The Princess is a Nerd

Waking of Monday, March 18, 2019

The Princess is a Nerd

Looking for Shrines.

Bottom of Lake Totori. Nope. Just a lot of swimming and Stamina games. And dripping through the air shafts.

The Devil’s Own Highway, via Moza’s.... enchanting abode. Nope. Just some Koroks and coyotes.

Purifier Lake. Killed the Hinox and the Lynel. Rusty Shield finally gave out in a blaze of glory.

Nope.

The eastern skirts of the volcano. Found some ruins, the Shadow Hamlet Ruins.... But nope.

The northeastern shore of the mainland. Nope.

There was....

....

I needed a Korok Leaf....

Warped to the forest and picked one off the ground. Finally spoke to one Kula the Korok, who wanted to see an Ice Rod. Heh, another Nebb....

I was busy.

Boating around Lomei Labyrinth Island. Nope.

Almost drowned when the wind blew away my boat after I swam to the border. But there was ground to stand on at the island.

No shrines.... where are there more shrines....

Tried a bit around the northeastern Central Plains. Nope.

The northern skirts of the Gerudo Highlands, as far west as I could go. Nope.

The eastern edge of that bowl of jungle-forest on the way to the Spring of Courage. Nope.

Hateno.

....Cooked more meals. That Lynel was brutal.

Bed.

Sleep.

Good night.

Just kidding.

Came back late when everyone else had gone toward bed. To bed.

Checked out Strock Lake. Very strange winds. Lots of treasure, a few Koroks, butt-tons of Lizalfos and a heckton of trouble. But no shrines. Nope.

Checked out the western edges of the Central Plains. Nope.

Hem and haw. Shilly Shally.

....

I shall.

I warped to the shrine near Serenne. And.... I moved toward the memory.

Uh.

There was a memory near there, just to the south and east a bit. A memory by a tree on a grassy hill, with the back side of the Castle in the distance. I’d seen it before. Even stood in it. Why did I never mention it before? How disgusted I am with myself as a journaler....

Maybe it was when I was looking for Mei. That run all the way across the Elma Knolls....

I did not rely too heavily on my map, but decided to go by sight in the midst of the thunderstorm. Stalgoons came out to waylay me, but I am a quick-change artist.

The first batch I left behind.

The second batch popped out right before I could get to the tree. Ugh. I did not want to wear down my weapons dealing with them, but I didn’t want to view the memory with them hanging around either. They all three told me their life stories for like three or four hours....

“Dawn take you all and be stone to you,” I urged them under my breath.

And at five in the morning.... they did.

The Memory....

Zelda and I sat near the tree on a beautiful sunny day, Zelda taking pictographs of all the flowers she could find. We were just sitting. The flowers were so lovely....

“The flowers of Hyrule aren’t just beautiful,” she says, “But they are also incredibly useful.” She expounded on their various properties and their uses as herbs and ingredients.

And then.... she stopped, seeming to slow down and breathe as her eyes softened.

“This one here...”

And then I saw it.

“This one is called the silent princess. It’s a rare, endangered species. Despite all our efforts, we’re not yet able to grow them domestically.”

She stroked it so lovingly. I felt suddenly guilty for picking every single one I could get my mitts on....

“The princess thrives out here, in the wild.”

Her eyes still looked at it.... though they looked at a thousand things more that I couldn’t see.

Does she now.

“The best we can hope is that it continues to grow strongly out here in the wild.”

I looked over her shoulder at the flower.... before with an excited little yelp the princess lunged forward on her hands and knees like a child.

“Oh I can’t believe I’ve caught one! Look at this!” She turned back to me with her hands cupped in front of her. “Ta-da!” She opened them.

A green frog chirruped and puffed and wriggled in her palms.

“They say that ingesting this specimen can actually enhance certain attributes!” Her eyes became more focused than I’d ever seen them before; he speech quickened; it all seemed to come flooding out of her.

Oh . . . I breathed out a single, hard little sigh in the shape of a smile.

I could see now.

There you are, I thought.

The princess.... was a nerd.

“And we wouldn’t be in a controlled environment out here, but with your excellent physical condition,” she kept coming closer, “you would make the perfect candidate to test this theory!”

And closer!

“Go on!” she urged excitedly, thrusting the frog into my face as it hopped up from her palms!

“Taste it!”

I backed up.... gasping in.... hesitation for I dare not say disgust here why oh gosh she’s the princess....

Oh my gosh.... the princess.... is a NERD. X-)

After coming back to myself I took a portrait. Several portraits. Then culled. Narrowed. Until I was satisfied.

In flicking through my albums, I saw that the pictograph of Windblight Ganon.... it had four.... protrutions out the back, like Revali’s four braids.... and I felt.... sick....

Enough.

HATENO.

HOUSE.

BED.

It was 11:something in the morning. Slept ‘til noon.

Heavenly Apex . . . Rock Bottom

Waking of Tuesday, May 2, 2017 ~ 3

Heavenly Apex . . . Rock Bottom

Ah, Sheem Dagoze’s was a fun little shrine....

The cliffs certainly were tall here. I ran along the high ledge on the north side—the non-Satori-Mountain side—and headed west. Straaange looking things crossed my periphery, but.... I didn’t stop to investigate. Oddly-shaped trees like gigantic mushrooms, a yammering conglomeration of blue moblins—what in the world were they all so riled up about? I would explore this area more thoroughly another time.

As the river bent toward the south, I eventually ran out of footing and had to paraglide closer to the water’s surface—a big piece of land jutted up like a plateau inside the canyon down there.... But as I jogged across it another stalmoblin popped up to say hello.

I didn’t have time for it, but ran straight to the plateau’s westernmost tip; the stalmoblin left off back by some trees....

I could see the next best place to go if I wanted to maintain this agile altitude—across the river on Mount Satori was another ledge—with.... baobab trees on it?

How interesting.

However, the rain had returned, and with the little plateau’s height, I wasn’t positive I’d be able to make that ledge.... There was a large possibility I’d touch down on the face of the cliff beneath, and I didn’t want to get caught in the rain there and slip.

So I just had to wait it out.

And as I waited, there was little else for me to do but look around: a ruddy, tiered sort of mountain range stood before me, west of the river.

I looked up. Some of its higher bluffs were dusted with snow.

I looked up further.

“WHAT THE—”

Gleaming electric yellow against the night sky, undulating like a jellyfish, long, gargantuan, twining like an enormous snake, four forelegs, two hind, floating on the snowy, cloudy air, passing in such serene slowness for its sheer size—

It was a DRAGON.

I had found David’s Dragon.

I snapped a pictograph, and my Compendium informed me its name was Farosh—a spirit of lightning in the form of a great dragon. Although it meant no ill toward men, it was still very dangerous to approach.

Well—

I—

....

Wow.

My Compendium also mentioned something about the Spring of Courage.

Was the Spring of Courage on top of that tiered mountain range?

Zelda had mentioned a Spring of Courage....

Eventually the rain let up, and I paraglided over to the low riverside cliff on Mount Satori—I’d been wise to wait; I didn’t make the top of the ledge, but had to scramble up from the sheer rock face.

The baobab trees were big and bewildering! I ran through them, following the cliff’s edge until—it disappeared? Suddenly I was running through the bottom of a valley bordered by both Mount Satori and the tiered red mountain range. What just happened?

I turned around and had a careful look into the gorge.

The river seemed to stop.

No, surely this had to be just a land bridge. The river just passed underground for a while—

I floated down—well, fell in, really, after trying to get a better view.

The river really did just stop in a dead end.

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

Where the heck was the LAKE?

Rivers didn’t just run out—I had known this ever since Ben had explained it to me way back when I’d shown him my very first fantasy map. I hated having been wrong about something and it was irritating to think of redrawing my map, but at least I then knew some proper geology. DEAD END RIVERS....

“Shut up its Hyrule,” my own ironic voice sounded in my head.

Rivers don’t run out....

I puttered around the bottom for a while—the wind was unnaturally strong, blowing everything in toward this dead end; it was a little creepy. The Korok I found was small consolation for my long journey to nowhere.

Hhhhh.

There was nothing else for it except to start swimming back.

I changed into my Zora Armor; it’d be slow going against the current.

Without a Paddle

Waking of Wednesday, March 29, 2017 ~ 2

Without a Paddle

I wandered further and further downstream in search of more tablets, but the most interesting thing I encountered was a Korok that bested me round the underside of a cliff—I’ll catch that one later....

But I thought, as long as I was headed downstream, I really ought to keep an eye out for Fronk’s wife.

I recalled something about a Bank of Wishes being important, and made my way there through nest after nest of lizalfos....

And indeed, there was a Zora standing there on the Bank of Wishes. But it wasn’t Mei.

It was Finley, a short, younger Zora, kind of orangey-colored—and probably the only young female in all of Zora’s Domain who didn’t give seven whits beyond the norm about Prince Sidon or his fanclub.

I stopped to chat.

Finley already had a sweetheart you see. But she had never met him. She just sent letters to him from the Bank of Wishes, floating them down the stream in tubular letter-carrying boxes made of red wood.

She asked me if I would follow the letter she was about to release, find out who was receiving them, and then return and tell her what kind of person he was.

I couldn’t really see any way out of this one. She was just a kid. And she’d promised her mother that she wouldn’t wander too far....

Well I was dressed for the occasion in my Zora Armor. “Fine...” I said, and leapt into the water after her letter.

To conserve my energy, I let the current carry me along—at times it pushed me through great schools of fish, some of which I’d never seen before! I scrabbled them right out of the river; I’ll cook them up later....

Other times I swam to the bank and employed my bombs to clear the stream of obstacles—carefully, per Finley’s warning, for the letter-carriers were fragile.

Other times still it was bow work against octoroks and waterborne lizalfos.

You know, my bow work has been improving greatly I think.

Maybe I used to be a great archer.

Maybe....

As I moved further and further downstream still, coming across familiar landmarks and stretches of road I recognized from my initial ascent to the Domain, I kept my eyes peeled for any signs of another Zora about. “Mei!” I shouted her name, again and again—“Meeei!”—but there was never any answer—just more lizalfos.

It started to rain at the edge of the wetlands. It was a bit of a trick to follow the letter beneath the tangle of boardwalks where the lizalfos keep an impressive haunt. Many arrows were fired. Many remains collected.

But at last the letter seemed to wander into a little dead end inlet surrounded by a low, sandy bank. I could see a half-tent set up near the trees at its deepest point. And as I drew nearer, I saw there was a man there. A Hylian. He stood up at my approach, as I kept even with the bobbing letter-carrier....

His name was Sasan, and he guessed who I was right away: someone sent to follow this letter for Finley. And to report back to her on what I found.

He had already gathered that she was a lovely young lady Zora of the Domain. But then he immediately confessed to feeling guilty and awful because he had lied in his letters to her, claiming to be a “buff traveler”.

Ah, he didn’t look so scrawny, buck up, man....

He had been sending his letters back to her via travelers who were on their way to Zora’s Domain, and he asked me if the road there was long.

Remembering my experience along it.... I could do naught but answer in the affirmative.

He considered traveling it to reach the Domain, but once again began to fret and tremble, wondering if he could face her after he had deceived her....

My two options were Good luck with that, and....

“Love reigns supreme,” I said, and this seemed to instill him with some confidence.

What did it matter? If he truly loved her, he should go and find her.

And he thanked me, and we parted.

I took a moment to collect what wreckage and spoils came floating my way from my sporting with the lizalfos about their boardwalks, and then had a good long look at my map.

The wetlands were vast. Locating Fronk’s wife seemed a much taller order from here at the river’s mouth. The marsh and currents spread in all directions, and I do mean all. Beyond the boardwalks, the shallow marsh extended far to the south and farther into the west. Another river broke off from the southern part of the marsh and curved back eastward before ending in a small, and I imagine deep, lake. But what looked like the easiest course for the main flow of the water to take.... was north. That way had the fewest obstructions, geological or otherwise.

But could she have washed this far down?

What if I’d passed her?

But hadn’t I been combing the Domain with a careful eye for days on end? Surely I’d have seen her if she were there. Surely someone would have seen her anywhere upstream of the Bank of Wishes anyway, if little Finley could venture that far. And downstream of the Bank of Wishes.... well I’d spent most of that stretch in the water—that had to count for something; I’d have bumped into her for sure....

No, she had to be somewhere downstream of the rivermouth. And the most likely downstream direction was north.

Then that was the way I would go.

Fortunately there was a road that ran alongside the river, all the way off the edge of my map. I followed it, drawing nearer and nearer to the unknown, the river on my left, and sprawling, mounting hills creeping up on my right, which grew into great rocky canyons and ridges in the distance. I wondered if I was near the volcano.... there was at least one Goron on the road with me....

“Meeei!” I called out, but to no avail. Even when I reached a small lake on my right that looked like it might have caught anything washed down in a flood.

But there was nothing there. Just a stray octorok, and some mineral deposits on the other side, which I collected before moving on.

Where could she be?

DEEPLY MOVED

Waking of Saturday, March 18, 2017 ~ 4

DEEPLY MOVED

When I traveled back to Zora’s Domain, I exited the shrine’s grotto, and came upon Gruve looking over a waterfall that spilled into the lowest lake at the base of the Domain.

He was impressed with my new Zora Armor, and told me to show him what I could do with it: dive down—with my most beautiful diving form!—and then swim back up the waterfall.

I peered over the edge. I’d combed the bottom of the Domain and scooped up plenty of fallen treasures down there, and I knew there were also plenty of rocks.

But I took a leap of faith, arced right over and speared into the water like an arrow.

Gruve was moved to tears by my graceful execution, and called me to swim back up the waterfall.

Well, King Dorephan had said I’d be able to do that with the Zora Armor.... now was as good a time as any to try it. I swam to where the roaring column of water pounded into the lake below in a swirling, churning froth.... and pressed A.

I shot up the inside of the funnel like a salmon!—leaping out at whiles like a dolphin!—until I shot out the top of the fall, high into the air, high above Gruve, and at the very height of my freefall clung onto my glider to hover slowly back down to the platform.

Gruve just could not get over the stunning display of my hydrodynamic form.

He gave me some seeds I can cook with that will make me run—and swim—faster.