Homeward Bound | Legend of Zelda

Chapter 10 - Fate is Written in the Stars

Link wondered how many times before he'd stopped to admire the stars.

There was no flicker of recognition as he gazed at the vast nightscape. Pinpricks of light littering the sky, some bunched together and others spread out, isolated in an inky mass of darkness.

Link thought about those stars. Did they know they were alone? There were so, so many stars, and yet those ones had been dealt the worst hand; doomed to spend eternity without anyone to share their light with.

Link's gaze fluttered down to the fire, then back up. The lights were fainter now, like a curtain had been drawn across his eyes, but it slowly started to clear again like a rising cloud of fog. If only the fog in his mind would do that same. Maybe then he wouldn't sit pondering such menial things when left alone for more than five minutes.

He poked the fire with a stick.

"You wanna know something cool?" Wind's voice cut through the silence. Link glanced over, finding the boy laying flat on his back, focussing on the sky like he had been.

Link hummed.

"The sky is always the same."

Link's ear twitched. He pressed his lips together and looked back over to the Hero of the Wind, resting his chin on his knee. "What?"

"The sky. Nature's map. The constellations are always the same." Wind pushed up onto his hand, using the other to point to the northern sky. "That one over there? That's the Goddess Harp. It belonged to Hylia's incarnation. Zelda. She wasn't a princess then, though. Hyrule as a kingdom didn't even exist in those times."

Link gazed at the arch of golden lights in the sky, wondering how Wind managed to distinguish it from the rest.

"And that one over there?" His finger moved to the western skyline, above the mountains. "That's the Courage of Farore. It's meant to be a dragon, but it looks more like a snake to me." Link followed his gaze. Just barely, he could see the faintest 's' shape in the sky, swirling around other stars like a wisp of smoke.

"You know a lot about stars." Link muttered noncommittally, prodding the fire again.

"I would hope so. I spent most of my adventure just sailing around with a half-empty map. It was either learn the stars or get lost and sink."

Link perked up at that, frowning curiously. "Sailing?"

Wind nodded, laying back down. "When I was still kicking, we had this thing called The Great Flood. The Goddesses sank Hyrule to stop Ganon's wish for destruction from coming true. It sucked, but it was all I ever knew. The world was just a series of islands, making travel... difficult." Wind took a breath, loosely clenching his fists.

Link drew his knees to his chest, hugging them as he fiddled with the cuff of his tunic.

"But then my sister was kidnapped by the Helmaroc King. That's when I met Tetra and the crew, but they dumped me on Windfall Island, which is where I met the King of Red Lions! Turns out he was the King of Hyrule, but he was a pretty cool dude once you get to know him. Reminds me a bit of that fish-guy."

"Sidon." Link automatically filled in, mind too caught on something Wind had said earlier. "You have a sister?"

Wind's smile turned sad, his gaze dropping to the fire and lingering. "Yeah. Her name's Aryll. She was both a pain in my butt and my best friend. Nobody quite understood me like she did."

The moon continued to climb in the sky, angled just so that the pale light shone on Wind's face. His already light hair had streaks of almost white filtering through it, and the skin of his nose and cheeks was a shade darker than the rest of his face - both being the longer lasting effects of sitting out in the sun for weeks on end while sailing. But none of this could hide the downward curl of the corners of his lips, or the aching in his evergreen eyes.