Zora's Domain Again

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017 ~ 14

Zora’s Domain Again

I coalesced into myself near the gates of Zora’s Domain.

Rivan was the first person I saw.

He marveled to me at the clearness of the sky.

I felt different.

I walked inward, passing familiar faces, Fronk, Trello, Laflat....

I showed Laflat the pictograph I had taken of the charging Lynel, and she made a rather undignified squeak at the sight of it. But she was grateful to see it; it would help her scare the young Zoras from going near the mountain.

Scare away, Laflat. The terror of that thing was completely justified.

In return for my high-stakes pictography, she gave me a pair of Zora Greaves. She said they used to be very common—Zoras had gifted them to visiting Hylians after the Hylians had collaborated with the Zoras to construct the Eastern Reservoir wall. Now, however, you didn’t see them all that much, because Hylians didn’t visit so often anymore. The very pair she had given me was the last one in the stock room before her father had to close down their armor shop.

Well, I could certainly look the part now, couldn’t I?

But I didn’t don them just yet. It felt.... a little presumptuous, on my way to see the King once again.

Back in the throne room before King Dorephan. Sidon and Muzu were there, too, as were many of the Zoras I had met. A small throng of blues and greens and reds and blacks—I could pick out a few individuals....

There followed from the King some pomp and circumstance, but.... beneath all that, I think what struck me as perhaps the heaviest honor—or perhaps the most dearly bought by its bestower—was Muzu, repentant. He hoped, he said, that I would be able to forgive him for his words to me before, if not now, then some day.

Many of the elders I passed on my way back into the Domain still resented me for stealing away their princess. And I don’t suppose I can blame them, trying to see it from their side. But.... Muzu’s olive branch was a gracious and most welcome gesture.

The King awarded me with a treasure that had belonged to Lady Mipha—the Lightscale Trident—which reminded him....

“Where is your trusty sword, Link? The one with the power to seal away the darkness?”

I looked at him. “What sword?” I said.

“...So you have forgotten that as well,” he replied mysteriously, his eyes shrewd. He assured me that it was a weapon only I could wield, and that it was no doubt only resting somewhere in Hyrule, waiting for its master’s return.

The King lauded me a little further until the meeting finally dissolved into the cheers and shouts of gratitude and relief from the attending Zoras....

I spoke again with the King after everyone had left, and he asked after his daughter. After all, she had not returned with me. So the King had held out some hope yet....

“I met her spirit,” I told him after a moment.

He leaned forward all at once toward me again—that one his size could move so....

“Her spirit, you say? Did she say anything?” he asked.

And I told him.

“I see...” he said, “so she really is....”

What could I say?

What do you say to a father?

“She really loved you, Link,” he said to me. And he asked me to promise to him that I would remember her always.

“I’ll never forget her,” I said.

Mystical Shishkabob

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017 ~ 3

Mystical Shishkabob

I sometimes wonder what people must think when I use the Sheikah Slate to Travel. Disappearing in a ribbony blue glow right before their eyes.... I hope poor Muzu didn’t have a heart attack.

I came down at the shrine above Kakariko and headed into Cotera’s forest. One of those little rabbit-spirits was running around—I’d heard that anyone with the skill to hit one with an arrow would find a nice surprise.... Oh but they’d seemed so cute and sweet, I thought, even as I nocked my arrow and took aim....

It squeaked when the arrow connected, and ran off through the grass. But at the spot where it had been hit, that spot of ground.... there were rupees! Thirty of them I think! One red and two blues, yes....

Well!

Perhaps I oughtn’t to be so shy of hunting them in the future!

It’s always pleasant to visit Cotera. Her woods are full of useful herbs and there are plenty of fairies to catch—though I didn’t see any this time.... Maybe they were all already in my pocket—if one of them heals me.... does it return home to Cotera’s spring? ....I’ll have to look....

She did her thing and used a few spare Lizalfos horns I had to enhance my new Zora Armor, upping its defense for me a bit.

It seemed a pretty special garment; I hoped Mipha wouldn’t mind the alteration to her handiwork. It was for the sake of keeping me better protected. I’m sure she would have understood.

Hundred-Year-Old Memory

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017 ~ 2

Hundred-Year-Old Memory

I donned my new Zora Armor, and went downstairs to find Sidon and Muzu by the statue of Lady Mipha.

The Prince seemed a little hot-headed about something, seemed to be holding something in.... and it was in the pattering rain, with narrowed eyes that he finally said it plain to Muzu’s face:

I, Link, was the one Lady Mipha had loved.

I reeled.

I didn’t move, but I reeled.

What? Me? How? But—

“I didn’t know it at the time of course, being only a child,” the Prince went on, “But for years after her death I had always heard the tales from my father about my sister’s undying love for a Hylian named Link—”

“Until you can show me one shred of proof—!” Muzu contended.

I felt.... so guilty then as I looked up into her face in the statue.... staring, staring.... I gasped—

A sunny time in the Reservoir when Vah Ruta was quiet, and Mipha and I sat atop the very tip of its trunk raised high in the air—so tiny on its bronzy, gargantuan form....

Just talk. Just talk as she moved her hand over my arm, the pulsing blue-white glow from her palm swaying gently over the deep gashes in my flesh.

And she was reminded of when I was just a reckless child, and she was always willing to heal my wounds, and how I looked grown-up so fast....

And maybe if Calamity Ganon did come back, and we could seal him away.... maybe things could go back to the way they used to, she said, and maybe.... maybe we could spend some time together—

“You’re shivering like a hatchling, what’s wrong with you?” Muzu spat.

“Mipha.... I remember,” I said.

“Oh don’t tell me you remember her now, when it’s most convenient.”

“Don’t you get it yet, Muzu?” the Prince interjected. “The proof is right in front of you. Look at him.”

It slowly dawned on both Muzu and myself that.... the Zora Armor crafted by Lady Mipha.... fitted my body perfectly.

My human body.

She had made it for me.

Muzu quieted.

If this was really the one Lady Mipha had loved....

He told me there was a great monster, on Ploymus Mountain—a Lynel.

Oh dear.

Prince Sidon gasped. “It’s a man-beast!” he shouted.

Muzu told me it had the Shock Arrows. They could be found high on Ploymus Mountain. I could collect them there. They were scattered all over.

But, he confided to me there was a chance I might not survive.

But I had to help the Prince. And retake the Divine Beast as last instructed by Princess Zelda through Impa.

And.... for Mipha’s sake.... I had to do something.

Sidon flashed his winning grin and called me to the plan—he would head for the Eastern Reservoir, where Vah Ruta was, and I could use the Zora Armor to take the shortcut up Mikau and Lulu Lakes to the high meadows of Ploymus Mountain—and after I got the Shock Arrows—at least twenty of them, Muzu suggested—we could meet up at the piers on top of the Eastern Reservoir.

Right now? I thought. I felt like I’d just lived a hundred years.

I had lived a hundred years.

And by the way who was he to address me as Young One when we first met when I may very well have been his same age or even older—

That grin.

He’s a good leader, Sidon is.

“I’m in. Let’s do this!” I chose the bold response.

I just needed to take a couple of detours first....

Lord of the Zoras

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017

Lord of the Zoras

Well, it was time to follow Sidon, and go and speak with the Zora King.

I found him in the high throne room.

He was massive. Royal blue body and back, pale moon-white front and face, and a bulging lobe like a beluga’s with a lighter-colored slash across the front—the mark of his battle with the Guardian. Jeweled silver armor and regalia spilled over his great, pleated barrel chest, and his trailing head-fin—longer than many trees I had ever seen—had been pushed to hang down his left side. Towering, towering above me, he sat proud and tall between his son Prince Sidon on his left, and a bent old green-skinned, ray-headed Zora on his right.

He recognized me too. And he said so.

But Prince Sidon had not. “That Link?” he said, “THE Link?” He had thought my name sounded familiar, I remembered he had said before.

That the Hylian Prince Sidon had found to aid them would turn out to be no less than the Champion Link.... King Dorephan concluded that our meeting, then, must have been nothing short of destiny.

But I told him that I had lost my memory. He seemed aghast that I could not even remember his daughter, Lady Mipha. Shocked.... but not unsteadied.

All the Zora elders seemed to hate me because I had taken away their Lady Mipha—and here was Lady Mipha’s father. Perhaps the one with the most reason of all to despise me. And yet he showed no trace, gave no sign.... I had.... a great admiration for the civilized tone he still used with me.

He seemed a goodly king; had his head on straight—he was trying to think of all the people of Hyrule. Vah Ruta had the ability to create an endless supply of water, and if it wasn’t stopped soon, not only would the resulting floods wreak havoc among the Zoran kingdom, water-breathers though they were, but it would also affect countless Hylian lives in the lands downstream. Already the effects were showing—I had even seen Ledo, and an apprentice of his named Fronk, trying to work repairs on a number of support pillars that had become damaged in the downpour.

Vah Ruta needed to be dealt with, very soon, and the truth, King Dorephan conceded, doing me the courtesy of being bluntly honest, was that the Zoras could not handle the Divine Beast alone.

The four orbs upon its back, which controlled the waterflow, were offline and out of control, and they needed an electrical current running through them to stem the flow of water.

This was what I was here for.

Because my body was more insulated against the Shock Arrows they would need to stabilize the orbs.

They asked for my aid.

Well, I had good news for them: Princess Zelda had tasked me with nearly the same goal.

King Dorephan—the unbelievable bulk of him—shot forward in his throne. “Princess Zelda is alive?” he asked.

“Yes, in Hyrule Castle,” I said.

He concluded once more that our meeting must have been fated. If there was a chance to retake Vah Ruta, there was also a chance to seal away Calamity Ganon for good....

He would give me all the help I needed—and he gifted me a set of beautiful Zora Armor, which has been crafted by Zoran Princesses for generations.

At this point the ray-headed Zora, Muzu, had had enough. Hylians, he argued, were the reason the world was in the state it was in in the first place, ever since they had sought out and abused the ancient technology of the Sheikah one hundred years ago.

To give one of them a Zoran Princess’ armor—armor that was traditionally supposed to be crafted for the one the Zora Princess would marry....

And Lady Mipha had crafted that armor herself! How could King Dorephan just hand it over to the very one who led Lady Mipha to her death?

Prince Sidon rebuked him, telling him to watch the way he spoke to the King and his guest, and reminding him that working together with the Hylians was their best chance of stopping Vah Ruta.

But Muzu wouldn’t have it, and he left the throne room.

Prince Sidon followed him.

The King asked me to follow as well, to try and talk to him.... because Muzu was the resident expert on just where and how Shock Arrows could be found.