eachdraidh | [video] Open to both courts.

[With the battle against the Fox finally over, his power gone (though his daughter had escaped from Ganondorf which made Lumina pretty uneasy) and his heart destroyed, despite her best arguments that they should see what they could do with it first, Lumina had to go and check out where the battle itself had gone down. She knew what had happened, for the most part, but hearing about it and seeing it were such very different things.

It was hard to imagine that one person dying could cause the kind of destruction that he had. The entire landscape was changed! It was even sort of pretty, in an...uncomfortable kind of way. She wouldn't have stayed past looking around, except...well. Like most things Lumina did, she'd had a silly whim and the materials to pull it off.]

[When the locket turns on, it's pointed at a cape that many people would find familiar as the one worn by a certain near-revolutionary named Reynard. At the top of the screen, just in view, are two small hands holding it up, clearly not able to do much more than manage it almost like a curtain. After a few seconds it abruptly drops down to reveal Lumina's face.]

Boo!

[She giggles, letting it drop the rest of the way, and waves towards whomever is holding the locket (one of her imps presumably) who backs up a bit to reveal that Lumina is also wearing Reynard's boots. Although they're so large as to be comical, and she probably got her feet, shoes and all, inside them with a lot of room to spare.]

Grr. [She manages, still chuckling.] I'm Reynard! I'm going to steal the things you care about and overthrow your kingdoms!

[She stomps a few steps, which involves lifting pretty much her entire body each time she moves a shoe. She doesn't quite have to reach down and pick them up with her hands, but it's close. The cloak drags along behind her so far it's practically a train.]

[Behind her is Cul Lairid Orc, or what is left of it after the battle with Reynard. A blood granite vein starbursts along the ground where he had fallen, perhaps twenty feet or so away from where Lumina stands.]

Give me all your shards and I'll take over the world!

[Lumina stomps a bit to the side of the frame, leaving the explosion in the center of the image.]

Or maybe not, huh? [Her tone shifts some as she looks over at the ruin. Though this is Lumina, so she's still clearly amused.] So Reynard's exploded twice now. He's not gonna walk away from it this time, though. Probably not anyway.

I guess this means we won. [Lumina's smile is a bit sly.] A group of noble shardbearers from both courts banded together to face down our shared foe! They solved the riddle of the Great and Terrible Reynard, saving us all from his oncoming, unstoppable wrath! So powerful was he that dying changed the very land around him! [She says this quite dramatically, arms tossed to the side for emphasis. But then they drop to the side.]

Of course, it's never that simple, is it? We hated him, but the locals loved him. You know, the little people we all kind of ignore? [She wiggles her fingers dismissively as she says this.] And he had allies we probably don't even know about! I bet they're all preeeetty mad.

[Her voice is a bit sing-songy by the end, and she nods her head sagely as she falls silent. Observant listeners might hear...something? In the background there. A shout on the wind, maybe? Like an echo of an echo of a scream. But then Lumina's talking again.]

I wonder how it'll all turn out? What do you guys think? [The kid waves a hand towards the marred land behind her.] Good day, or bad?

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So there are. And together, dangerous. In that, we must now tread carefully and hope that our monarchs do not find reason to make us into further enemies of these people.

Do you think our illustrious leaders really care?

I mean, they don't even like having people without shards at court!

No. Doubtless their concerns transcend the common people or are individual lives. But if they call us to arms again, we will only sow more seeds of resentment.

But they're going to 'call us to arms' anyway. They don't care.

I'm not even sure they should care. They're pretty powerful. They probably just figure us little people will deal with the littler people.

[Little people. That notion gnaws at his pride. Yet he swallows down his anger.]

You sound... resentful. Do you not find your boons sufficient enough for your service? I'm certain by now you must have collected some.

I'm not gonna turn down free stuff for doing things I was going to do anyway!

[Lumina shrugs.]

Besides, I like being special. And I'm a kid. [Her smile turns a bit sly.] That's a free pass half the time. And if the royals are right and the worlds will all end, the 'little people' need us whether they like it or not.

Do they? Their world is only in peril because we fight for the fate of others. What is it to a farmer if your world should turn to vapor? What use is my land of Hyrule to a local cobbler only trying to earn his wages? This world is a battleground to decide the fates of distant lands that mean less than nothing to the people caught in the middle of it.

[As for her being a child... he says nothing. Ganondorf came from a culture where children grew up swiftly or not at all.]

Yeaaaah...I don't think that's it.

Have you ever been out on the ocean here? This place just kinda ends. Suddenly. Violently.

[Yay for having the Outsider as a friend to know these things.]

I really doubt it's gotta whole lot of time either.

[He likewise knows this. There had even been talk of throwing Reynard into that void. But that was not something meant to be fed.]

For the common people, their world begins and ends from where they plow their fields to where they sell their goods. Regardless of how fragile this world might be, their concerns are more immediate than our own.

Yeah. People are pretty stupid huh.

[Lumina doesn't have a very high opinion of the peasantry.]

Back home, the chaos was going to swallow up the whole world, and they still did all the silly boring things they did every day as if it mattered.

I know this only too well. Even when darkness enveloped the land, the fools in their cities carried on as though nothing had ever changed. Yet these fools have been made to hate us, rather than plow their fields or carry on about their 'silly and boring' things.

All the same, they might yet be swayed again. Fools are only too easy to appease.

[Lumina grins slyly.]

Are you planning some kind of public relations campaign? [She tries to make her voice all deep and friendly and trustworthy.] 'Trust the Shardbearers, the shardbearers are your friends!'

[Amazingly, thanks to Ariadne, he actually knows what PR even is.]

A little less blatant, perhaps. But actions serve better than words. In Mair, my people know the measure of my deeds and respect me for it. There are few in the city who put stock in the fox's mischief. The people need only see that we use our power carefully and do not flaunt it idly for childish amusement.

That sounds great? Except most people are way too lazy to do things the way you did.

If it's not big and fast and flashy, they just aren't interested.

More the pity for them. And what will you do? Do you care for anything but your own games?

...Sometimes. [Lumina cares about things that Lumina cares about and that is a complicated and difficult to explain list.] Hey, I'm a shardbearer, I don't want people throwing fruit at me or anything.

But it's easy to get them to like me, I'm just a kid.

Not all are so easily endeared by children. [Certainly Ganondorf isn't one of those types.]

Yeah, I know. But you ever notice that people who are always seem willing to protect kids from the people who aren't?

I have. It is simple instinctual behavior, nothing more. Even common beasts will go to their deaths to protect their offspring.

[She just smiles.]

You see my point, then.

It would seem I do. Pray that you do not grow any older, if that is the armor you choose to wear.

Hasn't happened yet.

[Lumina doesn't do the aging thing (That she knows of.) and if he wants to think that's her only defense, she's not going to dissuade him!]

[video] Open to both courts.

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