The Entry With No Name

Waking of Saturday, April 22, 2017 ~ 6

The Entry With No Name

“They’re ALL DEAD ENDS??” I howled.

I sputtered, trying to think. What had I missed? WHERE WAS THE LAKE?

“No, there was still that other split,” said David, “Open your map.”

I did.

“Right here.” He pointed to some squiggle of map line north of where I was.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

(Actually it wasn’t until the next day (technically later that same day) that I realized he meant that first split: between the flow that followed the map line southward, and the flow that wandered off west between the tall cliffs.)

(I was very, very tired.)

I ran around. Somehow there was stable music. David might have steered me toward it. The Outskirt Stable. To think there were people living so close to that dread coliseum....

My head was full. I couldn’t take in anymore.

I met a guy named Trott. He was so exhausted.

Ha, me too, buddy.

He worked at the stable, but the stable meals he said were all vegetarian. He really needed some meat to help him feel better.

Gourmet Meat he asked for. Maybe we could share it he said. I think? Did he?

Did we even share it?

I don’t know.

But I did have one Gourmet Meat. The one and only Gourmet Meat I’d ever harvested. Fresh from the wolves of the Elma Knolls.

I handed it over.

I’ll just say we each ate half and felt like kings.

I like that story better. <3

Another of Staysi’s Rumor Mills was inside on a table. Volume three this time, and it spoke of the mystical creatures known as Koroks.

Hm.

That’s pretty neat.

I also spoke to a lady who stood under a nearby tree—was it raining at the time? She was liable to be struck by lightning if she wasn’t careful....

But she just clapped her hands and jumped for joy and said, “I knew the Hero of Legend would meet me under THIS TREE.”

Ever unassuming, I just gave her a bleary “What?”

“Oh,” she said, “Come to think of it, you do look a bit scrawny to be the Legendary Hero.”

Scrawny?

“And you don’t seem to have his legendary weapon, either....”

Aw geez would this broad just lay off, I was doing the best I knew how....

Another person at the stable told me about Satori Mountain, and the “Lord of the Mountain” that lived there. Hm, may have been Quince’s glowing beast....

Satori Mountain was that dun, conical mountain I had seen through my scope. The one with the occasional glow at its crest at night. I was quite close to it here at the Outskirt Stable.

And I could see there was a shrine up there, too....

Yet another person told me about some place nearby where I could find an elusive pure-white horse. He guessed it might have been descended from a horse that once belonged to the Royal Family.... and he asked me if I could bring it to him.

I agreed without even thinking.

People told me what was around. Hyrule Ridge. Rito Village? Was it here that someone mentioned a Rito Village?

Where even was I, that a Rito Village could be so close?

And what was Hyrule Ridge?

I didn’t retain any of the directions people gave me. Everything went in one ear and out the other.

I wanted to start back up the river, keep looking for Mei, trusting in David’s imagined split that I could still follow, but....

It was so late....

And I was so, so tired.

I had to think about tomorrow. I had to go to bed. I had to get up in five hours to get ready for church. The sun would be up soon anyway, oh gads....

I’d done three shrines along the way I think.... no towers, though.... But no matter, I just wanted to hurry....

But wouldn’t maps prove so useful?

“Hey what’s that? That tower down there?”

David kept taking the most transparent SUDDEN NOTICE of this tower on the plain that he wanted me to go climb.

He’d told me earlier that that one had been.... most intimidating.

Just scary.

Do I go back up the river? Or do I do the intimidating tower to get another map? Or do I climb Satori Mountain? Or do I chase a white horse?

All of Hyrule was my oyster.... I mean.... my shellblade....

But....

But I needed to sleep. I needed it....

I had to stop.

I had to stop.

I wandered back to the Outskirt Stable....

And booked a bunk.

And slept.

And in my dreams, the Princess’ voice came back to me again, warning me it was another Blood Moon, and I had to be careful....

Never slept through one of those before. Excluding the previous century of course.

And in my actual dreams, in my actual bed, I was fighting a lizalfos, and I killed it, and its awesome weapon and AWESOMER shield went tumbling down, waaaay far away from me, into this sunny little grassy dell beneath a tall grey cliff, where no fewer than FOUR Sheikah Shrines sat very close to each other amid the shallow pools of water at the bottom.

I had been hunting EVERYWHERE for that shield....

I ran down, rooting here and there to find it, batting away more lizalfos and caring nothing for activating the shrines—I WANTED THAT SHIELD.

“That shield is an army of swear words,” I grumbled in my sleep.