#kohv

I was never popular at the Turning the Wheel, he thought. Maybe one year I might do— what did Zalfe call it? — a Darling’s Dance with someone. Maybe one day someone might exchange a pearl with me.

As optimistic as he tried to be, the idea made him sad. So to distract himself before his thoughts got the better of him, Cironus joined in the Zorphin pod’s singing. Without the aid of his guitar he didn’t have to worry about getting carried away when it came to his magic.

As he sang, glancing back at Danmalaak, he felt a disconcerting stab of jealousy watching the goron's frank curiosity on regular display. His friend certainly didn't show any concern regarding the open seas. Indeed, when the Kingdom's southeastern foothills receded into the horizon, Danmalaak merely grabbed a blocky-looking sextant from his raft and set to jotting notes by candlelight on his blocky little raft. His pen’s scratchings paused only when for brief squints through his outsized hands as he measured the stars, or to lick from the dried bowl of seawater he kept balanced on a ball-shaped sconce over his candlelight.

"It's not quite the same as the sun-dried stuff," he'd confided to Cironus at one point, adjusting the sconce over its round wire rack, "but it makes for a nice aperitif. Want some?"

Cironus had politely declined.

Danmalaak had not been shy about his records, sharing them with his friend at a moment’s notice. During the voyage, the little goron sailor been scribbling down notes on everything that came to mind - meticulously drawn maps of their sea route, freehand (and…less skillful) sketches of swimming zorphin, names and quantities of fish the pod brought to the surface, even a few hasty notes on some of the songs. Cironus couldn’t help but notice that, while Danmalaak was astonishingly good at catching actual lyrics in his cramped shorthand, several of the zorphin had politely asked him to “just…watch for a bit” the last time he’d tried to recite them.

Cironus just couldn’t understand how a goron who’d spent so long traveling with him couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

As the pod’s singing faded into quiet, Danmalaak finally closed his journal, put his writing materials away in the raft, and waved over to Cironus.

“Mind me hitching a ride?” he asked. “I need to stretch my legs.”

“Sure,” Cironus said, turning his head to bump up against the raft. Danmalaak stepped aboard, grabbing the zorca’s dorsal, and the two of them drifted amongst the pod for a time.

“Can’t sleep?” asked Danmalaak after a few minutes.

“I don’t sleep.”

“Okay, edgelord.”

Cironus chuckled. “No, I mean I can’t sleep. Gotta keep one eye open, you know? We’re voluntary breathers.”

With one hand, he reached up and tapped his blowhole.

“If I fell asleep, I’d sink and drown.”

Cironus could just barely see Danmalaak’s raised eye ridge above him.

“Well, that’s macabre. Edgelord comment withdrawn.”

“Aww, there goes my dark reputation.”

“Cir, please. I’ve heard you sing about your feelings on Eventide. It’s solid, trust me.”

“Thank Nayru.”

“But yeah, you look like you’ve got something on your mind…y’know, besides me. So, what’s the bokoblin in your bonnet?”

“Oh you know, major life changes, no big deal.”

“Uh huh.” Cironus felt a foot brushing up ever so gently on the base of his fin. “You realize I know exactly where you’re most ticklish, don’t you?”

Cironus’ head turned ever so slightly that one eye was glaring back at Danmalaak as if to say "Don't you dare.”

“Come onnnnnnnn….” he could feel Danmalaak beginning to brush that spot. “You’re all about your feelings, Cir, remember? Let ‘em out!”

“I dunno,” he hesitated still. “I worry that people will get tired of me bringing it up all the time. Singing about them doesn’t help, what good will talking do?”

“I dunno. Give you something to do when your fingers are too callused to play along?” Danmalaak crouched, putting a knee on Cironus’ head. The size difference between the two truly was incredible. “Besides, it helps to have someone listen every once in a while. ‘A burden shared’s a burden halved,’ after all.”

“Okay, dad.” Cironus said halfheartedly. Thankfully the shrimp were asleep, so Wee couldn’t interject with another joke about her and Danmalaak’s nuptials.

Cironus let out a nervous sigh and opened up tentatively.

“I’m scared. I’m scared about leaving the place that’s been Home to me my whole life, and the fact I’ll never see my family again. It’s been two years since the Matriarchs kicked me out but it still hurts.”

In his mind, Cironus always reasoned out a justification for the Matriarchs’ decision. It was forbidden for a Zorca to take the life of another, and it was not lightly when the clans chose exile. But it was a better option than death. If they saw him as a danger, it was only because they were thinking of the clans’ safety as a whole.

Even so, there were days when he wanted to die. The loneliness was too much at times. Cironus recalled how his own father, Fat Fin, was once exiled. For reasons he never explained, he was pardoned centuries later. Did he feel the same anguish his son did in the time before then? If he did, his father hid it remarkably well.

“Zorca stay with their families their whole lives; we grow up, we have babies of our own and the pod grows. Ideally, I would have grown old with my family, maybe become an uncle or have kids of my own down the line. And that future is gone now. I’m trying to see the brighter side of things but…”

The floodgates were opened. There was a lilt in Cironus’ voice that indicated he was holding back a sob.

“I miss everyone. Kaska, Kaso, Sardon, my aunts and cousins, even my grandmother.” 

Large tears began to well up in his eyes. 

“I miss my mom.”

The sob escaped, a wretched keen rippling through the waters around him, made all the more terrible by his failed attempt to clamp down on it. He couldn’t help it; it hurt too much to hold it in, and once free, others poured out of him as a merciless tide, betraying that misery to the pod the more he tried to rein them in. Cironus’ choking sobs would not be restrained; they echoed through the pod, a wail of misery marking him as a beacon for everyone to notice.

As his cries echoed, however, it was met with another: smaller, reedier, but no less miserable, the squall of a child lost in a vast, dark, unfamiliar expanse.

"I'M LOST!"

And the sea lit up.

Pinks. Greens. Yellows and oranges. Faint clouds of light, a watery aurora of warmth and beauty that washed over the pod as zorphin after zorphin began to glow. Stardust and seawater were as one, coruscating through the ocean expanse, and Cironus and Danmalaak found themselves swimming through a river of light.

“I—whoa…” Cironus was caught off guard that his own cries stopped immediately. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand so he could take in the scene more clearly. “Are you seeing this, Dan?”

“I…yeah,” whispered back Danmalaak. “Wow…that’s…that’s incredible…”

“Something about it feels soothing.”

“Yeah. Like…like…night lights.”

Like the distressed calf, Cironus felt calmer now. His gaze moved from zorphin to zorphin, taking a moment to admire each hue, following the curve of each pattern, watching how the ripples around them reflected the gentle light. He noticed there were more beneath them, everyone moving at a steady pace. The longer he watched, the more he began to feel drowsy from staring at their mellow light.

"Pretty, isn't it? I remember the first time I saw the Rainbow River myself."

Despite the fact Kohv swam up beside Cironus unnoticed, it didn't surprise him in the least. During the initial introduction to the members of the Cackling Coral Pod he noticed there were other zora who were not Zorphin. Which explained why the older gentleman wasn’t glowing like the rest.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Cironus breathed. 

"You know they can turn it on and off at will? Pretty neat adaptation, huh? Hard to get lost when they make it so easy to be found."

“No kidding…” said Danmalaak, still shaking his head at the incredible display before them. “I…Cironus, when you get the chance, could you stop by my raft? I’d like to get my notebook…”

Cironus pulled his gaze away from the lights and turned so he was close against the raft for Danmalaak to step onto. The goron did so, gingerly grabbing the tow rope for balance, then opened the raft’s upper hatch so he could reach into his storage.  As he did so, he looked back to the waters, to his dear friend of two years.

“...Cironus?”

The Zorca looked back.

"...I can't speak for your family," said Danmalaak, "and...I certainly can't speak for your clan. Probably overstepping my bounds here, since, well...I'm a rock."

He hesitated.

"...But I've met your brother, and your father. I've seen the looks they give you when they know you're not looking. The misery they're experiencing, knowing that your visits can only be just that. Visits."

He reached down, brushing the palm of his hand on the white patch of his friend’s forehead.

“But it’s not one-way. They miss you too, and…not even all that deep down, really, they hope that this, too, will pass. That your exile will end…just as soon as your matriarchs pull their heads out of their rears and realize what they’ve done to one of their own.”

 He patted Cironus again.

“They miss you, bud. Don’t ever think they won’t.”

“Thanks, Dan…”