#yall should listen to vashti bunyan btw her music is... it give you Feelings

[randomwriteronline]

'You must be plagued by a benevolent spirit' used to be one of the things that people liked to tell him the most.

It is not uncommon. Spirits and imps and faes enjoy favoring or (much more likely) impeding Hylians, Gerudos and all other people of Hyrule alike. It must be a fun pastime for them, a popular one among their kind - or a very common way to blame the everyday misfortunes which the Goddesses allow to befall us.

But in his case, it is different.

Because in his case, it is seldom bad luck.

Whether it is a matter of getting that one darn cucco that keeps stubbornly hiding away somewhere back in the coop, or finding a little thing that has been lost for ages or just in the last hour, or returning home safely in the darkest of nights: he always seemed to manage it.

He had thought he had seen it as it haunted him, that little benevolent spirit of his, once or twice: he had almost been sure to have caught the glimpse of the shining of a large warm hued gem, spying from corners and shadows, with spindly fingers covered in grey ash and a voice as thin as a copper wire, glimmering from the shallow recesses of velvet shadows...

It had only been visions of course - quick, faint tricks of the mind.

He tried not to believe in it, anyways. It's never good to pretend the otherworldly has some kind of hand in unimportant lives.

Unless of course the Goddesses decide you are important.

Not just important, even.

Of the outmost importance.

The Hero reincarnated.

Hot damn.

It made him think - during the few times he could think of something different than the war's hectic insanity, which often was as he laid desperate for sleep that wouldn't come and unable to concentrate on important matters without feeling like bursting him into flames - about that little benign plague.

If it truly did haunt him.

The Chosen appears out of the bushes with a big silly grin and the healer having a hard time concealing something behind his back.

"Guess what we found!" the bird rider prompts him excitedly.

"BLUEBELLS," spoils a thin coppery voice.

The healer struggles to contain the sound of wood against wood behind him.

"Guess what we found," repeats the Chosen.

"IT'S BLUEBELLS."

The brown-haired hero turns a little to keep the grey head, hands and legs from peeking out. He is not very successful.

"Guess," tries the skychild one last time.

"I'M PUTTING THEM IN YOUR HAIR," Skull Kid screams again. In their small waving fist is a concerning amount of bluebells.

The captain looks at the little pest being barely held back by the healer, twists his mouth, clicks his tongue, dreads what is to come, and turns to the man who started the whole hero-ing business.

"I'm guessing it's bluebells," he says dryly.

The Chosen still smiles.

He looks mildly mortified.

The little bastard creature runs directly into the captain's leg, flowers still in an iron grip.

They pull at his tunic insistently: "Get down," they order.

"No, thank you."

"Get down!"

"What do you say?" the farmer chastises them as he stops tending for the fraction of a second to the slightly wet and not fully conscious man he has drowned under about five blankets.

The imp stops pulling for a moment: "Please," they say. Then they kick the captain in the shin.

"Ow," he protests.

"Get down or I'll eat your kneecaps," they threaten him.

"You wouldn't do that."

He proceeds to get his knee bitten.

The healer's eyes grow enormous as his scarfed companion nearly invokes the Goddesses in less than respectful ways: he grabs the round bald head and somehow pries it from the captain, leaving a few cuts on the fabric and maybe a drop of blood as the brunette yells: "No! Bad!" as if talking to a misbehaving cat.

A nasal voice rises from the earth suddenly: "My boy!" calls out delighted and a little feverish very sick former time-traveler.

"Which one?" Skull Kid asks, perfectly calm all of a sudden.

"My beautiful boy!" croaks the man.

"Be more specific,” Skull Kid says, “There’s four of them.”

“You missed one,” their friend corrects them.

The four indeed very handsome boys currently at the camp watch (and would swear that they also hear) the cogs in their dear menace’s empty little head turn feverishly for a minute as they stand perfectly still. The end product of their exhaustive detective work is a very earnest and very confused: “You?”

The eldest hero flops on his stomach with a gross hoarse laugh.

The sky dweller nudges the imp: “He meant you,” he suggests. The way they light up with genuine, delighted surprise makes the sick man cackle hard enough to get into a coughing fit.

“You kill me, sweet heart that you are,” he hacks up with a smile, “I’d kiss you but alas, I’ve come down with a fever.”

The healer turns to the farmer, concerned: “Did he jump into the frozen river like we told him not to do?”

“He jumped into the frozen river like we told him not to do,” the other confirms with a dreadful disappointed air to his face which is quickly copied by the Chosen, while the brunette opts for one that is merely worryingly mortified.

“Never said it wasn’t my own fault,” the time-traveler shields himself. “I take responsibility for my shortcomings. Unlike the Goddesses.”

A blue scarf swats at his face gently: “You're in no shape to be blasphemous, old man.”

“You shush and sit down,” the sick man huffs, “You’ve got to get those bluebells in your hair.”

"It's too short for that."

"Do not test me, boy!" Skull Kid shrieks. "I know my braids! Now sit down and let me make you smell decent for once."

The captain gasps outraged (his cologne smells very good and he will take no criticism on it, thank you). The gasp turns into a very heavy soldier-like curse as the child kicks him again before the farmer can restrain them.

"GET DOWN!" they yell from the strong rural grown grasp.

The captain repeats a not kind exclamation.

He then screams as two strong hands grab him from under the armpits and lift him in the air, swaying him like a large tube in the air before being forcefully sat on the ground.

The oldest among them raises his head and stumbles for a moment under a dizzy spell.

"Oh damn," he murmurs, "Oh fuck."

Three pairs of hands grab him like arpies to keep him from crashing all the way to the ground, at least one set of eyes burning viciously with an intense desire to force the imbecile idiot man still and possibly asleep to recover from his stupid idea.

The Chosen hisses with a glacial stare: "Now lay down, and stay down."

The time-traveler nods a couple times.

Then he lays on the captain's legs before the other can even try to stand up.

"I'll stay down now." he announces.

"Son of a good mother," the captain tells him.

The older hero smiles smugly.

Little wooden fingers begin running through the captain's hair to somewhat comb them. He huffs; it's not like there's any point in fighting them anyways. The old man spoils the imp too much, he mumbles.

The healer looks around: "Seems to me like we're a few links short in the chain," he notes. "Where has everybody else gone?"

"Moss and Sea are in hell," answers the imp.

"They might as well be," the farmer groans, "We lost track of them this morning when they went out exploring. The veteran and the blacksmith have been gone for a while trying to find them and we have been stuck here since Pops got convinced he was a Zora and took a bath."

“I can turn into a Zora.”

“Well, you didn’t when you jumped in the freezing water.”

The bird rider gives a deep pained sigh.

This will take long.

The captain waves his hand in a somewhat permissive manner at them: "You three go get our lost causes," he almost orders. "I'll stay here and watch over camp. The children have me imprisoned either way, so."

He shrugs excessively. He revels in short lived revenge as Skull Kid chirps angrily, their combing disrupted momentarily.

"No other choice for me."

The oldest hero stretches his arms, inviting his friend to deposit the flowers in his hands (which they do), as he hums a goodbye to the small expedition leaving to find their omonimous brethren.

There is not much of a sound. A gentle scraping against the scalp, deep breaths, rustling of blankets pulled over a sick body.

Skull Kid says: "Bell, pick a number."

"Seventeen," the captain says instinctively.

He feels their phalanxes pull at his hair two, three more times; then their mouth moves to whisper what sounds like a melody, a beat, and as they pick the first flower to fix on his head, they start singing.

"I saw seventeen pink sugar elephants," they breathe, "Sitting under a chestnut tree."

They are not a good singer. That is not what their voice is built for.

"I said good morning, pink sugar elephants, but they wouldn't speak to me."

It is charming either way, in some way; it is charming like songs murmured by children braiding flowers into hair.

"Each had two eyes, but they couldn't see me there. Each had four legs, but they couldn't go anywhere."

(For some reason it feels almost familiar. It cannot be, because he has never heard it before - but he can almost feel some sort of forlorn memory stir in him, some remembrance of these same skinny fingers pulling at him gently, and this same graceless, charming voice lulling him to sleep with this same song.)

"And so we just sat, that early autumn morning, sun not yet risen and magic everywhere."

Their coppery voice traild off with soft la la la la-s, and proceeds with the new verse.

"I walked up to one pink sugar elephant, asked why wouldn't he speak to me..."

The captain returns to that weird thought of his, that weird feeling. Who knows - perhaps that really happened (but with a different song, certainly. It could not have been this one. That would be silly.) and perhaps it had been his 'benevolent spirit', whatever it was, who had sung to him.

"... But he was a handy-made pink sugar elephant, given to children for treats of the teeth."

His eyes fall on the man already soundly asleep on his legs. He checks his forehead with the back of his hand: still warm. There he is, he thinks, that damned 'benevolent spirit' of mine, down with a fever after jumping into a freezing river like an idiot. He tries to imagine him sneaking up to his window - with all the time that passed between them, he might have been a skeleton! - to whisper him a nursery rhyme and help him sleep.

He had thought it had to be him back when he first saw him.

He had been certain of it.

That confused look on the small face as he had approached him with a strange smile, sure of his theory, came to his mind.

'I've got you all figured out,' he had told the child, his index finger tapping on his own smirk. The kid had given him a funny puzzled look and tilted his head.

'You are a Skull Kid, aren't you?'

That had made the boy almost laugh. That glimmer of mischief in his eyes had been confirmation enough for him.

'Do you even know what a Skull Kid is?' the little voice had asked.

But he had been prepared, perfectly prepared: 'You take me for a fool,' he had replied, 'They are the eternal children of the Deku Tree, who could not escape the Lost Woods - am I wrong now, little spirit?'

His response had been a giggle: 'I won't be the one to tell you!'

That had cemented it for him.

(How could he have known? He had no idea what a Skull Kid looked like at the time - hell, he might have gone his entire life without knowing such a thing! And the young time traveler had seemed like the perfect candidate to be one: older beyond his appearance, clearly knowledgeable of magic, and with something about him that felt strange in an incomprehensible manner. He understands now what truly causes his peculiarity - but how could he have known?)

That same giggle had caught his attention an evening, he could not remember precisely when, as he passed near the door of the castle behind which the puzzling child had taken residence briefly.

He had lingered, and heard two voices - both thin, child-like in nature, both exchanging quiet laughs in amused tones. He must have made some kind of noise, for one of the two gasped and hushered the other out with a gentle ‘go, go!’; and through a narrow he had caught the glimpse of a round head (made of wood?) gently colliding for a second with the child’s rosy face.

When he had opened the door the boy was looking out of the window and into the night, alone, his head on his arms.

‘How is the evening looking, lost child?’ the captain had asked.

The time traveler had turned with a mischievous smile and slightly colored cheeks: ‘The full moon is lovely,’ he had just replied.

He never did find out who that round head belonged to, didn’t he.

What a strange thing to remember.

His hand plays boredly with the sleeping man’s hair and his mouth keeps moving without him noticing.

“... He had two eyes, but he couldn’t see me there. He had four legs, but he couldn’t go anywhere.”

He can’t have heard this before. What a silly thought.

“And so we just sat, that early autumn morning, sun not yet risen and magic everywhere...”

La la-la la, la la-la la, la - la la la...

“Hi,” says Skull Kid, and the captain feels as confused and dizzy as if he had just woken up from a very long dream. He feels  the weight of their hands idly sitting on his shoulders; when he lifts his head to look at them, theirs has been turned for a while to welcome the seven man party returning to camp.

“Hi,” the sailor says sheepishly, several eyes glaring at him and at the cook: “We, uhm, we got lost.”

“Did you go to hell?” the imp asks.

“They had the bright idea of sailing halfway across a damned lake,” the veteran answers for them. He is positively furious. “And got fucking stuck in the middle of it until farmer boy got his swimming suit on and dragged them back because somebody left his magical baton in the bag he forgot back here and somebody else broke his deku leaf on the way.”

“Was the lake nice?” Skull Kid asks, ignoring the point.

“No,” the farmer sighs, equally angry and sopping wet. “No, it was not.”

A feverish bundle stirs: “I should’ve come with...” croaks the older man.

“You’re delirious,” the captain stops him.

“And you’re looking fancy,” the blacksmith informs him.

The scarfed man touches his hair. How did he forget about the flowers? He groans and reaches for the old man’s mirror shield.

Gazing upon it, a head of golden hay and blue spots greets him.

For a moment he loses himself in the reflection.

“Wow.” he comments finally after a pensive pause: “I look ridiculous.”

"Shut up." the imp punches his shoulder.

The veteran looks at him with half-lidded spiteful eyes: "I'd say it's an improvement," he argues, "Makes it clearer you're a clown-"

"You both stop that!" the skydweller barks at them, carrying away the cook and sailor by the ears that soon will be chewed by both himself, the farmer and (in a more concerned than outrigh paternally furious way) the healer.

The blacksmith, only one with the faculty of speech at the moment, intervenes gently: "I for one think Skull Kid did a good job."

The imp reserves him a wide, sharp, delighted smile, and a prideful 'thank you'.

The ill time traveler hums in agreement; his elbow nudges the captain, making him huff and look into the mirror again. The blue petals in his hair return his gaze and spread a sweet scent.

(That’s another weird thing. The smell of the bluebells - it’s so familiar, too, and for what reason? Goddesses know he cannot understand it. He has picked them, once or twice, hasn’t he? He must have. But never such a quantity that it would feel so close to himself. They make him think of... Of... Sleeping. Sleeping in a bed that feels too big, their sweet perfume sorrounding him, with fingers as thin as sticks combing through his hair and a voice so strange, like a copper wire, singing to him of pink sugar elephants. A little benevolent spirit plaguing his days with quiet help and his nights with calm dreams. But that cannot be right.)

The captain tugs gently at Skull Kid’s sleeve, pulling the bark of their cheek to his mouth to press upon it the kind of kiss bestowed out of love or spite by older brothers to their little pests.

“Thank you,” he says politely as the imp is too stunned to reply.

(In his silent acceptance of their coarse giggling hug - and he could swear that giggle sounds so much like the second voice he had heard one night behind that castle door - he forgets that time does not work in the Lost Woods.)

[the song Skull Kid sings is “17 Pink Sugar Elephants” by Vashti Bunyan]