Miro Miro looked up in awe at the mighty building sitting on top of the edge of the massive cliff, silhouetted against the fading sun. This may have been the first time Miro Miro stepped outside of the Kokiri Forest, but even she knew that this gigantic house, called a castle apparently, was the highest seat of power in all of Hyrule.
As she drifted closer towards the gigantic silhouette in the distance, she could start to see the shape of the castle better. How many decades have past since Mido, the leader of the Kokiri village, would describe his almost mythical trips to see the Queen. No matter how he described the castle, it was hard to believe that Hylians could build something bigger than the Great Deku Tree.
From her vantage point at an excessively safe altitude. The wider streets had torches fighting the darkness of the night. The only people brave enough to walk in the uncertain comfort of the night lights were the patrolling guards. Single guards were placed along strategic posts, and the patrols roamed the roads in pairs.
To her left was the city wall, and according to Rowark, the massive man made border was as tall as the tallest tree in all Hyrule, though Miro Miro was heatedly quick to dispute that. On her way to the city, Miro Miro remembered spending a long minute or two traversing the tunnel underneath. From up above, she could see why. The rampart was wide enough to easily fit two carriages side by side, and it stretched as far as a league from end to end, jointed by two towers midway between the gate and both ends.
To her right, night torches vibrantly danced against the darkness, and their light could be seen from leagues. No way, there couldn't be THAT many people here, right? Miro Miro asked herself. The numerous dotted lights in the distance became more concentrated the higher the neighborhoods were located. Like a warm sheet glowing in the distance, the night lights brilliantly highlighted the many layered terraces cut into the mountain. When she looked upward, she could see a great bridge connecting the castle to some… floating building? From her distance, it was hard to tell what exactly was lifting the lights that high up into the air.
Down below, the sound of crickets pierced the night sky. Even though she hovered higher than any of the many tall spires poking into the darkened sky, she still followed along one of the illuminated, stone paved roads. Between the blocks of buildings and houses was a dark void, a space where no light entered or left, one that gave her chills thinking about that horrors that could be dwelling under the blanket of the night. The very idea of flying over that void of safe lighting made her tremor.
The great wall to her left eventually ended at the base of the cliff supporting the castle, and while the height of the wall certainly impressed Miro Miro, the natural, geological barrier, naturally the city's western border, was three times as tall as the city wall. As she approached the base of the massive, wall of rock, Miro Miro could tell that the rock formations were not natural. She looked all the way up and thought to herself, Oh no, do I really have to fly all the way up this cliff?
Fortunately, Miro Miro spotted a group of city soldiers sitting in front of a bonfire. Where the wall met the cliff stood a large structure connecting the wall to the mountain and to the rest of the city below. All the windows from top to bottom were brightly lit with activity brimming from within the monumental house. Behind the bonfire, a wall of wooden stakes, cut more finely and uniformly than the crude fences made by the Deku, stood stalwartly between the soldiers and the peasants; the entrance was a gap in the palisade large enough to fit an entire elm tree snuggly. Judging from the number of other guards leisurely walking behind the group posted at the bonfire, Miro Miro had finally reached the soldiers' home.
The fairy uneasily lowered herself into the well lit street leading to the bonfire and hid behind a barrel sitting in front of a store. She was hesitant to approach the gate after the last soldier she encountered had attempted to capture her. Miro Miro hovered low over the barrel, partly studying the soldiers and partly fighting her nerve, for many minutes, before she decided that the soldiers were doing nothing more than sitting and talking, getting a grip of herself.
Of course, waltzing nonchalantly up to a group of soldiers was easier said than done. The anxious thoughts and doubts racing through her head made every heartbeat feel like hours. Thankfully, she displayed none of the physiological symptoms of her anxiety unlike her Kokiri counterpart, who would sweat and tremor until he either cried or wet himself. Once she could feel the heat of the fearsome fire cultivating on the ground, she cautiously and timidly grabbed their attention,"Um, excuse me. Um, can you tell me where the Castle Barracks are?"
The group of soldiers, a little less than a dozen men and women, stood and turned toward her. She froze, thinking they would try to catch her like the last one tried. But then the tallest of the men responded, "Yeah, behind us. Why?"
His hostile question froze Miro Miro into a frenzied silence. Her panicked mind was unable to form a proper answer immediately. His large eyes furrowed from his distrusting frown, covered by his thin, scraggly beard. The bonfire's radiance reflected brilliantly off of his golden breast plate, but the man was preventing her from seeing Rowark ever again. "I'm looking for Rowark. He's my only friend I have in, in," she was going to say the city, but she had been alone for so long, that she said instead, "in all of Hyrule."
"Queerdo? Ha! You could do better than that," said someone at the tail end of the group. Queerdo? That's an odd nickname.
The man shot his comrade a dirty look, but then he flipped his lips upside down as he turned back to Miro Miro, "A friend of hero boy eh? Good to meet ya, then. A friend of hero boy is a friend of mine!"
The short haired, brunette soldier slapped the man on the back of his head with her golden plated gauntlet. "Have you forgotten already? Rowark said he got help from a fairy, this is her! Am I right?" she asked Miro Miro.
"Yes!" This was going well so far. "Please! Can you take me to him?"
"Well," the taller man began with the word that presumed all disappointing sentences, "we're on watch here tonight, so we can't leave this place. But I can tell you he's having a good time at the homecoming party back in the mess hall."
"Yeah he is!" chimed in a man that Miro Miro noticed could not stand straight. The shorter, heavyset soldier held a small vase of something in his right hand as his left hand leaned on one of his taller compatriots. "He had a good amount to drink tonight that's for sure!" he said before belching out a laugh. "Oy, when's your watch done?" he asked Rowark's friend.
"Midnight. Will you still be at the pubs by then?"
"We ain't going to the pubs, we're going to the brothel! HAHA!" he fired a lewd laughter into the night sky, and all the men laughed along. "But hero boy ain't coming with us." That statement brought down the mood with a few awws. "Can you believe it? He's going to bed! After surviving an entire season out there, a place where there's nothing resembling a woman's sheath, he prefers his own, rock solid bed over the loving warmth of a Gerudo bosom!" The comment drew laughter from all the men, but their female compatriots looked at each other with thick-skinned silence.
"We all know why," snickered a soldier at the end of the queue, which drew laughter from the others.
"Will you piss off?" the tall soldier responded defensively, "For the last time, he's not Queer, he was just raised piously! Said he came from one of the forest villages, you know, where you gotta pray to the three Goddesses in front of a bishop before he'll even let you put it in your wife." Rowark wasn't lewd like that, Miro Miro knew this to be true in her heart and believed heavily. The man then addressed the fairy, "Rowark's back in the main mess hall. Go through the main entrance into the barracks all the way to the end of the hall, make a right, go all the way to the end of that hall, make a left, and then any of the three doors on the right lead to the mess hall."
Main entrance, end of hall, right, end of hall, left, right doors, she reminded herself while the memory was still fresh. "Thank you!" Miro Miro said with much gratitude and relief from the stranger's assistance before flying past him.
The unpaved path to the entrance led straight to the great, elm door, and about a dozen torch stands and heavily armed sentries stood posted along the road. A field spanned between the great barricade, the barracks in front, the wall to her left, the cliff to her right, and the palisade entrance behind her. Every piece of space in that field was occupied with a tent or a fire pit. There, there couldn't be that many people either, right? she asked as she estimated that the entire Kokiri populace could comfortably live in these tents.
Along the western border, armorers, blacksmiths, provisioners, and stablemasters were busy servicing and selling their wares to the crowd of armored Hylians into the late evening within the safety of the palisade. Many ate, drank, and told stories around the campfires far and few between each block of residents; otherwise, they were either busy with their duties, whether it meant going somewhere or standing still.
Despite how tall the city wall looked, it paled in grandeur to the city barracks. Layered roofs covered with bowmen and big, scary looking weapons could deter the nastiest of all the forest monsters. Nothing about the fearsome defenses and torch lighting could make the fortress feel inviting and warm. Like an unwanted house fly, she zipped inside past the half open door.
Up high near the tip of the arched ceiling, no one noticed that she existed. Immediately upon entry, the various banners hanging along the walls, brighter environment, and immense space of the foyer took Miro Miro aback. She flew past above all the hubbub and the activity going on below, and she paid special attention to the long, red rug along the floor leading down a very wide hallway. End of the hall.
But was she supposed to turn right or left? Curse her memory!
Miro Miro sank slowly until she reached an isolated soldier, a larger, mature woman with wavy red hair, and dove in after her. "Excuse me!" Miro Miro called out.
When the woman turned around, her foot got caught on the ground, causing her to tumble backwards onto the ground. When the woman would not open her eyes, Miro Miro thought she might have accidentally killed her. Then a booming snore exploded from the woman, then some babbling spilled out, "Mooore wine, puh-leeesh…."
Unsure of how to make of that response, Miro Miro asked again, "Um, excuse me?"
Another powerful snore erupted from her, and then more sleep talk. "Oh, Sirrr Jormax, yourr embraashe isz sssoooo waarrm...!" a smile crept on her face as she curled into a ball.
"Are you, are you okay?" Miro Miro asked.
"Eh, she's fine." Another voice whipped Miro Miro around. A golden haired, female soldier, slightly more petite than the one laying on the ground and much younger, carrying a man slumped over on her shoulders used her short, strong legs to crouch and grab the sleeping person by the arm. "She's just had too much to drink."
"Too much to drink of what?" was Miro Miro's genuine question.
The woman stopped in the midst of hoisting her companion onto her other shoulder to give Miro Miro a dumbfounded look on her slightly scarred face. "You're definitely not from around here," was her unnecessary, cold response. "Oy, Malon, come on, up on me shoulder. Let's getcha home afore someone nastier than me does."
The remark made Miro Miro feel unwelcome, and suddenly she realized she was amidst a crowd of strangers all wearing the same uniform. This was a place meant for Hylian soldiers, Miro Miro had no right to be here. Right… Oh yeah! Right! She had to make a right at the end of the hall, then she had to make a left at the end of that hall!
Having recalled the instructions, Miro Miro flew back to the safety of the ceiling and faithfully followed through. When she rounded the left corner, she saw that the three wide doors were swung wide open, leading to one of the biggest spaces Miro Miro had ever seen before.
No cavern she encountered could house hundreds upon hundreds of men and women dining beside each other. Tables and benches stretched as far as the eye could see with golden armored soldiers occupying every available seat. All except for the curious group jumping all over their small section of the mess hall. The way they tumbled, rolled, and horsed around the bench and the table reminded Miro Miro of the way the Kokiri used to play during meal times.
The only way to find Rowark without searching through hundreds, maybe even thousands, of unfamiliar faces was to ask someone. Miro Miro built up the nerve to approach a soldier again. "Excuse me," she flew beside a man with a pointed beard carrying a tray of empty dishes, "could you help me find my friend Rowark?"
The scruffy soldier cleared his throat and spit it out, "Rowark? He went back up to the living quarters," and then continued his way.
"Wait!" Miro Miro called out again, "Where are the living quarters?"
The guard let out annoyed grunt and pointed to a distant door on the other end of the dining room, "You're gonna have to go all the way back to the entrance, but the door will be on your right as you go in. Rowark's on the fifth floor I think. Now leave me alone!"
Back the way she came. "Thanks," she muttered, feeling weak and defeated. After everything she had gone through in one day, trailing this dead end felt like insult added to injury. With a heavy heart of frustration weighing her down, she sulked back towards the main entrance without caring who or what in the barracks' walls could harm her. She just wanted an end to the day.
None of the soldiers' looks bothered her one bit by this point. Her instructions were as clear as day by the time she entered the main foyer from whence she arrived. There were two doorways on her right, which would have normally made Miro Miro scared to guess incorrectly or ask the next rude person, but her mood put her in a mindset that deduced that the doorway experiencing more traffic was the way to the living quarters.
She had to be sure though, so she approached an old, hairy man walking from the traffic wearing nothing but a towel wrapped his big waist. "Have you seen Rowark?" she asked him plainly.
"Yeah, uh," he grunted back at her as he pointed behind him, "I think I saw him back that way."
Then it was beyond reasonable doubt. Rowark and the living quarters were just up ahead. Miro Miro zipped past the open door and through the hall as fast as she could, too excited to see her friend again for her to pay attention to the steam...
Only to find herself at the barracks' bath room. She stopped dead in the air and felt her body flush at the sight of nude men walking around the tiled room. She scanned the steamy room, trying not to get distracted by the nakedness around her, unsure if Rowark was here or not. Sifting through the steam, she searched each bath for him, calling out his name timidly, so as not to attract too much to herself.
Her eyes instinctively transfixed on an unmistakable muff of hair and thick, shaggy beard. There he was, submerged in water from his chest down. His beautiful eyes were transfixed upon something moving. His jaw was hanging, and underneath the forest of Rowark's blonde hairs was a sheet of bright red skin. Miro Miro turned around to curiously see what Rowark was looking at, but all she saw was other men walking around naked.
"Rowark!" she dashed to his bathtub.
Taken completely by surprise, Rowark yelped and submerged his head underwater. After a few heartbeats, Rowark poked his head out of the water slowly, "Wh-what are you doing here?"
"You told me to find you here!"
"Oh," he sat up looking sheepish. What was he embarrassed about? "Um, h-how was it, finding your companion?"
Miro Miro began sobbing, which immediately shifted the mood of the moment, "Rowark! I was so scared! It was so horrible!"
He perked up immediately, "What happened?" Rowark extended his hand so that Miro Miro could land on his wet palm.
"No," was all she could muster before she crashed onto his moist skin and cried into Rowark's warm, welcoming essence. "I hate Castle City!" she screamed into his hand and continued sobbing. "Castle City is so big, I didn't know where to go, I kept getting lost, and EVERYONE is so rude!"
"I'm so terribly sorry, I should have known leaving you alone was a very bad idea," Rowark interjected regretfully. You should not apologize for my naivete and foolishness, she wanted to say to him but could not because of her uncontrollable hiccuping between sobs.
She then had to unload a thought weighing heavily in her mind. "And then there was a scary shop owner who kept all these fairies trapped, and then he tried to kidnap me!" she said in between sobs.
Rowark dipped his head in remorse and bemoaned, "I must apologize once more. Before we parted ways, I should have warned you that fairies fetch a high price in Hyrule Castle City."
"But…" What was a price? Why were people after fairies? So many questions about this city and how it worked. "Why?"
"Um," he hesitated for a few heartbeats, "You wouldn't like the answer if I told you."
Miro Miro gave that response a moment to think over, and then she finally said, "Not today then, I don't wanna know." She had experienced enough trauma for one day. The truth could wait.
"How about your friend? Do you think he is here in Castle City?"
"I don't know. Maybe. But the problem is that I have not seen my companion in many years, so…" She focused and recalled all her memories as best as she could to conjure up a picture of him, "I barely remember what he even looked like."
Rowark could not reply, for both suddenly concluded impossible odds against Miro Miro in her quest. How many rooms of towers, houses, warehouses, and other kinds of buildings she did not yet know exist would she search? How many possible living spaces in all the roads and all the alleyways did she have to search? How was she going to be able to tell her companion from the countless possible thousands of people living in the city? How was she going to definitively prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was not here? Searching through every face in Hyrule felt like searching for a tree in a forest. Even though Miro Miro had an eternity to search underneath each and every roof and rock, Rowark did not.
His boyish voice broke the silence, "How long did you say you were in the forest?"
"Twenty eight winters," Miro Miro answered without hesitation.
Rowark brushed his long, light brown beard, "Curious. Then, wouldn't your friend look very different after 28 years?"
"You don't understand, he's a Kokiri. He looks like a child."
Quiet followed Rowark's state of deep thought, "I, uh. You are correct, I don't understand. What?"
"They stay children forever." Silence. Did he not understand? Miro Miro thought she could not get any simpler than that. "The Kokiri do not age."
"I get it, but," Rowark still looked puzzled, "How's that even possible?"
Miro Miro pondered upon the question as well. Until then, it had never occurred to her that she had never encountered death. "No one knows, and no one asks. All we know is that all this is made possible by the Great Deku Tree."
"Great Deku Tree, huh," Rowark scratched his chin even more. "I recall him from the legend, is that the talking tree who raised the Hero of Time?"
The term "talking tree" felt disrespectful to her, but she also knew Rowark had never seen Him before. "The Great Deku Tree who raised the Hero died by Ganondorf's hand. But a new one was reborn when the Hero returned as an adult and defeated the evil in the forests."
"So, if the Hero became an adult because he was a Hylian like me, then how did he arrive in the Kokiri Village?"
"I still remember the night he arrived to the village," said Miro Miro to a fully absorbed adolescent, "That night, a local druid of the Lost Woods rode a horse carrying a child. She was gravely wounded, and it was too late for the Great Deku Tree to save her. We mourned for her, for she was a friend of the forest. The child was orphaned and had nowhere to go, but because the Great Father cherished all life, He decided to care for the child of destiny."
"You've," shock coursed through Rowark's body, "you've met the… the Hero of Time?"
"Definitely! He was a wonderful and polite boy as he grew up, just like Father was. The Hero spent most of his time with the Great Deku Tree because he could not get along well with the others."
Again, silence. Rowark's jaw gaped wide open in disbelief, his dirty beard dipping in the bath water. He wanted to form words with his mouth, but somehow the incredibility of her story seemed to have paralyzed him.
Miro Miro made sure he was still healthy, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah!" Rowark snapped out of his state of disbelief, and then started laughing. "Haha! I just. Wow! I have so many questions I want to ask you. It was my favorite story when I was younger, you know? I always asked my father to tell that story at least once at every campfire." His face then faded into a frown, as if his own words had triggered an unpleasant memory. He looked down and began shaking.
It was clear Miro Miro had upset him, which upset her, "I'm sorry…"
"No! It's…" Rowark sniffed as drops fell into the water, and then he raised his red, moist eyes to show that he was smiling, "I'm crying out of happiness. It's the only pleasant memory I have left of my father, so… forgive me. I am still in disbelief that I have met living proof of the legend, which makes it history, now, I guess, haha." He paused to wipe the tears from his face and force a laugh. "I, I must finish washing up, and I would like my privacy. There's a lot going on in my head, so I need some time to myself as I finish getting ready for sleep."
"It's okay, I am just relieved that I did not make you mad."
Rowark chuckled through the tears, "Oh don't worry, haha. I'll be finished momentarily. Meet you outside the bath room, okay?"
Miro Miro hopped off his hand, ready to flee from all the nudity, "Deal!"