Hello everybody! So just as a warning, this story is completely different than anything I've ever written before, and it's EXTREMELY dark. If you're looking for something romantic...or happy...or that induces good feels in any way...don't read this. It is sad and it is scary (at least I think so). Just a little disclaimer. Now if you DO decide to read, enjoy! ^,^
1
When people ask me where my home is, I tell them that I don't have one. I suppose I did at one point, during a time in my life that I can hardly remember now, but I never bother mentioning that. If I can't remember anything about it, not the little moments or the big moments or the faces or the voices, it wouldn't be right to claim it as my home. Some nights, when the goddesses are kind enough to bless me with sleep, I dream of it. But the dreams are hazy. I can see faces all around me that seem to be glowing with warmth, calling my name and welcoming me home. Then my eyes open, the voices and the faces disappear into their mangled abyss once more, and I just continue telling people that I have no home.
There are two places, only two, to which I always return. They're the closest places I have to a home, but even now I can't bring myself to call them home. Someone feels happy at home. He feels content, satisfied, as if he's where he was always meant to be. He feels like he could stay there forever and build his life. He can sleep at his home without worrying about nightmares. I have no place like that. Nonetheless, I continue returning. Maybe the memories are calling to my unconscious soul, so they keep hungrily bringing me back.
The two places are the Sacred Grove and Arbiter's Grounds.
I've somehow managed to make sense of my attachment to the grove. It's where my life truly began. It had been sitting for centuries inside of that pedestal, weakly crying out for me, and only when I had graciously drawn it out had it blessed me with its gifts. The Master Sword was my life, is my life, and it sustains the delicate balance of my survival on its bloody blade. The grove carries an atmosphere of beautiful mysticism. If asked, I would not be able to tell anybody how many times I've been there since my first fateful discovery of its existence. The maze, once the source of my everlasting frustration, has now become a source of solace. I can walk through the pathways, wander into the shallow waters, let my feet take me where they will, without the fear of getting lost. The eerie echoes that whistle through the trees are instruments playing the most wonderful symphony, the type of symphony that only ears like mine can appreciate—ears that have already been stained by the bloodcurdling screams of death.
I still can't fully comprehend my desires to return to Arbiter's Grounds. The memories of that place are undoubtedly powerful, but they're not good memories. They're frightening, sad, scarring ones. That desert, with its scorching heat and freezing nights and endless chasms, has nothing to offer me. And yet, I keep going back. When I find myself wandering and questioning the next step in the seemingly pointless journey of my life, it always seems like a good place to start. Maybe it's because, just as the Sacred Grove is where my life began, Arbiter's Grounds is where my life ended. After the mirror shattered...after that soul-crushing sound rang through the air, telling me triumphantly that everything was over, my life ended. I had spent years fighting to do what I had felt was the only thing that I could do—the only thing that had given me purpose. I had spent years fighting against evil. And the mirror, I suppose, represented that fight. It represented the evil that had given me purpose. The nightmares only started after it shattered. In my entire life, I had never had a single nightmare until the day the mirror disappeared from my life. The shadow never appeared in my dreams before then.
So I suppose I do know why I go back there. I go back because I feel obligated to. I go back because it's where I began my descent into insanity.