The Queen of Hyrule is a lonely creature, now that the Gerudo is gone. It is a dangerous beast, loneliness.
oOo
The old Sheikah, Impa, has lost her mind. Folk say that years of guarding the Queen against foreigners, assassinations, and gold-digging kings shattered the old Sheikah's mind. They say the Queen found her in the grip of a fever one morning, foaming, wailing. They say the old Sheikah never awoke from her fever, that it plucked her brain right out of her skull.
They say that Impa was all the Queen had to talk to in this world, after the Gerudo left.
So of course the Queen of Hyrule is lonely.
oOo
There is Sir Link, who folk say is an intimate friend of the Queen. Those who don't know any better say, "She won't be so lonely when he returns from campaign." They snicker, wink, nudge each other.
Sir Link is exquisite, all slender muscle, river-blue eyes, hair like gold. Some folk imagine a good old-fashioned romance: a queen offering her handkerchief to a handsome knight, the knight pledging his life and sword to her. Good, old-fashioned chivalry followed by old-fashioned tumbles in fresh-laundered sheets. No woman with a man like Sir Link at her beck and call could ever have cause to be lonely.
But those who know better shake their heads.
Poor, stupid queen, ridiculous for all her vaunted wisdom. No woman with a man like Sir Link at her beck and call should ever be lonely.
But she is.
oOo
Folk have nothing good to say about the Gerudo, except that he's gone. Leaving was the only good thing he did. He overstayed his welcome. He made honest folk put up with a retinue of half-naked women for a whole summer, savage bitches who dined with weapons on their belts and robbed good Hylians of everything from their silverware to their men.
It got to the point no woman could let her husband or grown son walk the streets of Castle Town alone, lest a gang of Gerudos snatch him off the street. They always gave the men back, but never with their dignity intact. They'd dump a man naked into the moat, when they'd had their way with him.
Gods, it was good the Gerudo left.
oOo
Folk say the Queen has nightmares.
But the nightmares come later. A fortnight after the Gerudo left, the Queen still visited his chambers, her hair unbound and feet unshod as if she trysted with a lover. The chambermaids said she slept among the Gerudo's unlaundered sheets, that still smelled sharply of him: coconut oil, wild boar, the black-petaled roses the Gerudo had brought the Queen from the desert. The chambermaids said the Queen shed her nightgown and lay naked among the sheets, her hair spilled across the pillows. They said she held a black rose, thorns and all, as she slept.
The chambermaids finally stole the key and stripped the Gerudo's room. They washed the sheets and beat the mattress and the rugs. Folk say the Queen entered the room late one night and found it had been thus aired, the Gerudo scrubbed from the sheets and the tapestries. They say she cried, chest-scraping sobs too big for a woman so small.
The nightmares begin after the scrubbing of the Gerudo's chamber. The Queen locks herself in her bedroom and the chambermaids, eavesdropping in the outer rooms, hear her crying.
Her moaning wakes them in the wee hours. Terrible moans and sounds of thrashing, as if she is fighting a demon. The chambermaids all agree that she is whimpering, "Ganondorf. Ganondorf." That is the Gerudo's name, and it is the Gerudo, they say, who haunts her by night. He sits on her chest, folk whisper, suffocates her. Locks his mouth over hers and drinks the breath from between her parted lips.
oOo
Folk find it hard to believe that the Gerudo had been invited to summer in the Hylian court. The Gerudo are land pirates, blasphemies against the goddesses who made them, barbarians. They do not like men, except for their princes, and only one prince is born to them every hundred years. Folk do not like to think of their Queen consorting with the prince of such an evil tribe.
But consort the Queen did. How else to explain the evenings she spent in private dinners with the Gerudo prince? The long hunts? The scrolls no decent Hylian would read, scattered at her bedside? The way she tucked black roses into her bodice and discussed religion, politics, and ideas with him as if he were her equal?
Blasphemy.
oOo
There is a chambermaid who swears upon her good name that once, she entered the Queen's outer chambers at an earlier hour than usual to open the drapes. As she worked, she heard the Queen laugh in her bedroom, then speak. A voice answered her, a deep voice. The Gerudo's voice.
"He ensorcelled her," the chambermaid sobs to anyone who will listen. "Made her wicked, made her give herself to him so he could steal her virtue."
No one wishes to believe the chambermaid. But hers is only one story in a long line of ugly stories.
oOo
Folk say the Gerudo is a wizard and this is why the Queen groans and thrashes in the night. His spirit metamorphoses into a demon. The Gerudo is trying to steal her soul, to finish what he began.
No one can say why the Queen refuses the help of the sages who attend to her, of the doctors who see in her hollow eyes a woman worn down to raw exhaustion. No one can say why she wrestles, alone, with a monster she cannot conquer.
Loneliness is a dangerous beast. Though maybe it is not so lonely, in her bedchamber, where folk say the Gerudo sits, drinking up her soul.
oOo
A/N: It's Flash Fiction Month over at deviantArt. I'm seventeen flash fics behind and counting, but I at least managed to wrestle this ficlet out of my system (sans a proper ending - I have so much trouble ending stories you would not believe, O.o) I hope I can rustle up a few more flash fics before July is out. Thanks for reading.