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As he surveyed the stretches of snow before him, Teba felt as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders… Days spent soaring through the open sky with nothing save for his trusty bow seemed but a memory now.
Saki, his ever loving wife, rested a gentle wing on his own. “Teba…” Her voice drifted off, fading into howling gales of wind. “We should have dinner. The chicks are likely waiting.” With all of the adults gone from the village, she’d become a second mother to most of the children there: Kass’ girls, Harth’s Molli, their own Tulin.
But Teba couldn’t bear to move as he clenched his beak, sharp eyes searching the raging storm before them. “You should eat without me.”
“Teba, please,” Saki entreated, feathers drifting up to ghost along his face.
Leaning into his wife’s embrace for the briefest moment, Teba wouldn’t allow himself to be swayed. “You can split my portion amongst the chicks.” He ignored the light rumblings in his stomach as he lied, “I’m not hungry.”
Saki aquiesed, knowing that her husband was a Rito of his word. “Are you leaving?”
“Maybe.” Teba’s feathers rested on the curvature of his bow. He supposed that decades’ worth of marriage meant that Saki knew him better than anyone else. With a ragged sigh, he sank to the floor, bow clattering to the ground beside him. “I can’t leave, though, Saki… I can’t leave you and the chicks alone.” His breathing became heavier as the world began spinning around him. “Our people have been forced from our home, and our resources have been stretched so thin. As both an elder and as a warrior, I have a duty to my people, yet somehow I’m so conflicted.”
Dropping down to the floor beside him, Saki wrapped her wings around him tightly. “Teba… We’re all doing the very best that we can.”
Tears began to prickle at the corners of his eyes, becoming painful as they started to freeze. “It’s not enough. I have to do more.” His limbs became heavy, and he wished more than anything that he could weep… For so long, he’d been trained that tears were a sign of weakness, and though he’d sought to correct such an ideology when teaching his boy, he’d never quite conquered the miconsceptions he’d learned from the teaching himself. Yet now, more than anything, he longed for release, but the freezing temperatures denied him.
Saki stayed with him, his own personal shelter from the storm, stroking his feathers and singing to him softly. Her wings were his haven, and her eyes were his safety. He knew that she would protect him in any way she could, the same way he would for her. In this quiet moment, Teba allowed himself to shed the weight of his responsibilities as elder, collapsing into his wife’s wings.
Such vulnerability did not come so easily to Teba, but with Saki, he could find peace. With all his friends gone to scavange for food and defend their home, who else could he turn to? Even if they were all here, who would be the first Rito he called if he was in trouble? It had to be Saki.
Even as his chest heaved and his body tremored, Teba clung to his Saki like a lifeline, focusing on the sound of her voice and the way her wings felt around his body. When her feathers brushed against his own, tousling through his braids, he huddled even closer against her.
“You’ve been so strong, Teba,” Saki finally whispered, the tips of her wings wiping away the tiny icicles that had since formed around his tear ducts. “But I’m here with you. You’re not alone in all of this.”
Dark thoughts swirled around his mind before he finally dared to voice one: “I wonder what Kaneli would say if he could see what state the village is in now…” He gazed out into the distance once more, eyes catching on the sight of Harth’s twin bonfires. “So many survived the Great Calamity only to watch Hyrule fall once again to the Upheaval. During the Calamity, we could keep to ourselves and survive, but now… Now, we’re in deep trouble, Saki.”
He could feel his wife tremble slightly as they shifted together on the snow-covered ground. “Yes,” she admitted carefully, voice trailing off lightly. Her eyes softened, as the sound of chicks clambering up the slippery stairs caught their attention. “But there’s hope yet. There always will be.”
As his eyes fell upon little Molli and Kass’ brood and his own Tulin, Teba felt his heart throb a bit in his chest. Instead of scrambling to his feet, he stretched out a wing, his beak curving upward the slightest bit as Saki mirrored the action.
Little Rito chicks flung themselves into his wings and Saki’s, knocking them both over into the snow. But even as he ruffled their feathers and patted their heads, he clung to Saki’s words like they were a promise. There was hope yet… When Hyrule despaired due to the Great Calamity, Link and the Princess rose to oppose it, with the citizens of the kingdom fighting back in any way they could too. Perhaps such a miracle was possible now too…
Whether or not the chicks were right in their songs about deliverance by the Stormwind Ark… whether or not the Princess and her Knight were to be found and deliver the nation once more… whether or not the commonfolk stood together to combat the gloom and the darkness in any way they could…
Saki was right. They had to cling to hope, and, if only for the sake of the chicks in his wings and the wife by his side and his people scattered about on the four winds, he would hold on to hope too.
Hugging the chicks and his dear Saki tighter, Teba finally felt as though he could breathe again; a gentle relief flooded his body like a cool breeze on a summer day despite the chilly winds that raged on around them. As long as air filled his lungs and his heart beat in his chest, he vowed silently, in the presence of his family, to hold on to hope and protect the village so that his people would have a home to return to one day.