Evening of Friday, January 5, 2018 ~ 2
I bought all the arrows from that
donkey-pulling merchant at the Gerudo Canyon Stable.
The
sun was sinking. I had to hurry.
Calisa was nowhere to be seen. But
there was another Gerudo—Lukan—whom I had seen by the stable before. Lukan was
a soldier who posed as a merchant, in order to keep a better eye out for
bandits from the Yiga Clan.
I thought about walking out with her for.... another attempt at the
desert, but....
That life had already been lived.
And
yet how I still pressed to repeat even a nighttime journey just the same.
I turned my back on the stable, and
set my face toward the end of the canyon and the beginning of the sand....
Three Stalmoblins clawed up out of
the earth.
Dang
it.
This
wasn’t how it was supposed to go—
I dashed to isolate one of them,
cutting him down quickly and dispatching the head—
But there was another voice behind
me.
I turned to take on the second
monster—and saw Lukan engaged with
the third!
She was a soldier after all.
The manied hands made.... such light work.
And Lukan gave me a warming dish as
thanks for the team effort!
Maybe
I’ll walk out with Lukan after all, I thought, picking up the monster bits
that had rolled back toward the stable.
And so it was Lukan’s company I
kept as I walked once again into the icy, starlit desert.
It seemed Calisa did want to come
along after all, though; for after a time I noticed she and some other merchant
had started out from the canyon some distance behind us.
Well,
the more the merrier.
Lukan advised me on the dangers of
the desert as we traveled: “There are sandstorms so thick out there you can’t
tell vai from voe.”
Vai,
huh? Must be their word for female....
It was six in the morning when we
came close to the bazaar, and Vah Naboris rumbled and roared.
The sandstorm was greenish, lighter
with the dawn, and not the same. Not as
good.
Not the blue pre-dawn dimness that
was light enough to the eyes, dark enough to the heart, and far enough that it
might have held the vast emptiness of space. The color of desolation.
But I took it.
And Ripp the guard told me all
about the Divine Beast once more.
....
Nine o’clock.
....
Why
is it so difficult?
I
wish I could forget, but I have to remember....
Zelda ran panting over the desert
sand. Ran for her life. Head, neck, and arms pumping momentum over exhausted
legs. Tired, desperate, ragged gasps punctuated by the jarring of terrified
vocal chords as she turned and turned again and turned again to see behind her.
A Yiga Clansman. Red and lithe. The
vision of speed. Low and streamlined as a cat.
His scythe was drawn.
She ran.
In all the desert so open and vast,
the one jutting hill of beige stone approaching fast on her left—
Two more Yiga leapt out from behind
it to bar her way. Scythes—
Of
course they planned it that way.
She had not wherewith to fight.
She could not turn left or right,
only back and forth in snapping glances as they closed in, the chaser stepping
now; his run was over. And in the whirling panic to measure and shrink from the
press at every side she stumbled to the ground. On palms and rump, heels and
elbows she shuffled herself backward, away from the chaser, shaking as he
neared.
And the chaser stepped his last
step and raised his scythe above his head against the dusty sky and they meant to kill and it was happening
too fast and there was no hesitation and his arm reached its apex and came
rushing down.
Metal
clashed and sparked against metal—the scythe flew up into the air.
One
stroke.
Zelda turned with a gasp.
But Link wasn’t looking at her—his
sword was still outstretched from the parry as he stared the other two down.
Behind them both, the chaser’s
limbs folded and he fell on his side, limp, and dead.
The other two Yiga stepped back
uncertainly....
Link didn’t flinch. And Zelda only
looked at his face: steady, and hard, the gaze unreturned for it was busy, as
her breath came back to her.
I think.... that this is the first
time I have ever felt . . . . heartless, for the rapier precision I commit by
my words.
What is this log doing to me?
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