Thank you to the few who are following this. I know it's a weird idea, but it's my weird idea.
"Emotions don't make logical sense. Logic is rarely full proof. And spirituality? Well, spirituality can't be understood by either, but with both. You need all three to be human."
-A Friend
Chapter 5
Of course I didn't sleep. I laid awake to agonize in my humiliating failure to establish any control over my situation. Some messed up reason he was, because I was beginning to doubt the sanity of my original whoever-I-was in getting myself in this situation, memory loss and all. Not to mention my severe lack of tan. Nothing other than insanity would have kept me from the sun long enough to become this level of milky.
Thus, I begged outdoor work from Ilia and set to work with a pickax to a hedge of unwanted dead grass. In what felt like minutes I was hot, winded, half-blinded, and smarting with brilliant sunburns and blisters.
After seeing how my new luxurious red skin clashed with my orange hair, I almost went out and drowned myself in the river.
The other townsfolk, who had been shy of me as I fought against the dead grass from hell, all came about at noon since I had become essentially injured and harmless (what was I, a lion?). They crowded me where I had taken shelter under the shade of Ilia's and her father's porch.
"You poor thing," cooed a blond woman with a pudgy baby tied to her back. "I have some balm back home I'll run and get. Poor Colin always burns horribly in spring too."
"And with that hair," tittered the fat shop keeper, whose eyebrows looked about ready to disappear into her brown hair—along with her tact, I'd suppose. "If you ever manage to scrape up some rupees I think I have some old dye in the back to take care of that. No wonder you were so pale before—maybe you were a princess."
That caught her daughter's attention, who had followed after like a fearful, lost puppy. "Princess? Like a lost princess?"
"Oh, don't be silly, like a princess would lose her memory and stumble into the spring," she said, as though she hadn't just been the one to suggest it. "And with no clothes or jewels either, oh goodness. Unless that Ilia's hiding something…?"
I just gawked at her. How could someone say something so obviously contentious while making it sound like the most innocent of concerns?
"I'm pretty sure I didn't have any jewels," I said.
"Robbed," she said, more to her daughter than me. "Horrible thing to happen, but even our little ones were taken once, and to take your clothes—how depraved—Pergie! Over here! Come look at this sunburn and tell me you still have some of that hair dye from last year."
Pergie turned out to be a broad chested woman with a strong jaw and breasts that made mine look like humble tangerines. Her upside down triangular shape somehow complimented the heavy-set pear which was the shopkeeper.
Pergie gave a low whistle. "Golly. Mind you, Sera, you should go shout'n and drawing attention to someone's misfortune. You probably hurt her feelings."
The shopkeeper, or Sera (like I'd end up remembering that—I mean, I totally would), put her hands to her bowl like cheeks in dismay as though the thought that she could offend anyone had never occurred to her.
"Oh, my, I never intended it. Everyone get's sunburned every now and then, it's nothing to be ashamed of!"
Yeah, because everyone gets told they need to dye their hair as soon as possible because they looked like a walking pink lemonade stand growing carrots on top of their head.
Ugh, and if my eyes really were some sort of yellow—kill me now.
"Link! Back for lunch? Any babies yet?"
Din, Nayru, Farore, and every other god above, I was going to strangle this woman.
And of course he had to look nigh glorious even in dirty, blood-splattered clothes and his hair all over the place as though he had walked through a hurricane. Then he just had to smile, flashing perfect teeth, and I decided I'd go ahead and strangle him too.
"Three just this morning, one after the other. I was actually hoping you wouldn't see me like this…"
The pear and triangle flapped their hands and twittered that it was all nonsense, how they'd known him since he was in diapers and therefore had seen much worse than a bit of blood and dirt. Poor girl who had followed after her mother had turned a sort of sickly mix between a blush and nausea. Probably didn't know whether to swoon at the fine specimen of man before her or give in to the horror of gore (because, you know, he brought splattered goat organs and—grow up, really?).
"I'm just going to head inside—" but then the lady with the baby started up the road towards us, a lidded, wooden container in her hands.
I could feel Link's gaze on me, and since I found it oddly difficult to look him in the eye in bright sunlight (or perhaps it was just because I was a pink lemonade stand with carrots on my head), I focused my attention on the mother, who I soon liked far more than the other two simply because she talked far less. After Link left, the three didn't much see a reason to stick around and bustled off to whatever dreary thing preoccupied their lives.
The baby on her back started to fuss. She stopped mid-smearing of my arm to untie her sash and swing her baby down.
"Oh dear, getting a little hot?" She bounced it a bit which seemed to do the trick. "Would you like to hold her? Just as I finish up."
And since she had been so kind to apply the balm to my sunburn, let alone bring it out, I gingerly accepted the squirmy bundle of blond hair and chubby cheeks. The two of us stared at each other for a good few minutes before the infant found the end of my braid and took to tugging. It was long enough that she could pull all she liked without yanking at my scalp, and when I took its scorpion tail and brushed it along one pudgy hand, she squealed with delight. I couldn't help but smile. Her small weight and skin just as pale as mine, and the innocent, open way she considered me, sunburn, orange hair, freakiness and all, softened the barrier around my heart.
"You know what? I think you're my favorite person here." I tickled her cheek with the braid end, eliciting another squeal. "We should be friends."
The babe's mother's soft hands brushed against my own, spreading the waxy lotion along it. "Her name is Fila."
"Fila. The best kind of name."
"I'm Uli. I have some lotion to help prevent sunburns as well that I'll bring over. As I said, my son, every spring. Throughout the summer too, if I care to think about it."
"Thank you," I inclined my brow to her, as seemed appropriate.
Uli had just started on my neck and ears when Fila's face screwed up and gave a lip wobbling, gummy sob. My heart broke, and I inwardly groaned. If one little sob was enough to brake me, good goddesses, I should never have children.
"Oh oh," I lifted her from the safe cradle of my lap and bounced her awkwardly.
"Sounds like a diaper change is in order."
"What? You already know? I don't smell anything." And no, I was not going to sniff her butt.
"No, I can tell in her cries. It's a mother thing, you'll find out with your own children."
Which I would either end up coddling like a mother goose or abusing, I decided, as Fila's heart-breaking whimper grew to an ear-splitting wail. Uli seemed to take her sweet time wiping her hands on her pants and taking her from me. She spread her sling out on the porch, whipped out a fresh cloth diaper from a pouch on her hip, and unfastened the nightgown like sack. Dimpled legs, with rolls of baby chub, appeared kicking from the white folds. I fell in love again.
"Calm down, Fila baby, you're just wet."
Diaper changed, Fila was returned to coo happily in my lap, totally content, while Uli returned to rubbing balm on all my sunburns.
I must have sighed extra heavy at one point or something, for while I tugged on baby toes she asked, "What's on your mind? If you're up to sharing, that is."
"Oh, nothing, I'm just a useless ginger albino with no identity or memory squatting on someone's land."
"I wouldn't say you're squatting."
"Let's smudge the definition and say I'm being extra, I don't know, aggressive in my word choice."
She chuckled. "My, you sure talk like a noble. But I understand. It's always humbling to have to accept the help of others. It happens to the best of us."
I snorted. I highly doubted what happened to me happened to 'the best of us.' She heard me and decided to keep quiet from then on out, which made me worry a bit that I had put her off. The random, but not unpleasant one armed hug she gave me afterwards eased my concern.
"It's okay," she said. "You're a strong one. I can tell."
"I don't want to be strong," I mumbled.
"Oh? What do you want?"
I hadn't a clue. And just as I thought of some witty answer that might make her laugh, I looked up past her and saw Link coming our way, clean and changed into new clothes. He called to her with a warmth I understood instantly, and once more I felt as though a sun had walked into my world, blinding me.
With the utmost care, I awkwardly handed Fila off to Uli (and ended up having to pry reluctant fingers from my braid).
"Come by and hang out sometime," I told the little girl. "I like you. And your mom isn't too shabby either."
Fila blinked and pawed for the braid and got her mother's finger instead, which instantly became the prey of her drooly, pink gums.
"Keep this," Uli handed the ointment to me. "I'll make more."
I thanked her, and since I was standing, I fell into a full out curtsy. Uli cried out with surprised laughter.
"High birth indeed!" she cried.
I couldn't quite avoid stealing a glance of Link as I rose, who had an expression I couldn't quite read.
Then the pink lemonade stand with carrot hair fled to the dark recesses of her benefactor's basement.
Stupid sun.