Image Credit: Zelda Dungeon

Dark clouds. Trevor remembered what his mother said about the weather on the day everything changed.

It wasn't supposed to rain. The day would be perfect for her son and his friends.

For a time, it was. Trevor and the others smiled in the classroom they learned in at school.

They laughed on the bus, chattered during lunch and plotted during a competition against the fifth graders.

Everything went according to a plan. The day was beautiful. Children were meant to enjoy it.

Nothing could have gone wrong—but then the sky darkened.

Lightning crashed to the Earth. Nature had an outburst, a rage it could no longer contain.

The ground shook. Trevor recalled how it tore open, crumbling into countless clumps of grass, dirt and rock. A pitch black abyss pulled him in.

Trevor tried to reach out for anything that could keep him above ground.

He found nothing.

Everything turned dark.

Trevor thought he died at first, but a voice said otherwise: "Trevor!"

His eyes snapped open. Trevor jolted his body off a hard, rigid surface.

Trevor gulped in sweltering air. His throat grew parched and he coughed while his best friend Jerome pulled him up. His weary eyes looked around.

The children found themselves in a narrow canyon. The path was wide enough for someone to stretch out their arms from side to side without touching the red rock walls covered in moss and fungi.

White vapors wisped from the floor like spirits rising out of their graves. The smoke faded as soon as it rose above Trevor's head, but the heat lingered.

Rebecca and Sheila embraced one another a short distance away. Sheila seemed to cry on Rebecca's shoulder, scared of what happened to them all.

The look on Rebecca's face showed fear as well. She always kept herself tough.

Trevor could tell. He did the same thing all the time, lying with his eyes and his smile so no one could know what was really happening.

"Jerome," Trevor rasped. "Where are we?"

Of course, Trevor already knew the answer.

His friends didn't know.

No one did.

NOW

Zora's domain was like a maze. It had so many corners Trevor didn't want to see, so many walls of glistening silver stone he didn't need to find himself blinded by.

Eventually, he made his way onto a path that inclined. It curved upward like a hill and Trevor followed it.

He felt alone by the time he reached the path's end and the loneliness was enough to make him stop.

Water rose up to the top of his ankles. The cold touch made him shiver. Trevor was careful not to let his feelings get the best of him.

He didn't want to make a single drop rise from the surface by mistake. It happened before and happened in a far worse way.

His heart pounded every time he thought of that day at the lake outside of Oak Shire. He almost did the worst possible thing and he didn't know how to respond to such a mistake.

The water flowed over an edge that oversaw the rest of Zora's Domain. When Trevor looked outward, he realized he was at the waterfall.

He stepped back in case Claudius, Jerome or the others were looking for him. Trevor didn't want to be found. He wanted to shrink down to a small size and fade away.

Maybe that would help him wake up from the nightmare. Maybe he was in bed this whole time, wandering through a dream, waiting to get shaken awake by one of his parents so he could rise and start his summer.

It was all a nightmare. Maybe he'd be out soon.

When Trevor slunk like a rock dropped from a high place. He didn't care that his pants grew damp from the water.

After pushing his knees against his chest, Trevor buried his face into the caps and sealed his eyes shut.

Everything was dark.

At least he didn't hear the voice.

The voice was so eerie. There were many things about it that Trevor could have explained as his reason for being terrified.

It was chilling. The voice was right next to him, or drifted somewhere in his brain. Worst of all, though, Trevor could tell that the voice sounded just like—

Weeping.

Someone was crying nearby. Trevor lifted his head and listened, coming to the realization that he wasn't alone.

The weeping made him stand. He looked back the way he came. In his hurry to disappear, Trevor must have passed by whoever caused the sound.

A part of him wanted to stay put and let someone else handle it. He went in that direction anyway.

Halfway down the hill-like path, Trevor saw a boy sitting in the same way he did by the waterfall's edge. He must have been a Zora child with the way he looked; the boy had a purple complexion.

Like the other Zoras, a tail sprouted from the back of his head, draping over his right shoulder and going down to his waist. Glittering scales decorated the tail and the rest of his body. The Zora boy wore a white toga with a brass button fastened to it to hold the wardrobe together.

Trevor turned back around. The Zora boy wasn't in the mood. They were similar to each other, wanting to be alone, wanting to do nothing.

It made sense for them to have their space and distance. Trevor could stay in the shadow of the waterfall until he was found, or hope to never be found again. Maybe that wasn't realistic.

Someone was going to find him. They were going to drag him back to the Armory, or yell at him for being rude about the Zora Princess, or whatever.

This wasn't going to last.

"...Is...is everything OK?"

Trevor faced the Zora boy again. When the child didn't respond, Trevor called out to him in a louder voice, careful to not sound harsh.

The boy lifted his head. He had a big pair of eyes not unlike Navi's. Strange circles formed around each eye and the boy's cheeks were wet. He must have cried for a while.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" Trevor asked. "Are you lost?"

The Zora child shook his head before burying his face into his hands once more. After a few extra sobs, he hiccuped and struggled to breathe.

"I lost rupees," he said in a somber tone. "I was—I was looking at—the domain. And—I—I—" The boy wailed. Trevor's skin crawled as the crying grew louder. At this point, he was going to have to wait for the footsteps.

"I was gonna spend them at the shoppe!" said the Zora child. "But—now my mother won't even let me get new rupees! She never will!"

"Hey..." Trevor lifted his hands, trying to quiet the kid he just met. "Bud, please...don't do that. Please don't cry anymore, OK? Look, where did they go?"

The Zora child pointed in the direction the rupees were dropped with looking the same way. Trevor's stomach flipped.

He already knew that the rupees were long gone at this point. The boy probably dropped them in the current beneath their feet.

Then, they plummeted to the domain's lower level, lost in the rush. Each jewel was probably done for and good as drowned at this point.

"Tough break," said Trevor. "Look...I'm really sorry kid. But we got to calm down, OK? Kids lose stuff all the time, it's not like it's the end of the world."

The Zora child didn't feel encouraged by Trevor's words. His mouth trembled and he stared at his own reflection in the water.

He seemed to shrink a bit, as if a cold wind came through and chilled the space. Even Trevor realized how distant he might have sounded, how uncaring his words were.

"They belonged to me," said the child. "They were mine. All I want is something for me. I have six older brothers and they always get everything...but I was going to get a little bit for myself. Now I screwed it up."

Trevor froze. His shoulders slouched as he ran his hands through his hair. After exhaling, Trevor went to the edge of the waterfall.

He looked down at Zora's Domain and thought of the water below. There was always something that bothered him about what rested in its depths and what would happen if somebody fell in without ever coming out.

Someone was always lost in the dive of life, in the deepest parts of a pool, a river, a lake or a sea. Trevor didn't know how to feel about his powers yet...but something about knowing the boy's troubles and doing nothing about it bothered him.

With a deep breath, Trevor took a dive. He swam through the water's depths, looking for rupees in the deep.

They gleamed on the reservoir's floor, standing out in Trevor's eye. Anyone else's lungs would have shriveled and collapsed while being underwater for a time.

However, Trevor wasn't like anyone else. He controlled water.

His fingers brought rivers to life. He could live in the deepest lake or most expansive sea without consequence. It was a formality to come up for air.

Trevor knew he didn't have to rise to the surface, but it felt good to believe he was normal...and at the same time terrible to hide from himself. He was never sure of what to do in any situation.

Soon, every rupee the Zora child lost was in Trevor's hands. He came out of the water with the glimmering bundle, his clothes drenched from the swim.

Water could still make Trevor feel cold; he shivered as goosebumps riddled his skin. He took a long walk back to the top of the waterfall, to the path where the astonished Zora child waited. The boy was on his feet, his jaw dropping from shock. His eyes glimmered with gratitude.

"I didn't know humans could do that," he said. "I'm too little to even dive, but you swam like you've been one of us your whole life!"

Trevor smirked as he handed the rupees over. "You'll be better than me," he said. "When you get older and taller. I just have a gift."

"You definitely do."

Trevor's neck stiffened. He was breathless for a moment as thoughts rushed through his head.

Then, with a deep sigh he turned around. Trevor shrugged his shoulders, ready to offer a thousand apologies. However, as he looked up at Claudius, he noticed the gentle look on the Zora leader's face.

"You weren't hard to find," Claudius declared. "But I suppose I needed a better evaluation of you. You're hiding a lot of talent beneath this facade."

Trevor had a response, but he choked on it. He wanted to call what he did a bunch of dumb luck, but he knew it already. There was no fooling this man.

"The fairy and the forest boy spoke for you," Claudius continued. "You have a gift of water. This is strange. No one should have that at all unless they're Zoras. Even though, what they described...it's fascinating. It reminds me of a legend..."

Claudius pressed a webbed hand to his mouth. It seemed like his turn to keep a secret, to lock away words that weren't meant to come out.

After gazing around the space, Claudius shook his head and closed his eyes, smirking.

"It's folly to think that...young man, I have a place I need to bring you. It should help you get better equipped for what is up ahead. Follow me."

Trevor couldn't believe it; he was right behind Claudius, obeying a command. The two of them left the Zora child behind, but Trevor heard one last gleeful giggle from the boy, whose name he realized he never learned.

"I appreciate your help!" the Zora child exclaimed. "Good luck with finding Ruto and Jabu-Jabu! I'm cheering for you all the way!"

Trevor looked back at the boy. He lifted his handful of rupees like a gift for a shrine. They seemed fitting for the occasion.

Trevor could pick out every color of every jewel cupped in the boy's palms. They looked so much clearer when they were out of the water's depths.