Wise Old Owl

Waking of Saturday, January 5, 2019 ~ 4

Wise Old Owl

There was only one more Rito house before the spiral of boardwalk finally came to an end. And in this house, resting in what might have been a wooden rocker—I wasn’t entirely sure; there were a lot of feathers in the way—was the largest Rito I had ever seen.

He was aged, with a gentle demeanor, honeynut plumage, and great, cream-colored brow-feathers you could clean a pipe with.

Just as Kass was more parrot-like than most of his kin, this elder Rito seemed more like a great horned owl, with luminous eyes and a fine, pointed beak. Beneath his creamy brows and covering most of his face and neck was an equally creamy beard, brushed grandly out to either side, and braided thickly downward for a foot and a half before it ended in a gigantic bob. Was it feathers or was it hair? He stroked it as he greeted me.

“Ah, a visitor. Welcome to...” But he trailed off before—“Oh. OH! That object on your hip. Could it be...?” But he caught himself. “Forgive me. Where are my manners? I am Kaneli, Elder of Rito Village.”

He asked about the Sheikah Slate, and when I confirmed that that was indeed what it was, he leaned forward in excitement, and his already large eyes widened to an alarming size! Owl indeed!

“Then it is true!” he exclaimed, “You must be a Champion like Master Revali! One of the few people able to board Divine Beast Vah Medoh!”

But here he paused and murmured beneath his breath that the Champions had all been dead for a hundred years.... and shortly concluded that I must be a “mere descendent”. An inheritor of the Sheikah Slate.

He begged my pardon once more before asking if I would listen to the request of this old man.

Here we go, I thought....

And he told me straight up that he would like me to deal with the Divine Beast Vah Medoh.

“Only Champions were able to control the Divine Beasts,” he stressed again. And he told me how he had tried to impress this upon some of the more headstrong Rito Warriors of his tribe, but they didn’t heed his warnings.... He could not stop Teba and Harth from launching an assault against the Beast. And.... it hadn’t gone well.

Harth was badly injured.

And the other....?

“Teba escaped unscathed,” said the Elder, and I was relieved— “but I fear he now plans to face Medoh alone.”

—and just a little bit disappointed at the same time.... No derring-do, dashing rescues of the desperately wounded here. That was okay.

“As a descendant of Champions, you might have a chance,” the Elder went on, “Please, find Teba. If you work together, you may be able to stop Divine Beast Vah Medoh.”

And that seemed to settle it.

Hahh.

I thought about the other places I’d been. The grandness of King Dorephan, Lord of the Zoras, the seclusion of the protected Gerudo Chief.... But this old owl, he seemed more.... grandfatherly than anything else, here in this rustic place of small wooden lodgings.

It just seemed so.... humble.

I kind of liked it. c:

I spoke with the Elder for a little bit longer to get more details. I learned a little about Vah Medoh, not much I didn’t already know, and some about the old Champion Revali. He had been a skilled warrior, wielding a bow twice his own size with ease. Kaneli wondered what could have happened inside the Divine Beast a hundred years ago to defeat such a celebrated warrior....

I also learned that, evidently, attacking Vah Medoh had been Teba’s idea to begin with. Oh gads, that made it even worse that Harth was the one who was injured. Shot down, the Elder said.

Elder Kaneli suspected that this failure may have only strengthened Teba’s resolve to make another run at Medoh, and that he was likely preparing for the assault. Ah, so he had gone missing of his own accord, it seemed....

The Elder directed me to speak to Teba’s wife Saki—oh, that pretty one just next door—Saki, he said, might be able to offer me clues regarding Teba’s whereabouts.

So, I went back to the boardwalk, walked a ninepace downspiral and turned back into Saki’s house. Teba’s house, I guessed.

But Saki had already overheard me talking with the elder. Their dwellings were so close, and these homes.... they were so open.

Saki opened up to me then. She told me she thought her husband was somewhere in the Flight Range, a place where the Rito would go to practice aerial combat. (She gestured over the lake and toward the icy Hebra Mountains.) At least, that was where Tulin, their son, had said his Dad had gone.

She said, assuming I had a means of air-travel, if I took off from Revali’s Landing it would be a straight shot to this Flight Range, and I would easily be able to find Teba.

I looked where she pointed this time.

Revali’s Landing was only a little way down the Neck, and it was one of the larger landings off the spiraling boardwalk. So large it had little landings of its own, stepping off into the sky. The dark planks of its broad platform were painted with a stylized, flying kind of design in white....

I had been here before.

Memory took me....

The Last Frontier

Waking of Saturday, January 5, 2019 ~ 2

The Last Frontier

From the Ancient Columns and down the gentler, grassier back of the hill, I sported with a few Moblins and a lily-Korok before striking toward the Sheikah Tower.

The tower stood at the crest of a rocky hill to the north, across an empty gorge where the road bent and twined. Malice crawled all over the stones around the tower’s base. It was at a lower altitude than where I was, but I could tell I wouldn’t be able to paraglide directly onto the tower. The best I could hit was partway up the slope on the gorge’s far side.

Mom was with me during this part. I enjoy.... just being with my Mom. Even when she still starts and warns and cautions whenever I run along the edges of cliffs or take flying leaps into the air.

She is a Good Mom. <3

I floated over, scrambled up the far slope, and came to where the tower was. Malice completely encompassed its base; I couldn’t access it. There were a few tall stones standing here and there; I thought perhaps if I could get on one of those.... I could paraglide from one to the other.... maybe paraglide onto the side of the tower, but.... No, the distances were too great. I’d fry in the slime.

“Gooped. Ya got gooped.” –PBG

I couldn’t climb a stone and float over to the tower, but....! There!

I found an eyeball. :)

I shot it, it poofsploded and evaporated, taking a lot of the Malice with it, and the column it had been surrounding collapsed against the tower! Access!

And a long climb through the fargazing music later, I was at the top.

This was my last Sheikah Tower. The Tabantha Tower.

I set my slate into the pedestal, distilled the rune, and.... ♪You get the thing!♪ ....The last blank space on my map populated. This was the Tabantha Frontier.

Complete Map of Hyrule Extracted, said my Slate.

Wow! ^_^

The Rito Rock—that tall, oddly-shaped spire—Heh, Oddly-shaped indeed—it looked like a bird!—Although.... that Oddly was probably a mockingbird or a grackle; this rock spire looked more like the neck and head of some kind of crane or stork....

*AHEM*

The Rito Rock, I could see from the tower, was so close now, standing tall and straight, its neck hewn all up and down with odd angles from erosion, and its “beak” jutting out at a stark perpendicular angle at the top. I could see, both from the tower and on my map, that the spire actually stood in the middle of a sizeable lake. Huh.

Okay!

I considered, as I was so high up and could see all the world laid out before me. I could have struck out on a more direct route to the Rito Rock, but.... I decided to follow the road instead. Rather unlike me, now that I think about it.

It was rife with Lizalfos.

But after cutting and dodging my way through so many belligerent hoodlums I came at length to the Rito Stable. This was the one I had seen from the edge of Hebra.

Kass was there.

After talking with some of the other people there, I approached him.

He was happy to see me in one piece! The feeling was mutual as always. ^_^ And here so close to his hometown of Rito Village, he said he was feeling terribly homesick, and confided to me that he’d had to leave his wife and children back in the village.

Kass has a wife and kids? I thought. My goodness!

I never knew.

“But I can’t go home until I fulfill my promise to my teacher,” he said.

“Promise?” I asked. It was my only option.

“My promise to... No, perhaps now is not the time.”

He said he would tell me, in Rito Village, once he learned all the ancient songs.

So mysterious, Kass.... I’d heard him talk about his teacher before.... What promise did he mean....?

I decided to sleep the night at the stable before moving on. And in the morning, I headed toward the village.

The lake—Totori Lake—was different from most other lakes I had seen, in that its “shore” consisted mostly of two-hundred-foot dropoffs all the way around. The water shimmered distantly below in the enormous, sunken, beigestony pit. A few other rock spires stood attendant to the mighty bird-shaped one in the center, but none it seemed were half so tall. I could see the occasional updraft blowing here and there as well, in the event I should paraglide around and sink too low, but aside from those.... there didn’t seem to be much down there....

Not that I had reason to worry: well kempt, handsome bridges of dark wood spanned from shore to spire to spire to spire, high above the water. It was at the beginning of the first of these bridges that I met Gesane of the Rito as he patrolled the path to the village.

He introduced his home and kin for me: “The Rito of Totori Lake. Where the men are fine archers and the women better singers.”

Heh.

^_^ I liked it.

The tops of the spires were grassy, and pleasant, with birds and flowers and pine trees and even the occasional little water pocket pond. This really was beautiful country. Breezy and beautiful.

As I crossed the third bridge after the second rock, there were.... Malice drips and a sudden blackout? Would I meet the Divine Beast? I’d forgotten these bits! But it was.... a BLOOD MOON CINEMATIC?

“The Blood Moon rises once again,” came Zelda’s voice.

BUT IT WAS DAYTIME.

“Please be careful, Link.”

THE SCENE ENDED. It was six-something in the morning.

What the heck?

Afraid I had missed the proper cinematic on a glitch, I reloaded from the stable, and went toward the village again. I stopped to pick the same peppers or berries or whatever it was I had grabbed before. I moved forward at the same pace, had the same talk with Gesane. Began crossing over the water and came to the same bridge and....

Nothing.

Huh.

But.... I had reloaded.... Was the game acting like I had saved?

I kept moving slowly and shoot that was a bear over there, didn’t want to get its attention, what was a bear doing on one of these rock spires—

But nothing else happened. And.... I.... finally just kind of accepted that.... the game had somehow deprived me of the cinematic.

I resigned myself to just find it on YouTube later.

I sighed, relaxed my guard, and just continued on AND THEN THAT TERRIBLE BIRDLIKE SHRIEKING FROM THE SKY.

Then came the Divine Beast introduction cinematic.

. . . . Whoof.

That was alarming. I told David about it later and we laughed.

On into the village, and I was really liking the look of this place. Lush grass, sweet flowers, breezy pines; the dark, comely wood of the bridges-turned-staircases and -boardwalks intermittently broken by soft earthen paths under the gentle sun; the wilderness on all sides and above and below....

And the music. Rito Village’s music....

*-!-*

And in a soft jolt, I was both surprised and not:

It was DRAGONROOST. <3

It was the musical theme from Dragonroost Island.... only settled cozily in a cabin in the woods, instead of flying fiercely about a wild island in the bluster of an untamed sea.

Of course it was Dragonroost.

Ahhh. <3

The handsome boardwalk continued straight inward and upward, ending directly against the base of the central pillar of the Rito Rock, the Neck of the Crane. At this landing, the wooden path continued to the right, winding upward and away around the Neck. But for a moment I was more taken with the sight just in front of me.

At this juncture, a gentle alcove had been carved into the light stone of the spire, and a small Goddess statue erected in the hollow. The little shrine was laid with decorative cloth; offerings of flowers lay thereon at the statue’s foot, and a crown of similar blossoms rested gaily upon its head. All bright and fresh-looking as if they’d just been picked.

Of all the shrines to the Goddess I had seen, this one was surely the fairest in its happy simplicity.

*

The pine trees smiled and the wind and wood breathed.

The earth and the sun had never been as content.

The world was at ease here.

*

Well at this point I was pretty sure I’d finally done it. I had seen every major habitation Hyrule had to offer. Just in case.... Just in case....

Just in case of that notion I well knew by now to be only fancy, but which I had still decided to humor through to the end: I had made sure, or sure enough, that there were no other houses to be bought aside from that one in Hateno.

So that was the only place.

Hahhhh.

But if I had had a choice.... the pines, the grass, and open air, the open-walled homes in cozy simplicity, village full of flyers and all musically inclined....

Yes.

I think I would have lived here.

I think I would have lived here.