Wherein the travelers wake up after an unsettling dream.
Nuruli wakes from her dream, feeling quite disturbed. What did the shadow under the tree and the shadow in her dream mean? She tends to the Cuccos and does her other morning duties, mulling it over. With some trepidation, she returns to the tree from yesterday, but can find nothing wrong with it. In fact, the place where the root crumbled away seems to be healing over already. If anything, the fact that everything is normal makes her more unsettled, and wonders if she just imagined the shadow yesterday.
She heads back home to help make lunch, and her grandmother Nureni inquires after her, saying she seems upset.
Nuruli explains that she had a bad dream after a strange encounter, and believes they are related. She describes the incident with Violet and the tree, and then the dream. She says, there was a city, but it wasn’t the Gerudo capital or like any city she’d seen, with roads like a tangle of yarn, with a shadow stretching over it.
Grandmother is concerned by this combination of events, and wonders if it was just a dream about Nuruli’s worries, or a portent about something. After all, sometimes dreams are given by the Gods. Nuruli doesn’t know; she says she isn’t scared of the dark so doesn’t believe it was just a nightmare, but she just isn’t sure. Is it something she needs to do something about? Nureni tells Nuruli she’ll have to decide what to do, but after seeing how upset her granddaughter is, says “It’s alright, you don’t need to decide now dear. Right now, we’ll just prepare lunch.”
Marah wakes from her dream, puzzled. It seemed familiar, but how? She gets up and goes downstairs, where her father is making some breakfast. She thinks her dream must be related to the events in the crypt she experienced some years earlier, so asks about suspicious hooded figures, or anything out of the ordinary happening. She mentions the figures she encountered when she fell into that grave.
Her father plops a bowl of something mushy in front of her and says he hasn’t seen anything like that; he’s a little dismissive because he has never quite believed his daughter’s stories about her adventures in the crypt, but concedes that sometimes you do find odd things in a crypt. But no, nothing like that.
“Oh, well, thanks for the porridge.” “You’re welcome. It’s scrambled eggs.” Her father begins to eat with a gummy grimace as she continues to ask about anything odd happening, and talks a bit about the Poe from last night. He isn’t listening, really, and just sort of nods and continues to “chew” his breakfast, before pushing it away and starting to cut and toast some bread.
The bread burns while Marah tries and fails to get any sort of guidance from her father, and when he hands over the burnt toast, she reluctantly thanks him and says she’ll go eat the food outside. “I wouldn’t!” is his cheerful reply as she leaves, hearing the final crunch of him attempting to eat the ruined toast.
Marah checks on the fence, and then decides to go ask the neighbor’s if anything odd has happened. Talon’s wife greets her at their little homestead on the ranch, and thanks her for taking care of the Poe problem. The rancher’s wife apologies for asking about the problem so late yesterday, but that they’d had a long day with the farm animals all acting perturbed.
Marah says that’s fine, and then asks her about strange figures or anything odd, citing that she had a strange encounter with a Poe. The rancher’s wife is cheerfully dismissive, thinking she is being comforting when she replies that Poe’s don’t shove, and that you can’t get pushed into a tree.
Frustrated, Marah changes tact and asks about the animals, but the rancher’s wife is still not very helpful, just saying that they were in a state. Marah asks her if she’s had any weird dreams, and the rancher’s wife describes a dream about her husband turning into a Cucco and laying eggs on the barn roof. “But when I woke up, there he was, perfectly normal. But that’s how dreams work, dear.”
Clearly, nobody here is of much use to Marah for figuring out the dream. She decides to head toward Castle Town. It’s perhaps a forty-five minute walk, but as it comes into view, she stops short. The city in the dream — it was Castle Town!
Karin wakes up completely disoriented, and immediately marches over to the cabin where she encountered the odd figure. She bangs on the door, and he greets her cheerfully, oblivious to her dark mood. Some furniture has appeared in the cabin overnight, and it looks a bit less dusty and cleaner inside.
“What did you do to me?” she demands. He doesn’t know what she means, and although she slowly remembers the rest of their conversation from the previous day, and that it was pleasant, she is sure the weird dream and the headache were this figure’s fault. When she mentions the dream, he looks puzzled, and says “I can’t control dreams!” This appears to mollify her somewhat. Another chair appears at the table in the middle of the room, and he gestures for her to sit.
She sits, and he waves a hand to conjure some coffee, toast, and sausage, which Karin eyes apprehensively, asking “How can I know to trust this?”
“well, I can’t answer that question for you. You either trust me or you don’t. But please, tell me about your dream.”
As Karin describes the dream, his face falls quickly. He suddenly looks very old for a child-sized being. When Karin describes the laughter “like yours, but worse,”
He says “oh no. Oh no,” and produces some paper and quickly sketches out the layout of a city. “Is this the one from your dream?”
It’s missing some details, like it’s out of date, but Karin confirms that it is. “Oh no. I thought… I thought … I’m not ready for this.” He shakes his head and seems very disturbed, and then says “We gotta go.” There’s a pause, and then asks Karin if she has anything she can’t abandon here.
She looks confused but says there isn’t really anything, and he says “I know you don’t even trust me enough to eat breakfast and this is a weird thing to say, but we have to go to Castle Town. I was here to watch you and you had the dream, so I think they’ll need you there.” Karin wants to know what he gets out of this and he says “Oh, you know, saving the world,” and half-mutters “again.”
Karin hesitates for a moment, but then agrees to go, and they set off right away.
Impa wakes up with a shout of “I knew it!”, feeling quite vindicated in her family’s premonition of an oncoming darkness. She immediately begins preparations to leave for Castle Town, which she knows well.
At the general store, the owner makes pleasant conversation with her, and apologizes for complaining about the burn yesterday, when it was obvious he couldn’t possibly have gotten burnt. And anyway, it’s better today. Impa is distracted, but replies that she’ll be closing up shop for awhile.
“Oh no, where am I going to get lunch?” Are you serious? thinks Impa, but says “I’m sure you’ll manage for a few days. I just need to make a little trip to Castle Town.”
“Oh, Castle Town! We haven’t had anyone go that way in so long. Do you think you could take in an order for me?” Impa agrees, and the shop owner writes that they need 5 bolts of fine fabric, 10 of plain and ‘if you can, some candy?’ and a tightly closed bag with payment for the fabric and a cart back. She gets the name of the supplier and finishes buying what she needs. The shop owner gives her a 5 rupee discount for agreeing to take in the order.
Out in the street, people are yelling “We’ve told you, hitch that horse outside of town!”. Impa recognizes the somewhat unusual horse and it’s rider — it’s Karin, from the nearby balloon shooting range. She appears to be talking to herself?
Karin is, of course, talking to the spirit (?) who is hovering above her stinky horse Linkle’s mangey rump, but who nobody can see. The spirit is looking around, commenting on the rudeness of the Necluda Village populace and then — “Is that a Sheikah?” Karin is perplexed that he would be excited about this and confirms. “Just… walking around? In the middle of the day? Do you seem them a lot?”
“A couple of times a month, yes.” He is practically bouncing in his not-seat, leaning sideways and out (if he wasn’t floating, he’d fall off), and insists Karin get her attention.
“Hey, Sheikah!”
Impa turns, and then gestures to her closed shop, “You know my name! And it’s on the shop!” The spirit’s eyes follow Impa’s hand, and then go wide. “Her name is Impa?!“
Impa immediately asks where that voice comes from, and refers to the general location, the horses’s rear end. “Well that’s not very polite!” the spirit says again. Karin asks Impa to confirm that she can hear that. Impa says yes, and then sees some dust kick up on the ground next to the horse. She tackles the spot, and says “We had a deal, go ahead and show yourself.” thinking that Karin is traveling with the Keaton from yesterday.
Since the spirit is not the Keaton, he doesn’t appear or reply, but does start to come into visibility as Impa concentrates. She sees a pointy green hat and the tips of some pointy ears, as the spirit swoops up into the air and out of her grasp. Slowly, he comes into visibility, hands on his hips, and says she is ruder than she used to be.
Impa asks Karin why she’s traveling with the spirit of a child, and Karin says he doesn’t always look like that (“I don’t?”) but they get distracted deciding to move out of the street.
Once they’re out of the thoroughfare (though Linkle responds to an attempt to move her by promptly falling asleep), Impa interrogates the spirit. He doesn’t directly answer most questions, but does say his name is Salari, and that he and Karin are heading to Castle Town. This surprises Impa, since she is of course preparing to go exactly there.
“Why are you going?” she asks, and Karin replies about her dream. Impa’s eyes go a bit wide, and she says she had the same dream, and the three agree to travel together.
During her afternoon work, Nuruli is very distracted by everything, thinking hard about her dream and her grandmother’s words. She crouches down and begins scratching the city from her dream into the dirt.
“Why are ya’ drawing Castle Town?” Her mother Nunena has walked up behind her and is looking down at the drawing. Nuruli is surprised that she knows what it is is, and after explaining she had a dream, asks about it.
“Well, you know ‘ruli, that’s where I met your da’.” Her mother smiles, trying to spread some cheer, bur Nuruli is feeling pretty unsettled.
They talk about Castle Town a bit, and how long it had been since her mother was there, and then hesitantly, “What if… I wanted to go?”
“Well, you know you’re welcome to take your journey as soon as your ready!” says her mother, referring to the pilgrimage the Gerudo people take when they are ready to see the world and possibly find a partner, “But… do you think you’re supposed to go there?”
“I think I am.” and so Nuruli decides to start packing.