There are two joys for a Gerudo. The maiden's joy is the blade thrust into man. The woman's joy is the man's thrust into her.
Perda the Lovely
Before she was a mother, the woman was a soldier. She had been chosen out of relative obscurity, from an undistinguished house, daughter of an injured swordswomen who had turned to drink and witchcraft and a Rito archer who could not bear the heat of the desert. It was her great fortune to be placed alongside the future Chief, whose potential had been obvious from her first girlish spars in the palace courtyards. The two became close, seeing in the other their mirror, and recognizing the talents they shared in common. They were a force unleashed upon the military academy. When it was proposed that they be separated, with the future Chief to be assigned with the infantry, and her friend kept behind to study in the magical societies, the pair stormed to the throne and demanded changes. There was no explicit threat save their latent magic, but that incipient crackle was more than enough argument to clinch reassignment. They embarked, together, at sixteen, to see the world.
If you had asked the pair, at the time, about their plans, they would have laughed at such an expression. Their goal, they would have said, was nothing so trite or boring as seeing the world. They expected to fight. In a bold mood (which was, of course, typical) they would have said they expected to lay waste to their enemies. They were not wrong. The potential their officers had spotted in the two as girls had flourished. Already the future Chief had few equals with the scimitar, and as for her friend, it was whispered among the officers that she had surpassed them all in use of the claymore. In these early days of war, the pair tended to trust the youthful vigor of their bodies and preferred to fight with steel rather than magic. They gained fame, rotating from mission to mission, from company to company, enemy to enemy. They cleared monsters, guarded caravans, and fought in vanguard against an ill-devised Farish rebellion.
After this last threat was rebuffed, the pair was recalled to Gerudo Town for debriefing, promotion, and a well-deserved rest. They knocked on the door of the magical academy the very evening of their arrival. There had been a Lynel. The two warriors had tried their mettle against the creature separately, but were each found wanting; it was only together that they managed to slay the mighty beast and scrape a narrow victory. Conversing after, they had concluded that they had reached their limit in purely physical combat, and that it was time to better incorporate their people's magic into their arsenals. The future Chief believed that her swordplay had room for improvement, but that the scimitar lacked brute force and perhaps also range. Her friend the woman believed that the claymore was too unwieldy for certain foes, and in the back of her mind considered the value in certain of her mother's drunk musings.
The magical academy sent them both to its greatest master of electricity. Such was the traditional path for the gifted warrior, and each dedicated herself to this master's teaching. But here was where the two friends' paths began to drift apart, for the future Chief proved such an adept in this art that she left her fellow behind and began to monopolize the attention of their teacher. In later years, her Fury would earn the most extraordinary fame; this is where she built its foundations and began refining her technique. The other woman was by no means unskilled in these matters, but once it was clear she lacked her friend's singular gift, she began to look elsewhere for different instruction. She started with the healers, but soon tired of their ethos and pedagogy (she thought herself a warrior not a medic). This dissatisfaction is what lead her to properly consult her mother.
They were alike, the woman and her mother. The latter had been a warrior of some promise, but was crippled by a Yiga assassin on one of her first missions as an academy graduate. Perhaps if she had found a companion and rival of suitable skill, as her daughter had done, she might have pushed herself that fraction harder, might have sensed the Blademaster's magic that fraction sooner, might even have been shoved aside by a more alert partner. Instead, the earth had roiled—and her leg had never recovered, despite the best efforts of the master healers. She had gone in for magic then. But, again like her daughter, did not take naturally to the arts of lightning (which besides, were invented to support melee combat, not to replace it). She had still less interest in or patience for the healers, who had failed her and consigned her to these compromises. She left the Town and found a husband, who journeyed with her in caravans across Hyrule in search of itinerant sages and wise hermits. It was the witches of the desert that she took to best, and these to whom she wished to recommend her pride, her daughter.
The timing was fortunate for both. The daughter, and similarly her friend, was to be recalled to active duty. Entreaties to the witches could be pursued while they were out fighting, far from the desert borders. And fight they did, of course, and far abroad. A beastly Hinox roaming a forest of the plains, an encampment of Lizalfos menacing the Goron mines, a trio of Wizzrobes in the Crenel Hills against whom they could test their magic—such were the enemies that the pair brought to steel and cinder. After a year of such work (excitement being rare in the life of a soldier), the pair found themselves ordered into a conflict that would prove rather more momentous than the action they had so far seen.
The Farish rebels of the woman's prior tour were a scattershot band of wild Hylians. They had made thrilling sport for the highly trained Gerudo, these vai and voe in garish warpaint, animal skins, and decorative bones they must have fancied menacing. Careering on horseback as if one were born there was all well and good, until you caught an electrifying jolt, were forcibly dismounted, and faced with the whirling scimitar of a future Chief. The rebellion they next encountered would be rather different. It was closer to a civil war.
The lands of Akkala had joined in alliance against the Crown. The motive had something to do with taxes, not that it mattered anything to the woman or her fellow soldiers. As an enemy all knew they would be formidable, with their lushly planted fields and mineral riches, and thriving cities from which to draw recruits. Access to the region was easy in times of peace, but in wartime the roads through mountain and valley could be easily trapped or otherwise blockaded. More than anything, they held the Citadel. It was the mightiest fortress in Hyrule, more imposing, some said, even than the Castle. It was massive, its approach isolated and defensible, and held sway and vision over all entry into Akkalan territory.
There was glorious battle everywhere. The woman and her friend laid waste, as their young braggadocio went, to the enemy legions. The latter's prototype Fury could incapacitate half a dozen opponents at a stroke (if they were foolish, overeager, and in the right position). The former's magic was not quite so powerful, but the woman's claymore had never swung so easily in her hand (and there was a bolt waiting for anyone craven enough to strike her back). By the sixth month of fighting, the pair's exploits had caught the attention of a Hylian officer with connections to the royalty and their council of strategists. They were brought for an audience, and given commission into the Royal Army at the foot of the King, and then transferred into the elite unit that would be tasked with the overthrow of the Citadel.
The pair were given different assignments, according to their respective strengths. One would join a small force of Gerudo at the head of the larger group of assorted races, so that she could add her burgeoning mastery over lightning to their frontal assault, before charging with her scimitar into the opened fray. The other had made a less bombastic impression in battle, but something about her particularly caught the eye of the unit's commander, whose gut told him that she was the missing piece for their second objective. The woman was therefore introduced to a Sheikah who went on immediately to tell her, with an uncanny excitement that belied all her prejudices against that people's quiet and devious manners, that she would be joining his team of assassins.
The day of the assault arrived. The Sheikah leader gave one last incomprehensible gesture, snapped his goggles into place, and then every trace of his eccentric personality vanished. They stalked under cover of darkness, in the hours before dawn, with the woman doing her best to imitate the silent footsteps of the Sheikah trio. She could not have explained how their group managed it, for it seemed as impossible as reputed, but they climbed. Hers was not the place to question the Sheikah magic; a soldier trusts and fulfills her orders. The group split at the halfway mark, with the two sisters easing through an open window into the interior darkness. (They had often bickered in camp, the younger provoking the older's self-serious regard at every opportunity. But here they worked in perfect silent synchronicity.) She continued with the Sheikah leader upward, hiding from patrols, until they heard the signal. It was designed to be unmistakable, unavoidable, and unignorable. The Akkala Bridge was assaulted by lightning of unparalleled intensity. The battlements of the Citadel were fired upon from the far mountainside at the edge of Eldin by the Goron rock-throwers, those mighty siege weapons hurling flaming debris against the fortress stone. The prideful older sister had been overruled by the Hylian command when she had insisted that true Sheikah needed no such distractions to do their work. The woman doubted this boast was true, and regardless, was herself no Sheikah. But in this chaos of battle, she could follow her leader's step as he slipped from shadow to shadow, unnoticed by the mobilizing garrison.
When the day was over, the Citadel had fallen, and the war had been won. In the end, it was the older sister who dealt the Akkalan commander a silent killing blow. He had been in an unexpected position, by chance crossing the planned course of the two Sheikah sisters, and they had capitalized on the opportunity. The woman and the leader were found after the battle lounging in his empty office, annoyed to find their roles pre-empted. The fighting at the tower's base had been fierce. But it was the initial salvo, reports held, that won their forces a foothold across the bridge, and that this alone was the single cornerstone of their victory. The youngest of the Gerudo lightning masters had outdone even the highest expectations of her officers. For this she was later invited, when the mopping up was done and the army returned to Central Hyrule, to a grand ceremony in the Castle held for those who had served with special distinction, which commendation she received from the hand of Hyrule's princess. (But the relationship of the future Queen and the future Chief is another story.) The Sheikah assassin unit was naturally given no official recognition, much less a public ceremony. Yet the woman knew she had won comrades in the three others of the strike force, and had developed an uneasy but not begrudging respect for their magical and martial arts.
Decoration or no decoration, the woman had earned praise and recommendation among the highest reaches of Hyrule's military. She was quietly given a bonus for her work with the Sheikah out of the tribute taken from the rebels. As a Gerudo, however, she was forbidden by treaty from remaining permanently enlisted with the Royal Army; and as she had served under non-Gerudo, she was likewise forbidden by custom from rejoining the Gerudo Army. The woman was hardly the first to face this predicament (that detachment of lightning users, her friend among them, for example), and looked upon it as a second bonus. The Sheikah had given her a taste for experimentation and independence, which strengthened her vague resolve to pursue the training that her mother had been pushing so enthusiastically before she left on this tour of duty.
Once she had returned to the desert and received her mother's direction, the daughter set out into the desert alone. She proved a natural in much witchcraft. The woman learned the enchantments of sleep in a fortnight spent shutting her eyes against the winds of the Toruma Dunes. The trick of fullness was taken from a stick-thin crone somewhere in the Palu Wasteland. Silence was more difficult, for the witches of Karusa Valley practice their magic among themselves. Spells of warmth and coolness she begged from a lonely woman atop Daval Peak. On a lark, having found them by accident, she accepted cantrips of seduction and arousal from a beauty keeping a harem of voe hidden in the Arbiter's Grounds. (The woman would never find herself in need of this magic, but was curious about it, and about the witch who had invented it.) More subtle magic, practices of meditation, of deepening one's connection to sand and stone, or stealing glimpses from the minds of animals—these too came, eventually, in her wide travels from Taafei Hill to Stalry Plateau, from the Lookout to the Great Cliffs. She even tried her hand at the rigorous engineering of barriers and wards, under the impatient instruction of an ill-tempered hermit, in a house on Ruvara overloaded with books, but discovered she held little facility for such methods.
The woman had the knack for diverse magic, but lacked the patience for quiet prolonged study of the kind favored by many of her teachers. She missed the field of battle and the lively company of others. She had the benefit of connection with high Royal officers in addition to the standard reputation of her people, and the beginning of a name for herself in her own right. So when she reached Castle Town, she did not struggle to find appropriate work, and chose to join a familiar Sheikah. Her former superior let on that he was growing bored of sedentary castle life. The dynamics within the trio had shifted after the war, with the older sister now in royal favor by virtue of having made that lucky strike. The younger had never truly been much for action anyway, and preferred hacking away at ancient scientific theory more than she did enemy heads. The Sheikah man was a scientist of sorts as well, she learned, but liked to get his hands dirty a little more readily than the other two. They set off together for Eldin, where some project of the Gorons required his mechanical expertise—and where the mountain paths are under constant threat from well-hidden fire-breathers and other foul creatures.
The desert is a climate of both extremes. A Gerudo in Hebra is met with almost universal surprise, when in truth she can find the same temperatures camped out in a sandstorm at night. But the stereotypes are right in essence. Most Gerudo do prefer the heat and the sun, and it is Eldin that best suits them away from home. The woman also found she enjoyed the Goron tendency toward straight-talking, and suspected their smiths might be hiding secret arts that could elevate her standard weaponry. The smith told her that the price of whatever secrets he might possess was the destruction of the Eldin Taluses. The woman smiled at this bargain. So when the Sheikah found himself inspecting one contraption or another, she climbed from crag to crag searching out suspicious volcanic formations. They were difficult opponents for her magic, which better threatened flesh, but her sword arm had never dealt such heavy blows as those it hammered into the living rock. When the Sheikah found himself free of obligation, they went to hunt the Lizalfos together. Once they went too far north, and stumbled down onto the Badlands. They grinned at each other, at the sight of the Lynel, and launched a joint offensive. A silent assassin can strike those beasts, but a single blow cannot fell one; they can be stunned by the Gerudo lightning, but not for long. This was the carnage of brilliant sport. The Sheikah struck glancing blows that distracted its attention, and then the claymore's mighty swing would cut at its hide, the woman tirelessly attacking. Sensing danger, the creature turned its eye to the woman, and crumpled under some weapon of the Sheikah that was emitting an unholy noise. There was a further screech and the weapon promptly exploded in his hands.
The woman went to the Sheikah's tent that night. They were encamped on one of the Goron worksites. The air was warm. Gerudo have an erotic reputation. It can be deceptive: they are as awkward in times of inexperience as those of any other race. More so, actually, given the pressure of certain stereotypes, which the Gerudo themselves uphold. The voe-hunting schools, for example, advertise their lessons with the suggestion that natural attraction will not suffice when looking for a husband. The woman did have the advantage of her time in the Arbiter's Grounds, where that witch's open frankness made such a contrast with the more innocent gossip of the academy and the town. She had gained a measure of confidence, not in her beauty or sexual prowess exactly, but at least in the viability and excitement of seduction. An earlier version of herself would not have dared such a bold move, because she would not have entertained the thought that it might be worth the risk—that it might simply be pleasurable, and that that would be enough.
He was surprised to see her. Unions of Sheikah and Gerudo are rare. The thought of her hand had not entered his mind. That night, she offered more than just her hand, and also less. They communicated well, it turned out, both in battle and otherwise. The Sheikah was partial to experimentation and inclined to indulge his curiosities whenever possible. He was a curious person by nature. He could spend hours designing the intricate mechanics of a new Goron cannon, or repurposing the ancient technologies of his own people to strange new ends in combat, or observing the Gerudo that his hand-picked team of assassins had been saddled with as she proved her skill. He had found he could spend hours with that Gerudo fighting in the mountains of Eldin, and now he found further depths to be investigated with her. They were both rewarded for the investigation of their curiosity. But it was clear for both, from that first night, that this experiment was temporary. The Sheikah had duties to his people. And the woman? The woman had been merely curious.
Those months in Eldin were a turning point for the woman. She had struck out alone beyond into Hyrule for the first time, had tested herself in combat and come out stronger. She had strengthened a chance bond into something unexpected, and would always hold dear. The pair had satisfied the expectations of their Goron hosts, who were well impressed with the Sheikah's mechanical know-how and the Gerudo's tireless hunting. The pair had satisfied each other. And so they parted, the Sheikah east, to his home in Kakariko, and the woman west, to her father in Tabantha. She knew from letters that he lived in an isolated cabin out on the Rospro Pass. Her mother's voe had always been a loner, even when he was in active military service, and their relationship had suited him perfectly. When they lived together, they did so while journeying slowly and alone in search of remote magicians. When they settled down, they did so apart, she leaving him to his preferred cold on the outskirts of his native society.
He was a diligent correspondent and the woman had always held a positive view of their relationship. He had spent less and less time with his wife and daughter as the latter grew out of childhood, but his letters were nevertheless a source of stability that was not always available at the times her mother was more heavily into drink. He had been pleased to receive her request to visit. After a few weeks on the road, the woman found herself at the foot of the trailhead, where she was met by the blue-feathered Rito her father had said would lead her to the cabin. This Rito was a young archer of supposedly great promise that her father had been tapped to mentor. He began complaining about that fact within minutes of making her acquaintance. Then he began to complain about the slowness of her climbing, on foot and in the snow, and asked sardonically if she thought he could make better time if he carried her. This barb was answered when the Rito found himself suddenly smashed beak-first into the drifts. Well, if he was going to offer, she needed to get him into position before she could climb aboard his back.
Her father was not outwardly delighted to see her, but the woman knew he was glad she had come. It had been many years since they had seen each other. He had heard of her achievements, from her letters, and from her mother, and from the military gossip he still heard when he flew down on occasion to see old friends at the Nest or in the Village. But of course that is a far thing from a father's first opportunity to see his daughter as a woman and an adult. She was a soldier and a witch. He was very proud. His life, he said, was like his letters: very boring. There was truth to this. He simply told the woman and the apprentice that they should go into the mountains and explore. When they returned one night from their first trip and the woman began to tell him about their encounter with a Wizzrobe hiding in the cleft peak of a southern range, he laughed at her before she could finish describing the way her lightning had overwhelmed the creature's. He had meant the real mountains.
So the pair began their dedicated explorations. The mountains were full of game, of wildberries and mushrooms and truffles. Her father had gifted the woman a cloak of Rito-down, commissioned from the Falcon with measurements he had guessed according to the recollection of his wife. Her companion said he would only need his bow. It was of particularly sturdy make, painted blue to match his feathers, well-suited to his preening confidence. They set out first for Corvash Peak, where they easily cleared a camp of monsters, then progressed onward deeper into the cold. Up Talonto Peak, then down into the Coldsnap Hollow where they found a Talus. It was taken down in an explosion of bomb arrows from the soaring Rito, who then gave a mocking bow, and said they should make camp.
Weeks passed in this fashion, in the endless falling snow, trudging up and down slowly through the harsh terrain. They feasted on rhinoceros and moose in camp at night, and found pockets of Lizalfos and Moblins to cleanse by day. At one point they discovered a great stone door, well beyond the strength of either, hidden among the northern peaks. There were races to assorted summits but she could find no magic that would let her best the Rito's native swiftness. He would taunt her for her weight, as if it were fair to oppose his hollow bones. Atop one such summit, as he was winding up his boasts, the woman's eye caught a glimpse of something interesting through the whirling blizzard. She lead him in the descent, and gave him her own smirk. There was an abandoned cabin, built at the edge of a secret hot spring. They would not need to make camp.
The woman stripped off her cloak for the first time in what seemed ages before wading into the blessed healing waters. The Gorons had given her an appreciation for hot springs while she was working in Eldin, and this one in the remote northwest mountains was equally effective. She felt her cares lift away, the weariness of her body depart. She could hardly remember the glorious feeling of bare skin. The Rito eyed the water disdainfully. The woman ignored his mood and sighed contentedly. She was being intentionally obnoxious. Finally, with great exasperation, he set down his bow, removed his tunic, and sank into the water without a splash. The woman smirked again, but this time with more honest warmth behind it, and began to tell of her past experience in the mountains of the east. The pair had gotten to know each other in these weeks alone together, and in the reprieve of this surprise and secret setting, drew closer. Half their clothes had already been discarded. They realized, as the heat built between them, that they did not need the rest.
The woman's father answered the knock at his door and found the two sharing a secret smile. He ushered them inside, allowing himself a hidden smile of his own. Their expedition had gone well, it seemed. His daughter had a Rito's blood, this he had always known; she now had a Rito's experience to match. His apprentice meanwhile had completed the last step of his training. He saw a great future for the insufferable brat. The future of his daughter was harder to sense, its model less obvious to him, her culture still always foreign, but he knew she would be prepared. Where would she find herself next, he wondered? The following morning, he watched, shaking his head, as his apprentice gave his daughter a last stolen kiss before kicking off in the direction of Dronoc's Pass. (He would then go on to set a new record at the Flight Range in the first test of his graduation exam.) His daughter was also leaving for the south, and when she too left him, the old Rito caught himself making another one of those small smiles. Then he sat down to his desk, to begin a letter to his wife.
The woman hired herself onto a caravan making its way through the Tabantha Frontier, over the Ridge, and through the Breach of Demise, en route to Castle Town. She had decided it would be nice to reconnect with her old friend from home, who had taken a posting with a mercenary group based out of the capital following the heroics in Akkala. If their company had left the city for whatever reason, the woman was confident that the Sheikah sisters would be around. The younger would be pleased to gossip, she imagined. Luck was with her. The mercenaries had just returned from an assignment at Goponga Village, and the younger Sheikah was staying at the castle to pursue some research at the Royal Library. This trio managed to harass the elder Sheikah sister into joining them for a night on the town. The younger led them into a crowded bar off Central Square. She was visiting from the Royal Ancient Lab, she told them, which was basically in the middle of nowhere and staffed with tremendously boring old scientists. It was time, she said, sparkling with mischievous intent, to have fun. There was conversation and drink. The prim sister dismissed three men with her eyes before they managed to speak a word. Her Gerudo friend did the same, but loudly. Their reminiscence continued for some time, until the elder Sheikah rose saying she would have to leave and rest for her morning duties. The future Chief rose alongside her, saying she too had business to attend. The younger Sheikah complained the night was still young; the woman agreed. A pair of Hylians bought them drinks. The four made their way to the dancefloor, where a large crowd was moving to the beat of a Sheikah bard's music. He sang of beauty and desire. She danced with the Hylian who had given her his arm, letting herself feel the first spark of attraction. After they had danced, he brought her to his house in town, where she spent the night.
A few days later, the woman took leave of her friends and continued south. Hyrule was in beautiful summer. She made her way to Mabe Village and stayed with a farmer who opened his barns for travelers, offering a place to sleep and a plate at his family's table. The farmer's son tried to catch her eye. She turned him down and slept alone in the straw. He sold her a horse for a share of the earnings she had made in Eldin. Continuing south, she passed through the garrison hoping to catch one of her comrades from the Akkala tour, but found it occupied mostly with newer recruits. She pulled her horse up at the edge of Gatepost Town and found an inn. The woman suggested that the man behind the desk find her later.
She continued on her way the next morning. West past the Coliseum, then turning south across the bridges spanning the headwaters of the Regencia, and into the Gerudo Canyon. She breathed the air of home. She eased her horse along the dirt road, rounding the foot of Mount Nabooru and bending past the Koukot Plateau. Incredibly, a stranded Hylian stopped her and asked to buy her horse. Since she could not take the animal with her into the desert, she gladly accepted his offer, and set off on foot. Before long, the woman had reached the desert gateway, where she rested for the night near the quarry under the stars. In the morning, she entered the desert and made her way to the gate of her hometown. Her mother was waiting for her, as she hoped her old friends would be too.
Three months later she discovered she was pregnant.