THE NIGHT is oppressively dark when I exit the groves. Torches seem to only hold orbs of light in their sconces and no further into the ink air. The rifle is slung up high and the strap aggravates my bare skin and coagulated gash. My fingers are sticky with blood and fluid. My body is heavy, its ligaments swiveling as if tied by rocks when I swing them. The ground is carpeted with blossoms, filthy in the dirt and sticking to my boots. When I look up I see the trees are all completely bare, dark skeleton tentacles wrapped around one other. Mido carries palpable worry on his face when he runs to me, kicking up rotting blossoms coming down the avenue. "Captain! Captain, have you any idea what's happened? All the fairies are weeping and terrified, all the blossoms have fallen in the groves. The Know-It-Alls say the spores everywhere but here and the Lost Woods are gone completely." He looks to me, trying to hold composure but just as terrified as the tone of his news. The traditions that he could use to gauge the world are disappeared without a trace, as are mine. I can think of no lie or story to tell someone in my same position, as I can no better lie or seduce myself. "The Great Deku Tree is dead." I say, unwittingly exuding the deathly colours deep in myself out onto him, an individual so desperately seeking refuge in lies or false solution that I cannot save from the truth. Mido takes a step back and grows pale, gasping hard and faltering in the very core of his being. He looks at me with wild eyes, desperation sole inheritor to them now. "That can't be." I stay totally silent and look deep into him as his lips quiver, both of us powerless and feeling it. "It just can't." I begin to walk past me but he plants his hand onto my chest and pushes me back. "What do you mean. That can't happen." He pushes me again but I keep pressing forward.
"What have you done." I'm almost past him in total silence when he uses both hands and shoves me backward into a tree. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE CAPTAIN?" He pushes me over and over, uttering more guttural queries, hunting his answers down inside himself and me. "ANSWER DAMN IT ANSWER WHAT DID YOU DO? HUH? WHAT HAPPENED? THIS CAN'T HAPPEN SO WHAT DID YOU DO?" I meet his gaze here and I hang silence in front of him so that he may confront the truth of neither of us being able to alter the course of things now, or so I think I do, or so I wish to. His teeth flash, gritted, and his eyes narrow as his face reddens, the tears beginning to pulse out and spit expel to anguished sobs. He swings a wild fist at my face and I catch him by the forearm, pull him wide open and strike his agonized face with the back of my fist. He falls right to the ground, clutching his cheek and hyperventilating. I look down on him, tears and spit running over his hand, unintelligible curses and lamentations parsing from his open and shut lips. The Deku Tree had told me with his dying words to be good to the world and this was my first act right after, knocking a frightened victim into the dirt. My shame grows deeper by the second. When I begin walking again, Mido begins to shout from the ground between sobs, the same question over and over. He wants to know why I did it, and then he simply wants to know why. Why? Why? Why? "Captain you have done nothing wrong, he is wrong to implicate you." I say nothing to the fairy as it emerges to comfort me in the air beside. I kick in the door to the equipment shed as it begins to rain, splintering the door with unnecessary violence. I take up a big pack and start dumping shells in. I grab a single skillet and more rope and some gas. I pick up a bedroll and strap it to the side of the pack before turning back out and walking again straight across the village with strides so great that I am basically running. It is Hani who stops me just before I get to the gorge crossing to the West. I know every person in the village is watching me go in some capacity. "Captain, you can't go out that far and you know it. Please, I know something terrible has happened but whatever it is we can get through it together. Please, there's been enough death today." The tears roll down his face and I start to walk right past him. He flings his whole self in front of me, arms and legs spread wide as to disallow as much as possible. "I won't let you Captain." I do not want to say anything to him or anyone, because there is something in my self so huge that I do not even want to begin to let it out now. I ball my fist and he watches it, meeting my eyes defiantly. "Why, Captain?" More of the same words continue to shake me. Far across the village I can still hear Mido bellow the same sentiment even if he is not truly yelling any more. I open my fist and he loosens up, then I grab his tunic by the scruff and twist and hunch while I hurl his whole body over my shoulder and splat him into the mud. His body is sunk in so deep that it takes significant effort for him to free his arm to stifle his sobs. I traverse everything else in a flash, leaving everything in the mud behind me. When I reach the big suspension bridge with its tall gates lit by torches, I stare across to the other side. Past the other gate with the torches in the sconces is tremendous hollow tree trunk laid like a tunnel, the rim of its mouth lit, its innards black as a pupil. I take my first steps onto the bridge when I stop and turn a quarter of the way. Behind me, leaning out from the gateway Saria looks at me with a face pained with worry. Her eyes shoot through the thickening twilight and the partial shade of her sopping poncho's hood, her pale fingers shiver in the cold. We're silent there for almost a minute, the torches sputtering and hissing, raindrops drumming the boards and pelting the leaves all around. "So you are leaving. Really leaving."
"Yeah. I have to go." She takes her hands from the post and stands more in the open, her whole front facing me while I stand tilted, looking back only and detached. "I knew you would leave someday."
"You think I'm running away."
"No, I don't. I know you have a reason."
"How could you know?"
"I just do, I always did. And I knew when the time came to decide to stay or go, you'd be sad about leaving."
"I've wanted this for a long time, it was the only thing I wished for, to be able to go and see things."
"But you didn't want it like this." She steps closer and stares deeply into me, pouring sympathy into my eyes. "The Deku Tree passed away, didn't it?"
"Yes."
"From a curse."
"How did you know that?"
"You've seen the forest. So have I. His magic, his presence, it's been fading all around and now its gone. You didn't do this Captain, it's not your fault." She always knows things, is always vigilant of the happenings of my being. Her eyes go right into me and see me. "But this is what I wished for, this was my dream. I didn't want this place to be my home. I wanted this to happen. But still…I hate this. The world had to come apart for me to get what I want. I resent my wish. I resent myself for wishing it." Saria stands back a bit before proceeding to move closer again. "You mustn't blame yourself, Captain. Your dreams were what they were, and the world is what it is. Your wishes did nothing to cause anything but more wishes, things outside and away from you caused everything that has happened. Are you leaving just because of regret?" I pause looking her in the eye.
"The Deku Tree entrusted me with a mission."
"A mission to do what?"
"I don't know exactly, but he said it was important."
"I knew that's what it'd be. Some quest would call you away."
"Did you read that in your tea leaves?"
"I didn't have to, it was obvious. That someone as special as you would grow up here was evidence enough."
"You knew about that too? Why didn't you say anything?"
"Because it never mattered. You were my friend, and that meant more than anything to me." She reaches into a pouch at her belt, pulls out her earthen ocarina and holds it out me in the rain. I turn to her fully now, staring at her prize aimed toward me. "Nothing else matters, Captain, whether you leave or anything, because we will be friends forever." The rain hides her few tears well. "I want you to have this ocarina. Please, show it love." I close the gap and take it up in my hands after wiping them. I hold it with pure care, slight wind whistling in the dark of its holes. "Play it often and think of me, think of this forest and coming back sometime, okay?" The rain keeps up but the air between us feels still. She pulls the water darkened green poncho over her head and slams my head through it. "To keep you dry."
"I'm already soaked" The tears are hot before they mix and disappear in the rain. I hug her tightly as I had only once before. I release her and step back once. There is nothing but the rain; there are no tears. I begin to back away more. When I am ready I say it: "Be good, Saria," and then I turn and run as she replies the same, her wishes for me flying through the trees and up into the clouds, syllables booming in her voice across all the imaginable world as I step into the darkness ahead. BE GOOD, CAPTAIN.
I RUN flat out into the night and through the rain. I only need run due west, along the rough unkempt path to the world. I keep the rifle in my hands at my chest, only releasing one hand to jump over dark formless obstructions at my feet. The rain has yet to relent, assaulting everything with millions of falling liquid spears and filling the air with incredible noise. The fairy shivers, somehow cold, even in my sleeve near my hot flesh. "You should not be running through this rain. Stop and make camp." I remain silent save for my gasping. The forest beyond the village is not safe to be in anymore, even for those partnered. The protections of the Great Deku are gone now. Predators will swarm. They will grow large from magic flowing up from the earth, become fantastically adept at killing, and than progress beyond. The plants themselves may even begin to predate, will hunger for meat and life. All things that are prey will be devoured, or will begin to devour. I have no idea how fast this will happen, but it will happen. I think the Great Deku wished for me to leave before any danger closed in on my path, so I will not stop until I am out of this forest. My chest is tight and flaming, the back of my throat burns and spit torrents over my teeth and out everywhere. "I can't stop. This rain…is perfect." I leap over a dark jut and my boots splash loud into the soaked ground. Yes, the rain will cover me; hide me from the creatures of the forest that would want to find me. This was probably a final gift from the Dekumekuna, summoned from the heavens to render aid one final time. My boots rip through low ferns and shrubs; a branch whips and lacerates my cheek. My stamina is failing to lessen though I've been sprinting faster than I ever have before for almost two hours. "I had not noticed before, but this rain…it's delivering magic from high in the atmosphere." Her voice is clear in my mind even through the rain, the sounds of the world around us dimming to bow to her voice. "Just…for me?"
"Yes. I think so." Even her quiet sniveling cuts the night after she finishes speaking. The rain empowers me faster for another hour before I almost crash into a gigantic mass of patchy fur and diseased live meat. The bear turns to me quickly and the fairy emerges and illuminates it. The deep red veins of its sclera reveal when it levels its dead eyes at me, its bared teeth are sick yellow bones. I stand with my hand ready on my sword and the rifle leveled, a finger poised on the trigger. The sick animal makes unnatural noises I can hear over the rain but does nothing but stare. I am filled with immense pity and step back. This animal has been sick for a long time. Its den is somewhere far away and it has left it forever, to roam until it dies. It stares at the fairy floating in the heavy raindrops, its irises jellied and pale, obscuring nail hole pupils. "This is evil magic's corruption of the nature of this forest. This animal is in a tremendous amount of pain." She flies toward me and the bear's sickly gaze follows her. "Captain, what do you wish to do?" I release the sword and plant my hand high up the underside of the rifle. The sounds of the bear's heavy breathing seems to drown out even the rain, billows of vapor rising into the air from its jaws look like exhaled clouds of its life. I wait a second more before the bear looks to the ground and begins to slink into the dark. I break for the west again before I can do anything else. I have not looked back since I have started running, because I have not been going that way.
THE RAIN is letting up all around me and I clutch the rifle tighter. Danger may well beset me even before the moment the final drop hits the earth. Each heartbeat is like an explosion that pushes fire into my blood and through my whole body. I cast my eyes everywhere, crazily. I can feel eyes falling upon me, the intentions behind them. Rustling and splashing begin around me, the dull thud of earth being pounded by focused flesh. I try to muster everything I have left toward the west, to bring the whole of my being in the direction. The trees begin to thin and the path becomes clearer, but I am more and more being pursued. If I stop I will be surrounded. My only hope is that they will not dare to move beyond the trees. Patches of moonlight appear through high clouds and fall upon a clear road in the open-air just moments away. I grit my teeth and lean forward, slipping once but sprinting with everything left. When I pass the last dark tree I leap forward and spin around with the long gun leveled. When I pull the trigger the muzzle flares inside a wide pink mouth. Lying on my back I pull the bolt open and a shell spins from the breech. I close it again, sitting up and aiming into the howling dark. I blink sweat and rainwater, waiting in the fresh silence. When I'm certain, I rise and begin to shuffle slowly down the path, exhausted. Two large dead trees stand away from the tree line beside the path like forsaken guardians of this old path. I run my hand on the pale wood stripped of bark by time, and then slowly sink to my knees. I flop over to rest my back on the tree and sit upon the grass, the full furiously bright moon hiding behind the clouds once more as a gentle symphony of bugs lulls me to sleep.