Chapter 2: Visions
Sorry it took so long for me to update. Took me kind of a while, what with school and all... Anyway, enjoy! ^ ^
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T’risa sat cross-legged on the bed, frowning at the wall. The nerve of him! she was thinking. Treating me like I’m a child. I’m nineteen! That’s old enough to be an adult, isn’t it? She was interrupted in her thoughts by a soft knock at the door.
“T’risa?” It was Mako.
He’s proved his point; now he wants to gloat, thought T’risa bitterly. “Go away!” she snapped, her back still to the door. Listening to his receding footsteps, however, T’risa softened. Well, I really am acting like a child, she mused. After a moment’s thought, she decided to apologize. It was late, after all, and tempers tended to flare after the sun went down. She rose slowly from her bed. Heading toward the door, she heard a loud crash from the kitchen. Her eyes snapped open in alarm. “Mako?” she called. “Are you okay?”
As if in response, she heard him cry out in a strangled voice, and some sort of violent thumping ensued.
“Mako!” The girl unlocked her door and raced through the kitchen. When she saw her husband lying on the floor, she froze. He wasn’t moving, though his eyes were strangely wide open, and the most unnerving shade of green she’d ever seen. She gave a shriek and raced over to his still body, where she dropped to the floor. “Mako!” she cried. “Mako! What’s the matter? Mako, wake up, please wake up! Oh, Din, no!” She reached out to touch his face.
“Stop.” A commanding voice filled the room, and T’risa’s hand stopped halfway to her husband. She looked up to see a squat man standing in the open doorway, a grim look on his bearded face. “Don’t touch him,” he ordered. T’risa shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Is he… is he…?” She could barely speak, let alone voice her question.
But the man shook his head. “He’s not dead, Tamarisa,” he said firmly. “Leave him be. He’ll wake up sooner or later.”
Brazze Querelekt was a short, stocky man of at least sixty years. No one knew for sure how old he was, as he was constantly lying about his age, but his bristly white beard and bald head gave him away. He had two beady black eyes set into the wrinkles of his forehead that twinkled pleasantly whenever he was happy. Now, however, the old man just looked tired.
“How’d you know to come?” T’risa was wondering.
“Hard not to with you screaming like that.”
T’risa could no longer look at her paralyzed husband, so she stood up and moved to the older man. “Will he… will he be all right?”
The man grimaced. “Hard to say,” he muttered. At the pained look his daughter-in-law gave him, he checked himself. “Oh, he’ll wake up, if that’s what you mean. Whether he’ll be the same for a while is anyone’s guess.”
T’risa looked at him, still not quite understanding. “I don’t —“
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “There,” he said, nodding at something behind her. “You see?”
The girl turned around to see her husband sitting up on the floor. He was rubbing his head and looked extremely tired.
“Mako!” She dropped to his side and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing hysterically. “What happened? Are you okay? Din Farore Nayru, you scared me half to death! Why weren’t you moving? Did you hurt yourself? Do you need anything? Oh, Din, oh, Din!”
“There now, that’s enough. Give the boy some room!” Brazze put a gentle hand on T’risa’s shoulder and helped her to her feet.
Mako looked up at his father. “I had a vision,” he said simply. The man nodded. “So I gathered.” He turned to T’risa, who was gnawing at her fist in anxiety. “Don’t worry, Tama. He’s all right. Here, help me get him to a bed.”
The girl sniffed, then bent down and lifted one of Mako’s arms. Supporting his body between them, T’risa and Brazze made their way into the bedroom, where they lay him down. He sighed. “I’m really okay, Dad,” he said, his tone a sure giveaway that he wasn’t okay at all.
“Nonsense. If this vision is anything like your old ones, you’re anything but okay.” He looked at T’risa. “Go on and get a potion started for him,” he said.
T’risa looked at him. “Umm… I’m sorry, Papa, I don’t know how…” Brazze raised an eyebrow and looked at his son, who winced. “You never showed her how to make a potion?”
Mako shook his head. “I thought they’d gone,” he said apologetically. “I haven’t had one since…” He trailed off.
“Still,” said his father sternly, “you could have at least warned her.” The man glanced at T’risa, whose mystified expression made him chuckle. “That’s all right,” he said lightly. “I’ll take care of it this time. Mako, you can fill her in on your little secret.” With that, he strode out of the room.
T’risa, still looking terrified and now totally confused, sat down on the bed next to her husband.
“All right,” she said. “From what he said, I can gather that you’ve been hiding something from me. Mako, what’s going on? Look me in the eyes and tell me.”
What she meant was for him to tell the truth. Mako was not a very good liar, and he could never tell a lie to a person’s face.
He shook his head. “There’s not much to tell,” he muttered. “I have these visions sometimes. It’s not really important.”
T’risa grabbed him by the shoulders. “You say that like it’s nothing!” she cried. “Mako, you were dead! I saw it myself! There’s no way anyone could lie as still as that and still be alive!” She swallowed hard. “This… has happened before, then?” she asked, her voice trembling.
He looked away. “I’d hoped they wouldn’t come back,” he said. “I’ve had them as long as I can remember. They’ve always been awful experiences. This time, though… I don’t know. It’s never been that painful. Really, T’risa, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
She stared at him for a while, neither speaking. Finally, T’risa spoke up. “Do they… come true, often?”
Mako nodded slowly. “Always,” he muttered. “They’ve never been wrong once.”
“And… are they always… bad?”
An almost imperceptible smile crossed her husband’s lips. “Not always,” he said. He looked into her eyes, and she noticed that his were back to their usual shade of blue. “One time, when I was twelve, I saw myself falling in love with a beautiful girl.” He shut his eyes, cherishing the memory. “It was like a dream, where you can’t make out the features, but you still know they’re there. The girl had long, golden hair, and two bright purple eyes. Her skin was as perfect as the rising moon, and her voice was so sweet and soft I thought it was a singing bird.” He reached out and lovingly stroked her arm.
T’risa kept her face straight. “You mean to tell me,” she said skeptically, “that you’ve been in love with me since you were twelve?” Mako shook his head. “No, but I knew roughly what to look for.” He grinned. “Really, it was love at first sight.”
At that, T’risa couldn’t help but smile. “Well,” she said, “I love you, too.” She paused before continuing. “And tonight,” she said. “Was this a good vision, or a bad vision?”
Mako’s smile disappeared, and he looked off into the distance. “Bad,” he said ruefully. “Definitely a bad vision.”
T’risa would have pried more if her father-in-law hadn’t walked into the room at that very moment. He carried a mug of something hot in his right hand, and there was a tiny pouch in his left. He came around the side of the bed as his daughter-in-law got to her feet. “Sit up,” he ordered. When Mako did so, his father carefully poured the contents of the pouch into the liquid then handed the concoction to his son. Mako took it obediently and downed the whole steaming thing in one gulp. He wrinkled his nose.
“Still tastes as awful as always,” he announced. But the potion soon worked its magic. Within moments, Mako’s face looked almost brighter, and he sat up a little taller in the bed.
“Now, then,” said the old man, pulling up a chair and plunking himself comfortably down. “What was this vision about?”
Mako looked uneasily away. “Oh, nothing important…”
His father looked at him for a moment. “You mean you haven’t had a vision in seven years, and when one finally comes it knocks you out so bad your wife thinks you’re dead, and you’re trying to tell me it wasn’t important?”
Mako didn’t answer. He sighed and looked off into the distance. “I just don’t really want to think about it,” he said softly.
Brazze nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. “You’ll meet it when the time comes.” He pulled himself out of the chair and turned to face T’risa. “And you make sure he teaches you to make a potion,” he said, not unkindly.
T’risa nodded and forced herself to smile, but she still felt sick inside. Mako had visions? Her thoughts were all jumbled up. She barely heard herself call a good-bye to Brazze as he left the room. What was this vision about? He hadn’t told his father — and Mako told his father everything. T’risa’s head began to hurt with this new concept to devour, and she sat down on her side of the bed. Mako had leaned against the headboard and was looking at the ceiling with blank eyes. Neither spoke for a long time.
Finally, T’risa touched his face and looked at him carefully. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, worried. “You seem awfully tired.”
Mako shook his head. “I just need some rest,” he muttered. Giving no further explanation, he rolled over and shut his eyes.
T’risa hovered over him for a few moments, then she, too, rolled over and shut her eyes. It was too late to think about things like this. Maybe everything would be clearer in the morning.
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Meanwhile, some hundred miles away, an explosion lit up the southern sky. A young man approaching his thirties watched from a cliff as his city was engulfed by a swirling purple cloud. As it descended, the man could hear the screams of the Gerudo women below him. He smiled malevolently. It wasn’t the first they had seen. All month long, purple clouds, swarms of creatures, and other such disasters had wreaked havoc on the struggling village. He had been there every time, to his followers' relief. After a few moments, he descended into the growing crowd.
“Women of the desert,” he cried gallantly, raising a long black staff over his head. “Fear no more! Your king will deliver you!” With that, he pointed the staff at the cloud and shouted some words that sounded to the townspeople very elegant and noble, but no one could understand them as they were in a different language.
A ray of orange light shot out from the tip of his staff and hit the cloud in the center. Of course, he had no difficulty recalling the cloud, as he had been the one to create it. With a grand show of spinning dust and bright flashes of light, the cloud was pulled to the tip of the man’s staff, where it disappeared altogether.
When it was gone, the townspeople all clapped and cheered. “All hail the king!” they shouted. “All hail King Ganondorf!”
Ganondorf basked in the applause only for a moment. “Gerudos,” he called when the noise had subsided. “I have had a dream — no, a premonition — of what has been occurring here!”
The women listened intently. They were all eager for the attacks to cease for good.
“Do you know,” Ganondorf continued, “who has suffered us to endure these misfortunes?”
There was a silence as the Gerudos thought. A girl at the front of the crowd looked up at him. “The North?” she inquired.
He smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Lady Nabooru speaks the truth! It is the North who has done this to us! We have so little protection as it is, and they take advantage of our weakness! They laugh at us… scorn us, even! While they sit in their lavish homes and fruitful gardens, we are condemned to the scorching heat of the desert sun! Why do they mock us? My people, it is time for action! We must rise against the North!”
There was a loud clamor of agreement. The girl called Nabooru made her way over to him. “I want to help you,” she said earnestly, “in any way I can. Please, I would love it more than anything if you would allow me to fight next to you.”
Ganondorf smiled at her. “Of course,” he said. “You are my most loyal companion, Nabooru, and I would rot in my grave before denying you a position like this.”
Nabooru’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, sir,” she said, nodding her head in a half-bow. “You will not regret it!”
She rushed off to start organizing her ranks. Ganondorf grinned after her, an evil glint in his eye. “No, I don’t think I will,” he agreed silently. “The North will soon be mine to control. I will rule them all!”
Okay, a little bit of a lame ending…
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T’risa sat cross-legged on the bed, frowning at the wall. The nerve of him! she was thinking. Treating me like I’m a child. I’m nineteen! That’s old enough to be an adult, isn’t it? She was interrupted in her thoughts by a soft knock at the door.
“T’risa?” It was Mako.
He’s proved his point; now he wants to gloat, thought T’risa bitterly. “Go away!” she snapped, her back still to the door. Listening to his receding footsteps, however, T’risa softened. Well, I really am acting like a child, she mused. After a moment’s thought, she decided to apologize. It was late, after all, and tempers tended to flare after the sun went down. She rose slowly from her bed. Heading toward the door, she heard a loud crash from the kitchen. Her eyes snapped open in alarm. “Mako?” she called. “Are you okay?”
As if in response, she heard him cry out in a strangled voice, and some sort of violent thumping ensued.
“Mako!” The girl unlocked her door and raced through the kitchen. When she saw her husband lying on the floor, she froze. He wasn’t moving, though his eyes were strangely wide open, and the most unnerving shade of green she’d ever seen. She gave a shriek and raced over to his still body, where she dropped to the floor. “Mako!” she cried. “Mako! What’s the matter? Mako, wake up, please wake up! Oh, Din, no!” She reached out to touch his face.
“Stop.” A commanding voice filled the room, and T’risa’s hand stopped halfway to her husband. She looked up to see a squat man standing in the open doorway, a grim look on his bearded face. “Don’t touch him,” he ordered. T’risa shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Is he… is he…?” She could barely speak, let alone voice her question.
But the man shook his head. “He’s not dead, Tamarisa,” he said firmly. “Leave him be. He’ll wake up sooner or later.”
Brazze Querelekt was a short, stocky man of at least sixty years. No one knew for sure how old he was, as he was constantly lying about his age, but his bristly white beard and bald head gave him away. He had two beady black eyes set into the wrinkles of his forehead that twinkled pleasantly whenever he was happy. Now, however, the old man just looked tired.
“How’d you know to come?” T’risa was wondering.
“Hard not to with you screaming like that.”
T’risa could no longer look at her paralyzed husband, so she stood up and moved to the older man. “Will he… will he be all right?”
The man grimaced. “Hard to say,” he muttered. At the pained look his daughter-in-law gave him, he checked himself. “Oh, he’ll wake up, if that’s what you mean. Whether he’ll be the same for a while is anyone’s guess.”
T’risa looked at him, still not quite understanding. “I don’t —“
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “There,” he said, nodding at something behind her. “You see?”
The girl turned around to see her husband sitting up on the floor. He was rubbing his head and looked extremely tired.
“Mako!” She dropped to his side and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing hysterically. “What happened? Are you okay? Din Farore Nayru, you scared me half to death! Why weren’t you moving? Did you hurt yourself? Do you need anything? Oh, Din, oh, Din!”
“There now, that’s enough. Give the boy some room!” Brazze put a gentle hand on T’risa’s shoulder and helped her to her feet.
Mako looked up at his father. “I had a vision,” he said simply. The man nodded. “So I gathered.” He turned to T’risa, who was gnawing at her fist in anxiety. “Don’t worry, Tama. He’s all right. Here, help me get him to a bed.”
The girl sniffed, then bent down and lifted one of Mako’s arms. Supporting his body between them, T’risa and Brazze made their way into the bedroom, where they lay him down. He sighed. “I’m really okay, Dad,” he said, his tone a sure giveaway that he wasn’t okay at all.
“Nonsense. If this vision is anything like your old ones, you’re anything but okay.” He looked at T’risa. “Go on and get a potion started for him,” he said.
T’risa looked at him. “Umm… I’m sorry, Papa, I don’t know how…” Brazze raised an eyebrow and looked at his son, who winced. “You never showed her how to make a potion?”
Mako shook his head. “I thought they’d gone,” he said apologetically. “I haven’t had one since…” He trailed off.
“Still,” said his father sternly, “you could have at least warned her.” The man glanced at T’risa, whose mystified expression made him chuckle. “That’s all right,” he said lightly. “I’ll take care of it this time. Mako, you can fill her in on your little secret.” With that, he strode out of the room.
T’risa, still looking terrified and now totally confused, sat down on the bed next to her husband.
“All right,” she said. “From what he said, I can gather that you’ve been hiding something from me. Mako, what’s going on? Look me in the eyes and tell me.”
What she meant was for him to tell the truth. Mako was not a very good liar, and he could never tell a lie to a person’s face.
He shook his head. “There’s not much to tell,” he muttered. “I have these visions sometimes. It’s not really important.”
T’risa grabbed him by the shoulders. “You say that like it’s nothing!” she cried. “Mako, you were dead! I saw it myself! There’s no way anyone could lie as still as that and still be alive!” She swallowed hard. “This… has happened before, then?” she asked, her voice trembling.
He looked away. “I’d hoped they wouldn’t come back,” he said. “I’ve had them as long as I can remember. They’ve always been awful experiences. This time, though… I don’t know. It’s never been that painful. Really, T’risa, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
She stared at him for a while, neither speaking. Finally, T’risa spoke up. “Do they… come true, often?”
Mako nodded slowly. “Always,” he muttered. “They’ve never been wrong once.”
“And… are they always… bad?”
An almost imperceptible smile crossed her husband’s lips. “Not always,” he said. He looked into her eyes, and she noticed that his were back to their usual shade of blue. “One time, when I was twelve, I saw myself falling in love with a beautiful girl.” He shut his eyes, cherishing the memory. “It was like a dream, where you can’t make out the features, but you still know they’re there. The girl had long, golden hair, and two bright purple eyes. Her skin was as perfect as the rising moon, and her voice was so sweet and soft I thought it was a singing bird.” He reached out and lovingly stroked her arm.
T’risa kept her face straight. “You mean to tell me,” she said skeptically, “that you’ve been in love with me since you were twelve?” Mako shook his head. “No, but I knew roughly what to look for.” He grinned. “Really, it was love at first sight.”
At that, T’risa couldn’t help but smile. “Well,” she said, “I love you, too.” She paused before continuing. “And tonight,” she said. “Was this a good vision, or a bad vision?”
Mako’s smile disappeared, and he looked off into the distance. “Bad,” he said ruefully. “Definitely a bad vision.”
T’risa would have pried more if her father-in-law hadn’t walked into the room at that very moment. He carried a mug of something hot in his right hand, and there was a tiny pouch in his left. He came around the side of the bed as his daughter-in-law got to her feet. “Sit up,” he ordered. When Mako did so, his father carefully poured the contents of the pouch into the liquid then handed the concoction to his son. Mako took it obediently and downed the whole steaming thing in one gulp. He wrinkled his nose.
“Still tastes as awful as always,” he announced. But the potion soon worked its magic. Within moments, Mako’s face looked almost brighter, and he sat up a little taller in the bed.
“Now, then,” said the old man, pulling up a chair and plunking himself comfortably down. “What was this vision about?”
Mako looked uneasily away. “Oh, nothing important…”
His father looked at him for a moment. “You mean you haven’t had a vision in seven years, and when one finally comes it knocks you out so bad your wife thinks you’re dead, and you’re trying to tell me it wasn’t important?”
Mako didn’t answer. He sighed and looked off into the distance. “I just don’t really want to think about it,” he said softly.
Brazze nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. “You’ll meet it when the time comes.” He pulled himself out of the chair and turned to face T’risa. “And you make sure he teaches you to make a potion,” he said, not unkindly.
T’risa nodded and forced herself to smile, but she still felt sick inside. Mako had visions? Her thoughts were all jumbled up. She barely heard herself call a good-bye to Brazze as he left the room. What was this vision about? He hadn’t told his father — and Mako told his father everything. T’risa’s head began to hurt with this new concept to devour, and she sat down on her side of the bed. Mako had leaned against the headboard and was looking at the ceiling with blank eyes. Neither spoke for a long time.
Finally, T’risa touched his face and looked at him carefully. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, worried. “You seem awfully tired.”
Mako shook his head. “I just need some rest,” he muttered. Giving no further explanation, he rolled over and shut his eyes.
T’risa hovered over him for a few moments, then she, too, rolled over and shut her eyes. It was too late to think about things like this. Maybe everything would be clearer in the morning.
++++++++++
Meanwhile, some hundred miles away, an explosion lit up the southern sky. A young man approaching his thirties watched from a cliff as his city was engulfed by a swirling purple cloud. As it descended, the man could hear the screams of the Gerudo women below him. He smiled malevolently. It wasn’t the first they had seen. All month long, purple clouds, swarms of creatures, and other such disasters had wreaked havoc on the struggling village. He had been there every time, to his followers' relief. After a few moments, he descended into the growing crowd.
“Women of the desert,” he cried gallantly, raising a long black staff over his head. “Fear no more! Your king will deliver you!” With that, he pointed the staff at the cloud and shouted some words that sounded to the townspeople very elegant and noble, but no one could understand them as they were in a different language.
A ray of orange light shot out from the tip of his staff and hit the cloud in the center. Of course, he had no difficulty recalling the cloud, as he had been the one to create it. With a grand show of spinning dust and bright flashes of light, the cloud was pulled to the tip of the man’s staff, where it disappeared altogether.
When it was gone, the townspeople all clapped and cheered. “All hail the king!” they shouted. “All hail King Ganondorf!”
Ganondorf basked in the applause only for a moment. “Gerudos,” he called when the noise had subsided. “I have had a dream — no, a premonition — of what has been occurring here!”
The women listened intently. They were all eager for the attacks to cease for good.
“Do you know,” Ganondorf continued, “who has suffered us to endure these misfortunes?”
There was a silence as the Gerudos thought. A girl at the front of the crowd looked up at him. “The North?” she inquired.
He smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Lady Nabooru speaks the truth! It is the North who has done this to us! We have so little protection as it is, and they take advantage of our weakness! They laugh at us… scorn us, even! While they sit in their lavish homes and fruitful gardens, we are condemned to the scorching heat of the desert sun! Why do they mock us? My people, it is time for action! We must rise against the North!”
There was a loud clamor of agreement. The girl called Nabooru made her way over to him. “I want to help you,” she said earnestly, “in any way I can. Please, I would love it more than anything if you would allow me to fight next to you.”
Ganondorf smiled at her. “Of course,” he said. “You are my most loyal companion, Nabooru, and I would rot in my grave before denying you a position like this.”
Nabooru’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, sir,” she said, nodding her head in a half-bow. “You will not regret it!”
She rushed off to start organizing her ranks. Ganondorf grinned after her, an evil glint in his eye. “No, I don’t think I will,” he agreed silently. “The North will soon be mine to control. I will rule them all!”
Okay, a little bit of a lame ending…
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