Chapter Twenty-Six:
Strange Visitors

Malon

Malon set down the wooden bucket, straightening up, she stretched her back and arms into the air. She then glanced around the barn as the horses came up to their troughs, munching on the new helping of oats and hay. A satisfied smile pulled at her lips. She didn't have time to stand around and smile though. Yet her thoughts were interrupted then by an unfamiliar voice she heard outside. The closer she listened, the more it sounded like multiple voices too.

Not keen on Ingo's quick handback, Malon didn't dare to wander out in the open out of curiosity. Instead she went up to the wall of the barn closest to them. From what little she could spy through the gaps of the boards, they were a Gerudo group again. Their hair, though different shades, was red. Though one looked so pale of skin, it was nearly white—but that had to be their clothing, right? There was the crunch of several feets on the ground before she heard an unexpectedly masculine voice greet Ingo.

"Greetings, sir," said the warm voice. "We're a group of weary travelers just looking for room and—"

"Room and board, right," grunted Ingo's voice, nearing a flat tone. There was a longer than usual pause.

Malon was still trying to understand what she was hearing too. The only male Gerudo was Ganondorf, or so she had been told. The Gerudo King was older than the current voice suggested though. She knew about people who were born with the wrong parts, but it seemed like the Gerudo were different maybe? Or so it had always seemed, with how definite it was that only one male was born every hundred years. Everyone said it. It was hard to forget when that particular male had changed everything years ago.

Ingo's voice disrupted her thoughts. "Well, this isn't an inn, so you all will have to make due with one room, understood?"

"That's no problem. One room would be appreciated."

"Hm," Ingo grumbled. "Follow me then."

There was the crunch of foot steps again as they headed up to the main house. Malon blinked

and frowned at the wooden boards of the stables. She wanted a better look at these new strangers. Gerudos were no news, but a male Gerudo that wasn't Ganondorf …

She waited until she saw Ingo slinking away from the house, grumbling something foul under his breath, no doubt. Then she dared to leave the stables and dart across the grounds to the main house. She slipped inside and made sure to close the door softly. She tip-toed up the stairs and then approached the door to the room reserved for guests. She avoided the floor board that always creaked before listening in through the door on the new visitors.

"I didn't recognize him." This voice was more feminine, and there was a rustling of bags as the Gerudo seemed to be rearranging their things.

"You not knowing a Hylian? That's a new one." The snarky retort was another male voice, but different from the first one. There was a slightly more feminine lit to it, as if it had never dropped.

"Shut up," the feminine voice retorted, annoyance biting into her tone. "Lon Lon Ranch belongs to Talon and Malon Romani. I didn't see either." There was a sigh. "Though Talon could be off somewhere sleeping, and Malon could be covering his workload. Again."

Malon felt her heart sink, like it usually did when she didn't have something to occupy herself with. She missed her lazy lunk. She'd take that any day compared to now. She almost felt guilty for being mad at her father so often before.

"Well," began the masculine voice Malon first heard. "I heard it might have changed ownership…"

"Shit." The woman swore and the floorboards inside the room began to creak as someone began to move around.

The door opened without warning. A boy near her age stood above her with black eyes and a blank expression that was impossible to read under his strange straw and bundles-of-leaves hat. Malon gasped, falling back on her butt.

The boy still said nothing as he stared down at her. She swallowed before she choked out, "Um, hi."

That's when a familiar face popped up from behind him. A Gerudo woman who used to spend time chatting with her in Castle Town, before it fell. Upon locking eyes with her, bronze eyes widened and a smile crept across her face.

"Malon!"

She seemed to start moving before she was suddenly yanked back by another boy, this one also Gerudo.

"What did we tell you about just hugging random Hylians you know!" he snapped.

"Farah?" Malon asked back hesitantly. It seemed like another life ago when she last saw the Gerudo woman.

The boy finally stepped back and saw deeper into the room and the people there. The boy and a couple other ones weren't Gerudos. One was even another familiar face. She was about to say his name too, but the third one became more distracting the more she looked at him.

He was the one so pale she thought he was wearing a white tunic before. His hair was red like hers, but his eyes were bronze like a Gerudo's as was his style of clothing. More alarming was that his hands weren't right. Malon felt herself freezing as her blue eyes followed his fingers as they darkened into an unnaturally long and intimidating point. He merely noted the look, flexing his dagger-like fingertips with a slow, almost apologetic demeanor.

At least she hadn't screamed.

Rather than approaching with the rest of the group, the strange one remained near the doorway with all the presence of a living nightmare—and the coquettish air of a child uncertainty peering around a doorframe. After letting his unfocused, bronze gaze settle on the girl for a moment, he tilted his head and let his attention flitter back to the first Gerudo.

"Can we not have everyone just stand in the door and talk?" This time it was a different boy, notably Hylian in appearance. His long pale-blonde was tied back in a messy ponytail, and he seemed to be inspecting a jacket covered in blood. Judging his pale face, he clearly wasn't feeling well either.

Oddly enough there was an owl sitting by his side on the bed, watching Malon with a curious expression as well.

"Right, right, come in Malon," Farah said, brushing off the boy who had pulled her back and waltzed over to her, helping her to her feet. "It's okay. They're good guys. Plus, it would be good to talk to another girl. I'm out numbered here."

The owl hooted in seemingly protest.

"I said another," Farah tutted, as if talking to the owl was the most normal thing in the world.

Malon struggled to remove her blue eyes from the one with the inhuman hands as well as to really process the words spoken around her. The boy in the leafy hat stepped forward and offered her a hand. Slowly, she took it and lifted herself to her feet. He guided her inside the room and closed the door.

"Introductions are probably in order," Farah said, sitting on the edge of the bed next to the Hylian boy, who upon closer inspection, looked incredibly pale with dark circles under his eyes, as if he would keel over at any moment.

"This one is Ventus," she said, gesturing to the boy next to her before moving her hand to point to the owl. "And this is Ceres."

Gesturing to the boy who just led her in, Farah continued. "That there is North, and—" gesturing to the unsettling creature. "Eiji. The pretty one next to him is Ba'al and the one with the attitude is Jamal."

The unwell Hylian boy did look familiar and so was that name, Ceres. Ceres Agni was a baker in Castle Town. She liked to buy her buns when she and Father were in town selling milk. The boy was Ceres' son. But, obviously, Ceres couldn't have turned into an owl so … Malon felt her heart sink a little more, but a lot of people had died during the invasion. It wasn't really that surprising anymore.

Malon, finally free of staring at the strange one's hands, did her best to avoid looking at him again. Even as he was introduced. Somehow she was reminded of another Hylian boy she once knew, though he looked nothing like him.

She finally got to gaze more directly at the other Gerudos with them. The "pretty one" was the most overtly masculine of the pair. He clearly did not have breasts. Though the other Gerudo called Jamal was more slight of build, it was harder to really tell. She had never seen Gerudos like them before. The Hylian boy with black eyes and leafy hat looked as if he had been hiding out in the woods, which wasn't a bad idea with how things were in Hyrule lately.

Malon paused and then finally said in a small voice, "Hello."

"You don't need to stand there like a fucking log. Farah said this is your place, make yourself comfortable," Jamal said, pretty much plopping into a nearby corner. "Also I don't suppose you have any healing potions, though at this point sedatives will also be very welcome."

"I can hear you," Ventus shot back, wincing slightly as he moved to glare at Jamal.

"You may think horse sedatives will be too much, but I assure you, they will not be," Jamal continued, obviously ignoring Ventus.

Eiji smiled neatly behind his lips, ever mindful of his mouth full of pointed teeth and ducked his head almost sheepishly. Jamal's comment was too accurate; after all, Eiji had been the one to keep Ventus silent for the majority of the trip thus far.

Despite Jamal's words, Malon remained standing with the door to her back. Her place, he said. Not really. Not anymore. She shook her head at his question. "Ingo has all those things, if we have them."

"Who is Ingo?" Farah asked as Ceres fluttered over and landed on Malon's shoulder, nuzzling her as if seeming to understand the unsaid words. "What happened here, Malon?"

Malon flinched a little as the owl flew at her, but it landed surprisingly lightly on her shoulder. Everyone always said owls were signs of death, though, so she wasn't sure she was comforted by that either.

She looked away at Farah's question. It made sense that not everyone knew what happened. Not that she'd know either, she had been stuck at the ranch all this time. She listened in on travelers and customers passing through to have any idea of what was still happening outside the ranch. There hadn't really been the opportunity for someone to ask her that question anyway. She didn't really know how to say it. "Ganondorf came years ago … He said the ranch and everything in it should belong to Ingo. So he gave it to him, and Ingo… kicked my dad out."

"What?!" The loud exclamation was from both Farah and Ventus at the same time.

Ventus began to move out of bed as he growled, "If Ganondorf thinks he can think he can get away with this—"

Eiji's wan smile died still concealed behind his lips, head raising to focus on the shift in the conversation. The aberration merely cast his bronze eyes to Ba'al briefly.

"...a feif." Eiji's tone was threadbare but even as he spoke. "...it is called a fief. When a thing is granted to a loyalist as reward…in times of war."

Malon looked down at her feet. Ba'al had raised up to settle Ventus back down on the bed, and he busied himself with that as his face tightened for a moment.

"Fiefs have a sphere of influence," Farah said as if reciting something, the light in her eyes going unusually dark and staring into the distance as if she were looking at something else. "There needs to be a fee, typically in allegiance, services or payments. They can be hereditary, but I doubt this would be the case in this instance. In order to break the fief and return control to the Romani family, we would need to find a way for Ingo to break it. Simply removing him would result in unwanted attention and retribution."

Eiji offered little more than a somber nod at Farah's explanation. "Only the King can revoke it." There was a cryptic, but sorrowful finality to the chimera's words. "...should Ingo falter…he will be replaced."

The Gerudo woman blinked and pressed her lips together.

"This also means you are, for a lack of better words, a prisoner of war?" It was posed as a question, but it seemed Farah knew the answer already.

Eiji tilted his head doggedly at Farah, bronze eyes holding more intensity than his usual thousand-yard-stare.

Malon kept her stare down, studying her dirty boots and the flecks of horse manure stuck to them. Prisoner of war. That was right, she supposed. But it was like the strange one said, it didn't matter if Ingo was kicked out because of a broken agreement. Ganondorf would just pick someone new, and she would still be here. He would never give it back to her father.

Jamal sighed dramatically, breaking the tension slightly that had been building up in the room.

"Okay, to beat Farah to it, you want to come with us?" he asked, rolling his eyes. "We'll figure something out. Fake your death maybe. Have a ghost haunt Ingo's dreams or some shit. Figuring out this fief shit in the middle of a war ain't the smartest, but least we can do is help you. What's one more Hylian?"

Malon looked up, shocked at the question. They would take her with them?

"Th-thank you, but I can't do that," she said. Her expression settled but in a more determined if not stubborn manner. She could have run away from here long before now. It wasn't hard to get around Ingo when she wanted to for the most part. "The horses need me."

She didn't really expect them to get it, but she couldn't leave them behind. It was true her father was a lazy drunk most of the time, so it had been Ingo's and hers work that kept the place running. But she couldn't leave them to Ingo. He didn't treat the horses right. He whipped them.

"Then let's just take the horses with us too," Ventus said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Jamal just snorted at that.

"Idiot, horses are creatures that need a lot of care and attention. Plus, while I'm sure the agriculture around here is a huge draw, having well-trained horses is incredibly important for Gerudo. There is a lot of agricultural land in Hyrule, but I'm sure it was the horses which drew Ganondorf's attention. Just spiriting away the whole lot of them is going to get unnecessary attention," he explained. "I wouldn't be surprised if that also makes the kid here incredibly important. Horse training ain't easy."

The unsettling one offered another sober nod at Jamal's explanation. Still, Eiji found his gaze wandering from the spirited young Gerudo and back to Ba'al.

Malon found herself smiling though. "Still, thanks for asking … What brings you all here anyway? I've… I've never really seen Hylians and Gerudo traveling together like you are."

The Hylians traveled with Gerudos as slaves mostly or prisoners of some kind.

"Well, certain dumbasses—" Jamal gave a pointed look at Ventus before continuing, "got injured pretty badly and have refused to rest and heal. We ran into them recently, and you know Farah, so she pretty much decided to adopt these two on the spot. Problem is, it's a nasty wound and while we can find plants to help with the pain, it looks like we might need something stronger."

"With Lon Lon Ranch being a central hub for trade and nearby, we were hoping we could get something," Farah added, ignoring Ventus' protests he was fine as if this was common for him. "The bed at the very least is helpful as opposed to camping out. Though if there isn't anything here, we might need to go to Kakariko."

"Oh, yes, let's go to Kakariko," Jamal snarked. "Three Gerudo, Eiji and two Hylians—one of which is injured. That'll go over well."

"Well, let's see if Ventus improves with some actual rest first," said Ba'al. "If he does then we won't need to worry about running off somewhere."

"Speaking of running off, how about rope? Do you have rope? We might need to tie him down. He has a tendency to not rest," Jamal added.

"I'm fine!" Ventus protested hotly, though even the owl gave a hoot which sounded suspiciously like a sound of disapproval. Jamal just gestured to him as if to say, 'See what we've been having to deal with?'

Eiji's attention drifted from Ba'al to Ventus as the boy began his loud protest. There was no threat in his hazy bronze eyes, just offering enough focus to serve as a reminder that should rope be in short supply, he could be called upon to quiet him.

The strange one drew in a deep, forced breath that rattled audibly through his usually quiet lungs—drawing in the scent that lay on the air between himself and Ventus. The tips of ivory-sharp teeth showed as he opened his mouth enough to let the air wash over his palette, a brief display of what he took pains to carefully conceal behind his lips.

"I'll watch him," said Ba'al, glancing at Eiji but carelessly as to not draw any attention to his strange behavior.

"I'm sure you will," Jamal said with faux innocence before turning his attention back to Malon. "In the meantime, feel free to come up here if you need an escape. I'm sure you've probably overheard a lot of gossip; knowing what you've overheard will really be helpful."

"We'll trade for it, of course," Farah added. "I'm assuming any rupees you gather need to be given over, so we'll figure out some sort of system so you can keep what we give you."

"Um, okay …" said Malon slowly. She hadn't really been paid for anything for a while. She shuffled backward, instinctively unwilling to show her back to Eiji. "Bye then …"

She slipped out through the door and closed it quickly behind herself. She crept back the way she came before letting her breath out. She hadn't realized she had been holding it. She had to get back to cleaning the stables before Ingo noticed her absence. At least cleaning allowed her time to think about what just happened.