ONE
A Reasonable Start
It's been nearly two days, and I still can't believe I'm here.
Everything is so… overstimulating. I walked the first few miles with my shoes off, but I had to put them back on as the sounds of night filled the field: the intense tickling on my skin, the night breeze, and the hum of the fireflies made it hard to concentrate even on something as simple as walking.
I cannot even think about where I was mere hours ago.
When I'm not watching the moon tonight, or gazing at the spitting fire, my unchecked thoughts bubble up and threaten to overwhelm me. My new plan of action is laid before me, blank as the pages in this diary, and my mind meets me with everything at once, and yet nothing at all.
My heart is full.
For travellers, I know that the night brings danger, but I am basking the light of our recent success.
Link has said very little – which is very like him, I know – but a few times I have caught him on the cusp of opening his mouth and closing it, like a stunned fish. He sets a fire as soon as the buds of nightshade begin to glow.
I'm watching him as he tends the fire. He has dropped a few apples into the flames, and is watching the skins char and peel. He fishes them out deftly with a broken arrow. Behind his back, the mighty belly of his horse rises and falls.
He is frowning slightly, a little v-shaped mark like the head of an arrow in between his brows, like a bookmark for his thoughts. All this time I was worried that I might be falsely remembered, and I had forgotten about this expression of his that I'd come to know so well.
What is he thinking right now? He is impossible to read. And whenever I look for long, he instinctively looks up at me!
My eyes are tired. My notes are starting to blur. Since I started sleeping, I seem to sleep as if I've forgotten what consciousness is, and the morning comes within the blink of an eye.
He assures me we will shortly be at Zora's Domain: to civilisation.