((CAN: Ever since the conception of the FanFic(yes, Spinning Slash is now
officially a FanFic with two capital letters) as a whole, I've wanted to do
a Navi-Centric chapter. After all, I do kinda owe it to the Glowball after
pretty much shunting her to the side in Chapter 8. I kinda got into that
after the ending of the last chapter, where she displayed some fairy
prowess to outwit the Nymph. I also feel like I'm really ignoring Posie and
Elaine, who are the stars, after all. So guess what? They get a chapter all
to themselves! Hooray!))
((Oh, and just for confirmation: I know I'm calling Zelda a Sheikah here, which sounds weird, but I mean it. Look, it'll get explained a lot better at the start of the next chapter. Promise. This one's shorter than usual, which I don't mind.))
Spinning Slash, Chapter 12: Glowball
Their exuberance wore off after about an hour, when they realized that the five of them were wandering though the forest aimlessly. There were no more traps, there were no more Nymphs; but there weren't any maps to help them anymore, either, since Link had put his own out of commission with the burn salve. There were just trees; trees and bushes; trees and bushes and rocks; trees and bushes and rocks and growling stomachs.
Link's arm was becoming leaden as he swung his sword in a seemingly endless series of hacks at the air, cutting up foliage that blocked their path. But he preferred moving this way; bumbling through the forest at home, Saria forced him to delicately push aside branches and limbs so as not to harm the plants. She claimed she heard them "scream" every time he dug his blade into their stems. More often than not, the only screams he heard where his own when a rebellious branch smacked him square across the face.
Now the sun had reached its apex in the sky, and it felt just as hot in these woods as it had out in the Gerudo's desert. It rained down like flaming hail on their backs, not caring for the heavy canopy of leaves it first had to bypass. Everywhere it struck, their sunburns from the day past intensified and peeled. Naomi had enough pigment in her skin to help keep her skin from scorching, not to mention enough experience in the sun to last a lifetime. But even taking her place of birth into order, she really preferred the coolness of the shade.
"Too-hot. Can't-move-on."
Posie silently passed her shield up to Elaine, who took it with tired gratitude. She sat it upon her head like a hat, keeping a hand on it to prevent it from falling off. The comfort it provided was minimal, and the sun-baked metal steamed, but at least it provided her with the illusion she was being shaded.
"This is not September weather," Posie then observed. Never was there a happy medium for the hero, hero wannabe, and tagalongs-it was a constant flash, hot-hotter-hot-cold-colder-cold-hot again.
Link's head was wrapped in a blue-and-white hood of feathers, his Roc's Cape serving as a makeshift cowl. The feathers that held the essence of the wind in their down tried to carry a baby breeze to his head, but all it did was force him to inhale the smell of the sweat on his face.
"I dunno about you all, but I could do with a lunch break," Naomi sighed, having heard the gurgle of her innards in her ears again. "I haven't eaten anything since that fish-fest this morning."
"Me, too," moaned Elaine, though she'd prefer something to drink first. Her thirst had been abated after the incident with the acid river, but when her words were hindered by her tongue sticking to the roof her mouth, it was time for a drink.
"Posie?" Link spoke up, finally, after a long and sullen silence of hacking at shrubs. "Do we have a majority vote?"
"Very." She dropped where she was instantly, wiping her forehead and scooting around a little to fix her crossed legs. "I'm hungry!"
"Hey, Hungry, I'm Thirsty," chuckled Elaine sourly as she fell into the embrace of a tree's trunk and let Posie's shield scatter. A little too hardly; she winced when her red arms scraped up against the rough, ashy bark.
Link knelt at the head of their impromptu picnic grounds and opened up his seemingly bottomless backpack. "Let's see. canteen, right." He tossed it to Elaine, who released the tree and caught it easily. "Lunch, lunch. no, food's in this pouch." He folded over the flap he'd been looking through to nudge open another one. He gave a spasmodic shake of his head and the Cape he was wearing slid to the floor. "Hmm. 'Ey, Naomi!"
"Yeah?" She'd dug her heavy scimitars out of their scabbards and rammed them into the ground. She sat down between them, taking them as pillars around her imaginary throne.
"More sandwiches, some kinda salad, or are you feeling brave?" He grinned mischievously, eyes atwinkle. She was a Gerudo; time to see if she could take some real heat.
Naomi returned the smirk. She had no idea when Link was packing up his sleeve, but she wasn't about to be labeled a chicken. Though considering what the Cuccos of Hyrule were like, perhaps that was not such an insult. "I'm feeling brave. Show me the best you've got."
Link pulled a curious glass jar out of the pack, its lid sealed around the edges with a curiously un-waxy red wax. He passed it to Naomi, who pressed it to her face to observe it. Inside it was a red liquid about the consistency of tomato sauce, peppered with chunks of beef and various vegetables. Little flecks of green, yellow and black floated around inside. There might've been red specks, too, but they matched their surroundings with ease.
"Looks pretty tame to me, Linky-boy. Average stew of. some kind. Nothing fancy."
"Ah, but you're wrong on all three counts! It's not tame, it's not average, and considering it's Saria's cooking-fancy if you consider the fact that no one can cook as well as she can."
"Yeah, well, I'm sure I can hold my own." Naomi glanced over the jar with an overly-cherubic smile, taunting Link. Not glancing at her hands, she gave the jar's lid a twist and lifted it off.
Her sinuses were scrubbed clean as a powerful sweet-spicy smell assaulted her nose, which only hoisted her confidence up a notch. The Gerudos were pioneers in the game of fiery food preparation, and she'd grown bored of foods that would sear half the flesh off the inside of any other mortal's mouth. Seeing how many buttons of Link's she could push at once, she brought it up to her face and took an entire breath's worth of the aching smell. It was a bit painful on the olfactory senses. But she wouldn't dare let Link break her.
Link crossed his arms and looked unimpressed. He even shook his head a little, to show how much it jaded him. If she'd been there the night it had first been made, she wouldn't be so at ease now. He recalled very plainly the first thing he'd said upon swallowing it-"Yikes!-" but, in retrospect, that'd been an understatement.
"You'll need these," he stated very plainly, and threw to her a spoon and one of the spare canteens. She caught the first; laughed at the second.
"You think I'd need that? Well, that's where you're wrong, Link." She daintily held the spoon and reached down into the jar, scooping up a large piece of meat saturated in the red juice. "Now behold, a master of the piquant palatables at work!"
She took the mouthful with reckless abandon.
The instant she realized what she'd just bitten into was an instant too late. Regret surged through her mouth on the tendrils of flavor, belonging to a variety of chilies-among them habanjeroes, the spiciest peppers of them all. Tears flowed freely from the corners of her eyes as the stew charred a path down her throat, and she hastily set the jar down in favor of the canteen. Five deep gulps of sweet water later, she exclaimed-"What is that edible excuse for a four-alarm fire?"
"It is fire-Din's Fire, that is," Link smiled. "Saria's specialty, which is fairly interesting considering the forest is usually her scope." He wore his triumphantly-crossed arms like a badge. "The first thing she managed to make successfully-by, ironically screwing up the recipe really bad-has remained in her repertoire."
"And you can stand to eat that stuff?"
"Yep! My favorite-Posie's favorite too."
Naomi looked down at Posie with something akin to reverence. She had up until that point been watching the interesting contest between her father and the Gerudo, and jumped a little when Naomi suddenly turned toward her. "You. That. I can't believe it," she ranted, but hardly really speaking to Posie.
Posie smiled. "Believe it. I've loved the stuff since-well, since Mommy would actually let me try it."
Naomi stared as if she still didn't quite accept that fact. "You've got some kinda crazy endurance, kiddo."
There was that natural endurance again. And this time, it was genuine. "Well, thanks. Most of the rest of the things Mommy knows how to make are fairly tame, so perhaps it's because I need a little break from the ordinary once in while. Or maybe my tongue is stronger than I think-I can down a glass of clear kinra pretty quickly, but you know what that stuff's like."
Naomi smiled. "The Gerudo have a penchant for intense edibles; you'd not be out of place among them." She studied the hardened, intellectual look behind Posie's eyes, and added, "And you just understood every word of that last sentence, and that freaks me out."
Posie cheerfully shrugged. "I have good taste in books, and I learn fast. So it goes, and I'm a five-year-old with a fifty Rupee vocabulary."
Link waved his arm rapidly, trying to cause enough of a silent commotion in the edges of Naomi's vision to catch her attention. He heavily swallowed a mouthful of some sort of fruit(he had the rest of the pulpy plant in his hand) on his reply. "You know, she's my kid, and her intelligence disturbs me at times, too. Not like it's a bad thing, when your kid's a genius, but it can be frightening."
"And my daughter hangs out with her. I'm still so unfamiliar with Elaine-how much has she picked up?"
"From what I've gathered, a fair amount." Link raised the yellowish pod to his mouth and took another bite, the flesh of it squishing loudly in rebellion and spraying Link's chin with sticky nectar. He didn't have to chew it much-it was more an issue of slurping-but he wiped his gauntlet along the bottom of his face afterward. "And you're probably looking at me with juice all over my face and thinking I look like something of an idiot in comparison. Am I right?"
"Not particularly, but you do look sticky," she laughed, for once choosing to stick with more light-hearted comments on Link's humor.
Meanwhile Elaine had stolen the jar of spicy stew for Posie, and Posie had commandeered herself a spoon with the help of Navi. There were no bowls in the backpack-they could crush too easily-but Posie didn't mind eating from the jar, of course. She took one spoonful, a gigantic swallow to someone her size and delighted in the tingling feeling the various hot ingredients in the soup left on her tongue. Doing her best to eat just a little neater than Link had been doing, she took small sips off the spoon and occasionally munched on a larger chunk of meat or vegetable. Elaine grabbed a small block of sharp yellow cheese from the sack, nibbling on it while she and Posie chatted. They wondered at great length what would happen when the four of them returned to their respective homes.
"Mommy won't like hearing about the traps back there," Posie lamented, leaning her chin against the jar. "She'll fret on and on about how I could've gotten hurt."
"I think she'd be more disgraced to hear how you forgot what Deku Scrubs were called on Saturday," Elaine chuckled. "'Funny mad plant person?' That's low."
"Hey, you and I both know-we have our specific talents. Swords, Gerudo stuff. Reading, spelling. Remembering monster names isn't one of mine."
"Coming from the child of the great Link, that's vaguely pathetic," sighed Elaine only somewhat seriously. "I know if you put your heart to it, you could remember 'em all. Like I've always told ya, concentration and determination! Pop quiz. About two feet tall, a greenish-blue hue, can also come in red and it's highly allergic to magical powders! Don't touch it, or it'll literally shock you! What is it?"
Posie knew this one well, and felt Elaine had started easy for a reason-she saw these creatures wandering through her home woods all the time. "Chu-Chu. But that's a gimmie. Something harder, if you will."
Elaine searched her mind for an esoteric creature. "Hmm. OK, how's this one? Tall, with spindly legs and a gigantic, single eye. Not to mention a sleek black body hard as armor. What's that, eh?"
"Ummm. Ghoma! One of those used to live in the forest, a long time ago. back when Daddy was still a kid. Not so hard, though. Try me again, and something tougher!"
Elaine smiled, with just the beast in mind. "Alrighty, then. You'll never guess this one. It's tall, about six feet high. Roughly two of those are in its wire-like tail. It has two magnetic hands attached to its sleek black body, and it has an affinity for anything metal. It also like to throw things about and it might remind you of a shoe. What's that?"
Posie's grin was the broadest at the end of the very last question, because she all too well knew the answer. Elaine was well aware of this, but she'd wanted to make her friend smile. For she'd done nothing else but go and describe Posie's favorite monster: "That's a Smasher!"
"Of course! It's not like my sarcasm wasn't evident." She took a few more bites of her cheese. "Well, I'm tired of quizzing, personally. You don't need an encyclopedic knowledge, anyway-not yet. Wait until you're out adventuring on your own."
Posie silently agreed and delved further into her stew.
Some feet away, Link spat a few wrinkled black seeds at the ground, last remnants of the large, pithy fruit he'd been snacking upon. He gazed skyward, up at a ceiling that was slowly turning the color of a quarry. The ground still smelt dry and confined, but an ionic crackle teased along its length. It was still warm enough, but rain felt evident.
"Looks like the weather plans to turn foul on us," Link observed. "Hope it doesn't start to thunder and lightning. Too many trees. one could easily get hit. could start fires, or worse."
"What's worse than that?" ask Naomi. "Given our present situation, of course."
"We could be standing beneath it," offered Elaine, which Link nodded to despite the fact that it had been his cutting-off.
"I get enough bolts to the body back at home from Saria," Link sighed, with only partial contempt. Better and angry Saria than no Saria at all, he thought morosely. "So it's not my preferred method of execution."
"Nice rain though." Naomi perked up a little, chancing to lift her chin just slightly. "It'd be manna from heaven. It's too hot in the parched forest."
"I wouldn't say no to setting up camp for a little bit," shrugged Posie. "Settle down in one spot for a moment. Miss Naomi can soak up the rain while we do our best to avoid it."
"Good pitch, bad location for the seminar," Link lamented. He finally toppled on his knees to sit cross-legged on the ground. "We can't set up here. The trees are way too close together. Besides, we'd have to find a clearing of a fairly good size to set up-away from roots, incase the storm turns electrical." He flashed a glance up at the sky again, checking that all was still safe for them among the clustered copses.
"Ah, I'm too tired to move just yet," yawned Elaine, who plaintively slid herself downward to rest her head on a particularly cushiony-looking gnarl. "Gimmie a moment t' rest."
Link stuck out his lower lip, in a kind of sympathy pout. "Poor kid. I hate to force you guys on ahead if you're tired. You put up with the relentless walk yesterday, maybe you've earned yourself a break."
"I'm with her," gaped Posie, who finally set aside her cutlery and shoved aside the jar. Heat combined with a full stomach sent her woozy, and she wanted nothing more to lie down in what little shade could be found at noon.
Naomi, however, uneasily stared upward. "But we can't stay here. If there's lightning."
"I could carry Posie, no sweat," Link agreed mostly with himself. "She's so small, it isn't a problem. Are you up to carrying Elaine?"
She didn't look happy about her reply, but it was remorseful in its honesty. "No, I'm aching enough as it is. What can we do?"
Navi, who was relaxing in the hollow of an older tree by Link's head, put forward her own suggestion. "One of you could go forward and find a place to wait the storm out, and the other could stay here. That's pretty easy, isn't it?"
Link's head didn't move, but his eyes traced an obvious path over to Naomi's face. "Well, I still don't trust her around Elaine. not to go running off with her. so it'd better be me."
"No way. I'm not getting up. I'm still exhausted-you go on ahead, Linky-boy, I won't run off with your wards."
"Sorry. Not gonna let that happen." Link knitted his arms indignantly. "You go."
"You go!"
"No. you go. Go!"
"You ain't gonna talk me into it, Link! You go, I stay, and I won't compromise."
Navi clicked her tongue. "How like humans." She leaned slightly out of her tree hole, acting bemused. "You refuse to move forward yet you know you can't remain where you are. Is there any aspect of you creatures not swathed in paradox?" Her tone was very high and lofty.
"Well then, what do you suggest?" prompted Naomi, who kept her arms still though it was clear she wanted to jab fingers at Navi. One finger in particular. "If you're the mystic fairy with all the answers, give us one so we can make use of it!"
"If I were one of you, I'd talk myself into watching after the children while both of you go on ahead. Though it's clear you don't care for my suggestions."
Link tilted his head from side to side, as if letting the idea wash around in his brain and spread about evenly. "Actually, that's a pretty good idea. thanks, Navi! Naomi?"
"Wait!" Navi spurted. "I was being facetious! I wasn't actually suggesting."
Naomi unwillingly foisted herself up to comply with Link's request. "Dunno, sure it's wise to let that thing watch over our kids?"
"She's goofed up but once in the task, so I say she's a go. Come on! Let's move."
"Nooooo! Wait! I was kidding! Link! Come on! Link. Naomi?"
Link wore a blithe, ignoring smile, and his voice rose to the clouds on the strings of a familiar anthem. Only this time, he(for some reason) sang the self-promoting and irreverent Freezair version: "Link, he come to town." Naomi rocked her head in a way that suggested she might have been rolling her eyeballs.
Navi released a sigh-in an even more fanciful setting, this might have been accompanied by a little cloud coming out of her mouth. Her wings wanted to start slowly, in a way we might compare to an old lawnmower, and her cool fire ignited like a will-o'-the-whisp inside the tree hollow.
Bobbing up and down in an erratic flight pattern, she bubbled her way across steely air to hover just above the peaceful Posie and Elaine. She gave a little fairies' mumble of, "I suppose if all they do is sleep, this won't be too terrible." Caressing her exposed shoulders, she frowned and took perch upon a particularly snarled root. She cleared her throat a little and announced, just in case the girls were still awake, "Hope you two aren't too comfortable, because, you know, we may have to move at a moment's notice."
There was no response, save for a few sputtering breathing noises. A gnat had flown into Elaine's mouth and she coughed it out, before resuming her relaxed state of being.
"I hate babysitting," she groaned at her predicament. She attempted to lie back on the twisted plant, though she found it altogether too knobby to suit her tastes. Shrugging a little, she pulled up with a little puff. Her stomach whined up at her, and she lamented not asking Link for a bit of a snack while they'd been dining. Fairies could go many years without food- but the occasional snack was still handy to prevent severe discomfort.
Announcing to the air, she loudly proclaimed, "I'm going scavenging! If either of you are still awake, I'll be right back! Don't worry about me!" The little pixie darted off into a bush, possibly one that contained berries.
When Navi was fully submerged in the leafy jungle gym, Posie chanced to open one azure eye. Flashing left and right, it caught no bright white hints in the edges of its vision. She hissed softly at Elaine, urging her out of stasis. "Psst! Hey! She's gone!"
"Uhh," Elaine wordlessly agreed. Sitting up, her head did many takes to insure them that they were truly by themselves. "Hey! We pulled that off pretty well."
"I love doing that to the Glowballs," Posie chuckled with feelings uncharacteristically bordered on malice as she came to a stand. But as many have before noticed, all human beings have a dark side. "You don't know how many times I've been able to slip away from them by pretending to be asleep. You think they'd learn."
"You'd think, wouldn't you?" Elaine wanted to gaily burst out laughing, but silence was to be maintained if a smooth getaway was to be accomplished. "So we have a couple minutes to burst free and clear. What should we do, once we've escaped Madame Talksalot?"
"Explore this forest for ourselves. Daddy's always told me, 'Half the fun of the adventure is wandering about and seeing the sights."
Elaine nodded. "Right. We might even find a clearing before Mr. B and Mom do."
"Yeah, and then we can brag about actually doing something on this adventure, instead of just blindly following. Grab your dagger." Posie strolled over to Elaine's side and nabbed her scattered shield. Link had left the majority of his backpack in the lane ahead-she galloped over to it and began to ferret about inside of it for her bow. Itching for the chance to try it out for herself, she slung her quiver around her back and took a firm grasp of her supple weapon.
Elaine seemed poorly equipped in comparison, but she showed a determination not to be outdone. She decided to pry open what was left of Link's tack and pick out a weapon for herself. She threw aside the crystal of the real Din's Fire and folded over the discarded Roc's Cape in her search for something small enough for her to carry. She pulled open a leather satchel near the bottom of the bag and found it filled with a sparkling soft green powder that smelt of lime and wet fungus. The bag of Magic Powder went into one of her pockets, the one that also contained her mangled pack of cards.
Posie watched her search with interest, until her friend could stand beside her and feel well-protected. "Right then," she spoke upward in an almost condescending tone. (Almost, but not quite. She wasn't all that cruel.) "We can set off in one of three. well, no, we can't go that way, Navi's that way. two. no, Daddy and Miss Naomi went that way. err, pretty much one direction. Shall we?"
"Yep," Elaine said swiftly. The two of them marched off between a pair of shrubs, both of them seemingly barring worried expressions. As if they were conscious beings, concerned for the two children. Given that the place was Hyrule, this was not at all unlikely.
Though they had been quiet with their departure, Navi heard the sounds of a few cracking twigs with her more sensitive fay ears and twisted around. In her arms she carried three berries of a depressing shade, and a highly blunted taste. But though not astounding, it was bearable nourishment for the imp. Trying her best not to drop any of the swelling fruit orbs, she drifted out of the bush on a self-made current and tensely checked around a leaf. She asked tentatively, "Posie? Elaine?"
All that showed in the bare dust where they had lain were a few scuffs, perhaps to suggest the movement off their feet.
"Ahhhh! Oh-my-Goddesses!" Navi keened on sight of the empty patch, and let go of her ashen load to zip around the space frantically. She spun about the area Posie and Elaine had rested in before the berries hit the forest floor, splattering with little bursts of a clear juice. "No! Where did they go? Posie! Elaine! Goddesses, I'm deader than Ganon if Link and Naomi come back before I find them." Her entire body cringed into a ball.
Her small voice managed to carry to the traveling pair. "Uh-oh," Posie observed. "Looks like we got out just in time. Better run."
"Amen!" Elaine expediently lifted her pace and dashed on ahead, as fast as congestive flora would permit her to.
Posie cracked out her sword as she started to run, following the given example by snatching at all those branches that snatched back. A flurry of leaves was kicked up behind them, easily revealing their position as they were lofted high above their heads. Elaine tried to remedy this by grasping a handful of the oddly fluid Magic Powder and throwing it over her shoulder. The leaves continued to fly, but an unfortunate insect caught in the updraft of cascading particles metamorphosed into a living, breathing turnip-creature that fell at their feet.
"Dangit!" The plant-animal was hardly intelligent, but it bounded about wildly giving bruises to the two if they dared stand in the way. Elaine reached for her weapon and made salad garnish of the enchanted vegetable, which became harmless and normal as soon as the fine red point cut along its length. Elaine had learned a quick lesson about the natures of the Powder.
There were leaving a very audible trail of destruction now. Navi, with ears keen as the rush of a Shell Blade, had no problem signaling in on the source of all the cracking branches. Getting there was another issue entirely, however-fairies could reach a top speed of about 5 miles and hour, which wasn't bad considering their size. Flying through leaves and branches was another issue, however, and Navi hadn't the greatest acceleration in the world. And she couldn't fly very high, either-more than 15 feet off the ground, and she could start to get heady. Many of these trees were easily twice that.
Meanwhile, Posie and Elaine had started to drift into foliage so thick they might as well have been digging through it. It was if Farore had placed plants such as to create a twisted obstacle course for them when they arrived here, so many millennia after the land's creation. Posie certainly wished she had the power of the slash in her now-how easy would it be to clear a path then! Cutting was becoming difficult, but not because her shoulder was seizing up-it was because her unoccupied left arm itched like crazy.
"Put down the sword, then, and scratch it," Elaine sort of leadenly replied when Posie made her distress public. The lack of oxygen in her brain, caused by her constant exhaustion, seemed to be making her act stupid.
"Hello? We're kind of running here?"
"In here, then," Elaine groaned, and jerked Posie off into in an unbent bush. Posie looked darkly at her friend and their spontaneous hiding place, but she was grateful to drop her jaded arm and send all her loaded guns at the tingling limb. It was good that itching was such a mindless activity, because Posie still had to keep much of her attention on the world outside the shrub.
Navi, tracing the path the two rouge girls had taken, stumbled into their rough-hewn path of getaway. Butchered twigs and jetsam leaves littered the forest floor along their path, of some many shapes and varieties it might've been the spilt contents of a dryad's cereal box. She buzzed about like an oversized white bumblebee, calling out the names of the two missing children. "Pooooosssssieeeee? Elaaaaaaine?"
"Great!" softly snapped Elaine as the distant hearkening reached the tips of her ears and slid down their smooth curves into her mind. "Here comes the Glowball. Let's move, Posie."
"My arm is insanely tired." she sighed as she foisted herself up on the balls of her heels. "Elaine, would you mind cutting at the bushes this time?"
"Sure. You look behind us and make sure Navi's not getting too close." Twin chimes rang out as a sword was sheathed and a dagger drawn in the darkness of the bush.
"Right. And I'll pelt her with a few arrows, just in case she does start to close in on us." Posie had her bow clamped firmly in her right hand, left behind her back to grab her first arrow. She never could remember which hand she was supposed to hold the bow with. but her right was too tired at the moment to put up with the strain of fighting against the leather. Besides, she didn't want to actually harm Navi, so it was of no great consequence if some of her accuracy was sacrificed. The arrow's feathered shaft seemed to be eager to be received into her hand, and she almost thought she could hear it speaking directly into her brain: I know where to go, just set me free.
Funny, but I feel more comfortable holding this arrow than I do my sword. She readied it against the pliant bow that still smelt sweet and new, putting it all to the fact that this bow was much lighter. She figured a single test shot couldn't hurt; she aimed blindly above and drew. She remembered seeing apples in this tree as she was absorbed into the bush; perhaps she could hit one.
The bow twanged as she let the arrow fly, whistling as its sharp point ate up the atmosphere.
There was a thud; the arrow had hit something. The bush's canopy was broken when a single, brilliant red apple plummeted down in the center of it, burst straight through the core with a miniscule arrow.
Elaine's eyes were respectively wide. "That was cool," she admirably gusted at the fine spearing of the fruit. She picked it up and dusted it off, throwing its home-true skewer back at she who fired it and taking a small bite of the prize. "Just don't go William Tell and try that when it's on top of my head, OK?"
Posie laughed, setting the leaves around her rustling. She clambered up to a natural sill formed in the bush's tangled branched; she was poised like a cat with an arrow ready.
Further down the path, where Navi zipped, she took a few breaths to still herself as some object far away cast ripples into the atmosphere. The sound she could easily place, for it was as familiar to her as the feeling of sunshine on her shoulders. It was the soft twang of cured leather snapping back from a taut stance, and stiff feathers undulating in an unnatural wind. And the unmistakable thump of soft fruit flesh suddenly spliced.
She set off speedily. Her body curved backward like the feminine figurehead of a great galleon, wings beating in a gossamer vapor behind her. Little drips and sparks of magic melted off the fay light she cast, leaving little will-o'-the-whisps to sparkle on the cracked trees.
"Glowball, two 'o clock," hissed Posie from her watchpost.
"What's that mean?" Elaine whispered back.
"Don't know. Read it somewhere." For once the prodigy in her own right had no answer. "What I mean to say is, I see Navi coming."
"I figured that," moaned Elaine at the candid. "How close is she?"
"Close enough. I'll shoot her, and when she's distracted, we sprint. Alrighty?"
Elaine nodded. Hunched over, she thought to take another mouth of the apple, coating her hand in sugars. She knew fairies could hear well and hoped the sounds of her chewing wouldn't call attention to them.
Navi stopped, slightly befuddled, when she came to the heavily overgrown path Posie and Elaine had been traveling. Choppily-sheered scrubs and ferns ended, though the occasional half-limping branch still teetered on a few millimeters of stem. The forest was as clustered as grains of pepper in a shaker, so neither of the two girls could have made amazing progress. "Helloooo? Kiddies? Posie! Elaine! I know you're around here somewhere, come out, now!"
Her reply was a quick brush with certain death. One of Posie's arrows, easily bigger than her entire body despite Posie's size, had just narrowly missed taking her legs by a hair's width. It lodged cozily in the un-ironed bark of an ash tree. Her eyes inspected it for a second, but only so long. The ringing sounds of an upset bush aroused her from behind.
Many a forest is verdant, but as it has been iterated so many times before, this one was steel like a lode. A dashing deep green was hard to miss-better camouflaged was Elaine's bleached white dress. Navi began her flittering engines to attempt to reclaim the wandering wantons. As the two pulled over roots that blocked their path, the fairy began to reclaim space between her and the children.
"Wait up! Stop it, you two! Your parents are gonna be furious if you keep running from them like this!"
"Dangit, Glowy's right! What do we do Posie?" wondered a very windless Elaine. "I'm all up for pushing her buttons but, what about your dad? Yesterday morning?"
Posie suddenly brought herself to a stop. Betraying her father was the last thing on her mind.
She suddenly felt pain in her head and slumped to her knees.
"Posie! Woah! It's alright! You don't have to get that emotional about it," but despite Elaine's friendly hand Posie was far beyond hearing. Her ears were already filled with an implacable roaring; one that didn't fit the description of any creature she was familiar with. It sounded like the temporal rush of a ghost as it crossed the barriers between fragile reality and world of spirit. She felt as if something were chewing on her stomach-in her mind, a picture haunted of a wizened demon with scabbed skin and shedding blue fur. But there were red eyes, cold unlike the fire they held, and sharp knives sprouting by the millions inside a cavernous jaw.
As suddenly as it came, the gnawing sensation vanished like the conjuration it had been liked to. In a different section of the colorless woods, another member of the same family was helped to his feet by a Gerudo who, for all her jeers, looked worried. Both kin, when probed by their friends as to the cause of their distress, dismissed the case as frivolous. But a long-remembered dream surfaced inside Posie's skull, and a fatal face turned Link's nerves to stone. His eyes picked a spot about ten feet from the ground to probe, finding it more likely than not a hoggish-canine face would scowl at him from there. But all he found was a segment of skyline; a cloud with holes cut in it by two jogging purple shapes.
The pause the two girls made for the ghastly premonition was significant enough for Navi to make it all the way to the place they knelt in. The fairy was prepared to read them the riot act-her features resembled a contorted expressionist painting, and two small vessels-one per eye-had leaked under pressure. "Alright! That's enough. You two are coming back with me whether you want to or not!"
"Hey, cool it, Navi. Can't you see Posie's upset?"
"I'm fine," Posie gulped, slowly taking in air to quell her racing heart. She teetered to her feet, threatening to fall like a stack of blocks built too high. "That was just-weird." She hoped she wouldn't be asked to explain what had just happened-she felt as if recalling that mug would put the electricity in her veins again. Her voice was scarred by fear, which seemed enough for Elaine. Even Navi looked empathetic.
"Was it a premonition? Did you see something that might. mean anything to our quest?" Navi steepled her fingers, and Posie felt nauseated. Navi was in truth doubtful Posie had had anything resembling a premonition-inherited magic didn't mean all magic. Impa's Shadow magic was of the sort that would have future-dreams; Saria's Forest magic would heal body and soul and use nature's poisons against an enemy. But even a non- mage could occasionally pick up a flash of power, so the wedge of a chance was worth inquiring into.
"I saw-a face. A face I saw a long time ago, and hoped never to see again. I really don't want to elaborate."
Elaine scowled. Posie hoped she could link her vague words to the dream she'd once had, but realized with a sad twinge that she'd merely scored in Elaine's word-and-meaning war. The brunette girl muttered and fixed the sums in her tally.
"What face?" Posie merely waved and told Navi to stop her prying.
"Fine then," the fairy coughed, rebuked. "If you're going to stay clamed up, then both of you do me a favor and don't complain while we go back to camp."
Elaine sighed. "Fair deal." Following Navi like obedient puppies, the girls and the fay leader began to browse a trail through the already-ripped landscape to get back to the "camp."
Posie, watching the ground as she went, made a curious observation. Apparently the soil was gray here for a very good reason. She would kick it and not be assaulted by a turned-up, earthy smell, but something a bit like an old, dirty fireplace. Much of the ground around here was made up of actual ash. This made the lack of flourishing greenery seem dubious, as nutrient-rich soot seemed just the thing to prime a forest on. Occasionally a little odd pebble-like object would turn up, and she'd kick at it with another toe. These little specks bought her eagle-like gazes from Elaine, who was apparently a princess and the gravel flecks peas in disguise.
"Stop kicking those at me."
"Kicking what? It's just dirt."
"Yeah, well, there's rocks in it!"
"What rocks?" Posie asked, innocently and genuinely baffled. All she'd seen were the small chips of something like stone.
"The big ones! I feel 'em hitting my back. You're gonna put bruises the size of craters on me!"
Posie gazed down at the forest floor. She had no idea what Elaine was talking about, but she didn't want to argue. "Sorry."
Elaine raised an eyebrow, but smiled to show she harbored no stiff emotions. Posie received the warmth of that smile with welcome.
As they continued down along the rude trail, at a much slower pace than they had descended it, the dust at their feet began to stir again. But neither weary toe nor restless breeze was to blame this time-it was the small, wet jewels which fell from the heavens into it. The bulging rainclouds felt it the time to relieve themselves of their burden. It was starting as a merely light drizzle, but the Olympic bulk the thunderheads boasted of was testimony to the storm forthcoming.
"Oh, well, this is-dandy," moaned Navi, who suddenly staggered as her back was caved in by a direct watery blow. It was the equivalent of a normal person getting ambushed with a water balloon. "Better hurry it up, then."
Posie and Elaine cranked up their pace. They rather blindly ploughed onward with their eyes on Navi, brushing past trees and shrubs with varying degrees of damage inflicted on them. The two girls had never moved on very far in the first place, so they were quickly returned to the sight of their camp. For the most part, it was as undisturbed as they had left it.
As Elaine diffidently shuffled her feet into their designated little clearing, she muttered something to Posie in a voice Navi was clearly meant to take hint from. "Why's that stupid Glowball always messing up our fun, huh?"
"Because that's what a fairy does; cause trouble for its owner," Posie lamented, sitting down beside Link's backpack and taking a little bit of his draped cape as shelter from the rain. It was beginning to shower more steadily now. "Better ask-'Why does Navi always follow us?'"
"To keep you out of trouble," she scolded them. "I think the two of you are seriously underestimating what I could do for you if you were to find yourselves in a dangerous situation!"
"I know exactly what you could do. Yell a lot." Elaine was feeling particularly cynical after her plans were squashed, more so than usual.
Posie watched a jet of red appear over the crest of one tree-top. She'd quickly picked up on what that sight meant. "Hey, look. Daddy and Miss Naomi are coming back."
"Hey, yeah," noticed Elaine, who gave a yawn. She was thoroughly unsurprised. "Vegetation-I get a point for that even though you know what it means because I'm so glad I thought it up on the spur of the moment-must be a little thick."
From off in a western-bound direction, a spray of blue crystal announce a magic presence.
"Hmm?" The two children were aroused from their mild torpor by the unusual blasts that rallied above their heads. How was it the a spray of fire came from one direction and that of ice from another? Naomi couldn't be in two places at once, could she? There were a few who had that talent-but it was a power usually limited to those of Sheikah ancestry; Gerudo were much better at moving fast. But not that fast.
"How's that?" Elaine craned her head to the sky as another rose jet appeared, and much closer. The scent of burning and bursting sap filled their noses. "Huh."
Navi whipped around in the air. Almost immediately after the first flames had receded, something shimmered over their shoulders for an instant and shattered the sun's rays into rainbows on the ground.
"Girls," she hissed in a low, panicked voice, "hide."
The fear they heard in Navi's voice was as real as the earth they walked on. They would not argue with a tremolo that threatened to level the sea with its variety of waves. Their thoughts were alike and instantaneous-both of them dashed into the blue-and white feathered concoction of the Roc's Cape, with something much more serious to conceal themselves from. Navi dulled the light she usually carried and zipped beneath the cloak with them.
They heard the splintering of many branches from inside their tight little cavern, the heat of their own quivering bodies rising the inside of it to a fever. A whistle of wind, tampered with via magic, carried aloft two very near and very creaked voices. One, the first they heard, put rage into their blood and made it pump with the fury of an all-consuming bonfire. The second sent chills up their spines, freezing all signals their nerves might want to send and enveloping them in a sort of passionately angry terror.
"So did you find 'em, Kotake?"
Posie felt all the saliva in her mouth turn to bitter acid when that name was mentioned. The fireproof incidents in the Fountain Cavern were playing at high-speed in her brain. Kotake. the ice half of the witch-sisters Twinrova.
"Yeah, I got 'em, all right," Kotake icily replied. "Ain't so hard when you've got a calling spell on ya!" She cackled like the light of an ill- crossing star, and the three concealed souls could feel the frozen vibes her waving hand sent into the air.
"Sh'roth's the only place left on the list of places to check, right?"
"That and Ro." Check for what, exactly? Posie wanted to know. Though not out loud.
"Yes. And our sacrifice will be.?"
"No." That penetrating wave of coldness gripped its claws around their lungs, attempting to control all of their breathing for the worst. "Missing persons draw too much attention. That's why we're doing it the hard way this time. We still have to hoodwink Link and get that bloody Ocarina offa him, but it's better than alerting the Hylean public ahead of time."
"Kotake, what'll we do if we can't trap him while he's all alone like this.?"
The hag breathed with a rattle. "Don't worry. Remember, as long as we have all the ashes in our possession."
"Of course." There was the sound of sickly, wrinkled skin rubbing together. "Any time, any time! The only thing we have to do is stay outta the King's sight. Blood will flow freely again soon enough, sister!"
Their barking laughs sounded again in ghostly unison. "Now, let's get outta here. I don't like rain. It makes my joints ache," sighed Kotake in a way that could almost draw pity. "Sh'roth, the Shadow Haven? Make way for Twinrova!"
"Right! Perhaps we'll have some fun with the pathetic Sheikah remnants while we're there. I know what I said earlier about Impa and Zelda being the only ones left of their race, but I guess I forgot about those at the Shadow Haven." She paused for facetious effect. Then picked up: ".All 12 of them!"
Somehow managing never to notice a backpack and a Roc's Cape in the clearing, not to mention two very frightened girls and a fairy, Koume and Kotake flew off like two corks of maleficent bottles of champagne. Hisses and clicks followed in their wake-from the droplets of rain, either freezing as hail and rattling through tree branches, or as steam, sizzling back up into the clouds.
Slowly, Elaine was first to emerge, watching the tails of their brooms soar away. The words came pouring from her mouth in a gibbering stream. "Ash. Shadow Haven. Sacrifice. Ocarina. Your dad. What's going on." She was so lost in her maelstrom of through she didn't even bother to phrase the last statement she made as a question.
"I. I'm really not sure," Navi gulped, riding out on top of Posie's head. "I. I have a theory but. it's totally wild. Posie, you really don't suppose. that they could be trying. to."
Posie shook her head, sending Navi airborne again. "I'm not even sure what you're talking about. I remember a little about Twinrova from what Daddy told me. but. I never heard a lot."
"Never mind. I. I'd just be frightening you, if I told you. Besides, even if it was true. There's nothing that you could do. It would be."-She motioned as if she were hiking up her pants. Even though she didn't have any. "-It would be strictly your mother and father's business."
"C'mon, Navi, tell us," whined Elaine. "Even if it's terrifying, I'm curious. In a morbid kinda way."
Navi screwed up her face, and looked like she'd lost her heartbeat somewhere in her throat by the sweat streaming down from her forehead. "Well. it's just that. that I think. I think."
"What?"
"That I think-your parents are returning," she quickly improvised. With a sweeping hand gesture normally used to introduce celebrities in public, Navi made clear where Link and Naomi battled their way back to the clearing through the suppressing undergrowth.
((Oh, and just for confirmation: I know I'm calling Zelda a Sheikah here, which sounds weird, but I mean it. Look, it'll get explained a lot better at the start of the next chapter. Promise. This one's shorter than usual, which I don't mind.))
Spinning Slash, Chapter 12: Glowball
Their exuberance wore off after about an hour, when they realized that the five of them were wandering though the forest aimlessly. There were no more traps, there were no more Nymphs; but there weren't any maps to help them anymore, either, since Link had put his own out of commission with the burn salve. There were just trees; trees and bushes; trees and bushes and rocks; trees and bushes and rocks and growling stomachs.
Link's arm was becoming leaden as he swung his sword in a seemingly endless series of hacks at the air, cutting up foliage that blocked their path. But he preferred moving this way; bumbling through the forest at home, Saria forced him to delicately push aside branches and limbs so as not to harm the plants. She claimed she heard them "scream" every time he dug his blade into their stems. More often than not, the only screams he heard where his own when a rebellious branch smacked him square across the face.
Now the sun had reached its apex in the sky, and it felt just as hot in these woods as it had out in the Gerudo's desert. It rained down like flaming hail on their backs, not caring for the heavy canopy of leaves it first had to bypass. Everywhere it struck, their sunburns from the day past intensified and peeled. Naomi had enough pigment in her skin to help keep her skin from scorching, not to mention enough experience in the sun to last a lifetime. But even taking her place of birth into order, she really preferred the coolness of the shade.
"Too-hot. Can't-move-on."
Posie silently passed her shield up to Elaine, who took it with tired gratitude. She sat it upon her head like a hat, keeping a hand on it to prevent it from falling off. The comfort it provided was minimal, and the sun-baked metal steamed, but at least it provided her with the illusion she was being shaded.
"This is not September weather," Posie then observed. Never was there a happy medium for the hero, hero wannabe, and tagalongs-it was a constant flash, hot-hotter-hot-cold-colder-cold-hot again.
Link's head was wrapped in a blue-and-white hood of feathers, his Roc's Cape serving as a makeshift cowl. The feathers that held the essence of the wind in their down tried to carry a baby breeze to his head, but all it did was force him to inhale the smell of the sweat on his face.
"I dunno about you all, but I could do with a lunch break," Naomi sighed, having heard the gurgle of her innards in her ears again. "I haven't eaten anything since that fish-fest this morning."
"Me, too," moaned Elaine, though she'd prefer something to drink first. Her thirst had been abated after the incident with the acid river, but when her words were hindered by her tongue sticking to the roof her mouth, it was time for a drink.
"Posie?" Link spoke up, finally, after a long and sullen silence of hacking at shrubs. "Do we have a majority vote?"
"Very." She dropped where she was instantly, wiping her forehead and scooting around a little to fix her crossed legs. "I'm hungry!"
"Hey, Hungry, I'm Thirsty," chuckled Elaine sourly as she fell into the embrace of a tree's trunk and let Posie's shield scatter. A little too hardly; she winced when her red arms scraped up against the rough, ashy bark.
Link knelt at the head of their impromptu picnic grounds and opened up his seemingly bottomless backpack. "Let's see. canteen, right." He tossed it to Elaine, who released the tree and caught it easily. "Lunch, lunch. no, food's in this pouch." He folded over the flap he'd been looking through to nudge open another one. He gave a spasmodic shake of his head and the Cape he was wearing slid to the floor. "Hmm. 'Ey, Naomi!"
"Yeah?" She'd dug her heavy scimitars out of their scabbards and rammed them into the ground. She sat down between them, taking them as pillars around her imaginary throne.
"More sandwiches, some kinda salad, or are you feeling brave?" He grinned mischievously, eyes atwinkle. She was a Gerudo; time to see if she could take some real heat.
Naomi returned the smirk. She had no idea when Link was packing up his sleeve, but she wasn't about to be labeled a chicken. Though considering what the Cuccos of Hyrule were like, perhaps that was not such an insult. "I'm feeling brave. Show me the best you've got."
Link pulled a curious glass jar out of the pack, its lid sealed around the edges with a curiously un-waxy red wax. He passed it to Naomi, who pressed it to her face to observe it. Inside it was a red liquid about the consistency of tomato sauce, peppered with chunks of beef and various vegetables. Little flecks of green, yellow and black floated around inside. There might've been red specks, too, but they matched their surroundings with ease.
"Looks pretty tame to me, Linky-boy. Average stew of. some kind. Nothing fancy."
"Ah, but you're wrong on all three counts! It's not tame, it's not average, and considering it's Saria's cooking-fancy if you consider the fact that no one can cook as well as she can."
"Yeah, well, I'm sure I can hold my own." Naomi glanced over the jar with an overly-cherubic smile, taunting Link. Not glancing at her hands, she gave the jar's lid a twist and lifted it off.
Her sinuses were scrubbed clean as a powerful sweet-spicy smell assaulted her nose, which only hoisted her confidence up a notch. The Gerudos were pioneers in the game of fiery food preparation, and she'd grown bored of foods that would sear half the flesh off the inside of any other mortal's mouth. Seeing how many buttons of Link's she could push at once, she brought it up to her face and took an entire breath's worth of the aching smell. It was a bit painful on the olfactory senses. But she wouldn't dare let Link break her.
Link crossed his arms and looked unimpressed. He even shook his head a little, to show how much it jaded him. If she'd been there the night it had first been made, she wouldn't be so at ease now. He recalled very plainly the first thing he'd said upon swallowing it-"Yikes!-" but, in retrospect, that'd been an understatement.
"You'll need these," he stated very plainly, and threw to her a spoon and one of the spare canteens. She caught the first; laughed at the second.
"You think I'd need that? Well, that's where you're wrong, Link." She daintily held the spoon and reached down into the jar, scooping up a large piece of meat saturated in the red juice. "Now behold, a master of the piquant palatables at work!"
She took the mouthful with reckless abandon.
The instant she realized what she'd just bitten into was an instant too late. Regret surged through her mouth on the tendrils of flavor, belonging to a variety of chilies-among them habanjeroes, the spiciest peppers of them all. Tears flowed freely from the corners of her eyes as the stew charred a path down her throat, and she hastily set the jar down in favor of the canteen. Five deep gulps of sweet water later, she exclaimed-"What is that edible excuse for a four-alarm fire?"
"It is fire-Din's Fire, that is," Link smiled. "Saria's specialty, which is fairly interesting considering the forest is usually her scope." He wore his triumphantly-crossed arms like a badge. "The first thing she managed to make successfully-by, ironically screwing up the recipe really bad-has remained in her repertoire."
"And you can stand to eat that stuff?"
"Yep! My favorite-Posie's favorite too."
Naomi looked down at Posie with something akin to reverence. She had up until that point been watching the interesting contest between her father and the Gerudo, and jumped a little when Naomi suddenly turned toward her. "You. That. I can't believe it," she ranted, but hardly really speaking to Posie.
Posie smiled. "Believe it. I've loved the stuff since-well, since Mommy would actually let me try it."
Naomi stared as if she still didn't quite accept that fact. "You've got some kinda crazy endurance, kiddo."
There was that natural endurance again. And this time, it was genuine. "Well, thanks. Most of the rest of the things Mommy knows how to make are fairly tame, so perhaps it's because I need a little break from the ordinary once in while. Or maybe my tongue is stronger than I think-I can down a glass of clear kinra pretty quickly, but you know what that stuff's like."
Naomi smiled. "The Gerudo have a penchant for intense edibles; you'd not be out of place among them." She studied the hardened, intellectual look behind Posie's eyes, and added, "And you just understood every word of that last sentence, and that freaks me out."
Posie cheerfully shrugged. "I have good taste in books, and I learn fast. So it goes, and I'm a five-year-old with a fifty Rupee vocabulary."
Link waved his arm rapidly, trying to cause enough of a silent commotion in the edges of Naomi's vision to catch her attention. He heavily swallowed a mouthful of some sort of fruit(he had the rest of the pulpy plant in his hand) on his reply. "You know, she's my kid, and her intelligence disturbs me at times, too. Not like it's a bad thing, when your kid's a genius, but it can be frightening."
"And my daughter hangs out with her. I'm still so unfamiliar with Elaine-how much has she picked up?"
"From what I've gathered, a fair amount." Link raised the yellowish pod to his mouth and took another bite, the flesh of it squishing loudly in rebellion and spraying Link's chin with sticky nectar. He didn't have to chew it much-it was more an issue of slurping-but he wiped his gauntlet along the bottom of his face afterward. "And you're probably looking at me with juice all over my face and thinking I look like something of an idiot in comparison. Am I right?"
"Not particularly, but you do look sticky," she laughed, for once choosing to stick with more light-hearted comments on Link's humor.
Meanwhile Elaine had stolen the jar of spicy stew for Posie, and Posie had commandeered herself a spoon with the help of Navi. There were no bowls in the backpack-they could crush too easily-but Posie didn't mind eating from the jar, of course. She took one spoonful, a gigantic swallow to someone her size and delighted in the tingling feeling the various hot ingredients in the soup left on her tongue. Doing her best to eat just a little neater than Link had been doing, she took small sips off the spoon and occasionally munched on a larger chunk of meat or vegetable. Elaine grabbed a small block of sharp yellow cheese from the sack, nibbling on it while she and Posie chatted. They wondered at great length what would happen when the four of them returned to their respective homes.
"Mommy won't like hearing about the traps back there," Posie lamented, leaning her chin against the jar. "She'll fret on and on about how I could've gotten hurt."
"I think she'd be more disgraced to hear how you forgot what Deku Scrubs were called on Saturday," Elaine chuckled. "'Funny mad plant person?' That's low."
"Hey, you and I both know-we have our specific talents. Swords, Gerudo stuff. Reading, spelling. Remembering monster names isn't one of mine."
"Coming from the child of the great Link, that's vaguely pathetic," sighed Elaine only somewhat seriously. "I know if you put your heart to it, you could remember 'em all. Like I've always told ya, concentration and determination! Pop quiz. About two feet tall, a greenish-blue hue, can also come in red and it's highly allergic to magical powders! Don't touch it, or it'll literally shock you! What is it?"
Posie knew this one well, and felt Elaine had started easy for a reason-she saw these creatures wandering through her home woods all the time. "Chu-Chu. But that's a gimmie. Something harder, if you will."
Elaine searched her mind for an esoteric creature. "Hmm. OK, how's this one? Tall, with spindly legs and a gigantic, single eye. Not to mention a sleek black body hard as armor. What's that, eh?"
"Ummm. Ghoma! One of those used to live in the forest, a long time ago. back when Daddy was still a kid. Not so hard, though. Try me again, and something tougher!"
Elaine smiled, with just the beast in mind. "Alrighty, then. You'll never guess this one. It's tall, about six feet high. Roughly two of those are in its wire-like tail. It has two magnetic hands attached to its sleek black body, and it has an affinity for anything metal. It also like to throw things about and it might remind you of a shoe. What's that?"
Posie's grin was the broadest at the end of the very last question, because she all too well knew the answer. Elaine was well aware of this, but she'd wanted to make her friend smile. For she'd done nothing else but go and describe Posie's favorite monster: "That's a Smasher!"
"Of course! It's not like my sarcasm wasn't evident." She took a few more bites of her cheese. "Well, I'm tired of quizzing, personally. You don't need an encyclopedic knowledge, anyway-not yet. Wait until you're out adventuring on your own."
Posie silently agreed and delved further into her stew.
Some feet away, Link spat a few wrinkled black seeds at the ground, last remnants of the large, pithy fruit he'd been snacking upon. He gazed skyward, up at a ceiling that was slowly turning the color of a quarry. The ground still smelt dry and confined, but an ionic crackle teased along its length. It was still warm enough, but rain felt evident.
"Looks like the weather plans to turn foul on us," Link observed. "Hope it doesn't start to thunder and lightning. Too many trees. one could easily get hit. could start fires, or worse."
"What's worse than that?" ask Naomi. "Given our present situation, of course."
"We could be standing beneath it," offered Elaine, which Link nodded to despite the fact that it had been his cutting-off.
"I get enough bolts to the body back at home from Saria," Link sighed, with only partial contempt. Better and angry Saria than no Saria at all, he thought morosely. "So it's not my preferred method of execution."
"Nice rain though." Naomi perked up a little, chancing to lift her chin just slightly. "It'd be manna from heaven. It's too hot in the parched forest."
"I wouldn't say no to setting up camp for a little bit," shrugged Posie. "Settle down in one spot for a moment. Miss Naomi can soak up the rain while we do our best to avoid it."
"Good pitch, bad location for the seminar," Link lamented. He finally toppled on his knees to sit cross-legged on the ground. "We can't set up here. The trees are way too close together. Besides, we'd have to find a clearing of a fairly good size to set up-away from roots, incase the storm turns electrical." He flashed a glance up at the sky again, checking that all was still safe for them among the clustered copses.
"Ah, I'm too tired to move just yet," yawned Elaine, who plaintively slid herself downward to rest her head on a particularly cushiony-looking gnarl. "Gimmie a moment t' rest."
Link stuck out his lower lip, in a kind of sympathy pout. "Poor kid. I hate to force you guys on ahead if you're tired. You put up with the relentless walk yesterday, maybe you've earned yourself a break."
"I'm with her," gaped Posie, who finally set aside her cutlery and shoved aside the jar. Heat combined with a full stomach sent her woozy, and she wanted nothing more to lie down in what little shade could be found at noon.
Naomi, however, uneasily stared upward. "But we can't stay here. If there's lightning."
"I could carry Posie, no sweat," Link agreed mostly with himself. "She's so small, it isn't a problem. Are you up to carrying Elaine?"
She didn't look happy about her reply, but it was remorseful in its honesty. "No, I'm aching enough as it is. What can we do?"
Navi, who was relaxing in the hollow of an older tree by Link's head, put forward her own suggestion. "One of you could go forward and find a place to wait the storm out, and the other could stay here. That's pretty easy, isn't it?"
Link's head didn't move, but his eyes traced an obvious path over to Naomi's face. "Well, I still don't trust her around Elaine. not to go running off with her. so it'd better be me."
"No way. I'm not getting up. I'm still exhausted-you go on ahead, Linky-boy, I won't run off with your wards."
"Sorry. Not gonna let that happen." Link knitted his arms indignantly. "You go."
"You go!"
"No. you go. Go!"
"You ain't gonna talk me into it, Link! You go, I stay, and I won't compromise."
Navi clicked her tongue. "How like humans." She leaned slightly out of her tree hole, acting bemused. "You refuse to move forward yet you know you can't remain where you are. Is there any aspect of you creatures not swathed in paradox?" Her tone was very high and lofty.
"Well then, what do you suggest?" prompted Naomi, who kept her arms still though it was clear she wanted to jab fingers at Navi. One finger in particular. "If you're the mystic fairy with all the answers, give us one so we can make use of it!"
"If I were one of you, I'd talk myself into watching after the children while both of you go on ahead. Though it's clear you don't care for my suggestions."
Link tilted his head from side to side, as if letting the idea wash around in his brain and spread about evenly. "Actually, that's a pretty good idea. thanks, Navi! Naomi?"
"Wait!" Navi spurted. "I was being facetious! I wasn't actually suggesting."
Naomi unwillingly foisted herself up to comply with Link's request. "Dunno, sure it's wise to let that thing watch over our kids?"
"She's goofed up but once in the task, so I say she's a go. Come on! Let's move."
"Nooooo! Wait! I was kidding! Link! Come on! Link. Naomi?"
Link wore a blithe, ignoring smile, and his voice rose to the clouds on the strings of a familiar anthem. Only this time, he(for some reason) sang the self-promoting and irreverent Freezair version: "Link, he come to town." Naomi rocked her head in a way that suggested she might have been rolling her eyeballs.
Navi released a sigh-in an even more fanciful setting, this might have been accompanied by a little cloud coming out of her mouth. Her wings wanted to start slowly, in a way we might compare to an old lawnmower, and her cool fire ignited like a will-o'-the-whisp inside the tree hollow.
Bobbing up and down in an erratic flight pattern, she bubbled her way across steely air to hover just above the peaceful Posie and Elaine. She gave a little fairies' mumble of, "I suppose if all they do is sleep, this won't be too terrible." Caressing her exposed shoulders, she frowned and took perch upon a particularly snarled root. She cleared her throat a little and announced, just in case the girls were still awake, "Hope you two aren't too comfortable, because, you know, we may have to move at a moment's notice."
There was no response, save for a few sputtering breathing noises. A gnat had flown into Elaine's mouth and she coughed it out, before resuming her relaxed state of being.
"I hate babysitting," she groaned at her predicament. She attempted to lie back on the twisted plant, though she found it altogether too knobby to suit her tastes. Shrugging a little, she pulled up with a little puff. Her stomach whined up at her, and she lamented not asking Link for a bit of a snack while they'd been dining. Fairies could go many years without food- but the occasional snack was still handy to prevent severe discomfort.
Announcing to the air, she loudly proclaimed, "I'm going scavenging! If either of you are still awake, I'll be right back! Don't worry about me!" The little pixie darted off into a bush, possibly one that contained berries.
When Navi was fully submerged in the leafy jungle gym, Posie chanced to open one azure eye. Flashing left and right, it caught no bright white hints in the edges of its vision. She hissed softly at Elaine, urging her out of stasis. "Psst! Hey! She's gone!"
"Uhh," Elaine wordlessly agreed. Sitting up, her head did many takes to insure them that they were truly by themselves. "Hey! We pulled that off pretty well."
"I love doing that to the Glowballs," Posie chuckled with feelings uncharacteristically bordered on malice as she came to a stand. But as many have before noticed, all human beings have a dark side. "You don't know how many times I've been able to slip away from them by pretending to be asleep. You think they'd learn."
"You'd think, wouldn't you?" Elaine wanted to gaily burst out laughing, but silence was to be maintained if a smooth getaway was to be accomplished. "So we have a couple minutes to burst free and clear. What should we do, once we've escaped Madame Talksalot?"
"Explore this forest for ourselves. Daddy's always told me, 'Half the fun of the adventure is wandering about and seeing the sights."
Elaine nodded. "Right. We might even find a clearing before Mr. B and Mom do."
"Yeah, and then we can brag about actually doing something on this adventure, instead of just blindly following. Grab your dagger." Posie strolled over to Elaine's side and nabbed her scattered shield. Link had left the majority of his backpack in the lane ahead-she galloped over to it and began to ferret about inside of it for her bow. Itching for the chance to try it out for herself, she slung her quiver around her back and took a firm grasp of her supple weapon.
Elaine seemed poorly equipped in comparison, but she showed a determination not to be outdone. She decided to pry open what was left of Link's tack and pick out a weapon for herself. She threw aside the crystal of the real Din's Fire and folded over the discarded Roc's Cape in her search for something small enough for her to carry. She pulled open a leather satchel near the bottom of the bag and found it filled with a sparkling soft green powder that smelt of lime and wet fungus. The bag of Magic Powder went into one of her pockets, the one that also contained her mangled pack of cards.
Posie watched her search with interest, until her friend could stand beside her and feel well-protected. "Right then," she spoke upward in an almost condescending tone. (Almost, but not quite. She wasn't all that cruel.) "We can set off in one of three. well, no, we can't go that way, Navi's that way. two. no, Daddy and Miss Naomi went that way. err, pretty much one direction. Shall we?"
"Yep," Elaine said swiftly. The two of them marched off between a pair of shrubs, both of them seemingly barring worried expressions. As if they were conscious beings, concerned for the two children. Given that the place was Hyrule, this was not at all unlikely.
Though they had been quiet with their departure, Navi heard the sounds of a few cracking twigs with her more sensitive fay ears and twisted around. In her arms she carried three berries of a depressing shade, and a highly blunted taste. But though not astounding, it was bearable nourishment for the imp. Trying her best not to drop any of the swelling fruit orbs, she drifted out of the bush on a self-made current and tensely checked around a leaf. She asked tentatively, "Posie? Elaine?"
All that showed in the bare dust where they had lain were a few scuffs, perhaps to suggest the movement off their feet.
"Ahhhh! Oh-my-Goddesses!" Navi keened on sight of the empty patch, and let go of her ashen load to zip around the space frantically. She spun about the area Posie and Elaine had rested in before the berries hit the forest floor, splattering with little bursts of a clear juice. "No! Where did they go? Posie! Elaine! Goddesses, I'm deader than Ganon if Link and Naomi come back before I find them." Her entire body cringed into a ball.
Her small voice managed to carry to the traveling pair. "Uh-oh," Posie observed. "Looks like we got out just in time. Better run."
"Amen!" Elaine expediently lifted her pace and dashed on ahead, as fast as congestive flora would permit her to.
Posie cracked out her sword as she started to run, following the given example by snatching at all those branches that snatched back. A flurry of leaves was kicked up behind them, easily revealing their position as they were lofted high above their heads. Elaine tried to remedy this by grasping a handful of the oddly fluid Magic Powder and throwing it over her shoulder. The leaves continued to fly, but an unfortunate insect caught in the updraft of cascading particles metamorphosed into a living, breathing turnip-creature that fell at their feet.
"Dangit!" The plant-animal was hardly intelligent, but it bounded about wildly giving bruises to the two if they dared stand in the way. Elaine reached for her weapon and made salad garnish of the enchanted vegetable, which became harmless and normal as soon as the fine red point cut along its length. Elaine had learned a quick lesson about the natures of the Powder.
There were leaving a very audible trail of destruction now. Navi, with ears keen as the rush of a Shell Blade, had no problem signaling in on the source of all the cracking branches. Getting there was another issue entirely, however-fairies could reach a top speed of about 5 miles and hour, which wasn't bad considering their size. Flying through leaves and branches was another issue, however, and Navi hadn't the greatest acceleration in the world. And she couldn't fly very high, either-more than 15 feet off the ground, and she could start to get heady. Many of these trees were easily twice that.
Meanwhile, Posie and Elaine had started to drift into foliage so thick they might as well have been digging through it. It was if Farore had placed plants such as to create a twisted obstacle course for them when they arrived here, so many millennia after the land's creation. Posie certainly wished she had the power of the slash in her now-how easy would it be to clear a path then! Cutting was becoming difficult, but not because her shoulder was seizing up-it was because her unoccupied left arm itched like crazy.
"Put down the sword, then, and scratch it," Elaine sort of leadenly replied when Posie made her distress public. The lack of oxygen in her brain, caused by her constant exhaustion, seemed to be making her act stupid.
"Hello? We're kind of running here?"
"In here, then," Elaine groaned, and jerked Posie off into in an unbent bush. Posie looked darkly at her friend and their spontaneous hiding place, but she was grateful to drop her jaded arm and send all her loaded guns at the tingling limb. It was good that itching was such a mindless activity, because Posie still had to keep much of her attention on the world outside the shrub.
Navi, tracing the path the two rouge girls had taken, stumbled into their rough-hewn path of getaway. Butchered twigs and jetsam leaves littered the forest floor along their path, of some many shapes and varieties it might've been the spilt contents of a dryad's cereal box. She buzzed about like an oversized white bumblebee, calling out the names of the two missing children. "Pooooosssssieeeee? Elaaaaaaine?"
"Great!" softly snapped Elaine as the distant hearkening reached the tips of her ears and slid down their smooth curves into her mind. "Here comes the Glowball. Let's move, Posie."
"My arm is insanely tired." she sighed as she foisted herself up on the balls of her heels. "Elaine, would you mind cutting at the bushes this time?"
"Sure. You look behind us and make sure Navi's not getting too close." Twin chimes rang out as a sword was sheathed and a dagger drawn in the darkness of the bush.
"Right. And I'll pelt her with a few arrows, just in case she does start to close in on us." Posie had her bow clamped firmly in her right hand, left behind her back to grab her first arrow. She never could remember which hand she was supposed to hold the bow with. but her right was too tired at the moment to put up with the strain of fighting against the leather. Besides, she didn't want to actually harm Navi, so it was of no great consequence if some of her accuracy was sacrificed. The arrow's feathered shaft seemed to be eager to be received into her hand, and she almost thought she could hear it speaking directly into her brain: I know where to go, just set me free.
Funny, but I feel more comfortable holding this arrow than I do my sword. She readied it against the pliant bow that still smelt sweet and new, putting it all to the fact that this bow was much lighter. She figured a single test shot couldn't hurt; she aimed blindly above and drew. She remembered seeing apples in this tree as she was absorbed into the bush; perhaps she could hit one.
The bow twanged as she let the arrow fly, whistling as its sharp point ate up the atmosphere.
There was a thud; the arrow had hit something. The bush's canopy was broken when a single, brilliant red apple plummeted down in the center of it, burst straight through the core with a miniscule arrow.
Elaine's eyes were respectively wide. "That was cool," she admirably gusted at the fine spearing of the fruit. She picked it up and dusted it off, throwing its home-true skewer back at she who fired it and taking a small bite of the prize. "Just don't go William Tell and try that when it's on top of my head, OK?"
Posie laughed, setting the leaves around her rustling. She clambered up to a natural sill formed in the bush's tangled branched; she was poised like a cat with an arrow ready.
Further down the path, where Navi zipped, she took a few breaths to still herself as some object far away cast ripples into the atmosphere. The sound she could easily place, for it was as familiar to her as the feeling of sunshine on her shoulders. It was the soft twang of cured leather snapping back from a taut stance, and stiff feathers undulating in an unnatural wind. And the unmistakable thump of soft fruit flesh suddenly spliced.
She set off speedily. Her body curved backward like the feminine figurehead of a great galleon, wings beating in a gossamer vapor behind her. Little drips and sparks of magic melted off the fay light she cast, leaving little will-o'-the-whisps to sparkle on the cracked trees.
"Glowball, two 'o clock," hissed Posie from her watchpost.
"What's that mean?" Elaine whispered back.
"Don't know. Read it somewhere." For once the prodigy in her own right had no answer. "What I mean to say is, I see Navi coming."
"I figured that," moaned Elaine at the candid. "How close is she?"
"Close enough. I'll shoot her, and when she's distracted, we sprint. Alrighty?"
Elaine nodded. Hunched over, she thought to take another mouth of the apple, coating her hand in sugars. She knew fairies could hear well and hoped the sounds of her chewing wouldn't call attention to them.
Navi stopped, slightly befuddled, when she came to the heavily overgrown path Posie and Elaine had been traveling. Choppily-sheered scrubs and ferns ended, though the occasional half-limping branch still teetered on a few millimeters of stem. The forest was as clustered as grains of pepper in a shaker, so neither of the two girls could have made amazing progress. "Helloooo? Kiddies? Posie! Elaine! I know you're around here somewhere, come out, now!"
Her reply was a quick brush with certain death. One of Posie's arrows, easily bigger than her entire body despite Posie's size, had just narrowly missed taking her legs by a hair's width. It lodged cozily in the un-ironed bark of an ash tree. Her eyes inspected it for a second, but only so long. The ringing sounds of an upset bush aroused her from behind.
Many a forest is verdant, but as it has been iterated so many times before, this one was steel like a lode. A dashing deep green was hard to miss-better camouflaged was Elaine's bleached white dress. Navi began her flittering engines to attempt to reclaim the wandering wantons. As the two pulled over roots that blocked their path, the fairy began to reclaim space between her and the children.
"Wait up! Stop it, you two! Your parents are gonna be furious if you keep running from them like this!"
"Dangit, Glowy's right! What do we do Posie?" wondered a very windless Elaine. "I'm all up for pushing her buttons but, what about your dad? Yesterday morning?"
Posie suddenly brought herself to a stop. Betraying her father was the last thing on her mind.
She suddenly felt pain in her head and slumped to her knees.
"Posie! Woah! It's alright! You don't have to get that emotional about it," but despite Elaine's friendly hand Posie was far beyond hearing. Her ears were already filled with an implacable roaring; one that didn't fit the description of any creature she was familiar with. It sounded like the temporal rush of a ghost as it crossed the barriers between fragile reality and world of spirit. She felt as if something were chewing on her stomach-in her mind, a picture haunted of a wizened demon with scabbed skin and shedding blue fur. But there were red eyes, cold unlike the fire they held, and sharp knives sprouting by the millions inside a cavernous jaw.
As suddenly as it came, the gnawing sensation vanished like the conjuration it had been liked to. In a different section of the colorless woods, another member of the same family was helped to his feet by a Gerudo who, for all her jeers, looked worried. Both kin, when probed by their friends as to the cause of their distress, dismissed the case as frivolous. But a long-remembered dream surfaced inside Posie's skull, and a fatal face turned Link's nerves to stone. His eyes picked a spot about ten feet from the ground to probe, finding it more likely than not a hoggish-canine face would scowl at him from there. But all he found was a segment of skyline; a cloud with holes cut in it by two jogging purple shapes.
The pause the two girls made for the ghastly premonition was significant enough for Navi to make it all the way to the place they knelt in. The fairy was prepared to read them the riot act-her features resembled a contorted expressionist painting, and two small vessels-one per eye-had leaked under pressure. "Alright! That's enough. You two are coming back with me whether you want to or not!"
"Hey, cool it, Navi. Can't you see Posie's upset?"
"I'm fine," Posie gulped, slowly taking in air to quell her racing heart. She teetered to her feet, threatening to fall like a stack of blocks built too high. "That was just-weird." She hoped she wouldn't be asked to explain what had just happened-she felt as if recalling that mug would put the electricity in her veins again. Her voice was scarred by fear, which seemed enough for Elaine. Even Navi looked empathetic.
"Was it a premonition? Did you see something that might. mean anything to our quest?" Navi steepled her fingers, and Posie felt nauseated. Navi was in truth doubtful Posie had had anything resembling a premonition-inherited magic didn't mean all magic. Impa's Shadow magic was of the sort that would have future-dreams; Saria's Forest magic would heal body and soul and use nature's poisons against an enemy. But even a non- mage could occasionally pick up a flash of power, so the wedge of a chance was worth inquiring into.
"I saw-a face. A face I saw a long time ago, and hoped never to see again. I really don't want to elaborate."
Elaine scowled. Posie hoped she could link her vague words to the dream she'd once had, but realized with a sad twinge that she'd merely scored in Elaine's word-and-meaning war. The brunette girl muttered and fixed the sums in her tally.
"What face?" Posie merely waved and told Navi to stop her prying.
"Fine then," the fairy coughed, rebuked. "If you're going to stay clamed up, then both of you do me a favor and don't complain while we go back to camp."
Elaine sighed. "Fair deal." Following Navi like obedient puppies, the girls and the fay leader began to browse a trail through the already-ripped landscape to get back to the "camp."
Posie, watching the ground as she went, made a curious observation. Apparently the soil was gray here for a very good reason. She would kick it and not be assaulted by a turned-up, earthy smell, but something a bit like an old, dirty fireplace. Much of the ground around here was made up of actual ash. This made the lack of flourishing greenery seem dubious, as nutrient-rich soot seemed just the thing to prime a forest on. Occasionally a little odd pebble-like object would turn up, and she'd kick at it with another toe. These little specks bought her eagle-like gazes from Elaine, who was apparently a princess and the gravel flecks peas in disguise.
"Stop kicking those at me."
"Kicking what? It's just dirt."
"Yeah, well, there's rocks in it!"
"What rocks?" Posie asked, innocently and genuinely baffled. All she'd seen were the small chips of something like stone.
"The big ones! I feel 'em hitting my back. You're gonna put bruises the size of craters on me!"
Posie gazed down at the forest floor. She had no idea what Elaine was talking about, but she didn't want to argue. "Sorry."
Elaine raised an eyebrow, but smiled to show she harbored no stiff emotions. Posie received the warmth of that smile with welcome.
As they continued down along the rude trail, at a much slower pace than they had descended it, the dust at their feet began to stir again. But neither weary toe nor restless breeze was to blame this time-it was the small, wet jewels which fell from the heavens into it. The bulging rainclouds felt it the time to relieve themselves of their burden. It was starting as a merely light drizzle, but the Olympic bulk the thunderheads boasted of was testimony to the storm forthcoming.
"Oh, well, this is-dandy," moaned Navi, who suddenly staggered as her back was caved in by a direct watery blow. It was the equivalent of a normal person getting ambushed with a water balloon. "Better hurry it up, then."
Posie and Elaine cranked up their pace. They rather blindly ploughed onward with their eyes on Navi, brushing past trees and shrubs with varying degrees of damage inflicted on them. The two girls had never moved on very far in the first place, so they were quickly returned to the sight of their camp. For the most part, it was as undisturbed as they had left it.
As Elaine diffidently shuffled her feet into their designated little clearing, she muttered something to Posie in a voice Navi was clearly meant to take hint from. "Why's that stupid Glowball always messing up our fun, huh?"
"Because that's what a fairy does; cause trouble for its owner," Posie lamented, sitting down beside Link's backpack and taking a little bit of his draped cape as shelter from the rain. It was beginning to shower more steadily now. "Better ask-'Why does Navi always follow us?'"
"To keep you out of trouble," she scolded them. "I think the two of you are seriously underestimating what I could do for you if you were to find yourselves in a dangerous situation!"
"I know exactly what you could do. Yell a lot." Elaine was feeling particularly cynical after her plans were squashed, more so than usual.
Posie watched a jet of red appear over the crest of one tree-top. She'd quickly picked up on what that sight meant. "Hey, look. Daddy and Miss Naomi are coming back."
"Hey, yeah," noticed Elaine, who gave a yawn. She was thoroughly unsurprised. "Vegetation-I get a point for that even though you know what it means because I'm so glad I thought it up on the spur of the moment-must be a little thick."
From off in a western-bound direction, a spray of blue crystal announce a magic presence.
"Hmm?" The two children were aroused from their mild torpor by the unusual blasts that rallied above their heads. How was it the a spray of fire came from one direction and that of ice from another? Naomi couldn't be in two places at once, could she? There were a few who had that talent-but it was a power usually limited to those of Sheikah ancestry; Gerudo were much better at moving fast. But not that fast.
"How's that?" Elaine craned her head to the sky as another rose jet appeared, and much closer. The scent of burning and bursting sap filled their noses. "Huh."
Navi whipped around in the air. Almost immediately after the first flames had receded, something shimmered over their shoulders for an instant and shattered the sun's rays into rainbows on the ground.
"Girls," she hissed in a low, panicked voice, "hide."
The fear they heard in Navi's voice was as real as the earth they walked on. They would not argue with a tremolo that threatened to level the sea with its variety of waves. Their thoughts were alike and instantaneous-both of them dashed into the blue-and white feathered concoction of the Roc's Cape, with something much more serious to conceal themselves from. Navi dulled the light she usually carried and zipped beneath the cloak with them.
They heard the splintering of many branches from inside their tight little cavern, the heat of their own quivering bodies rising the inside of it to a fever. A whistle of wind, tampered with via magic, carried aloft two very near and very creaked voices. One, the first they heard, put rage into their blood and made it pump with the fury of an all-consuming bonfire. The second sent chills up their spines, freezing all signals their nerves might want to send and enveloping them in a sort of passionately angry terror.
"So did you find 'em, Kotake?"
Posie felt all the saliva in her mouth turn to bitter acid when that name was mentioned. The fireproof incidents in the Fountain Cavern were playing at high-speed in her brain. Kotake. the ice half of the witch-sisters Twinrova.
"Yeah, I got 'em, all right," Kotake icily replied. "Ain't so hard when you've got a calling spell on ya!" She cackled like the light of an ill- crossing star, and the three concealed souls could feel the frozen vibes her waving hand sent into the air.
"Sh'roth's the only place left on the list of places to check, right?"
"That and Ro." Check for what, exactly? Posie wanted to know. Though not out loud.
"Yes. And our sacrifice will be.?"
"No." That penetrating wave of coldness gripped its claws around their lungs, attempting to control all of their breathing for the worst. "Missing persons draw too much attention. That's why we're doing it the hard way this time. We still have to hoodwink Link and get that bloody Ocarina offa him, but it's better than alerting the Hylean public ahead of time."
"Kotake, what'll we do if we can't trap him while he's all alone like this.?"
The hag breathed with a rattle. "Don't worry. Remember, as long as we have all the ashes in our possession."
"Of course." There was the sound of sickly, wrinkled skin rubbing together. "Any time, any time! The only thing we have to do is stay outta the King's sight. Blood will flow freely again soon enough, sister!"
Their barking laughs sounded again in ghostly unison. "Now, let's get outta here. I don't like rain. It makes my joints ache," sighed Kotake in a way that could almost draw pity. "Sh'roth, the Shadow Haven? Make way for Twinrova!"
"Right! Perhaps we'll have some fun with the pathetic Sheikah remnants while we're there. I know what I said earlier about Impa and Zelda being the only ones left of their race, but I guess I forgot about those at the Shadow Haven." She paused for facetious effect. Then picked up: ".All 12 of them!"
Somehow managing never to notice a backpack and a Roc's Cape in the clearing, not to mention two very frightened girls and a fairy, Koume and Kotake flew off like two corks of maleficent bottles of champagne. Hisses and clicks followed in their wake-from the droplets of rain, either freezing as hail and rattling through tree branches, or as steam, sizzling back up into the clouds.
Slowly, Elaine was first to emerge, watching the tails of their brooms soar away. The words came pouring from her mouth in a gibbering stream. "Ash. Shadow Haven. Sacrifice. Ocarina. Your dad. What's going on." She was so lost in her maelstrom of through she didn't even bother to phrase the last statement she made as a question.
"I. I'm really not sure," Navi gulped, riding out on top of Posie's head. "I. I have a theory but. it's totally wild. Posie, you really don't suppose. that they could be trying. to."
Posie shook her head, sending Navi airborne again. "I'm not even sure what you're talking about. I remember a little about Twinrova from what Daddy told me. but. I never heard a lot."
"Never mind. I. I'd just be frightening you, if I told you. Besides, even if it was true. There's nothing that you could do. It would be."-She motioned as if she were hiking up her pants. Even though she didn't have any. "-It would be strictly your mother and father's business."
"C'mon, Navi, tell us," whined Elaine. "Even if it's terrifying, I'm curious. In a morbid kinda way."
Navi screwed up her face, and looked like she'd lost her heartbeat somewhere in her throat by the sweat streaming down from her forehead. "Well. it's just that. that I think. I think."
"What?"
"That I think-your parents are returning," she quickly improvised. With a sweeping hand gesture normally used to introduce celebrities in public, Navi made clear where Link and Naomi battled their way back to the clearing through the suppressing undergrowth.