Fat Fin sidled over to the side of the road, swinging his hair about as if he were the star of some beachfront-obsessed serial. Once he became preoccupied with his new mission (that is, provocative bends made in service of looking for interesting rocks), Cironus turned to Danmalaak and crossed his arms.

“All right, Danmalaak. First off: we’re barely twenty feet out of the village. We didn’t run, we weighed the pros and cons and took a vote on the matter.”

“In, like, six seconds!”

“We like to be itinerant. Trust me, when it came to that vote, it felt like the longest six seconds of our lives.”

Danmalaak looked from Cironus to Fat Fin, then back to Cironus again.

“Uh huh.”

“When it comes to the important stuff!” Cironus said, waving away the goron’s askance glance to his father. “Look, if it happened to you, wouldn’t you want your old body back?”

Danmalaak retained his skeptical glare, but only for a few seconds. Then he shook his head.

“I…guess,” he sighed, adjusting his pack. “I don’t know, I just…could your dad have made it any less obvious he just wanted to go punch a hinox?”

Cironus considered the question, though it didn’t really faze him much. “Dan…look at it this way. Dad’s a wrestler,” he said. “Big hammy fistfights are kind of his thing. Like, sure, maybe he’s not as beefy as he’d normally be, but my old man makes a living getting the krill knocked out of him. He’s not about to let being Hylian stop him from plying his trade, okay?

“Yeah, but at his current height, one punch is–”

“--Not going to happen. Trust me, getting hit for a living also means knowing which hits you can and can’t take,” Cironus insisted. “I get it. Dad can be a little…I dunno, cavalier at times? But I’m telling you, he knows how to avoid getting hit when he wants to.”

He smirked, recalling an old memory. 

“We’ll have to introduce you to Big Blue at some point. Trust me, he’ll have stories about trying to pin my dad.”

“Not for lack of trying!”

“NOT HELPING, DAD.”

Danmalaak was having a hard time processing this. Cironus was building up his father as some sort of badass fighter, yet in the short time he’d been traveling with the zorca, Fat Fin had spent most of his time lumbering about behind the group, cracking crass jokes, only playing at mediation between his sons when they finally got too rowdy. As such, Danmalaak was increasingly of the impression that Fat Fin got by mostly from being the largest goon in the room. The idea that the zorca would remember his Hylian limitations and avoid getting himself flattened in the first ten seconds of combat was something the goron harbored some serious skepticism about.

Still, though, the little goron was the one least familiar with his new brethren. At the very least, Cironus seemed to have a level head on his shoulders; If he said his father could handle himself, who was Danmalaak to say otherwise?

“...All right,” he conceded. “I’m…I dunno, still not used to traveling around with a bunch of fighters.”

“Hey, no bigs, Bro-malaak!” said Cironus, clapping him on the shoulder (and wincing at slapping solid rock). “Think of it this way: yours truly palled around with the craziest fighters in Hyrule! And I was armed just with my fists, this holy apparatus–” he tapped the head on his guitar “--and the truth.”

He tossed his head, glancing back at a throng that had started ogling his showboating father.

“You’re in good hands! Right, Da–”

Cironus’ brain caught up with what he was seeing.

“DAD!”

“YOU SAID–”

=========

Hours later…

“All right, fish break.”

Danmalaak reached about, grabbed his pack, passed out boxes of sushi to the others, who gratefully started wolfing them down. The four of them had been moving at a brisk pace, having separated Fat Fin from his adoring crowd, and the other three had already begun showing various degrees of dishevelment from slogging through muggy swamp weather. Fat Fin was looking particularly musky, his shirtless chest having nothing to absorb those rivulets of sweat pouring from his matted hair. If the grime covering his body was bothering him, though, he gave no indication.

Unwrapping one of the salt licks he’d pried from the canyon wall, Danmalaak glanced at Sardon. 

“How’s the leg?” he asked, gesturing at the rough scab on the bigger brother's leg.

“Eh, it’s fine,” Sardon said through a mouthful of rice, then swallowed. “Feels a little weird without the blubber, but otherwise? I forgot it was even there.”

“Dang. And that was…what, a ten, fifteen-foot drop?”

“I’ve had worse. I’m feeling it more in the arms. You’d think, with all this moisture, those rock walls wouldn’t be so rough on the hands.”

The goron considered as he chewed. Those walls had been deceptively smooth during their climb, giving even Danmalaak pause. All those outcroppings and recesses had been far too small for the goron’s outsized hands, and it took some irritable fist-taps to gouge out something he could grab.

He’d not even realized that Sardon had lost his footing until Cironus’ gleeful whooping called out from below. Apparently, the larger brother had just managed to catch some gnarled branch growing from the wall and used it to swing back to the path.

“Well, at least we don’t have to go back down that way,” he said, licking his lips as they continued to walk. “Imagine pulling that branch trick in reverse!”

The four of them laughed.

As the sun began to creep over the horizon, Sardon raised a different subject.

“So…yeah, since we’re on fish-break, we really ought to find a place to crash,” he said, waving half an onigiri at the shadows extending in dusklight. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather avoid being eaten alive by the insect life around here.”

Danmalaak paused chewing, eyes wide. “Is…is that a thing?” he asked.

“Well…for us, at least. Not sure about you. Rocks and whatnot.”

“Oh, right. Right. Well, Cir, you’re the tour guide here - which way should we go?”

Now it was Cironus’ turn to pause. He squinted through the foggy marshland, mid-munch, peering past the low treelines for any particular landmarks he could recognize. At first, he couldn’t see anything besides the clearing they’d been plodding through. As the sun continued to set, though, he recognized a faint pair of skylights broadcasting from a foothill in the distance.

“Oh, of course!” he exclaimed, slapping his forehead. “Necluda’s sky tower!”

“Necluda sky what.”

“Sky Tower,” Cironus said, answering his father’s skeptical question. “It’s one of the cartographer’s stations. You know, one of the ones Zelda commissioned for mapping out Hyrule?”

Blank looks from the rest of the group.

“...Right. My family lives in the ocean.” Cironus sighed, searching his mind for some way to provide an analogue - then, realizing none would work, he changed tack. 

“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “It’s a station that’s got regular upkeep from the Hyrule Carpenter’s Guild. They’ve got people coming in to make sure the local wildlife doesn’t destroy it. Even if nobody’s there, well…it’s a sturdy structure, and we’d have a roof over our heads.”

“If it’s open, of course,” said Sardon.

“...I mean, didn’t stop us when we needed in,” Cironus muttered.

“What?”

Cironus feigned ignorance with another sushi roll. “I didn’t say nuffin’.”

“Uh-huh.” Sardon gave him a hard look.

“Okay, okay!” Some of them did need breaking into when I was at ‘em last, okay?” said Cironus. “But that was during the Upheaval - what didn’t need a fixer-upper, right? It’s not like we trashed the place. Sometimes we even did the Guild’s job for them!”

“Hope you got paid for it,” Fat Fin said.

“...Ehhhhhhhhhhhn.” Cironus see-sawed with his hand.

“...Anyway,” said Danmalaak, trying to bring the conversation back around, “sounds like a good place to pack in for the night. Anyone got any objections?”

There was a pause.

“...Just one,” said Sardon. 

He pointed to a well-trod path crossing the clearing they were passing through, one that appeared to have been there for several years, if the weathering stones were any suggestion. Along the path was a sign, constructed from a set of rickety planks, rocks, and some iron rails with no attention to rhyme, reason, or basic design. 

It read:

THIS WAY TO LURELIN VILLAGE DANGER! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SCALE CANYON OVERLOOK SERIOUS INJURY OF DEATH MAY OCCUR GUARD RAILS TO BE INSTALLED NEXT SUMMER COURTESY OF HUDSON CONSTRUCTION

“Know anything about that?” he asked, maintaining an absolutely straight face.

Cironus blanched.

“I, uh,” he stuttered.  “I-I mean, Link was always in a hurry, and–”

Sardon broke composure.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, faint incredulity creeping into his voice. “Your… friend… was in SUCH a hurry he’d go catapulting down a canyon wall just to shave a few hours off his commute?!”

“He had a parachute–”

“HE HAD A PARACHUTE?! And you had us go UP IT?! With NOTHING?!”

“...He called it the Hero’s Climb!” Cironus squeaked.

“What, was he possessed by a mountain goat?!” 

“Or by someone who didn’t allot any time on his itinerary.”

“NOT HELPING, DAD!”

==========

It was early evening as the group scaled the foothill leading to Necluda’s sky tower facility. The building stood as it had during the Upheaval incident: a strange, hollow wooden structure with a fluted base, sitting on a narrow platform that seemed oddly flimsy for the robust structure it had to support. It looked to them all like an outsized chimney.

The skylights illuminated the tower against the evening fog, bathing it and the surrounding region in a soft, pale yellow light. It also shone atop some new rooftops in the vicinity; evidently, some new maintenance buildings had been constructed in the intervening years. Of note was a distinct lack of thorn bushes in the nearby area; evidently, someone had finally had enough of the brambles surrounding the tower and had either burned, cut, or bombed them away. In their place were a number of flower beds, which someone had been suspiciously meticulous about separating from the wetland’s endemic vines.

Cironus, thoroughly emasculated by his lack of signpost awareness, took some heart in the image. Here, like in so many other parts of Hyrule, people were reclaiming the Wilds from Ganon’s gloom. The towers were now a permanent station - a far cry from Cironus' fears of decrepit ruins, with people milling from hut to hut talking about something in the distance.

“Nice! Looks like we’ll be camping in style tonight!” said Danmalaak, clapping Cironus on the back.

“No –ACK–kidding,” Cironus said, grinning through a wince. “I thought we’d have to shut ourselves in the tower. Could rent a room instead!”

Danmalaak coughed, shifting his pack. His coin purse inside was noticeably silent, suggesting a little too much about their finances.

“Well…maybe not that...But hey, nothing wrong busking outside a tent!”

Fat Fin rolled his shoulders. “Maybe even give ‘em a show..”

“No, Dad–” Sardon began.

“Hang on a sec,” said Cironus, interrupting him. “I think he’s on to something.”

He pointed. Further up the hill, a zora was crouching to emerge from one of the buildings. While not completely unexpected, it was definitely unusual: it was a Hylian encampment, after all. More interesting was that she didn’t look like a local from Zora’s Domain. She was missing fins, she was a duller color than most, and yet...she was, strangely enough, somehow familiar to him.

…Why was she so familiar?

“Looks like there’s people of all types showing up here,” Cironus said. “Maybe if we cozy up with the local zora, play some music, do a little show? They might speak on our behalf. Get us a room for free, you know?”

“And why would the zora care about us?,” replied Fat Fin, tapping his chest pointedly. “Hylian, remember?...though I do like your thinking.”

The mystery Zora was speaking with zeal to one such Hylian: a squat, stout figure with heavily-framed spectacles who could have posed as a stunt actor for Fat Fin, had he only been a head taller. She waved at the sky, pointing out something behind the party that (based on how excited she seemed) must have been the discovery of the century.

As they approached, her conversation became more clear.

“...I can feel it in my bones! A low-pressure system’s moving in–another storm is coming soon! Oh, ooh, I’m hoping for lightning! Maybe then I can test my little apparatus?--But wait, for the last two storm cycles it’s only been rain, right?”

The Zora was practically bouncing up and down in excitement.

The Hylian nodded. “ Yeah. Can’t say we’ve had anything but lightning. Just rain, rain, and more rain. But that’s not all bad! We’ve been able to test the acid content to see how the nearby towns are affected by this weather.” 

The conversationalists continued, not even pausing to look at the party as they approached.

Cironus scratched his head. “Okay…yeah, that’s way more science talk than I was expecting here. Kind of reminds me of someone!” 

He shot a mischievous look at Sardon, then paused. 

“Actually, wow! She really does look like…”

Cironus trailed off.

Now it was Sardon’s turn to blanch.

“...Oh, no.”

Danmalaak blinked. “Is she someone you–”

“No,” Sardon said, his eyes darting between his three compatriots. “In fact, we don’t know anybody over here. That means you, Cir. Okay?”

He planted a finger directly in Cironus' chest.

“I…okay?” 

Cironus glanced at his father, but the old man had already drawn a hand over his face, revealing an expression of polite ignorance in place of his usual joviality once removed. Fat Fin’s eyes flicked over to Cironus, hardening in a glare as he nodded towards Sardon, then softened back to base incuriosity as he walked forward.

“...I am so lost,” said Danmalaak.

“...We’ll talk about it later,” Cironus said out of the corner of his mouth as they approached. “For now, let’s just get some information. Hi there!”

He punctuated that last bit with a jovial wave, which finally caught the attention of their mystery zora.

“Oh hi!” The zora stepped away from her cohort, looking over the quartet (and their clothing) with interest. “How can I help you? Are you with the survey team?”

“Surv–Oh! Uh, no!” said Cironus. “We’re, ah, actually just passing through from Lurelin! We happened to see this place as it was getting dark.”

He pointed at the tower.

“That’s not an inn, by chance, is it?”

Danmalaak squinted at him. Cironus responded by stepping directly between him and their host.

The zora laughed. “Oh, that’s what I thought! I was afraid you guys might be here to work. I was going to say, you’re a little underdressed! It’s been storming here pretty badly so you’d need more clothes–”

“Trust me, we don’t,” interjected Fat Fin.

She blinked, surprised, then flashed a big grin in response. “...Well, in that case, it sounds like you’re good to go!”

Cironus gave her a sheepish grin, scratching the back of his neck. “Sorry,” he said, “Dad’s a bit…assertive about his fashion sense.”

“Oh my goodness, are you all family?”

She turned briefly to look up at the tower. “Well, sorry to say, but that’s not an inn! But I bet Darol knows where the next closest one is. Right?”

The other Hylian licked his lips, pulling off his glasses to polish them on his shoulder. Cloudy lenses were clearly a regular issue in muggy Necluda.

“Hmm…I would have said Lurelin would be the closest place, but you just came from there,” he said, squinting off towards the south. “If that’s the case, your next best bet is probably…oh, say, Hateno.”

He flagged the path leading east with his glasses before putting them back on. “You might want to get a move on, you’ve got a bit of a march in front of you.”

“YEAH MAYBE WE SHOULD GO YOU GUYS,” said Sardon, a little too loudly - and, surprisingly, several feet further from the group than he’d been only seconds earlier.

“Ooh, no, no, no.” The zora waved her hands, stepping closer. “Oh that’s way too far! And you might get caught in this storm that’s heading our way. Hmmm…” 

She looked over the party again. Sardon felt his cheeks flushing.

“You know what? You guys probably wouldn’t take up too much space. I’m not planning on sleeping too much tonight…so if I move my stuff out of my tent, would you like to stay overnight in there?” She smiled at them again. “I have to take some night notes for my studies, so it’s no problem by me!”

Cironus brightened.

“Hey, that’s p–”

“--a TERRIBLE idea!” 

Cironus looked at Sardon, confused and more than a little irked. “What are you talking about? We wouldn’t be taking up that much room!”

“And I won't even be in there!" chimed in Danmalaak. “Water doesn't bother me, so I’ll just stick around outside!”

“Yeah! I mean, no accounting for your dad, but with me outside, you three would have plenty of room in the–”

“We are not leaving this…lovely lady outside in the rain, okay?” Sardon gritted his teeth as he addressed the zora. “It’s not polite.”

“She said it was okay–”

“NOT THE POINT!”

“I’m gonna tell Mom.”

“DAD’S RIGHT HERE!”

Fat Fin sighed. Sardon was taking “playing dumb” to a whole new dimension.

“I’m gonna tell Mom on you,” Sardon said, leveling a finger at Fat Fin and Cironus. “Telling a nice young lady to sleep out in the rain! What would Yon–youuuuuuur mom have to say about that?!”

Cironus glared at him. He knew exactly who Sardon was about to implicate.

“Low Blow, Sa–IRRRRRR.”

The two scientists glanced at each other.

“They remind me of my siblings…” The Zora stage-whispered to Darol. “They sure seem like family to me!”

“I’m not so sure,” said Darol. “I think the goron’s a dead giveaway.”

“He’s a pet,” said Fat Fin.

“HEY!”

“Oooooohhhhhhkay guys," said the zora, clearly wanting this interaction to end. "You know what, why don’t you just stay in the tower! We have people coming in and out at all hours, so it’s not really comfortable but, at least you’ll be sheltered!”

“Okay, see, that was what we were hoping to do in the first place.” Cironus locked eyes with his brother. “You can’t possibly argue with that.”

“I totally can! I thought of that idea first–”

“No you DIDN’T!”

Sardon stuck his tongue out at Cironus. Cironus shot his back.

“Why are you making this so difficult–”

“I am NOT–”

“SHUT UP!”

Fat Fin had had enough. He grabbed his two sons by the shoulders, yanking them in, and knocked their heads together.

“NO! ONE! CARES!” he bellowed - and then, spinning on a dime, he offered his most charming, disarming smile to the zora.

“We’ll take the tower, if you’re still offering,” he said, still holding his sons by the scruffs of their necks.

Darol gave them a hard squint.

“Just…don’t break anything. Actually, Sona, if they do break anything, it’s on you.”

He turned on his heel and started walking away.

Sona (for they now knew who the zora was) winced. 

“Oh, boy.”

Sardon stared at the ground.

“That’s not gonna happen,” he said, under his breath.

“Agreed.”

Fat Fin sidestepped the two of them, smiling genially.

“Thank you…Sona, was it?”

Sona nodded tersely. Her sunshiney friendliness was replaced with a new air of concern and possibly regret.

“Why don’t I show you to the tower now?”

She jerked her head as if to say, “let’s go!” and started walking.

Sardon’s heart sank - just as Sona asked something that derailed his thoughts altogether.

“What were your names?” 

Oh no.

Sardon froze. He'd been trying to avoid this moment instant he’d realized who Sona was. He’d been trying so hard, in fact, that he completely neglected the possibility they’d reach this moment. He needed an alias: something plausible, something that a normal Hylian would have. Something that didn’t sound asinine, something that didn't sound like something an idiot zorca would make up–

“Finn,” Fat Fin said. “With two ‘n’s’.”

“I’m, uh…Cir.”

Cironus grinned at Sardon. 

Sardon stared straight ahead, wracking his brain. Nothing came to him. The nickname the Lurelin children gave him came to mind, but–no, too fake - AND Cironus had already stolen it. Cir?! REALLY?!

The milliseconds ticked by like lifetimes. He felt ten thousand years old in an instant, and just as stupid. Come on, Sardon! It’s just a stupid NAME! A stupid, stupid NAME!

“I’m…”

His mouth clamped shut. He was sweating buckets.

“I’m...peety.”

Cironus nearly tripped over his feet staring at him.

“...Peety?!” he mouthed.

Sona whipped her head around. “Wh- what was that?”

Oh, NO. OH, NO!

His brains were soup. His legs were noodles. If the mystery fog that turn him Hylian were to show up again, it couldn’t have done a better job turning his spine to jello. Sardon fell to his knees, eyes blank, a strange, wobbling smile swimming its way across his face as he went from kneeling to face-planting the dirt.

Sona gasped, dashing towards the now-prostrate man. “Ohmygoddess!?” She knelt and moved to roll him over.

Sardon mumbled something inaudibly through a mouthful of dirt. 

Danmalaak stared, flabbergasted, gesturing towards Cironus, then at the brain-dead Hylian on the ground. He pleaded, wordless, for something, anything that could make sense of this.

Cironus leaned in sideways towards him, eyes firmly looking towards his brother.

“Girlfriend,” he whispered.

Dawning realization played across Danmalaak’s face.

“Ohhhhhhhh.”

Sardon tried again.

“Ibb beeeee.” A gob of dirt fell out of his mouth with the confession.

“Oh my gosh, honey, c’mon–” Sona shifted her arms under Sardon, and with a bit of effort, lifted him up in a carry. “Is he sick? Is he okay? We need to go to the infirmary!” 

“Ibb’s beeeee,” he said again. “I’b Bar-bon.”

“He’s delirious!” She speed-walked, huffing and puffing a little - Sona may have been taller than Sardon as a Hylian, but he was still an incredibly stocky man for her to carry. Fat Fin pushed forward, meeting her steps with his own, and gestured to take his son in his arms.

“I can take him,” he said. “Lead the way.”

Sardon switched hands as Sona led them towards a building which must have been the infirmary. She chuckled nervously - who would have imagined this crazy Hylian would share her boyfriend’s silly nickname? Truth was stranger than fiction.

Fat Fin stared up at the sky, mentally taking the goddesses’ names in vain, then looked down at his son, who was burbling like an idiot under the pressure.

“Want one more shot at it?” he asked.

Sardon nodded.  Fat Fin sighed.

“Hang on,” he said, rocking his son’s body so that the last of the mud would clear his lips. “He’s got something to say.”

“This is a medical emergency!” Sona sounded stressed.

“Yeahhhh, no. It’s not.” 

Fat Fin shifted Sardon in his grip, grabbing the boy’s head by the chin, and raised it up so he could look at her. His cheeks spilled slightly over his father’s fingers, giving him the unfortunate appearance of a half-drowned trout.

“Ready to hear this?” he asked Sona.

“No? Yes? I don’t know??” Sona was absolutely exasperated. 

“That’s a yes,” said Fat Fin. “Go ahead, son.”

Sardon whimpered. 

He felt like a limp fish. 

Funny, considering.

FOCUS.

He closed his eyes.

Opened his mouth.

“...It’s…meeeeee,” he said, his voice filled with anguish. “I’m Sardon.”

Sona stared at Sardon. She very slowly lifted her head to look at the others, an expression of confusion and fear suffusing her face. 

Cironus and Fat Fin nodded. Danmalaak shrugged, looked at the other two, then nodded as well.

“What is going on.”

Sona looked like she was debating on whether or not to run.

“Sardon? What’s going on?”

“Magic cloud.”

Sardon looked up at Fat Fin.

“That’s Dad.”

Then at Cironus.

“That’s Cironus.”

And then at Danmalaak.

“That’s just a goron.”

“HEY!”

Sona peered at Sardon intensely. 

“...What did you say to me behind the seaweed rock by the tidepools at our first Turning the Wheel?” 

Sardon looked at Sona, then at Fat Fin and Cironus. His face turned beet red.

“Please,” he gasped. “Not in front of them.”

“Ohhhhh no,” said Cironus, suddenly grinning. “Now you GOTTA answer.”

Sona whipped around on Cironus and pointed a finger at him. “What was the first song you and I played together?” 

Cironus blanched as she brandished her finger at him.  “Uhhhhh–Song of Storms! SONG OF STORMS!” he blurted, wanting out of Sona’s glare as quickly as possible.

Sona spun back to Sardon as though Cironus had never existed.

“Ohmygoddess I cannot believe it! Sardon? What is happening?” Wrenching him out of his father’s grasp, she put her hands on Sardon’s shoulder and chest and put her face close to his. “It really IS you guys!”

Then she paused.

“Wait.” 

She pulled a half-amused, half-embarrassed grin and pushed her face in even closer. 

“You did say ‘peety!’ You used your little nickname!” 

Sardon wanted to die.

Fat Fin rolled his eyes.

“Ta-daaaaaaa.”