The Waters of Nayru
Chapter 9: The Oasis
By, Frank Hunter

The desert passed in much the same fashion each day as it did on the first. Rigo kept moving south well into the night of that first day, and turned northeast just before dawn.

"You want to ride into the tail of Saggat, the scorpion," Amili reminded him, pointing over his shoulder at the constellation before them. "Saggat rises in the northeast this time of year, and his tail points down."

Rigo adjusted his course and made straight for the scorpion's tail, which should have been more or less northeast. "Good thing one of us actually did study stars, huh?" he asked.

By the second day, they had already begun making two long stops a day, one at noon and one at midnight. They quickly realized the pace they were setting was too trying, and to top it off, they could not see well enough in the dead of night to continue travelling, which they realized when their camel almost toppled down a particularly steep dune. A little more sleep traded for a little more time seemed the best option.

They'd make camp the same way each time they stopped. Though they no longer trusted the cacti to successfully keep their camel tethered, there unfortunately was no alternative to be had, so they settled on just keeping a loose watch over the animal. It seemed as grateful as they did for the downtime, and never wandered as far as it had on that first day again. But the real challenge in those nighttime reprieves was fighting the urge to light a fire. It was cold and their shelters did not do enough to trap the heat, and there were actually dry bushes available when the camel didn't eat all the foliage.

Rigo took to pulling Amili close and the two would sleep together, sharing body heat to combat the harsh outdoors. In other circumstances it would have been bliss, but it seemed they could never get comfortable enough this way, nor warm enough in the unrelenting environment. By the fourth night though, Rigo was glad they had heeded Pureet's advice. As the sun set and twilight passed into blackness, Rigo noticed an orange glow in the distance, to the north. He called Amili's attention to it immediately.

"It must be Sooru," she said. "Pureet was right. They're following us."

"If they're still looking, we should change course again, make sure we stay unseen," Rigo suggested. Amili agreed. They took a momentary rest and surveyed the stars, considering possible alternate routes. They decided to turn due east to save the most time possible without risking a run across Sooru's path.

"With all the course changes though, we're not sure exactly how far off we've gone," Rigo said. "What if we miss the temple entirely when we get there? How will we even know?"

Amili considered. "Our lessons always said the old Gerudo homestead was built near to a river, similar to how ours is settled at Jirin, right?"

Rigo nodded. "The flowing waters from the mountains into Lake Hylia," he repeated, ver batim from Pureet's geography scriptures. He could only imagine what mountains and lakes of the size found in Hyrule would look like in reality.

"Since we've been keeping further to the south," Amili continued, "we're likely to undershoot the temple if anything. If we hit the river, we should follow it north, and we should be able to see Desert Temple from there. If we can't find it…well…"

"The river flows straight through Hyrule Castle, and out into the lake beyond," Rigo recited.

"Right. Worse comes to worst, we could go there, resupply, and reorient," Amili said.

Rigo was hit by a wave of consternation. Actually go into Hyrule? Meet the race that shunned his people and chased them into the desert? It wasn't what he'd intended.

"That may not be the best idea," he said.

"I know," agreed Amili. "Like I said, it would be a worst-case scenario. Only if there's nothing else we can do."

Another two days to the east and the firelight was gone from the horizon. Rigo was able to turn their path northward again comfortably, but a new concern was looming. The two of them were going through the water supply faster than anticipated, partly due to the fact that their camel needed more drink than they'd expected, but also due to their inexperience and inability to determine just how long the trip would be and how much water they would be consuming. The jerky was holding out, thankfully. As a people evolved in the desert the Gerudo did superbly well with scarce supplies and extreme weather, but Rigo knew the water situation had the potential to become life-threatening and didn't know what to do about it. He tried tapping some of the more substantial cacti they passed during the days, Amili had some useful tips on how to go about it, but although there was moisture inside, it wasn't nearly enough to keep the two of them sustained should the water supply go dry.

Fortunately, this did not become the problem he feared it would.

As twilight came on their first week in the desert, Amili sat behind the reins and Rigo was working not to nod off behind her. Out of nothing, something appeared before them.

"Hey!" Amili shouted back.

Rigo jerked into full consciousness. "Huh!? What?"

"Look! Rigo, look!" she said, pointing in front of them. "What's that over there?"

Rigo squinted and stared, trying to make out the shape in the wavering, orange sky. "It looks like…trees?"

"Palm trees!" Amili exclaimed. "I think it's an oasis."

"Just try and relax," Rigo said, sitting up straighter and trying to contain his own excitement. It wouldn't do to get their hopes up prematurely. "It might be a mirage."

They rode tentatively closer and it soon became apparent that this was no mirage. Sitting in the middle of the desert was a grove of greenery and life, situated around a shallow pond that housed - Rigo couldn't believe it - silver fish. It was an oasis, a small tropical paradise in the middle of all of the discomfort, and it was theirs.

The kids set up camp as close to the pond as they could manage without drenching their supplies in mud. The tethered their camel to an actual tree, and left him there convinced he wouldn't be doing any chewing this time. However, the sun was on its way out, and they barely had enough time to pull down some vines off the trees and tie them into a simple, makeshift hammock, to keep them off the ground. Here, they might become a target for oversized desert scorpions, snakes, and anything else that might be roaming the lush floor, particularly if they slept in a hole.

Despite the change of scenery, the desert cold was still unforgiving, and it was a necessity that they still sleep together. Rigo didn't mind. The curvature of the hammock placed Amili almost on top of him. The sudden dark was a disappointment though, as Amili and Rigo both wanted the opportunity to look around, explore, and gather what the oasis had to offer.

That more than anything led to the decision to stay.

"We should take another day here," Rigo said, when they'd hunkered down for the night. They were still exhausted and there was no reason to stay out and about in the dark. "You know, rest and recover." Amili was closer to him than she'd ever been, and her hair gently stroked his cheek.

"It might not be a bad idea," she admitted. "I don't think Sooru will find us here, even if her group kept on going from where we saw them. We would never have found this place if we'd taken a straight path."

"You're so incredibly smart," Rigo said suddenly. It just kind of escaped him, and he wasn't sure whether or not he should have been embarrassed of such a direct compliment. Amili shifted, though he couldn't see her in the dark.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"You just…" Rigo trailed off. He didn't know exactly how to put it. "You thought of the cloaks, you got the food. You're doing most of the navigating. Geez Amili, I don't know what I would have done out here without you."

Amili chuckled. "You are pretty helpless, huh? Some king."

Rigo shoved her and she shoved back, and it quickly turned into a game of tickling and poking that only ceased when their jerky movements snapped one of the vines holding the hammock in place. But still, it was the first sign of the fun and lively relationship the two of them had shared before the adventure set itself before them. It put Rigo at ease, for the first time since they left. He was able to forget his crimes and the trouble he'd caused, and that night he sunk into Amili's hair and drifted off into pleasant dreams. He slept the night.

The next day came and Rigo awoke first, finding Amili asleep on his shoulder. He couldn't bring himself to move at first. He thought she looked beautiful as she slept, and neither of them had rested much in the week they'd spent in the desert. It would be unfair to deprive her of sleep. But, as he lay there, the morning urge to relieve himself grew stronger and stronger, and before long he had to slip out from under Amili, duck into the vegetation, and water a tree.

When he got back, he found that she was awake too. Amili stretched out in the hammock.

"Mm. Do you think we can just stay here?" she asked.

"Like, another day?" Rigo asked.

"No, dummy. Like, forever."

Rigo thought on that. Every morning waking up with Amili at his side. Sunshine, water, shade. There were worse lives than that. But on the other hand…

"It's nice. Just…you know…king?"

Amili smacked her forehead. "You're so dense sometimes, your highness," Amili said, drawing out those last words in a twist of sarcasm. "I'm only kidding, Rigo. You really need to grow a sense of humor."

He smiled at her. It all felt so good. He really might have considered giving it all up to stay.

They got up, took a drink of the water from the fresh stream, and did something they hadn't done since they'd left: they bathed. The water was cool and refreshing, and when they were done they lay out in their soaked undergarments and let the sun dry them up. As they lay there, Amili noticed green fruit up in the trees.

"Coconuts," she said.

"Hm. Great," Rigo said, sarcastically.

"You don't like coconuts?" Amili asked.

"I like them when someone else opens them," he answered.

"I thought you wanted an adventure!" She got up and went over to a couple of the palm trees that were curved and angled outward more than the others. "I tell you what. We'll have a race up the trees. Last one to get a coconut is the one who has to open them. Deal?"

Rigo, who was used to playing games with her, gave a fake sigh of resignation. "Fine, deal."

They both got ready at the bottom of their respective trees and on Amili's "Go!" began to climb. Both were dexterous, a result of years of climbing and dangling around the pueblo, but Amili was faster here and Rigo found himself collecting the green fruit a few seconds after her.

"Guess you'll be feeding me then," Amili teased when they were both back on the ground.

Rigo got his sword out but, clueless as to how he would actually go about cleaning and preparing this fruit, wound up mostly taking instructions from Amili anyway. Where she learned about this was beyond him.

He swung his sword and cut into the specific parts of the shell that she indicated, and made slow progress. But Amili seemed pleased and he was happy if she was. After what felt like an hour of work and some very sore muscles, Rigo pulled the more tender nut out from both of the mutilated husks. "Alright, so now how do I get this open?" he asked.

"I think maybe we don't."

Rigo blinked at her. "I just threw out my shoulder getting that out of there, we'd better be opening these!"

"Just not yet! We should save them to have with supper," Amili said.

"With supper? Then what's going to be supper?" Rigo asked, but then followed Amili's gaze over to the pond, and the flashes of silver that kept appearing at the surface. "Right."

"Was getting tired of all that pork anyway," Amili said. "Not sure how to catch one of those, though."

This was Rigo's area of strength. He pulled out his bow and quiver of arrows, and used the fishing as an excuse to teach Amili the basics of stringing, loading, and firing a bow. The two practiced with the arrows, and fired at the fish that made their way to the surface of the pond. They didn't hit anything (at first, Amili could barely hit the water), but the whole activity was interspersed with laughing and playing and swimming out to retrieve the arrows. They took a rest in the heat of midday under the shade of a palm tree, and walked in the afternoon. Eventually, as the day began to come to a close, Rigo was able to hit a single fish with an arrow. Amili cheered emphatically.

Rigo pulled the arrow out from the pond with the fish skewered on it and held it up for Amili to see. It was still wriggling.

"Do we…do we just bite into it?" she asked.

Rigo laughed. "No, not exactly. I have a better idea."

The kids talked it over, and decided that the night they spent in the oasis would be the best night to build a fire. There was plenty of tinder around, and the trees would mask the glow from any prying eyes that could still be outside. They gathered wood and kindling and struck a spark from their flint, and like magic they had a small fire to tend that grew into a respectable blaze by twilight. Rigo angled the arrow with the skewered fish over the flame, adjusting it regularly, while Amili got the two coconuts together and used another arrow to poke strategic holes in the top of it. Before long, the two had a meal of roasted whitefish and coconut water, and the well-deserved nutrition left their bellies full and happy. After the fish, Amili took the coconuts and smashed them on a particularly jagged rock, exposing the meat inside as a sweet end to the meal.

They talked by the fire for hours before retreating to the hammock that night. Sleep would mean that the day was over, and they would have to resume their journey the next day. The water skins had been refilled and were waiting by the camel, along with their food satchel and equipment, but neither wanted to go.

This had been the happiest day of young Rigo's life, and he wished that it would never end.

"Does it ever wear on you?" Amili asked him.

"What?"

"The whole king thing. To know that you're gonna have so much responsibility when you're all grown up." She pursed her lips. "That you're gonna have to be so serious."

He laughed. "No. I mean, yeah, it's something to worry about. But I don't think it'll be that bad. Like I told you, I just want to help the tribe settle and make Jirin its real home. I think that's easy enough for a king to do. It's not like I'm gonna be…you know…him."

"Ganondorf?"

Rigo nodded.

Amili reflected for a moment. "What do you think he would do, if he were king now."

"I don't know. Probably arm the Gerudo, march them right back across the desert and try to burn Hyrule Castle to the ground. It's probably what he'd want. I always got the impression the whole thing was personal for him."

"It's personal for a lot of people," Amili said, sidling up next to Rigo. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "I think for my mother too."

"But that's exactly why it's a bad idea," Rigo said. "You can't make it personal when you're looking out for people. That's dangerous." Pureet had taught him that. It's a lesson he latched on to.

"Still," Amili said. "Going back, taking the old homestead again. Not going to war, that's not what I mean, but living where we used to live, and just standing against the Hylians, and making them understand that we're people too and we have the right to live there. It would make the Gerudo proud again. That wouldn't be so bad."

"No," Rigo told her, "but it would be hard. Harder than it needs to be."

"Hm," Amili said.

"As long as the people can live and live peacefully, then I think I'll have done a good job. They'll become proud of their new life too, in time," Rigo said.

"I guess you're right," Amili conceded.

A moment of silence passed before Rigo snorted. "It's ridiculous, isn't it? That two kids like us can sit here and talk about this, and it can actually be real? It seems stupid that what I think should matter to the Gerudo."

"I think it's good that it does," Amili said softly. "You're sure and clear, and you make sense. I think you'll be a great king."

Rigo looked down at her and she met his gaze. Her eyes were wide and darting back and forth between his own. He was about to ask her what was wrong, when she leaned up and, for the first time, placed her lips on his in a kiss that shocked and excited him and drove him to pull her into a full embrace. The taste of her lips was magical, and she didn't let go of him either.

They sat there, enamored with each other into the night. Eventually, they brought it back to their hammock, and forced themselves to go to sleep in preparation for the long day ahead of them. But when they slept, they slept close, arms wrapped around one another, no longer feeling a need for space or discretion. The two had always been part of each other's lives, and now their romance had brought their lives even closer.