Fan Fiction Friday: Koume And Kotake – Creation Of Fire And Ice, Part 4

Koume opened her eyes to the bright flickering of flaming torches, which lined what once might have been an opulent throne room.  She groaned as she sat up; her body was so sore, almost as if she had collapsed onto hard stone under her own weight.

Then, she remembered everything.  That beautiful woman, her enchanting voice, and how she claimed to be the Goddess of the Sands!  Koume twisted her neck sharply to look for Kotake, stirring awake beside her.

“Kotake,” whispered Koume frantically, “we have to get out of here!”

Kotake rubbed groggily at her eyes, then looked balefully at her sister.  “What happened?” she replied, confused, before the realization of what had taken place washed over her, too.  She grabbed Koume’s arm and exclaimed, “The Sand Goddess!  She’s here!”  Kotake jumped to her feet and began looking intently around the room.

Koume stood up and shushed her sister.  “We don’t know who that woman is!  Or how she got us to…well, wherever we are now.  We need to find a way out, now!”  Koume looked suspiciously around the room, as though somebody might leap at her from behind one of the many pillars that lined the walls.

“What do you mean?” Kotake questioned, unable to understand why Koume was panicking.  “Didn’t you just see what happened?”

“I saw nothing, Kotake!” Koume snapped, “I was knocked out by that…that woman!”

“You did see it, Koume!  I know you did!  And I know you felt it!” growled Kotake, frustrated.  “She is the Goddess of the Sands, and we know what happened to her!”

Koume abruptly turned away from her sister.  I had a strange dream, that’s all, she reasoned to herself, denying any likelihood that the Sand Goddess could possibly have made herself known to them.

…But it was such a vivid dream.  And how I felt…  Koume shivered and turned back to Kotake.  “A dream doesn’t prove anything, Kotake; she could be a spirit, or a poe!  Or even a witch, casting a spell on us!”

“Well, I’ve never been compared to a witch before,” the voice, though soft in tone, shook them both to their cores. From the shadows cast by the golden throne at the end of the room, the Sand Goddess stood and made herself known.

Kotake fell to her knees and bent her head towards the stone floor, “I apologize for my sister, oh, Divine One!” she excused, as Koume raised an eyebrow at her.

The Sand Goddess smiled and replied, “You were forgiven, and now, so is your sister.  She knows who I am, and soon she will come to terms with it.  I understand that I have been unseen and unheard for much too long now.” The Sand Goddess, moving toward them, bent to gently cup Kotake’s face in her hand. “But the world is awake to me once again, and I have you both to thank for that.”

She turned to face Koume, allowing warmth to shine in her eyes. Koume tensed her muscles as she met that holy gaze, unable to decide whether to fight or fly.

The Goddess of the Sands seemed to have moved from one side of the room to the other, where Koume stood, in the blink of an eye.  She held out her hand, waiting for Koume to place her own within its grasp.

Koume felt compelled, although her body strained against her mind’s orders.  But as soon as her skin touched the Sand Goddess’s hand, she relaxed, her worries falling away. The weight of their journey to the Spirit Temple and the struggles that followed it melted almost instantly from her mind, leaving pure clarity in its wake.  “It is you,” breathed Koume, gazing in wonder.

“Yes, I am Daenia, Protector of the West,” replied the Sand Goddess, laughing as Kotake raced eagerly across the room to stand beside her twin.

“I’m Kotake, and this is my sister, Koume!” beamed Kotake, before her face fell as she remembered the harrowing tale of how Daenia had been sealed away.  “You’re own sister, your twin!” she gasped emotionally.  “Your heart, I felt it shatter!  I’m so sorry.”

“Kotake!” admonished Koume, before looking apologetically at Daenia.

“Do not worry, child.  She feels what I feel.  It is a pain that I will carry until the end of time.”  Daenia seemed almost to lose herself in some memory, before looking once more at the sisters.  “But for now, I feel joy, for at last I am heard!”  She smiled widely, but it was an expression that hardly lasted.

Koume felt stricken at the change in emotion displayed by the Goddess.  “What else troubles you, Protector?”

Daenia sighed and replied, “I am seen and heard inside my temple, but still I cannot set foot outside its walls to feel the warmth of the sun on my skin.”  She took a deep breath and almost seemed to shiver, making her seem vulnerable and more human than when they had first laid eyes on her.

Kotake looked at Daenia in confusion, before asking, “But if we can see and hear you, surely that means that Hylia’s curse is broken?”

“It would seem that it is only half broken, my child.” Daenia answered, as she walked towards a doorway at the end of the room.  Koume and Kotake followed in their Goddess’s footsteps, listening intently as she lead them down a stairway and through her temple.  “It is as if my magic, my divine powers have returned to me, but I am still trapped within these walls.”  Daenia eventually lead them to the entrance of the temple, where she reached out towards the sunlight.  As her hand extended, it met some invisible barrier, and Koume and Kotake gasped in astonishment.  “You see, I am still confined, and my magic cannot free me!”  Anger flashed across Daenia’s beautiful features, as she thumped her fist against the invisible force that held her captive.

“There must be a way!” uttered Kotake as she choked back her horror at the Goddesses imprisonment.  “We will find a way to free you!  I swear it!”

Koume nodded eagerly, “We have no magic, but we are your faithful servants, and we will set you free from this insidious curse!”

Daenia smiled and thanked the sisters, as she took each of their hands in her own.  “Then, we must get to work.”

Koume and Kotake looked at each other, and together, they knew they were ready to do whatever it took to free the Goddess of the Sands.

---

Daenia finally looked up from her grimoire and sighed at her predicament; she had to find a suitable magic that Koume and Kotake would be capable of learning!  But these books and scrolls, long hidden in this secret room in the depths of her temple, only made matters more confusing!  She would have burned them to ash had she not spent an era filling them with her own stores of knowledge and experience!  Before Hylia’s betrayal, Daenia had been free to explore the secret powers of the land – the earth magic, and she had recorded everything that she had learned on these pages!

But, upon the very thought of her freedom, the claustrophobic memory of her imprisonment engulfed her.

The years of silence and solitude that followed her imprisonment were loathsome.  The Gerudo had returned to her temple, determined to break the curse of Hylia.  They had no knowledge of the power of magic, and only one clue which she had left them: Your blood shall free me!  And so, her people offered their life’s blood in order to free her from her bonds.  But the Gerudo did not understand that it would take countless offerings over the course of a hundred generations to set her free.  Daenia’s real prison was that of time.

Eventually, when their hearts had faltered without her presence, and they were unable to scrape a life in the harsh West, the Gerudo had abandoned her temple and set out to leave the desert.  Closing her eyes to the physical world that surrounded her, Daenia watched her people travel until her sight could not follow.  What became of that generation, she would never know.  The unknown became a torture in itself and she could not escape it.

As time passed slowly by, her sands became a desolate wasteland, deserted of all life.  Daenia retreated into her own mind, and she began to forget her beloved people, her desires, and even herself.  The loneliness was maddening and the solitude unbearable.  She became lost to insanity, her mind a prison in itself!

In her lunacy, Daenia had not wondered at time, but surely an eternity had passed before the Gerudo had finally set foot in her temple once more, seemingly in the wake of some new discovery.  In her psychosis, Daenia did not recognize her own people, and paid no mind when one old woman solemnly smeared blood upon the idols that represented her.  Travellers came and went over the span of generations, making offerings of blood to a Goddess that Daenia didn’t recognize as herself.

But somehow, she had heard Koume’s prayer!  It had broken through her mania as though it had been sent by the Golden Goddesses themselves!  Her mind broke loose from its own cage and all of the love for her people, her desires and her identity came flooding back, crashing over her like a glorious typhoon!  She had watched carefully and waited patiently, willing the sisters to make it through the trials of the desert.  Willing them to come to her.  And such joy she had felt when they had both seen and heard her!  When she had believed that she was free — free at last!

But, that was not the case, she knew now.  So she turned back to her scrolls, determined to find the magic she required, somewhere in this cramped and dusty room.

After an entire day of searching, when she had begun to feel what little spark of hope the girls had lit within her begin to flicker, she finally found it.  Koume and Kotake would learn to conjure and control the elements!  But which elements?  She could teach them to shake and crack the earth, or to send an unstoppable wind across the plains of the world…

Or… Daenia smiled in satisfaction.

Fire and ice!

---

Three full moons had passed before Koume and Kotake had managed to conjure any sort of magic.  Kotake had yelped in shock when she had produced her first frost.  “I did it!” she cheered, as Koume looked on with jealousy.

“How did you do it?!” Koume demanded, annoyed that Kotake could have surpassed her in something so important.

“She has allowed her spirit to connect with that of the earth,” answered Daenia, pleased with Kotake’s progress.  “Keep going, Kotake!”  Daenia smiled as she watched Kotake send the frost throughout the room.  This was what she needed to see after so many fruitless lessons!  Daenia had allowed herself to be overcome with impatience as she witnessed the sisters’ failed attempts at conjuring the elements.  She had screamed and shook the stone walls of her temple, sending fear into the hearts of her new apprentices.  Fear, it turned out, was not the path to successful magic, and she had been careful to hide her frustrations when teaching her delicate students since.

Koume felt the envy of the Sand Goddess’s pleasure at Kotake’s success course through her veins.  But no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t conjure the fire that she so desperately wanted to summon.  Instead, she had to suffer the hoots of delight from Kotake as she managed to turn her frost into huge crystals of ice.

When their lesson was over, Koume retired to her quarters, depressed and angry with herself.  As she looked out of her window and towards the horizon, she tried to imagine what her clan would be doing at that moment.  Had they given up on her?  Did they believe that she and Kotake had perished on their journey?  She sighed and turned away from the window to find the Goddess of the Sands behind her.

Daenia had decided that, without singular encouragement, Koume might never learn to harness earth magic.  She intended to comfort the girl in hopes that it would help her to focus more on the magic, and less on her jealousy.

“I know it is difficult, but you will find the magic,” she soothed, before realizing that Koume was not focused on the failure in today’s lesson.  “But what else ails you, my child?”

Koume was ready to deny her longing to return to her clan, when she looked into Daenia’s eyes.  But instead of denial, she felt compelled to honesty.  “My clan must believe me dead and my quest a failure.  They will have forgotten me.  And until I return to them, I am not a Gerudo woman, but a girl.

Daenia turned to the window and gazed at the sunset.  “I see,” she replied simply.  “Is there a man awaiting your return?”

Koume smiled sadly, “No, we do not take a man in marriage.  They are easily swayed and cannot be trusted.”

Daenia was confused, and continued, “No husbands?  But you bear children how?”

“Well, when the Hylians visit for trade -”

“You consort with Hylians?!” Daenia exclaimed, sickened. “Are your own stock not suitable?”

“There are no Gerudo men,” said Koume, as though she stated the obvious.  She furrowed her brow, reflecting confusion that anything else could be possible.

Daenia’s head began to swim as the weight of Koume’s words sank in.  It couldn’t be… How have I not seen this?  “Are you sure?” she snapped, unwilling to accept the truth, “No men…no sons?!”

Koume shook her head, “No, there have been no Gerudo males in living memory.”

Daenia felt her world collapse around her.  She had laid the souls of every Gerudo male upon her faith in Demise.  And if there were no Gerudo men, then…

Demise had been defeated.  

She would be bound by the curse of Hylia…forever.

 

Artwork by Courtney Chitsiga.  See more of her work here.

Judy Calder is an Original Content Editor for Zelda Dungeon.  She enjoys lengthy debates about the Zelda timeline and anything to do with Ocarina of Time.  Follow her on Twitter.