The Fleeting Career of Mr. Jingles

Waking of Saturday, November 10, 2018

The Fleeting Career of Mr. Jingles

I WAS GONNA GET THAT STALHORSE!

I set out from the Snowfield Stable in the morning, and fortunately it took me all day to climb the mountain, kill the baddies on top and find and suffice that golf-Korok. And when the world went dark, I sailed down past the Lynel toward the maze and.... there were no stalhorses there.

I dashed past the Lynel and back to the snowfield. No stalhorses anywhere.

Um.

“Where’d you see it, David?”

“By the maze.”

Huh.

Okay.

I slipped back past the Lynel ONE MORE TIME.... And found a stalhorse. Excellent. I knocked off its rider, tamed it, and took it back to the stable....

And as ever and always, the stablehand at the counter blindly asked if I wanted to register my new mount.

“Yes!” Oh please oh please oh please.... XD I was already thinking of possible names, and for some reason could not banish the thought of calling him “Mr. Jingles”....

“Uh,” the stablehand pulled up short, “that’s a monster, not a horse!”

Dang it! XD

“I’m sorry but we can’t board that... thing, here. It might eat the other horses.”

XD Well, couldn’t say I hadn’t been expecting that response....

I tried to interact with the skeletal horse for a while. The other residents were certainly reacting to him already, the people starting in shock at the sight of him, and the dog darting away in fear.

I dropped some carrots on the ground, but the stalhorse ignored them. Next, reminding myself just a bit of Harry Potter, I tried some meat. The stalhorse ignored this too. But the dog didn’t. He came hopefully padding up to where it lay on the ground, but I picked up the treat before he could get it, and he bounded away again.

I didn’t know what else to do, and so simply remounted and walked in sedate meanderings for a while, admiring the lightening scenery about the stable. I stayed with Mr. Jingles until the sun came up, whereupon he bucked me off.... and died.

David was horrified at the sight and sound of it.

I was just another horse short.

Ah well.

All The World's a Pawn Shop

Waking of Friday, August 3, 2018 ~ 6

All The World’s a Pawn Shop

Rupees. I needed rupees.

My first stop was Trott at the Outskirt Stable; he was always willing to pay a hundred rupees for a hunk of gourmet meat! But.... he would only do it thrice a day. But that was three hundred rupees more than I had. That put me just over a thousand.... Only nine thousand to go....

....

At least it wasn’t over nine thousand.

Next was Goron City. I knew there was a Gerudo wandering around there who would pay top-rupee for certain ores.... and I found her—Yamella, no, Ramella, that was her name.

But she wanted my Sapphires—and ten at a time at that! I couldn’t split with ten of those! What if I needed them for something else? What if a Great Fairy could do something with them?

I couldn’t cut a deal with Ramella.

So I went to the Goron City General Store, and had a visit with Tanko. I skimmed my supplies to him bit by bit BY BIT until I had 8,039 rupees in my wallet.

But there was a lot that I just wasn’t willing to part with. Like gemstone ores, though I spared as many Ambers and Opals as I would. But Rubies, Sapphires and Diamonds? Those were just too hard to come by.

8,039.... That was pretty close....

But.... I was getting tired....

I needed to be going to bed for real....

To See What I Could See

Waking of Friday, August 11, 2017

To See What I Could See

You know, lately I try not to play too far ahead before I’ve written up my adventures so far. I really do. But man....

I don’t know what came over me on this day. It’s a Zelda game. It’s a siren. It’s Blow it all I just wanna play the game and be the Hero. Escape to Hyrule. Divert my mind. Fly me away and tell me stories....

I was still in the deepest recesses of the Forgotten Temple.

David said he’d just warped out of that one. But.... There were no convenient shrines to warp to outside. I think the closest one was Ketoh Wawai, and that one was all in the dark with a Hinox next to it.

I didn’t want to have to traverse any huge distances again. How was I going to get out of here?

....

Well, I decided to just try the same way I’d gotten in—on the air currents. I climbed up the giant Goddess statue for some altitude (pardon me, Lady) and wouldn’t you know.... I made it out unscathed this time! ^_^

After that I climbed back up to where the shrine-detector had vexed me, near where I’d met Yammo and seen my first Tabantha Moose.

My blue marker was right there on that red mountain.

What had I seen on top of that mountain?

I needed to go get it—NOW.

It had always been my wont to keep so many things in reserve until NEVER, because what if I had more urgent need of them down the road?

But I chucked that notion out the window as I perused my very old stock of Spicy Omelets. Surely they should have molded over by now.... but! My hammerspace pockets seemed also to act as the perfect preservation larder.

I ate an omelet, and charged up the road, not stopping for anything! I scrambled over the rough red rocks, straight up the mountainside! My blue marker drew nearer in my HUD map....! And UP over a little crest and it would be in sight!

I had a little difficulty focusing on it however as I seemed to have disturbed a little camp of cold-blooded baddies. Bokoblins, Ice Keese, White Chuchus.

I swiveled my scope madly—there it was! My blue marker!

It was a tree.

I had placed it on the naked trunk of a frozen tree.

....

I ran toward it! Straight through the baddie-camp and further up the hill! Passed the tree, the marker disappeared, and I kept running! I didn’t care to engage any of those things just now!

But higher up on the crest of the mountain was something that made me pull up a short. o_o I snapped its pictograph just as it turned its massive head and noticed me.

A Great-Horned Rhinoceros.

It was big, and woolly! With a blue-grey coat, and an enormous mean-lookin’ horn on its nose!

It charged and I jumped out of the way! Turned and pinked it with my sword. It bellowed and ran away. I ran but couldn’t catch it.... fired one arrow—it groared again—landed a second arrow....!

And it was down!

That was a great lotta meat to harvest! I scooped it all up quick and skipped up to the very tip of the mountain.

The warming effect from my spicy omelet would run out soon.... I decided I would paraglide back to the warmer climes!

And I did—it was a very long flight and I started freezing before I escaped the frigid air. But I managed to touch down on a warmer hill just above where I had started, near that bend in the path that curves around the head of the Forgotten Temple Valley.

GOT the blue marker!

Where to next? :D

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.