Btw, I deleted the last scene in the previous chapter because, based off of reviews, I realized it made absolutely no sense and didn't add to the story. It was from the Snow Maiden's father's point of view finding Nani a few years previously.

Holy crap, it's cold. I want a refund on this Spring! It was not what Winnie the Pooh said it was gonna be! Sheesh.

Baby Kai is doing well, I'm munching on homemade bread, and dang it, I'm telling a story! Life is good. Please review. I wanna hear yer thoughts.

Oh, and to you reviewers who are signed on as guests and who are not reviewing off of an account on fanfiction, I adore you, but I won't be able to really answer your question you may ask or message you unless review with a fanfiction account. Just a heads up.

Chapter 10: Frozen

Link hadn't sleep much before the crisp morning broke out over the village. The room felt as though it had been turned to ice and he could see his breath rising above his blankets. The fire had grown dark and the brazier was the only thing in the room that didn't have a fine film of frost. Teeth chattering, he threw on his tunic and scuttled down the ladder. He found the family in the living room, huddled about the fireplace. They made space for him around the fire.

"Don't go outside." said the mayor.

"I wasn't planning on it." said Link.

"No, really," cut in Kane, "Jewels nearly suffocated on the air out there. It's so cold-"

"It freezes on the way down." whispered Jewels, then she shivered and coughed.

"Where's Nani?" he asked.

Kane shrugged while rubbing his arms through a quilt. "She hasn't come down yet. I don't blame her. If it weren't for having to go pee I wouldn't have left my bed either."

"Kane!"

"Mom, it's a bodily function, everyone does it."

"That doesn't mean you have to broadcast it to the world."

He sighed in exasperation. "Excuse me, Link, I had to make a tinkle of golden water."

His mother smacked him across the head and he yelped. Link smiled, but his muscles didn't want to work. He was fighting not to imagine what Shadow looked like right now, nor about what had happened the night before. He could only be thankful that Nani wasn't down here yet. But since he couldn't plan on going outside, he'd have to face her eventually.

"Has it ever been this cold before?" he asked.

"No. Never." said the mayor. "I've never experienced cold like this before."

"Neither have I." said his wife.

Kane rubbed his head. He grew uncharacteristically solemn and threw his blankets over his head like a hood.

"You don't think this is...the end, do you?"

A chill ran up Link's spine.

"Of course not." said Carrol, but even she didn't sound so sure to Link.

An awkward silence grew over them. Carrol shuffled closer to her husband and leaned her head on his quilted shoulder. Jewels sat next to her brother and reached her hand through his blankets. Link, on the other hand, was a stranger in all this and kept his distance, doing all he could to keep his eyes on the fire. He couldn't let them see his guilt. He couldn't face that.

Did this cold mean the Snow Maiden had died? Or, possibly, was this her reaction to Shadow's death? Though he had tried to kill Shadow many times in self-defense, this was different, this was wrong. He felt so utterly wrong.

When he felt Kane's questioning eyes wander to him he couldn't take it. He left the fire, dragging his blankets with him. Maybe he would go outside and take a big breath of that freezing air. Out in the hall from the living room he already could feel the numbing bite of ice on his feet, face, and hands. Half way to his ladder, he turned around and came face to face with none other than Nani. Her dark eyes widened and with a thrill of panic he rushed to pass her.

"Link-"

"Please, forget about it, I don't want to talk about it."

He scrambled up his ladder, tripping a few times over his blankets. In his room he retreated to his mattress where he curled up in a lump. The last thing he saw before the darkness of his quilted cave covered his view was the snow outside reaching half way up the barn, and even the sturdy pine seemed flattened by snow.

The attic door opened and he tensed. Feet slapped against the floor.

"Link?"

He felt her weight sink in the mattress on his side. He felt pathetic. He just had to act like a five year old to the first girl he took the initiative to kiss. Some manly man he was.

"Link, are we going to freeze?"

"I don't know." he said, hoping the hot air from his breath would bring feeling back to his nose. "Probably."

She fell quiet. The stillness of the air was deafening compared to the howling winds of the night before. It was as though the very sound had been frozen still. Even through his several layers of blanket he could feel the cold reaching fingers to him.

After a few minutes he began to hear chattering, but it wasn't him.

"Nani, you should go downstairs by the fire. I can hear your teeth."

"I'm fine."

"You're freezing."

"We're all freezing."

He clenched his eyes closed. Yes, they were, and it was all his fault. Shadow died for his mistake. And if the Snow Maiden wasn't murdered by him, whatever had changed in her heart to cause this deathly freeze was because of him. The village would have been better off without him coming. The worst part was the look he had seen on Shadow's face when facing the whirlwind of snow. No one could have such love and tenderness on their face without having a soul.

Question was, how had someone like Ganon created a unique soul? He didn't think of himself as a wizard or anything, but the general belief was that the power to create souls lay solely with Farore, goddess of courage. It was part of every legend of Hyrule he had heard: Din created the land, Nayru the laws of nature, and Farore the living souls that would uphold that law and live upon the land.

Nani leaned into him, breaking him out of his thoughts. He could feel her head shivering through his blankets. His embarrassment was dashed away with concern and without thinking he opened up his blankets. To his surprise she fell into his embrace, throwing her own blankets ontop of them and curling up against his chest. It took him a full minute to think again. Talk about moving quick. His heart started speeding up a notch. Heat flooded his limbs as he caught a whiff of her sweet smell. Could this possibly mean she had forgiven him? Maybe even-

"Please, don't take this as anything," she said against his neck, "I'm just so cold."

The hopeful bubble in his chest deflated.

"I won't."

The awkward quiet returned. The cold fingers retreated from their combined heat and he could almost pretend that the blankets were a magical force field that made everything outside of them irrelevant and nonexistent. Sighing, he pressed his face against her hair. It was as soft as he had imagined.

"I want to apologize for my actions earlier. That was uncalled for." he said.

She didn't say anything, though her shivering was slowly subsiding.

"Why did you come up here? Your family is enjoying the fire downstairs. You'd be more comfortable down there."

"Do you like me?"

He blanched. "What?"

"Do you like me? Like...love me?" she shifted nervously. "You did kiss me. Please tell the truth."

Of course he'd tell her the truth, he'd only always want to tell her the truth. But the question hit him like a wall to the face. The answer should have been obvious, and yet it wasn't. He hardly knew Nani. He had only been here for a week. Why he had kissed her he had been wondering all night. All he could remember was the yearning to know deep within her, to see the story that was behind that promising smile. He remembered being drawn by her wisdom, which felt so much more down to earth than Zelda's had ever been. Her quiet demeanor reminded him of his own when he had first left the Kokiri forest, and he thought he could understand her. But really, if he thought about it, what did he know about her?

In all reality, it just didn't make sense for him to love her, so it couldn't be love. It just couldn't be.

"I don't know." he said.

She let out a shaking breath and drew into herself. He could feel her making a move to leave, but he tightened his arms around her.

"But I do know I want to know you," he said earnestly, "I want to know your best memory, your favorite food, your favorite games, hobbies, color, weather, shoes, flowers," he took a deep breath of her smell and knew he could smell that for hours without it growing old, "your worries, your past, your fears...Nani, I don't know yet if I'm in love. I don't even know if I know what love is. But I do know that I want you to be happy and I am so, so very sorry for making your night uncomfortable and pushing myself on you like that. That was horrible of me. I will never do that again."

She held still, as though thinking hard. Eventually, she seemed to make up her mind and relaxed against his chest with a sigh. He lost his breath as she lifted up her nose to nuzzle against his neck. Such a simple move did so many complex things to him.

"I just was afraid," she said.

"Of what?"

"That you were running off a whim and were, well, going to just use me or something."

He was horrified. "Nani, never. I would never do that to anyone."

"But I've read of it before, even in heroes." she held to him tighter. "They can have any girl they want, so they get rid of stress or have a nice night with whatever girl happens to throw herself at them."

He couldn't help but chuckle. "That's funny, because most of my life I've been terrified of women."

Her head rotated under his chin and he could feel her lashes against his jaw line. "Why?"

"Well, for one I was raised with children that never grew up. Adult stuff, including women, sort of hit me in the face and I just barely got use to the fact that people don't come from trees." he felt himself blush. "I mean, the Kokiri come from trees, that is. There was also this girl named Ruto I met once as a kid. She had something I needed very, very badly..."

! #$^$! #$#$%$#

She woke up not sure of anything. Snow surrounded her, lit with warm firelight. A silence pressed in on her senses. No snowflakes fluttered textures to her, no wind murmured to her, and for the first time she could truly feel the cold leaking in from outside. Groaning, she moved to get up and found herself able to move without pain. A rough blanket covered her form. Beneath it she saw a bandaged wrapped about her waist, dyed red, but not by blood.

The other thing that she noticed was that she was naked.

She clung to her blanket and blinked the fuzz from her eyes. The middle aged man sat crouched on the other side of the fire, polishing a beautiful brass horn in his hands. At his feet was the dark man, pale as snow itself.

"What did you do?"

"Just bandaged you up." he said softly. "Your clothes melted when you came near to the fire. I know now you are no ordinary girl, which is a pity," he turned the horn over to get to the other side, "you look so much like my lost daughter. But, even if you were normal, you couldn't be her."

"Your daughter?"

He smiled, a tender thing through his gruff beard and various scarves. "Yes. Got lost in a summer snow storm, she did. Her name was Rosy."

"Why couldn't I be her? I mean, besides the...not normal part."

The older man tapped his head with the horn. "She was a ginger."

"Ah." she said softly, curling up deeper into her blankets. She could feel her hair wilting against her cheek. Her own skin felt flushed with heat from the fire, but she liked it, even as it burned her. She wanted to crawl over to the dark boy, but was afraid of getting any closer to the instrument man. The last thing she remembered was the older man telling her he was dead, or close to it. She tried not to think about it and nuzzled her mouth and nose into her arms. The icy coldness from outside pressed in deeper. Her companion across the fire shuddered along with the flames.

"Never been in cold like this," he said, "and my wood stores are just about out. This is the last of it." he sighed and put down his horn. "I'm afraid I've done all I can for you and your friend. That red potion I put on your wound should have healed it by now, rare stuff, that is. Got it to make up for part of the price on a Kokirian fiddle."

She watched the fire play on the brass. A memory in the back of her mind flickered with music. There was something about this man she couldn't place. She feared his music, however. Too often the very thing she loved was used against her. Whatever she was looking for, she'd never know.

He blew off some ash from his horn and stuffed it back into his pack. "I better go. Unlike you, I don't stand a chance against this cold and need to make it to the village."

"Can you take him?" she asked.

He looked down at the pale boy by the fire and shook his head, meeting her gaze with sad eyes that said he understood her feelings more than she knew. It was the sadness the snowflakes sang of him. It must be this lost daughter of his that made him mourn so.

"I'm sorry." he said simply.

She watched as he slung on his pack and retied his scarves around his face. The fire flickered in another wave of cold, struggling to burn.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked. If he died in this cold, it would be her fault too.

"There's a village only about a mile away. I'll keep moving." his eyes crinkled with his hidden smile. "Thank you for your concern, miss."

She had the distinct impression then that he knew she was the cause of this cold, and yet he didn't blame her, but accepted it. The sensation was so peculiar she couldn't take her eyes off him as he crawled out of the cave and into the wasteland outside. How could he understand her so easily?

Once his dark boots vanished from her view, she crawled over to the boy on the floor, letting her blanket drag behind her. She didn't trust herself to touch him, but she curled up next to him, his body inches from her own. She leaned her forehead in so close she could almost pretend to touch him. How nice it would be to touch him-to have warm, friendly, human touch. It would be like a kind fire, she thought. Oh, to just be caressed by such warmness.

But he wasn't warm anymore.

She trembled.

"I'm sorry." Her throat hurt. "I'm sorry."

Icy water trickled past the bridge of her nose and down her cheek to the cave floor. His body turned to nothing but shadow back lighted by the fire in her blurring vision. She apologized over and over, not knowing what else to say.

The fire fluttered. She feared the cold outside. She didn't want to be with the snow anymore. She didn't want to be cold anymore. She wanted to be warm so she could make him warm again. She had done so many things wrong. If only there was something else other than winter out there for her, but there wasn't.

Soon her apologies grew incoherent. It was all her fault. She didn't want to live anymore. No one wanted winter anyways.

Figuring she had ruined things as much as she could already, she leaned up just enough to bring her face to his and kissed his lips so softly she barely felt them at all. Cold tears dripped onto his cheeks and she quickly brushed them away from his fire-warmed cheeks.

His purple eyelids quivered. She sniffed. It couldn't be. He had been frozen.

Clouded eyes looked up at her. His lips cracked slightly as he tried to smile.

"Gods, you're beautiful."

She couldn't breathe. She could only stare. His groan snapped her back and she scrambled back. If he was alive-if he was alive-she couldn't be near him, she couldn't touch him, she'd freeze him!

And at that a more horrifying thought occurred to her. As he coughed weakly she scrambled out the mouth of the cave.

"Hey!" she shouted. "HEY!"

Dang it, why didn't she seem to know anybody's freaking name!

But as far as she could see, the older man had vanished. A strange haze of cold lay over the land that made mirages in the distance. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears.

"What you 'hey'ing to?" croaked from inside.

She slipped back in just enough to see him. "The man who saved us, he needs to take you back-the cold-" she choked on a sob she didn't feel coming. "The cold, it's so cold, and your alive-how the hell are you alive?"

He gave her a strange, dopey smile and opened his mouth just to cough instead. It was then that she noted that his white face was blotched with red she hadn't seen in the rosy firelight. Her panic grew. The excitement and hope that had hit her before on his awakening now only teased her. She rushed to the fire, flapping her hands in distress, trying to decipher how long the firewood there would last.

It was then she realized she had left her blanket by him. She went ramrod straight. No wonder he was giving her that stupid smile.

She couldn't feel her stomach anymore.

Right as she was wondering how this had gone from horrible to absolute nightmare, he mumbled something and turned his head away, eyes drooping. She hesitated, then mentally smacked herself. How could she be worried about her dignity and minor safety when his life was trickling away as she stood there?

He made no sign of noticing her when she went to pick up her blanket. She paced a bit more in fruitless attempts to figure out what to do and eventually sat back down next to him to fret.

"Break it hard, such a pity, such a pity," he muttered. "Dirty city, such a pity." he took a deep shuddering breath and looked up at her. "Is there an extra blanket? Damn, it's cold."

She paused. Then, with trembling arms, she took off her only covering and laid it over him. He watched, though this time he didn't smile. She scooted away, arms wrapped about her breasts and legs glued together.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"I already told you," she said quietly, "I don't know."

"How 'bout Snow? Thought about that one for myself once."

"That's a stupid name."

He chuckled. "I know. Any name you had wouldn't be stupid though. You could be Snow, I could be Mud."

She wrinkled her nose, though inside she just wanted to cry. His delirium only made it worse. If he didn't die from cold, he may just die from illness. "Mud? Is that really the names you could come up with?"

"I want it to be special." he sniffed and groaned. "Agh, my head. Stupid church is so flipping cold, I want my money back."

Maybe, if she covered him with the blankets and hurried she could make it to the village, but it had taken most of her strength just to drag him the few meters to this cave. How could she carry him a whole mile?

"Can you walk?" she asked.

He looked vaguely offended. "'Course I can." He slowly sat up and moved to his knees. The moment he got there, however, he wobbled and tipped towards the fire. She leaped forward and caught him, nearly crying out at how close to the flames she had gotten, even though they never got close to touching her. She had never been too tolerant of heat. With her holding on to the tops of his arms to keep him stable, his eyes naturally fell on her chest.

"Huh," he said, as though examining the weather, "you're naked."

She nearly dropped him back into the fire. Instead she aimed him away from it before backing away herself, hot and horrified and scared all over. Men did awful things when the snow melted. Such awful, terrible things. But if he couldn't stand, surely she would be okay?

That and the thought she couldn't leave him to die were the only things keeping her from fleeing.

Maybe she could go to the village and bring someone back who could help him. But who would help her? Who could she trust when she trusted no one?

The boy on the floor took a shallow, rattling breath. "There were these skeletons everywhere. You have to be sure to cut through their femurs or they'll just get back up, you know? Skeletons. That knight, there was this knight there..." he flopped his flushed face towards her. "You're really pretty, you know that? I hope you know I wouldn't've gone into that tent anyways. You're prettier than anyone."

Her own blush burned her face, and it hurt. She wasn't built for this much heat. "What are you talking about?"

"The tent," he croaked, "where girls go to take off their clothes, they wanted me to go in, but I wouldn't. I knew you wouldn't like it. And I'm notta perv." he coughed. "Girls are special. You're special. Sex special." he gave her another goopy smile. "Hmmm, yeah. Sex."

She stared at him. She didn't know a fever could do this to people. Biting her lip, she made up her mind and stood up, doing her best to angle her body away from him.

"I'm going for help," she told him, "you stay here." Not like he could go anywhere.

His glassy eyes drooped with disappointment along with his cracked, and now slightly bleeding, mouth. "But it's cold. Don't you want to cuddle?"

Now she was blushing all over. "Trust me, you don't want to cuddle with me if you're trying to get warmer. I'll just make it worse."

"No, you're pretty and soft, it would be so nice." he hummed to himself, then coughed again. He groaned, flopped his head to the other side, and promptly passed out.