Okay, here we go with the usual smart mouth author remarks.
FIRSTLY, I would like to extend a BILLION thanks to Kokeshi088, whose poems this story is based on! Feel free to read and review all of her stuff!!!
SECONDLY, I don't own Zelda, and I don't own this plotline, either. It belongs in its entirety to Kokeshi. If anyone out there wants to do an AU thingy, contact her, NOT me. Thank you.
LASTLY, I would like to thank the group Evanescence. I listened to their music while writing this bit. Check out their CD, it's very good to listen to while reading angsty stories!
Okay, have fun reading all! Take it away, curtain guy!
Boy Clad In Green
(The Novelized Version)
Part One The Mistake
I thought she was a monster.
Yeah, I admit it, I was tired. Tired in my body, tired in my mind, tired in my soul. But mostly, I was tired in my heart.
I was sick of this life. I couldn't stand living this way for much longer. I felt my body breaking down around me. The guilt weighed down on me, forcing me to accept the Goddess awful truth.
*I* was the monster.
I've killed more creatures, sentient and not, than I'd care to admit. I'm a murderer, and more than one world has learned to fear my name. Some see me for what I'm trying to do; most don't. Some people realize that I'm fighting for them, but, I've found, the vast majority of the different cultures I've come across have it set in their minds to kill me on sight.
They think I bring the creatures that take away their children and kill the helpless, men and women alike. They think I summon them so that I can claim that I've cleansed the land of all evil.
They think. They don't know. Unfortunately, I do.
I know what it's like to kill someone else. I know what it's like to slaughter mindless creatures, but you know what's ten times worse? That's killing something that can talk to you and taunt you about the million different ways it could kill you, each one more painful than the last, before you shut its voice off forever by chopping off its head in a spray of blue blood.
But you know what's a thousand times worse than even that?
Killing someone by accident. And that's what I did.
I'm a simple-minded Fairy Boy, but I know enough that I made a mistake. And this mistake is eating at me, slowly consuming me inside out.
I was ten years old. Three years ago, when I first left the forest, I was on edge, wandering through the Woods. I heard footsteps.
Now, any Kokiri worth his fairy knows that anybody is free to wander the Lost Woods. Only the Kokiri are safe from becoming Stalfos. Any child can tell you that, too.
So, naturally, I thought a Stalfos was stalking me.
In fact, I *knew* a Stalfos was following me through those bushes-or at least it seemed that way to me. In my idiocy and panic, I forgot that it takes time for people to become Stalfos, a slow and painful process.
We used to gather around the entrance to the Woods and listen to the screams, promising each other that we'd never enter the Woods without a map. I could never stand these 'Screaming Sessions', so I ran off with Saria and sat by the waterfall, where the sound was loud enough to drown them out. Still, you could hear the shrillest wails, the ones that signified the final stages of the transformation. Those made my eyes roll up in my head, and Saria had to catch me more than once when I fainted. I would cough up blood for the next two days.
And the worst thing? I never knew why these things always happened to *me*, and nobody else. Ever since the first time I heard those screams, nobody, Hylian or otherwise, has been able to explain it to me. Not civilians, village wise men, or even Sages. Princess Zelda herself was at a loss.
I guess the only place I have left to turn is the Goddesses. And those were just the beings I was praying to that fateful day in the Lost Woods.
I remember it clearly. I heard the steps, the loud crunching of feet on twigs, the soft weeping. At that time, I figured it was somebody who was halfway to becoming a Stalfos, somebody who had already lost his or her sane mind.
I have never been so wrong in my life.
There I was, crouching behind a bush, sword drawn and in my hand. I was pretty good with the short blade by that time, even if I was only a few months out of the community. The footsteps came closer.
In my adrenaline-fueled delusion, I failed to hear the soft female voice being comforted by a strong, confidant male one. I crouched, ready to spring.
They rounded the corner, and I jumped as high as I could (which wasn't very high), whirling around and charging up magic. I cut off the leader's head and landed, ready to spring on the next one.
A spurt of red blood hit me in the face. The metallic scent made my senses reel. I couldn't see, couldn't think. I couldn't move!
It was Hylian blood.
I felt my stomach contract. My lunch flew out into the bushes. I retched again and again, but each time, the smell just came back stronger.
Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, I fell down on the ground. It was through blurry, tear-stained eyes that I first noticed the young man collapsed against a tree trunk. He was alive, physically, but his eyes were dying. I was afraid of him.
Then I looked down at the body, and I was afraid of myself. I felt my humanity crumbling at the edges.
A beautiful woman lay at my feet. Even though I had grown up among children, most of whom were decades older than me, I knew what beautiful meant. I had seen it in another, and everyone else had paled by comparison since then. But this one, she actually came close.
Her long, wavy blue hair was strewn on the ground all around her-some of it was still long, anyway. My sword had sliced through most of it, and the shorter hair marred her high cheekbones and smooth face. Her neck, or what was left of it, was exposed to the open air.
Her body was separated from her pretty head. I almost retched again, but when I looked at her face, I did.
Her dark, misty red eyes were wide open, staring up at the sky in shock. I could almost see the life draining away from that head and body; her expression was forever frozen in utter, innocent surprise.
I went to the bushes and was sick.
When I was done, I tossed off my shield and sword. I tore my clothes, an ancient Hylian custom used to show grief when it was too great to speak of. I also tore out some of my hair, but that was because I wanted to. I was going crazy.
The purple - haired man with the strange fire-eyes was still sitting against the tree, staring at her face, her body.
Then I felt it. I felt myself dying as I stood. I can feel it all the time now, but it started then. I knew from that instant that I would never be the same.
I sobbed, and my knees started wobbling. It was then that I noticed the dead woman's gaze was actually focused on something.
I followed it up. It was the full moon hanging over our heads.
I swallowed.
"She loved the moon."
The man had spoken. His voice was cracked, full of pain. Yet, no tear tracks streaked his face, as I knew they did mine.
"We were going to get a better view of it."
He slowly stood up. I found my hand reaching to my sword of its own accord. I forced it to stop with some effort. His eyes still wouldn't meet mine.
"She was afraid. We were lost. I recognized that tree, and we were heading for it."
Those dead eyes met mine. My hand shot for the hilt of my blade. I left it on the handle, but refused to draw the Kokiri Sword, borrowed from my childhood.
"Then you panicked and decided that we weren't allowed to walk in these Woods."
I almost spoke.
"Who gave you the right? You're only a child with a sword. You had no right."
I *almost* explained myself. Then I realized that I couldn't possibly explain myself to this man. I stood and waited for it.
"You had no damn RIGHT!"
His hand instantly curled into a fist and shot for my jaw. I dodged it, practically running up a tree. He laughed after me.
"Coward. Run from me. Run from the power of my love."
And run I did. I ran across ancient branches, ignoring the leaves and thorns that constantly smacked my face. However, I didn't run fast enough to escape the arrow that stuck itself into my right leg.
"I swear this to you, child! You will not live to see your destiny!"
I was afraid of him. But, just for that instant, fleeing one-legged through the treetops, I was more afraid of myself than anything else.
"Remember her name, coward! Let it eat away at your soul until there is nothing left!"
An older Hylian curse, from the days when honor and courage meant something and money didn't set your social standing. I limped, trying to run.
He whispered, "Narissa." My ears heard the voices of the Goddesses scream it, engrave it into my mind.
"NARISSA!!!!!"
And, in the background noise, I picked out a small voice.
"You made a mistake, foolish mortal. Hero of Time! The Goddesses decree, you will be punished!"
"NARISSA!!!!!"
Scratch that. I was afraid of who I was becoming, and I could find only one word to describe it.
Animal.
***
Now, three years later, I'm once again standing in those Woods, at the exact same spot where what I thought would be a small part of my future was decided.
Keyword: Thought.
Her ghost is still here, even though her body is gone. I can sense it, wandering the Lost Woods, looking for her lost love. Her lover - my enemy.
I remember his eyes, and the familiar old fear shoots up, a tumor in my abdomen, slowly consuming me.
The curse on the arrow he gave me has eaten everything but the heart of my soul, the soul of my heart. The inner core of my very essence, and, I like to think, the one place his evil cannot taint. But the fringes of my already shabby, hastily - built walls are being torn away even as I think these thoughts. The last shred of my sanity is slowly slipping away.
A curse born out of hate born out of love. Classically, I had to be at the tail end. I ask again; why am I *always* in the minority?
My eyes slide shut and suddenly I'm there again, standing over her dying, severed body, tears running down my face. I realize that that, at least, is not an illusion; hot salt water is streaking my face, drying and squeezing my skin so tight I think it's about to shatter.
For a second, I consider yet another what if.
What if my face *did* shatter? What would I look like beneath the mask of flesh and blood? What if there was a window to my soul?
What if, through that window, there was a panicked wolf, cowering in the shadows?
What if there was nothing *but* shadows?
Cold ice explodes through my veins, shimmering as it moves behind my already frozen eyes. The tears are gone, almost as if they never were. They have left nothing but the red rims I try to scrub away.
She died here, in this lonely wood, and it was my fault. Since that moment three years ago, I have dedicated my existence to weeding out the evil everywhere and utterly destroying it. Or at least, I've tried. But it seems to keep popping up all over the place, and no matter what I do, it won't leave me alone.
Ever since I had that arrow removed from my leg, I knew there was something wrong. The head wasn't silver; it was a deep ebony, and the black scar on my calve hasn't faded, and never will. It spread inward, covering my insides with its black ink, its curse. When it begins to show on my skin, when I no longer care, then it will be over. The world will be lost. *I* will end. The fevered dreams I lay wracked with every full moon come back to my mind.
The darkness is closing in on me. I see it in my dreams; a million shadows, a million creatures, all destroyed by my hand, by my blade. They're surrounding me, laughing at me, because I'm at their mercy now. The circle gets tighter as they come closer. I'm bleeding and screaming and begging for grace, and the goddesses are laughing right along with the crowd, and they all jump me at once and I'm surrounded by evil. And then I become evil, a shadow of myself, a Dark Link.
And then there's nothing.
To me, the world has only two sides, the split path in the Woods, the face you know is yours and the one you see in the mirror. I haven't looked in a mirror for a long time; the way I live my life, catching a glimpse of my own face in a thing made of fine glass is a rarity.
Somehow, I can't turn my back on that small clearing where nothing grows, so I back away from it until the brown, lifeless patch is hidden by undergrowth. I turn around, and notice a small, still pool just before I step in it. I look down, wanting to see my face, my eyes, even though I can feel that both are frozen. I look down, and see nothing.
My reflection is gone. It's as if it was never there in the first place. That's when I know that I might as well be dead. I thought I still had some time left, but it's run out. Hah! How could time run out for someone who doesn't even know which timeline he belongs in? How could time run out for the *Hero of Time*?
I curl up into a ball and sob. It's over. I'm dead.
Then a cry floats out of the woods, not too far away from me. It sounds familiar, like I should know it but I don't. A cry in a voice from a timeline that never should have happened. Or a timeline that was my destiny, the timeline I ran away from?
All of this philosophy stuff is starting to hurt my head.
I clear my mind and get up, pulling out the Kokiri Sword, the blade I should have returned a long time ago, the one that's starting to be too small for my longer fingers. It's more like a long dagger now, and I've been using it like one more often as of late. I really should have it forged into a sword more suited for my size.
Now laughter is echoing through the Woods. Cruel, cold laughter that sends chills up and down my spine. Do I laugh like that? I haven't been happy in three years.
No, it's not my laughter. I peek around a huge, ancient, and no doubt magical tree, and see a small puppet-like figure standing over a man with flaming red hair and a huge traveling sack strapped to him. The outside of it is covered in masks. Their empty eyes stare at me, laughing.
The puppet is rooting through the bag. I see the reed flute in its hand when it holds up one particular mask. The yellow eyes in the purple face, the red and green spines on the edges-I *knew* that mask, even though I'd never seen it before.
*Hero* of Time!
Pain begins in my leg, in the exact center of the small black spot just a hand span above my ankle. I wince. I mean, it *hurts*!
You will pay, Hero.
It spreads, shooting through my body from that point in my leg. I whistle through my teeth, hoping the puppet won't hear me.
You're mine to the death. Don't deny it.
Whoever the hell is speaking in my head, I really wish they'd stop. It's kind of painful.
The yellow and red eyes glow, piercing my tortured brain, my diminished soul. They tell my of my destiny, of how I'll be ripped apart piece by piece, of how the mouth belonging to those eyes will drink my blood, and slowly consume my flesh, chewing each mouthful delightedly, closing those pure evil eyes as the taste of my skin was savored, how it would slowly pick through my splintered bones, picking its teeth with them. How only my ghost would survive, and be forced to watch as my body was eaten half- alive.
Tears are leaking through my own invisible mask. My stomach is doing flip - flops. It *hurts*, dammit, and it won't stop! What *is* that thing, and why does it want to hurt me so badly?
You owe it to me, Kokiri. Don't walk away. The Goddesses have given me the right of vengeance. You are *mine* to destroy as I please. You will *not* WALK AWAY!
My feet stop shuffling backwards of their own accord and instead walk towards that floating face without a body, held in the hands of some small stick-child. My whole body shakes with my efforts to break free, but I'm trapped in the trance. I'm barely conscious; my mind is just tagging along for the ride.
I can feel the tops of my feet brushing along the grass. I'm floating like a carcass, towards the creature that *will* make me into a carcass. I can see the mask smiling at me.
What the-
It screams aloud in agony as the stick-kid puts it on, giggling that cold, heartless giggle. It makes me feel twisted and cruel myself. I wish he would stop it.
The mask has settled on the kid's face. The fire in its eyes is extinguished, but a small glimmer still remains. The agony has faded to a numbed throbbing instead of burning. I almost sigh in relief; then I realize what the kid's staring at. First, I'm a scarred, barely teenage body in the middle of a clearing. Second, I'm a scarred, barely teenage body *floating* in the middle of a clearing. The kid screams.
I immediately drop to the ground, the spell broken. And it feels like my feet are broken, too. When I fell, I fell right on the top of my feet, where you are *not* supposed to walk. I lay sprawled like a rag doll in the grassy meadow.
My hands somehow find the ground, and I lever myself up onto my feet, managing to take a few shaky steps before I fall flat on my face again. As soon as my eyes close, the world around me starts spinning. I see the creature chewing on my ragged, defeated body-
I sit up, fighting for breath, hoping it was just a figment of my imagination-and it is. The stick-child is staring into my eyes through the mask. My throat croaks when I try to ask a question. He holds up a finger to silence me, and I shut up.
"What are you doing here? You look like Kokiri, but you smell-strange."
I grunt.
"Huh?"
I roll over on my stomach and cover my head with my arms, trying to shut that damn mask out until I can figure this out. But the kid isn't willing to give up that easily. He kicks me, hard, in the ribcage.
"Hey, you! Wake up!"
I turn over, feeling my face contort into the frustration and hatred for that *damn* mask rolling around in the depths of my body.
"Kid, just shut up and take off the mask! It's evil!"
His eyes widen, then narrow, and I know there's going to be trouble now that I opened my big stupid mouth.
"You big fat meanie! I'm going! Don't follow me, or I'll kick you!"
When there's a flash of yellow in those forest eyes, I know that this is only the beginning.
As he scuttles off, my imagination sees two bobbing spheres of light follow him. I lay back and groan through my teeth, covering my eyes with my only recently gloved hands. I rub out the grit from the day, then just let my hand lay across the bridge of my nose, blocking out the world for once.
A small bug flies past, and I hear and feel it landing on the tip of my ear. I lay still for a minute, thinking. Am I like that little bug? Do I really matter in the big scheme of things?
I swat it away from my ear, and do the same with the thoughts in my mind. But then that little voice comes back.
*Not everything in life can be just swatted away in an instant. Remember that.*
I tell it to shut up, and slip into a full-moon sleep, my senses tuned in to everything around me, even allowing me to feel the grass slowly being flattened beneath me.
When it fades away, the shadows come.
***
Just in case you couldn't figure it out, this story is from Link's perspective, and Navi is nowhere to be found.
Just checking.
Thank you again, Kokeshi!!! Your ideas are wonderful!!
I'll try to come up with the next bit soon.
-Shawshank
FIRSTLY, I would like to extend a BILLION thanks to Kokeshi088, whose poems this story is based on! Feel free to read and review all of her stuff!!!
SECONDLY, I don't own Zelda, and I don't own this plotline, either. It belongs in its entirety to Kokeshi. If anyone out there wants to do an AU thingy, contact her, NOT me. Thank you.
LASTLY, I would like to thank the group Evanescence. I listened to their music while writing this bit. Check out their CD, it's very good to listen to while reading angsty stories!
Okay, have fun reading all! Take it away, curtain guy!
Boy Clad In Green
(The Novelized Version)
Part One The Mistake
I thought she was a monster.
Yeah, I admit it, I was tired. Tired in my body, tired in my mind, tired in my soul. But mostly, I was tired in my heart.
I was sick of this life. I couldn't stand living this way for much longer. I felt my body breaking down around me. The guilt weighed down on me, forcing me to accept the Goddess awful truth.
*I* was the monster.
I've killed more creatures, sentient and not, than I'd care to admit. I'm a murderer, and more than one world has learned to fear my name. Some see me for what I'm trying to do; most don't. Some people realize that I'm fighting for them, but, I've found, the vast majority of the different cultures I've come across have it set in their minds to kill me on sight.
They think I bring the creatures that take away their children and kill the helpless, men and women alike. They think I summon them so that I can claim that I've cleansed the land of all evil.
They think. They don't know. Unfortunately, I do.
I know what it's like to kill someone else. I know what it's like to slaughter mindless creatures, but you know what's ten times worse? That's killing something that can talk to you and taunt you about the million different ways it could kill you, each one more painful than the last, before you shut its voice off forever by chopping off its head in a spray of blue blood.
But you know what's a thousand times worse than even that?
Killing someone by accident. And that's what I did.
I'm a simple-minded Fairy Boy, but I know enough that I made a mistake. And this mistake is eating at me, slowly consuming me inside out.
I was ten years old. Three years ago, when I first left the forest, I was on edge, wandering through the Woods. I heard footsteps.
Now, any Kokiri worth his fairy knows that anybody is free to wander the Lost Woods. Only the Kokiri are safe from becoming Stalfos. Any child can tell you that, too.
So, naturally, I thought a Stalfos was stalking me.
In fact, I *knew* a Stalfos was following me through those bushes-or at least it seemed that way to me. In my idiocy and panic, I forgot that it takes time for people to become Stalfos, a slow and painful process.
We used to gather around the entrance to the Woods and listen to the screams, promising each other that we'd never enter the Woods without a map. I could never stand these 'Screaming Sessions', so I ran off with Saria and sat by the waterfall, where the sound was loud enough to drown them out. Still, you could hear the shrillest wails, the ones that signified the final stages of the transformation. Those made my eyes roll up in my head, and Saria had to catch me more than once when I fainted. I would cough up blood for the next two days.
And the worst thing? I never knew why these things always happened to *me*, and nobody else. Ever since the first time I heard those screams, nobody, Hylian or otherwise, has been able to explain it to me. Not civilians, village wise men, or even Sages. Princess Zelda herself was at a loss.
I guess the only place I have left to turn is the Goddesses. And those were just the beings I was praying to that fateful day in the Lost Woods.
I remember it clearly. I heard the steps, the loud crunching of feet on twigs, the soft weeping. At that time, I figured it was somebody who was halfway to becoming a Stalfos, somebody who had already lost his or her sane mind.
I have never been so wrong in my life.
There I was, crouching behind a bush, sword drawn and in my hand. I was pretty good with the short blade by that time, even if I was only a few months out of the community. The footsteps came closer.
In my adrenaline-fueled delusion, I failed to hear the soft female voice being comforted by a strong, confidant male one. I crouched, ready to spring.
They rounded the corner, and I jumped as high as I could (which wasn't very high), whirling around and charging up magic. I cut off the leader's head and landed, ready to spring on the next one.
A spurt of red blood hit me in the face. The metallic scent made my senses reel. I couldn't see, couldn't think. I couldn't move!
It was Hylian blood.
I felt my stomach contract. My lunch flew out into the bushes. I retched again and again, but each time, the smell just came back stronger.
Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, I fell down on the ground. It was through blurry, tear-stained eyes that I first noticed the young man collapsed against a tree trunk. He was alive, physically, but his eyes were dying. I was afraid of him.
Then I looked down at the body, and I was afraid of myself. I felt my humanity crumbling at the edges.
A beautiful woman lay at my feet. Even though I had grown up among children, most of whom were decades older than me, I knew what beautiful meant. I had seen it in another, and everyone else had paled by comparison since then. But this one, she actually came close.
Her long, wavy blue hair was strewn on the ground all around her-some of it was still long, anyway. My sword had sliced through most of it, and the shorter hair marred her high cheekbones and smooth face. Her neck, or what was left of it, was exposed to the open air.
Her body was separated from her pretty head. I almost retched again, but when I looked at her face, I did.
Her dark, misty red eyes were wide open, staring up at the sky in shock. I could almost see the life draining away from that head and body; her expression was forever frozen in utter, innocent surprise.
I went to the bushes and was sick.
When I was done, I tossed off my shield and sword. I tore my clothes, an ancient Hylian custom used to show grief when it was too great to speak of. I also tore out some of my hair, but that was because I wanted to. I was going crazy.
The purple - haired man with the strange fire-eyes was still sitting against the tree, staring at her face, her body.
Then I felt it. I felt myself dying as I stood. I can feel it all the time now, but it started then. I knew from that instant that I would never be the same.
I sobbed, and my knees started wobbling. It was then that I noticed the dead woman's gaze was actually focused on something.
I followed it up. It was the full moon hanging over our heads.
I swallowed.
"She loved the moon."
The man had spoken. His voice was cracked, full of pain. Yet, no tear tracks streaked his face, as I knew they did mine.
"We were going to get a better view of it."
He slowly stood up. I found my hand reaching to my sword of its own accord. I forced it to stop with some effort. His eyes still wouldn't meet mine.
"She was afraid. We were lost. I recognized that tree, and we were heading for it."
Those dead eyes met mine. My hand shot for the hilt of my blade. I left it on the handle, but refused to draw the Kokiri Sword, borrowed from my childhood.
"Then you panicked and decided that we weren't allowed to walk in these Woods."
I almost spoke.
"Who gave you the right? You're only a child with a sword. You had no right."
I *almost* explained myself. Then I realized that I couldn't possibly explain myself to this man. I stood and waited for it.
"You had no damn RIGHT!"
His hand instantly curled into a fist and shot for my jaw. I dodged it, practically running up a tree. He laughed after me.
"Coward. Run from me. Run from the power of my love."
And run I did. I ran across ancient branches, ignoring the leaves and thorns that constantly smacked my face. However, I didn't run fast enough to escape the arrow that stuck itself into my right leg.
"I swear this to you, child! You will not live to see your destiny!"
I was afraid of him. But, just for that instant, fleeing one-legged through the treetops, I was more afraid of myself than anything else.
"Remember her name, coward! Let it eat away at your soul until there is nothing left!"
An older Hylian curse, from the days when honor and courage meant something and money didn't set your social standing. I limped, trying to run.
He whispered, "Narissa." My ears heard the voices of the Goddesses scream it, engrave it into my mind.
"NARISSA!!!!!"
And, in the background noise, I picked out a small voice.
"You made a mistake, foolish mortal. Hero of Time! The Goddesses decree, you will be punished!"
"NARISSA!!!!!"
Scratch that. I was afraid of who I was becoming, and I could find only one word to describe it.
Animal.
***
Now, three years later, I'm once again standing in those Woods, at the exact same spot where what I thought would be a small part of my future was decided.
Keyword: Thought.
Her ghost is still here, even though her body is gone. I can sense it, wandering the Lost Woods, looking for her lost love. Her lover - my enemy.
I remember his eyes, and the familiar old fear shoots up, a tumor in my abdomen, slowly consuming me.
The curse on the arrow he gave me has eaten everything but the heart of my soul, the soul of my heart. The inner core of my very essence, and, I like to think, the one place his evil cannot taint. But the fringes of my already shabby, hastily - built walls are being torn away even as I think these thoughts. The last shred of my sanity is slowly slipping away.
A curse born out of hate born out of love. Classically, I had to be at the tail end. I ask again; why am I *always* in the minority?
My eyes slide shut and suddenly I'm there again, standing over her dying, severed body, tears running down my face. I realize that that, at least, is not an illusion; hot salt water is streaking my face, drying and squeezing my skin so tight I think it's about to shatter.
For a second, I consider yet another what if.
What if my face *did* shatter? What would I look like beneath the mask of flesh and blood? What if there was a window to my soul?
What if, through that window, there was a panicked wolf, cowering in the shadows?
What if there was nothing *but* shadows?
Cold ice explodes through my veins, shimmering as it moves behind my already frozen eyes. The tears are gone, almost as if they never were. They have left nothing but the red rims I try to scrub away.
She died here, in this lonely wood, and it was my fault. Since that moment three years ago, I have dedicated my existence to weeding out the evil everywhere and utterly destroying it. Or at least, I've tried. But it seems to keep popping up all over the place, and no matter what I do, it won't leave me alone.
Ever since I had that arrow removed from my leg, I knew there was something wrong. The head wasn't silver; it was a deep ebony, and the black scar on my calve hasn't faded, and never will. It spread inward, covering my insides with its black ink, its curse. When it begins to show on my skin, when I no longer care, then it will be over. The world will be lost. *I* will end. The fevered dreams I lay wracked with every full moon come back to my mind.
The darkness is closing in on me. I see it in my dreams; a million shadows, a million creatures, all destroyed by my hand, by my blade. They're surrounding me, laughing at me, because I'm at their mercy now. The circle gets tighter as they come closer. I'm bleeding and screaming and begging for grace, and the goddesses are laughing right along with the crowd, and they all jump me at once and I'm surrounded by evil. And then I become evil, a shadow of myself, a Dark Link.
And then there's nothing.
To me, the world has only two sides, the split path in the Woods, the face you know is yours and the one you see in the mirror. I haven't looked in a mirror for a long time; the way I live my life, catching a glimpse of my own face in a thing made of fine glass is a rarity.
Somehow, I can't turn my back on that small clearing where nothing grows, so I back away from it until the brown, lifeless patch is hidden by undergrowth. I turn around, and notice a small, still pool just before I step in it. I look down, wanting to see my face, my eyes, even though I can feel that both are frozen. I look down, and see nothing.
My reflection is gone. It's as if it was never there in the first place. That's when I know that I might as well be dead. I thought I still had some time left, but it's run out. Hah! How could time run out for someone who doesn't even know which timeline he belongs in? How could time run out for the *Hero of Time*?
I curl up into a ball and sob. It's over. I'm dead.
Then a cry floats out of the woods, not too far away from me. It sounds familiar, like I should know it but I don't. A cry in a voice from a timeline that never should have happened. Or a timeline that was my destiny, the timeline I ran away from?
All of this philosophy stuff is starting to hurt my head.
I clear my mind and get up, pulling out the Kokiri Sword, the blade I should have returned a long time ago, the one that's starting to be too small for my longer fingers. It's more like a long dagger now, and I've been using it like one more often as of late. I really should have it forged into a sword more suited for my size.
Now laughter is echoing through the Woods. Cruel, cold laughter that sends chills up and down my spine. Do I laugh like that? I haven't been happy in three years.
No, it's not my laughter. I peek around a huge, ancient, and no doubt magical tree, and see a small puppet-like figure standing over a man with flaming red hair and a huge traveling sack strapped to him. The outside of it is covered in masks. Their empty eyes stare at me, laughing.
The puppet is rooting through the bag. I see the reed flute in its hand when it holds up one particular mask. The yellow eyes in the purple face, the red and green spines on the edges-I *knew* that mask, even though I'd never seen it before.
*Hero* of Time!
Pain begins in my leg, in the exact center of the small black spot just a hand span above my ankle. I wince. I mean, it *hurts*!
You will pay, Hero.
It spreads, shooting through my body from that point in my leg. I whistle through my teeth, hoping the puppet won't hear me.
You're mine to the death. Don't deny it.
Whoever the hell is speaking in my head, I really wish they'd stop. It's kind of painful.
The yellow and red eyes glow, piercing my tortured brain, my diminished soul. They tell my of my destiny, of how I'll be ripped apart piece by piece, of how the mouth belonging to those eyes will drink my blood, and slowly consume my flesh, chewing each mouthful delightedly, closing those pure evil eyes as the taste of my skin was savored, how it would slowly pick through my splintered bones, picking its teeth with them. How only my ghost would survive, and be forced to watch as my body was eaten half- alive.
Tears are leaking through my own invisible mask. My stomach is doing flip - flops. It *hurts*, dammit, and it won't stop! What *is* that thing, and why does it want to hurt me so badly?
You owe it to me, Kokiri. Don't walk away. The Goddesses have given me the right of vengeance. You are *mine* to destroy as I please. You will *not* WALK AWAY!
My feet stop shuffling backwards of their own accord and instead walk towards that floating face without a body, held in the hands of some small stick-child. My whole body shakes with my efforts to break free, but I'm trapped in the trance. I'm barely conscious; my mind is just tagging along for the ride.
I can feel the tops of my feet brushing along the grass. I'm floating like a carcass, towards the creature that *will* make me into a carcass. I can see the mask smiling at me.
What the-
It screams aloud in agony as the stick-kid puts it on, giggling that cold, heartless giggle. It makes me feel twisted and cruel myself. I wish he would stop it.
The mask has settled on the kid's face. The fire in its eyes is extinguished, but a small glimmer still remains. The agony has faded to a numbed throbbing instead of burning. I almost sigh in relief; then I realize what the kid's staring at. First, I'm a scarred, barely teenage body in the middle of a clearing. Second, I'm a scarred, barely teenage body *floating* in the middle of a clearing. The kid screams.
I immediately drop to the ground, the spell broken. And it feels like my feet are broken, too. When I fell, I fell right on the top of my feet, where you are *not* supposed to walk. I lay sprawled like a rag doll in the grassy meadow.
My hands somehow find the ground, and I lever myself up onto my feet, managing to take a few shaky steps before I fall flat on my face again. As soon as my eyes close, the world around me starts spinning. I see the creature chewing on my ragged, defeated body-
I sit up, fighting for breath, hoping it was just a figment of my imagination-and it is. The stick-child is staring into my eyes through the mask. My throat croaks when I try to ask a question. He holds up a finger to silence me, and I shut up.
"What are you doing here? You look like Kokiri, but you smell-strange."
I grunt.
"Huh?"
I roll over on my stomach and cover my head with my arms, trying to shut that damn mask out until I can figure this out. But the kid isn't willing to give up that easily. He kicks me, hard, in the ribcage.
"Hey, you! Wake up!"
I turn over, feeling my face contort into the frustration and hatred for that *damn* mask rolling around in the depths of my body.
"Kid, just shut up and take off the mask! It's evil!"
His eyes widen, then narrow, and I know there's going to be trouble now that I opened my big stupid mouth.
"You big fat meanie! I'm going! Don't follow me, or I'll kick you!"
When there's a flash of yellow in those forest eyes, I know that this is only the beginning.
As he scuttles off, my imagination sees two bobbing spheres of light follow him. I lay back and groan through my teeth, covering my eyes with my only recently gloved hands. I rub out the grit from the day, then just let my hand lay across the bridge of my nose, blocking out the world for once.
A small bug flies past, and I hear and feel it landing on the tip of my ear. I lay still for a minute, thinking. Am I like that little bug? Do I really matter in the big scheme of things?
I swat it away from my ear, and do the same with the thoughts in my mind. But then that little voice comes back.
*Not everything in life can be just swatted away in an instant. Remember that.*
I tell it to shut up, and slip into a full-moon sleep, my senses tuned in to everything around me, even allowing me to feel the grass slowly being flattened beneath me.
When it fades away, the shadows come.
***
Just in case you couldn't figure it out, this story is from Link's perspective, and Navi is nowhere to be found.
Just checking.
Thank you again, Kokeshi!!! Your ideas are wonderful!!
I'll try to come up with the next bit soon.
-Shawshank