Lake of Tears

I wrote this after watching part of NintendoCarpriSun's LP of Wind Waker. He's the best LPer in the whole world! It's an amazing game, and I wish there were more stories out there! So, I thought I'd add mine to the bunch. Enjoy it, please! EDIT: I fixed some spellings so now there are less typos, because quality of written English is useful out of exams too!

I don't own The Legend of Zelda, savvy? On with the story!

He wished Tetra would understand.

Standing up on the bow of the pirate ship, ready to sail off into an endless world with people he didn't know or trust, leaving his aged Grandma behind to wallow in her misery at losing both her grandchildren in the same day, Link was depressed. He had every right to be.

Waking up in the morning, he wouldn't have ever guessed that things would've gone this way. To be honest, never in his life would he have expected fate to turn so harshly. He wanted to be a fisherman. He would've never have chosen 'wannabe pirate' as his first choice.

Then, after saving a strange girl from certain death in the forest, everything turned upside down.

Watching the skies with his little sister, Aryll, Link's world did a belly flop. Seeing the giant bird filling the sky with its eerie plumage was only the start. Watching the pirates shoot it down was the prelude to something greater. Staring as the girl plummeted to her grave, or so he thought, was the beginning of something bigger than himself.

Pulling himself through the forest, after a brief yet brutal session with Orca, he found her lodged in the branches of a tree, too high for him to reach, and he was sure his sword wouldn't come back to him if he threw it to cut the branches.

That was another thing. He was twelve. Today was his birthday. And he was running around with a sword. Maybe Link should've guessed at that point that his life was going to be extraordinary, but all he really wanted was a bath. And to see the maiden safe, of course. Just as long as those pirates didn't loot the town while they were at it. He wasn't sure one boy with a second-hand sword could take down a whole ship full of pirates.

Then, when the girl was free, she ignored him. She rushed straight off after making a snarky comment on his clothes. Why didn't she understand it was tradition? He didn't like it much himself, but he wore it anyway. After all, it was sacred. Maybe Tetra just didn't care about anything other than her ship.

Scratch that. She didn't care about anything other than herself.

But that was the way pirates were, right? They loot, they pillage, they burn everything to the ground, then they fritter away the gold on good food and drink and more bombs so they can burn more things and it's all a vicious circle of destruction and hate and malice. And piracy. He knew his Grandma kept her Rupees in a nook under the house. Their lives were so different they were miles apart, and yet, here he stood.

Then, when the Helmaroc stole his sister from right beneath his fingertips, he saw something else there. Something he didn't think he'd ever see. His sister, being taken away, crying tears that could've been pearls in the light in the sun. It was supposed to rain when bad things happened. Why was the world so happy, when his world wasn't? It wasn't fair. It never was.

Especially around Tetra.

She refused to take Link with her. She didn't understand. Aryll was the only thing, other than his Grandma, left to remind him of the better days when his parents were still around to clean their wounds and read them bedtime stories. Link cared for Aryll in the same way the Sages cared for their temples. Aryll was sacred to him.

She didn't understand that either.

Then, after taking the family's crest, the Hero's Shield, away from his grandmother, he felt like he was taking more. Her soul was in this shield, he felt. It was there to protect him, like she had, where their parents had failed. It was the only time he'd ever be able to see her, maybe even forever.

Tetra was just blunt about it, as per usual. She called it 'decrepit', which, as a memory of Link's grandmother, insulted her as well as him. The simple fact that she had let him go without even asking why, or when he would be back, summed it all up. She was too scared to know, and he was too scared to think about it.

Link was leaving everything behind. He'd already lost his sister, and his parents, though that was so long ago their faces were like mosaics of saints, warped and faded through time. He was leaving behind the wild pigs, and the smell of the fresh air, and the laughter of the residents at seeing him in his new clothes.

He was leaving behind a part of himself. The part that wasn't with Aryll.

And as he stood on the deck of Tetra's ship, waving goodbye to all the people he knew so little of, and would regret missing the chance, she sat with a cocky smile on her face and called him a wuss. As he gave a final farewell to his Grandma, who probably wouldn't see him through her cataracts, she threatened that if he started crying she'd throw him overboard.

She didn't understand.

He couldn't cry. If he did, he knew he'd run straight back to his Grandma, across the ocean if he had to, and he'd hug her and they'd cry until their tears became a lake and then an ocean and swallowed them all up as the seas had already taken the old Hyrule away from them, if the legends were to be believed.

He had to be strong, for her sake, if nothing else. It must've been hard for her at all, to let her grandson leave home at the age of twelve to fight for his life, sail across the ocean, with every possibility of death or serious injury. He might never come back, he realised. What then? Would his Grandma sit in that rocking chair of hers forever, until her bones turned to dust, as she waited for the news that someone was OK? That someone hadn't died because she couldn't protect them?

So, when Tetra wasn't looking, he did cry, even though he promised he wouldn't. He was small compared to the task he'd just forced upon himself. He was a mole on the skin of a sperm whale, riding out of control. There was no way he'd ever cope, and no way he'd ever come back alive, but just as long as he could get Aryll back to Outset Island, then the sea could do whatever it wanted with him. It didn't matter.

And Tetra didn't understand.