Thunderclouds

Goddamn writer's block. Anyway, I'm back for some more, now that I've finally got my first debit card! I stupidly sold my copy of Wind Waker ages ago, so I'm gonna buy it again so I can play it on my Wii. Of course, I need a debit card to pay for stuff over the internet. I feel like a proper grown up! Now all I need is a job. What does this have to do with the story? Nothing at all!

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

Link's birth wasn't normal.

There had been a thunderstorm. Rain had cascaded down from the heavens all night, as if the Goddesses had been weeping over some disastrous event. The thunder and lightning screeched at each other through blackened clouds. It was a bad omen, even to those who weren't superstitious. Those born under a thundercloud were doomed to be stalked by death and destruction, or so the myth went.

They weren't all that wrong.

Link's parents had died four years later, when Aryll was born. It was sunny, go figure, but his mother passed away in childbirth, screaming like the devil had a hold of her intestines. His father left on a boat and never came back. Link wasn't optimistic about his chances of survival. The seas had no mercy for fishermen, who stole her children and sold them as fodder.

Even though his father had been lost within its glacial depths, Link loved the sea. Almost as much as he did the wind. He was a good swimmer – skipping chores to take a dip. He wasn't able to dive yet, not being strong or confident enough, but he was working on it. If only Grandma would let him take five minutes to submerge himself instead of making him herd the pigs around when they escaped again.

Everyone on Outset Island knew each other. There were no strangers. Most people were related, no matter how distantly, and those who weren't acted like a family regardless of blood. Link didn't have friends – he had brothers and sisters that transcended the limits of genetics and relations.

So when strangers came to the island they usually didn't get a very pleasant welcome. Of course, the islanders were polite enough, but there was an underlying hostility towards the unknown that made them shun any visitors. Tourism wasn't hot, for obvious reasons. Trades were usually dealt with fish, which were far from scarce in the clement waters, and that was all. No marrying foreigners.

Except Link didn't have the same feelings towards people he'd never met. Where there was uncertainty, Link felt no fear. Where there was hatred, Link was filled with awe. These people had conquered the oceans that even his seemingly-invincible father was taken by, bringing goods and treasures in bounteous cargo. They were like Gods to Link, who knew no better.

He who had never left the island, knew only the island.

Since the arrival of the visitors, Link had been overcome by a burning desire to leave with them. Fly the coop. Spread his wings. To fall or fly, it didn't matter. Just as long as he could go to these places that were so out of reach and taste the food and talk to the people and perch himself on the tallest mountain and stare down at the villages below with a panoramic view.

He'd never been like the other members of his extended family. He found more pleasure in waving a wooden sword around than he did in farming. He was more likely to be lost in the woods again than he was to be doing chores. He wanted to be a fisherman like his father was, but he knew deep down he was more likely to arm himself with whatever he could get his hands on and mount the heads of monsters on his walls.

There was only one problem: Aryll.

He couldn't leave his sister for anything. She was a living testament to their lost parents, just as he was. Besides, she was his sister! He'd do anything to save her, and he knew she would do the same, though he wasn't sure what an eight-year-old could do to help her tearaway brother. She could lie for him, and had already done that before, but it left a taste in his mouth like a drink gone flat at the thought of falsities pouring out of the mouth of someone so innocent. He'd let himself take that role. That and apologising, which he seemed to be doing a lot of lately.

Sometimes he wanted to apologise nonstop. He wanted to make people forgive him for not being like everyone else. He wanted to make the odd looks stop.

Odd looks because he never went home without a scrape or a bruise as a trophy of some adventure. Odd looks because he refused to get his hair cut short, or even tie it back. Odd looks because he felt nothing of walking around shirtless in hot weather, or jumping in the sea instead of using the bridge, or coming home with a fairy trapped inside the glass prison of a bottle that should've been used to collect chu jelly. Odd looks because he was as free and as wild and as untameable as the wind.

They wanted to pin him down, and sometimes he wished they would.

And then the bird and the pirates showed up, and Link realised the thunderclouds hadn't blown over just yet.