Lorule was not a forgiving place to live. It did not take more than a single mistake, a single careless move close to one of the deep ravines, saying the wrong word to one of the many criminals that inhabited her kingdom, or being in the wrong place during one of the frequent earthquakes to ensure certain death. And even when people tried their best to survive, even having energy to care about others, Lorule would always strike back, the air slowly but surely destroying people's will to live along with their lungs.
That was what had happened to Hilda's parents, killing them when she had been only twelve, not much more than a child herself. But even a child had to become queen, to take responsibility when she was the only heir left to the throne of a dying kingdom.
Not willing to let her parents' deaths be for nothing, Hilda had fought to save her kingdom. Though she had just lost both of her parents, she did not have any time to grieve. Instead, she had immediately begun to work; spending years trying to create laws, both to make sure that the people of her realm would be able to get help from the castle should they need it and to try to make the kingdom a safer place to be. But of course it had not worked. With how quickly the situation in her land had worsened, the people had completely lost trust in the monarch's ability to save them. The royal family might just as well not have existed.
Being the princess, Hilda knew that she could not allow herself to lose hope. Despite how little power she had, her giving up would mean the end of Lorule. So she had to find a way to save her people or at least find a way to make it look like everything wasn't over yet.
So instead, she attempted to find a glimmer of hope hidden away in the past.
The ancient history books in the royal library spoke about a golden relic, the Triforce, a gift made for them by the Goddesses that had watched over her land, a relic that had gotten destroyed in the Lorulean Civil War centuries ago. Hilda had known about that for a long time, but since the sorry state of her kingdom was proof that once the Triforce had been destroyed, it was gone for good, she placed the book back in the bookcase, the moment she came to the section about the destruction of the Triforce, having to grab onto one of the shelves moments later as another earthquake had suddenly made the floor of the library shake. They were growing more and more intense each day - Hilda did not need to look at the numbers to know that.
But for once, the earthquakes had brought along something other than death and destruction.
A book - otherwise hidden away on one of the top shelves - had fallen out of the bookcase and hit the floor with a hollow sound. Hilda moved over to pick it up, absentmindedly flipping through the pages. And then she had seen it. A section about someone called the Interlopers.
Hilda had taken the book back with her to her desk and had spent the rest of the night there, reading about the forgotten part of the history of her country. With the newfound knowledge presented by the book, she learnt how a tribe of powerful sorcerers had worked against the royal family, wielded powerful and dark magic, how the king of Lorule's last action before he had destroyed the Triforce for good and unwittingly doomed his descendants had been to ask the goddesses for help, and how the goddesses had responded by sealing the Interlopers away in another dimension, the Twilight Realm, with the Mirror of Twilight being the only thing bridging the two worlds together.
Hilda could almost feel her heart skip a beat. This could be it, this could be thing that could save them all. She had never hoped to dare for the existence of another dimension, but here she was, sitting with the proof for it right in front of her. If she could only figure out how to find the mirror of Twilight, there was a chance that she would be able to move her people over there, leaving their dying realm behind and saving them all. And then she would just have to hope that the Interlopers would allow them to be there.
Overjoyed by the prospect of survival, Hilda did not allow herself to think about what would happen if the Interlopes said no. She could do nothing but hope for the best, but at least she had hope now.
That was how the search for the Mirror of Twilight had begun. It had taken Hilda to the deepest corners of Lorule, for she had insisted that she would not just stay in the castle making laws that everybody knew would not be able to suddenly solve the problem that the kingdom had been facing for centuries, the fact that it was doomed. It had taken a couple of months, with the sky getting darker looking more torn up each and every day, the ravines getting deeper, and the earthquakes more frequent, but in the end Hilda succeeded in assembling the Mirror of Twilight, having built it where the entrance to Lorule's Sacred Realm had once been.
And that was what had brought Hilda to the last step in her plan, opening the portals to see if there were any descendants of the Interlopers left of the other side and to ask if they would allow Hilda and her people to evacuate to their realm.
The power in her bracelet should be enough for her to have the gate to the Twilight Realm multiple times, allowing Hilda to open it on her own the first time, something that would perhaps give her a better chance of establishing contact and what would hopefully be a friendly relationship with the people in the Twilight Realm. But as she stood there, looking at the mirror that had taken her so much precious time to find and repair, she was not sure if she dared to open it. After all, if there were any people on the other side, they would be descendants of the people that Hilda's ancestors had asked the goddesses to imprison. If there was any animosity towards her from the people in the Twilight Realm, Hilda would have no idea as to what to do. The only thing that she could think of was to simply wait as the last part of her kingdom crumbled, eventually killing all life in it.
She was powerless. That was not a new feeling to Hilda, but until that moment, she had always been able to hide it from everyone around her as well as herself by making sure that she was always working to improve the world around her, even if she deep down knew it was a futile effort.
But she had to at least try, if not for her people's sake, then for her own, to know that she had done everything she could.
Hilda reached out to touch the surface of the mirror. The instant she did so, the mirror seemed to begin to glow, but unlike any light Hilda had ever seen, even in her dark world, the light went straight through her. She turned around to see that a massive set of stone slabs had appeared behind her, pitch-black but with designs and letters on them, that were completely foreign to Hilda.
When she heard the sounds of approaching footsteps from the other side of the stone slabs, Hilda instinctively took a step back, suddenly feeling like the little child, the girl who had just lost her parents, she had been years ago when she had first had to take on the full responsibility for her kingdom. She just hoped that she would now not also be the one responsible for having let in someone who would destroy the ruins of it.
Finally, a person appeared in the light. She was tall, much taller than anyone Hilda had ever seen before, and was wearing something that was completely unlike the fashion in Lorule, with its contrast between bright blue and black. But the woman in front of her was certainly beautiful, Hilda could not deny that, would not even attempt to. And now, she could only hope that the woman would be as kind as she was beautiful.
"I am Princess Hilda of Lorule and I beg you to allow-" she began, the phrase that she had spent so much time practicing in Twili, having used the few sources about the other culture to teach herself a few words, still sounding like the first time she had tried to say them.
The other woman cut her off immediately. "There's no need for that. I am Queen Midna of the Twilight Realm." she spoke Hilda's language fluently, only a slight accent in her words.
Hilda tried to not show her surprise or how embarrassed she was of her own mangled attempt to speak Twili. It was not fitting for a princess, especially not when she ruled over a doomed kingdom.
Instead, Hilda repeated what she had tried to say.. "Pleased to meet you, Your Royal Highness, as I said, I am Princess Hilda of Lorule, and I beg you to allow my people to escape from our doomed world into yours." she held her breath as she watched Midna, waiting for a response.
"Oh, I see." Midna raised an eyebrow. "Well, let us see if we can reach an agreement as to how we can manage that. But for now, I think that a proper handshake would be in place."
She held out her hand, waiting for Hilda to shake it. Slowly, still somewhat waiting for Midna to refuse to help her, Hilda reached out to take Midna's hand and shake it. The queen had a surprisingly firm grasp for the softness of her skin.
"Yes, let us discuss the issue," Hilda said, and although her shaking voice was sure to give her insecurity away, she did her best to appear calm.
In the end, Hilda's hope became reality when she after only a few days of negotiating reached an agreement with Midna, the agreement allowing the inhabitants of Lorule to go to the Twilight Realm, and more importantly: to stay there. With the friendly relationship between Hilda and Midna that would soon come to blossom into something more than that, the change went as seamlessly as it possibly could for the former inhabitants of Lorule, with the perpetual twilight of their new home being softer and more comforting than the sickly glow from a dying sun that they had left behind.
And for once in her life, Hilda felt like she was doing more than just barely clinging onto the world, keeping it from sliding into chaos. She felt alive.