QUEST FOR PANTS

Waking of a Saturday, February 3, 2018

QUEST FOR PANTS

I warped from Cotera’s to Gerudo Town, and found Bozai. He seemed overly-concerned when he learned that a delicate little flower such as myself (for I was disguised as a girl again) had actually ventured into the wild Gerudo Highlands. He didn’t think I’d actually do it. But when he saw the pictograph I’d taken of the Eighth Heroine, he could make no disputations—he’d promised me those Sand Boots, and so he gave me those Sand Boots.

Though it was a real wrench handing back the Snow Boots, I tell you what.

He kept flirting with me pretty strongly until I could worm my way out of the conversation. But then.... as he sat beneath the tent out in front of the town....

I approached him again.

And dang. I don’t know if even I had boiled it down to what was really on my mind. Not so baldly or succinctly. But the penetrating bluntness of the very first option I was given in my conversation with Bozai spelled it out plain—“I want Snow Boots.”

Dang it, Nintendo! I could take a lesson in non-codependent assertiveness from this.... XD

Bozai seemed taken aback, but sweetly accommodating. And through all his coddly flirting he struck a new deal for this delicate desert flower and her silly flights of fancy.... one she wouldn’t possibly be able to see through....

If I could snap a pictograph of the Eighth Heroine’s Missing Sword—

Hahh, yes, yes, indeed—the Missing Sword—so that’s what it was.... But I hardly heard the rest of Bozai’s words for how pleased I was feeling at having the fetchquest mapped so plainly before me! ^_^

If I could take a pictograph of the Eighth Heroine’s Missing Sword, this time without the aid of the Snow Boots he had lent me before, then he would let me have and keep the Snow Boots upon my return.

He was sure I would never find it this time, as it didn’t really exist, I heard him murmur beneath his breath.

Oh what wicked cacklings were mine as I warped off to the Shrine of Kema Kosassa....

It was slower going, without the Snow Boots. But at least that left me to finally invest in something with a higher defense for my legs.

I schlumped up the mountain to the Dragon’s Nest, and was favored with the good fortune of there not having been a Blood Moon in the meanwhile—no Lynel to tangle with.... and no Moblin either!—and took a fabulously artful pictograph of the sword.

A simple warp and a change of wardrobe later I was back at Gerudo Town, once again listening to Bozai’s incredulous fluster at my having ventured into such savage, dangerous territory, a dainty little thing like me, I mean really! Silly girl, didn’t I know I could’ve been seriously—

I showed Bozai the pictograph.

He was shocked.

“Snow Boots,” I snapped.

DANG! XD XD Didn’t let him mess around much for this encounter, did they? XD XD

Bozai.... shifted, and hemmed, and hawed, and.... decided he’d better stay true to his word. After all.... this was his big move for a pretty lady....

He gave me the Snow Boots. And started to ask, “Would you... g-go... out... with...”

“Not a chance.”

“You could at least let me finish the question.”

Aoh MAN.... XD SAVAGE. XD XD XD

Well, Bozai couldn’t really go anywhere after that—he was confined to the little tent out front of the city. The sand was very hot after all.

I felt kinda bad that I’d taken every lower-body wardrobe item he had....

But not nearly bad enough to do anything about it, not that the game had a mechanism for it that I could tell!

Nyahahahaha! XD

Mind the Daisies

Waking of Saturday, March 25, 2017 ~ 4

Mind the Daisies

The last hump of grassy hill to the north bank of the river was not as bare as my map had made it out to be—a rusted Guardian slumbered there. I gave it a wide berth.

After trying and failing to sneak up on some deer through the rain, at last, at last, there was the Shrine.

I paraglided down to it, and no sooner had I run a few paces across the islet—Floret Sandbar—than an irate woman’s voice scolded me something awful.

I was ruining her flowers.

The game blacked out and put me where she was, on the south side of the island. She told me to watch my step for the love of all things holy.

Ah, I saw, it was like a corn maze. I just had to follow the bare grass winding round like a crop-circle.... which turned out to be easier said than done. Er, if you wanted to reach the handy items in all the dead-ends, that is.

And a fat blue chu popped out of the ground, and I found out quickly that I couldn’t swing my sword at it; the strokes were too broad. I needed a spear for straight thrusting.

This was more involved than I’d anticipated!

The woman brought me back to the start every time I messed up, and it was about four or five times! But eventually I made it to the shrine, and received a fourth Spirit Orb from the monk inside.

I’ve been calling them shamans, but.... when David started a game I noticed and remembered the term monk.

However, when I exited the shrine I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to wind myself back out through the flowerbeds. But I didn’t bother. Instead, I warped to the mountaintop where Vah Ruta now resided.

I’d made a lot of friends in Zora’s Domain.... and I’d assured most of them I’d lend them a hand.

It was time to deliver.

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.