Artist: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738-1815)
Date: 1782
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, United States
Description
Brook Watson had been sent to sea at fourteen; he decided to go for a swim while his ship was docked in the shark-infested waters of Havana Harbor. The painting depicts the moment when the shark is coming by for his third and possibly final attempt to make a meal out of Watson. The men in the boat were successful in harpooning the shark and heroically rescued the swimmer. Upon returning to the ship, Watson’s left leg was amputated and he was fitted with a peg leg. Later in life he became Lord Mayor of London and was often satirized, with his peg leg playing an important feature. This is one of three versions that Copley painted to commemorate the heroic rescue of Brook Watson.
Masterlist
Word count: ~1625
Universe: Breath of the Wild; sequel to “No. 22 — Withdrawal (2020)”
Pairings: Zelink
Rating: T
Themes: Mob violence, harpooning
Read on ao3
---
Zelda jolted upright in the dark, eyes wide and heart racing and a chill sweeping down her back where his heat had been. She tried to listen over the ocean pounding in her ears; it had probably been an animal shuffling through underbrush, or a rotten palm frond finally giving under its own weight. It was impossible to be sure now. She asked anyway.
“What was that?”
Link’s arm tightened around her waist as he pulled himself closer, as he eased up to nuzzle the back of her neck. “It was nothing. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you if there’s trouble.”
He dropped a soothing kiss on her spine and coaxed her back down, and though she gave in easily to his heat and her exhaustion, she was far from soothed. Trouble rarely called when it was convenient for them.
“Do you want me to sleep in dragonshape?”
“Because that won’t draw attention.”
He puffed a laugh against her nape, the warmth from the fire in his belly washing over her shoulders. “Then go to sleep.”
But for as calm as he pretended to be, she wasn’t fooled. His heart was racing, too.
This whole mess was her fault, really. She’d wanted a home, and he’d given her one.
She had fallen in love with the sea. Something about the sigh of waves crawling up the sand had trickled into her heart and settled there, something about the taste of brine clinging to the wind. Link called it Rootsong, that inexplicable call to a place, that sense of belonging that transcended reason, that sent birds migrating south or salmon swimming upstream. He said it was what called him to her, and what called her to the ocean.
It sounded silly when he put it like that. She liked the sea, certainly, but was hardly bound to it the way animals were bound by instinct. It was just a feeling.
“But that’s what instinct is,” he’d smiled, eyes burning warmly into hers. “Just a feeling.”
They found a lonely spot above the Clarnet Coast and built a house together, which was significantly easier than it sounded with a dragon to do most of the heavy lifting. He would stay Hylian for anything that required dexterity, and then shift when anything was remotely cumbersome to move or hard to reach. When the time came to put on the roof, he just lifted her up so she could fasten the canopy and brought her things, looking smitten.
It was wonderful while it lasted. They had glorious views of the sunrise every morning, and she would ask to go down to Lurelin on warm afternoons, where they could barter for silks and spices and dyes. Their visits were regular enough that soon the villagers knew them, and there was a comfort in that kind of familiarity. And perhaps that was the problem: too much complacency. Too much comfort.
Soon there were enough reports of strange shadows and hulking shapes to suspect something was amiss about them, enough contradictions to spawn whispers. It didn’t help that, unlike the people of Hateno who still offered a virgin to appease the spirits, the people of Lurelin had killed their patron dragon several centuries ago. The notion that another might be hiding among them was not a welcome one.
Things finally came to a head one night when they returned to their little home only to find it burned to the ground.
They hadn’t lost anything of importance in the fire, not really, and they were more than capable of rebuilding. Still, she burst into tears at the sight of it.
“They’re just afraid,” he soothed her as they sat on the mountaintop, overlooking the water, buffeted by the wind. “They’ll forget, in time. People always do.”
“This is my fault,” she sniffled, not able to stave the tears, even though she felt stupid for them. “I was the one who wanted to stay in one place.”
“No,” he frowned, “it was mine. I got careless.” Then, passing her a grim smile, “It’s too easy to be myself around you.”
Which, whether he saw it that way or not, still meant it was her fault.
She turned over restlessly and buried in his throat, grasping after a few hours of sleep.
The sky was just starting to pale when she finally felt close to drifting off—but then that sound snapped a second time over the cape, and Link was sitting up, and she was a live wire again.
He rolled into a crouch, his arm outstretched to keep her low and behind him. Downhill, bobbing like a row of fireflies, lanterns drifted through the mist up the headland, illuminating the silvery tips of machetes and fishing spears. And one would think weapons like those wouldn’t have been much of a threat against a dragon, who could easily roast anyone who got within ten meters, or else slash them to ribbons with his claws. But Zelda knew Link was too gentle a soul for violence like that, not when the odds were skewed so dramatically in his favor.
He wouldn’t hurt them.
“Go,” he murmured as the lanterns weaved closer, spangles knotting and glittering menacingly on blade edges. “I’ll buy you a little time.”
“Go where? There’s nothing behind us but the cape—”
Faces emerged from the mist, catching light along with their spearpoints. Faces marred by fear. Faces she knew. Faces she never would have thought capable of willfully harming anyone. It made tears clog up her throat again. It made her wish she’d been satisfied with what he’d given her and burned that stupid house down herself and saved everyone else the trouble.
“You’ll have to jump.”
“Jump?”
“I’ll catch you,” he said, voice raising with urgency. “I promise I’ll catch you. Now go!”
She nearly objected again, but he took his eyes off the mob long enough to fix them on her: eyes that begged her not to leave him without a choice, that begged her not to make him hurt anyone. That begged her not to make him change here, while they were in striking distance, where she might get hurt.
She clenched her jaw, brow puckering, and ran. The tip of the cape teetered in her vision as she stumbled up the hill, tilting and dipping close to the horizon as she closed the distance. She heard Link call for peace, felt the wave of heat at her back when he sprayed a warning stream of fire across their path. And then the ocean was swelling around her like a wave, endless and brilliant in the sun peeking over the horizon.
Her heart jackknifed in her breast, sharp with adrenaline and terror. She braced herself for the icy chill of the windblast, for the vertigo that was sure to grip her as the sheer drop came into view, barreling breathlessly toward the cliffs. And suddenly she was on top of the nothing, her eyes glued to the fronds of grass hanging precariously over the oblivion, holding on to the crag by their roots.
She nearly lost her nerve then, every instinct screaming at her to plant her feet. Link must have sensed it. He shouted behind her, just as her stomach dropped into the void, “Zelda, jump!”
She screamed as she flung herself over the edge, arms thrown over her eyes. For just a heartbeat she felt suspended; then the wind caught her with an angry rush, roaring as she plunged towards the sea. It drowned out everything else, leaving her gasping and frozen, blasting her eyes until they watered and pulling the breath from her mouth. There was nothing leftover but the sea, scintillating with sunglitter, and the harsh silhouettes of harpoon ships gliding along aureate glass.
Harpoon ships, crouching in the shadow of the cape before the sun had even risen.
She tried to twist in the air, her heart lodged in her throat, tried to scream. But the wind devoured it, and she was helpless.
Link launched himself off the headland after her, his dragonshape bursting over him in a whorl of smoke. He barely had time to tuck his wings, to get a fix on her and tear into a dive, before barbed spears and ropes were whistling through the emptiness between the sea and sky.
The harpoon sheared through his soft underbelly, lodging beneath his arm. A sound came out of him she’d never heard before—shrill, piercing, cutting through the windblast like tissue paper. But he reoriented himself with a strained, crooked beat of his wings, not daring to take his eyes off her. Diving straight for her, even as the other ships tracked his path.
He caught her with his muzzle, staying in freefall with her until she could wrap herself around his neck. As soon as she was secure he flattened out, but they were still descending, the drag of the tether pulling on his wound enough to slow him down. He turned towards Soka Point, beating his wings once, twice, trying to rise even as torn muscle and pain left one side weak and listless. Then a second ship fired, and the harpoon caught him at the flank.
That haunting sound wrested out of him again, cleaving the dawn, and they were falling.
Somehow he kept himself level until he hit the water, throwing her into the shallows as his body dragged across the shoal. The impact left her head ringing and her side bruised; but as she rolled out of the lapping water and shuffled backward onto the sand, the sun rose over the bay, illuminating a spectacle so awful her pain was forgotten:
The image of a downed dragon, skewered with harpoons, and the waters of Cresia staining red.
