XII

Green looked up at the door as someone knocked quietly, his armour now off and on the floor, neatly set together. He stood up, pushing aside most of a meal he'd not wanted to eat. When he opened the door he was surprised to see Vio there, Shadow just behind him. "I didn't grab a key." Vio explained, walking in with Shadow close behind. The shade's eyes were downcast, his cape almost completely enveloping him as he kept his arms close to his body.

Green smiled at him and looked up at Vio, who retrieved the book from his bag and sat on one of the two beds to read it. Shadow looked almost ready to follow, but sat with Green at the table instead, placing a book on the table. He could sense Green's heavy mood and pulled out some candy he'd picked up from one of the bars and tossed it to him, unable to think of anything to say.

"Thanks." Green looked at it, glancing at his uneaten food. He put them down in the table for the moment.

Shadow nodded. "You're welcome. You doing okay?"

"Yeah. I need to talk to everyone when Blue and Red get back is all."He smiled and Shadow returned it, taking notice of the abandoned food.

"Are you going to eat that?" He asked.

Green wrinkled his nose. "Nah. It's cold anyway." he nudged the plate towards Shadow. The shade took it and ate it. That, the fire, and the pages of Vio's book being the only sounds heard for several minutes as Vio read and Green stared at the fire. When Shadow finished he sat in silence, fidgeting with the edge of his cape for lack of anything else to do.

He didn't want to interrupt the others, but after several minutes he was bored out of his wits and slipped over to Vio, sitting on the bed beside him. The blond turned to look at him, caught off-guard by Shadow's inquisitive eyes. "Read to me?"

Vio's expression softened and he turned back to his book. "Why?"

"I'm bored." Shadow inched away shyly. "Please?"

The blond smiled and put his bookmark in, flipping to the beginning of the novel. "Okay, Shadow." Green looked up a few minuted later and saw Shadow curled up against Vio, the blond hardly noticing the shade as he read his book aloud, more passion going into the life of the words than Green had heard him give to anything. Shadow's eyes were wide, watching as Vio read each word and following along on the page. The scene made him smile, though Vio's words came back heavy on his mind.

He sighed and stood up, stretching limbs stiff from hours of sitting. He headed towards the door, barely jumping back in time as it crashed open half an inch from his nose. Blue nearly ran into him, entering as quickly as he was. Red laughed shyly, muttering a quiet "excuse me" as he slipped past Green and Blue, who'd stopped in the middle of the room, staring at Vio and Shadow.

"Hey, I want to talk to you all about something." Green said before Blue could make a scene. He pulled a chair from the table for Blue and Red standing behind him. Vio held the place in the book with a finger and the shade beside him looked up.

Green smiled and straightened his posture, finding a place he could look at all of them. "Tomorrow we'll hopefully find that temple and get Zelda… after that I always thought we were agree on what we were doing... well, what I think is evidently not what everyone else does." he sighed. "Where do we go from there? Where do we stand?"

Shadow looked away and Vio patted his shoulder. "You know where I am." the blond said.

"Well, that's a big question, Green." Red muttered. "I don't think it's up to us alone. What about Zelda and Father?"

"Perhaps we should wait to make a final decision until we can consult them both." Vio suggested with a slight, apologetic smile for Green for the way he'd acted before.

The leader nodded. "That sounds like a good idea. I apologise for how insensitive I've been about you guys. I've been so focused on Zelda that, well, I just assumed you'd all want to join again."

"It's okay, Green! Red assured, patting his head like a dog.

Vio nodded. "The important thing is getting Zelda now." he smiled as Shadow leaned against him, eyes closed.

Red knew better than to coo at how sweet they looked, knowing pointing it out would disrupt him, but it took a lot of willpower not to. Green smiled at the scene and then turned to Blue, who was slumped awkwardly in the chair, head lolled to the side. Green laughed. "That's why he was so quiet."

He and Red moved Blue to the bed and Red got ready for it. Shadow looked up and yawned a bit, smirking as Green, then Red mirrored him. He did it again and grinned as finally Vio needed to yawn as well, though he was humoring Shadow more than anything else. "OH! Hey, Green. You should take a bed tonight." Shadow pointed out.

Green looked at him and Vio. "I don't need to."

"I don't need to sleep." Shadow pointed out. "I mean, I will, but not for long. Just enough to completely heal from today. You should have the bed."

Vio nodded. "It makes sense." He shrugged. And so it was that Shadow curled up on the floor with several blankets on the floor and fell asleep within minutes, twisted into a position none of the others thought looked comfortable. Everyone went to bed, but they didn't sleep for log until Blue, Green, and Vio woke up to the sound of loud howling. "Goddesses, Blue!" Green cursed.

"What?!" Blue demanded, even more irritably than usual.

"Not you!" Green stood up and walked to the window.

Blue glared at him and the moon highlighted his silhouette. "I bet you could hit that thing with Vio's bow from here." he grumbled.

Green shook his head. "At this rate he's going to wake up everyone in the town. I'm going to see if we can bring him in before someone does shoot him."

He sprinted downstairs and outside in just pants and his undershirt, making the cold noticeable, especially to his bare feet. "Blue!" he called, summoning the wolfos.

"If you don't rename that thing, I will!" Blue the human yelled from their window, again having though someone wanted to talk to him for once. Green waved him off as Blue(the wolfos) sniffed at his feet for a few seconds, then tilted his head upwards again to howl.

Green, startled at the impressive volume, quickly clamped his hands over Blue's muzzle, silencing him. Blue growled a bit, but made no aggressive move. "Hush and maybe I can bring you in." Green told him, not sure if he could understand. Blue seemed to get the message though and quieted, following Green to the door of the inn where the owner was looking out at them, very annoyed. He agreed to let Blue in provided they took care to clean any messes and kept him silent. Upon entering the room Blue went straight to Shadow and wedged himself under one of the Shade's arms. Shadow muttered something and curled his arm around the wolfos. Green went back to bed.

Golden sunlight showered down on Shadow, but its rays did not burn his skin or drain his power, as the sun normally did. All around him were beautiful willow trees, flowering bushes, and pure green grass. A stone path led him through patches of sunlight and shadow, through the most beautiful place Shadow had ever seen. He wondered vaguely if he should be doing something, but in the end all he could think was to follow the path, passing chirping birds and a cool blue stream. In the distance mighty mountains surrounded him, but he payed them no mind as the stream wounds up just beside the path and he was following it just as much as the golden cobblestone. Eventually he came to a small pond, around which three beautiful women were gathered. The closest to him was standing tall, her arms folded. Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was fiery red, brighter than any creature's Shadow had ever seen. She wore minimal but ornate leather armor stained a reddish-brown that matched her eyes and had tanner skin and a more muscular build than the others. Shadow could not see her face.

He felt intimidated by her and turned his eyes to the second, the palest of the three. The woman was very slender and tall, though now she was sat on a rock at the water's edge, her bare toes just dipping in. She wore a long, flowing dress the color of the sky on a clear day embellished with a silver sash at her waist. Her hair was a deep blue, though it didn't look unnatural on her. The hair curled around past her shoulders, wavy at the very ends. her face was slender, and her eyes were icy blue and thin, framed by long eyelashes. She was the most beautiful woman Shadow had ever seen, and everything about her seemed to flow, her every movement alight with grace. Something about her reminded him of Vio.

The final woman seemed younger than the other two, though Shadow couldn't put an age on any of them. Sitting on the grass, she had light green hair, messy bangs falling over her forehead and draping in front of her ears. It was shorter than the other two's hair it and didn't quite come to her shoulders. She had a more laid-back air than the others, unburdened and free, dressed in a green tunic with dark leaves embroidered at the bottom and around the v-shaped collar. She held a green-glowing seed in her palm, smiling at it, while the others watched with mild interest. Green eyes alight with delight, the third woman held out her hand as a butterfly flew past and coaxed it to her empty hand. The seed had come from a strange, faintly-glowing plant in front of her with ivy-like leaves and a slender stem. a few seeds hanging from it like emerald pea pods.

She gently crushed the seed she held and sprinkled the dust over the butterfly, laughing in delight as it was enveloped in a green glow and curled into a chrysalis that lay dormant in her palm. "Look at what the seeds from my plant do, sisters!" She was enthusiastic, but not in a childish way, her bright tone, if anything, made her sound like a good-natured, but ancient being in a way Shadow could never describe. "They do not sprout and flower, but they make other things do the opposite! A flower would turn to bud, then to stem, to sprout, to seed if it touched this powder."

"What use is that?" the redhead scoffed. "A seed to make things weaker in a world that is only a seed itself. Things need to grow here, not revert."

"There will be a point someday those things will be too grown for this world to contain, if they do indeed continue to grow endlessly." The beautiful woman reasoned, an amused smile upon her lips as she held out a hand for the a seed that her sister handed to her without question. "Hyrule is nearly ready to be without us, perhaps we can leave the plant as a gift to Farore's children."

Farore smiled and nodded, gently placing the chrysalis on the grass under the plant. "This plant will not grow others, but it will grow a new seed every hundred years. I hope they make use of it in coordination with your wisdom."

"We can only hope the inhabitants of Hyrule treat our land and our gifts wisely." Nayru smiled.

The vision faded as Shadow blinked his eyes open, the lingering image of Nayru's smile staying with him longer than all else until the dream faded completely from his memory, him being too distracted by Blue's tongue to try and preserve the dream as the wolfos licked his face urgently.

"Good morning, Blue. Big day today."


Hello again! Sorry my last few author's notes have been rushed, It's been a rough few weeks. But here's your next chapter!

I want to thank all of you for reading this story, It's so great to see all the reviews, favorites, and follows coming in! And I would love to have more! I love reviews, I like knowing what was good and bad about a chapter and how I could get better. It helps me as a writer and it helps you guys get better stuff to read!

I've had a lot of support for this story and it makes me happy to just think about!

NExt chapter we start to get down to the final leg of the story, so, as Scar says, be prepared