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

[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?'"

[newmemorywhodis]

Link blinks. Not the kind of response he was expecting.

And not the kind of question he's good at answering, either. Zelda would know. Zelda would have an answer. But Link isn't Zelda; he's only Link.

Still, he thinks about it. Tries to pull together some kind of response.

"...The world," he says. "People. Animals. Plants. Spirits." He couldn't tell you why or how all of those things were real. But he knew they were, anyway.

Perhaps that's why he'd been so surprised to hear Shu describe herself as an illusion. Because she was a person. She was real. How could she not be?

[singlemilletgrain]

"Yes, of course. Those are examples of things that are 'real' to you. But what I meant... what does the word 'real' mean? It exists, you may say. But a photograph of a tiger is not a real tiger, even if it exists to your eyes. Similarly, if you were to capture the voice of a songstress and reproduce it, you would not say it was the 'real' thing, even though your ears cannot distinguish a reproduction of song versus a true song."

She pauses in her lecturing, simultaneously glancing at Link to see if he is following and considering the next portion of her explanation.

"You might then say, it must exist to all your senses at once. That is something that is real. I can see, hear, smell, touch, and er... taste you, if necessary. However, please consider: the organ responsible for these perceptions are not your eyes, ears, and nose, but rather, your brain.
And your brain is not an accurate observer of reality. Often, we hear things that are not there, we see images in the corners of our eyes that fool us, and if I bring you into my home, you might believe you smell the scent of garlic and ginger simply because you know I love to cook.

"So I must ask once again... what is real?"

[newmemorywhodis]

There's a faint frown on Link's face, a slight furrowing of the eyebrows. He follows what she says. Even agrees with some of the logic, even; many people can't see dragons or spirits, but that doesn't make them not real.

But she makes it sound like everything wasn't real. And that...felt wrong. Even if he couldn't articulate why.

"...Real is truth," he says, eventually. "Yiga make illusions. But they're still Yiga."

[singlemilletgrain]

"Truth."

She nods, not entirely in agreement, but in contemplation.

"A true thing. It exists, regardless of whether or not it is perceived. It persists, regardless of whether or not it is extant. If you, Link, were to find yourself in a barren wasteland alone with no other conscious life, you would still be Link. In ten thousand years, every piece of you that composed you would still be there, recycled into the earth and the stars.

"If I, Shu, am not perceived by humanity, I do not exist. I am a reflection of your consciousness. When I disappear, every piece of me will vanish, because they were never real. My creations, my works, my words, my actions will all be gone. It is not that I would be erased from history, but it is simply that I never did exist.

"However, in the here and now, I would like to believe that there is nothing that separates us. You perceive that I live, breathe, plant, harvest, and create food, and thus, it is so. You and everyone else share a mass belief in a being called Shu... And so, I am as much a person as you are."

If Link does not understand this, it is because it is largely incomprehensible to humanity.

[newmemorywhodis]

No. No, Link doesn't understand it. Shu exists. She's here. She's even arguing with him! But it sounds like...it sounds like she's saying that if she dies, she wouldn't just die. She'd never have been here at all.

Link wouldn't know her anymore.

"...I'll forget you if you die?" He whispers, almost too soft to hear. There's almost a quiet terror to the way he stares at her. As if there's something particularly frightening to him about not being able to remember Shu anymore.

It's not a look you often see on Link's face, who usually seems to fear very little at all.

[singlemilletgrain]

Shu smiles gently and reaches over to try to pat his hand if he allows.

"Do not fret. I do not intend to die anytime soon." She will not mention that she just did so, and it was an experience she would prefer not to reenact. "The sorrow will all be mine. You will live a long, long life, and one day, I shall place a wreath upon your resting place in remembrance, as I have done for all of those whom I cherish. I am the soil of Yan.

"But as I said... now, I am just Shu, your friend. And I think that will be enough fortune telling for today. You must eat something before you go."

[newmemorywhodis]

Somehow, Shu's reassurances don't really make Link feel all that better.

(The Champions didn't plan to die either. But they did, and then when Link woke a hundred years later, he didn't remember any of them.)

But Link's not one to argue. He doesn't yell or shout or plead when something upsets him; he just gets quiet. And resolves to never, never let Shu die.

[singlemilletgrain]

((Actually, on reflection, I think this might be a good place to end! Let me know if you think there was more you wanted to do!))

Shu does not, of course, miss the expression of dissatisfaction in Link's eyes. But she does not wish to dwell further on the subject, either. In Terra, the contractors of Rhodes Island and the Sui Regulators knew about the... peculiarities of her family, and so she never felt it to be a particularly burdensome secret. Here, she preferred not to have it be public knowledge.

But Link had wanted to know, and while she believed in telling small lies for the good of one's friends, she felt he could be trusted with the information.

As usual, they spend the remainder of the day in peaceful scarfing of delicious foodstuffs.

[newmemorywhodis]

[[Sounds good! We can wrap up here]]