Starter for | @burntoutlives ( Fi & Link )
The thing about silence, is that it does not truly exist.
Fi had lived through many cycles, many worlds, suffered through lingering bouts of sacred solitude. Yet no matter where her chosen resting place, silence never truly came. Her home of grey stone had been surrounded by many environments. From the cold stones of temples to the various fragments of nature, silence was never to be found. For even stone carries the echoes of the world around it, and lost woods are always haunted by the music of its inhabitants. The skies carry dulcet tones on it’s very breath, and an underwater grave set in stasis surely has its own symphony to share. Even the guise of an eternal slumber came with the wicked accompaniment of the voice of your very first enemy. No, if true silence existed, Fi was sure the goddesses never intended for others to achieve it.
It was a vexation as much as it was a comfort to find this still rang true regardless of her form.
Space was not quiet, regardless of what jokes her fellow crew shrewdly made. Even in a ship as big as the Pandemos, in the dead of night as it was, noise still permeated the air around the former sword spirit. The hum of the life support systems running through the walls, the slight creaks that came from something made entirely of metal, the noises were endless. Fi had come to find a strange sense of comfort in these noises, in the same way one might find comfort in simple white noise to drown out their own thoughts. Though, she had never been lucky enough to out run her own mind. Her feet carried her down the various hallways laid out before her, the hour late enough to hopefully avoid any company. She had been blessed with constant company since her awakening into this cycle, and while that posed nothing but a mere need to adjust, her newest companion had caused a bit more strife.
Newest companion. The mere thought brought a sad smile to the girls face. For her newest companion had been her oldest, and the irony was enough to hurtle Fi down a path of thought that was bordering dangerously on blasphemous.
She had known it was him before she had ever turned around, because what good was a soul who did not know the aura of its own master? What good was a blade who could not recognize the very hand that had forged it all those lifetimes ago? What good was a girl who could not recognize the only family she had ever come to known?
So yes, Fi knew it was Link, knew the importance of the man behind her, even if Link did not know the same of her. That was how it had always been, and that is how it continued to be.
She could have denied him, slip of orders and hopeful eyes be damned, it wasn’t the first time she had disobeyed a higher power than her. However, she could never pass up the opportunity to spend time around her friend, even if it was a forgotten friendship on his side. So train him she did. Just as he had trained himself all those years ago, she began to teach him how to swing a wooden sword as easily as he had swung her very self. Outside of the halls, she had no idea how to approach him. Sword fighting was their language, very literally.
These very thoughts had set her out on her nightly stroll, swirling around in her mind as she tried to think of what this cycle might entail for them all. However the white noise of the ship was soon replaced with the sweet sounds of an instrument, and Fi’s thoughts crashed to a sudden halt at the intrusion. The notes were soft, but the melody was as powerful as a sirens song, pulling her towards its origins. Music had never lost its power on Fi, no matter how many lifetimes she had lived. It had been one of her very first wonders to experience in existence, and the feeling had never left. She stumbled around the corners, resolutely avoiding the voice in her mind that sounded suspiciously like a certain vexing counter part of hers as she went. The sight before her was surprising only in the fact that it should not have been.
The very person who had haunted her thoughts now stood before her, instrument tucked under chin as his hands drew a bow across strings. The song isn’t fully familiar to her, but in certain measures she thinks she can hear notes from her past. From his. Regardless, the sound is like a balm for her troubled thoughts. The viewport in front of him does little to divert her attention, and as the sound slowly dies down, she finds herself speaking.
“That was beautiful,” She said simply, the words leaving her mouth softly. “However, when we brought up bows in training, that’s not really the kind I had in mind.” She added, unable to stop from teasing him slightly as she stayed firmly rooted to her spot, not sure whether she should stay and engage or allow the words to be a passing comment. She supposed it was up to him to decide.
If asked, Link wouldn’t have an answer to “What inspires you?”. His ‘inspiration’ was a command, or a feeling to go somewhere or do something. He didn’t mind. Inspiration didn’t have much use in farmland or a battlefield. Both of which intimately familiar to him, far more than he could even begin to comprehend.
His life was a constant stream of never ending tasks. Imagination could only take hold in careful footwork. Creativity in a twirl of his sword. No room for anything to distract him.
Yet when he looked out the view-port of the Pandemos, Link thought he understood what people meant by inspiration. Millions upon millions of star systems, each containing a world for them to potentially land on. And the passing nebula? The green and orange hues were enough to make him dig through his closet for an instrument he hadn’t touched in months, to practically rush back to the view-port.
It was slow going, between the tuning and the near snap of one of the strings. Eventually, the instrument was rested against his shoulder, bow gliding across the strings.
There was no reason for the measures he played, misremembered songs from childhood. Snippets of verses that sounded familiar. Something about wind and earth gods, another about time. Things he must have heard on the radio, almost alarming in the way they flowed so well together. Connected by a lullaby, soft and sweet.
Link wouldn’t want to know the significance even if his mind was clear.
As the notes faded, he registers the presence close to him, a sort of humming feeling that always seemed to follow her. Fi, the trainer. The only trainer as far as Link was concerned. His friend. He thought.
It was hard to tell. Something below the surface for the both seemed to prevent that final sheet of ice from breaking. She was familiar to him, and that was all he knew. And with Fi... It was as if she was looking through him instead of at him. Like there was someone she was seeing in his place.
He wouldn’t fault her for it, not when he himself was trying to understand the strange connections that had awakened from a deep slumber in his mind.
A shrug as she spoke, resting the instrument back in it’s case. Whatever works. “In training... I could just-” He mimed hitting something, bow used as a stand-in bat. A grin as his swing ended. He’d kill to see the other militia members’ faces if he showed up with just that as his weapon for the day.
