Sour Apple Blossom

During the decline of the age of prosperity, there lives in lower-central Hyrule a girl named Afalon. For generations, her family has owned an apple orchard, and while that orchard isn't all she's ever seen, per se, it's still all she's really known, for all eighteen years of her life. Raised on that orchard, she feels like she's spent more time growing up in the apple trees themselves than in the farmhouse she shares with her mother, Eithne. Ever since she was young, she's climbed the trees, sometimes just for fun, sometimes for work, sometimes to hide, and sometimes, just to see how high she can get... and how far into the distance she can see. It's earned her her fair share of bruises from falls and scoldings from her mother, but no stinging cut or slap on the wrist bites worse than climbing the trees can soothe.

Afalon has never been able to please her mother, something that her mother expresses to her easily and often. She's not petite and doll-like enough to be considered traditionally 'pretty', and is kind of awkwardly proportioned. That, and the fact that while Afalon is eager and earnest, she lacks more refined social skills, and never thinks before she speaks, or looks before she leaps, leads her mother to believe Afalon will never find a husband 'in time'. The husband part is something Afalon doesn't really care for, but the in time part does make her uneasy every time her mother mentions it.

Afalon's mother is sick. She has been for a while, now, but with autumn setting in and the weather getting colder, her health has been failing faster. Afalon doesn't know how to feel about it. She often feels like the orchard is a prison, and her mother the jailer-- she's mean enough to be one, for sure. So in that way, her passing will be a sort of release. At the same time, however, Afalon is afraid to lose her only family. Having been treated all her life like a painfully average, underwhelming girl, and with only her mother's unattainable standards for company, Afalon doesn't know who she is without her. She doesn't know who she would be if she left the apple trees. Inheriting the orchard is equally daunting. Afalon isn't sure she wants to be ruled by the same cycles of harvest her whole life. All she can imagine of a future spent on her family's orchard is her mother's face.

Afalon doesn't care about finding a husband, but she is running out of time to forge her own path. She's outgrowing her mother, and she's outgrowing the apple trees. She wants to climb higher. She wants to see farther. She wants to be more than a childhood nickname-- Sweet Apple Blossom-- that never suited her. She's been having strange dreams, and they're only getting stranger.

She doesn't yet know what it is she's meant for, but it's not a lifetime of harvests. She'll discover her destiny sooner than she thinks, and despite all her fears, she will grow into it. She is determined to rise to the challenge when the moment of truth arrives. However, neither that moment, nor the challenge, will be what she's expecting.