Sadly staring after his brother, Talon cleared his throat and took another bite. He chewed slowly.
"And this is where the conversation ends?" Navi pouted, pulling herself up into the air. "I'm not buying it." Her wings opened and snapped shut. Once. Twice. Three times, and on the fourth, she crossed her arms and scowled. "I see why you have doubts, Talon. There's obviously some reason Ingo doesn't believe it, and Gerick, you accept the story like Link with Lore." The wrinkled-apple face assented. She was pacing, though her feet had no part in the action. "So. Why are there different levels of belief? With Lore, it's a matter of survival – if you don't follow the guides or patterns, you die. This legend is important, you say, but only socially." Navi was drawing nearer to the rafters. "You told Link for the same reason I answered questions today, but our Lore will not have the same effect on your Lons." She came straight down and stared into Talon's bushy face. She watched her angry little accusatory finger's reflection in his weather-socketed eyes. "That's not a fair trade."
Link's gorge was rising again as he watched Talon's realization sink in to everyone around the fire, brain refusing to review the knowledge he just gained. It was like all the food he ate was trying to come back up en force. All he wanted was to understand. "Why is Ingo mad?"
Again, with liquid gazes and the hidden center of the geode of Lon family life slowly exposing its secret, Talon set aside his plate.
"I'm not sure you'd understand, right now," he said with remorse. "There's more to the story, and it all ties together…" Talon concentrated. "But sometimes a big sadness can only feel like anger, especially when it keeps stewing and getting stirred up."
Boy and fairy agreed silently.
No one was sure what to add or where to direct his or her words, and all at once, the food was scoffed, but not savored. Uncertain jostlings and adjustments scored the scene, and they sat for a while, listening to the hiss of fire and distant chittering bugs and the muted grating of a people talking, singing, shouting and living beneath the neighboring canvas cones. Each scraping of a utensil on metal, every fart and bitch slap carried on the wind, along with all the malodors of big bodies and at best, shoddy hygiene, but it was civilization, it was a setting all understood and ears relished the buffet of noises and noses wafted in the smells of people.
Link was still deep in confusion, like the others, unaware of a remedy for the not-silence. Navi was no help, unspeaking and full of thought as she sat next to his ear, plucking pointedly at a thread in his new tunic. He glanced at Malon, and saw her face was drawn in a sad understanding that purely radiated unspoken sympathy, stretching out a verbal palm, approaching the skittish Hylian like any colt. "I need to tell you about my mother."
Link could not dampen his curiosity fast enough to prevent the others from seeing. His quick observation of the tent-mates confirmed Malon's offer. Talon looked sad, worn, but acquiescent, and Gerick affirmed something to himself as they settled to listen to the woman's not-oft-spoken past. Even this tale was preferable to the pregnant tension of Ingo's departure. Drawing herself up and slinging on the story-telling posture, she initiated.
"She was an outsider, too. This life was a second one to her, and she had less in common with us than you do." More than the likeness, Malon's tortured telling sounded so bitterly entwined with her heart's beat that Link was instantly absorbed, and the rest of the world fell away. "Papa was trading for horses with the people in the west a few years ago. Supplies in the area were low, so the stock was sellin' for nothing, and a woman was tacked onto the deal, for reasons of their own, I guess. She was starving, a tanned corpse wandering beside the mares of the same color. The ladies in charge of the sale were ecstatic for the pitiful bit of jerky and cheese, and one less mouth to feed. Well, some of the men on the expedition took that as their cue to treat the…traded girl like a pack animal, or even showed violence when she obviously didn't understand the command. Pa was working for his pa before he took leadership when he told his son to make her understand. What he meant as a threat Pa turned into a real effort to bring kindness to a life broken. She clung to him for support in a world strange to her as he showed her our life, how to care for horses and to mind the cows and bulls, the plants we grow and our crafts that are second to none." The current of her story sounded, to Link, one of rote origins. He heard stops and pauses where words wanted to be spoken aloud, but for her sake or his, Malon omitted details, Link was as sure as the fire beside them needed more wood to burn.
"She could not adjust to a new way of living, even with Pa's support. More than learning new Lore," Words for him, he smiled and gathered her reference with warmth, "her dark skin and red hair announced her difference immediately. You can see what fear and hostility can do, with glares in glances and whispers floating between conversations." Link responded with a somber nod of compassion. "To cheer her, he would ask her name, or weasel a story from her about her previous life, but she seemed to remember that, too, with little happiness."
"I called her Sunshine Eyes, since they glowed golden," Talon croaked. "Always told me the names her people called her were not worth repeating."
Navi clutched at her heart for the man. "Did she have a name for you?" Without the cultural relevance of romance, the fairy of the forest nevertheless understood the deep, personal obligation to return a gesture so sincere.
"Heh. Oaf, Stumbler, Long Arm, Big Heart, I don't think she ever called me 'Talon,'" he supplied kindly. "Well, that's not true." He bathed in a memory, eyes bright with emotion. "I remember, she enticed me to the fowlhouse, where the cuccos and turkeys roost, so unlike her to joke." He reminisced dreamily, bittersweet breaths shallow to avoid shaking. "She flounced in, like a little doe. Told me, find the three special Super Cuccos, and something miraculous would happen. I took my sweet time, inspecting each bird, trying to discern if there really were three special ones. Finally, I just chose a few that had a brown spot on their chests, and she smiles at me. Really grinning, like she knew I knew this was just a game for something, and she looks at me, and says, 'Aveil.' I didn't understand the word, but she repeated, 'Aveil' means 'Not There' in Gerudo, where she comes from. That was her name, and it broke my heart." Link watched it happen all over again on Talon's face. "She put her hand up, touched my brow, just repeating my name and telling me she will always be with me. I promised her the same, that I…I would protect her. And then, she just come out and says, 'Our child will like that very much.' Words failed me then."
Malon picked up the thread of the tale, but her wry voice crackled with grief not unlike her father's. "I'm sure, observing nature, you know how difficult birth can be. My birth," she trailed off with such a sigh of disappointed guilt Link felt his own soul buttress against her fate, which he could guess before she said anything else, "Was a disaster. Caught in a storm, horses and cows both needin' Pa's attention, a sloppy doctor and a group of people who didn't want a foreigner among them. Lucky for me, I got Pa's face and coloration."
Now his liver withered at the bitter set of her mouth. There was nothing the boy felt appropriate to verbalize running through his mind, but now he saw with crystal clarity why Talon had no fear bringing him here to his family, and why Malon would prod the younger, ignorant generation into accepting him before letting the adults mold him. He tentatively extended a hand to lightly touch her shoulder, the Kokiri gesture for pride in another's courage, and even if she did not understand his meaning, she appreciated his sympathy, evident by her very heart sparkling in her eyes.
"The story confused her too," she continued, throat tightening her vowels. "She was thrown into our world, and expected to pick it all up, cause this is Hyrule, and you should look and live like a Hylian, but for an adult, it's heartbreaking."
"Will my heart break, too?" Link asked, unable to dam the leak. "Should I be different at all? If Aveil's difference made people kill her…" And with the feeling of a boot stuffed into his mouth, he stopped, finally remembering Aveil's husband sat in the tent with him, and Link swiveled to Talon.
His head was bowed and his one-sided smile was strained. "It's okay," he muttered. "I know what my people done. The real differences are the ones inside us, that make us do what we decide, or to stay. I have moved on, still responsible for the rest of my family, but Ingo…his heart lives in the past."
"And you still care for them? Even after what they did?" Navi exploded away from her companion, outraged on Talon's behalf. "How could you have stayed in charge of people with so little concern for you?"
"Responsibility and determination," Talon said easily. "Even when your charge spits in your face, if you can help, you should." Gerick interrupted by rummaging beside his bed for a little jug, handing it over to his younger relative. Talon took a long restorative and sighed with a nostril-burning stench. "Besides, the sole killer I ran off our land right then and took my retribution. Bystanders to a tragedy are like fence posts in a stampede – well meaning, and hoping to hold back, but powerless against the whole herd."
To the boy who had been neatly shuffled into a world more complex than the forest ecosystem only the night before and shaken to his roots every hour, a very inconvenient suspicion played at the back of his mind, on the tip of his tongue, teasing with these important words and laying a bolster against a wave yet to break. He could not illustrate the unease brewing, but the ideas that Link did have were at best anxious and unformed worries about facing the "murderous" clan under Talon's influence. They already knew the man was capable of holding his own, unafraid of the threat of group action and willing to match sacrifice against progress. As long as he was beneath the protective wing of the patriarch, he doubted anyone would try something. Talon was big and strong, and Link had the sword from Kokiri, reminded he still had not practiced with the weapon, so it was of little use, yet. Customs would be learned, however, and he would just see how seamlessly he could fit into this new area. He could show them, differences are meant to be embraced, utilized to the maximum and not slung off when uncomfortable. Yes, let them glance and whisper.
That line of thought ended abruptly, and Link was left with a vast sea of choices before him. Every direction he could take confronted him at once, and the twisting confusion of Hylian society loomed in his mind's eye, and the frustration of incomprehension doubled, filling his blue eyes with unwanted tears, but the wrung out boy in the tent let the paroxysm shudder down his spine and he loosed the droplets to his cheeks.
Immediately, Navi came closer, and Link was so sure he looked silly with his face scrunched in sadness or whatever this release was, but even through a filter of water, he knew she wouldn't judge his fire. Malon, too, wanted to reach out again to the youngster, adrift on currents he hadn't even imagined yet, but she did not move, letting him take comfort in his fairy friend.
"Link," Gerrick cleared his throat, eyes glistening as well. "I seen men and women, I watch 'em grow up, some with purpose, and others just bobbin' along the stream. Others still, paddle and swim when they need to, but it's a rare breed that wants to set the course and navigate it, too. Yer a driven soul, and you need to find your purpose." Link was still blinking through emotion, and the old man was not helping.
"But I don't have – I don't even know where to start! The Kokiri Forest is a dead-end for me, and I'm not sure how long I'll like living here-" The bottom of his foot was beginning to taste familiar.
The three special Lons surrounding him and the fireplace were gentle, though, letting their charge work through his embarrassment before letting him realize there was no precedent for such, anyway.
"You aren't going to be tame, remember?" Malon stretched her arms up, shoulders cracking. Her jaw ran away with her chin before she veritably roared in pre-sleep habit. "In Hylian clothing, you could pass for a sane Hylian, but we know you're nothing like that. You'll stay for awhile, because you obviously take responsibility very seriously, by giving you shelter and food, you are in our debt. I'm sure you'll find some way to repay us, but then you'll leave, and we'll have stories to mull over for decades to come." Nonchalant as she tried to be, Link understood he really owed these people nothing, that his Lore was good credit to his name, but like Malon said, he wasn't going to let it go so easily. This was a decent family, he thought warmly, mentally tallying it to a technical third one in his life: birthers, his Kokiri siblings, and the fine Lon Clan, who was now readying for some much needed sleep.
Talon handed the jug back to Gerrick, brushed his pants when he rose from the ground, spreading a thick blanket from a box nearby, and preparing another for cover as Gerick just rolled over, wrapping himself firmly in his square bedframe, face still directed towards the fire and his family. Malon scooted into her own bed, a little restless as she searched for the comfy spot and position that would be her downfall into sleep. He unraveled the lump that was his bearskin, enjoying the weight settling over him as he reposed on Talon's loaned bed. Link and Navi held gazes for a little bit, seeming to communicate without speaking that this night was a clue, the beginning of a spoor trail into the hunt of his life.
A purpose. What purpose? He didn't feel that driven, Link mulled when Navi floated back to the rafters above the fire. Sure, when he wanted to learn something he immersed himself, he was trying to prove what a good Kokiri he could be without a fairy. Now, out here, should he try with the Lons? Aveil's immersion had ended badly, so maybe Link, planned tentatively, he would show them the joy in being different. The kids had showed an interest in hunting, after all. Maybe teaching Lore to outsiders would be interesting. He learned, why couldn't they? Excitement bubbled beneath his heart. As they learned what he could teach, he would practice with the sword too and then…Then what? There were no giant spiders out here, his oversized knife was going to be a showpiece…
Slinking down into blackness, he flung out one more mental line and audibly gasped with the effort to stay conscious. "The letters, and the weaving?"
"Hmm?" came Malon's apathetic investigation.
"My letters, Saria told me about them, and I told the kids, they're connected to the Royal Family, some symbol, the golden relic thing," He blathered, still fighting to stay awake and make his point. "Saria found letters in a home by the forest, probably mine…I should tell the Royal Family about Kokiri. You knew so little truth…" He couldn't fight back a head-splitting yawn.
"We'll make…a formal escort. We'll present you to the Royals…when we go…to Market…" She said no more.
To Market, then. That's what, Link was unable even to finish the avowal before sleep claimed him.
