SusiCeri

Ganondorf could smell the rain permeating the inn. "We're not in the desert. It rains all the time here."

"I don't like it."

Another dull yawn of thunder, so soft by comparison of what the Gerudo king was used to.

Ganondorf sat up on the bed. "You enjoy the rains when they come to the Valley," he said.

Ghirahim looked back at his master, regal as he sat in the shadows, his golden eyes catching traces of the candle's light. The king's thick, red hair framed that strong face like a bonfire.

The sword bowed in partial agreement. "I enjoy how nervous it makes mortals," he admits.

Ganondorf snorted.

"But you seem to enjoy them," Ghirahim added, more of a question than a statement.

Ganondorf lifted his gaze to the windowpane, dark and splattered with waves of water against the glass. In another lifetime, he'd drowned with all of Hyrule. In another, he'd been imprisoned without water or food by people who called themselves sages. It was always too much or too little.

Ghirahim didn't understand what it meant to be mortal anymore. It had been so long since he was anything resembling a man that Ganondorf wondered if he even remembered it. "Without the annual storms, the desert would be completely uninhabitable," the Gerudo King said. "It feeds the oases and the cacti along the borders, and the peahats soak enough to be good reservoirs all year.

"The storms are also great reminders never to get comfortable. Those we get in the desert have no trees to stop the wind, no wild grasses to soak the excess and prevent flash floods. They are terrible, and loud, and cover the entire sky in a vast cataclysm you can't escape. I think of them as a symbol of myself."

"Very poetic, Master."

"Hmph." Ganondorf fell silent for a few moments. The rain continued to beat and rattle the pane.

Ghirahim thought he saw a flicker of doubt cross his master's face. It was a twitch of a frown, a moment of downcast golden eyes losing the sparkle of the candle flame.

"Something troubling you, my king?"

The wooden bed frame creaked beneath the Demon King, Leader of the Gerudo, as he shifted his weight with his hands laced between his knees. "The storms are, as of right now, more of a god than I am."

"How so?"

Ghirahim admired Ganondorf's beauty in a way few people were able to. Most creatures didn't see the King of Evil this way, in his incarnation as a man with the memory of many lives. There was majesty in that face, but also a great weight in him.

Failure—despite divinity, despite the eternal, cyclical curse, despite the Triforce of Power—had changed him, and Ghirahim wasn't sure he liked the uncertainty of what that meant. Things hadn't been so simple in a long, long time.

And his master, settled deep into the combination of light and shadow in the inn, said, "Because unlike the great storms, I can't renew or give life; I may only take it when I see fit."

He was not Hylia. He never was.

And yet the incarnation of the Goddess chose to lead a people who repeatedly, unashamedly, chose to "unify" the lands around them by force, and to ostracize those of the desert. And the goddess thought it appropriate to keep this status quo, at least so much that her interim descendants could undo all social progress she attempted to make.

He wasn't a god of life, but she'd squandered the power she possessed. Wisdom, indeed.

Ghirahim saw the wobble in Ganondorf's pupils as they became slits for a brief moment, and he got excited. Oh, were they going to go on a spree? Right here, right now?

No.

Ghirahim's burgeoning grin faded as Ganondorf exhaled, his shoulders slumped.

"To me, Ghirahim."

The demon dissolved in a cascade of floating motes once again, and a large, black sword appeared across Ganondorf's knees.

Ganondorf reached down toward the polish underneath the bed and set the clean rag on the blade.

He was silent as he worked. His large, calloused hands smoothly scrubbed off any flecks of dust, and he ran his hands along the metal, checking for imperfections or scratches.

Once satisfied, he released Ghirahim back into his human shape.

"You tease," Ghirahim breathed.

Ganondorf perked an unimpressed eyebrow as Ghirahim kneeled under Ganondorf's hands, the demon grabbing his master's hand and setting it on his hair.

Ganondorf slid his hand slowly down his servant's hair. He even cupped his cheek, his expression blank.

"Demise and I are not the same," he said.

Ghirahim began to protest, to whine at his king that yes, of course they were the same, but Ganondorf glared at him.

"One day," he promised darkly, "I will be a storm."

1. It's ironic as hell, with anemo being the element of freedom.