The Legend Of Zelda: Archaic Entity
By XevesMore Info / Reviews
Chapter 1: Chapter 1
The moon was shrouded by the thick clouds above, which covered the pirate ship in darkness. It was an old ship, with tattered sails, faded paint jobs, chipped rails and a worn hull. It had a dead and weary appearance, showing signs of rough seas and deadly assaults on its body. The sea appeared dead as well. The water was flat and lifeless, and no land was in sight for miles. No gulls perched on the sails. No stowaways in the depths of the ship. The only life that was visible on the ship was a young woman, who was leaning on the wooden railing, staring out at the vast and empty sea.
She was quite beautiful, with large glistening eyes that revealed a wealth of experience and insight, smooth tan skin that reflected the now uncovered moonlight, long flowing straight blonde hair that swayed with the wind, and a round face that reflected her young age. The woman, however, did not dress like a beautiful maiden would. She wore a red bandana that she tied around her head from her temple to the back of her neck, pearl white trousers that were rolled up to the bottom of her knees, bare feet, a black shirt that hugged her torso and hung all the way down to the bottom of her hips with sleeves that only went a little bit past her shoulders, and long strips of cloth that wrapped around her forearms and the palms of her hands. Around her neck she wore several silver necklaces, each with different lengths and gems at the ends of them. On her pointed ears she had many piercings, with nine on her right and seven on her left. All over her upper arms she had thick black tattoos that looked like billowing flames, which extended all the way to her neck.
There was sorrow and anger in her eyes, which did not appear in her overall demeanor. It was as if the woman did not wish to show her true feelings, and instead hid everything inside her deep blue eyes. She liked to bottle everything up inside, and she hid these feelings in order to appear prominent and independent. However, she did not always have to hide things to appear this way, as she was quite an independent woman, and she always was, even as a child. During her childhood she was already the captain of the ship, bossing around her crew of pirates and being the mature one around a group of blubbering fools ages older than her. Despite her leadership, she always had her true feelings bottled up. Yet there was one who she unleashed her emotion for, as that person was the only one she ever truly trusted. But that person was asleep in the ship’s cabin, and was not there to help her exorcise those feelings from her eyes. However, there was always one feeling she kept from that person, and she never let it loose.
She wondered when she would ever be free of the sea, the sea that she had lived with her entire life. It never left; no matter where she was it was always there. She had once loved to be out on the water, pillaging and plundering island communities, reaping the land of its fortunes. It was once exhilarating, yet now she wished to stop this plethora of adventuring. It was once a game to her, an amusing endeavor that had no consequences.
Yet, after being in the world for nineteen long years, and after losing so much, she yearned to settle down and rest for years to come. But she had a task, a task that seemed to never want to end. She had to find a new land, where peace and prosperity could reign. The new Hyrule, as she had once said before Daphnes corrected her as the sea crashed down on them atop Ganon’s Tower.
“It will be your land,” she whispered, reciting the ancient king’s words. Her land; Nay, their land. She had forgotten about the one that was asleep in the cabin of the ship, the one who she had known for nine long years now. It was their task to bear, to share together. She was, after all, the descendant of Zelda, princess of Hyrule. And he, the new hero, was not a descendant of anything. Sure, he had family, a wondrous one at that, but where did he come from? Why was he appointed with this task?
She often felt sorry for him, being dragged into all of this, risking his life with no rewards for himself. He didn’t seem to mind it; in fact, he enjoyed helping others in times of need. Yet, she couldn’t help but wonder if he deserved better. Did he really have to bear this burden? Her thoughts were interrupted by a gruff voice behind her.
“Something wrong?”
“Go back to sleep Link, you’ve had a long day,” she said softly, and this response was very unlike her. In normal instances she would have pretended to be vexed and would have thrown Link back inside the hull of the ship, sending him tumbling down the stairs and landing on his head. However, she wasn’t feeling happy at the moment.
“And you haven’t, Tetra?” said Link.
Tetra turned her head to look back at him. He had changed ever since she had picked him up on that cheerful island to save his sister. He was not the same innocent little boy anymore. Nay, Link was not innocent at all anymore. Sure he was still kind, and understanding, yet it seemed that it was only towards her. With others he was so much rougher now. He was easily angered, he had often rivaled her in scolding the shipmates when they messed up, and he never smiled. Smiling was his trademark when he was young, and he was one of the only ones she had known that ever did. But now, it was a rare occasion that he even curved the sides of his mouth. It had seemed that she had influenced him more than she ever thought she would.
His appearance reflected this change as well. He was much stronger now, not abnormally mind you, but it still made him appear more intimidating. His skin was a light tan from being on the ocean for almost half of his life. The once well trimmed short hair that used to sit on top of his head was now wild and messy, kept long so that he didn’t risk injuring himself with his sword while cutting it, and it seemed to spike out on it’s own without his interference. His face was serious, with a masculine physique and light stubble that covered his chin. His eyes were no longer large and shining, full of glee and innocence, but they were now stern, with a deep and cold understanding.
He no longer donned the green clothing of the Hero of Time; he felt that it was not necessary anymore. Instead, he dressed in brown trousers that were ripped off at the bottom of his knees, exposing his lower legs, wooden sandals, and a white short-sleeved shirt that had black bandanas tied at the sleeves to keep them against his arms. He wore a black bandana on his head, covering the front half of his upper head with hair sticking slightly out of the bottom.
He was so much older now, she could barely connect him with the little boy that he once was. She often worried about his newfound awareness and maturity, and how long it would take for it to show him how she felt.
Tetra smiled weakly at him, and turned away. She knew he wanted to know what was wrong, but she couldn’t say it; she couldn’t allow herself to have a breakdown in front of him. She didn’t know what he’d think of anything she said anymore, even after knowing him for almost her whole life. His reactions varied day by day. There were so many things he surprised her with, things she didn’t expect to come from the clueless child of Outset. She didn’t know what to think anymore.
“Link-…Link just go back to sleep. I can handle it myself.”
He adopted a vexed voice, “No you can’t, no one can. I’ve watched you for the past months, you haven’t been acting like yourself; you’ve barely spoken to me. You’ve been hiding in storage, and I’ve heard you, you’ve been crying. Stop bottling up your feelings and speak to me damnit!”
A harsh jab pierced his soul as soon as he stopped speaking, like someone had just grasped his heart with a firm and callus encrusted hand. She looked back at him with horrible guilt, her blue eyes quavering as they gazed into his.
He began to plead, “Tetra, I di-“
“It’s my fault”
“-n’t mean to… what?”
She looked down at her feet, wincing, “It’s my fault they’re dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gonzo, Niko, the crew. It’s my fault.”
“Tetra, that wasn’t your fault. The only one who is to blame is nature.”
“No! It’s my fault! I told them to make sure the ship was kept in one piece! I told them to stay on deck in a storm! I went down into the cabin while you were all up here half dead, in fear of the roaring winds, only caring for myself. I caused them to be washed away by the fury of the sea.” She wiped her eyes. “I could have saved them…”
Link paused for a few moments, absorbing what she had just told him. He couldn’t help but feel a sudden hatred for her, but then that hatred clashed with sympathy as she looked back up at him, her eyes watering vigorously. He didn’t know what to think anymore.
She inhaled with difficulty, and spoke again, “You can hate me if you want, I don’t care anymore. I want to die.”
“Tetra, don’t say that.”
He tried to put hand on her cheek, put she slapped it away. “I want to die!”
She kept looking at him, with waterfalls gushing from her eyes, her brows furrowed, and a flush of mixed feelings emulating from her complexion.
Any initial hatred Link felt after she told him her part in the crew’s death was washed away by the sympathy that shared it. For the first time in years, his eyes didn’t accompany the cold stare he had adopted as a mask to hide his emotions. Tetra could see it. It was the wide, curious eyes of the clueless boy of Outset, staring right into her soul.
Her sobbing anger withered away into pure depression, “It’s just so lonely without them. Yelling at them was the only thing that kept me sane before you came along. It’s like I’ve had a chunk of my life taken from me. The thought of them just makes me feel empty inside. I’m sorry; it’s just that we never really talked about it when it happened. We just…”
She dropped to her knees, with her arms resting crossed on the ship’s railing, her face buried in them. Link knelt down beside her and placed his hand on her shoulder, now feeling empty inside too.
“There’s no need to be sorry, you knew them all of your life. They were to you as Aryll and Grandma were to me; they were your family. I can understand if you-.”
She interrupted him, turning at him and burying her face into his chest as she yelled, although muffled, “I hate this! I hate this! I am no pirate anymore. I don’t want to be at sea, all it has done is take things away; my mother, my crew, it took my family away from me. I want to rest. I want to sleep. I don’t want to lose anything more. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Tetra...”
“But I can’t have what I want. We have a task. We have a burden to bear together, and we can’t leave it be. If we don’t… where are we to go? I don’t know how to get back to our old home, I don’t even know where we are. We’re lost, the winds misguide us Link. They’ve left us out in the ocean, alone; they’ve left us to die.”
Link didn’t know what to say, but he eventually felt that he had to do something. “Come on, you need to sleep.”
He pulled her up and helped her to her hammock by the steering wheel. She looked at him one last time before turning away, facing the moon. He wanted to tell her what he had wanted to say ever since he first saw her being carried towards outset in the talons of that demented bird, but he held back. She was in enough shock already.
He walked back down into the cabin of the ship. As he walked down the stairs, he looked at all the things that were at the bottom of them. Diamonds, rubies, gold, silver, emeralds, jade, ebony, bronze, all the precious gems and metals that you could think of, all collecting dust. He walked past the treasures that had built up during their childhood, and went into his room. This room was not always his; it was once Tetra’s. But she didn’t like to be in there anymore. She wanted to be outside, looking at the stars and breathing in the fresh air. So he took it as his own, put her things in the storage room, and left just a bed, an oil lamp, his sword, and a box on the floor in the corner. He wanted to look inside of the box, but he wondered if he could take the pain of remembering those he would never see again.
He sprawled himself onto his bed, and turned off the lamp. He knew that what she had said was true. He had known it for a long time. They had left them to die.
The seagulls sat with profoundly dumb faces inscribed into their heads, gawking at each other and cawing like banshees into the air. A few of them circled the sail without reason, other than having a false purpose in the group of forty-six.
Seagulls were quite a peculiar animal. They seem to be the primary decomposer of this flooded world, eating up the waste and dead things that littered the earth and floated aimlessly around in the sea. They were the dysfunctional angels of death, carrying the empty shells, whether they are organic or inorganic, to the afterlife; to be specific, in their stomach.
If one were to die on their ship, with no one to take them to shore and bury them respectfully in the ground, the gulls would swoop down, devour whatever they could of the corpse, and carry them on to the gates of hell. They always seemed to know when death was imminent. In fact, they were very casual about it. On the sails of the lost ships they wait, preparing to pounce upon the living once the gift of life was stripped from them. When the carcass was devoured, the gulls always left scraps; the heart with only one ventricle left, the bladder and the appendix left there alone, the rest nibbled gingerly and left torn asunder on the deck of the ship.
They were once the weakest link of the detrivores, them at the bottom and the bald vultures of the desert at the pinnacle of royalty; they were the kings. But after the world was flooded thousands of years ago, the gulls were the only ones left standing. So their species took up the mantle of king, and ruled over the decayed people of the sea.
Those who were about to die didn’t know why so many gulls appeared on their sails. They just watched them fight with amusement in their dying eyes. They would never know what was to happen to them. They would never know that the angel of death was upon their doorstep.
The rising sun struck light onto Link’s eyes through the circular window in the back of the room. He opened his eyes reluctantly, and growled at the thought of waking up. He turned over and saw the box in the corner of the room. Just as he laid his eyes on it, he thought of Aryll. How much had she changed while he was gone? Did she even think of her big brother anymore? He couldn’t even picture her anymore, aside from two large curious eyes, and a childish smile that haunted his mind every night.
And then he thought of his grandmother. She would be a hundred and four on this day. Although he knew she was probably dead by now, he did not want to believe it. Instead, he pictured the remaining two members of his withering family line spending time with the villagers on Outset, taking care of the pigs and harvesting from the gardens outside of their wooden houses. The children would be looking up to Aryll just as they had to Link. They would want to be heroes and play with sticks; they would swordfight and try to overcome their imaginary archenemies. They would pretend that the pigs were monsters, and they would chase them all across the island. Aryll would look on at them with the other adults on Outset, all laughing at their follies. That’s what he wanted to think. He wanted to think that all was well at home. Then he pondered over a very sad thought. Did he even have a home anymore?
He couldn’t take it anymore and lunged at the box, and pried it open. Inside was a pictograph with him as a child and the entire village of Outset. Grandma had her hand on his shoulder as well as Aryll’s, and they were in the center of the pictograph. They had always been the glue of the community, especially when the others would squabble. They served as an example to follow, and the others followed in order to survive. Grandma wasn’t always the feeble and gentle old woman she was when he left. She used to be the strong and energetic leader of the island, the one who made all the decisions and solved all of the problems. However, over time her old bones began to wither away, and she had to rest. They all knew she was going to die, they just didn’t know when.
Link threw the box to the ground, and walked out of the room. He went into the storage room, with growling sounds coming from his abdomen as he walked. He looked inside a barrel, and saw that there were no apples. Link looked in another, and saw that all of the meat gone. He repeated in this fashion for an hour, moving faster every second. All of the barrels were empty. He cursed loudly and kicked over a barrel, breathing heavily through his teeth. After he calmed down a bit, and tried to ignore the situation he was now in, he went over to the buckets of water that they had collected after the last rain. He cupped his hands and dove them into the warm water, and returned them to his mouth, at which he drank ravenously.
Link looked to the side of him and saw that the rum was gone as well, with a three large bottles freshly emptied. His eyes went wide, now thinking of Tetra. She’s drinking again. Passing by the treasures that collected dust by the stairs, he walked up to the deck of the ship. It was now the early morning; the sky was clear, spare a few white clouds, and the sun beat down on his neck. He turned and walked up to the steer of the ship. Tetra was already up, laying in the hammock with her legs crossed, drinking casually from a bottle of rum. She looked at Link out of the corner of her eye, and she did her trademark wink and grin at him. Link couldn’t help but smile at this, for she had not done that since he was a boy. He sat against the railing of the ship by her hammock, and looked up at her curiously.
“How long have you been up?” asked Link.
“Who says I even slept?” Tetra hiccupped humorously. Link could now tell that she had definitely not slept, for there were dark spots underneath her eyes, and the veins in those eyes were pulsing red.
“I suppose you feel better now? Or is it just the rum that’s making you giggle?” asked Link with a fake smirk on his face, while he was actually worried for her. She would never drink before. The entire crew drank it, as did he, while Tetra sat on the side constantly saying that it was a waste of time. But after the crew died, she had almost died of alcohol poisoning. Once again, she was going to drown her thoughts and feelings in a pool of buttery warm rum.
“The rum of course. You know, honestly I can’t believe I used to hate this stuff. It’s fantastic!”
Link could tell she was getting a bit tipsy. She began to sing drinking songs with a drunken overtone, waving the bottle around to the tune. Link looked up at the sail, and squinted his eyes at an odd sight he had not seen in months. There was a seagull perched on the sail of the ship, nipping at its underside. More and more came and perched on the sail, nipping and flapping their wings, cawing at each other at annoyingly high pitches.
He didn’t ask her about her drinking, as he didn’t want to anger her, especially when her common sense was faltered. Instead, he asked, “What are we going to do when we find this new land, anyway? I mean, we don’t have anyone with us, how are we supposed to colonize an island by ourselves?”
“Who knows,” Tetra said lightheartedly, hiccupping every now and then.
“Perhaps we’ll have to crossbreed with those gulls up on the sails, make Gullians and live among deformed man-birds for all eternity.”
Link laughed out loud at this. Even though she was only happy because of the rum, this was the first time the two of them were normal since the others died. Well, perhaps normal wouldn’t be the right word, but it was enough normal for him. It reminded him of old times, when the two of them would sing and tell dirty and wild stories with the crew. It made his chest lift up and gave him a grand euphoria. He held out his hand, and Tetra placed the rum in his hand. He took a swig and gave it back to her, and he replied to her Gullian remark, “Ah yes, that would be quite the sight, I can see it now. We would be like the Ritos, only we would have half a brain and we would nip our undersides and flap our wings for no apparent reason when perched somewhere. When we would see someone with food, we would pester them, screaming ‘gnanangna’, as the gulls do, and shooting droppings into their eyes. We would continue doing that until they surrendered their food to us. That is how we would survive, and our society would have no order, just the need to eat, reproduce, and annoy the hell out of everyone we see.”
Tetra saw this as an invitation to compete for the best interpretation of their wondrous man-bird society, and happily joined the fray. They went on like this for hours, ignoring their roaring hunger and the inevitable realization that they were going to die soon. Link did not want to tell her they were out of food though; he wanted her to smile, whether naturally or artificially. He was also worried that after the rum wore off, she would become sad again. He felt horrible when she was; he hated to see her like that. It was just so unlike her, he couldn’t imagine the pain she was experiencing right now.
Link scratched his whiskers rhythmically, and looked back at the gulls on the sail. There were even more now, about forty-six, a few of them circling the sail, and two of them now squabbling over room. The two gulls faced each other in a deadly stare-off, with their beaks wide open. They stood in this trance for a few minutes, and then charged at each other, flapping their wings as they lunged forward. One of them slipped and their beaks crushed together as two stags in battle would clash their antlers in a wrestle over a doe. The two gulls were now cawing into each other’s mouths, their beaks now literally locked together. Eventually Link’s amusement of the epic scuffle turned to annoyance from the constant onslaught of their Gnanangnas, and he looked at Tetra again.
Her eyes were wincing, and her hands grasped her stomach. She got up weakly and walked away from the hammock. “I need to eat,” she breathed.
Link decided that he couldn’t keep it from her, but he couldn’t bring the words from his gut to his mouth. He couldn’t bear telling her of their imminent starvation. He sat there, looking down at the creases in the aged floorboards deck as he listened to her light footsteps head down the stairs to the lower deck, then down another flight into the interior of the ship, and again into the storage room. After a few minutes he heard barrels being knocked over in a hungry fury, and it eventually turned into breaking glass and irate screaming.
Link burst into a fear induced sprint, taking three steps at a time down each flight of stairs, running past the stolen treasures collecting dust, down the hall into the storage room. It was in more of a chaos than he had left it earlier that morning; shards of glass littered the floor, broken barrels laying in piles of spilt salt, shelves knocked down, even bloodstains. Bloodstains…
Tetra was collapsed in the center of the room, sobbing lightly, laying in a pool of blood. There was a long shard of glass by her side, and there was a slice her wrist, right through her artery. She had tried to kill herself.
He rushed towards her with a look of horror that had never before stricken his face. He was supposed to be courageous, he was supposed to ignore fear and fight through tough times. Courage was even on the face of his hand, in the form of a golden triangle that only he could hold. Yet it somehow left him at this moment, but it did not make him weak; it did not take away who he was. It made him human to have such a fear, fear that gave him the strength to do things. Courage cannot exist without fear, yet fear can exist without courage. Tetra had lost her ability to have both.
Link untied his bandana and made a tourniquet out of it, cutting off the flow of blood to her arm. He scrambled around the room for needles, found them, and pulled a thread of cotton from his shirt. While he stitched up her cut and used various techniques he had learned to mend a broken artery, she looked up at him with tears dripping down her cheeks. He was not crying, he never did, but it was showing in his complexion; it was showing in the deep black wells of his eyes, it was showing in the way he breathed, the way he moved, the way he thought, touched. He was afraid of her. Not her herself, but what was happening to her. He didn’t think she was serious the night before, when she said she wanted to die, and she wasn’t. She didn’t want to die; she felt that she had to. She felt that she would rather die by her own hand than by the hands of the gods. He knew this, and he now felt horrible. He didn’t want to lose her, but he knew it was inevitable for the both of them to lose each other. He didn’t want death, but if he was going to die, they were going to do it together, in unison. He wanted to die by her hands, and she by his. That was the only way to do it without the other having to feel the pain of losing their last living friend.
He finished her stitches, and undid the tourniquet. The bleeding had stopped, but the pain still seared her. He held her against him, closing his eyes and hearing her heartbeat.
“Why didn’t you let me die?” she whined.
“You don’t need to.”
“But I want to.”
“No you don’t. I know you don’t, and you can’t hide it from me. I know you Tetra. You may not think it, or realize it, but I know when you’re lying, when you’re afraid, when you’re happy, when you’re sad. I can hear it in the way you speak of death. You fear it, everyone does. Even I do.”
Tetra didn’t speak, and buried her face into his shoulder. She wasn’t crying anymore, he could even feel her lips curl into a smile. They both wanted to say it, but they didn’t know what they would think.
She was quite beautiful, with large glistening eyes that revealed a wealth of experience and insight, smooth tan skin that reflected the now uncovered moonlight, long flowing straight blonde hair that swayed with the wind, and a round face that reflected her young age. The woman, however, did not dress like a beautiful maiden would. She wore a red bandana that she tied around her head from her temple to the back of her neck, pearl white trousers that were rolled up to the bottom of her knees, bare feet, a black shirt that hugged her torso and hung all the way down to the bottom of her hips with sleeves that only went a little bit past her shoulders, and long strips of cloth that wrapped around her forearms and the palms of her hands. Around her neck she wore several silver necklaces, each with different lengths and gems at the ends of them. On her pointed ears she had many piercings, with nine on her right and seven on her left. All over her upper arms she had thick black tattoos that looked like billowing flames, which extended all the way to her neck.
There was sorrow and anger in her eyes, which did not appear in her overall demeanor. It was as if the woman did not wish to show her true feelings, and instead hid everything inside her deep blue eyes. She liked to bottle everything up inside, and she hid these feelings in order to appear prominent and independent. However, she did not always have to hide things to appear this way, as she was quite an independent woman, and she always was, even as a child. During her childhood she was already the captain of the ship, bossing around her crew of pirates and being the mature one around a group of blubbering fools ages older than her. Despite her leadership, she always had her true feelings bottled up. Yet there was one who she unleashed her emotion for, as that person was the only one she ever truly trusted. But that person was asleep in the ship’s cabin, and was not there to help her exorcise those feelings from her eyes. However, there was always one feeling she kept from that person, and she never let it loose.
She wondered when she would ever be free of the sea, the sea that she had lived with her entire life. It never left; no matter where she was it was always there. She had once loved to be out on the water, pillaging and plundering island communities, reaping the land of its fortunes. It was once exhilarating, yet now she wished to stop this plethora of adventuring. It was once a game to her, an amusing endeavor that had no consequences.
Yet, after being in the world for nineteen long years, and after losing so much, she yearned to settle down and rest for years to come. But she had a task, a task that seemed to never want to end. She had to find a new land, where peace and prosperity could reign. The new Hyrule, as she had once said before Daphnes corrected her as the sea crashed down on them atop Ganon’s Tower.
“It will be your land,” she whispered, reciting the ancient king’s words. Her land; Nay, their land. She had forgotten about the one that was asleep in the cabin of the ship, the one who she had known for nine long years now. It was their task to bear, to share together. She was, after all, the descendant of Zelda, princess of Hyrule. And he, the new hero, was not a descendant of anything. Sure, he had family, a wondrous one at that, but where did he come from? Why was he appointed with this task?
She often felt sorry for him, being dragged into all of this, risking his life with no rewards for himself. He didn’t seem to mind it; in fact, he enjoyed helping others in times of need. Yet, she couldn’t help but wonder if he deserved better. Did he really have to bear this burden? Her thoughts were interrupted by a gruff voice behind her.
“Something wrong?”
“Go back to sleep Link, you’ve had a long day,” she said softly, and this response was very unlike her. In normal instances she would have pretended to be vexed and would have thrown Link back inside the hull of the ship, sending him tumbling down the stairs and landing on his head. However, she wasn’t feeling happy at the moment.
“And you haven’t, Tetra?” said Link.
Tetra turned her head to look back at him. He had changed ever since she had picked him up on that cheerful island to save his sister. He was not the same innocent little boy anymore. Nay, Link was not innocent at all anymore. Sure he was still kind, and understanding, yet it seemed that it was only towards her. With others he was so much rougher now. He was easily angered, he had often rivaled her in scolding the shipmates when they messed up, and he never smiled. Smiling was his trademark when he was young, and he was one of the only ones she had known that ever did. But now, it was a rare occasion that he even curved the sides of his mouth. It had seemed that she had influenced him more than she ever thought she would.
His appearance reflected this change as well. He was much stronger now, not abnormally mind you, but it still made him appear more intimidating. His skin was a light tan from being on the ocean for almost half of his life. The once well trimmed short hair that used to sit on top of his head was now wild and messy, kept long so that he didn’t risk injuring himself with his sword while cutting it, and it seemed to spike out on it’s own without his interference. His face was serious, with a masculine physique and light stubble that covered his chin. His eyes were no longer large and shining, full of glee and innocence, but they were now stern, with a deep and cold understanding.
He no longer donned the green clothing of the Hero of Time; he felt that it was not necessary anymore. Instead, he dressed in brown trousers that were ripped off at the bottom of his knees, exposing his lower legs, wooden sandals, and a white short-sleeved shirt that had black bandanas tied at the sleeves to keep them against his arms. He wore a black bandana on his head, covering the front half of his upper head with hair sticking slightly out of the bottom.
He was so much older now, she could barely connect him with the little boy that he once was. She often worried about his newfound awareness and maturity, and how long it would take for it to show him how she felt.
Tetra smiled weakly at him, and turned away. She knew he wanted to know what was wrong, but she couldn’t say it; she couldn’t allow herself to have a breakdown in front of him. She didn’t know what he’d think of anything she said anymore, even after knowing him for almost her whole life. His reactions varied day by day. There were so many things he surprised her with, things she didn’t expect to come from the clueless child of Outset. She didn’t know what to think anymore.
“Link-…Link just go back to sleep. I can handle it myself.”
He adopted a vexed voice, “No you can’t, no one can. I’ve watched you for the past months, you haven’t been acting like yourself; you’ve barely spoken to me. You’ve been hiding in storage, and I’ve heard you, you’ve been crying. Stop bottling up your feelings and speak to me damnit!”
A harsh jab pierced his soul as soon as he stopped speaking, like someone had just grasped his heart with a firm and callus encrusted hand. She looked back at him with horrible guilt, her blue eyes quavering as they gazed into his.
He began to plead, “Tetra, I di-“
“It’s my fault”
“-n’t mean to… what?”
She looked down at her feet, wincing, “It’s my fault they’re dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gonzo, Niko, the crew. It’s my fault.”
“Tetra, that wasn’t your fault. The only one who is to blame is nature.”
“No! It’s my fault! I told them to make sure the ship was kept in one piece! I told them to stay on deck in a storm! I went down into the cabin while you were all up here half dead, in fear of the roaring winds, only caring for myself. I caused them to be washed away by the fury of the sea.” She wiped her eyes. “I could have saved them…”
Link paused for a few moments, absorbing what she had just told him. He couldn’t help but feel a sudden hatred for her, but then that hatred clashed with sympathy as she looked back up at him, her eyes watering vigorously. He didn’t know what to think anymore.
She inhaled with difficulty, and spoke again, “You can hate me if you want, I don’t care anymore. I want to die.”
“Tetra, don’t say that.”
He tried to put hand on her cheek, put she slapped it away. “I want to die!”
She kept looking at him, with waterfalls gushing from her eyes, her brows furrowed, and a flush of mixed feelings emulating from her complexion.
Any initial hatred Link felt after she told him her part in the crew’s death was washed away by the sympathy that shared it. For the first time in years, his eyes didn’t accompany the cold stare he had adopted as a mask to hide his emotions. Tetra could see it. It was the wide, curious eyes of the clueless boy of Outset, staring right into her soul.
Her sobbing anger withered away into pure depression, “It’s just so lonely without them. Yelling at them was the only thing that kept me sane before you came along. It’s like I’ve had a chunk of my life taken from me. The thought of them just makes me feel empty inside. I’m sorry; it’s just that we never really talked about it when it happened. We just…”
She dropped to her knees, with her arms resting crossed on the ship’s railing, her face buried in them. Link knelt down beside her and placed his hand on her shoulder, now feeling empty inside too.
“There’s no need to be sorry, you knew them all of your life. They were to you as Aryll and Grandma were to me; they were your family. I can understand if you-.”
She interrupted him, turning at him and burying her face into his chest as she yelled, although muffled, “I hate this! I hate this! I am no pirate anymore. I don’t want to be at sea, all it has done is take things away; my mother, my crew, it took my family away from me. I want to rest. I want to sleep. I don’t want to lose anything more. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Tetra...”
“But I can’t have what I want. We have a task. We have a burden to bear together, and we can’t leave it be. If we don’t… where are we to go? I don’t know how to get back to our old home, I don’t even know where we are. We’re lost, the winds misguide us Link. They’ve left us out in the ocean, alone; they’ve left us to die.”
Link didn’t know what to say, but he eventually felt that he had to do something. “Come on, you need to sleep.”
He pulled her up and helped her to her hammock by the steering wheel. She looked at him one last time before turning away, facing the moon. He wanted to tell her what he had wanted to say ever since he first saw her being carried towards outset in the talons of that demented bird, but he held back. She was in enough shock already.
He walked back down into the cabin of the ship. As he walked down the stairs, he looked at all the things that were at the bottom of them. Diamonds, rubies, gold, silver, emeralds, jade, ebony, bronze, all the precious gems and metals that you could think of, all collecting dust. He walked past the treasures that had built up during their childhood, and went into his room. This room was not always his; it was once Tetra’s. But she didn’t like to be in there anymore. She wanted to be outside, looking at the stars and breathing in the fresh air. So he took it as his own, put her things in the storage room, and left just a bed, an oil lamp, his sword, and a box on the floor in the corner. He wanted to look inside of the box, but he wondered if he could take the pain of remembering those he would never see again.
He sprawled himself onto his bed, and turned off the lamp. He knew that what she had said was true. He had known it for a long time. They had left them to die.
The seagulls sat with profoundly dumb faces inscribed into their heads, gawking at each other and cawing like banshees into the air. A few of them circled the sail without reason, other than having a false purpose in the group of forty-six.
Seagulls were quite a peculiar animal. They seem to be the primary decomposer of this flooded world, eating up the waste and dead things that littered the earth and floated aimlessly around in the sea. They were the dysfunctional angels of death, carrying the empty shells, whether they are organic or inorganic, to the afterlife; to be specific, in their stomach.
If one were to die on their ship, with no one to take them to shore and bury them respectfully in the ground, the gulls would swoop down, devour whatever they could of the corpse, and carry them on to the gates of hell. They always seemed to know when death was imminent. In fact, they were very casual about it. On the sails of the lost ships they wait, preparing to pounce upon the living once the gift of life was stripped from them. When the carcass was devoured, the gulls always left scraps; the heart with only one ventricle left, the bladder and the appendix left there alone, the rest nibbled gingerly and left torn asunder on the deck of the ship.
They were once the weakest link of the detrivores, them at the bottom and the bald vultures of the desert at the pinnacle of royalty; they were the kings. But after the world was flooded thousands of years ago, the gulls were the only ones left standing. So their species took up the mantle of king, and ruled over the decayed people of the sea.
Those who were about to die didn’t know why so many gulls appeared on their sails. They just watched them fight with amusement in their dying eyes. They would never know what was to happen to them. They would never know that the angel of death was upon their doorstep.
The rising sun struck light onto Link’s eyes through the circular window in the back of the room. He opened his eyes reluctantly, and growled at the thought of waking up. He turned over and saw the box in the corner of the room. Just as he laid his eyes on it, he thought of Aryll. How much had she changed while he was gone? Did she even think of her big brother anymore? He couldn’t even picture her anymore, aside from two large curious eyes, and a childish smile that haunted his mind every night.
And then he thought of his grandmother. She would be a hundred and four on this day. Although he knew she was probably dead by now, he did not want to believe it. Instead, he pictured the remaining two members of his withering family line spending time with the villagers on Outset, taking care of the pigs and harvesting from the gardens outside of their wooden houses. The children would be looking up to Aryll just as they had to Link. They would want to be heroes and play with sticks; they would swordfight and try to overcome their imaginary archenemies. They would pretend that the pigs were monsters, and they would chase them all across the island. Aryll would look on at them with the other adults on Outset, all laughing at their follies. That’s what he wanted to think. He wanted to think that all was well at home. Then he pondered over a very sad thought. Did he even have a home anymore?
He couldn’t take it anymore and lunged at the box, and pried it open. Inside was a pictograph with him as a child and the entire village of Outset. Grandma had her hand on his shoulder as well as Aryll’s, and they were in the center of the pictograph. They had always been the glue of the community, especially when the others would squabble. They served as an example to follow, and the others followed in order to survive. Grandma wasn’t always the feeble and gentle old woman she was when he left. She used to be the strong and energetic leader of the island, the one who made all the decisions and solved all of the problems. However, over time her old bones began to wither away, and she had to rest. They all knew she was going to die, they just didn’t know when.
Link threw the box to the ground, and walked out of the room. He went into the storage room, with growling sounds coming from his abdomen as he walked. He looked inside a barrel, and saw that there were no apples. Link looked in another, and saw that all of the meat gone. He repeated in this fashion for an hour, moving faster every second. All of the barrels were empty. He cursed loudly and kicked over a barrel, breathing heavily through his teeth. After he calmed down a bit, and tried to ignore the situation he was now in, he went over to the buckets of water that they had collected after the last rain. He cupped his hands and dove them into the warm water, and returned them to his mouth, at which he drank ravenously.
Link looked to the side of him and saw that the rum was gone as well, with a three large bottles freshly emptied. His eyes went wide, now thinking of Tetra. She’s drinking again. Passing by the treasures that collected dust by the stairs, he walked up to the deck of the ship. It was now the early morning; the sky was clear, spare a few white clouds, and the sun beat down on his neck. He turned and walked up to the steer of the ship. Tetra was already up, laying in the hammock with her legs crossed, drinking casually from a bottle of rum. She looked at Link out of the corner of her eye, and she did her trademark wink and grin at him. Link couldn’t help but smile at this, for she had not done that since he was a boy. He sat against the railing of the ship by her hammock, and looked up at her curiously.
“How long have you been up?” asked Link.
“Who says I even slept?” Tetra hiccupped humorously. Link could now tell that she had definitely not slept, for there were dark spots underneath her eyes, and the veins in those eyes were pulsing red.
“I suppose you feel better now? Or is it just the rum that’s making you giggle?” asked Link with a fake smirk on his face, while he was actually worried for her. She would never drink before. The entire crew drank it, as did he, while Tetra sat on the side constantly saying that it was a waste of time. But after the crew died, she had almost died of alcohol poisoning. Once again, she was going to drown her thoughts and feelings in a pool of buttery warm rum.
“The rum of course. You know, honestly I can’t believe I used to hate this stuff. It’s fantastic!”
Link could tell she was getting a bit tipsy. She began to sing drinking songs with a drunken overtone, waving the bottle around to the tune. Link looked up at the sail, and squinted his eyes at an odd sight he had not seen in months. There was a seagull perched on the sail of the ship, nipping at its underside. More and more came and perched on the sail, nipping and flapping their wings, cawing at each other at annoyingly high pitches.
He didn’t ask her about her drinking, as he didn’t want to anger her, especially when her common sense was faltered. Instead, he asked, “What are we going to do when we find this new land, anyway? I mean, we don’t have anyone with us, how are we supposed to colonize an island by ourselves?”
“Who knows,” Tetra said lightheartedly, hiccupping every now and then.
“Perhaps we’ll have to crossbreed with those gulls up on the sails, make Gullians and live among deformed man-birds for all eternity.”
Link laughed out loud at this. Even though she was only happy because of the rum, this was the first time the two of them were normal since the others died. Well, perhaps normal wouldn’t be the right word, but it was enough normal for him. It reminded him of old times, when the two of them would sing and tell dirty and wild stories with the crew. It made his chest lift up and gave him a grand euphoria. He held out his hand, and Tetra placed the rum in his hand. He took a swig and gave it back to her, and he replied to her Gullian remark, “Ah yes, that would be quite the sight, I can see it now. We would be like the Ritos, only we would have half a brain and we would nip our undersides and flap our wings for no apparent reason when perched somewhere. When we would see someone with food, we would pester them, screaming ‘gnanangna’, as the gulls do, and shooting droppings into their eyes. We would continue doing that until they surrendered their food to us. That is how we would survive, and our society would have no order, just the need to eat, reproduce, and annoy the hell out of everyone we see.”
Tetra saw this as an invitation to compete for the best interpretation of their wondrous man-bird society, and happily joined the fray. They went on like this for hours, ignoring their roaring hunger and the inevitable realization that they were going to die soon. Link did not want to tell her they were out of food though; he wanted her to smile, whether naturally or artificially. He was also worried that after the rum wore off, she would become sad again. He felt horrible when she was; he hated to see her like that. It was just so unlike her, he couldn’t imagine the pain she was experiencing right now.
Link scratched his whiskers rhythmically, and looked back at the gulls on the sail. There were even more now, about forty-six, a few of them circling the sail, and two of them now squabbling over room. The two gulls faced each other in a deadly stare-off, with their beaks wide open. They stood in this trance for a few minutes, and then charged at each other, flapping their wings as they lunged forward. One of them slipped and their beaks crushed together as two stags in battle would clash their antlers in a wrestle over a doe. The two gulls were now cawing into each other’s mouths, their beaks now literally locked together. Eventually Link’s amusement of the epic scuffle turned to annoyance from the constant onslaught of their Gnanangnas, and he looked at Tetra again.
Her eyes were wincing, and her hands grasped her stomach. She got up weakly and walked away from the hammock. “I need to eat,” she breathed.
Link decided that he couldn’t keep it from her, but he couldn’t bring the words from his gut to his mouth. He couldn’t bear telling her of their imminent starvation. He sat there, looking down at the creases in the aged floorboards deck as he listened to her light footsteps head down the stairs to the lower deck, then down another flight into the interior of the ship, and again into the storage room. After a few minutes he heard barrels being knocked over in a hungry fury, and it eventually turned into breaking glass and irate screaming.
Link burst into a fear induced sprint, taking three steps at a time down each flight of stairs, running past the stolen treasures collecting dust, down the hall into the storage room. It was in more of a chaos than he had left it earlier that morning; shards of glass littered the floor, broken barrels laying in piles of spilt salt, shelves knocked down, even bloodstains. Bloodstains…
Tetra was collapsed in the center of the room, sobbing lightly, laying in a pool of blood. There was a long shard of glass by her side, and there was a slice her wrist, right through her artery. She had tried to kill herself.
He rushed towards her with a look of horror that had never before stricken his face. He was supposed to be courageous, he was supposed to ignore fear and fight through tough times. Courage was even on the face of his hand, in the form of a golden triangle that only he could hold. Yet it somehow left him at this moment, but it did not make him weak; it did not take away who he was. It made him human to have such a fear, fear that gave him the strength to do things. Courage cannot exist without fear, yet fear can exist without courage. Tetra had lost her ability to have both.
Link untied his bandana and made a tourniquet out of it, cutting off the flow of blood to her arm. He scrambled around the room for needles, found them, and pulled a thread of cotton from his shirt. While he stitched up her cut and used various techniques he had learned to mend a broken artery, she looked up at him with tears dripping down her cheeks. He was not crying, he never did, but it was showing in his complexion; it was showing in the deep black wells of his eyes, it was showing in the way he breathed, the way he moved, the way he thought, touched. He was afraid of her. Not her herself, but what was happening to her. He didn’t think she was serious the night before, when she said she wanted to die, and she wasn’t. She didn’t want to die; she felt that she had to. She felt that she would rather die by her own hand than by the hands of the gods. He knew this, and he now felt horrible. He didn’t want to lose her, but he knew it was inevitable for the both of them to lose each other. He didn’t want death, but if he was going to die, they were going to do it together, in unison. He wanted to die by her hands, and she by his. That was the only way to do it without the other having to feel the pain of losing their last living friend.
He finished her stitches, and undid the tourniquet. The bleeding had stopped, but the pain still seared her. He held her against him, closing his eyes and hearing her heartbeat.
“Why didn’t you let me die?” she whined.
“You don’t need to.”
“But I want to.”
“No you don’t. I know you don’t, and you can’t hide it from me. I know you Tetra. You may not think it, or realize it, but I know when you’re lying, when you’re afraid, when you’re happy, when you’re sad. I can hear it in the way you speak of death. You fear it, everyone does. Even I do.”
Tetra didn’t speak, and buried her face into his shoulder. She wasn’t crying anymore, he could even feel her lips curl into a smile. They both wanted to say it, but they didn’t know what they would think.
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- Chapter 1: Chapter 1
- Chapter 2: Chapter 2
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