Midna

My fingertips fell against the wooden armrest, an impatient rhythm thrumming in their contact. It caused a repeated tapping that filled the room, and though I knew that it probably drove the other occupants of this space crazy, the knowledge didn't amuse or entertain me, which was unusual. I had been acting "unusually" for a very long time now. It didn't take long to grow bored of the routine sound, so—Just to shake it up a little, I thought sarcastically—I let out a long sigh.

The other eyes in the room darted to me, but I paid them no mind. The dull glow of the twilight filled the throne room as it always did, yet the plain color did not comfort me as it used to when I was a child. It seemed that nothing was "comforting" in the twilight anymore. Another sigh, and I fidgeted unhappily in my throne. More rhythmic tapping from my fingers, and the clicking of my tongue against the side of my mouth. "Princess?"

I ignored the servant, not even sparing him a glance. I began to fear that I was being too lenient with these servants—they were obviously feeling too bold if they were approaching me without a planned audience. Too bold for my liking. Once more, I let out a great huff of air and rocked out of the chair, onto my feet. "Oh, how this throne room bores me." I sighed, stretching my arms above my head.

A whole year back in my normal body and it still felt unnatural—walking around in this form. It was like I was still waiting to morph back to that small imp. I had thought that the forged shadow was rather fashionable, also. I continued to ramble, playing with a strand of my orange hair. "Maybe we should paint it! What do you think?" I said, pretending to sound enthusiastically mischievous as I turned to the servant.

He seemed slightly baffled by my asking for his opinion. He rearranged his facial expression before speaking. "What color would you have us paint it, Princess?" I thought about that for a few moments that seemed like a few years, and then my face fell. I exhaled deeply and looked out the window with a longing air. "I suppose painting it is a foolish solution, isn't it?" I muttered, more to myself than the servant.

Really, the problem wasn't that the room was boring. It was that the realm in which I lived was depressing. The dead yellow sky that never had sunlight, the black traces of broken dimensions that floated through the air, how there was never any breeze or weather here. This was the Twilight. Painting a throne room wouldn't change that. Even now, as I gazed out the open window, there was no relief in seeing the outside world. Because the outside world was just as ugly as the inside.

Sometimes I liked to close my eyes and imagine the breeze against my skin again, the sunshine warming my body again, the gray and black fur that brushed against my cheek again. I liked to imagine that I was back in the world of the light, and I liked to imagine a different ending to my hero's tale. It was an ending in which I hadn't spent my entire journey antagonizing and taunting him—constantly degrading him. An ending in which I was allowed to stay there with Princess Zelda and the light. An ending in which I wouldn't have to say goodbye to the light. The precious light that I had taken for granted. Now that I looked back, though, it seemed that I had taken everything for granted.

I yawned loudly and then propped myself on the windowsill. "Get out." I muttered uninterestedly, and the servants scurried away. So I sat alone in my throne room. As always. I had been alone for a whole year. A year in which I had rebuilt the Twilight, but also a year in which I had grown more and more closed off. I couldn't be myself as the "Princess of the Twilight." It's hard to be sarcastic when everybody in the Twilight world takes things so literally. Sometimes I think that's just because I'm the princess, though.

Things had been really down for me lately, "lately" meaning "the last three quarters of a year." That was because it didn't take long for me to give up hope on returning to the light world. It was easier now to say that I shouldn't be back there anyways, but that's only because I know that I can't return. When I first came back to the Twilight, I had only made it about a month before I cracked. I just remember exhausting myself as I tried to make portal after portal, each one shattering before my eyes like glass.

So it had been settled. I didn't belong in the light world. A girl could dream, but a princess couldn't leave her people. And as Midna, the Twilight Princess, I wouldn't leave my people. Instead of thinking about this painful conclusion to my life, I tried to focus on the scenery of the twilight world instead, and thought of alphabetical words to describe it. A: Abasement. B: Brooding. C: Corrosive. D: Depressing. All of them were good words. I was content with this imaginative stupor, and I slowly lowered my head onto my folded arms and closed my eyes. It didn't take long to lose consciousness.

. . . .
"Princess! Princess, wake up!" My eyes barely opened, and were mere slits as I tried to clear my vision and my head. "Princess, we have to escape! Now!" As sight came back to me, my hearing did as well. Behind the servant's frantic voice I heard something else. What was it? I tried to focus more to tell what it was, and then, all at once, the answer was clear. Bombs. Exploding bombs that were filling the air with dust and debris.

My head snapped up, and I barely noticed the servant pulling on my sleeve desperately. I stood from my spot where I had fallen asleep on the floor and rushed to the window. "What happened!" I snapped at the servant girl, who was already scurrying for cover behind me. "We do not know, my princess! One moment, everything was normal, and then the next, they were attacking!" My eyes widened. "Who?" My voice was barely more than a whisper, and the servant's eyes turned pleading. "We do not know, Princess!"

I was disabled with fear and anguish for only a few moments before I cleared my head again. I Pulled my skirt out from the servant's grip and instead grabbed her hand. "Come with me." I rushed her through the hallways of the palace, searching desperately. "Where are the guards?" I yelled to her over the explosions, my tone just a little more unkind than I would have wanted it to be in my alarm. Her finger shook as she pointed. It was at the entrance of the grand hall that all of the guards were now stationed, desperately trying to defend the palace.

I grabbed the girl by her shoulders and looked her directly in the eye. "I want you to get out of here. Find some place safe and don't leave there until someone comes for you." She nodded and I shoved her forwards. "Go!" As she sprinted away, I hurried over to the guards and stood in front of them, catching their attention. "Princess!" One of them shouted over the roaring bombs. "You need to get out of here!" "Listen to me!" I shouted, forcing them all to focus on me.

"All of you need to escape! I don't know who these people are, and until I do, nobody is fighting them, got it?" "But, what about the castle?" One responded. "Do you value this old castle or your lives more?" I growled. "I will stay here and defend the castle." Immediately their faces turned defiant. "We can't leave you here, Princess! Not even you could fight all of these monsters off alone!" I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. They were right, but I wasn't about to let them know that. I wasn't about to tell them that I wanted them to sacrifice their lives for me. Not today.

"I order all of you to run away!" "But—!" "NOW!" I roared, pulling back my hand threateningly, green electric currents of magic already sprouting from my palm. Reluctantly, they all turned from me and fled down the steps. I turned to those attacking my castle and blinked. There were so many, which didn't surprise me, but what did surprise me was that I didn't recognize these beasts. I had never seen them before. Strangely, they didn't look like they were from the Twilight, yet they didn't look like they were from the world of the light either.

Where had they come from? Immediately, every single one focused on me. I couldn't last, but I could try. I had no purpose now but to protect the Twilight kingdom, so I could at least fulfill that promise. I took several deep breaths, each one more painful and more terror-bearing than the last, and then pushed my hands in front of me, palms forward. It was as they charged at me that the green electricity spewed from my finger tips and brought them down—one by one.
. . . . the only problem was that "one by one" wasn't good enough.