Hollow
It was harder to feel in his new form. There were no nerves within his skin, no blood rushing through his veins to tell him he was alive. He didn't even breathe anymore, he was only vaguely aware of carbon dioxide siphoning through him and oxygen filtering out.
He wasn't hungry, but sometimes he still felt thirst. Or, more appropriately, the need to absorb water rather than drink it.
Remarkably, he could still hear and see. But taste, touch, and scent eluded him. Sleeping was no longer an issue either, not that he had the time to spare on slumber anyhow.
This form was different. It felt empty, in a way. He was lighter than he had been before, meeker. And when he had looked into the pond and saw his own reflection, he had screamed.
And not even that had come out right.
His usual child's shriek of pain or fear came out an echoing warble of terror and confusion. He had only recognized the voice as his own because he felt it reverberating within the walls of his body.
No, not a body… more of a shell.
He questioned his own ability to really speak or have a voice. Whenever he attempted communication, it came out as vibrations in his body which were emitted from his mouth that could no longer close. It wasn't the same. People didn't understand him like they used to. They looked at him with pity and conceit.
He looked at them in a filter of desperation. He could see the same way he used too. But rather than seeing the blurry figure of his nose between his eyes, or catching a glimpse of his eyes lids when he blinked or went to sleep, he was haunted by the dull shadow that lurked behind his glowing orange orbs. He knew there was nothing back there.
Nothing but the emptiness inside him.
After his first day, he had gone back under the clock tower. Back to the dead tree he had seen before. It looked like him, or at least how he looked now.
He placed his hand upon its petrified bark, hearing a soft clunk as bark hit bark. Looking at the downward set eyes and the unnatural droop of the branches, he knew that this tree had been living not too long ago.
That Skull Kid had taken its soul, and put it into him.
He voluntarily shuddered, as muscular reactions were no longer within his capacity. That feeling was welling up within his empty form again.
The despair. The sorrow. The horror. The longing. The regret.
They were feelings not his own. Feelings that belonged to this tree. This deku. He knew that the deku had had a family, friends. A home. Something that he had long ago left behind.
It was harrowing to be reacquainted with those feelings of helpless loneliness again…
And he so he knew that as long as he was in this form, he would always feel the emptiness within and the sickening drop of his soul when he was given a glimpse into the deku's.
He was becoming empty himself, emptied by the tragedy of this poor creature within him, never given a chance to fight for his life or fulfill his dreams.
With this mask on his face he was-
Hollow.