Chapter Text
[SHEIKAH SLATE OPENS]
ZELDA
Testing, Testing… Alright, I think it's working.
[SHUFFLING PAPERS, CHAIR CREAKS]
Ahem - This is Zelda Bosphoramus speaking, Head Archivist and Scholar of the Hyrule Institute. The Hyrule Institute researches the paranormal events of the history of Hyrule, from the dawn of the kingdom to present phenomena. It is my job to organize our physical records into our new Sheikah Slate, as a means of preserving them.
The Head of the Hyrule Institute is my father, Rhoam Bosphoramus. He’s worked here since the death of my mother, though I know he finds it…an unproductive institution. It was her greatest passion, he always said - after me. So, he keeps it open in her memory.
I’ve practically been raised in this building, and worked here since I was old enough to do so. I was recently promoted to the position of Head Archivist, much to the chagrin of my father, who believes I could be doing something more important than ‘reading paranoid nonsense all day’ - his words, not mine.
I believe these statements are crucial to understanding our past, present, and even our future. By researching the dark experiences of the Hyrulean people, we can learn more about whatever dangers arise in the future. Then, perhaps we will be prepared to meet them.
[ZELDA PAUSES, TAPPING HER FINGER AGAINST HER CHIN]
Lets see, what else - oh! My colleagues, of course.
I have four assistants - ugh, no, five now. They help me by collecting statements, as well as gathering evidence and artifacts into our archive for research.
Urbosa I’ve known the longest. She was a dear friend of my mother, and we would often visit her in Gerudo Town. I’m honestly surprised this position didn’t go to her. But she’s very happy for me, and told me she hadn't seen me so eager like this in a long time. I must say, I am excited to take on the challenge. I’m ever grateful to have her support.
Then there’s Daruk, a very friendly Goron man who’s only been here a few months, or so. Nevertheless, he is committed to doing his work with a positive attitude. He gets along very well with everyone, and I get the feeling he’d defend us all from danger in an instant. He’s a little loud and boisterous, but his optimism is crucial in an institute like this. For that I admire him deeply.
Mipha is a very sweet young woman. She used to be a nurse, according to her records. I haven't seen it myself, but I’m told she’s a very talented healer. I often wonder why she came to work with us all those years ago, but she’s a good assistant. Quiet, maybe, but endlessly kind. Honestly, for someone so timid, I am impressed she is able to handle the more gruesome statements. Perhaps it is her experience in the medical field. Anyway, she’s a calming presence to be around.
Revali’s worked here about as long as Mipha. I actually did know him at school, though not very well. He was a top athlete in archery and the best flier the school has ever seen. The reason I know this is simply that he won’t let anyone forget it. He’s very prideful, I’ll be honest, but not without reason. His work for us is impeccable, after all. Though I do think his competitive side sometimes gets the best of him, he’s the most reliable of the group.
And lastly, our newest employee - Link. I swear, my father only sent him to the archives to keep an eye on me. He was a security guard on the top floor, for goodness sake! Now, his job is to accompany my other assistants on their research tasks and guard the archives throughout the day.
Unfortunately that means he also follows me everywhere. Goddess, I can’t stand it. And he won’t even talk to me!
[ZELDA PAUSES BRIEFLY]
Well, he doesn’t really talk to anybody, to be fair. He’s Deaf, and he can speak, but I believe for the most part he chooses not to. Which isn’t a problem of course, I am fluent in seven languages, including Hylian Sign Language. Despite this, the only person he signs with frequently is Mipha. I can’t get a read on him…
[ZELDA SIGHS, FRUSTRATED]
I’m getting off topic. I believe that’s more than anyone needs to know about my role and the roles of my colleagues in the Hyrule Institute Archives, so I’ll get on with my actual job.
[ZELDA AHEMS AND PULLS OUT A FEW PAPERS AND TAPS THEM ON THE DESK]
Statement of Izra Tule, regarding a gardener at the Floret Sandbar in West Necluda. Original statement found in the personal writings of Izra Tule, estimated to be written about 500 years ago. Sheikah Slate recording by the Head Archivist of the Hyrule Institute, Zelda Bosphoramus. Statement begins.
ZELDA (STATEMENT)
The first time I met the flower keeper was an accident.
I used to spend a lot of my spare time at the docks by the stables. It’s a lovely view, sparkling water, tall green trees, blue sky filled with fluffy clouds. It’s only because I spend my days here so often, admiring the view, that I noticed the garden immediately.
I started calling it the Floret Sandbar. It used to be just a regular sandbar, sandy and dull and flat, right in the middle of the river where it splits into two streams. It was a bit of an eyesore, honestly.
Then, suddenly, there were flowers - grass, and trees, and bushes too, but most especially flowers. The sandbar had flourished overnight, bright and beautiful and so colorful it was a little hard to look at. The sweet smell of the flowers wafted over the river with wayward petals on the wind. It was gorgeous, but utterly mind boggling.
I was a gardener myself. I didn’t grow flowers, mostly endura carrots and hearty radishes instead, but even I knew flowers don’t bloom overnight.
It must have been because of this mystery, that one day I set out from the docks on my raft, and sailed towards the garden.
The smell was even stronger up close. It was so overpowering, it began to sting my nose, and my eyes watered. I could hardly breathe the thick, cloying air when I stepped foot on the sandbar.
No one was there when I arrived - this I am sure of. It’s a small spot, and even with the vibrant, distracting hues of the flowers, I knew I was alone. There simply couldn't have been anyone there.
I stepped towards the flowers to admire them. They were in full bloom and attracting bees and butterflies to gather their pollen and drink their nectar. Amoranths and blue nightshades, swift violets and silent princesses, all grew unnaturally tall, taller than any of their variety I had seen before. Some flowers I didn’t even recognize seemed to glow in the sunlight.
Without thinking, I reached out a hand, gripped the stem of the mysterious flower, and plucked it from its roots.
Maybe, if I had been paying attention, I would have heard the strange crackling sound it made. Noticed the dark liquid dripping from the end, or caught the faint smell of iron amongst the other flowers’ scents. But at the moment, I was instantly distracted by the horrible scream from behind me.
I dropped the flower, and whirled around. There was a woman there, mouth still open in a silent scream, looking for all the world as if I had stabbed her myself.
“What do you think you are doing to my garden?” she said, clutching her hands to the side of her head.
Now that I look back on it, it was more like she was covering her ears.
I apologized instantly, explaining I had no idea the flowers were hers. She shook her head at me in anguish.
“You must never harm the flowers.” She said, “Oh, how am I going to fix this… “.
I felt terrible, even if her reaction was a bit much for something as small as a picked flower. I tried to calm her, and offered to lend my own tools from home for her.
This actually did seem to help, and she asked if I had a garden too. I told her I did, but she became significantly less interested when she found out it was only fruits and vegetables, not flowers.
Still, she accepted my offer, still clearly distraught over the flower I had picked. In fact, even though I offered the tools, she sort of demanded that I bring them as soon as possible.
“Watch out for the flowers,” She said as I left the garden to return to my raft, “You don’t want to hurt them… do you?”
She sounded so earnest, I paused for a moment, compelled to ask what she meant. It was as though she was talking about living beings, real living beings, like her and me.
“They are.” she hissed.
I decided to leave it at that, thoroughly creeped out, and still suffering from the overwhelming smell of the flowers. I boarded my raft and took off.
The second time I met the flower keeper, I was bringing my tools to her as I promised.
Goponga Village sits on an island in the middle of a lake, with plenty of water to spare. When it rains, it rains hard, and it floods quite easily. It rained for a few nights, and flooded the river, covering the bridge that was my usual way to work. I wondered how the Floret Sandbar garden was faring in the weather. And as I did, I heard something.
A gurgle.
It was still raining, so I didn’t think much of it. But it became louder and louder, right outside the window facing my garden. The more I listened, the more gruesome it sounded - like someone choking, drowning in water, trying to breathe, but to no avail.
Soon, the gurgling turned into crying.
I know I heard it, something sobbing outside my window. I rushed out, expecting to find one of the village children lost in my garden, and when I opened my door, the volume grew tenfold.
No one was in my garden, and the crying had gone from one voice to multiple, all sobbing and choking on nonexistent tears.
Water. Drowning. Dying.
It was the garden. The garden, crying out for help.
I crouched in the muddy ground and lifted up a fortified pumpkin - it was rotted through, the roots suffocated in the watery dirt without any oxygen for days. The pumpkin wriggled and sobbed in my hands, alive , alive and dying, and I ran in fear.
I locked myself in my house, hoping to drown out the noise. The crying never stopped. The crops wailed and cried out, dying, dying, dying.
When I couldn't take it anymore, I gathered my tools from the shed as quickly as I could. I jumped on my raft and sailed towards the Floret Sandbar.
I guess I thought the woman could help me. She seemed so passionate about her unnatural flowers after all, but as I grew closer, I heard voices again. My heart dropped, but I did not hear the sorrowful cries of dying plants. I heard singing.
Magda. Magda. Magda.
Magda. That must have been her name.
The flowers were even more beautiful than before, with raindrops glittering on their petals like stars. The water didn’t seem to have risen around the banks of the garden at all, even though I knew that was impossible.
The woman, Magda, was there this time when I arrived, standing in the shallow water of the river, staring at me. Like she’d been waiting.
I climbed off my raft and she said nothing to me, simply walking towards her garden, winding through the complicated path. I took my tools along as I followed her, asking my burning questions as we went.
How did your garden grow so fast? Why can I hear my crops crying? Can you hear them? How do I make it stop?
She smiled at me, as if this was good news, “A good gardener listens,” she said.
I told her I didn’t want to listen, I wanted peace and quiet and not the haunting sounds of drowning plants constantly filling my ears. I got quite angry. I told her it didn't make any sense, the speed and size her flowers had grown, their powerful sweet smell, and their song chanted in harmony.
When I said this, the flowers’ chorus stopped.
Magda’s flowers murmured at me.
Magda. Hungry. Food.
Magda looked at her flowers, then at me. Not wanting to find out what that meant, I turned around and charged out of the garden.
Except I ran right through the garden. The path I had been sure was there before had shifted, and this time, when I crushed the plants beneath my feet, I noticed.
The crystal clear sound of breaking bones. The smell of iron. And when I looked down, streaks of dark blood on the ground where the flowers used to be.
I heard a scream behind me, just as I had before, but I heard it below me, and all around me, Magda and the flowers screaming in anguish.
Killer! Killer! Killer!
“No!” Magda screeched, “They are screaming out in pain - look what you’ve done!”
I stumbled around, trying to find the path that evaded me. More flowers were crushed underfoot, their flesh and bones breaking, blood seeping into my shoes. The garden felt larger than before, the already tall flowers suddenly growing up over my head, blocking my view.
I felt a hand grab my shoulder, and only barely managed to yank it off before I crashed through the edge of the garden.
I launched myself onto my raft once more and sailed away as fast as I could.
The third time I met the flower keeper, I never intended to.
It had been weeks since I escaped her garden. Weeks since I lent her my tools. And weeks filled with the now screaming voices of my plants.
Without my tools, there was nothing I could do to save my plants. They drowned in the water, dried up during the day, and screamed and screamed and screamed.
My head was ringing every time I escaped the house to go to work. I apologized to one of my neighbors for the noise, who simply looked at me in confusion. They hadn’t heard a thing - though, they did mention they could smell the rotting plants and asked me to at least throw them out.
Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. When I went outside and tried to rip the plants from the ground and be done with them, they only screamed louder. It was deafening, and I gave up.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I was sure Magda was the one causing this, ever since I stupidly plucked that flower, and recklessly ran through her garden. And somehow, I was sure, if she was gone, I’d never hear the voices of our gardens again.
I snuck over to the Floret Sandbar in the dead of night. All I brought with me was a single torch.
I set sail on my raft down the river, docked at the banks of the sandbar, and stood before the garden. The path was even more twisted and complicated than before. The flowers' colors were vibrant, still glowing under the moonlight, the smell still overpowering and made me want to vomit more than the rotting stench of my own dead garden.
Magda wasn’t here, and the flowers were quiet. I guess I thought they were asleep as I neared the edge of the now towering flowers, several yards above my head, stretching closer to the edge of the sandbar than ever before.
I came close to the garden, when an arm shot out from the shrubbery and grabbed me by the throat.
Inhuman strength lifted me into the air and I caught sight of Magda’s eyes, reflecting the colors of the flowers all around her. My torch fell to the ground as I clawed at her arms, to no avail.
“Have you come to make up for what you’ve done?” She asked.
I couldn’t have responded if I wanted to, with her fingers closing around my throat, and all I could do was watch as the flowers drooped down to surround me, covering my view of Magda, wrapping around my arms and legs, and swarming around my face.
This close, with the light of my torch hitting them from below, I could see the center of each flower where the petals meet, opening up into dark red maws. Sharp teeth lined the inside, and the flowers grew bigger, and bigger, snapping at me, until they were big enough to swallow my head whole.
I flailed and kicked and screamed with all my might, as thorns dug into my skin, tearing it with my every movement. I was about to die.
It must have been pure luck, that in my flailing, I managed to kick the torch at my feet into the garden.
The fire was instantaneous. The flowers retreated, writhing in the air as they burned. In the middle of it all was Magda, screaming.
She dropped me, as flames caught on her sleeves, but she didn’t care, only turned around to try and cradle the blazing flowers in her hands.
I stayed on the ground for only a moment, trying to catch my breath and recover from the horrible sight of the living flowers about to eat me alive. I tried to stand once, twice, falling to the ground before finally standing on shaking knees to face Magda one last time.
“I worked… day after day…” She croaked, the smoke coating her lungs and turning her voice into a horrible, grating shout, “to plant these flowers.”
She was engulfed by the flames, kneeling in the destruction of her garden. She was lifting something from the ground - my own shovel. I could feel terror and adrenaline rushing back through my veins as I realized the danger I was in.
The flowers may be dead, but Magda was not.
“Then you come and hurt them… over and over.”
She started to turn around towards me. I stumbled back to the river, back to my raft, too slow, too overwhelmed by the smoke and fire and fear to see properly.
I barely made it to the shallow water of the river when my own shovel whisked past my ear, splitting my cheek and drawing blood.
It landed in the river, and I reached for it as Magda’s voice came closer.
“I will make you understand… the flowers rage!”
She grabbed my shoulders, nails digging into my back and screamed, pushing me down and pulling me by my legs. I kicked and yelled as she dragged me back towards the flaming garden.
We came closer, the fire burning my eyes, and I swung.
The shovel hit her in the arm first, and she dropped my leg with a shout. Then I aimed for her knees, slicing through skin as she fell.
The blood I expected to start gushing from her never came. Instead, it was dirt, soil, spilling from the wound and joining the ground beneath my feet.
She laughed, despite being scorched, and cut, and bruised. I raised the shovel once more, and stabbed her in the back.
Again.
And again.
And again.
More and more dirt. Eventually she simply laid on the ground, laughing, until the dirt filled her mouth, and she was quiet.
Eventually I could no longer tell if I was hitting her body or the ground beside her, and I had to retreat. I left the shovel. I left the burning garden. And I left Magda.
I realize now she can never truly die. Only join the earth,become the dirt and soil, until she grows again like the flowers in her garden.
I hope that will not be for a long, long time.
ZELDA
Statement ends.
When we originally received this statement, it was of course very fragile because of its age. It was given to us by an archaeology student who wished to remain anonymous, who said they found it while exploring the ruins of Goponga Village. It’s hard to verify many of these statements, especially physical artifacts, but I do have a friend of a friend at the Hateno Ancient Technology Laboratory who confirmed its validity and approximate age.
Given the contents of the statement, I feel it is important to note that this section of Izra’s writings was the only one largely untouched by bugs eating away at the remaining pages. Apparently the rest were completely unsalvageable. I wonder why…
I sent Mipha out with Link to investigate the Floret Sandbar and Goponga Ruins - which, may I say, the etymological implications are astounding - this very well may be evidence of how the title of the Floret Sandbar came to be!
It’s been a bit of a joke that the Floret Sandbar has such a floral name for something so barren. I fell into a bit of a blupee hole back in college trying to figure out the origin - nearly changed my major because I was so obsessed with it, actually - but at that point the oldest reference to it was a newspaper clip about a travelling vendor who was on the sandbar looking for Energetic Rhino Beetles, but the sandbar only had Bladed Rhino Beetles and he got so upset he started throwing them at passers-by –
Ah, I’m getting off topic again. Mipha reported that the area is much like Izra described it to be in the beginning, mostly sand and gravel, only with a few sprouts of stubborn grass. No sign of a garden or ancient tools. Disappointing, but not altogether unsurprising.
The Goponga Ruins did seem to have lots of water damage, and is almost completely overgrown by wildflowers and weeds. Mipha took the Slate with her to take photos, which I am referencing now. One house stands out in particular, overgrown like the others, but the plants around it are all dead and rotting.
If I had to make a guess, I would say this was Izra’s home.
Could the events of this statement be what caused the ruin of Goponga Village? The timeline seems to match up - Goponga was destroyed about 500 years ago, possibly soon after Izra recorded his experience. That event is largely a mystery, but this could be a clue to what happened to them all those years ago.
I would submit it to local historian groups, but most organizations don’t accept anything from the Hyrule Institute as… reliable information.
[ZELDA SIGHS, FRUSTRATED]
Speaking of unreliable information, there are unfortunately no records of a ‘Magda’ in or around Goponga village at the time of the incidents. The lack of a last name certainly doesn’t help since we can’t try to track down any distant relatives for more information. As far as our research shows, this is the only instance of any record of Magda the flower keeper.
Magda’s appearance in this statement is hardly believable either. A woman with dirt instead of blood, raising a garden with flesh and bones and an appetite for living beings, apparently. I wouldn’t even know where to begin researching something like that, outside of our very own archive. And with so many statements to go through, that task seems nearly impossible.
As for Izra Tule, he has no direct descendants either. His records show he died in the ruin of Goponga along with the majority of the village. We’ve found a few people with the surname ‘Tule’ that I sent Daruk to interview, but with no luck.
That’s all the information our research provided on the case, but if any more evidence is found, I will record it myself and add it to the file. I wish I could do more, perhaps go out and investigate the sandbar myself…
[ZELDA SIGHS]
But no, I trust Mipha’s work. That’s all there is.
[ZELDA HUMS, DISAPPOINTED, LIKE SHE DOESN’T WANT TO END THE RECORDING]
Well, with that -
[THE CHAIR CREAKS AS SHE SHIFTS]
Recording ends.
[SHEIKAH SLATE CLOSES]