Took me some time to get this chapter up, but really only one afternoon to type up. That's just how this collection works really, I need the words to really just start flowing before I can do anything with them.

And now for the final Oracle, Nayru. Enjoy.

Chapter 3

I Am Nayru

I never really liked the ocean, even though it always surrounded us on all sides. True, the shells I would often find on the pearly beaches were beautiful to look at in the clear sunshine, and I kept a collection of them on my windowsill, but the water itself never appealed to me.

Many other children always went swimming and fishing, working down at the docks with their mothers and fathers, clearing decks and mending nets, but I never did those things. No one liked to play instruments, the only songs people knew were jaunty sailor songs. The most musically inclined anyone could be would be to whistle a fast-paced song on a ship's panpipe, or a shrieking chord or two from an old ukulele. The dances were fun for the dancers of course, but I never took to dance very much. I wasn't allowed to sing, the only places where I could've sung for a lively crowd were frowned upon by my father.

All I can remember of father aside from the deep naval blue of the long coat he always wore, and the heavy musk of the sea and expensive lotions he used, and his back. It isn't as though he disapproved of me to the point of not being able to look at me, but it's true that he truly had desired a son. Father was very good at what he did, ordering men around and catching anything that swum in the sea. Some said he had once wrestled a fierce shark in the beast's own underwater den, and won. Father was a remarkable sailor, well respected by his crew and owner of the most profitable merchant vessel on the island. He was also a shrewd businessman. His work often took him from home for many months at a time.

Father was also famous because of mother. When I think of her, I can remember the pearls she always used to string through her hair, or the lovely mother of pearl combs father would bring her which she'd run through the golden red lengths of her hair. Mother had a voice like music, but she didn't sing; she could hardly hold a tune. Instead, she used her voice and clever words on all the visiting dignitaries, helping father make his deals using her charms and lavish parties. With her swirling skirts, mother had always wanted a little girl, or so she said.

In reality, she'd just wanted a doll she could dress up and make look pretty and darling. In truth, I didn't mind so much when she would spend so much time with me, how I could watch her unblemished hands swirl the long black lengths of my hair into complicated loops and braids. But the silks she dressed me in for those parties were impossible to move in, and I wasn't allowed to move very much when my hair was properly done up.

But really, even when she primped and prettied me up, or bid me say something cute to a visiting merchant, I don't think either of us liked being around one another very much. I learned young not to try entertaining people myself, because I would always try to sing something. I wasn't silly enough to relate a sailor's shanty to any of the silk-swathed ladies from the southern seas, but even when our guests complimented me and would begin to make requests for other refined songs I might know, she would always be standing there, watching me… I don't even remember her face, only the sense of disapproval she always seemed to convey around me.

Mother didn't like competing for attention with anyone, least of all her own child. That's one of the reasons why I only ever saw father's back.

Age means so little to me now that I hardly remember how old I might've been all that time. All I remember was how lonely it was. I had no siblings for all that my father had craved a son. Mother had been so dreadfully sick while carrying me and had nearly died giving me life, and father himself said a daughter would suffice; he liked mother's company to much to have her leave him with a little girl and a shrieking baby. I remember how smug mother was when she heard that. I had thought it a nice thing for him to say to her, but the smile she gave me as he finished speaking was so… I won't say cruel… but…

I had no friends on our island. The people were nice enough, but mother and father disapproved of most of them since so many people worked for our family. I didn't have much in common with the other children my age anyways. I didn't like the ocean very much, in fact, the idea of swimming sent chills up my spine. What was worse was how sick fish could make me. It wasn't only the sight of them either, the smell, the taste, I would become physically sick after eating anything father brought home, my arms growing itchy and phlegm filling my throat making it hard to breathe. All that time, all I really ate was vegetables.

The day father learned that his only child was not only unable to swim, but was violently ill at the thought of gutting a fish… had he been able to take back his words about not needing another child, he would have.

I remember how terrified I was of him after that day in particular, but I look back on it now, and I understand him more. He bought a small schooner after his next voyage to the far off trader's island he did business at. Mind you, even for a family as wealthy as ours, a second boat was more than a large purchase; I can remember the maids keeping me in my room whenever mother and father would begin arguing about his purchase.

It wasn't a very large boat, enough room for three or four people, a simple mast with a single triangular sail and easily managed lines. One person could easily sail it alone. Carved onto the stern of the ship, I remember how terrified I was when father made me lean out across the dock to read it, was the name 'Nayru's Wisdom'. I had never heard that name until then, and father told me about how people used to believe in three goddesses a long time ago. Nayru was the goddess of water and wisdom. He told me he bought the ship because of its name, hoping it would make me wise enough to stop fearing the water…

Someone who cannot swim cannot be a sailor, or at least not good enough to wrestle sharks underwater. But if I was to be father's heir, I needed to at least be able to work a ship even if I couldn't be the most competent. He was home so rarely, but during that one stormy season, I was with him more than I ever had been before in my entire life.

Every day, we rose before mother could come out and glare at me with her stern disapproval for taking up father's time. The first few times, I protested and father had to haul me over his shoulder to get me onto the schooner, but eventually, I started trying to do it on my own. I was so terrified, standing on the swaying dock with several other sailors going about their business, watching their captain's shy daughter tremble like a wind-swept leaf trying to move from the semi-solid dock into the rickety ship where her father waited. I hadn't even known they were watching until I was clinging to my seat, having climbed there all on my own, and someone started clapping. Father might have smiled at me, but then he just turned his back to me and started working with the lines.

The first time I fell into the salty water, father saw it happen and didn't try to catch me on the way down. The first thing I did was panic, my head went under and I screamed, my arms flailed around and the lengths of my skirts got tangled around my ankles. I was nearly under the boat itself before a pair of rough hands jerked me back up to the surface. I was so ashamed, I just clung to my father, crying and apologizing. I had never wanted him to take me home so badly, but he just sat me back down in my seat and undid the lines anyway.

When we went out sailing, the sea looked so frightening to me, I didn't know why, but I would always find myself wondering where everything had gone. But I didn't even know what I meant by everything. The sea was the sea, the ocean had always been there, and always would be.

I would often lie awake at night and wonder where I'd gone wrong, what I'd done wrong, just lie there staring at my ceiling where a huge map of the ocean had been drawn, red dashed lines scattered across it showing father's trade routes. They'd painted it that way when mother had been pregnant, so that their child could learn all father knew from the cradle. Even at the time though, no matter how hard I studied that map in the night, come the day time it was always all a blur.

Really, what had I been doing wrong? I wanted to know so badly. I did all the things mother said, but even if I didn't sing to guests- which was always a hard thing to do, since people had eventually come to know that I had a lovely voice- she was always so mad at me for… I don't know… being better than her? Was I really? I couldn't do a quarter of the things she could, by the time I was ten, I could braid my hair on my own, and could dress myself without needing more than a bit of help with the buttons along my back. But I couldn't order the maids around like she did, couldn't monitor every detail of the house's activities. I couldn't speak to seven people at once and not make one of them feel left out. Even now, I can't say that she could've been jealous of me, what was there to be jealous of?

Mother was always angry with me, and father tried so hard and yet couldn't be proud of me. I wasn't a son, I wasn't a sailor, I couldn't catch, gut, clean, or eat fish and I couldn't even swim. I had learned over the course of that hard autumn how to control the schooner our accounts were still recovering from, but I would always go green whenever the ocean began to grow rough. All I could do was try, and yet even though I know that deep down father must have known and appreciated that… It changed nothing…

I was just… I was alone… and I couldn't do anything to make myself really belong, I felt as though I just didn't. But where could I go? All around me, what more was there save only the ocean? The ocean and its endless waves…

One night… I don't remember when it might have been really, but I believe I was nearing my eleventh birthday; I did something I hadn't before. I was staring at my ceiling and that map I could never memorize when I asked myself if I really had been doing everything I could. Was I really trying, or was I just doing what people asked without really doing my utmost to please them?

Well, I didn't have an answer at the time, and I don't really have one now, but I didn't like having to ask myself that question. I pushed aside the covers of my bed -they were light because summer had come by then- and got dressed. I didn't rouse any of the maids, or if I did they just ignored me and went back to bed. I dressed in one of the plainer outfits I often wore when going down to the docks, and took nothing with me.

I knew what I was going to do. I was going to go down to the docks, untie the schooner, and prove to myself that I was who I had been born to be. Once I had done that, I could go about proving it to everyone else. No more wondering if I was where I belonged.

I was as quiet as I could be as I left the house, looking briefly to the sky and disliking the dark clouds rolling in from the north. But if I wanted to truly try, then I would have to do this no matter the weather, I needed so show them all that I really did belong.

I remember how my sandaled feet smacked against the white cobbles of the island's curving roads. All around me, rain was starting to spit down at the ground, but I ignored it; all I could think of were mother's dark smiles and father's disappointed sighs.

I remember how dark the night was, how the wind started to pick up. I remember the fear that suddenly burst up within me, causing me to slip and lose one shoe over the slick stones. I don't know where the premonition came from, but it wasn't complete as I would experience now. All I felt was a gripping pain, like a cold giant's hand gripping me around the stomach and squeezing trying to hold me back.

I just sat there on the road propped up on my arms, shaking and terrified as the rain continued to fall, heavier now, lightning beginning to flicker and snake across the sky. But it was unlike any lightning I'd ever seen, not the awe-inspiring forks of white which lace across the clouds overhead and then vanish. These bolts, I could've sworn they had colour to them, a dark violet light shining through them as -instead of flickering harmlessly through the sky- I nearly screamed as one sharp strike actually fired down towards the ground, and somewhere far across the island, I heard a deafening boom.

The rain was falling in sheets by this point, darkening the images of the tall white buildings from view even as I found the strength to stand and run again. I don't know why I kept running for the docks, but I did. My hair was slicked back against my skull as lightning struck again and again, like war-drums pounding in the distance. I couldn't even hear my own frightened gasps as the water kept drumming down on me, hard enough with hail mixed in to begin bruising my shoulders. All I could see through the rain was the white of the road before me, all I could hear was the sounds of the wind whipping past me, like laughter… the sort of malicious laughter one could hear in mother's eyes when she saw how disappointed father was with me…

"JABUNE!!"

To feel fire when encased in water, I screamed as white light surged up behind me, followed by scoring heat which shattered the earth just behind me. I don't know how it was possible, but I leapt forwards just far enough to escape the true heat of the lightning. My back was momentarily dried and that is likely what protected me from burning. The rain was icy cold, maybe that had something to do with it too.

That voice, hearing such a furious call so clearly on the winds; it spurred me on for more speed than I'd ever known. Mere moments later, my feet were thumping down the wooden planks of the dock, the dark form of my father's ship looming farther off in the harbor. This was where I stopped running.

It was as though the water dumping down from the heavens parted for me, like a sheer curtain in a sea breeze, but perhaps it was just the lightning. All I know is that I could see how it happened, how the lightning wasn't born from the clouds swirling darkly overhead. Instead, I could feel a terrifying shiver down my spine; see dark violent light collect high in the sky before the blinding flash of lightning filled my eyes. Even so far away, I could hear the sounds of shattering timbers and exploding gunpowder. When my vision had hardly cleared from the yellow afterimage and the rain soaking me, I stood there shrinking in on myself on the dock; and father's ship was gone…

Why did I feel as though I'd caused this?

I can remember how, even with all of this destruction around me, I turned towards the familiar section of the dock. I can remember how I fell to my knees knowing I needed to undo the lines holding 'Nayru's Wisdom' before I could climb in and take her away. Why was I even going after the schooner? Maybe I'd thought it'd be safer than returning to my parent's home.

"COME OUT, JABUNE!!"

I don't know how long my numb hands fumbled with the metal hooks, searching for the ropes before I realized they simply weren't there. The night was so dark; I just knelt there staring at the black waters swelling around the dock before I realized she wasn't there. My father's schooner, that terrifying little vessel, the one he'd bought because I was useless to him, but he hadn't wanted to give up on me. But now she was gone too. Some sailors would say that ships could come to life; that was why large vessels had figure heads. Father had always said that ships only did that when men were drunk, and that was why the heads were always those of women.

Had I even earned the disapproval of a ship with no head at all? So poorly lived up to my place as a sailor's daughter that such a small vessel wouldn't tolerate my presence anymore? Looking back now, I know those were foolish thoughts. Very foolish, but what more was left for me to think at the time?

Even had I looked towards the sky then, I wouldn't have seen what was happening behind me and high over the island. Shivering and soaked from head to toe, my face was burning and my eyes spilled hot tears.

I would describe the sound as a roar, but such a simple word does not compare. It was as though the entire world were screaming in my ears, drowning out the useless words of my mind as a deep rumble began shaking the entire width and breadth of the island. Even the docks, floating wood as they were, began to tremble terribly. All the wind was drawn in from the sea towards the land, something which nearly took me off my feet if not for the rain beating down on me relentlessly.

I turned only just in time to see what was happening you know. I glanced over my shoulder with my soaking hair falling across one eye. The light was so brilliant, lacing as I had seen it do time and time again during summer storms, but across the ground instead of the sky. It shore through the stones, wedging into all the weakest points in the rock and driving them away from one another. And yet as the light blasted through the heat was such that the sea boiled when it tried to fill the gaps.

Geysers, father had seen and told me of them, where the heat of the world meets the cold ocean and causes powerful jets of scalding spray. It was one of these as that energy met the waves which tore through the dock and cut it free from the land. I was tossed down to the slick boards, huge sections of wood and iron sinking beneath the hissing water as droplets splashed up to burn me. I remember how I screamed yet couldn't be heard over the roar of it all, the light hurting my eyes as I clung to the dock until I'd driven splinters in nearly to the bones of my hands.

I looked up once and only once as I lay there, the rain so suddenly cut off as the heat of the land sliced through the downpour. I should've been blinded by the brilliance before me, but all the forces of the magic and nature around me drove the floating debris I clung to so far from the shore that I could see nearly all of it as it was engulfed in that light. It looked like a flower really, the brilliance shooting down from those malevolent black clouds, laughter trilling on the whipped up winds as the ocean was forced back by the heat and the energy.

And then I saw it; land. Land which had been submerged beneath the waves since what I had thought to be forever. It was like driving a pick deep into a glass pane; the shards of land being forced up as the energy drove deeply into the heart of the island and forced all the water away. The edges of the island, they surged up from beneath the waves in a deafening display of fire and water hissing and spluttering against one another. Such raw power, it tore the land completely apart…

"Nayru!!" I don't know why, but the name came to me, I don't know who I was calling out to. I didn't call out for my parents, not any of the sailors whom I had known my whole life. I didn't shout the names of any nurses, nannies, or maids. Instead I just shouted that name, Nayru, over and over again. Maybe it was the force of losing the ship. After all, over those months it had become a means of redemption for me, the only way to earn the approval of the parents who hadn't wanted a daughter to begin with.

"Nayru, come back!! Please!! Nayru!!"

I don't know how many waves I managed to withstand before my strength failed me, how many times I cried out to the ship which had vanished from its moorings without any trace or reason. Maybe I even fell asleep. All I know is that I never saw the light dawn over the ruins of that tiny little island, the remains of the world I hadn't even belonged in to begin with…

When I woke up, everything was dark, but I could still see. How do I properly describe that though, really? Everything beyond was entirely black, and yet anything that held colour was startlingly clear to me. Like… him.

For all that I'd lived in a world bound by water; I had never seen a creature like him. He had skin the colour of the ocean at midday, but eyes that were dark as a midnight sky, that shade stretched all across his eye from one side to the other. His face, it came to a sharp point with an over-pronounced nose, and his head was completely hairless, but was long and slender as it went up, evenly leading into a long fish tail which hung down behind his neck.

I won't pretend I knew or know who he was, although I knew in my heart where and when we were. Yes. When. It's so strange to be able to say that, but yes, I knew when I was.

It was the Beginning.

How can I describe creation to someone who hasn't seen it before? Is that even possible? Perhaps I shouldn't try, for even though the experience is engraved in my memory, the words, the details, they're all beyond my ability to convey. How the darkness was burned away by three whimsical ribbons of red, green and blue, golden light shimmering in the wake of the goddesses and radiating out across the world they created. What must have taken years and years to complete, I can remember sitting and watching there with him as though it were only a few minutes. But I know it was longer than that...

There were others there with us, I can hardly remember any of them, but I know they were there. Always an adult and a child, all of them standing, kneeling, or laying on the ground, the older one always looking to the child with them, stroking their hair, holding them closely, doing something to convey a sense of... belonging. I don't remember anything else about any of them, just how they behaved. No faces leapt out at me in the shimmering light of the world's birth, no cloths struck me with their odd patterns. It wouldn't be until much later that I could puzzle out the meaning behind all of this, until I would recognize each of those people, old and young, as every Oracle of Ages throughout the length and breadth of time...

When he spoke to me, his voice was strange, reedy and yet thick at the same time, like the voice of a clarinet although at the time I hadn't yet set eyes on such an instrument. He told me many things where he sat kneeling on the ground as it slowly formed beneath him, bidding me rest my head in his lap and listen to the tales he had to tell.

All while I listened to him, I watched how the barren earth was formed, and how water fell from the sky to cool the fires and line the stone with rivers and brooks. A breath of wind was what startled me as I listened to him however, for it was the wind which brought the sweeping wave of greenery, bid those tiny green blades grow taller and stronger. I witnessed the birth of the very first trees...

While he told me of many wonderful things, of how the world had come to be and all the sights that he had seen, he told me something else. The tone of his voice changed, like the low thrum of the ocean air just before building into a fierce storm. He told me of things he was forbidden to do, how life and death were interlinked, and how the force of Time was both dominant and submissive to the wills of Life and its end. And then he told me something else;

"All of the people here who you see before you; we are all alike. When our souls rested in the afterlife a wave of energy separated us from where we belonged. We were each born in the wrong time, in the wrong place, to the wrong parents." I cannot tell you what the emotion was which surged up within me at his words, I do not know if it was fear or anger, or some twisted form of delight at knowing my life was not my fault, but the feeling overcame me just the same.

"That same energy, it was as a blade which sliced through the souls of others, countless people who'd done no wrongs were injured as their souls drifted through eternity awaiting rebirth." I remember how his hand had been gently stroking my hair up until this point, and how he stopped and rested both his hands in his lap as I sat up and looked at him silently, hanging on his every word. "And for every one who was thrust through time, or scarred by the waves, another was plagued with a seed of blackness, a poison lodged within their essence to leach off of them." I did not even have a chance to ask him why, his scaled blue hand simply came up when I tried to speak, and I kept my peace as he answered without even needing me to prompt him.

"One of our people, one of the many here and now, they are the one responsible for this; for all of it. Paradox is all that may harm us, child, and when paradox is formed by those who think with their hearts and not their minds, terrible things come to pass... In all times."

He did something then which surprised me. He told me he was going to teach me a song and that he wanted me to play it. I hadn't known until that point that he had any instrument at all, but there it was; in his hands was a long flute. It was such a mesmerizing instrument to behold, it looked as though it were made of coral and wood swirling through one another, precious gemstones polished to a low glow dotting it at random, the finger holes and clasps all rimmed with gold. Up until that point, although they were so clear against the pale blue of his skin, I hadn't noticed the jewelry he wore either; a swirling piece of gold was looped several times around his wrist, an identical artifact coiled about his thin neck.

When he lifted the flute to his lips, there came such a sound that I felt my breath catch in my throat. His fingers, I would have thought them slow and clumsy across the slender length of the flute, but they danced and jumped so easily from note to note that nothing had ever seemed more natural to me. And the sound of it... Oh, the melody was so pure and sweet, so different from the coarse tavern songs and stiff upper class mantras I had sung all my life until that point. The sound of that flute filled my mind with its song, and unbidden my voice rose to meet it, following the sound as well as I could manage.

Along with just the simple sound of the music, images also came to me. I could see a young girl sitting all alone in a sea of greenery, for I'd never seen a true forest before, so it was difficult to comprehend. Her hair was braided back behind her, two golden clasps keeping it away from her face. Seated on an old stump, she was fingering through a large tome in her lap. That book, it was such a deep green the world around it paled in comparison, clasped with bronze along the spine, it reminded me of a chest, and I wondered what sort of treasures might be hidden within those bindings… Somehow, despite how vague the vision was, I could see the blackness staining her shoulder over her heart, could feel the indifference running through her small form as that darkness ate up everything else.

The scene changed, and I can remember how even in song and trance, I allowed for a small gasp. All beyond me I could see what the world might be like if the waters of the ocean were truly drained away. More people than I had ever seen gathered in one place were assembled before a large black tower, staring at a young girl with flaming red hair. A smiling man stood before her, speaking and holding his arms out in a grand manner. In the girl's arms was a staff half her height if not more, made of glowing pearly white ivory with golden swirls and a bejeweled head. Large gold bangles were resting uncomfortably around her wrists, and another sliding loosely around her neck as she fidgeted in the dawning light. As the one before, the vision was so cloudy, but I could still see the ugly black tear which scarred her. A terrifying rent running from one shoulder to her hip across her body. It was along this line that she clung the staff, as though it could mend the wound.

And then… finally… I saw my island. I saw the rain sheeting down across it despite calm skies covering the rest of the ocean my father had known so well. I watched as one girl dressed in a plain frock and sandals slipped and spilt her way down winding white roads through the thunder and unearthly lightning. I could see all the people she had passed during that terrifying run, those whom she was blind to as they stared at the sky from windows and doors, she the only one not bound by the mesmerizing sight and able to flee towards safety. That island had been fated to die, so only she had survived.

Only I had survived. And that was only because I was the only one who wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.

"An Oracle's duties are to monitor the scarred, and aid them in healing from the black wounds one of our own caused." When did the sound of the flute stop? I wish I knew, but I'm sort of glad I don't remember. What I do remember however is how the flute fell apart in his hands. How it was like watching water run down a hill, spilling over his fingers as though they were stones from a babbling brook. Over and under, under and over, the water of the flute swirled around him as I could still here the song all around me.

I felt something cool brush up against my arm, music still pouring from me as my voice continued to carry the tune even as the last sparkling bead of water slipped from his grasp. I remember how he smiled at me, how he held his arms out to the sides and looked up towards the fully formed sky, golden light radiating out from a point far behind me.

"Send me home, child. I heard your cries across time, how you wept the name of the goddess. Send me home now, and then find your own way back."

The first time I strummed the Harp of Ages, the light of the Triforce as the Goddesses left their new world for the heavens was blinding. I know I was still singing through it all, how I felt tears pouring from my eyes as I didn't know whether to be happy or sad or afraid or anything at all. All my life had changed in a span of time which was so short and yet not. I could hardly contain any of the emotions I felt running rampant through me.

My voice was never more pure, nor my hands- even now- so assured across the strings of the bejeweled instrument in my arms. The gold of his flute's clasps became the strings of my harp, the wooden base curved against my arm as the jewels sank once more into the curves of the handles as well as the small knobs for tuning.

All my life I had always been running down a hall, not knowing what awaited me, and always restricted by one door at a time, one door leading to one hall leading to another door. Now, it was as though there were no walls at all. As though that terrifying lightning in the night had shattered all the rooms and all the walls and doors. A bird set free from a cage to small and set for another animal. I was free…

I was… I am…

I am Nayru, Oracle of Ages.

For those who have not played Zelda: Wind Waker, this is also a shameless attempt to explain what the destruction of Great Fish Isle might have been like. And yes, I know the length is striking, but for all that I knew that Din's section would be more than Farore's, I knew from the start that Nayru's would be longer still. And it most certainly was!