Disclaimer: Nintendo owns Zelda- not me.
A/N: I fixed and re-uploaded this. Old work (from 8 yrs ago), but still special to me.
Key:
Parenthesis ( - ) = telepathically
Italics= Navi's thoughts
One
Rocks rain down like bomb flowers reaped from the sun's flaring face. I hide underneath his cap in fear of being crushed by their smoldering momentum. My owner cunningly escapes the jarring bouts of mountain fragments by jumping sideways and rolling into protective crevices. But hundreds of boulders are against him, and soon enough, one strikes his left shoulder.
Oh, my Goddesses, I think. What if we don't make it to the top?
He totters then shrugs off the pulsating pain. Stay strong...
The earth shivers. I feel my brain rattle in my head, my vision becomes a kaleidoscope.
A gigantic spider web lined with blue sky waits to trap Link ahead. He sees it, too, and slows down. He is able to since the avalanche of rocks has reduced to pebbles and dust. Link can shrug them both off, but not me. The dust affects my sensitive fairy nostrils and the larger pebbles are proportionate in size to my head. One hit and I'm for sure down. I remain safe here –under his cap- while he pulls out his fairy slingshot and knocks down fifteen Skullwalltulas, five at a time. Impressive, I think before the kaleidoscope vanishes in a blink, the obscurity known to the blind consumes my vision, and reality drizzles onto its darkness, until I'm seeing a half-distorted world.
Rainbow dust, pixie powder, star showers! It's not the first time I'm seeing all three, but I've discovered that if I think about them a lot, they'll go away.
Whoo! It worked!
A wall! There's no spider web or fifteen Skullwalltulas, just a laddered wall along the mountainside. The bruised corpses of three (yes, three) Skullwalltulas lay on the floor as dry bones do in the desert, all life submerging in the bottomless pools of their ebony agleam eyes… like life wrapped in death or a black dwarf in the night sky unwilling to die, their cores shine through the darkness.
He's just standing there, staring at them with me. Link, climb already! They've faded! See? Gone. Now move it. Ugh. The boy with his habits…
He always stays for a moment, waiting for his victims to fade before he proceeds with his quest. I know what he is thinking: This could have been avoided, just like the dismembering of tektites and the slaughtering of Lizalfos. He blames it on himself. This is his fault for disturbing them, he says.
Arachnids are not this kid's friends. Queen Gohan's death resulted in weeks of mumbling in his sleep- or was it whimpering? The cursed family in Kakariko Village has him tethered to this fear. I know why he helps them: To free himself of the responsibility and not have to look at skeletal faces, embraced by the shadows of that house. A house that chases daylight away and attracts the curious… like Link.
I don't know what's more upsetting: Link not accustoming to murder or he accustoming to it. I don't want him to drive that sword into them with apathy, yet I don't want him to experience their pain when he does. He's a hero, but he's also a killer – a murderer in the eyes of his fallen foes. And he knows it, too.
"Hey," I say concerned. This is my way of keeping him fully conscious while offering some condolence.
His head bobs up, as though it would allow him to see me. I don't need to say more; he knows what I'm thinking, our closeness and my place atop his head seems to allows our minds to be in sync- not that they're not.
Our thoughts are in accord. We share emotions, too, sometimes, when they are at their peak. Love is one of them. He loves Saria more than life. I can feel it when he plays the fairy ocarina; there is a sigh of worship with every note. When he plays it for Malon, there's a bond of friendship; for Princess Zelda, there's the undying despair to please, to live up to her; and for Ruto, there's insecurity but less pressure, since her interests are beyond 'silly songs.' They're four secrets that he'll take to his grave, but I won't.
Link begins to climb.
Peeking through the cap, I make sure there are no loose boards. I'm all about the little details, and at my size, it is only appropriate.
I cringe. His fingernails are blue. I wish I could do more for him.
We reach the top. He let's himself fall, and I fly out. "Link, we made it!" I cheer, fluttering about his grubby face. It becomes sickeningly silent. Beating my wings rapidly in his face to cool him off, I begin to whimper.
"No, not yet, Link! Please get up and I'll help you find the Great Fairy's cavern. Sh-She'll make you feel better."
You didn't climb the highest mountain in Hyrule just to die, did you, boy?
On the other hand, this is Death Mountain.
He stirs. "Listen," he breathes out. I do, but only hear silence echo silence.
"What- what do you hear?"
He pulls himself up as best as he can. I lug him forward by the tunic's front, steering him away from the edge. He raises one of his long, pointy ears in the air, and speaks. "Can't you hear it? A song- a tune. Near. I can hear it calling, Navi."
I don't hear anything- why? I thought we shared minds, Link. I thought you opened your mind to me…
Link walks achingly slow to the mountain wall. Curious to where this mysterious tune will lead him, I follow suit.
"Navi, hand me a bomb," he commands, feeling the smooth dark wall with his hands.
"A bomb?"
"I can hear it coming from inside." I shake my head. In a puff of smoke, I make a bomb appear. Link holds its wick against my body's glow. I close my eyes, envisage fire (increasing my body temperature), and the wick ignites. He tosses the bomb, we step back and BOOM!
The Great Fairy's Cavern! He has found it, a feat accomplished mostly without me.
"Hey! How did you know?"
"Shh." He listens attentively then enters.
Walls are melting, reminding me of liquid metal running down the sides of an anvil. Lilac marble fences a glittering, foaming fountain. I remember it all. I've been here before- maybe in another life. Yes, my life as an ordinary fairy- a fairy without a boy.
"Link! Look! The crest of the royal family is here." I hover around the gold Triforce on the top step leading to the fountain. He pulls out the ocarina and plays Zelda's Lullaby.
While he waits for the Great Fairy to appear, I linger about the cavern. Why can't I hear Her song? It's a song that belongs to my race; only our kind is intended to hear it. Why is it that this boy can hear it but not me? He's not a fairy!
"Link, can we go now? Our company is not fancy enough for Miss Fairy Majesty." My disappointment is only slightly above my bitterness towards this moment.
He clears his voice. "Navi, she's right in front of me."
Oops. I grimace. "I knew that!" I perch myself on his shoulder and whisper in his ear: "If you're lying, I'm gonna—Hey! Listen to me when I'm threatening you, boy!"
Link continues to stare at the back wall. "The Great Fairy of Power wants to know if you can see her."
I answer bashfully, "Um, no."
The boy stares ahead, again. "Oh."
"What? What did she say?"
"The channel that connects our minds is closing, so our powers are splitting. You can't see her because I have some of your fairy powers. The song, the Great Fairy- It was you who was to hear and see them, not me. And this is all because our bond is- is falling apart."
My eyes begin to water. It's his fault. Whenever he looks at me with those blue eyes of his, I'm overwhelmed by the loss of innocence I see in them. There used to be a sparkle in them, but they've seen too many gruesome sights and the fragile blue have dulled over the years.
"If I can't trust you to be there, how am I going to make things right?" he asks aloud, but there was more than that. 'I thought you were my friend…' his face, grimy, beyond tired and distraught, really says.
I start to cry.
"No! Link" -I look deep into the blue night of his eyes- "I still am. I've never lost hope in you. Never. I've never let you down and never will… You're the most important person in the world to me."
He listens again, unconvinced… are the words tinged with an unknown betrayal? "She said that you're jealous."
Jealous? I wanted take one of Link's bombs, light it, and toss it in the center of the fountain. KABOOM! and that Fairy would have been charred for sure. But it was true. A part of me was jealous- jealous that someday my work would be forgotten. There would never be a Heroine of Time- only a Hero. "I'm sorry, Link. Just that sometimes, I want to be you so bad it hurts. No one cares about 'some fairy'- they care about the 'Hero.' I want to be remembered, too. I don't want to be forgotten, Link, but I know it's inevitable."
"We'll remember."
(You and me will remember. Always. I can never forget you, Navi.) I hear him say in my head. I don't know how it's possible, but it's in here. His voice is in my head.
(Oh, Link, that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me…) I respond, not sure if he can hear me as well.
He offers his opened hand to me. I sit cross-legged on his palm. "Will you remember me when I'm gone?" I ask. He nods, and I kiss his hand. One day when Hyrule is safe, I will no longer be needed and shall return to my home. It is what I've always wanted, right? With time, I've lost some certainty. Going home would mean losing him. Somewhere deep inside, I wish that day to be far off – a selfish wish, I understand.
Link looks back to the wall. I groan. "Now what does she want?"
"She wants to soothe my wounds…" His arms fall lifelessly to his side. Peach-colored light ribbons encircle his body. I see his scratches vanishing, the clotted blood on his fingertips bleeding back into the wounds, and the wounds healing without leaving pink scars.
I wish I could do that…. My place in the fairy caste is far below the Greats. I once dreamed of growing up into a great fairy, healing the bodies and souls of heroes. In my most grandiose dreams, a gentle-hearted hero only asks for my love in place of my healing powers. Sometimes he has muddy blonde-colored hair and sometimes he has familiar eyes.
Link takes back his life from the Great Fairy, slipping into a world I was once part of—a world I'd once give up my wings for. Today I'd choose to stay here, even in constant peril if it meant helping Link in the same little ways. There's no jealously anymore, merely a faint homesickness overpowered by a bit of happiness.
As I'm watching him, I can't help but glow with pride. There is no other fairy in Hyrule who guards the Hero of Time. No fairy's life, small or Great, will ever compare to my fairytale.
Somewhere inside of my mind, I can hear the ghost of a tune, its twanging strings echoing a memory of my home, of my kind, but I know that it is not me who is hearing it. It is he.
We will be one again.
Afterward, I recall asking him what she 'empowered' him with.
(She taught you "Spin Attack?" Oh, that would be useful when Ruto is after you. Magic Meter? Humph. I could've taught ya how to use that.
(Why are you laughing? Jealous, Me? Don't be ridiculous!)
He sees right through my lie and grins.
(Well, maybe a little.) "Wait a second, you can hear me!"
His wicked smile is all the reassurance I require. "Navi, remember, you're the only girl for me." It's a sweet line, spoken from the heart, I know.
(For now,) I add, but perhaps it is enough for me.
A/N:
For those of you who didn't understand the part of Navi hearing a tune: Navi and Link share a bond, a psychic bond. They can hear each other's thoughts and speak telepathically. That's what makes them such a great team! Okay, okay, I made that up.
If you're wondering about how Navi looks, then I suggest you play Zelda: A Link to the Past. Remember the fairies in the start menu? Now pretend one of 'em is Navi. Ain't she pretty?