They grow up so fast [Closed (Kiomara, Collin, ???)]

[AmJanky]

Kiomara
Collin

She had pressed on his very heart and soul that this was extremely precious cargo.
As if she had to.

She had pressed about feeding this cargo properly, and to tend to every need and want.
As if he wouldn't.

And to - for Hylia's and the Sand Goddesses' sake - make sure the little one would get proper sleep.
He had to concede she made a fair point there.

Lastly, she had - multiple times - assured him it would be fine that he was the one escorting their daughter to the desert. Because that was a thing he did worry about and she really felt he needed to hear it.

Gerudo didn't normally let the dads be the ones to bring their kid to the desert. They weren't even really welcome in that part of their lives. There were rules to be followed and the Gerudo women were strict about them. It was only recently that the town had even considered letting Voe in at all.

When her daughter's great day drew near she had told them all to sod the rules. The girl was already going to have to say an earlier than planned goodbye to her mom; what with her busy in and about the still rebuilding Castle Town. She would have joined them if she could, so thought it was only fair for girl to spend some time with her father, at least.
She knew him well enough to know that, would there be any backlash, he could handle it - perhaps not with dignity, but at the very least with a laugh.



Kio had given her mom the biggest hug ever, before she was handed over. Her parents had exchanged some words, but she didn't even really hear what the words were. She didn't even notice that her dad had blown her mom a kiss as they set off.

And just like that Kio found herself in a saddle between her father's arms holding the reins to Fox, his horse. She had been there before, normally they'd just go out for a couple of hours - or a day or two on occasion - and have some small adventures. This time was gonna be a little different and Kio was a bit more excited - perhaps even a bit apprehensive about it all. She thoughtfully stared ahead of herself, as if trying to get to grips with some big feelings she'd never experienced before.

"Hey, you wanna be my look-out?" Collin asked after a while, feeling some distraction was in order. The speed with which Kio took off her shoes and thrust the small pair of heels up to his face caught him off guard after all the quiet staring, "I'll take that as a yes. Trade you for the reins."

She took the reins and held them with great glee beaming on her face while Collin busied himself with putting the shoes in a bag behind him.
They had done it many times, Kio would stand on Fox's back behind the saddle, holding onto his shoulders. Without her shoes, because the horse hadn't responded well to the little pinpricks excitedly bouncing on his butt.
But it did grant her a higher vantage point and all around view. She'd point out all the things she'd see, he was always surprised by the observations she'd make.

Before he even had a chance to properly turn and take the reins back, she was already raring to go. He had to lean into the stirrup while she excitedly grappled around him and got her feeting, without a hitch and with practiced ease. Fox wasn't too happy about all the stirring around on his back, though, and gave a snort and a shake, but other than that he'd been through it all before as well.

When she was done with her climb, it remained quiet for a while. Collin couldn't see it, but Kio was staring contemplatively at the top of his head. She mulled the thoughts that formed in her head over for quite a while before speaking.

"Hey dad...?" He hummed in response, it took another while before she said anything, "Why are some of your hairs white?"

He drew a breath, but let it out slowly. "Because your dad's getting old, hun."

"Will I have white hairs too when I get old?"

"You know, I don't know." He answered truthfully, "I don't think I've ever met a Gerudo that wasn't a redhead."

"Dad?" She had left a thoughtful pause again, he hummed in response again, "What's a redhead?"


Their conversation went on like that for a bit, until he felt her actually bouncing with excitement. "Look at the pretty pink treeee!"

"Want to see it up close? We can have a last look at Hyrule Castle too, before we properly set off." He was certain things weren't going to go this smooth all the way. He wanted to give Kio a chance to get to grips with leaving the place again; she hadn't even been there for long at all. But she wasn't old enough to have to stay in the desert just yet when her mother left Kara Kara Bazaar for Hyrule Castle.

"Mom said we couldn't dilly-dally." Kio pouted. She really, really wanted to see the tree, but mom's word was law.

"She's not near enough to tell us off." He tugged Fox into the direction of the pretty pink tree.

[Sav'saaba]

Boneyard Bridge had not been named so undue. The mildness of the day, with the birdsong that had announced its dawning and its sky shifting from friendly pastels to stark cobalt belied how just bad the night before had been. It wouldn't surprise him if he would find gristle and bits in undefined places for the next fortnight or so.

Overhead the canopy of pink blossoms unfurled at the sun's gift, as Yaku stood at the tree's base, his fingertips lightly tracing over a section of its bark.


Still there.

After everything.

The little girl pressed her back against the tree's trunk, her spine rigid and button nose wrinkling with the effort as she puffed out her chest and strained her calves to reach just that little bit higher.

"Hey there, no cheating," Yaku chuckled as he put his hand flat upon her crown and pressed gently, a giggle betraying the girl's amusement at being caught. It was already evident that she had grown since they had done this last.

"No fidgeting please, this doesn't wash out," he told the child as he opened a small container to dip in the point of an errant twig that he had picked up for that purpose and coated it with the jar's contents.

It was potent, this pigment, ground into a paint by the colour man back in Castle Town, although it did not look like much right now. A concoction that was as drab as the city's flagstones on a dreary autumn day, but if they would loiter here a little...

Seeing unbridled wonder in his little girl never would get old.

"Papa, is it time for the surprise yet?," the lass asked for what must have been the umpteenth time that hour, her voice full of excited anticipation as she reached out for the container, her fingers flexing with eagerness.

"I wanna see! Can I, can I, pleeease?" she pleaded, and he really did not put up much of a fight as she slipped her hands around the opened jar and held it to her chest to better inspect the contents.

Whenever they would set out to do this, he would first bring her to the small store sequestered in an alley off the West Road and let her pick whatever colour she fancied from rows of shelves stacked with pigments from all over Hyrule. Most were as common as Hyrule herbs, others rarer than a male Gerudo.
One time, he had considered suggesting a touch less fluorescent pink, but who was he to question the sensibilities of little girls, anyway?

Now, however, he had goaded her into choosing this colour when he had found it sitting inconspicuously among a selection of mineral pigments, promising the child something good would happen to it but not telling her what, only that she would have to be patient. 

"I still don't see anything special..." she muttered after taking a good, long scrutinizing squint at the paint, a pout emphasizing her disappointment with the world, and perhaps even her parent.

"Just a little longer, peanut," her father reassured her, raising her chin back up with a knuckle and entrusting the jar to her hold entirely as he raised his makeshift drawing utensil towards the tree's trunk.

"Hold real still, now."

With a quick yet steady hand, he added a new tally to a collection of lines already on the tree's bark.  All different shades, albeit still mostly pink, now becoming a little difficult to discern in the similarly coloured light of dusk.

"Want to see how much you've grown since last time?" Yaku asked his daughter then, sitting back on his haunches. Of course she did, and as she wheeled around to admire her unconscious efforts of growing taller, the motion sloshed the contents of the jar over its rim, spilling onto the girl's hand. Her tunic made a narrow escape of meeting the same fate.

"Oh, no..." she gasped, the shock of the accident winning out over getting to gloat to her papa over what a big girl she was now.

He was not cross with her. How could he be? Accidents happened all the time. It was part and parcel of being a child. Parenthood often was a succession of spillovers, scraped knees, and pancakes stuck to a ceiling, and so far those all had been weathered. But at that moment it seemed his daughter was not so sure of the utter insignificance of this mishap. Instead, she was on the verge of tears. 

"Oopsie. That's okay." he said in a light-hearted tone, nothing more, and gingerly took the earthenware vessel from her.
It was then that the inspiration to averting the burgeoning crisis struck him. On the next beat, he poured what remained of the paint over his own palm, and rubbed his hands together once or twice.

"Cenedra, do like this." Teary-eyed but starting to forget about her sorrows through intrigue, the little girl eventually followed her dad's example.

Stretching out his arm in front of him, he spread his hand, and waited for her to mimic him yet again. Puzzled, she did. As he praised her, he turned towards the tree trunk, and then pressed his palm flat onto the bark.

Next to the measurements they had tallied over the years, there were two perfect prints of their palms, the  moment frozen in time.

Never would he forget the look on her face when their handprints on the trunk had suddenly lit up with a spectacular blue glow, the luminous stone particles of the paint pigment kicking in when the sun had fully dipped below the horizon that evening.

Under that tree, the shaman sat, as he had sat with her, so very long, long ago, the remnants of black-and-magenta shadows and all that had come before slipping into the mists and his limbs growing stiff and rigid from disuse.