flat simply stunning." Naturally, he spoke taintedly, squeezing every last bit of sarcasm he had congealing in his personal store out for the purpose of upholding his reputation as the single most annoying and yet friendly person on the entire continent.
"So naturally," Posie laughed back, inflection so oddly mature it was unnerving, "I shouldn't quit my day job."
"I didn't know folks your age could get day jobs," Link tittered as he skittered Posie over to his side with a few taps on her back and a tug or two on her folding tunic collar.
"Hey, I also do parties."
It was all Miss Claire could help to sigh softly and prop herself up against the wall, two dream-ridden orbs nodding back into their sockets with a contemplating sanguinity. Posie really was a different child when she had that swashbuckling, wisecracking, youth in his own sense lurking close at hand. Miss Claire had no trouble identifying where the unconditional love lied between those two—walking the thin, yet endlessly wide, heartstring of family that gave them a common bond. Nothing but an honest, even if it was light, affection could draw out that rumpled, high- tipped beam of delight that spread over Link's face as Posie dove into his embrace and snuggled up against his front. But this certainly wasn't a mild warmth, it was a brilliant pyre, chuckling as it noshed at the common blood that fed it, opening its saffron maw across its crimson face to spew the embers that were every laugh and smile they shared, every good time that burrowed and dwelled within their hearts. In layman's terms: It was evident that Link truly loved his daughter.
"So, kid, whaddiya say… show me the crowd. Introduce me to the gang. You know… I mean, you must have some friends in class, right?"
Posie withdrew from Link's front and made a face. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder, then mumbled, "Welllll… first, I got a bone to pick with one of the kids. Ringleader of the 'In' crowd. He's in need of a serious cutting-down-to-size."
Link laughed. "Oh, one of those. Well, world could always use less of those sorts of attitudes. Go ahead, do whatever it is you need." She slid off his lap and began to weave her way through the crowd, looking for a particular red-head boy in overalls whom had put her down one too many times. Now, it was her turn to laugh! He must be feeling pretty sheepish right now, she was thinking to herself. Surely, he wouldn't dare pick on her now! All she would have to do—the instant he began to retaliate, just give him the old evil eye and say, 'I'll tell my daddy on you!" Now, if that didn't make him creep like the slug he was back under the pile of dead leaves from whence he came, she didn't know what will! He was lurking near a small stack of books when she found him, sulking with his hands in his pockets and a scowl hastily scrabbled across his face.
"So, Tony Barakos, who's doing the laughing now, huh?" She slunk up behind him with a sort of exaggerated, scuffling stride, dramatically shooting one foot in front of the other, than leaning forward almost to the point of falling over when suddenly, almost as if it was beyond her control, out would come her other foot, catching her in the nick of time. Her eyes were narrowed, her mouth was crimped in a snicker, and her entire expression radiated a smug demeanor not totally unlike the one Tony himself often bore. She craned her neck to look up in his face, though finding her way beneath it had involved weaving beneath the slouch of his back and the drag of his limp elbows.
"Yeah, well…" He sounded deflated and weary. "Maybe I misjudged your dad, but a wimp is still a wimp is still a wimp. You're a midget, you'll always be a midget, and I really couldn't care less. Blast you, Posie, what'd I do to be cursed with your presence?"
"Ooh, you actually used my first name for once. I'm SO totally frightened."
"Eh, might as well. It's just as fruity if-not-fruitier-than anything else I could think of to call you. Where'd your parents get nutzo enough to name you a thing like that, huh? Maybe if Link weren't your dad, but honestly, is he really as crazy as he would seem by you?"
"FYI, I happen to very much like name and it was in fact Daddy who gave it to me. What's it to you?"
"Daddy? DADDY?! DADDY?!?! Someone please pass the Q-tip, I must be hearing things." Tony motioned upward to his ears and made a twisting motion with his arms. "Does that man honestly tolerate such a degrading nickname? Honestly, I'd thick he would positively explode at being called such a degrading and childish name."
"He doesn't care. He says that just as long as I'm his baby girl, I can call him whatever I like. Why? Is your father such a stiff and uncaring…"
"Baby girl? Good Goddesses, does your entire family have a sappiness gene? Whatever happened to the undefeatable king of swords? The mega-macho hero of time? He can't just melt like that every time he gets around you, can he?"
"I've obviously never seen him when he's not around me, so I wouldn't know, would I?"
"Oh… go. Just go. Your mushiness is starting to warp my innards."
Feeling victorious over the brat for the first time since they'd met, Posie stalked away.
Tony sighed, out-sardonicked, out-witted, and generally bearing the burden of a tired mind. He pursed his lips and then bit his lower one with a bucktooth, licking at white, chapped flakes of skin and flesh and raking the crusty surface into even deeper submission. A white, depressed flicker trembled in the corners of ebony eyes that, had they not been so full of malice and ill will, would be utterly charming. A tender, smooth hand laid itself upon his shoulder, and he craned his neck to look up to the young woman with a cascade of midnight undulating from her scalp and dark, outsized pools glittering just beneath her forehead. Her skin was pale, her form slender, her lips thin but full at the same time. Her fingers were graceful, but stub-nailed, what could be considered the only fracture amidst a showering of beauty.
"Honey… you know, you aren't going to make a great deal of friends if you don't learn to treat your peers with respect. Especially if you point out glaring differences and make a mockery of them."
"Ehh, what good is she to me anyway? Not like she matters, or will ever matter, for that point, in the long run to me, or anybody."
"Now, darling, you don't know that. You don't know that at all! Besides, she matters very much to her family, and as long as she can make them happy, she might have well made the world happy. Even if not everyone likes you, I still love you. Though that doesn't mean you should show such disregard to others!" His mother scolded him firmly, curting up her face until there were only slivers left of the gaping abysses of her eyes, and she had almost no visible lip left at all. "What do you have in for that poor girl, anyway? It's not her fault she's so small. It's not anyone's fault at all."
"So? You told me that you didn't like Link. Now that everyone knows that he's her dad, why can't it be natural that I don't like her?"
"Now, sweetie…" Tony's mother rose to her feet, supported by even, dainty legs. "There's a great difference. Link did something that… well… that hurt me very badly, something I haven't been able to get over for a long time. But even I don't hold a grudge, because even though he… broke a very serious promise to me, I really don't have any reason to be upset over it anymore, because I have you and you're what matters." She knelt to the floor and scooped the slightly indignant little boy up into her arms, rocking him softly back and forth upon her knees an almost lulling him into a state of sleep. Eventually, though, he realized he was about to drift off and instantly began to push himself free, shaking his head so much that one could almost see his freckles flying off of his face and splating up against the walls. "Mooom! For crying out loud, I'm five years old for the Goddesses' sake! I'm surrounded by my classmates! Don't embarrass me," and he promptly splayed her arms aside and leapt to the floor.
Even though her shape was a bewildering one, if Link had seen the face she had made at the precise moment he would have seen right through her in nanoseconds flat. Brushing a loose strand of hair from her face, she grunted to a stand and turned her attention to the throng that now buzzed anxiously about the frazzled teacher, who was busy dashing out instructions and trying to pull together all the stragglers so that the games could begin.
Kids, she thought and pushed her way to the center of the mob, can't understand a word of their logic, and scarily enough they get most of it from their parents.
***************************
In the end, it didn't turn out as badly as Miss Claire had originally thought it would. Though the day had been cut a tad short by the events of the morning, they managed to botch and bumble their way through every event, though some had proved a bit more difficult to deal with than others. Thankfully, the wind's breath had dusted the sky free of clouds, for a few of the planned events dealt with water and with it the chance of spills, which she did not want tainting her walls or carpet. Especially the problematic water balloon toss, which in the end counted for nothing besides good, clean fun.
First there was the fact that Posie was much too small to catch a full water balloon at high velocity, and it would be an unfair advantage to give her a half-filled balloon, for Link was very much normal sized and would have an easy time catching and keeping hold of a balloon that still retained much of its original stretch. How much of an advantage it would really be, though, Miss Claire was unsure, as it proved, while Link tried to assist in filling the many balloons, that the grain of chain mail that was upon Link's gauntlets was fatal to the surface of fragile polymer. So they decided to sit out, which would mean they would have to obtain double the points the next game they won. Then Krissi went and complained to her mother that she was wearing a brand new dress that she didn't want to get wet, so then they retreated to the sidelines and had a similar rule applied. Tony's mother, who had given her name as Hirodea("Though oddly unsure about it, she was," quoted one of the fathers) went positively ballistic at the mere thought of getting soaked, and several more simply quit. It turned out to be, for the first time in the kindergarten's four- year history, an optional event, as giving the double-score rule to so many was simply a pain in the neck and could more easily be managed in a fell swoop.
At the end of that long and tiresome round of games, there was a three-way tie: Tony and his mother, "Hirodea," Elaine and her father, and, as most everyone had expected, Link and Posie had all cleared the rounds with the same figure, and now Miss Claire fished through a hat full of slips of paper to determine the tiebreaking event. "Lies and ties, a tragic tale, mystery tool caught in pool of the scale!" was an ancient Hylean saying, rather cryptic but deciphered by most as "It's been right under your nose all this time, but unfortunately that's in the dragon's keep." That was how she felt about the meaning of this trolling day—it meant something, deep down in there, but the trek to find it was long and dangerous. Her fingers finally found an aura around one of the pieces that suited them, and they stole it from the cap so that the anxiety under pressure that was definitely subliminal amongst the crowd could be released. She thankfully kept a steady store of tiebreaking incidents in her office for all occasions, though there were a few she would toss into the salad especially for Parent's Day.
She read the Cucco-scratch handwriting to herself and groaned: One of the Parent's Day specialties, this particular card called for the family teams in question to each demonstrate some tradition from their kindred, and it would be judge on how accurately the child could copy what their parent did. There had been troubles with this one, in the past: last year's experience came vividly to mind, with—she did not even want to think about it. But, she intended to play fair and by the rules she herself had spent several hours slaving over, and she would not, no matter how much she was tempted to, place the card back, shake the hat and draw again.
The faces that were returned to her by the six participants did not boost her confidence any. Tony and Hirodea began to feverishly chitter about anything in their family that could vaguely be considered a "tradition" that could be performed in the class; Elaine and Randy on the opposite hand had stockpiles of trivial little traditions and began to dissect which ones would be best, and Link and Posie just stared at each other, both with obviously one thing on mind that twisted their looks to think about.
Each of the three groups retreated to a corner in order to discuss.
"Alright. It's obvious. You're thinking what I'm thinking, I'm thinking what you're thinking, neither of us is happy with it but it's all the ammo we got. Capiche?"
Posie gave a sour nod. "Right. Umm, there's no chance of, uh, anyone getting hurt in this, is there?"
"Nah. I wouldn't dare give the thing full power in a crowded area. Besides, there's a big difference between a sword and a stick. As long as folks stay back and I pick a fairly brittle branch, no one's gonna get burned. Besides, it isn't even a really fire, just an energy swipe that looks like one. Y'know?"
"I know," and Posie shuffled her feet in waiting. The moment of truth approached—though it pressed against the back of her throat more like the black cloud of deception.
Tony and Hirodea renounced the match as soon as it began, stating that they were at a loss for finding any sort of tradition. Randy and Elaine took their stage and Randy demonstrated a strange, meticulous dance that seemed a cross between soft-shoe and a whirling dervish, which Elaine mimicked perfectly and with an added grace Randy's dolphin feet would not allow. Link, returned from the outside and with a small, sopping branch in his hand, made his way through the center of the crowd.
"Lady, gents, children," his voice cracking embarrassingly, "What I am about to demonstrate you have no doubt seen before or at least heard described, it is a very old trick and a very famous one, too. I come from a family of warriors, the first of my kinsmen eons ago being blessed by the Goddesses with this very stunt. An ancient sword technique, passed down through the generations by the Blades and really not needing any sort of weapon to accomplish. Much to our convenience. Please stand back, there is a minimal risk involved but I will take precautions. Now, I present you with my trick…"
Link gave a small cough and assumed a stance, spreading his legs for balance and holding the branch out to his side. At first, nothing happened, but then they noticed small sparks of a bluish energy flowing down Link's arm and gathering around the branch. A corona of silvery cerulean light encircled the twig, turning it into a vein of metal trickling through a mountainside. The air turned thick and stuffy, a sudden haze of humidity present. The rest of the room seemed very dark compared with the branch, and a low, throbbing hum chirped on in the new-fallen silence.
Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over, and Link was suddenly a fast-moving tornado of green, tan and shimmering light. They tasted lightning in their mouths and felt the sudden burst of heart of the energy's release, and then the twig was just a twig and Link was just Link, standing there with only a few wind-blown dregs of his hair clinging to his face to indicated that he had ever moved.
There was a modest round of applause.
Link bowed and nodded and continued his miniature speech from earlier. "Yes. I thank you all! Now, as one might expect, I am not about to let the buck stop here, if you prefer clichés. Even though she may be a girl and rather small at that, do not underestimate Posie. Her strength is great, considering. And I'm sure, if she tries, that she can also pull off that stunt! She has not been training and trying for more than a year for nothing! Correct, Posie?"
Posie, who had been standing against the wall through the whole ordeal, suddenly lost her enraptured stare and became very interested in the toes of her boots. "C-c-correct," she stammered. She had behind her a similar stick, but it now hung idle down her torso. With a sigh and a sniffle, she pattered softly to center stage, then proceeded to hold off the switch to her right.
Nothing happened. No brilliant wash of power, no congealing atmosphere, nothing at all. But still she concentrated. And oh, did she concentrate! Her eyes were pinched tight and her forehead was bunched, and her normal smirk was a determined leer. So tense she was, tremors ranging from mild to massive inhabiting every inch of her body. She would not force herself to spin! She would let it happen, as Link had told her. But most of all, she would not give her classmates reason to jibe! She would fiercely discipline herself until she could do it properly!
It was in vain.
The small tree limb was out of her hands in an instant, and dazed, she fell to the floor. Tears were racing down her cheeks before Link could come running to her side, and sobs escaped her mouth in torrents. She had cracked before, but this was the first time, in public, she had ever truly broken down, and she wasn't even a smidgen embarrassed when she was being cradled in Link's arms, rocking slowly back and forth as he hummed a soft, choppy, and yet oddly melodious tune.
"Shh. Posie Cassandra; no need to cry. All of us have troubles, and all of us get frustrated. It is good to cry sometimes, for tears are the way in which the heart rids itself of sorrow. But there is no need for this. No idle tears."
"No idle tears," she repeated softly.
"There's a good girl," he said as he raised his finger to brush away the fiery drops as they seared her face. "Sometimes failure is better than success. It tells you exactly what you need to work on. Do you understand, Posie?"
She nodded into his tunic.
"Good. And, anyways, you should be happy for Elaine. After all, I'm fairly sure she and her father won."
"I'm not so sure," sighed Elaine. "After all, even though I performed the dance better than Posie the slash, she tried awfully hard. I think she deserves something for perseverance. Righty-o, Miss C?"
Miss Claire beamed happiness. "I couldn't have said it better myself, Elaine. A special award this year, I think, to Posie Blade for being so persistent and never giving up. What do you say we end the day with out awards?"
Link nodded, but then he just a quickly shook his head. "Thanks but no thanks. This kid's one who seriously needs a breather. She's had a rough day, and I think she and I both could use a rest. You don't mind, do you, kid?"
But Posie had already curled up in Link's arms and had closed her eyes, safely away in a peaceful oblivion of sleep.
"That settles it, then." And the two Blades were out the door and away.