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“Here. You’ll need this.” The boy held out a flimsy-looking rod, fashioned out of a Deku stick. “And then you’ll have to bait it, too.”
The Deity turned the stick over in his hands. It had been a very long time since he’d held anything that wasn’t his sword. “I have seen the depths of your soul,” he said, in a voice that reminded all who heard it that they were painfully mortal. “You served as my vessel, and you survived. You cleansed yourself in the blood of my most loathed enemy. And then you hand me what I can only surmise is a pitiful excuse for a weapon.” His eyes blazed white. “Though it must be said, even the crudest of implements may rend flesh from bone, when wielded in the correct hands.”
The boy blinked at him. “It’s not a weapon,” he said.
“Then why in the Four Corners would you hand it to me?”
“I’ll show you,” the boy smiled. He sat down on the dock, and picked up a similar pole lying beside him. Swinging his feet over the water, he cast it over the bay. “It’s a fishing rod,” he explained. “For… catching fish. You put bait on the hook, and then you wait for them to bite.”
“There is no time to waste on waiting.”
“The moon’s not going to fall anymore. Now, you can do whatever you want.” The boy stuck out his free hand. “I’m Link,” he said. “It’s nice to, um, meet you.”
“I know your name,” the Deity answered, “as I know all your deeds and failures.”
For a moment, there was nothing to be heard, save for the waves against the dock. Nothing in the water seemed to be biting.
“I saw the things you did, too,” Link said quietly, “when I put on your mask. All the… those bodies in the Canyon. And afterwards, the- what happened to you on the moon. Those masks all hurt to wear, but yours was… I thought for a moment it was all some sort of trick, and you were trying to kill me.”
“I do not play tricks,” the Deity answered, with no small amount of contempt. “I would sooner remain imprisoned for another thousand years than inhabit an unworthy vessel.”
“So you really were trying to kill me?”
“Consider it a… test. You passed.”
After a while, Link put down his fishing pole. He took an instrument out of his pocket, and began to play.
It was a slow, calming tune, and one the Deity recognized. Long ago, the melody was used everywhere, from funeral rites to children’s lullabies. Termina had largely forgotten it now, but the effect of it hadn’t faded with time. It had its own name- which nobody could remember, save for the spirits of the dead- but the boy knew it as the Song of Healing.
When he finished playing, he glanced back at the Deity.
“Do you feel anything?” Link asked. “Anything… different?”
“No.”
“Oh. Usually, it works immediately. It’s supposed to make you feel… better, I guess. It should fix whatever’s wrong with you.”
“I know what it’s supposed to do. You should not play for me. It is a waste of your time.”
“It’s not a waste of time,” Link said boldly. “You must need it more than anyone. I want to help you- even if I can’t do much. That’s… sort of why I’m here. Everyone else gets to find happiness, or at least closure. You should have that, too.”
How impractical mortals were! The Deity shook his head. Perhaps that’s why Majora delighted in playing with them. They were not gods. Their time was finite. And yet, they insisted on doing things without purpose or reason. Even when threatened with the end of the world, they could only think about whether they’d get to see their chickens grow up, or whether they could get married, or whether they could ease the sorrows of everyone who was bound to die anyway. They did absolutely everything they possibly could with their limited time- except for what needed to be done.
It was nearly infuriating.
“Maybe I need another instrument,” Link said. “Hold on; if I can find one of my-”
“Do not bother. Music would have no effect on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“It cannot stir me- not as it stirs you. My time is infinite. Yours is not.”
“I don’t understand,” Link answered. He reeled in his fishing rod. Nothing was on the hook, and he cast it into the sea again.
In the three days before the moon threatened to fall, Termina was more musical than it had ever been. Choirs of frogs croaked out their tunes in the grass. Gorons pounded on their drums, and Zoras plucked at their fish-bone guitars. The Deku Palace thundered with vengeful trumpeting. Even in the desolate Canyon, filled with the bones of the dead, there was a house in the shape of a giant music box. Supposedly, someone had even managed to fit a full-sized pipe organ into the Clock Tower. People sang lullabies to their children, and bellowed drinking songs in the Milk Bar, and hummed as they continued their useless, monotonous tasks, trying as best they could to delude themselves into a sense of purpose and normalcy. Nobody was prepared for the end of the world, but everyone was prepared to meet it with as much noise as possible.
Music was not essential, or necessary. It had no function; art alone would not stop the moon from falling. In other words, it was a perfect waste of time- especially at that particular moment.
“If music can’t heal you,” Link asked, “then what can I do? Are you saying that you just have to live with all that pain… forever?”
“You have done enough. You helped destroy my adversary, released me from the confines of my prison, and allowed for the restoration of order. For that, I owe you my eternal loyalty.”
“Um…” Link shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know if I want that. No offense. I mean, you’re, like, a god, and… I sort of saved your world by accident. Can’t we just be- friends?”
The Deity’s eyes flashed white. He did not have friends. In his day, he’d made many enemies. He had inhabited several vessels, but these people were all means to an end- in service of order and maintaining structure. Friendship was as incomprehensible, as unnecessary to him, as music and fishing. These were mortal concerns.
“If you should have the need, I am willing to assist you in battle,” he said.
“That’s… nice of you, I guess. But- what about things like this? You know- talking, spending time together. Or we don’t have to talk at all, if you want. I was just thinking about how lonely you must have been. It must be tiring to be treated as some sort of weapon all the time. You could be more than that.”
“It is a noble thing to be a weapon.” The Deity lifted his head haughtily. “I have a purpose, and you do not.”
“Maybe it’s okay to have no purpose,” said Link. “I think, when people know that… they get to heal. At least, that’s how it worked for everyone I’ve met. I… don’t know if the Song of Healing would work on me, either. I’ve played it lots of times, but nobody’s ever played it for me. Well, except for that salesman. And I’m still not sure what he wanted.”
“Perhaps it is better that you remain unsure.”
“Would it work if you did it?” Link asked.
“Pardon?”
“If you played the song for me? I… I think I could really use it.”
“I do not play songs,” the Deity answered. “I do not play, at all. I should hope this does not disappoint you, if it is what you want me to provide.”
“No; I’m not- I’m not disappointed. It’s only-”
Just then, Link felt a tug on his fishing line. A wave crested up from the ocean, and a tail briefly flashed above the surface. Whatever it was, the thing was big. It dove, still hooked to the line, thrashing and snapping beneath the water. Link began reeling as fast as he could. The rod started to bend. He stood up on the dock, trying to keep his feet planted, but they began to slip.
“It’s too heavy!” he cried. “I can’t reel it in by myself!”
“Do not panic,” the Deity responded calmly. “I will dispatch the beast for you.”
“I don’t need you to dispatch anything! I just need-”
But it was no use shouting. The Deity drew his enormous, double-bladed sword. It was the sort that cleaved through the hides of demons, and obliterated fiends of a cosmic scale. It was not the sort of thing that had any business being used against a regular fish, no matter how big it may have been. The sword’s helical blades began to glow with a blinding light, and a terrible beam shot like a comet into the water. Link’s fishing pole flew out of his hands, and he fell backwards onto the dock. There was a great explosion of spray and flotsam, and the impact was so tremendous, the ocean momentarily parted around where the beam had landed, walls of water rising and crashing on either side. The fish leapt up from the water- a glimmering marlin, banded in green and blue, with golden eyes and a long, wicked beak. It was a sight that would have instilled an unshakeable fear of the divine into the most skeptical of minds, and caused permanent panic and hysteria in the most ardent believers.
“I missed,” the Deity muttered.
Link stared at the ocean, open-mouthed. “You what?!” he gasped.
“This time, expect its swift and total annihilation.” And he raised his sword again.
“I-” Link stammered. “Let’s not annihilate anything right now. I’m all right. It’s just a fish.”
The Deity blinked, a rare display of confusion and annoyance. “I thought you endeavored to slay aquatic beasts here, even if your methods were humiliatingly ineffective. You have a sword. I am certain you know how to use it.”
“You don’t… you don’t use a sword to go fishing. The point of it isn’t to be efficient. It’s just… fun. You’re supposed to enjoy yourself. That’s something you’ve done before, right?”
“I am satisfied when my purpose is fulfilled.”
“I mean, beyond that. Isn’t there anything you’d want to do after… fulfilling your purpose? You have plenty of time now.”
“But you do not. That is what I want you to understand.” He sat down on the dock. “Your time is woefully limited. You cannot manipulate it forever. You and everyone you love will die. All of this you know- and still you insist so firmly on spending your time uselessly.”
“But that’s what you don’t understand!” Link exclaimed, growing frustrated. “You don’t have to worry about dying. You have your own body; you can finally live now… and you don’t want to!”
The Deity stared at him with a long, cold gaze. He supposed this was the consequence for pledging his loyalty to a child. All of that terrible wide-eyed idealism. Gods didn’t have ideals. They were ideals. Which, from a mortal perspective, could make their existence seem terribly lacking. Miserable, even.
He picked up the fishing pole Link had given him. It was still intact.
“If I did not act according to my purpose,” he said, “it would please you.”
“It would,” Link said, a little distractedly.
“You want me to waste your time. That is a terrible request, for that time will never return to you. Instead of taking your life in a single blow, you want me to take it from you in slow, meaningless, insignificant pieces.”
“Well… I wouldn’t put it that way,” Link answered. “I’d just call it living.”
“Living,” the Deity responded, as if he were unfamiliar with the word. He stared out at the ocean. It was astonishing how soon the water had calmed again, as if he had not violently parted the waves moments ago. He would never consider his existence living. If one lived, one would eventually die. It was not the same as being. Infinite time meant one had none to waste. Nothing to discard or throw away. Nothing to regret.
“Why do you want to use your time this way?” he asked.
Link didn’t look at him. “I just wanted to help you.”
“Out of pity.”
“No! No, I mean- well, yes. I guess I do pity you. I understood why you were so angry; you were trapped inside the moon without a body for a long time. It used to be your home, didn’t it? And Majora was going to use it to destroy all the people you were supposed to protect.”
“A perversion of order,” he responded. “That is correct.”
Link pointed at the water. “Looks like there’s some fish down there,” he said. “I guess you didn’t scare all of them off. You should try to catch one. Without your sword, I mean.”
The fish were small and silver, darting in a school of five or six about the dock. They weren’t nearly as impressive as the marlin that had gotten away. They certainly didn’t look very dangerous- certainly not like anything the Deity would typically bother himself with. They would not be worth his time.
“A perversion of order,” he repeated coldly. How he had fallen.
Perhaps desperation had led him to accept someone so young and full of ideals. In retrospect, it may have been a regrettable decision to lend his memories and power to a child- and one who could manipulate time, at that. Children, no matter how brave they were or how many horrors they had seen, could never fully grasp the permanence of their own mortality, even when it loomed directly above them. That was what made them such easy targets for Majora.
Link continued to watch the fish. He was a child- even if he didn’t try to act like it. Even if he had memories that, somehow, appeared to be far older than he was. He’d looked into the soul of a god, accessed pure wrath and fury and sorrow- and then insisted on going fishing together. Only a child could do that.
It was practically impressive.
Begrudgingly, the Deity cast the line into the water. All of the fish immediately fled. He narrowed his eyes; this wasn’t combat. It was something entirely unfamiliar. A problem he could not easily resolve by driving his sword through it. For the first time, he experienced disorder.
“Oh,” Link said, and looked over. “I think you forgot to bait the hook. They won’t bite if all they see is something sharp.”
“I see,” the Deity muttered. “I see.”