This is a short follow up piece, written in two parts, to the poem Ghosts that I wrote awhile back. This probably can stand on its own without it, but if you're really curious/lost, it's on my profile. Warning, character death ahead.
I've been forgetting to do this, so I'll start again. I don't own Zelda.
The little girl wandered quickly through the gardens, giggling as she lost her nurses amongst the tall hedges. They cried out for her, but she ignored their frantic pleas, only walking further down the familiar path. She suckled on her sticky fingers, licking the sugar off. When she was done, the girl started to run, almost but not quite tripping on her long pink dress. She kicked off her slippers with a tiny, gleeful whoop. Her blonde hair was coming out of the twin braids it had been tightly wound into. She laughed again as she came closer to the place she knew her mother liked to sit and work when it was nice and warm out, when it was summer and everyone was playing outside the castle walls without her, but it didn't matter because she had Mommy and Daddy to play with her and nurses to trick and sweets to eat.
She finally reached the corner where the roses grew tall and red and white, and her smile grew as they poked out and waved hello from around the stone.
"Middie's here!" She sang out, her high pitched, quavery voice slightly off key. "Mommy!" She bounced around the corner, her delight rolling off her in waves as she saw the stone bench where her mommy liked to read scribbles that she tried to get Middie to look at and say what they were, but she wouldn't, she just wanted to play, play, play.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her mommy and Daddy sprawled out on the ground. Her nose wrinkled in confusion.
"Mommy?" Middie inched closer, her bare feet bunching up and bunching in the green grass. They sometimes played this game, where they laid down and were really quiet and still, then she would start laughing, and then Daddy would start laughing, and then Mommy would laugh too until they were curled up in the grass, not caring about the green stains on their clothes because they were happy and together. Middie relaxed then, seeing nothing wrong with the picture before her.
She finally made it over to Mommy and kneeled down, her face relaxed and happy. Papers were strewn about her mother like new fallen snow, crinkling and creasing under the little girl's knees. Middie reached out and poked Mommy's shoulder, then waited patiently for the laugh that she knew was coming. She frowned; Mommy was too good at this game. She was always the one to last the longest in staring contests and quiet games or "How-Long-Can-You-Stay-A-Statue". She would last a couple minutes longer, eyes fluttering under closed lids, so still she thought her mommy was a statue, carved from stone and put here by the Three Ladies the priests were always talking about for everyone to admire and say she was pretty. Everyone seemed to on special days where Middie had to get extra dressed up and stand on a wooden podium outside the castle walls, and everyone pinched her cheeks and called her cute, and she would rub their touch away and wish that she could be like Mommy. Mommy was radiant, her eyes purple like the one ring small enough that Middie could wear it, her hair shining and pulled up elegantly off her pale swan neck, and her dress sparkling and rustling, with gold at her shoulders and draped over her neck and head. She looked like a doll so fragile that if even the slightest breeze came along and played over her, she would shatter. No one touched her then except for Daddy, and even then it was just a hand on her back or lightly tracing over her gloved wrist. He only kissed Mommy in their little secret corner of the garden, where the roses hid them from the view of all but their daughter.
She loved Daddy and the way he would pick her up and twirl her around and his booming laugh and the way it could make Mommy laugh too. Mommy was sometimes so sad and busy, but Daddy would smile at her or kiss her, and then Mommy's statue face would split into a shining grin, and she wasn't just a statue or a doll that the Three Ladies had put on the earth or the bench or in the ballroom. She looked like she cupped some of that divinity in her hands, that feeling that she had all she wanted in that moment. Mommy got that same smile whenever she held her daughter on her lap and Middie would always snuggle closer, happy she could make her mommy smile like that.
She wanted to make her mommy smile like that now. Middie looked closer at her mother and saw that her eyes were closed lightly, her pink, painted lips parted slightly. Her face was very pale, almost like porcelain, and when Middie put her hands to her mommy's cheek, she felt that it was as cold and smooth as her dolls. Mommy kind of looked like one now again, with her limbs all akimbo and and her dress pooled out around her, her hair all brown and red and spread out like a fan in the grass. The only time Middie had seen one of her dolls look like that was when she had dropped it accidentally, and its face had shattered and its arms were broken and its legs were bent, and she had cried and cried and cried, but all her tears couldn't fix it.
She shed no tears now as she tugged at her mother's dress. Middie frowned, her nose wrinkling. It wasn't like Mommy to stay like a statue for this long. And she was normally sitting, her back stiff and her legs crossed as she went very still. Right now she was lying on her tummy.
Mommy was just sleeping, she assumed. So she moved over to Daddy. He was staring straight up at the sky, his hands halfheartedly clutching at his chest. His eyes were half open, revealing the same pretty blue that she had for her eyes and always liked, and his face was set in a frown that she had never seen on him. Middie's brow creased at this new puzzle laid out for her. Daddy should be stifling a smile, and any minute now he would jump up and laugh at the look of surprise on her face and then give her a big hug. Middie grabbed his hair, twisting it between her fingers and lightly shaking his head back and forth to wake him up. He didn't move, his head now lolling slightly to the side, his face pressed into the grass that tickled her feet. His eyes that matched the sky stared blankly at her. Middie shivered.
Something wasn't right about this.
There were suddenly frantic footsteps and yelling, and Middie's head snapped up in shock. It was so quiet and peaceful in this corner of the garden that she was under the impression no one else knew about it. That theory was quickly debunked as her nanny came storming around the corner. She stopped as quickly as she came, her face going a pasty white in an instant. Middie cocked her head to the side and stared at her as the nanny stood stricken at the horrifying tableau displayed in front of her.
"They won't wake up!" She finally called out over the distance that seemed to grow greater and greater the longer they stood there motionless. The nanny covered her mouth and screamed, long and loud, and with this Middie finally started to cry.
Second part will be in a couple days. I split it up because there's going to be a time skip and possibly a change in writing style.
~Eva