Copyright disclaimer: Do I actually have to say this every chapter? I am not Nintendo. I'm not even Japanese. I do not own the Legend of Zelda franchise or anything associated with it (once again, except for that Ghirahim body pillow I got a couple of weeks ago... *girlish squeal*).

CHAPTER 4: Unimportance

On an early sunday, fog whispered its pale morning mist into an envelope over the world. I laid under its veil in the city that abandoned the dawn for a few more minutes in bed, asleep, safe. The fog turned from a dark blue to a pale pink, and the only memory left of this time was the dew that stays on car windows for mere minutes. Even I forgot about it after a time-but when it was there in that moment, it was incredible...

"What is knowledge? What is wisdom? Do you attain it, are you born with it?" inquired the scholar from the Golden School of Nayru. An elderly woman raised her shaking hand, and her companions around her laughed as if they were enjoying their days in primary school.

"Knowledge is the very beginning of wisdom. Wisdom is the perfect knowledge of something, enriched with experience, trial and error." The speaker spoke and pushed his glasses up his nose while nodding avidly.

"Yes, ma'am... But no, as well. Your answer was near perfect—wisdom is the imperfect knowledge of something, made up of constant trial and error learned through experience."

The crowd chattered a bit, then quieted down more when the speaker seemed as if he would speak again. "I have amassed quite a bit of wisdom in World of Warcraft," he said, and the younger audience members giggled and the older ones could be heard asking, "What is that?"

When that speaker finished, a poet from the Nayru school came to the podium, in the public meeting place at the back of the library. She opened her mouth, took a breath, and went straight into it:

what we have plastered to our skulls
in a desperate attempt to know something
eventually peel off; outdated.
what we staple to our minds
as a prickling stab at truth
decays, of ornamenting our beings with
assumptions hanging skewed on the walls
we should throw fish into oceans
leave them there for others to converse with.

The audience was silent for a spell, then a cacophony of snapping and clapping rushed up. The poet bowed her head and walked off. The first speaker read his interpretation of the poem and continued more on humanity's search for knowledge. At the end of his lecture, he said, "The Golden School of Din will not be presenting for a few weeks because they still need time to prepare for their performance. The library will have more information when the school is ready." There was a collective groan, but with a lightheartedness. Many people went to the lecturer and thanked him for his speech and the crowd began to flood out of the library. I stayed behind because Keet had asked me to check out two books for him. Gemstones of the Sky was a classic Hylian novel with more than 300 years of history. The story had been preserved for centuries, and it gave me a strange feeling when I ran my hand over the worn leather cover.

The second book Keet asked me for was more obscure: Impossible Philosophies outlined a man's perception of life and time as well as the human psyche through both narrative and nonfiction. It was completely illustrated, and I opened the book to a random page to see a cross section of the human body with a strange language written all over it.

The librarian checked out the books and told me I had two weeks. I walked into the scorching summer day and began to sweat immediately.

"Planning for world domination?" The speaker from the Golden School of Nayru was leaning against the front windows of the library with a bicycle. He pushed his glasses up his nose and smiled.

"No," I said.

"Your choice of literature says otherwise," he said jokingly. I wonder if I should ask Keet? I thought to myself.

"What's your name?" he asked me.

"Link," I replied cautiously.

"My name isn't important, but it's nice to meet you. Good luck with your conquest of domination, revered hero," he said as he hopped on his bicycle and sped down the sidewalk.

"Not like that, Link," Keet said. He was sitting in the corner of the dance studio and flipping through one of the books I checked out for him while he ate from a jar of pickled pumpkin slices. The dance instructor did not speak the Hylian language, but it was conveyed very well that I was doing something wrong. Keet spoke whatever language she was shouting angrily at me and translated, though I was pretty sure he put it nicely.

Keet laughed and said, "Madame thinks you dance like a dying turkey and are more than tone-deaf." Madame hit me across the head with a rolled-up newspaper. She shouted and accusingly pointed her finger at me while her face turned red from loss of breath.

"She said she'd quit if you didn't do this right," Keet inputted while still reading his book.

"Okay, okay," I said, a bit annoyed. Madame turned on music and demonstrated with ease what I was supposed to do, but the movements were meant for someone with talent.

"Dude, even I can do that," said Keet. I sighed and decided to put all my effort into the next one.

"Un, deux, trois!" Madame said, punctuated with snaps. The music pulsed and I could feel the nervousness leaving my body. I went through all the steps and found myself enjoying it. I brought my leg up higher then I thought it could go, moved the hips I was positive I didn't have, and threw myself around in a series of flips, turns, and jumps. It ended, and I stood in the middle of the studio panting with a content feeling in my chest. Madame looked as if she was thinking about something of dire importance.

"If you move like that..." she started with a heavy accent, "then I will have no problem teaching you." She said something else in her native tongue.

"You've got potential, see you on Thursday," Keet translated as he stood.

"Thank you," I nodded to the Madame.

"Merci." Keet and I walked out and he elbowed me in the ribs as I walked down the street.

"You dance like a virgin," he said, snickering. I ignored him. "I recorded that all on my phone," he said with another elbow to my ribs.

"No you didn't," I said and kept walking. I suddenly heard Madame's shrill voice and turned to look at Keet. The familiar music began to play and he showed me his phone with an innocent smile.

"I've always wanted to blackmail a bigshot detective," he said. My mind went back to what the man from the Golden School of Nayru said about his taste in books. "Keet, about those books you had me check out..."

"We're at the office. Did you leave your suit in the intelligence department? Were you going to shower there?"

"Yes, I—"

"Okay, then." Keet scanned his company ID and the doors unlocked. We walked through the front hallway, checked in with the head security guard and got on the high-speed elevator.

"Oh, right, what were you going to say about my books?"

"...never mind," I said, avoiding eye contact. I don't know if I should be scared for him or for myself, I thought.

"I think Mr. Owlan had Orielle iron your clothes," he said, scrolling through his phone. "So you don't need to stay for anything after you wash up." We got to the intelligence department and it was deserted once again. There was an apple on one of the desks, but no other sign of anyone being there. "Shower's in the back room, your clothes are there."

I took a quick shower and put on my freshly pressed suit, though I didn't want to wear it outside in the suffocating heat of the summer. At my dancing lessons, I wore a loose T-shirt and pair of basketball shorts—both property of Keet because I didn't have athletic gear—and I would have rather worn that outside. I walked back into the department office and Keet was leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk and reading.

"What day are you coming in next?" he asked without looking up.

"Can I just come in on Thursday?"

"Yeah," Keet said.

I took the elevator down to my floor to make sure my office was in order and to file another case I'd solved over the weekend. Unlocking the door, I saw there was nothing out of order.

"Detective?" I turned around and saw Fledge holding a large stack of papers.

"Hello," I said as I walked in and sat at my desk. The light on the office phone flashed red and I motioned for Fledge to enter while I answered.

"Your lessons?" Fi said, and I could detect a hint of amusement in her voice.

"Fine," I said with some irritability. "Anything else?"

"I'll text you your next case," she said and hung up.

"Was she talking about your dance lessons?" I stared at him. Are you serious, Keet?

"How do I know, right?" He flipped out his cell phone, holding his monstrous stack of papers in one arm.

"Keet texted it to like twenty people in the company." I watched incredulously as the tiny copy of myself danced around on the screen.

"You're really good," Fledge said.

"Thanks," I said, unconvinced. Fledge nodded and put his phone back in his pocket just as his stack of papers cascaded from his arms. It was like a flock of white birds gently fluttering to the ground.

"O-oh," he whispered with defeat. I stood and walked around my desk, beginning to pick up his papers.

"Most of these were for your cases..." He began to stutter out an apology.

"It's fine," I said. We were both on our hands and knees, picking up the papers. I glanced at a few of them. "These are for the case I just solved." On each paper were the results for DNA tests, cell phone records, photographs, and autopsy information. Fledge gathered information from all of the different forensic workers and brought them personally to the detectives that needed it, though he was officially in training to become a forensic anthropologist.

"You solved it already?"

"I'm sorry." Relief flooded his face, and he hurriedly picked up the rest of the papers.

"N-no, it's..." He trailed off, reverting to the nervousness that characterized him. He'd spoken much more today than he usually did. I stood.

"Thanks," he said quietly, and stood awkwardly in silence while staring at his feet. He took a deep breath and then started speaking very quickly. "Tomorrow, there's a mandatory field excursion for detectives above floor seventy except for you so if you don't want to come you don't have to since you have extra responsibilities but it's at the church on Navigator Street at two o'clock." He had stuttered most of it out, and was panting. "O-okay, bye," he said and sped out of the room with papers falling out of his arms.

I took no time in filing the cases at the office and left at 5:30.

"Go to the museum," Fi said when I stopped by her desk. She didn't explain why, but she wanted me to see the preserved woodcarvings from centuries prior. The Earth Museum was a treasure of Skyloft, rich with the history and culture of our ancestors. There were two or three other museums in the city, but none were as celebrated as Earth. It was the oldest and largest building in Skyloft next to the Skyview Temple. Earth was maybe just as shrouded in mystery as the pieces being displayed inside: it was a common myth that in the museum's very deepest chasms, there was once lava flowing freely and people explored these places to find treasure, but it was never found. The museum was considered dangerous in some places, so only the front hall was allowed to be explored—however, the front hall was grand in size and was skillfully divided into rooms for different exhibits.

I walked up the numerous wide stairs to the entrance of the Earth Museum, seemed to be formed from earth itself. Right when my foot crossed the threshold, a faint ringing in my ears started up. I took a guide pamphlet and found that the woodcarving exhibit was at the very back of the hall. As I maneuvered around the many rooms, the ringing in my ears became louder and louder and my head began to hurt. The lights were dim and I was afraid I would run into something because of the crippling pain in my head, but I came upon the sign: Traditional Skyloftian Woodcarvings.

I walked into the deserted room and the ringing became so loud that I couldn't hear anymore. I ignored the pain as best I could and kept my eyes locked on the glass cases around the room. In each were woodcarvings of varying sizes: a fish, a boat, animals. There were more than thirty, but if I got close to any of them the ringing stopped. There was a nostalgic feeling that came over me when I looked at the carvings, but I couldn't understand why my ears were ringing or why Fi wanted me to come.

I rushed out of the museum with echoes of the ringing still in my head. Outside, the sun had gone down completely, though it had still been up when I'd first entered the museum. I checked my watch: 8:00. I'd spent nearly three hours in the museum?

Am I dreaming? I asked myself.

No, replied something sleeping deep inside me. This is more than reality.

A/N: Well, hello there, my dear children (lol). This took a while... Happy belated Single's Awareness Day (or Valentine's Day). That's about all I have for you this time around... Stay tuned for a new chapter up on Tuesday.

Ciao~!