A/N: Welcome, everyone! As of May 12, 2016, this is completely rewritten. Old readers, new readers, all are welcome. For those of you that have already read this story, I ask you to take a fresh look at it: there have been a lot of stylistic changes, and I would greatly appreciate it if you all tell me what you think. Love it, hate it, I want to know! For those of you new to the story, this is going to be a fairly dark tale. Many of the characters within are in dark places in their lives, and much of the story arcs over their emotional and spiritual struggles just as much as their physical ones. Without further ado, I bid you read, enjoy, and REVIEW!
P.S. If anyone is interested in beta-ing this, that also would be greatly appreciated (though I'm not sure how it works, never done it)
Chapter One: Of Mice and Men
The sword across his back was heavier than all his years of turmoil. The Hylian shield- blazing, blistering to touch in the relentless sun- had ever been more cumbersome. Epona, the heavy draft, hung her head low beside him in misery. He had long since abandoned her heavy saddle to the shifting sands, and her sides were bare but for the whipped froth of sweat that matted her sorrel hide. The mare stumbled, her breath puffing emptily, legs unable to sustain her bulk and navigate the slippery terrain at once. The air before them was quivering with heat waves, the horizon shimmers of false hope- death masquerading as illusions of water.
Link took a knee, the hot sand burning through his thin cotton breeches. The mare trembled beside him as he retched and wheezed and sobbed dryly in his fatigue. Dry heaves wracked his body, but his stomach had long been empty and his mouth so dry that he couldn't conjure the slightest mouthful of saliva. The desert taunted him with its myriad of mirages. The very sands laughed and scorned him, you'll never make it out of here.
The warrior stood, collapsed with tangled feet, and rose once more to lean on his beloved horse. He lifted his gaze, his eyes dried and itching from the dust, his vision blurred. He looked beyond the rolling wastes and through the trembling air and saw green. Green, greener than the richest jade, green with life untouched by drought or famine. Green. Trees, a forest-before he knew it he was running, rolling down the slopes, stumbling, tripping, crawling with the red mare staggering alongside him.
They reached the treeline. Link laughed aloud, sobbed in relief, threw himself into the murmuring stream that's water tasted sweeter than any nectared wine. He drank so much that it all came back up, and soaked the last of the sands, and bent to drink more before crawling through the brook on trembling arms. He collapsed on the far side in lush grass, listening to the mare swish her tail and guzzle the water and splash like a young filly in the ripples. He cried, the first moisture to touch his eyes since he entered the wastes, and let the blackness overtake him.
Blades of grass tickled his nose. Link groaned breathlessly, sneezed, and his eyes cracked open. His limbs, weighed down with fatigue and dehydration, responded with nothing more than a twitch when he tried to rise. He ached, a pain deeper in his bones than any old wound from any old time of his life. He strained his ears, but couldn't hear the sighing of the brook, nor the movements of his steed. His head throbbed. The trees around him shifted and swayed, their limbs creaking. A twig snapped. Another. Feet moving in the undergrowth, closer, ever closer, Link could feel their very heartbeats through his state of otherworldly awareness. He couldn't move.
"I'm tellin' ya, mate, he was right here!" cried a voice in the underbrush. Link tensed.
"Gonff, when am I going to stop believing your tall tales?" another, his tone bordering on irritation, "yowch! Watch those branches!"
The pair emerged from the undergrowth. Mice. Giant, man-sized mice. Giant, man-sized mice that spoke, and walked, and shoved one another playfully about, and wore the clothing of men. Link's heart shuddered and grew still as their sharp eyes scanned. They fell upon him, gazing with human intensity for a moment before being spurred by whatever instincts that such creatures possessed. The shorter, tubbier creature reacted first, his green jerkin rustling and twin daggers banging against his hips as he sprinted to Link's side.
"I told you I found somebeast!" the mouse exclaimed, gathering him up in his paws.
Link choked on his swollen tongue, tossing his head as he struggled in the creature's grip.
"Settle down," commanded the other, a creature of noble bearing and the grace of a warrior, "we're here to help you."
Both knelt beside him, cradling him carefully and studying him.
"We need to get him back to the abbey," murmured the warrior, touching a paw to Link's forehead, "he's got a horrible fever."
Link tried to resist, tried to untangle his tongue to tell them to get their furry hands off of him and point him in the direction of his horse, so that he could be on, and forget that they ever existed like he had forgotten that anything ever existed in his years. But the mice were strong, and already were bearing him swiftly into the deep woods.
"Do you have a name, mate?" asked the mouse who'd found him first.
Link slurred something incoherent, feeling the darkness overtaking him, and he furrowed his brow and tried again with a paltry, "Ne-wa-eh…"
"Ne-wa-eh?" the mouse repeated, in confusion.
"Wa-ter," his drink from the stream seemed a distant memory as his mind fogged.
The mice eased him down quickly. A flask was pressed to his lips, and he grunted and guzzled at the sweet water. After a cough, sputter, and whimper, he was lifted again.
"A beast dyin' of thirst," remarked the chubby rodent, "he was a stone's throw away from the River Moss!"
The warrior hummed in reply, shifting the weight of Link's legs in his arms. "Stone's throw away or not, we need to get him to the Abbess. He won't make it otherwise."
Link was lost to them already, lulled by the respite brought by unconsciousness, borne away in the arms of the overgrown rodents.