Chapter Text
The cry of dead pigeons lies dormant, buried beneath a muffled snow blanket that gently seals marrow and stone alike. Wooden pillars facing uphill sink crooked under the thick layer of wind-packed crust, their framework long erased. The cobblestone foundations, once even and proud, stand jagged and raw where the treacherous winds gnaw loudest on the far side of the houses, every gust hissing like sand dragged over stone.
The road had long since been forgotten. Travelers who reach the Great Bridge no longer linger in the region. They veer elsewhere, northwest toward Rito Village, the only place where faint wingbeats still echo, or instead, travel from the north, west past Snowfield Stable, where the path bends and disappears into the jagged white silence of Hebra’s peaks.
A flimsy, rust-bitten axe, abandoned many years past, leans at an angle against a stump on the northern rise. Its haft is splintered, its edge dulled by a century of storms and silence. The wind rattles the haft faintly against the wood, the sound thin, hollow, too brittle now even for kindling.
Close to the village fence, one of the houses has collapsed. A child’s red blanket, red as the blotch it hides within, stitched with pale yellow donkeys, hangs stiff on a splintered beam. Frost has hardened the fabric to wood, trembling when the gusts pull it, caught in a low grating by the wind. It longs to be released, it longs with the memory, it longs to be lifted, but no hand will come. Not ever again.
To the other side of the path, a monster campfire burns low. Red bokoblins hunch in the haze, chewing charred meat on sticks. Their coarse voices rasp, laughter breaking before fading into slumber or storm. Bitter, acrid smoke rises translucid in ribbons, clinging to broken walls, stinging the air for the long-gone wildlife. Yet worse still lurks in the house nearby, a shadow heavier than theirs, sturdier. Ancient.
Beyond, a small wheat field stretches, fields that once blazed gold under the promise of summer. The snow piles higher each year, layer upon layer, pressing down. Sometimes, when the wind cuts across, cracking sounds rise from the crust, yet another stalk breaking below, surrendering after an epoch of peace. Some remembered the warmth, the gentle heat of the sun on a cold spring morning, warm, very warm, hot, so hot, suffocating, heavy, crushing, and then cold, so cold, until breath gave out, killing what had once grown.
By the old well, a faint pulse of energy hides beneath a hard rock. A sole spirit of the forest has not fled, shivering in silence. It gives no song, only a quiet hum beneath the earth, sometimes the clink of a wooden wind chime, and others the shake of a single maraca. Monsters lie frozen in the ice below, their twisted shapes drowned like insects in amber, waiting for thaw that was yet to come, to betray the emancipator that will liberate them from the spirit of winter. The ribs of a goat jut from the ground beside the stony edge, a pale bush of white bone, cold, a species not unique to the village anymore.
A soldier had fallen long ago. His shield split, his weapon rusted, feathers tangled between the stones. Forgotten by the Rito, his remains click faintly as the wind stirs them, bones gnawed clean long before by beasts and time. Beside him lies a broken clay pot, the ashes within long scattered, flowing freely by Lake Totori, and only a soup ladle for pitiful company. His Falcon Bow rests hidden under frost and rubble, unseen by the scavengers as to honor his last wish.
Crates stand protected within the half-buried houses. Fur-wrapped once for protection, the rhino hide now rimes in frost, the fabric groaning when the wind shifts, the sound of sharp rock dragged through an olefin couch, or water scratching the inside of your eardrum. Inside, frozen apples split with tiny cracks, arrows stiffened into sticks of glass that rattle and squeal as they rub together, only those at the core surviving the onslaught.
To the south, near the grove, a Blizzrobe stands too close, its laughter muffled by the storm. Its rod crackles with frostfire and sapphires; a tick, yet crystalline sound. It sways between the dead trees, graceful, seamless, whimsical, demonic, as if a puppeteer tugged its strings unseen, a menace that once bound the village in its prison of ice.
In the grove itself, an ice lizalfos lies in wait, the scrape of its claws barely audible when it shifts beneath the snow. Otherwise, it is silence, indistinguishable from the drifts, nothing more than another pile until one stirs too close.
The path southwest bends past the second-to-last broken fence. Wildberry bushes bear no fruit, their thorns stiff and fragile. The breeze whistles through them, thin, like reeds of bone. Mounds shift faintly, ice chuchus hurdle and tremble underneath, waiting for the warmth of footsteps.
At the far edge stand the final two houses. The story of two families, two lovers, two tragedies. Their floors have rotted, the beams sagged like broken ribs. The remaining walls shake when gusts strike them, the timber barely standing. A violent aquilon, or perhaps an avalanche, has ripped off the northern side. Inside, a blue bokoblin rummages, smashing crates in dull cracks and hisses, snarling, greedily stashing what scraps it can find. Its gang lies sprawled nearby, groaning half-asleep, unbothered by the sour reek of a dying fire in their stone ring. The smoke seeps through the wreckage and stains the snow outside.
And beyond it all, the path continues, narrowing toward the cliff. It overlooks the yawning span of Tanagar Canyon, fog rolling thick enough to swallow sight of the hills beyond, a hollow voice calling for those willing to hear it. Green sprawls out there, or so it seems; a faint sliver of hope, blurred and unreachable, a cruel promise for the souls that rest here. Time has spoken the truth, and gloom has sealed it shut as Hylia turns a blind eye on Hebra. The clouds above part just enough to mock, somehow still blocking the sun.