"Rainbows"

By LoweFantasy

A promotional Godless oneshot

Author's Intro/Gift:

Since it's lame to give you all an announcement without a story update, I offer you this little extra history into Hanna and Link's babies! Or rather their attempts at parenthood.

Why the announcement? Today I release the first book in a series of inexpensive Kindle books that I've started to help put food on the table LITERALLY, as in I'm having a hard time paying for food and the basics. If you can, please drop by and pick up a copy of it.

It's titled "Wendy" and you can find it on Amazon under the pen name T.S. Lowe. I've put a synopsis at the end of this chapter.

Now I'll get out of your way...

The fluffy downy feathers of her babies always started out as a pale yellow or a musky gray. She had supposed that to say they would grow into either Link's glorious white and gold, or her own midnight plumage.

But around Leano's third birthday, his feathers, still with a healthy amount of poof and fuzz nearer to his back, began to grow in a brilliant red, speckled with sky blue.

From then on, she waited eagerly for the third year when their true colors would grow through. Her little gray ones produced darker colors, and her yellow into lighter. But even after seeing this rule prove true with five children, her sixth, a daughter named Navi, threw it all out the window when she was born gray, but dried to a bright blue before she had reached a month old. Everything about her was blue—even her hair.

Her older siblings, with varying shades of black or blond hair, had no end of amusement with this. Hanna had to learn to beat hands back several times a day from plucking strands from little Navi's head.

Then there was flying. Oh, gods above, she didn't know how her parents survived on the side of a cliff with only her, forget six.

Saria, her third, with a gorgeous forest green plumage that reminded her strongly of Aspen, was the worst. The moment she learned how to walk she was heading towards the door and out towards the drop fifteen meters away, insisting on following her daddy or mommy, whoever went out for the day. The baby locks on the doors became increasingly elaborate thanks to her, and her eldest sons complained incessantly about it.

"Then build a door she can't get to," Hanna said impatiently. "The upper part of the house is a perpetual construction zone anyways."

Since she couldn't get the seven year old Leano or the five year old Rusl to do a speck of work of any kind without heavy threats, she was surprised when she went looking for them a while later and found hung over the rafters and pounding away at the underside of the roof.

"How did you get up there?" she exclaimed, before her mother nerves kicked in and she started fluttering around beneath their dangling feet, terrified of the inevitable drop. It didn't help that she was once more pregnant and had her hormones everywhere.

"Climbed," said Leano, hair and face speckled with woodchips and dust.

"Stop! Get down! Gods above, you can't go smashing a whole through the roof!"

"You said we could make a door," said Rusl with a pink pout. His plumage had come in a rusty orange that looked pink in the right light, or set next to his brother brilliant scarlet.

"Well at least wait for you father to get home to help, so get down, now!"

In the time it took for her spat with her sons to get over and done with, three year old Saria had once more solved the grand puzzle of the doorknob and the locks higher up, using a chair to get to them, and toddled out of the house. If Link didn't happen to be flying in just then, their first daughter would have met her perilous end.

Her fourth were twins, one of which was a boy born a dark gray that was nearly black. Sheik was an odd one. Very solemn and quiet unless left in the darkest room of the house. Then he was quiet exuberant and energetic, to the point that she had needed everyone's help, even the persistent Saria, to keep up with him. She wasn't able to try for another child until she could trust Sheik to stay in the sunshine on his own without all his siblings on his tail.

His twin sister, on the other hand, was his antithesis. Middy grew into a pure, brilliant white devoid of her father's golden speckles. She was a docile, happy, good little child, which was a real shame, seeing as Hanna feared she was neglected because of it, and because she had such a troublesome brother. She didn't like the dark, though, and would cry when night came. They took to keeping her cradle by a candle and closest to their bed.

Thus, when Navi came, in all her strange and brilliant blue that stuck out from the reds, green, white, and black of her siblings, the twins had already reached five-years-old, and the house was getting more than a little crowded. Link had taken to flying trees from the forest to his old village, where the miller would cut them into lumber for him to fly back to his home on the other side of Hyrule, where the plains bordered a land populated mostly by horses and a few nomadic humans. Because of the trip it took to get the wood, the construction was coming much slower than any of them would have liked.

Leano, at this time, though having reached his twelfth birthday, was far from grown into his wings, to which he moaned about every day, especially after seeing how beat his father was after bringing in supplies. Despite his concern, it would turn into fights when Link insisted he use that energy for complaining to actually help building, and Leano was no more prone to do work without threats than he had been at seven.

At least Rusl had grown out of that. Unfortunately, he also became more pink.

"Pink's a girl color!" Sheik would crow.

"Shut up, squirt, or I'll make you look pink!"

"Yeah, but you can't make me stay that way. You'll be pink forever!"

This would usually follow up with Rusl giving a closed mouth roar and launching at his much younger brother, despite their size difference.

And, of course, one of them would have to step in. If the boys were lucky, it was Link who happened to be nearby. With patience born from solving maddening logic puzzles under dire circumstances, he peel them apart and remind them both that there were plenty of things that were pink and not girly at all.

What perplexed Hanna was how Sheik had gotten the idea in the first place. It wasn't like she'd made blue or pink things for her babies according to their gender. That had been more of a human thing.

Then, one night, when she woke up to check on Navi, who had a bad flu, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. It turned her towards the door her two eldest had built into the ceiling with the help of their father. Suspicious, she crept up to the door, eased it up, and peered out into the moonlight—

To see a small, black, winged shape pitching off the edge of the roof. Just as she sucked in a breath to scream with all the bloody murder rage she had built up during Saria's escapes, Sheik reappeared, gliding out from the front courtyard of their cliff alcove home and over the edge.

She nearly gave Link a heart attack yanking him up from bed.

Turns out, Sheik had been taking little flights out into the black of night for the past three months without anyone knowing. Not only could he move as quietly as a shadow, but apparently that same darkness gave him the ability to defy the physics of his wings still being too much downy to lift his small body. On one of these said flights, he had come upon one of the said little tribal nomads that wandered the great plains after the herds of horses. Though the humans knew of the family of winged people in the cliffs, since they didn't really have much in the way of trade for Hanna and Link, they hadn't formally met and at first treated Sheik with wariness.

All except for one little girl, who wore a skirt of baby pink and had a shock of wild red hair, who had become fast friends with Sheik.

Hanna thought she had overcome the urges to beat her children to a pulp. But, as he always had, Sheik never failed to bring it up. She compromised and left the boy with a bright red rear end.

Saria and Leano became impossible after that, no matter how many times Link and Hanna insisted that Sheik defied physics. They'd nearly lost Saria again when she started picking random times to spastically jump off the cliff. Hanna had never flown so fast in her life than when she was diving down, trying to catch her flailing green daughter.

Something good did come out of Sheik's escapades. It gave Link and Hanna the push to associate with humans for something other than trade or work, and the little red-head girl's tribe soon warmed up to their unorthodox neighbors.

Life became easier after that, mainly because, for the first time since the birth of Leano, Hanna found herself left to her lonesome for long periods of time. Well, there was Navi, who was much happier without her siblings trying to pull out her hair, as they often went down with their father to play with the horse people's children. Leano had the firm responsibility to keep an eye on their siblings, but Hanna wasn't surprised when Middy turned out to be the most responsible in reporting back to her mother the doings of everyone. Link suspected a gossip in the making.

Then the day came when Leano grew into his wings and could take Navi with him in the trips down to the plains, and she truly was alone in the house.

At first, it was just another naptime. Hanna even found herself jumping towards the nursery at random moments to check up on babies that weren't there. She picked up toys with growing apathy. She had planned to use this time to catch up on her sleep or deep clean everyone's bed.

But, as the days past, she too took the trip to the horsemen's tribe.

Days past into years. Their social circle grew a bit with each child that grew into their wings and were able to take the trips across Hyrule with their parents, though more often Link than Hanna, who preferred to stay home and tend the little ones.

Leano grew into a beautiful specimen of a man, taller than his father, but with all his strength and brawn. While he still did plenty of moaning when it came to work, he had become quite the craftsman, and found he had a particular talent for metal working. The combination of bright blue spots and red made his feathers the favorite among the tribesmen women, who did quite a fair bit of fawning after him. Link and Hanna had explained imprinting and its signs to him, but he insisted he felt nothing of that towards any of his sisters or even the humans, though he had no qualms about teasing the village girls, which Link would scold heavily.

Then, one day, he rushed up to his mother, bright faced and flustered.

"Navi," he said, looking for all the world like the little seven year old boy Hanna remembered pounding a whole into the ceiling. "She's—she's—I didn't mean to walk in on her, but she's—"

"Walk in on her?" Hanna repeated, bemused. The only ones in the house that had any sense of privacy or nakedness had been Link and Hanna. Even at twenty-four, Leano could not comprehend the appeal of a naked woman.

He just looked at her, red faced, at a loss for words.

After that, he grew oddly secretive and tended to find excuses to flee a room whenever his twelve year old sister would come in. Puberty hadn't been kind to Navi, giving her oddly placed feathers and random puffs of shed downy that stuck to everything. But already, at twelve, her curved, supple torso was growing into her gangly long arms and legs. Her siblings still sometimes pulled at her hair, for old times sake (and mostly because Sheik loved making family and humans alike squirm), but otherwise her blue colorings had become very becoming. She could blend in with the sky, if she wanted to.

When she turned fourteen, Leano confessed to his mother that he thought he had imprinted on her, which he hadn't have bothered, as both Link and Hanna already knew. But it was perhaps the strangest moment of Hanna's life. A reverse of the moment when he was born, watching his blue eyes light up with his blush as he spoke of the girl he once plucked nearly bald for the sake of making a dream catcher with his brothers.

A year later, Hanna was trembling and bawling as Leano and Navi flew away to find some other place to build their own home. It was double the heartbreak. Birthing labor all over again.

Her other children took much longer to find their mates. Rusl was nearly thirty by the time his baby sister, beautiful yellow Nabu, reached an age for imprinting. Saria and Middy took much younger husbands when their younger brothers reached fourteen years old each, though they didn't leave to take that last step into maturity until their espoused brothers turned at least 15.

And grandbabies. Leano and Navi would bring back grandbabies in all shades of red and blue, and life brightened again. Her babies had left her, but had come back around, and without the labor of birth or the stress of raising. She could just spoil those babies rotten and send them back home.

Course, as he had always done, Sheik shook up the routine.

"I'm marrying Malon," he had told them one evening, keeping one half of him in shadow where the firelight couldn't reach him. "The way you're letting your kids marry each other is sick."

Malon. The little redhead who was his first friend, now a full grown woman. A human woman.

"But we can't imprint on humans—" started Hanna.

"You mean we can't fall in love with them?" Sheik had said, almost snarled. "Well I love her and I'm going to marry her, whether you want me to or not."

And he had left, leaving his parents speechless. After a few minutes, Link had followed after, though he soon lost Sheik in the night. If their dark son didn't want to be found at night, it would be impossible to find him.

Relations with the horsetribe became strained after that. Sheik and Malon were married, though Hanna didn't hear of any babies. Though they still often flew down to visit, doing everything they could to smooth the ties between them, Sheik remained aloof. It got worse as Malon grew older and no babies came.

Then, when one of Hanna's daughter's turned twelve, she suddenly collapsed, coughing and crying blood. Within an hour, the girl had gone from perfect health to death.

It was the first time Hanna lost a child this way. Even when they had gotten sick she could entreat the gods to heal them in the name of her murdered ancestors, but this had been something else, something entirely out of her control.

And for the first time in many, many years, Hanna saw red. Water drained from the very air as she landed in the midst of the horsetribe's tents, aimed at that of her third son's home. The sky and ground shook with the force of her scream. Terrified tribesmen stumbled away from their tents in their underwear and bedclothes, but Sheik came out calm as the day he had been caught jumping off the roof and into the night.

What she remembered was in blotches and snapshots. Grief and fury had overwhelmed her senses, as the weak hearts of their kind couldn't handle such with the control that human's had.

But when she came to at the sound of Link's voice, Sheik had lost a wing and was collapsed from bloodloss, and a scattering of other bodies were around her. Among them was her red-headed daughter-in-law, who stared on in horror, though she didn't move as Link took up his son and took him home.

Sheik regained consciousness only long enough to see the body of his dead sister and comprehend what had happened. By the next morning, he too had died.

Hanna couldn't bring herself to have any more children after that, despite having an odd number. She raised the children she did have and waved the married ones off, but soon was left with her last son, who knew all too well why he was alone in the world and hated the humans for it.

The tribesmen had settled somewhere north, far from Hanna and Link, forbidding their own children to mingle with the bird people. But just before Malon's tribe was to head out as well, the aging woman hiked to the shallow shore far beneath the mouth of their alcove. She would have been standing there forever if it hadn't been for Link heading back in with his shoulders heavy with deer.

Hanna was sewing a quilt for one of her many grandchildren when Link came in, holding a little, red-haired girl in his arms. She had stunted, awkward black wings that would never be able to carry her.

"Hanna," he said. "Meet Rose."

Hanna stared at the child. That poor, scrawny little thing with misshapen wings and frizzy red hair, trembling like a branch in the wind and staring down at her feet.

"Malon's family won't let her take her," continued Link quietly.

The more Hanna looked at Rose, the more she saw of the girl's story. There were scars on her pale skin, from thin cut to broad burns, all silvery pink. The horsemen were often tanned from the sun, but this girl had kept to the shadows or indoors. Her wristbones stuck out against her skin in a sickly way.

And Hanna's heart melted. Tears came to her eyes. Oh, her poor little Sheik.

She fell from her rocking chair to her knees and held out her arms.

"Come here, my little one. Everything is going to be okay. You're safe now."

Rose was cautious in her approach, only glancing up to see where she was going. But once she was in Hanna's tight embrace, her little body relaxed.

Course, her last son was appalled by his new housemate, but only for a little while.

And Hanna and Link's hearts healed once more.

"Wendy" synopsis:

Wendy knows she tends to be a mother hen to her friends. But if she doesn't, who will? Her boys are lost from their parents in more ways then one, especially the mysterious Kolya, who awkwardly befriended them after fleeing the Russian mafia. She almost wishes he hadn't when she finds herself on the end of what must be a one-sided love. After all, why would the cool, handsome, aloof Kolya have any interest in a nagging she-man like her?

But when Kolya's past catches up with them, getting rid of an unwanted crush will be the last thing on Wendy's mind.

You get a book and I get milk. You don't get me milk, and you still get an extra chapter to your favorite story. I think it's a good deal.