NOTICE: The following section is canon. It happened, no doubt about it. And there were scars.
…
Tale #4: "The Most Successful Yabbid in the World"
When Dholit stirred, she looked up to find that she had been lying on her four-poster bed at home. She gave a soft groan as she rose and stretched her arms into the air. As she slid her hands down her body, she found that she had fallen asleep wearing her skin-tight, red body suit yet again. She silently bemoaned her appearance as she stood up from the bed. Her normal attire was supposed to be as natural as possible; there was no telling who might be by in the mornings. She checked the contents of the chest of drawers near her bed. Red. Her favorite color. She changed to a sleeveless dress that reached as far down as her ankles with a thigh-high slit on one side.
Then she noticed a small box sitting on top of the chest. She frowned, not familiar with its presence. So she picked it up and opened it. Inside was a pair of gold earrings shaped like a set of sails on a mast. Her eyes became wide; she had never received such finely-crafted jewelry. The pieces of work looked so delicate that she was not sure if she should try taking them out. She carefully removed the paper they had been mounted on and examined the box to look for some sort of note, any indication of who they had come from. She felt stymied by the fact that she did not know who the gifter was, so she did what she could. She stepped before the full-length mirror next to the chest and put them on. Then she held her long hair back so that she could admire them next to her dark skin.
When she turned her head to angle the ambient light on the earrings, she realized that there was a Gelto teenager standing at the table behind her. The young Gelto, wearing an orange tunic and red tights and sash, gave her a smile before setting a tray of food on the low table. When she stood back up, she had to push a strand of black hair out of her face. "Good mohning, Mothah," the girl greeted her as she tried to tuck the strand back into her side-tail. "Happy bihthday."
Dholit gave the girl a heartfelt smile. "Thank you, Bayla," she replied. She turned around and took a few steps toward the table. "I wondah… do you know wheah these came from?" she asked, pointing to her new earrings.
"I cannot say that I do, Mothah," Bayla answered. "But, if they ah a mysterious gift, I do believe that Klin was in heah eahliah. We wahned him not to wake you."
Dholit's smile changed to her sly look. "Really?" she asked. "Well, I do wondah who put him up to it." She moved to sit on the sofa. "Is this to be my breakfast?"
"It is," Bayla replied. However, Bayla moved to block Dholit just as Dholit, having sat, reached toward the tray. "Mothah. We ah all waiting."
Dholit, with a confused frown on her face, looked toward the entrance of the large tent. The flaps rustled as someone's head quickly ducked out of sight. She raised an eyebrow at Bayla. "Is my breakfast to be held ransom just because my children desiah to give me bihthday wishes?" she asked.
"You object?" Bayla asked in turn, crossing her arms. "I assuah you that theah will be huht feelings if this is true."
Dholit sighed and leaned back against the sofa. "If I must," she relented.
Bayla gave a polite nod. Then she put her fingers to her mouth and gave a loud whistle. The tent flaps flew open, and the rest of Dholit's children charged across the tent at her.
"GET HER!"
All twenty-nine of them.
Dholit's eyes grew with surprise as she suddenly realized that she had made a serious mistake. She made to stand, but Bayla had rushed back to her and pinned her shoulders against the back of the sofa. Dholit struggled, so Bayla placed her full weight on Dholit. Her eyes darted to the wall of girls charging at her. She reached up toward Bayla's ribs, but Bayla saw the maneuver and slid her hands down to restrain Dholit's biceps.
Dholit glanced up in time to see the older girls run around the other sofa. "No. No. No. No! AAAAAAAH-HAHAHA!" she screamed out when the first three girls to reach her jumped onto the sofa and started scratching their fingertips on her ribs. "No, I—AAAAAAH! Sto-op!" The younger girls restrained her kicking legs so that her feet could be tickled as well. "I—AH-HAHAHAHAHA! I-I ca—WAAAAAH!" Dholit's attempts to call off the children were lost in her laughter. Her voice howled as it had never done before, loud and free of care.
It finally ended when her children started telling each other to back away. Dholit, feeling as if she had already spent most of her energy, rested her heavy body against the back of the couch. Her eyes shifted from smiling face to smiling face to take in their glow. She gave a weak giggle as she said in Geltoan, "Scoundrels, all of you. I mean to permit you to give me a morning greeting, and you turn it into an attack."
"Master Layna says that you should always strike when your target least expects it," said young Rutha, the six-year-old redhead clad in all black.
Dholit glanced down at her. "Master Layna never told you to attack your mother, did she?" Rutha, kneeling near her with her hands and face resting on the edge of the couch cushion, only offered a shrug of an explanation.
"Mother?" Dholit looked toward Bayla to see that the speaker, the seven-year-old Klin, was standing next to her. The boy's brilliant red hair had been slicked back, and he wore a loose, green shirt and black slacks. "Did you like Father's gift?"
Dholit touched a hand to her ear as she recalled the earrings with a small measure of surprise. "Yes, I did, Klin," she replied with a gentle smile. "Hah. I feel as if I should have known." She pointedly looked up at Bayla.
Bayla folded her hands behind her back and pointed her nose into the air. "I cannot possibly know all that my siblings do," she said in Hylian to the confusion of her younger sisters.
"Uh huh," Dholit replied with a skeptical tone. Then she looked back down at Klin. "Is youh fathah heah?" Klin nodded.
"Would you like us to send him in?" Bayla asked.
"Yes, I should like that very much," Dholit replied.
Bayla and Tamiy, the second eldest, started shooing the rest of their siblings out. Dholit watched with pride as they were shepherded out of the tent, reciting their names to herself. Attay, Tamiy, Bayla, Miyrin, Jomi, the twins Anniym and Rada, the twins Jiya and Rayn, Fiynt, the twins Dhola and Lyut, Bi'am, the triplets Xiyra and Bolma and Cira, the twins Jiym and Harra, the twins Raym and Zhifa, the twins Xa'la and Kway, Klin (her only son), Rutha, the triplets Siyara and Cayliyt and Thoyma, the twins Roma and Nwayn, and Fay. But wait a moment. She counted Rutha, but she did not see Rutha leaving with the rest. With a smug look on her face, she reached behind the couch and took hold of a long pigtail. The owner of the pigtail giggled as she slipped through her mother's grasp. Then Rutha ran from behind the couch to catch up with her siblings.
Dholit gave a sigh and leaned forward. She heard the tent flaps rustling again, but she chose to ignore this for the moment in favor of her tea. In spite of her calm as she heard someone approach her, she felt her heart fluttering with anticipation. She could not remember the last time she had seen her husband. She hoped it had at least been since the youngest had been born. No, he must have cared for her if he felt it appropriate to come to her on her birthday. Only one person in her life could ever be so considerate. And she looked up at him to confirm who it was.
He wore a green tunic over a body of lean muscle. He was not wearing his customary body suit or his baggy work trousers but instead snow-white tights which showed off his toned legs and another abundant attribute Dholit spent a little more time admiring. His long, blond mane fell over his shoulders, and his square jaw sported a thick and well-trimmed blond beard as tribute to his father. His arms bore the scars of many battles, the most prominent being a crescent-shaped mark adorning the center of his left shoulder. And, in spite of his rugged exterior, his icy-blue eyes fit inside of a face bearing a look of gentle adoration for her.
He said nothing until he sat next to her on the couch. When he spoke, his deep voice carried a hot and arousing hint of desire as he said, "Happy birthday, My Goddess."
She placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed his tight muscle. "Thank you, My Captain," she replied in a pale imitation of his voice, such was the nature of her sudden attack of nerves. "And thank you foh the present."
He carefully reached around her and slid a rough hand behind her neck. "Is there anything else you would like for your birthday?" he asked, his eyebrows rising just barely enough to provide suggestion.
She gave a coy hum as he slid his other hand up her thigh. Then she put on her wicked grin to show him her reception of thought. "Anothah child?" she said.
They leaned together with the intention of kissing. She closed her eyes to better take in the full taste of his lips.
Whump!
Dholit opened her eyes and blinked at the wooden floor in front of her in confusion. It took her a few minutes to gather her thoughts and memories together before she realized that she was lying, twisted in an awkward position with her left shoulder and her right hip underneath her and her legs a little tangled in a blanket, on the deck beneath her berth after having fallen out of her hammock. She looked up and realized that the other women had left her alone, probably somewhere in the middle of changing shifts and eating breakfast.
She stood up and began piecing her dream back together while she held her blanket over her half-naked form. Then, at the memory of a very adult Link, her face turned bright red. Dholit being Dholit, however, she was hardly embarrassed by this. Or anything else, really, as she suddenly charged out of the berth deck still with just the blanket over her body. Twali and Lwamm thought they caught a glimpse of her as they came up from the galley, but, before either one of them could perform a sufficient enough double-take to correctly identify her, Dholit had already disappeared up the stairs on the opposite side.
Upon stepping onto the main deck, the wind of the Sky Line surrounding the Island Symphony threw aside part of the blanket, forcing Dholit to grab with the opposite hand to hold it over her thighs. With less dignity than before, she hustled aft until the ship's geometry blocked the ferocious winds. Then she broke into a sprint.
Leynne, focused on a clipboard he was going over, looked up and stopped just in time to avoid having Dholit plough into him. He turned to watch her shove open the door to Link's cabin.
"I wondeh if I should've stopped heh," he said to himself as he watched her carefully close the door behind her.
Then, from behind the door and above the sound of the Sky Line around them—
"MY CAPTAIN, I'VE HAD A PROPHECY! GIVE ME BABIES!"
Wha-BAM!
"YAAAAH!"
"TOLITA, CON KAPÒHU TANÌ HÁTA?!"
Leynne sighed and gave the door a look of flat irritation. "Right, my sanity is not wohth the issue," he said to himself as more shouting sounded from the door. He returned his attention to his clipboard. "I wondeh if Captain Nohth is hiring…"
…
Tale #4 of the Island Symphony – END
NOTICE: As I said before, this story is canon. You will be happy to know that Leynne still works on the Island Symphony. Aaaaand I think I might've accidentally turned myself on with Dream Link…