Pyrophobia

"And could you do a favor for me, Zelda?" the queen asked. Due to a family tradition, her name was Zelda as well. Most people addressed her by her second name, Harriet.

"Certainly, what is it?" She was feeling more comfortable with the modern language, which was nice but sometimes she wanted someone who she could speak naturally with.

"I worried about my daughter," she said. Her name was Zelda as well, although Harriet had not given her a middle name. So when Zelda had been woken up from an enchanted sleep of centuries, things had been confusing for a while. Now people referred to her as Zelda the Elder and the queen's daughter as Zelda the Younger. "She was anxious for some reason last night, but kept telling us that she was fine. I haven't seen her since breakfast today, so would you go find her and talk with her?"

Zelda nodded. "I will. Do you know where she may be?"

"The maids say that they've seen her in the summer parlor, which should have been closed off for the winter. They say she took blankets with her, but everyone would rather her be where we've got the fireplaces going. Why she would even think of going there in December, I haven't an idea."

In the summer parlor? "Perhaps..." she started to say, but then thought better of it. Even if it was her mother, this might embarrass her. "I have an idea of why, but t'would be better for her to say so herself." Giving a curtsy, she added, "I will do my best to bring her back."

"Thank you," the queen said with a relieved smile. "You two are so much like good sisters; I'm glad you came to us."

"It's nice to have a little sister like her," Zelda said. While they were warmhearted people, she had lost her brother to time. He'd been foolish at times, but she still knew he was a good man at heart.

With the favor to fulfill, she left the queen to her work and went to her room. Hyrule Castle was too large to feasibly keep warm through all of winter, thus the central area was closed off from the rest to keep everyone comfortable. The outer areas were closed up from the elements. Still, it would get cold, especially in the summer parlor as it had large windows. Zelda got a long winter coat to keep warm, then headed off to find the other Zelda.

Maybe she could entice her back with an offer to help with her work. As Zelda the Younger was already named as the king and queen's heir, there was no need for Zelda the Elder to fulfill the role of a princess anymore. Her education was terribly outdated as well. But since there was so much for her to catch up on, she had offered and was accepted as a historian of the royal family. With that, she could pass down what she knew and gather up what she had missed.

Zelda found a door that should have been locked until spring; a guard nearby said she was keeping an eye on it but didn't want to relock it until the princess came back. After thanking her, Zelda went into the outer halls. It seemed empty here without the vases of flowers and sounds of chatter. Her breath turned to puffs of mist and the windows were coated with delicate frost. Beyond that, fluffy snowflakes drifted down onto the first snowfall from yesterday. It had been calm so far, but people were worried that a true storm would come tonight.

The door to the summer parlor was open; a shuffle of a page could be heard inside. "Zelda?" she said, knocking on the door to call her attention. "May I join you?"

Being curled up under a pair of heavy blankets, she kept a gloved hand on the page as she lifted her head out of her fleecy wrap. She smiled on confirming it was her. "Oh, sure, if you don't mind the slight chill here. But I'm fine, I brought good blankets."

"That certainly looks cozy," Zelda said, coming in and taking a seat on an overstuffed chair. Even though she was wearing her coat, the chair felt uncomfortable with cold. "Are you sure you want to be here, though? Everyone else is back where it's warm."

She had to wrangle her blankets around to sit up on the couch to chat. "Well, that makes it so noisy over there," she said, the corners of her eyes twitching like they did when she didn't want to tell the truth. "I can focus on my reading in here. And it really is cozy and nice."

"It would make it hard to eat, so you'd have to come back for meals," she said.

"Um, I could figure out something," she said, glancing at the furniture left in here. Unless she got something easy to handle and not too messy, like a sandwich, there wasn't a good table to put food on here.

"Your mother is worried about you being here too."

"I'll be fine," she said, worried on hearing that.

"What are you really doing here in the cold?" she asked, reaching over to put a hand on the blanket.

"Well, um," Zelda slipped back further into her blankets, possibly trying to hide the fact that she was blushing.

"Is it because you're afraid of fire?" she asked.

She looked over in surprise. "Huh? How'd you know about that? I haven't told anybody."

"It's a gift," she said with a smile. Actually, it was more good observation. With the mild autumn, the castle hadn't needed the fireplaces going until this week. Zelda had also left a bonfire event early after not saying much, which was very unlike her. "Although I can't tell why you'd be afraid."

"I got imprisoned behind a wall of magical fire," she said. "It sounded just the same as one in a fireplace, but I could hear all kinds of strange noises past it. The eerie buzzing was most common, but there'd be roars from any direction. Most of it didn't sound human because it was all monsters, but sometimes there was something almost human that I couldn't understand, just in the other room. That could be scarier than the others."

That would have been Ganon. From what she'd studied, he'd been using the form of a beast for so long that people believed that he hadn't been able to turn back into a human. "It would be. Did you get hurt on that fire?"

She shook her head. "I kept away from it mostly. Still, when the fireplace in my room got lit last night, I couldn't get to sleep because I'd hear the snaps and wonder what might be in the next room. I know we should be safe now, so it's silly to get fearful over that. But I still do."

"I wouldn't call it silly if the sound of fire reminds you of that imprisonment," she said. "However, are you sure you want to stay in the cold parts of the castle all winter long?"

"Um, that could be tough," she agreed, having to think about it now.

To get her comfortable around the fireplaces again… she should spent some time near one, with something to occupy her so the sound of a crackling fire became background noise again. "How about you come with me back to where I'm studying? I'll be with you so you won't have to be by yourself, and we can as one of the knights to stay nearby so you feel safer. Getting used to normal fire again is something you should do."

She seemed unsure for a moment. Thankfully, she nodded. "If I'm with you, then all right, I'll try that. Just, well, could you not tell anyone about this? It's really embarrassing."

"i won't tell them," she promised. "Although you may wish to at least tell your mother so she knows why you've been nervous recently."

"Maybe later." She got up from the couch, keeping one of the blankets wrapped around her while they were still in the summer area. "What are you studying now?"

Zelda got up as well and made sure the door was shut behind them when they left the parlor. "I'm working on a small book explaining the island temple. These days, people see it as just ruins on a foreboding island of cliffs and rock spires. But at one time, it used to be a place to worship the ocean itself."

"They'd worship the ocean?" she asked in interest.

"There is great power and mystery to the oceans," she said. "Fishermen and sailors of all kinds would come to ask for safe passage when sailing the open waters. When we had good relations with the oceanic Zoras, that temple was a shared place of worship too, one where we could negotiate on equal terms. I can show you a book with some excellent art on it."

"All right," Zelda said, smiling again. "But I thought you would be looking for a way to break the curse on Link so you two didn't have to live apart anymore."

Of course she'd be the one to bring that up. Trying to keep composed, she hid her smile behind her hand. "Well it's his choice, if he wants to live away from others."

The younger princess seemed like she would have tugged at her arm teasingly if she hadn't been trying to keep warm with her blankets. "Oh, but you're so happy whenever you get to see him and then sad when you part. And he really likes you too even if he can't say anything about it. So you should do what you can so you two can live together."

"The problem is that it's a curse we can't get out of," she said, trying to be serious. Although she might not mind getting to live with him, even in his cabin in the middle of nowhere. "Nor you. It's a lingering mark from a demon of a time even older than mine, making it so that evil will keep a grip on Hyrule out of hatred for our ancestors. We must always work against that evil to keep our land peaceful."

"I've heard about that, but that's not what I mean," Zelda said. "I mean, he got cursed this time so that if he dies, his blood can be used to revive Ganon. That means his monster servants keep fighting him, even now. It might even be why he doesn't talk."

While she had been worried about him, it had seemed like something she couldn't really help him with. If it was a curse, there might be something. "And definitely why he keeps away from people. I hadn't known about that. We could do some research, but we'd need to go see him to figure out the specifics of the curse magic."

"Could I come with you this time?" she asked.

"We'll have to wait until this upcoming storm passes," she said, waving a hand to the frosted windows. "And you'll have to be more tolerant of fire since he'll definitely have one going to keep his place warm."

She shifted the blanket around her shoulders. "S-sure. I'll work on it."

"I'll help you, and then we can help him," Zelda said. It had been tough to get used to these times, to everything that she'd known being gone or greatly altered. Still, Hyrule was a beautiful land with wonderful people. If she could help the younger Zelda and Link, the future could be bright indeed.

A/N: Written for a Yuletide exchange as a treat. While it matches up some with another fic of mine, it actually can't be a follow-up due to timing. All well, I like writing for these games.