Audio | Llama 4

[wisdominshadows]

An idle question: is there anyone on the train who receives visions of our missions and comes from a world with advanced technology?

I am curious whether that perspective would lend itself to a better idea of what we will be facing. I could see computers, row upon row of them... but if that vision had more information to give, I cannot interpret it.

[A pause, then continuing]

One other matter: I saw a memory of a garden gone for years, just at the end. Not a place someone from another world would know. On our last mission, many of us found ourselves trapped in image and memory.

...I think something of the sort might happen again.

Comments

[wisdominshadows]

It is a gift, they say. The sight of Goddess Hylia, the mark of her blessing upon her children.

[Whether Zelda herself feels that it’s a gift, judging from her tone of voice, is a considerably more ambiguous matter.]

I’ve seen what is to come for half my life, now. It is... it is never truly comfortable, but I am used to the experience.

[ayao]

Your Goddess... Is she kind? [Or is she the sort that would drop horrid visions on a poor woman unexpectedly?]

I know of my future now and I can agree with you: it isn't comfortable. I'm not even sure if knowing means I can change anything.

[wisdominshadows]

[Oh, a hard question.]

It is said that the White Goddess loved her people enough to sacrifice her divinity, to make herself one of them so that she might best protect them. Whether that makes her kind... I don't know. Kindness and goodness, if we might call it that, are not the same thing.

[She manipulated a man she loved, who loved her, in a plan that unfolded over millennia. She suffered as well, sleeping a thousand years in crystal to hold back evil- and yet, did that justify what she had done?]

To see the future is always a little dangerous. One might as well grasp a double-bladed knife; to point one side at your enemy is to point the other at yourself.

[ayao]

No, you are right. Great leaders might seem good in the eyes of their people, but that does not mean they are kind. [A lesson he learned at the hands of Jin Guangshan when he was shoved down a long (long) flight of steps all because he interrupted Guangshan's favorite son's birthday.]

I wish I could ensure you are not cut.

[wisdominshadows]

They might even truly be good and not kind. Kindness... is not always possible. Even if it ought to be.

[After all, hadn't she used Link in a way not so different from how Hylia had used her hero?]

I hope, at least, that is still different from cruelty. And I thank you for the sentiment, sir.

[ayao]

When you are drawn to someone for their positive qualities and then discover they are hard and cold, it is...difficult to bear. [But what other choice does he have?]

There must be...increments...between kindness and cruelty. I would prefer to be closer to kind.

[wisdominshadows]

I hope that most people would.

[ayao]

Some don't care.

[wisdominshadows]

No.

But those who do can at least limit the damage they create.

[ayao]

I wish I could.

But I feel like a small animal trying to reach a star.

[wisdominshadows]

[There's a pause while Zelda considers whether this is a good idea or not. Then-]

Would it be inappropriate for me to ask what happened?