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The Stock Pot Inn is quiet all through the hot season. Even when the leaves begin to fall in a wash of earthy tones, from a crisp brown to buttery yellow, the inn welcomes a warming calm. Slippered feet tromp and sashay down the halls, but they are always steps Anju recognizes. Ones she has come to know even whilst lying in bed with her eyes closed, willing sleep to grace her despite the thinness of the walls, the sheer volume of life that threatens to choke her. Her nightmares of a falling, open-mouth moon gnaw at her, as ridiculous as they might sound now.
There are the soft, dainty steps of the dancer. Anju imagines him prancing down the halls: pirouetting, twisting and turning, his feet just barely scraping the floor as he dances for only the night to see. The truth is much more mundane: the dancer cannot sleep. He is alone. There is no one to pull him back to sleep, no one to press the softest kisses against his shoulder, not like Kafei does for Anju now. His touch is featherlight, barely there. On the cusp of a dream. It has almost been a year since their wedding, and yet his presence in her life still feels ethereal. As if she had been but a hair's breadth from losing him, from losing everything. And in another world, perhaps there is another woman who wears her face that lives with the horrors of exactly that.
The dancer stays with them, their constant nighttime performer, through the falling leaves. Anju always wonders but never asks: What is your story? She doesn't feel it appropriate to dig too deep; for all she knows, most of the people at the inn come seeking an escape. And why take that from them — the softest whisper of freedom from one's woes?
It is the Carnival of Time that draws people in, luring them to Clock Town with the promise of jovial camaraderie alongside strangers half in their cups; of bursting, fiery colors that fly into the air to crack and pop, scattering across the night sky like stars. Of a night on which to wear masks crafted by careful hands: when made at home, these masks tell so many more secrets. They speak of skill or lack thereof; they boast of passion or confess apathy.
To those visiting from outside of town, it must seem a simple thing. Many slap together masks at the last minute here at the inn, laughing all the while. The carnival isn't that serious, or it shouldn't be. Anju doesn't blame them. But what they don't know is that, for many of Clock Town's citizens, the Carnival of Time begins long before the rainbow banners are pinned across town. Long before shops begin to croon of special deals and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, not to be missed. It is when the trees outside are barren, gnarled like monstrous claws, that preparation for the carnival begins. Finding the mask to express oneself for the biggest event of the year is no easy task. People wonder: Might a cat mask be appropriate this year? Perhaps another creature, or a mask to represent some unliving thing; something dear to me. Who am I this year, and who will I be in the next?
On the cusp of winter, between the last of the falling leaves and the first snowfall, Clock Town gets an opportunity to explore its personae. The moon falls, once a horror morbidly spread across the sky but now just another part of nature, once more courting the mundane. Kafei cups Anju's cheek with the insistence of a man touch starved, his fingers ice cold, when he sweeps his way into the inn. Crisp, dead leaves stick to his boots. Anju can smell the earth clinging to his clothes, the cold wind that has left him trembling as he touches her.
"Are you ready?" he asks, slipping his hand into hers. In his other hand he holds this year's mask for the festivities: the exploration of his id. It's like his Sun Mask but darker; sharper, with jutting spikes instead of smooth, rounded edges. While it would be considered taboo for either of them to don their wedding masks for the occasion — seen as a slight against one's beloved; a lingering uncertainty — Anju wouldn't mind. Why seek a fresh mask every year when they have already crafted the perfect pair? And so neither does she take offense at Kafei's new mask, at what some might see as an expression of regret, of some deep foreboding inside, due to its color.
Anju clutches her own mask: a bird with wings swept over her ears, iridescent and shimmering. She is free; as light as a feather. This is the way Kafei makes her feel. "Let us be off, then."
Outside, young children toddle just a few steps in front of their parents; lovers stroll hand in hand. All wear masks: from strange, plantlike creatures with tentacles that curl across shoulders to the innocence of long, drooping rabbit ears. Everyone tries something new, in honor of tradition and mischief. Everyone reaches toward the unknown.
Kafei's hand is still cold, no matter how long Anju holds it, bringing it to her chest, to her lips. When she looks at him for some sign of life, for a small smile to reassure her that he isn't coming down with something, all she can see is that obsidian mask grinning at her. Mocking her. But of all occasions, this is the night for it.
When children trot up to her, she presses pieces of candy into their hands, warm from her palm. Some nod, others awkwardly curtsey on excited feet, ready to leap to the next proffered sweet. Like a river, always flowing. Like time, always racing.
Clock Town is different at night. Still teeming with life — from children rebelling against designated bedtimes to patrons of the milk bar longing for one last drink — but muted. Grayscale compared to the lush color of day. It is her home: Anju has known little else. As the night wears on, fewer children come in search of candy. Her sack is near empty, now light in her hand.
They wander through town, pausing to admire everyone's masks. How everyone has chosen to represent themselves tonight. And what does Anju's own mask say about her, she wonders? What of the contrast of hers against Kafei's, both effervescent, sparkling?
South Clock Town is where most of the festival-goers end their night, grabbing drinks from nearby stalls and watching the blip of fireworks cut across the night sky. A teasing spark for what's to come in the new year's festivities, as if to mock their own traditions: You didn't think this was all we had in store, did you? And as a child, Anju had thought there was nothing more grand, not even when her mother scooped her up and said, "Just you wait until the Carnival of Time."
"Do you see it?" Kafei asks. The crowd is near stifling now, rushing past, making her skirt brush against her legs. Their breath is scalding, sucked in and let out as one, unified being.
"Yes," she says, squinting at the fireworks shooting up from the clock tower. Again she smiles beneath her mask, squeezing Kafei's hand: not knowing, not understanding. But she sees the real attraction before long, pummeling its way through the sky, somehow larger and angrier than before. And why, she wonders, not for the first time, might the moon be so mad? What has driven it to such fury?
Anju chokes back a gasp even as the people around her clap and laugh.
Kafei squeezes her hand. "Are you afraid?"
What kind of question is that? Anju wishes she could see his face, gaze upon his expression. If it's anything like the tone of his voice, she imagines it flat. Emotionless. As barren and crumbling as Ikana Valley is said to be.
Deep down, some shard of her hates the moon. Fears it. Not for the collective paranoia once etched across Termina — or what many claimed the phenomenon was, completely minimizing the danger, the magic, the multitudes of unanswerable questions — but for the possibility that it might return. Even without the nightmares that have plagued her regularly over this past year, somehow Anju knew it would return. How could something so angry, so nature-defying, simply cease to be?
It has barely been a year, she thinks. No, not even that. A quiet fury fills her as she grits her teeth. Don't take him away from me. Not now. Not after everything.
Time seems to slow, scraping along its ethereal axis. No one seems to notice the moon crashing toward them, the sudden blood-red of the sky. As if Anju and Kafei are alone meant to witness, to feel, whatever end the moon has in store.
It's not fair, she thinks. The tears spill from her eyes, cutting down her cheeks. She should have loved Kafei just a bit harder, made him smile more, reveled in the short time they had together as man and wife — but she musters a sense of peace, regardless. They have kissed and made love more times than she can count, have made each other laugh every day, even when it was hard. Especially when it was hard. Anju can't regret that, at least. She fought: for love, for time. She lost.
Kafei's hand loosens from hers, their fingers just barely brushing now. Warmth floods into her skin, flushing her, except for the tips of her fingers: still grasping for Kafei, still ice.
"I love you," he says, whispery soft, somehow heard even above the slow clamor of the festival-goers. He says it, this farewell, even before Anju spots the man in the Keaton Mask, the tufts of inky blue hair spilling from it. The tails like billowy tendrils flooding from the sides: a beloved child's mask, modified. Mischievous, curious. Older, wiser. At peace. The man pushes his way through the crowd, and even without the ethereal glow hovering about him, like the light of noon illuminating specks of dust, she knows it is Kafei. She knows it with such ferocity — that this lone, illuminated man is hers — that it makes her chest ache for him.
"I know you won't forget that," the Kafei beside her says. "Not when you have him. You have me."
Even now, after seeing her Kafei lunging for her through the crowd, Anju doesn't have the courage to call this one fake. Could her heart have been so easily deceived? She wants to believe no. He is still Kafei; of this she is certain. But how?
"I don't understand," she says, but Kafei shakes his head, as if to say: I would never want you to.
He clasps her hand one final time in a brush of ice across her skin. "But know this," he says. "In another time, in another world, that moon did fall. It has never been just a dream, not for us. And it is falling even now. Again and again. Don't you see it?"
Kafei lets go of her hand, and when Anju looks to the sky, there is naught but glittering stars and the last sparks of fireworks. The sky is clear, purified.
The other Kafei is gone, having slipped away into the crowd. Or perhaps he made his exit another way: like the moon, he wasn't supposed to be here. And yet he fought time and space — to see her, she realizes. Not to make her suffer, nor to remind her of the agonies she herself had been so close to succumbing to, but to touch her. To love her one last time, just as she had wished for when she thought the moon was truly about to fall.
"Where were you?" her Kafei asks, raising his voice to be heard above the crowd and buzzing fireworks. When he clasps her hands in his, he is warm. Scalding. Rippling with life. "I stopped by the inn, but you had already left."
I was someplace else, she wants to say. Someplace wretched, horrid. Somewhere I hope to never see again.
But then she thinks of that lonely Kafei, seeking her out: wanting to see her one last time, despite the curse of the moon heavy in his time, his world. That Kafei reached out to her, and she reached back.
Not so wretched then, she thinks, sliding her lips against her beloved's, soothed by the warmth of him. In the end, you think of me. Always. Just as I thought of you.