A fire in dead winter, isn't that the rarest thing? One would have to be unbelievably unlucky to have an uncontrollable fire in the midst of a very heavy snowing, seeing as it was ridiculously cold and tiny yet numerous flecks of ice were floating down from the sky, ready and waiting to snuff out any chance of a campfire you might have.
And yet, there was a little wooden cottage by the woods, a little bit of a walk from the nearest village, burning to the ground without much rhyme or reason.
It simply defies logic, didn't it?
However, to the little blonde girl who stood tear-stricken in front of the raging inferno, it all made perfect sense.
The world simply hated her, that was all. Not such a big deal.
No, actually, it made even less sense to her then it would to any other person who might be witnessing this scene. To them, it looked like a fire that had probably been started by the stove or the fireplace let to burn for too long. But to her ...
To her, it was a graveyard.
A graveyard for her family, a loving mother and the bestest big brother a little kid could ever look for. A graveyard for the warm bed she had spent many, many cold nights rather like this one, cuddled up in her covers or trembling with illness - one or the other. A graveyard for the toys and drawings she and her sibling had made when it wasn't fit to go outside and had carefully stashed in an old chest crafted by their father. Every plan her brother and she had ever made, every hardship her family had ever endured together, every handmade item their household held along with all the sweat and tears ... sudennly all gone.
Turned to ashes.
And all she knew about the reason why was that it had come out of nowhere. Unexpected. Unannounced.
Unwanted.
The girl was barely old enough to remember her experiences, but she vowed then and there on her silently flowing tears and her dear, dearly beloved bunny hoodie cloak, the only thing she'd managed to save from the fire, that she would not forget this spot.
"I swear to the heavens, on the three eternal goddesses Faore, Nayru and Din, solemn as the earth I stand and sure as the sun rising in the east to this promise."
And she wiped her tears on her sleeve with the words she had heard repeated all throughout her life. It was a promise for life, like the sort of vows one would take while marrying. Maybe she didn't fully understand all of it, but she understood that it was serious, and that's what she needed right then.
She turned around to leave, her face unusually hard for such a young child. She thought she was all done with her greivances and sobbing.
She didn't even make it three steps before she keeled to the ground, her throat burning with tears and her cries of pure and total greif.
The girl stayed like this for some time, crying and sniveling curled into the fetal position in the snow until the powdery white in front of her turned a strange, fuzzy gray, then ever so slowly faded to black.
No longer feeling her resolve of steel, she simply ...
... let go.
She sank.
She is depressed.
It has been a week since the fire already, and she has only woken up three days ago. She was told so by a little boy whom she found sitting beside her bedside squirming in excitement and worry.
"You're finally awake~!" he had sung. "It's been soooo long already. Why wouldn't you wake up?"
She refused to answer him.
In fact, she refused to answer any and all of the questions she was asked and didn't react at all to the ones concerning her family and where she lived.
The boy doesn't seem to care much that she won't speak, and cheerfully informed her on all the things he seemed to be able to tell her. Like how his name was Link and how his father had found her out in the snow half-buried in front of a large pile of ashes around the size of a house, he'd said, and how he had brought her into his house and cared for her even though she wouldn't wake up for four days and how he had told Link to watch the house while he went errand running.
"At first it was drop-dead boooooring, but now you're awake so it's not so boring anymore!"
When the father returned home, he first inspected her thoroughly and made sure she was feeling alright before confirming everything the boy, Link, had said. He, however, was far more concerned at her silence and tried various methods to get her to speak to them.
It didn't work the first day ...
... or the second ...
... or the third.
Now, on the fourth day, she is hopelessly and completely depressed. It had been eating away at her since she had woken up, and now she wouldn't even get out of bed. Link lost his bubbling river of words in concern for her, and the house is quiet now.
She doesn't like it. Link's words kept her corrupting depression at bay due to the cheery way he delivered them, but now that he too has locked up his words, all she can do is boil in her own misery.
And she knows the only way to fix it is ... to talk.
She really doesn't want to because it means she has to start answering their questions, but if it will fix her miserable emotions, she'll try it.
So at around twelve noon, still in bed, with only Link sitting by her bedside with his head down and feet kicking half-heartedly, the girl said her very first words in a total of seven days.
"Zelda." is all she said.
He is cold.
He is so, so very cold and he doesn't have any idea as to why in the slightest. His chest is hurting - aching, more like. Aching for something that he knows in the back of his head he will never get.
And his legs are hurting like hell.
After attempting to move and finding that his entire body is a) frozen solid and b) completely devoid of all forms of energy, he decides to assess his mental well-being first so he can regain some of his strength.
First, he checks his memory.
I am Sheik. I am seven years old. I live a little distance away from Kakariko Village with my mother and ... sister? My mother's name is ... um ... is it Daphnes? My sister's name is ... uhh ... um, my sister is ... how old? She must be around ... ah, five years old? Four? That doesn't seem right ...
Sheik is horrified, then disappointed, then horribly, horribly, terribly depressed.
Why can't he remember?
He lays there pondering this miserably for a time, during which his body slowly begins retaining some energy. By the time he's noticed, he's gathered enough strength to open his eyes and sit up a little. At least enough to prop himself up on his elbows.
And he is shocked.
Shocked to see a large pile of black ash around the diameter of a small house. Shocked to see the smallest of small amounts of smoke, wood smoke, curling out from beneath the black ash, meaning whatever it was had been burnt recently. Shocked and thoroughly aghast to smell the very, very faint and rather smoky scent of blood through it all. Strange and twice as metallic-tinged, as if ... burnt.
There is still no life in his limbs, but his heart is certainly lively as it beats ten million times a minute, telling him to get out of there. To move his frozen arse far, far away from this place.
And so, driven solely by the pounding of his frantic heart and his extreme desire to get away, Sheik scrambles clumsily to his feet and runs.
He still doesn't know what made him hesitate, stop once, and take one last look at the ashes before bolting into the woods.
He still doesn't know why he cries as he does.
(A/N): So, uhm ... er ... I'll call this the prologue. Yeah. And this is probably the best story I've uploaded on this account so far. (I'm such a terrible writer this whole thing was barely three pages on Google docs in Times New Roman font ;─:)
I was playing Twilight Princess a few days ago! And was reminded of the thing called ZeLink! And was reminded of how much I so looooove this pairing! And read for a little bit! And received inspiration from the Awesome Fairy of Total Inspiration at ten PM yesterday who governs by her own rules and appears whenever she feels like it, deal with it! And I ended the chapter here because I felt like it, deal with that too.
Er, I hope you liked it? Keep an eye out for more? All that jazz. Bye~
- PKK