So my computer isn't broken anymore :D
Monster, how should I feel?
Creatures lie here
Looking through the windows
The afternoon has long past by the time we make it indoors, and thunder clouds have rolled in over our quiet forest. Our clothes are still splattered with blue, and I still can't help but smile at nothing in particular. I have a wish in my heart briefly, for this day to last forever, but I don't hold onto it. No, I can't hope for that because I know it never will.
"I'll go get changed," Zelda murmurs, touching my back gently and leaning her head into my shoulder before stepping past me towards my room. "I should be cross with you," she warns with a smirk, "this was my favorite dress."
All I can do is lean against the bookshelf in my own ruined clothes and cross my arms over my chest, grinning back at her as she separates us with the door.
With her gone, I feel free to move, to let my eyes drift. She's like a magnet, always drawing my attention towards her. And without that draw, I find myself turning to the bookshelf, and finding that piece of metal sitting on it from earlier. It doesn't look like it did before, before it looked charred, blackened and unpolished. Now it looks almost like it's glowing, or like it had been sitting in the coals of a fire and just barely pulled out, glowing white in the middle.
I reach towards it hesitantly—I can't describe the pull of it, but nor can I deny it. When my fingers finally meet it, I feel a spark, and for a second I think that it must have been hot and that I've burned myself. But as I glance toward my hand, it's unscathed, though suddenly thoughts that aren't my own are flooding my mind.
It's that woman again, and she's smiling, laughing as she looks at me, running through the trees as the sky opens and her body becomes blurry through a constant sheet of rain. She keeps looking over her shoulder, making sure I'm following, and then she's opening the door to a house and beckoning me inside.
The second the door shuts she's in my arms, but they're not mine... because I've never done this before, these aren't my memories, but I see them as though from my own eyes. Her lips are on mine, her damp body pressed against me. "I love you," she whispers, her breath light and racing against my skin.
I lift her up against me, her legs wrapping around my waist as I continue down the hall, and all the while our lips are attached. I've never been to this house before, but I know where I'm going, I don't need to be able to see, all I need is a free hand to guide me along the wall of the hallway to another door. I slam her body against it, a burning pit in my stomach waging war on my body, my legs feel weak, my head spinning. And then I reach around her hips to the iron door handle, my eyes finally leaving her for a fleeting second as my hands fumble with it.
And then it's gone. All of what I'd just seen is gone.
But the image of that door handle remains, burned into my memory, because it looks so familiar. Had it been blackened by fire, it would have looked exactly like the piece of metal on the shelf. The one that has lost the white glow it had just moments before.
My head swims for a moment, dizziness causing me to stumble as I take a step towards my room. I have to ask Zelda about it, I have to ask her if she saw what I just did. I lift my fist and knock twice, "Zelda. I need to talk to you."
No answer. I knock again, "Zelda?"
Nothing. My heart starts to race as my hand finds the doorknob and twists it anxiously, pushing the door down with as much force as my disoriented body can muster.
The sound of it swinging into the wall startles me and I flinch as I stare down in disbelief to the girl sprawled out on the floor, her paint-covered dress on the back of a chair, a different dress held loosely in her hand, and her body limp and unconscious. A feeling of distress climbs up and settles itself in my throat as I rush over to her, my eyes wide as I turn her over and cradle her neck in my hand. And then I gasp, because she isn't unconscious, but her eyes are open and she's staring up past me.
"Hey, are you alright?" I ask, partially relieved.
But she doesn't answer... because it's happening again.
There are tears in my eyes as I try to shake her body into waking from this spell, but it doesn't work. If it wasn't for her slowly rising and falling chest, I'd think she was dead. "Zelda, come on," I murmur, my voice breaking. I'm tired of this, I'm tired of losing her and her being afraid that she's going to lose herself for good.
Her lips quiver then, and I hope that it's over. She opens her mouth, like she's going to speak, and then in a voice that is too stoic to be hers, she says, "She's not here."
I can feel my jaw drop slightly, her body suddenly feeling heavy in my arms. "What did you do to her?" I ask, though I can't manage to say it louder than a whisper. I lay her down on the floor, my shaking hand finding her cheek, "Give her back," I beg.
Unseeing eyes stare up past me, she's still lost.
"Please, give her back," I plead with whoever is doing this.
There is nothing... no hint of response. Sometimes it takes time, maybe I should just give her a minute. I am haunted by those three words she spoke to me though, "She's not here." I lean back and push the hair off my face, I'm afraid.
Who had been speaking to me if not Zelda? Every other time when she'd drifted off, she had never spoken directly to me, never separated herself from the body she was in, said she was someone different. If it was Hylia like we thought, where was Zelda? Maybe two consciousnesses were never meant to live in the same mind, and maybe one was taking over the other, and maybe this was the last straw before Zelda broke.
With a lump in my throat, I lean back over her, placing my hand on her cheek and hesitantly speak one word, "Hylia...?"
Those eyes that are supposed to be Zelda's, the ones that are different than the ones I've seen when I touched the glass and the piece of metal, they look directly at me.
My heart stops for a moment, and then it begins hammering, blood rushing in my ears.
But that doesn't stopping me from hearing a distant howl from the woods, angry and pained and feral all wound into one blood-chilling sound. "Oh no," I mumble, hurrying to rush to the doors and lock them, make sure we'll be safe even though the thought of being trapped inside this house with Zelda's body for the night terrifies me.
By the time I make it back to my room, she is no longer laying on the ground but she's sitting with her back against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her eyes are still staring off to some distant place, and so I know that she's still not my Zelda.
She promised this would never happen. But I guess we could have never seen this coming. She promised she would always be my Zelda, but she's not right now. I don't know if she ever will be again. I lower myself to the floor against the wall across from her, holding my head in my hands and aching at the thought of losing her. In the distance I can hear the Arnacht coming back to life, though there is a ferocity in it that startles me even after everything that's happened to us because of it, a ferocity that only stirred when her eyes looked at me.
My sword sits sheathed in the corner, and an idea stirs in my head fueled by fear for her. Maybe if I can end this, then maybe I can have her back.
Standing up, I pull the sword into my hand, swallowing hard and slipping it from its sheath with a trembling grasp.
I feel some of that same adrenaline that drove me through my journey course through my veins, my breath shallow but quick, walking on the balls of my feet to the door I'd just locked. For a moment the brief thought flits through my mind that this could be the stupidest thing to do. But then I'm desperate, and I don't know if it's worth going back to Skyloft alone, explaining to her father, trying to explain to everyone if something should happen to her.
I reach for the doorknob, gently twisting the lock, and then grip the handle, preparing myself for what lay outside. This wasn't like the things I fought before, this thing was fast, it was ready. But I'm ready this time too.
So I open the door.
For a moment I brace myself for the impact of it trying to push past me, like the time before when it burst past the door the moment it was unlocked. But instead it stands, teeth bared a few feet away, snarling, ready to pounce, but still just waiting.
My hand feels slick on the hilt of my sword, my palms sweating and my heart thundering. I twirl the sword once in my gasp, beckoning it to make a move, but it only stares me down with hungry eyes.
It snaps its jaw at me, a bark like the crack of a whip echoing throughout the small room and I flinch. "Come on," I whisper, my voice shaking.
It obeys, lunging at me past the door so quickly I barely have time to react. In the next moment I'm on my back looking up at it over my head, and then I feel its weight as it leans a paw on my chest. The talons bite down into my skin as it presses harder, four knives digging into my flesh. I call out in pain, bracing my hand against its neck to keep it from sinking its teeth into me, writhing beneath it to get enough leverage on my sword.
I manage to get my knee between my body and the Arnacht's, and that's when I plunge my sword into its stomach.
It stumbles back for a moment, head bent down to see the blade still embedded within its body. I push myself up into a seated position, watching it with a glimmer of hope, the faintest victory in the distance.
And then my sword clatters to the floor, not stained by any blood. The hole that had once been in the Arnacht's stomach weaves back together as if it had never been there at all.
I inch backwards on my hands, with no weapon, no hiding place, no protection from the impending fury I can hear rumbling in its throat. It rears back on its hind legs, bearing its savage teeth again, and all I can think about in that brief moment is that I'd messed up. That everything that is about to happen is my fault. Tears fill my eyes as I watch and wait.
It leaps towards me, and unlike before when everything had happened too fast for me to process, I see everything. And I hope that Zelda will run.
And then just as quickly as it had pounced, it's knocked out of the air and onto its side, a whining yelp catching me off guard as a beam of light pins it to the ground. My eyes widen in shock as I follow the beam back to the girl in the white dress standing in my bedroom doorway. She holds her hands out in front of her, palms glowing, fingers shaking slightly and flexed as if she is pushing back a great weight. And then I see her eyes, almost white completely with golden light spilling from them.
"Don't touch him," she says, and it's as if two voices are speaking at once; one of them is Zelda's, the other is stronger, with more authority, "this is our fight."
It cries and yelps, struggling to evade the light, and finally, just as it crawls close enough to the door as if being crushed beneath stone, the light falters and it bolts into the darkness.
I watch for a few moments, my heart pounding as it anticipates the Arnacht's return, but the night is quiet. Turning back to Zelda, her eyes start to fade from that glorious gold to their regular, clear blue. Her body wilts then and she glances at me once before her eyes roll back, and she begins to fall forward.
The pain in my chest forgotten, I jolt forward to catch her, slowing her fall as we settle back to the floor. "Link?" she asks quietly, her voice thick and empty. The tears that had been in my eyes spill; her voice is Zelda's. I hold her tight in my arms, hugging her close to me and her body is quivering, it takes me a moment to realize through my own stupor that she's crying.
"Are you okay?" I ask her softly, burying my face in her shoulder.
She shakes her head against me, unable to form words through her muffled cries.
"I've got you," I remind her quietly.
"I almost couldn't get back," she murmurs.
I press my lips to her neck. "You're here," I remind her, "you're okay."
Her breath is ragged against my skin, her trembling hands holding me tight. I hope she believes me when I tell her that we're both okay for now. We'll both make it through tonight. Because I'm not sure if I even believe myself.