Another Storm

Waking of Sunday, June 25, 2017 ~ 2

Another Storm

Vah Naboris was so far away now....

The desert below was vast.

Still I clung to the bottom of the frost line, high on the mountain range.

David was absolutely boggled why I didn’t just go to that place out in the desert, the one with the shrine right next to it.

But I didn’t want to.... not yet.... I felt more drawn.... to the Volcano. The breadcrumbs seemed to pull me there.

These Gerudo Highlands? This was just a lark, this was exploring....

Mmmm this was not the determined Hero I thought I’d be playing....

Sometimes I wonder if it’s because I let myself slip from being the farthest along in the game. I know it’s not a race, but.... there’s something in that, I think....

Hm.

I ventured into the freezing snow to solve a magnetic Korok puzzle. I climbed up the back of a Talus to show David how it’s done. I didn’t even know how many Talus kills that was for me. Felt like a boss.

Creeping shrinelight shone from the desert floor far below, looming out of a gigantic ribcage lost in a cloud of sand.

“Why don’t you go get that one?”

“You mean that shrine that got eaten by some giant thing?”

No, David, I wouldn’t even go get that one—

A sandstorm blustered up out of nowhere and obliterated the world. Everything was lost in a greenbeige haze.

The map in my HUD went static.

“What?”

David groaned a knowing groan.

“Have you seen this?” I asked him.

He had.

I opened up my Sheikah Slate.

Static. Blue-on-black static.

Nothing. It was nonfunctional.

I put it away.

I couldn’t see anything. Only the ground for a few yards around me.

I pressed on, forward into the raging din, but then—

That soft little xylo-cowbell tap, that chime that means No.

And

You can’t go any farther.

Words at the bottom of my screen.

“Nooo!” I howled, running against the press of nothing, feet not going anywhere.

I paused and—if my map was malfunctioning, how did I place that stamp?

I marked the spot with a Star.

And with nowhere else to go.... I headed down the mountain.... and with a new spot of ground to stand on veered hard into the west once more!

And once more I could not move any farther.

And I marked that spot with a Star.

One more drop in elevation, another press against the edge, another Star....

Could I even see these stamps on my static map?

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. Everything was gone. Storks flew away into the howling wind. Wolves loomed out of the airborne murk. My Great Thunderblade became my flashlight.

I came to a rock ledge overlooking the desert I could not see.

“I’m at the edge of the universe,” I said.

There was nowhere left to go but back counterclockwise around the mountain. I had to jog quite far before the sandstorm let up and the air cleared enough for me to see.

My Sheikah Slate came back to life and I looked at the stamps I had placed.

They formed a perfectly vertical line near the western edge of my map.

“You should do what I did,” said David, “I just went to my map, scrolled aaaall the way down to the bottom-left corner, and put a marker, then I unpaused to see where it was!”

Ugh! “Nooo!” What a ghastly thought!

So that was the end. I couldn’t circumnavigate the Gerudo Highlands after all. The highest, westernmost plateau continued off into spaces and areas over which I could not pan.

And I felt a little sadness again . . . . but not like before.

Before, when I saw the sea, there was something more awful there. Woeful. An empty isolation.

But here on the sandblasted mountainside.... something inside me joyed to know that....

The land went on.

I don’t know, I just....

I liked that thought.

There was a kind of dread finality when the border was the sea, but when you can see the land goes on?

There’s something hopeful there.

When more is left to the imagination.

I went back round the mountain. I found more Koroks here and there. I saw the lower entrance to that Satan Canyon with all the frogs.

I paraglided to the other side of it—boggling David further still as to why I did not just go down and explore the sandy desert floor.

I did take a look at a couple of treasure chests down there. One of them was Magnesable, but the other....

“Maybe you’re not close enough,” said David.

“Oh, I’m close enough,” I said, and it was my turn to have a knowing groan in my voice.

David was confused. “What, are there things that disguise themselves to look like treasure chests?”

I only narrowed my eyes as I regarded the chest on the screen. Oh I’d love to see his first encounter with one of those....

I climbed further up the rocks, still counterclockwise back around the mountain, and found some amazing ruins haunted by three Lizalfos and an Ice Wizzrobe. I bombed the Wizzrobe from a nearby cliff, and killed the Lizalfos up close; looting the place turned over a bunch of SWEET bows, man. I left a bow stamp there for later.

A hop, skip and a jump further around the mountain and all at once the screen flicked to an interrupted connection message from my WiiU.

My controller had run out of batteries.

Well.... it was just as well. It was getting pretty late, and I had to pack anyway.

I set the controller in its cradle and set to filling my suitcase....

I’d never run my battery completely dry before. I checked in every few minutes until there was enough juice to at least put Link safe in the pause screen for a while. And there he sat while I went through my packing list.

And by the time I was done.... I really should have just gone to bed. But instead I justified myself in playing just a little bit more by reasoning that after all that packing, I really deserved a little cool-down time....

But I played much like I got ready for the family reunion: with much procrastinatory wandering.

I only wended my way back toward the Gerudo Tower, exploring some of the lower reaches of that spiral path around the Tower hole—I really think there must not be a floor there—finally just warped back up to the Tower platform, saved.... quit.... and went to bed.

I got a good twenty minutes before my alarm went off.