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A Contemporary History of Hyrule
-Chapter Five (yes, still, so cut the whining or I swear I'll turn this car...fic...thing...around!)-
Section 2.75- Editor's Note
The following section is different from any other section in this chronicle. It is the tear-jerking tale of Fred the Pyrite Age, and to fully convey the tragic tragedy of it all, the detached, matter-of-fact style with which the rest of this history has been written must be temporarily suspended. Thank you for your understanding. Now, arm yourselves with a box of tissues and delve into the black hole of indefinite time period angst that is...
Section 3- Fred's Story
From the dark corners of wherever it is that historians tend to congregate- the content of many history books seems to suggest, to the editor of this text, swamps, politicians' minds, or some equally disgusting locale- have come whispers. Whispers to the effect that the Second Second Golden Age wasn't really a Golden Age at all. Whispers intimating that it was, in fact, closer to bronze, but with a strange tint to it that suggested a golden luster to the untrained eye. Whispers insinuating that the Hylians were duped by this would-be Golden Age, which the historians had fondly nicknamed "Fred."
What this whisperer (and, indeed, the rest of Hyrule) did not know was that Fred was, in reality, a Pyrite Age. He is very touchy about this, because all of the other indefinite time periods (and perhaps the enlightened reader) know the more common name for Pyrite.
Fool's Gold.
When Fred was a young indefinite time period, he was exactly like all the other little Golden Ages. He did better in school than all the little Good Old Days, was better looking than the Great Depressions, was beaten up by the Wars, and so on. All perfectly normal for a Golden Age.
Except for one thing.
For as long as he could remember, Fred had lived with his mother. She was a beautiful Golden Age (think Athens), and Fred was proud to be her son. He had never known his father, though, but as his mother never mentioned him, Fred was content not to ask. He was, remember, an indefinite time period. Not a human. So rather than brood gloomily and sustain irreversible psychological damage due to the absence of a father figure, Fred created one in his mind. A fabulous Golden Age of a father who had been struck down by a horrible disease just months after his son was born. And Fred was proud to be his son.
It was the day that Fred finished indefinite time period grad school with an ITP.D in Being a Long-Term Golden Age that the brilliant tower of his illusion, in all of its flying buttressed glory, came crashing down around (and possibly onto) his ears. Seated in the back of the room at the graduation ceremony were his mother...and a Stone Age, seated directly to her right. This meant nothing to Fred as he waved to her from the stage, diploma in hand. After all, his mother had come alone to this ceremony. For all he knew it was his buddy Johnny's dad- Johnny had earned his ITP.D in Being a Stone Age.
The ceremony drew to an end, and as the graduates had to leave by a separate exit than their friends and relatives, Fred drove himself to the restaurant rather than riding with his mother. He noted as he walked in that she had beaten him there, and took the seat across from her with a grin. The grin was filled with the exhilaration of knowing that soon he would be going to work as Hyrule's Second Second Golden Age, that soon he would realize his ultimate dream.
Then came the fateful bowl of soup.
It was not the bowl of chicken noodle that was placed before Fred that was to have such staggering impact on an entire world, nor was it the bowl of mushroom placed before his mother. It was the third bowl, filled with tomato soup of a coloring that reminded Fred of nothing so much as freshly squeezed tomatoes, that was to dominate his destiny and cast its shadow on the land of Hyrule.
"Hey Mom," he said. "What's with the bowl of tomato soup? It's kinda freakin' me out, you know? Reminds me of freshly squeezed tomatoes."
"That's because it's made from tomatoes, dear," Fred's mother explained patiently.
"Oh. But what is it doing here to my left?"
"It's for your father, Fred."
Fred began to drool into his chicken noodle soup, as his mouth had just commenced hanging open. "M-my father?" he asked, after several awkward moments of drooling.
"That's right," his mother said gently. "Your father."
"I don't understand," Fred whimpered. "My father is dead!"
His mother looked at him quizzically. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Er," Fred replied, not wanting to admit that he had invented the idea himself.
Just then, the Stone Age that Fred had seen with his mother approached the table, sat down, and sipped a spoonful of his tomato soup.
There was a very awkward pause that was filled by the resulting slurp.
"If you're a Stone Age, and you're my father," Fred began calmly after a little while, as his insides continued to scream at him, "and my mother is a Golden Age...what does that make me?"
Fred's father shrugged and sipped his soup. Fred's mother began to add salt to her own soup by a rather roundabout method involving crying.
On a sudden impulse, Fred broodingly bit his presumably gold finger. Hard. It made his teeth hurt, and he resolved not to do it again. Then he reached across the table and bit his mother's hand. And there, in her index finger, were the tooth marks that were absent from his.
"PYRITE," he wailed in a manner that suggested a newly discovered insanity, and fled the scene.
-Chapter Six: The First Pyrite Age of Hyrule and then a Little Backtracking-
Section 1- The Pyrite Age
Why the three goddesses elected to let Fred stay on as "Golden Age" after his depravity set in is one of the Great Hyrulian History Mysteries (along with other age-old questions such as Why? How? and What the hell is mayonnaise, anyway?). However, as it has been noted that Din, Nayru, and Farore had something of a penchant for all things alcoholic, certain inferences can be made.
Fred's effect on Hyrule was devastating. While there were indeed the numerous advances in technology, medicine, and the arts that are so indicative of a golden age, each one was a double-edged sword with as much potential to harm as to help. One such invention was the double-edged sword. No one really knows why it was invented during a time of peace, but several expert swordsmen met gruesome deaths on their own blades as they struggled to develop a fighting style for the new-fangled contraption. Like many men before them, they had ignored the instruction manuals.
The goddesses watched in mild concern as the Pyrite Age continued for one decade, and then a second. However, each time one of them remembered that this "Golden Age" had the highest fatality rate of all the Golden Ages from all the worlds, real or imaginary, she would take another shot and pass out for a while.
And so, Hyrule was on its own for twenty years, suffering unwittingly at the hands of Fred. At the end of those twenty years, however, something wonderful and horrible happened (which was nothing new, of course). The guitar was invented. While this did lead to a lot of what many people called "radical awesomeness," it also meant the advent of something so hideous that it later got a paragraph all to itself in TempleMaster17's A Contemporary History of Hyrule.
Country music.
It spread like an auditory plague across the land of Hyrule, even extending into the isolated Kokiri Forest. Several of the children were killed instantly, and those remaining were soon slaves to it. There were precious few in all the world who retained their sanity and resisted, usually by curling up in the fetal position and whimpering. However, there were none who suffered the negative effects of country music as profoundly as Fred. In the middle of a particularly loud concert in the middle of Hyrule Field, Fred imploded and was immediately replaced by a Dark Age.
Section 2- So Whatever Happened to Link?
After returning home from the Great Imprisoning War, Link took the advice Ganondorf had offered in his note a few years before. He proposed to Zelda, they were promptly married, and had two beautiful children named Nethaniel and SuperFly. He then led a long and fruitful life. Huzzah.
It should be noted that he and his family were among the movement that resisted country music, as it had claimed the life of their godchild.
Thus was the rise and fall of Fred the Pyrite Age, and the normal life of Link the family guy. The next chapter will discuss primarily the Dark Age ushered in by country music.
Hmmm...another short chapter. Ah well, c'est la vie quelquefois, non? Anyone who can tell me the significance of the words "brood" and "gloom" in their various forms is utterly cool, though I pity you if you can. Anyone who leaves me a review is pretty cool too. Anyone who does both is probably a god visiting from an alternate universe or some such.