Flash Fiction Friday - #213: "Ten Years Later."
@flashfictionfridayofficial has released today's prompt and I've been ~inspired~.
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I wrote an AU of my own AU, 'A Seed of Song', in which -- ten years after the Calamity -- a juvenile Rito tries to learn more about her Hylian dad, guided by her dead father's diary.
Told in reverse chronology. 1k words exactly in GDocs.
—
And The Time Has Flown
Characters: The Chick (A Seed of Song), Aryll, Purah (mentioned), Impa, Sidon, Revali (posthumous)
—
"The Director told me you're here. That you're healing.
"...Are you? I'm not doubting her! But— Are you really gonna wake up?
"...Are you really my father?
"Nobody can tell me. But if you are… Please. Come back. Come back."
—
"Hi! Um. I'm looking for Lady Purah?"
Aryll pauses and looks the little Rito girl over. She doesn't seem much taller than an eight-year-old, and her russet-and-cream feathers are in substantial disarray from a long, hard flight.
"The Director?"
The little girl nods. Her eyes flash with hope.
"You want that big building up the hill, then," Aryll says, pointing the way, and tries not to smile at the flicker of dismay on the girl's face that soon turns into grim determination.
"Thanks."
"You'll have a hard time getting up there, you know," Aryll calls after the child as she starts hopping away up the path/ Her legs are only little. "It’s late. I'll be running supplies up there tomorrow morning. You're welcome to stay with..."
- us, she almost says, but that's not right anymore. It's just Aryll in that old house across the Firly, after Gramps passed away and Ma went out hunting and never came back, and Nanna didn't wake up one morning, and—
And Dad and Link both died, far away from home, when the Calamity came.
“You promise?”
The girl says it with such suspicion that Aryll has to laugh. “Promise.”
She beckons for the Rito girl to follow. As they near the bridge, she thinks to ask, “What's your name?
The girl chirps out, “I’m—"
—
"...I see."
The child fidgeted from one foot to the other. "Do you... believe me?"
Truthfully, it is quite the wild and incredulous tale. If she hadn't been an unwitting witness to some small part of the tale, she might not have believed it.
But Impa had found herself cast as a silent intermediary, letting Link's letters slip out of the castle with minimal disturbance and no eyes but her own setting sight on their contents.
Champion Revali's replies had been scarcer, and neither side had given much indication of the regard that might imply a shared parental duty, but...
Purah told her, just once, of the champion's chick. Her older sister had always enjoyed keeping secrets. It would come as no surprise if Purah knew something more.
So Impa puts her doubts aside for now, and tells the child what she knows, and sets her on the path towards Purah.
...And that evening, when the shadows fall and the village turns still, Impa walks to the island where the Goddess Statue stands and prays Link might wake and return to them soon.
For Princess Zelda's sake, and for this child who calls herself his.
—
This year, Gaddison is chosen to wield the Ceremonial Trident. Not for the first time, Prince Sidon longs to be bigger. Then he might be the one to carry it instead.
He's distracted anyway. There's a Rito perched on the cliffside the entire time, though they don't make any move to approach, watching the subdued ceremony in silence and shifting only when Laflat steps forward and sings the song that Sidon hates them singing.
By the time the festival ends, and Sidon manages to glance up at the cliffside again, the Rito has gone.
He tracks them to a pond, south of the Veiled Falls, and finds them sitting at the edge of the water, a book in their wings and a bow set within reach.
They are - she is - singing. But it's not the simple version, the way Laflat sang it: it's Mipha's version, and Queen Sela's before her, with a few unknown turns that speak of another voice that passed it on.
Sidon picks up on all of that, but he can't make sense of it. "How do you know that?"
The Rito snaps her book shut, guilty. "I — my dad sang it to me when I first hatched."
"...You're a Rito," Sidon points out.
"Um. Yeah?"
Rito don't marry Zora. Do they? Maybe there's something he doesn't know. "How was your dad a Zora?"
"They... weren't? They were Rito. And Hylian. He's the one who sang to me. My uncle said he was a knight in service to Hyrule's princess..."
That's wrong. She's wrong. Princess Zelda only had one sworn knight. Everyone says so. And he was...
"The Hylian Champion was gonna be my sister's husband," Sidon tells her with certainty. His father says it's true, and all the councillors believe it too, even if they hate Hylians now. "You're mistaken."
It's the wrong thing to say. The Rito girl flies into a rage. "I'm not lying," she shrieks, "you're lying!"
"You're wrong!" Sidon yells back. "Why would my sister have made him that armor if they weren't…"
Everyone says it! Mipha loved Link. Mipha wanted to marry Link. So why does this girl think she can barge in and say otherwise?
But she flies off before Sidon can say so, winging her way south, away from Zora's Domain. Well. Good riddance, Muzu would say.
...He still feels bad about it. If he sees her again, he'll try to say sorry.
—
He keeps talking about giving her a name.
No matter that I've told him she has a name, and it's only a sad quirk of his biology that he can't say it. How else would she recognise when I'm talking to her? Really. She doesn't need a Hylian name yet.
—
...Loath as I am to concede the point, he might - inadvertently - have one.
And the name he suggested wasn't that unacceptable...
I wonder if she ever felt this way when I was young. Probably not: the way people speak of her, she thought herself invincible.
I should thank her for that lesson, at least. No warrior is invincible. Any battle might be our last. I knew that, but...
It took until now for me to understand it.
Yes. That name will do. I'll tell him when we meet at Mt. Lanayru…
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