The traveller left, and Vaati allowed his facade of mysterious, all-knowing shopkeeper to drop. That was the thirteenth one this week asking for red potion, and he was quickly running out of it. Ruuya may have finally been hobbling around, and could brew a potion while sitting and arguing about pointless matters, but the point still stood: his stock still had yet to recover while that blasted woman kept his apprentice locked up in her house. The girl was steadying replenishing his stores, but his potion shop front was far more popular than he had anticipated.

He massaged his temples. The whole thing was entirely too troublesome. Perhaps hiring on an extra pair of hands to man the front of the store wouldn't be so bad. Maybe then he wouldn't be hounded every single day by incompetent people who didn't know a boulder from a Talus.

A hired hand would cut into his book funds, however. Vaati grimaced. He required the older ones as well, the ones with tattered and yellowed pages, and those cost a pretty rupee to acquire without resorting to more...lethal tactics. Unfortunately, taking such a route would drastically decrease his avenues of finding the rarer tomes.

The door creaked opened again, and Vaati immediately relaxed his shoulders, then intertwined his fingers and set his chin on top of them, every inch the bored but interested shopkeep. In walked a man who seemed to have visited the bar far more often than he should have going by his gut, and his eyes seemed to bore in on Vaati as he strode over to the counter and leaned on it slightly, a faint wisp of alcohol on his breath.

Vaati smiled. That should make this deal easily.

"Good morning, Gufuu," he greeted gruffly. "How's business?"

About as annoying as your imbecilic face. Vaati held back his first response, and instead raised a hand and moved it with a flourish. "It is going as well as expected," he said, sounding put out. "The shelves empty faster than I can fill them."

Inside, Vaati smiled. Ruuya's meager information gathering from the last meeting meant that he knew how to handle the handful of people who wanted to do business with him. Baza, the overweight proprietor of the Castle Town Bazaar, was a tad surly but intimidated by elderly women with a sharp tongue. He was otherwise a tough man, but nearly all business.

Nearly.

Apparently, the man couldn't stand to lose a contest, even if there wasn't one actively happening. He would make one on the spot, as if his pride would be harmed if he didn't.

Baza casually looked around the store, raising an eyebrow as he studied the merchandise. A few bottles of red sat on the shelf behind Vaati, and green just barely outbeat that number by two. Various elixirs half-filled the other labeled shelves, offering everything from heat protection to shielding from the icy cold winds that blew off the mountains.

The heavy set man nodded begrudgingly. "You've been busy. I'm surprised by how you've kept up with demand."

"It's a simple task, I assure you," said Vaati, grinning. He hadn't needed to lift a finger since Ruuya had freed herself from Alysse's clutches. Last he had heard, the hinges on that woman's front door were still broken after Ruuya had escaped. His guess was healer hayfever; desert Gerudo were just more susceptible to that particular ailment than most. "My potions and elixirs are second to none, and my skills more so. I find the demand is well warranted."

Baza grunted, briefing avoiding eye contact with Vaati. He glanced over the shelves again, as if appraising them. "I'm sure it is," he agreed. "I'm also sure that you'll have my order done by next week."

Vaati grinned broadly, not bothering to stifle a chuckle. "It could be done by tomorrow if you pay extra. I am personally seeing -"

Cree-BAM!

Vaati and Baza jerked their heads around at the door slamming against the wall. In the doorway was a cloaked figure, hunched over and gasping for breath.

"Vaati," she said, much to his chagrin. How dare she! Ruuya knew better than to use that name when outsiders were about. "Baby."

He lifted an eyebrow. "That's a most inappropriate way to address your lord," he replied, mind racing. "You may only call me by my family name, how-"

She grabbed him by the wrist, dragging him to his feet from across the counter. Vaati glared and bared his fangs at her briefly behind his arm. "No," she wheezed, "Birthing aloti."

"A lot of tea?" asked Baza.

"Children," Vaati clarified absentmindedly.

He looked at Baza in askance. The man frowned thoughtfully, then his eyes narrowed with suspicion, as though he suspected that Vaati and his apprentice weren't being completely honest, somehow. Well. Ruuya would just have to pay for this later. Still, Vaati could spot an opportunity when he saw it.

"Forgive the interruption," he said, placing a hand on Baza's back and a slender smile on his own face, "it seems the mayor's wife is giving birth."

"Ah...and they need tea?"

Vaati just shook his head. Perhaps Baza was truly more dimwitted then he thought. Ruuya had shrunk back against the wall, however, as though this whole conversation had made her weary, afraid. She should be, considering what the fool had done.

No, he thought, she's just concerned for her friend, though two red potions should be enough for even the most complicated birth. Women, Vaati decided, were indeed an odd lot.

"The shop is closed." With that, he ushered the merchant out the door.

Once the door snapped shut, Vaati whirled on Ruuya, finger pointed at her chest. "Do you have any idea what you have done?! You foolish girl, you have exposed us both!" The sorcerer snarled and closed the gap between them in two long strides. "I should cast you out for such insolence! Allow you to walk this wretched world alone and without my vast store of knowledge."

Ruuya shrunk further back against the wall, shaking slightly with fear. Then she stopped, her eyes wide like a frightened deer. Vaati bared his fangs, growling slightly.

"My saving grace," he hissed, "is that the damned fool didn't seem to recognize my name." He huffed, indignant. "Pure idiocy. How dare they forget me..."

He glanced at the walls as if they had ears. She, too, followed his gaze.

"...But someone else might recall when that lout spreads his news," he said. Slowly she nodded, it seemed the girl understood the lesson. Good, she wasn"-'t one to make the same mistake twice. "Go make yourself useful and fetch some towels, stamina potion, and two red potions. I need my cloak."

Vaati stomped away, blood boiling. An incompetent apprentice. Forgotten greatness. A secret exposed. A duty to abide by lest his village servants decide he was untrustworthy.

By the goddesses he hated children. Drooling, insistent things that never knew when to stop asking questions or digging into things they shouldn't.

By all rights - by all rights! - he should not have to do this...this ceremony! This farce! He hated that woman and wanted nothing to do with her. She could die the next day and he would sit at his fire and sip tea as on any other morning, but should he not at least offer a few potions, opinion of him might change.

He knew of how shifty and fluid those could be. Best to keep his minions happy and do this good deed.

And those Hylians. Their legends were many, some passed down for countless generations. He had poked at a few of them, hoping for some insight into his...issue or dangers to avoid in this new landscape. And yet, there had been no mention of himself. Oh, yes, there was the "lord of winds" from the Rito Tribe some three hundred years back, but that was then. His own terror stretched back even further than Ganondorf's menace, and should have been remembered for all time! He had nearly destroyed Hyrule, had taken its princess, and...and…

And…

He grabbed his cloak off the rack and his staff from where it leaned against the wall. It did nothing but give an appearance of age. Pah! How pathetic and easily led these Hylians were.

And... No. Vaati dismissed the thought. His memories were full of holes, and a tad faulty here and there on details, but he knew one thing that was unshakable: he was the King of Winds, a force of unimaginable destruction and cunning. The most powerful sorcerer ever to live! None would ever stand against him, not even as he was now. Especially as he would be in the future.

As much as he loathed to admit it, Vaati needed to keep his place secured among the villagers. Any ill comments or suspicion could turn any from one to a few to many against him. His progress was directly linked to how little or not they worshiped him. Free goods or occasional deals on books made his life substantially easier. Even gossip tended to aid him on keeping tabs of public opinion or if there were...problems he needed to tend to.

From deity to being reliant upon fragile mortals for a base of power. Truly, how far he had fallen.

His free hand rolled into a fist. Wisps of red wiggled and swirled and danced, but despite how hard he tried to concentrate and form even the most minute strain of air or smallest flame, nothing came. No, his power was restrained as ever, as useless as it had been a year before when he first woke. Vaati let off a vile oath, damning his curse.

That, unfortunately, didn't work either.

Vaati stormed through his store front, taking a moment to take the bulging bag from his apprentice's shaking hands. More than what he demanded. He undid the thin rope at the top and peered inside. A few more red potions than he wanted sat at the bottom and a few small vials of painkiller were tucked beside the stamina potions. Goddesses, were the desert girl's nerves so frayed over mere children? Even the most trying birth should only take a few of each not half-a-cauldron full.

He took out some of the extra potions, placed it on the counter, then retied the bag shut. "Make yourself useful while I'm gone," he reprimanded, "and get onto the last of that oaf's order before nightfall. I expect it to be perfect, otherwise I'll have you make it again, understand?"

Ruuya grabbed the potions, nimbly untied the bag again, then shoved them back inside before he could blink. "Only if you take everything." Her voice was oddly faint. Hollow. He didn't care. "Make sure she gets through this in one piece."

Vaati rolled his eyes at the childish insolence, but decided this wasn't a hill worth dying on. It wasn't as if he had to use it just because it was there. Damn women and their superstitions.

"Fine. Get to work then." He motioned for her to shoo, then turned on his heel, cape whirling majestically behind him. Footsteps retreated before he had even opened the door, and once outside, he gripped his staff in a manner which commanded respect and marched to that Alysse's house.

The girl was going to be shut inside the potions room for a month after this.

/-/

Ruuya was not one to make the same mistake twice. She had seen that look on the Hylian voe's face when she had slipped into her own tongue. He knew what she was. He would spread the tale, tell everyone, just as Vaati had said, they...they…

The Hylians would rout out this village she called home for harboring a desert Gerudo then burn it to the ground. She...no they were all in danger because she was here. Her friends and family and Vaati just didn't know it yet.

Cold dread succumbed to acceptance.

I have to go.

She wasn't sure how long it was since Vaati left, but that realization made Ruuya scramble for the spare guest room she had used months ago after she lost those toes to frostbite. She pushed both hands against the door to keep momentum, and practically collapsed to the floor beside the bed. There, she reached under and withdrew a bundle of blankets she had been gifted but had no real place to put them. Ruuya took the bundle apart, knowing which folds to pull and which to leave alone. After a frantic minute, she found a bit of leather, grabbed it, and yanked it out.

Her old travel bag, as worn and water damaged as the day she had found it after returning from that hole in the ground. It had gotten lost in the woods just beyond the ruins. She hefted it over her shoulder, and stood back up. She nabbed the tarnished ring from the bedside table, and the sheathed scimitars hanging on the wall. It took a minute, but she had the belt tight around her waist. Sitting on a rack right above where the swords had been was a spear, the words "apple pie" engraved on it.

She took it down and shrugged it into some sewn on loops in her belt. It was a fight and a half but it wouldn't fall out by mistake. Not after tying some loose strings around the shaft.

Ruuya swallowed. Her hands shook as she raced to the kitchen. There, she picked up one of the many bags they had for collecting herbs and mushrooms, and filled it with apples, cheeses, dried meats, and whatever else she could get her hands on.

She wasn't picky. But it was good to have supplies.

A list ran over and over again in her head. Weapons, secrets, food. Food was abundant. Food was last. Food could be hunted for if this wasn't enough.

Pulling the drawstrings shut, Ruuya shoved the bag under one arm, and readjusted her cloak, heading for the back door and slipping outside. Vaati would just have to find it in his black, dried up heart to forgive her. But Baza's order was less important than keeping the village safe.

The sun blinded her for a moment as she stepped outside, then she walked, sedately, normally towards the fields where horses grazed. Overt speed was suspicious. Walk like you were not on a mission. The less people who realized why she needed to go, the better.

Her heart hammered in her chest. Escape route first. Always first. Never engage without an out.

An agonizingly long walk finally ended with her by Jamilla's side. She took her friend and guided her to the woods. A routine hunt, no one thought her suspicious, though a few did wish her a good day.

Ruuya's gait was stilted. She couldn't kill the large voe. Windfall was friendly, of course. Windfall was bustling. Windfall was innocent. Her new friends, her new family did not deserve this stain. There were no safe places to hide and gut him, nor were there allies to lure him elsewhere and silence him.

She was a Gerudo. The only Gerudo in the whole damn village. She had no one who could help her in her quest. Maybe she never had.

Not like she needed them now.

It was better that she left these people. She should have done so months ago...to keep them safe from others and herself.

Steadily, she walked along with her mare, and when Windfall fell silent, when the buildings were blocked by trees, she climbed onto Jamila's back.

And ran away from those she loved.

A Gerudo didn't make the same mistake twice.

/-/

This was not the first time Vaati had had the misfortune of being present at the birth of a child, or children, in this case.

But by the gods, spirits, and all that was wicked, he prayed it would be the last. Holding two bundles of cloth and flesh in his arms, Vaati stepped out into the living room, his cape billowing in an awe-inspiring wave behind him. Helping that midwife with what had been perhaps the most bloody birth he had ever seen had worn him thin. He expected much praise for what he had done when he swooped through those doors like some Hero of Light out of a damned legend...

Instead, all he got was silence.

There, Bazz sat on the couch with Nan asleep beside him, resting her head on his arm, and Joshua, far heavier than Vaati last recalled, paced back and forth along the floor, wobbling upon each turn. None of the room's occupants noticed him.

Vaati coughed.

"Vaa...Vaati!" Joshua began clearly breathing hard, Vaati furrowed his brow at the mayor's hubris. How dare he-but the man ignored him again, prattling on without even noticing the mage's angry expression. Instead, he gripped Vaat''s shoulders, somehow both gently and firmly at the same time. "Is Alysse...are they...is everyone…"

"Lord Joshua," Bazz, not rising, said in a calm yet tired voice, "I believe your children are fine. His Eminence has brought them with him."

He nodded, letting go. "And Alysse?"

"Asleep," the midwife said, poking her greying head outside the birthing room. "She will be fine after-"

Joshua rushed past him, ignoring both the children and Vaati himself, the great and noble man who had made this hour possible. The Wind Mage huffed.

"What are their names?" the captain asked, relieving Vaati of one of the children. The little boy with a tuft of red hair. The softest sprinkle of water magic flowed from the Zora as the babe started to stir, soothing the child once more. "Or…"

"They," he said, gesturing tirely with his free hand towards the couple in the next room, "haven't gotten any yet. Alysse thought that she would speak with her husband first. Though, obviously, the boy will be named for me. Vaatimar is a handsome name for a hero." Vaati bit back the instinctive scowl and vitriol. A hero? Named after him? What a joke!

"That's an awful name," Nan said, apparently now awake. She followed Bazz's lead and took the other babe from his arms. Finally, Vaati let his shoulders droop, arms falling to the side. Her niece let out a little cry which gave Vaati a spark of pleasure, easing his exhaustion momentarily. "Where's Ruuya? Didn't... didn't she come with you?"

Don't you have more to be concerned about than that stupid, useless Gerudo? But Vaati held his tongue, instead, shrugging tiredly. "She's doing her job."

"Wait," Nan said, coolly. "You made her stir potions while maa was giving birth?"

"It's her job." He let off another shrug. "She, at least, is responsible."

"How cruel!" With that, she thrust the child back upon him, the girl crying as soon as he took hold once more. Gods. This one was his least favorite already...Vaatimar was certainly the best of the family, as far as he was concerned. "I'm going to fetch her. When I get back, you better apologize or I'll…"

She was out the door and on her way before he heard her next threat. After calming the child in his arms, he looked up at the Zora. "Today's youth, eh?" he said with a dry chuckle. Even the Zora was a child compared to him. "Not grateful for help in their time of trouble."

"My Lord, perhaps it might not be wise to give such a...heartless opinion," Bazz replied. "If you don't mind me saying."

"I do mind, captain."

The Zora did not flinch the slightest at his words. Politeness did not mean cowardice, at least not here.

"Not one of you gave praise. Or more correctly, worship. Anything. I deserved it all for what I just did."

Bazz sighed. "They were worried. Joshua thought he would lose them all tonight."

Vaati ignored him. "I was in there for hours. It's night. And not one measly thanks?"

Silence. Followed by a deep breath. "Empathy is an important trait for a leader to have your lordship," Bazz replied. "I understand, an immortal like yourself might find it difficult to grasp, but when you nearly lose someone you have come to love...or, at the very least, care for, then you might comprehend it."

He gave the other child back to the Wind Mage, who glared up at the Zora in anger and disgust.

"Put them where the midwife tells you, I'm afraid I must bid you goodnight and see what is keeping young Nan."

The Zora left without even a bow, making the mage even more chagrined. How dare they…! How dare they leave him and make him take… He was the lord, not they!

Then Vaatimar coed and Vaati relented, laying the twins down to sleep as the sun peeked over the horizon. With the swift arrival of dawn, news came. Nan had searched everywhere in the village for Ruuya. The other guards had soon joined her on the Captain's orders.

But Ruuya was gone. They could not find her. His heart skipped a beat. Damn that fool. It marked a strange bundle of feelings… of worry, fear. Even some concern.

How would he keep his treasured secrets safe without her?

Kandragon: Vaati has realized that Nan is not actually Alysse's daughter. This fact gives him great pleasure, given his love of pity evils.

Also, Vaati does deserve a thanks, that was unfair, but...yeah. People are like that sometimes.