fandomhighdorms | Fourth Floor Common Room; Sunday, March 25th.

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Fourth Floor Common Room; Sunday, March 25th.

Being without electricity didn't bother Sidon too much; there wasn't much of it in Hyrule, and what there was (usually in the raw form of lightning) was practically lethal to the Zora. But there was one aspect of it that he'd grown rather used to and found extremely important, especially now that he was without it: heating his sleeping tank. Oh, how he'd taken that small luxury for granted! So now he was sleeping on dry ground, still chilled to the bone, honestly surprised that he didn't have to break a film of ice off the top of the tank with how frigid the water had become.

Thus the reason he'd migrated to the common room, blankets thrown over his shoulders, huddled in front of the TV-turned-fireplace for warmth, eating still-frozen fishsticks out of a bad.

He knew it wasn't likely to be a treat for many people here, but for him, the little delicacy made his current misery somewhat more tolerable.

[[open common room is open!]]

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"No need to be sorry," Sidon said with a faint smile. "I was so young I barely even knew her, and my sister filled in role nurturing and caring for and teaching me."

Of course, his sister was dead, too, and that was something to be sorry for, but he felt one dead relative was more than enough for a conversation.

"Besides," he chuckled lightly, "we're very communal, us Zora. If Mipha hadn't taken up the task, I'm sure I'd have a whole swarm of the Domain's females flocking around me to take care of me."

And now he had a whole swarm of them flocking around him for a very different reason, but that was another story.

"Do you ever wonder, though?" Sidon asked, tilting his head. "About who he might be? Your mother never spoke of him?"

Uma seesawed her hand. "I used to wish he'd come and take me away," she said, staring into the fire. "But that wasn't the same as wishing I knew more about him. He was always this...I'unno, father-shaped cutout? Like I just wanted to get away and he was a convenient way to do it. I never really wondered about him. Mo--Ursula was always too big and too present and too much to wonder about anyone else."

"I can understand how that feels," Sidon smiled softly again, nodding, thinking of his father in pure size and his sister in pure spirit. "Do you sometimes feel the need to have to live up to being so big and present and...much? Or are you really not interested in anything like that at all?"

Again, that little hand seesaw. Sidon had hit upon a topic that filled Uma only with uncertainty and confusion.

"She's one of the meanest, more terrifying villains on the Isle," Uma said softly. "Her name commands instant fear. I command instant fear because I'm her daughter. Hard not to want to step out of her shadow and prove that I can be twice as terrifying and ten times more wicked. But at the same time...that frustrates the hell out of me because even when I'm trying to strike out on my own, I'm still doing it for her, kinda. And I don't want to owe her anything."

Sidon had to chuckle a little bit; he hoped Uma didn't take it the wrong way, of course, but it just slipped out of him as he thought about what she said.

"It's a little funny," he explained softly, "that's how I feel about my sister, only she was the exact oppsite of mean and terrifying. I don't think there will ever be a soul as sweet and gentle as Mipha's. Everyone had such high hopes for her, and I fear I may never quite live up to them. But what I do know I can do is try my best, be bold and be confident that I will do right by my people and Hyrule!"

He pumped his fist a little, careful not to dislodge his blanket, and gave Uma a broad smile. "You can do it, too! I have faith in you! Though it does feel a bit strange encouraging villainous behavior out of you...but perhaps that is the way in which you might distinguish yourself from your mother! By being as great and powerful as she was....only good! Twice as terrific and and ten times more kind!"

Hey, he couldn't be blamed for at least trying, right?

Besides, hopeful delusion still seemed a better option than admitting to Uma that he had yet to find her even remotely terrifying or wicked. Because he had absolutely no desire to prove that notion wrong.

Probably for the best. Because that was exactly the kind of thing Uma would do.

"Nah," she said. "I'm a VK--a Villain kid. My parents are villains, I was raised among villains--and, c'mon, what's good ever done for me?"

Besides imprison her before she was ever born?

"Good is fine if you're a pretty little princess or a handsome prince--" she gave him a wry glance "--where stuff is easy and everyone bends over backwards to make sure you're okay. The rest of us--well, some of us don't get a choice. And the rest of us just aren't chumps."

If there was one thing that Uma had learned, it was that Good and Evil were a things you were, not things you did.

"...Sorry 'bout your sister, though," she said, a little softer, both in tone and volume. Because, yeah. She'd heard that past tense, Sidon.

Did...did Uma just call him handsome? Though he knew it was the last thing about what she said he should be focusing on, Sidon couldn't help be caught a little off-guard about it, and maybe a little pleased. Sure, all the Zora females couldn't stop talking about how handsome he was, but no one ever said it to his face before...not even in a subtle, by-association sort of way.

But then Mipha always softened a little, and he gave her a slight nod at her own softness. "Thank you," he said, giving her a faint, very distant smile. "But, you see, sometimes we princes and princesses don't have such an easy time, either. My sister was supposed to be one of the Champions that brought defeat to the great evil plaguing our land. The Hylian princess Zelda was destined to gain the powerful to end Calamity Ganon. And now the Champions are dead and the only reason Calamity Ganon hasn't complete destroyed Hyrule is because Princess Zelda has been trapped in the castle, keeping him at bay in an endless struggle for the past fifty years. The storybooks aren't always true. At least, they haven't been in my world..."

And he frowned, because he rather wished it could be that simple. Even if it meant she'd be a villain, he couldn't help being a little envious of Uma if that truly was how it worked in her world.

Yup. She'd absolutely called him handsome. And made no bones about it.

"I mean, it works that way for some people," Uma said. "If you're a poor but honorable thief or a princess with a mean stepmother or a rebellious teenage girl who just wants to be free, then...yeah. You get cute animal friends to help you out or the talking furniture fights your enemies for you or, hell, you can take a nap and everything gets tidied up so that you get your happily ever after delivered on a platter when you wake up. The rest of us have to actually work to try to do anything and even then, the game is rigged."

But it was the only one it town.

Sidon looked as though he was about to say something, finger poised, shoulders squared, but then stopped as soon as he opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, then curled back into his blanket, head tilted. He thought to approach a different thought, then, going through a similar process, retracting it again, with a small thoughtful hum this time.

"Your world," he finally decided on, "sounds very...interesting."

That felt...diplomatic enough.

Uma laughed at him. "Just say it," she said. "You don't have to worry about bein' all polite. I'm not."

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Fourth Floor Common Room; Sunday, March 25th.

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