乙巳 004: 大寒

[singlemilletgrain]

[video broadcast]
Greetings again, Corsairs.

[As usual, following a bow, Shu addresses the video feed with perfect poise and elegance.]

After the... challenging events of the New Year's mission, I wish to call for some levity. In Yan, as the year changes, we visit the temples to have our fortunes told for the coming year. It is just for fun, of course. In Dahuang, I keep a place of worship to... [a faint pause] a Xian of agriculture, Shennong, and occasionally run the festivities.

Please come by. There will be traditional New Year's food, of course.

[If anyone has learned anything about Yan at this point, it is that they have Too Many Holiday Traditions and Too Much Food.]

[option 1: just for fun]
[Shu's doorway is vibrantly decorated in red and gold, and when she ushers you in, the most immediate sight is the table filled with plates and plates of food. Mostly dumplings, for dumplings are easiest for visitors, but also whole fish, noodle dishes, and sticky rice.

To the side, there is a little chest with two sets of burning incense at either side. Fortune seekers are invited to kneel, burn incense if they wish, pray for luck from whatever deity or the general karmic wheel of the universe, and then reach out for a container of what look like sticks. There is a little sign explaining this is the tradition of 'qiu qian,' beseeching insight from the gods.

One must ask a clear question, shake the container a few times, and pull out a stick.]

[option 2: the real thing]
[Shu sits at her 'priest's seat' and laughs lightly at the interpretation of the fortune received. Perhaps she sees something more ponderous in your eyes, for after a moment or two, she clasps her hands together and exhales lightly, bowing her head.

Her red pupils have constricted to tiny dots when she raises her head once more.]

...I could give you a better fortune, if you wish.

((If you pick option 2, Shu will either tell you in very vague prophetic terms something that may or may not happen in the future of your canon, something that happened in the past of your canon, or give you a random item that might be useful to you this year. If you pick option 1, it will be total nonsense.))

Comments

[singlemilletgrain]

" -- Oh!"

Her eyes snap back to their normal state as she blinks, coming out of a trance.

"Er." She looks more like someone who has just been woken up from a nap, but when she processes his question, she shakes her head lightly. "No. I am... an illusion. Now shh. Don't interrupt."

This is likely to make less sense to Link than her cryptic mutterings.

"Where was I... Ah, yes. I had read your head line."

[newmemorywhodis]

Link blinks. No, that does not make any sense at all.

But she asks him not to interrupt, so he stays quiet. Maybe later, he'll ask.

For now, he just gives her a questioning look. What is a head line? He thought she was looking at his hand, not his head.

[singlemilletgrain]

"This one."

She gestures to the middle of the three long lines that cross the palm. Without further explanation, she exhales deeply once more and resumes her reading.

"...Hie! Look to the marble'd sky. The dance of dragons that resolves fate's bifid paths. Hand-in-hand, the shooting stars, to earth they fall, before them shall lay bare the endless cycle of torment. The wheel of time shall grind -- merciless its pestle. Yet Hero of the Now be not disturbed.

The call has quelled. The wilds tamed. For all paths lead... to home again."

[newmemorywhodis]

"...I'll go home?" He whispers softly. "Will it...will it be very long?"

Because if anything, that was his biggest fear; that even if he got home again someday, that it would simply be too late. That it would be another hundred years, another thousands of years.

[singlemilletgrain]

Shu, after an annoyingly long period of silence, looks up and exhales lightly. "No. Not long. You will be together once more." Her smile is faintly rueful. "I am much afraid... your sun line is extraordinarily faint after the early indentation. It means your life will be quite calm and placid in its later years."

She frowns slightly.

"I must be mistaken, but for some reason, there is a fair amount of... cheese?"

This is Link's own fault for reintroducing cheese into the world.

[newmemorywhodis]

Not long. He just had to hold on, for however long that was.

And his life will be...calm and placid? Huh. That was almost strange to imagine. Although if a life that involved rather a lot of things like shield surfing, sky diving, and excessive use of bomb flowers could ever be called calm...

...Well, maybe it was all relative. Compared to the Calamity and the Upheaval, even Link's general chaos could be called calm.

As for the cheese...

"I helped Koyin find her great grandfather's cheese recipe?" He says, head titled to one side.

[singlemilletgrain]

"Ahhh."

She murmurs oracularly, as if she has any idea who Koyin or her great grandfather is.

"That must be it. There are many paths in which that village becomes famous for its cheese products -- Hateno, correct?" That wasn't fortune-telling; he had just mentioned the village he lived in a few weeks ago. There was another path she had seen briefly in which Link was wearing what she could only describe as a tremendously ugly hat resembling a dead bird with artists surrounding him drawing portraits, but that one she doesn't even bother to mention. Sometimes the fortune-telling went a little weird.

Her eyes drift towards Link's head.

"...Do you have a helmet?"

[newmemorywhodis]

Link nods. Yes, Hateno. He could see it becoming famous for cheese; it kind of already was when Link was last there.

As for whether he has a helmet...

"...Which one?" Link had lots of helmets. Lots. And various other kinds of headgear as well.

Really, Link just had a lot of things, period.

[singlemilletgrain]

"...You might want to keep one on hand."

Her words come out a little bit hesitantly.

"For some reason... there are a few futures where you... come out of floors. Head-first. And quite a few people kick you in the head or hit you with something heavy."

She sounds confused as to why he was coming out of a floor in the first place. To be honest, it looked like a video glitch, except that was complete nonsense in the context of a fortune. Still, it was hard to imagine under what circumstances he would be clipping through the bottom of somebody's house.

[newmemorywhodis]

Link blinks.

Wait.

"...I get Ascend back?" He says. He'd had the Fuse ability come back, but...he hasn't seen any trace of any of the other Zonai arm abilities yet. He'd wondered whether he ever would, or if it would only ever be Fuse that would be returned to him.

But if Shu was seeing it...

[singlemilletgrain]

"Well..."

The other futures were even weirder.

"Or sometimes... superglue?"

She didn't know how else to explain the other possibilities. Really, all around, besides the part where he didn't have to fight off any more world disasters, this fortune was very strange.

"But it is all in the rather near future, so you'll probably see soon enough."

[newmemorywhodis]

"What's superglue?" He could recognise the description of Ascend when he heard it, but this one involved references to things Link didn't have the faintest idea about.

[singlemilletgrain]

"A material that can stick things together, even objects that shouldn't be able to stick."

That was the only explanation for why she saw him building a giant robot with six flamethrowing hands out of discarded steel beams and wood.

[newmemorywhodis]

Link's mouth makes a silent 'oh!' of understand, as the description clicks.

"Ultrahand!" He says. He holds up his right arm, looking at his hand. The Zonai arm is gone, but he got Fuse back. And now...it looks like he's getting Ascend or Ultrahand back too.

[singlemilletgrain]

"Ultraglue?"

'Hand' is a strange word to use for 'glue,' but she supposes that pesky language barrier is getting in the way here.

"You seem to know what I mean. Yes, there are a number of rivulets diverging down that path, too. ...I am rooting for the floor-digging. I find that one to be exceedingly peculiar."

[newmemorywhodis]

Meanwhile, Link thinks that 'glue' sounds like an odd word for 'hand'. But he'll roll with it.

But yes, he does know what she means. These are abilities he knows well.

"...Not my abilities," he says softly. "They belonged to the Zonai arm. I don't have it anymore. But...I got Fuse back."

An ability Shu would be familiar with, having seen it in action whenever Link attached one of his elemental fruits to an arrow.

[singlemilletgrain]

To be honest, Shu had a sort of mental image of Link taking the head of an arrow and sticking a piece of fruit to the end before shooting it off to wherever he needed it. It wasn't as if she were usually looking back at him in the middle of combat and he was fairly quick about the whole process, anyway.

She has a more immediate question, though.

"Zonai arm?"

In his palm, she had seen the visions of him with a... blackened arm. She hadn't quite understood.

[newmemorywhodis]

Grabbing his Purah Pad, Link taps at the screen until he finds an old picture of himself, turning it around to show Shu.

It shows the very same blackened arm, with odd markings that creep up his shoulder. Twisted around the arm itself is what seems to be a metal shaped into geometric lines.

"Gloom took my arm," he says. "Rauru gave me his."

[singlemilletgrain]

As usual, Link's minimalism makes it a bit challenging to understand exactly what he means. ...Did people just pass around body parts in his world? Shu squints at the picture and takes a stab at what exactly happened.

"You had... surgery?"

Magical surgery, probably?

[newmemorywhodis]

Trouble is, even if Link was the talkative type, he still couldn't give Shu the answers she desires. He simply doesn't know.

"...I was unconscious," he says. "I had the arm when I woke up. Rauru said mine couldn't be saved." And yet here Link was, with his own arm once again. He's still holding it up, looking at it. Another thing he can't explain.

"Maybe Zonai magic?" Really, Shu's guess was as good as his.

[singlemilletgrain]

Well. What's a little more Hyrulean inexplicable mystery after all the others? Shu will simply nod, content to understand that there are some things she will not understand.

"So you are saying that arm... had the ability to do all those things I saw."

A pause.

"Oh. Ultrahand." Now this makes sense. "But -- what on earth does an arm have to do with going through floors?"

[newmemorywhodis]

Link nods. Yes, it was the arm that had been the source of the abilities. But as for going through floors...

"I do this," Link says, holding up his right arm. "Then go up. And swim."

Well. It made sense to him.

[singlemilletgrain]

Shu takes on that familiar long-suffering expression that Link might be slightly familiar now every time something nonsensical or illogical is mentioned in relation to his abilities.

"But -- "

There really is no point in buts anymore.

"Well, I suppose. You must try to be careful of places you swim into. Do avoid bathrooms."

[newmemorywhodis]

Link nods. Although more for the promise to avoid bathrooms than the promise to be careful.

He falls silent, for a moment. Thinks for a bit about what it would be like to get Ascend back, or Ultrahand. Things about things from his past being returned, even things he thought couldn't.

And he thinks about what Shu said earlier, when her power felt like Hylia.

"You said...you're an illusion?"

[singlemilletgrain]

"Mm." Shu nods in assent, though she isn't exactly leaping to explain. Still, she knows what he wants to hear about. "...I shall answer your question with your question. Please bear with me as it may be difficult to understand."

"'What is real?'"