Day 69: Courtyard

[his_legacy]

Link was feeling overall good as he was escorted outside after breakfast. The food had been good, and the weather was nice. It wasn't so cold anymore, but still comfortable. He much preferred coming outside to being cooped up in that stuffy, dull building. The Hylian was trying to remain positive. They had the cure now, did they not? People were getting better.

The death toll was impossible to ignore, though.

He sighed, hands in his pockets as he shuffled through the grass and settled himself on the lawn. This was nice. At least, it was as nice as things could get around here. Link's mind drifted back home, back to Ordon and Hyrule and Midna and Zelda. Everything was okay there, now. And he couldn't even see it for himself.

[Free!]

Comments

[impudentsongbird]

"I've lived in the desert for a number of years," Gabriel agreed. "I've always found the climate rather bracing. Mind you, I could say the same about the cold."

He laughed at himself a little as he took a seat. "I'm Gabe. And you? Tell me about your desert." If nothing else, talking about something loved might be enough to keep the man distracted from his woes, whatever they were.

[age_of_kings]

"Tolten. And the Urhan desert is...well, a desert. Flat plains, brown scrub-brush, canyons. Not much water until the coast, that sort of thing. I don't actually leave the capital city all that often, to be honest with you." He knew that poets and artists had gone on for centuries about the great Golden Plains of Uhra, but the young king couldn't see it. It was a great deal of flat, pale brown nothingness dotted with sad looking shrubbery.

Until it reached the sea, of course, and the golden cliffs.

"The coast is much nicer," he added. "The city's on the coast, you see. Much more pleasant than all that desert."

[impudentsongbird]

Gabe laughed at Tolten's tone of voice. Not that he was wrong, because deserts did tend to have similarities, and yet ... there was a lot more difference once you've taken a closer look. Or lived in several different deserts. Over several different centuries.

"I imagine the ocean does break up some of the monotony," said the Archangel with a smile. "And at least you'd get cool breezes off it. Did you at least get to go sailing a little?" He could've done that just in the city harbour, at least.

[age_of_kings]

"Oh no," Tolten said, shaking his head. "I get seasick something awful. I hate being on the water. My father used to try to take me out when I was little, but...well, I'd only get sick and no one would be happy. I'll just look at it and read about sailing, thank you."

Especially after his adventures in the Nautilus. He still had nightmares! Not just about the submarine ship, but of the ocean itself. It was so vast and large and powerful and he was only one young man! There was nothing he could do to stand in the way of anything it chose to do!

And it had taken two powerful magical engines. Oh, with good reason of course - though Tolten still felt Grand Staff could be incredibly beneficial, if actually built as a magical engine to serve a country - but it had left him with a reenforced fear of the ocean.

[impudentsongbird]

"That's a pity," Gabe said earnestly. "There's something glorious about being on the water. If seasickness is the only trouble, there's a few things that help with that."

But he suspected from the way Tolten shook his head that it might not be the only thing. The ocean was the most awe-inspiring constant natural phenomenon on Earth. There were other things equally so--storms, natural disasters--but the ocean was steady. He could understand why people would find it terrifying.

Not that he did. Not when he could look up at the stars and know intimately the stars he was looking at.

"Can you swim?" he asked. "Swimming and sailing aren't the same thing. Some peopel can dislike one and be fine with the other."

[age_of_kings]

"Oh yes!" Finally something Tolten could respond positively towards. "I've an indoor pool I'm quite fond of. And it's good exercise, swimming." He just preferred to do it indoors and without the precarious aspect of nature involved. He was reminded of his home and he sighed wistfully, but did his best to push those thoughts away.

He'd see it again...someday.

"Do you swim?"

[impudentsongbird]

Oh, good! Gabe beamed. "Yes, I do! Not just in the ocean, but just about anywhere. I have to admit I do particularly enjoy the beach, though. There's no limitations. If you don't want to be in the water, you can play in the sand. It's fun."

Tolten sounded like a well-to-do young man, if he had a swimming-pool and a father with the means for sailing-ships. The sigh indicated he was starting to miss home again, though, so Gabe went on, "What else do you usually do with your time?"

[age_of_kings]

"Oh, well, I'm...rather busy, most of the time. I'm...in politics." He hated admitting he was a king. He still felt something of a pretender - a little boy in his father's shoes. And it made people so awkward! They suddenly didn't know how to talk to him or what to call him. It was maddening.

"I read, whenever I have the chance. I prefer stories of adventure to adventure itself." He'd had enough of that. He'd had his great quest, his forging in fire...he was well and done with it now. Or...more or less. This didn't count. This wasn't an adventure, it was a nightmare.

The talking was taking his mind away from macabre thoughts, however.

[impudentsongbird]

"Politics does that," Gabe said a little dryly but understandingly. "You must be good at it, to be in it so young." He couldn't be any older than Gabriel himself looked, and Gabe looked in his early twenties at the most.

Then he laughed. "That's understandable; adventure isn't for everyone. Do you watch much theatre? It's a good alternative to reading, and somehow more personable to cinema. The story's just as living. Sometimes it's as if you're in the adventure yourself, without having to leave your seat."

[age_of_kings]

"Oh, ah, it's the family business." Of course his father had abolished the monarchy rather than see his 'weak' son on the throne, Tolten had won it back himself. But only because of his heritage. Uhrans were very particular about their kinds. Blood meant everything.

"I've had my share of it," he admitted. "Adventure, I mean. So at least I know what I'm missing. And I get to the opera sometimes, but I don't enjoy going out in public. I swear I'm not some mad recluse, I just...don't like crowds. Or being stared at."

Or escorted by dozens of people everywhere, and pushed towards every unwed noblewoman in the near vicinity.

[impudentsongbird]

Ah. Something more than just well-to-do then, apparently. Pursing his lips, Gabriel leaned back to look Tolten up and down, just a little theatrically. Then he shook his head, curls bouncing.

"Nope, can't see why." He grinned. "Unless you just happen to go to right parts of the city, because you are rather handsome, but I see no horns, claws or tails to make people stare in the least."

[age_of_kings]

"Yes, well, people stare anyway. You don't want an entire lesson on politics in my home, trust me." Even leaving out the fact that he was King, Uhran politics were a tangled mess on the best of days. He was doing his best to sort it all out, but change only came so quickly. And there were more pressing matters to attend to, such as the painfully high unemployment rate.

He cleared his throat, awkward at being referred to as 'handsome'. He had never been able to take compliments well, in any form.

[impudentsongbird]

Challenging politics, being in politics despite his youth, the inability to go anywhere without anyone staring ... really, there were only so many scenarios that held all those features. Gabriel took a stab at the most obvious, though he didn't think he was wrong. It was in the way Tolten sat and spoke and, well, moved.

There was just a certain air about the way born royalty sat, spoke and moved.

"Royal duties can do that," he agreed sympathetically, recalling King Josiah and the troubles he had had when ascending the throne at eight years old. Gabriel had been there and the boy had done wonderfully, but it had been far from easy. He grinned. "But now I'm curious. Go on, give me an example."

[age_of_kings]

Tolten sighed.

"Oh, I'm miserable at hiding it. I try. I don't like being thought of as...as a king. And I really don't want to talk about it, I...don't terribly enjoy it. I don't hate it..." He threw up his hands and cast an apologetic look to the other man. "The governing head of Uhra has changed four different times in the last two years, it's a very unpleasant political climate at the moment. And the world's economy is an absolute mess, thanks to two major countries being wiped out also in a span of two years."

Which was his fault, unfortunately. But they had both been accidents! Well, the second had been deliberate, but it was Tolten's mistake that put the vile man in a position to do so.

"Oh and of course there's the revolutionaries, the cultists and the horrific failed experiments wandering about the sewer that we're still attempting to deal with."

[impudentsongbird]

"It's the manner of being raised like that," Gabe said with an easy shrug. "It's possible to cover it, of course, but if you don't get much opportunity to get out and not be a king, it's hard to keep those little tells from being obvious."

He smiled comfortingly in response to the apologetic look. "It's difficult. Especially if you haven't really had people to guide you, and then you have a whole bunch of others with their own ideas as to how things should go. The real issue at stake for any leader is to know their own mind enough to be able to counter what anyone else says, but still be receptive to advice."

It sounded like the nation had been in a lot of turmoil lately, though. Tolten wasn't just a king, he was a king who'd been saddled with more of a mess than any one person should be expected to have to handle. Gabriel nodded quietly and thoughtfully.

"Just because you're a king," he said, "doesn't mean you have the whole world on your shoulders." He smiled again, tilting his head at Tolten consideringly. "Surround yourself with people whose company you enjoy, whose words you trust. Know when you can and can't handle things alone, and when to take off the crown to breathe. Feed your heart, revel in beauty, and that will hold off the darkness."