The Story of Me

"Love is a trick that nature plays on us to get us to reproduce. I want no part of it." "In a way, I'm disappointed Kara. There was a part of me that had hoped you would win and put out the rage in my heart. Sometimes it even scares me. But, then I get over it." "It hurts, doesn't it? Losing your family rips out your heart and your guts and your feelings until all that's left is the pain. Right? Welcome to the club." "You'd like to kill me. Wish you could."

There's only one way to begin telling the story of my life and that's to begin with my parents.  You could say that my life has been a series of accidents and that is precisely how Timison Pike and Emilia Cortylini would meet.  My father was a middle class merchant who sold spices shipped in to Hyrule from Holodrum.  Mother was a singer, a celebrity in her own right.  She was once invited to perform at the Starlight and Still Waters club in Catalan, a rather lofty honor, especially for a Hylian in the height of the conflict between Catalan and Hyrule.  Their meeting was one of fate.  My mother, a

respectable lady of the court by birth, was sent to North Castle to sing for a command performance before the royal family.  My father was also as the castle that night, accompanying his older business partner Sid, whose daughter Tori was to be married to the king's brother.  The moment my mother stepped on the stage and my father laid eyes on her, destiny's course was set.

After a reasonable courtship, my parents were wed and elected to settle down in Saria Village, at the time a promising place for the upper middle class.  Being both very young, it would be many years before they decided to have children.  They spent those years deeply engrossed in conversation and romance, as is proper, I should think, for any newly wed pair of lovers.  My

birth, as indeed much of my life, would cause scandal.  About three years prior, panic erupted in Saria when a young boy, the son of our neighbors, was born with brown eyes.  Hylians had never before witnessed one of their own kind born with such a deformity and it was considered a disgrace.  We were all supposed to have blue eyes, everyone insisted.  It wasn't natural.  The next year, five more children were born with the same condition.  When I was born, I was the thirteenth child afflicted.  Of course, this was of little concern for my parents.  They called me Catalina after a song of my mother's.  For a middle name they chose Darla which means "darling one" or "dear one," I forget which.

Nearly three years to the day after my birth, my brother Owen was born, becoming the twentith and final child of the village to be born with brown eyes.  It was around the time of Owen's birth that my mother's parents, Micino Cortylini and Iola Prentice came to live with us.  Grandfather Cortylini had been a knight in his prime, an excellent soldier and a brave warrior.  But, like most men of decoration and honor, civilian life was difficult to adjust to.  Grandmother Prentice was a soft spoken woman of great breeding.  She seemed to understand her husband's affliction, but found herself helpless to

do much of anything to help him.  She died when I was five years old.  Afterwards, my grandfather became unbearable, so much that my Aunt Leda refused to visit the house again.  I never got to know my cousins for it.

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