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In Wild’s Hyrule, everything feels bigger and heftier than any of the others. The land is wider, the mountains taller, the storms more intense and the monsters leagues more dangerous. The rule doesn't only apply to things on the planet's surface either. The stars are brighter and more, crowded together like trails of precious stones in the deep indigo sky, shards of white and pale yellow and red.
Then there is the moon. This is the first time Time has seen it full, and as it peaks between the canopy of leaves over their heads, it dominates the night sky. It is round and bone white, dousing their campsite in blue light. Time freezes. He remembers-
“Wow! The moon sure is big tonight!” Sky calls, staring up sunnily into the oversized disk. Time can almost see its crazed, cavernous eyes, and its mouth pulled back into a gruesome rictus. “You can see the remlit really well!” Sky continues cheerily. Time blinks.
“What’s a remlit?” Wind asks, looking up from the meticulous cleaning of the hilt of his sword.
“They’re in Skyloft. Little animals with big ears,” Sky says, putting his hands just above his ears and spreading his fingers, “They’re fluffy and cute, but… they sure can bite.” He sighs and sounds almost nostalgic about the fact.
“You mean a rabbit?” Legend asks, attention pulled from his tunic mending, “A rabbit lives on the moon, making potions.” He squints up at the moon. Raising a finger, he traces a figure around the multitude of darker patches on the its surface, vaguely in the outline of a creature with two long ears and a fluffy tail, holding a spoon. “See, there’s the rabbit, and there’s the cauldron where he mixes the potions,” he explains.
“It’s the remlit calling for war,” Sky says, tracing his own finger around a shorter, squatter figure with big, wide ears, four short limbs, and a long tail, standing on two stubby feet. “They say that's why all the remlits are angry at night.”
All eyes in the camp turn to Sky as he casually talks fondly about tiny monsters wreaking havoc.
Four is the next to interject. “You all see an animal?” he asks, squinting up himself, “All the elders back home say it's the first king of Hyrule’s face.” Everyone gathers around, some kneeling as he extends an arm to trace out a pronounced brow, noble nose, and strong jaw in profile. “He has one eye and ear turned towards Hyrule and the other turned towards the heavens, so he can keep watch over all his citizens,” he explains.
“I like that better than Sky’s war-rat,” Legend says. He squints. “I suppose I could see a man there.”
Sky tilts his head until it is nearly resting on Legend’s. “I guess,” he says, "I can make out the nose, a little."
Straightening, he turns his gaze on the others scattered about camp. “Do we all have different stories about the moon?” he asks eagerly.
“Well, my village always said the moon was made of cheese,” Twilight says contemplatively.
“What?! That’s ridiculous!” Wind exclaims, “Cheese? How’d it even get up there?”
“Don’t know,” Twilight says with a shrug. He points a finger at Wind’s nose. “What’s your story?” he asks.
“Grandma always says a goddess lives inside the moon,” Wind says, “You know, since the moon controls the ocean and stuff. I don’t really believe it, but it’s better than cheese!"
“It’s not like I believe it either!” Twilight says defensively, “It’s just something we say when kids ask.”
“Old folks in my Hyrule say there’s a goddess in the moon too,” Hyrule adds tentatively, “Her name is Nayru. She controls the tides and makes people want to sing when the moon is full.” He looks wistful.
“You want to sing when the moon’s full?” Wind asks. His grin is a touch mischievous as he turns it on Hyrule.
The tips of Hyrule’s ears turn pink and his brow furrows. “It’s also why wolves howl at the moon,” he adds defensively.
“It’s because they want the rabbit,” Legend says before Wind can tease Hyrule anymore.
“Or they’re paying respects to the First King,” Four adds.
“Maybe they hear the call like the remlits,” Sky ponders.
“Wolves don’t actually howl at the moon,” Twilight adds, predictably.
“Like you’d know,” Warriors says as he checks his nails. If he notices the looks passed between Legend and Four, he doesn’t say so. “They howl to warn us,” he says ominously. Time’s gut twists. “The moon’s a deadly weapon that our enemies can turn on us at any time.”
“That’s just stupid,” Legend says, rolling his eyes.
“It’s true,” Wild says, “Before… When the Calamity was still in power, the moon would turn blood red, and the air would stink like sulfur and ash one night every month and all the monsters would revive. It was a result of the blight.
Warriors looks to Legend, triumphant despite the haunted lilt to Wild’s voice. Legend fumes silently from the other side of camp.
“What about you, Time?” Sky asks gently in the ensuing silence, “Do you have a story about the moon.”
Time stiffens slightly, closing his eye against the bright light of the moon glaring into his face. Whenever the lively conversation lulls, its cold light steals the color from the world. It plunges them into icy silence. Best to keep everyone talking then. Time takes a deep breath, seeing a flash of purple, green and yellow, before snapping his eye back open.
“A story… yes,” Time admits, “Though not a very happy one, I’m afraid. Closer to Wild's, I would say."
The promise of gossip brings them all back into a circle around the fire. Wild feeds it another log to keep it from dying and the flames lick hungrily at it with a spray of embers.
“Well, old man,” Warriors says, sitting on a log, crossing his legs, and leaning forward, “Make me doubly right.”
As the others settle, Time lets the word form in his mouth. It is hard to pluck them, like fish in murky water, and the ones he grabs are insufficient. It all feels so far away now, yet so close, like a gossamer curtain hung delicately between himself and the worst time of his life. The fear is muted now, replaced with bitterness and resentment. Though the anger at a goddess that treated her children so carelessly has never quite faded.
“Once upon a time…” he begins, earning himself an eye-roll from Legend, while Wind settles in more comfortably against Sky’s side. “There was a lost child in the woods, and woods tend to love children so much they never let them go….”
He chooses to leave his trials and tribulations out of the story. He turns the focus on the eerie face of the moon and the child that brought it crashing down, not his own part to play. Despite the omissions, he has the rapt attention of everyone around the fire, even Legend who seemed to think himself too old for fairytales.
“Left lonely without their dear friends and with nothing but the mask, the child turned their attention to mischief, using the mask as a convenient shield. However, the mask began to replace who the child was underneath. It seeped into him, like rainwater into rotting wood, weakening the child’s will day by day. Their mischief became malicious. It turned the child’s face to the moon, and had them call mournfully for it,” he tells his audience of entranced listeners, “The moon turned its horrible grimace to the town, bearing down on it, growing closer and closer for three days. The people of the town lost hope, but at that time, the guardian deities of the land, four giants, were able to hold the moon back. With great effort and sacrifice, they were able to free the child from their evil entrapment, but the mask still remained. Though it is claimed to have been purified of all evil, who is to say that’s true?”
He finishes, his voice petering off into the crackle of the fire. They all stare at him for a moment, wide-eyed and open-mouthed in rapture. When the silence begins to settle too heavily, however, Warriors shatters it. “I told you!” he says, “That’s three people with that story. That means it’s definitely true. The moon is a deadly weapon.”
“I don’t know,” Wild says, crossing his arms, “The moon was only deadly because of Calamity. It doesn’t do that anymore. The Zora also believe that Nayru lives in the moon, so wouldn’t that mean that’s the right story?"
Warriors huffs, crossing his arms in a pout.
Legend snorts. “There isn’t a ‘right’ story,” he says, “The moon’s the moon. It doesn’t really have a human face on it or a goddess inside of it. It’s just some cold, unfeeling disk in the sky. Stories are just stories.”
Time casts a glance down at his knees, thinking about all the people he met in Termina over the countless loops of three days he lived through. He thinks about how it all vanished the moment he found Epona again, how he emerged from the forest no older than he was when he wandered in. All he had to show for it was the collection of masks weighing down his pack. Looking back at it now, so many years into the future, it didn’t really feel real. Was it all just some story; cooked up by the mind of a lonely, lost child in the woods?
Even if it was, it still felt real. The sadness and fear, the pain of failing and watching an entire town of people be destroyed, they still haunt Time as if they had really happened. The moon is just a moon, but the stories are what imbue it with magic or cast fear about what lurks in its darkest corners.
“Hey, old man!” Warriors calls and Time snaps out of his thoughts, looking up at the group of boys as they bustle around. “Bedtime!” he says.
Time nods along, already having to dodge Sky, now firmly asleep near the fire. He supposes, watching as the boys move through their bedtime routines, arguing over sleeping space and rubbing sleepily at their eyes, without the stories, they were all just regular Hylians. Hero's spirit aside, their stories; individually and as a whole, are what makes them legendary. In the end, he wonders if that makes it better, or so much worse.