Gathering Dust

by FlowerOwl

Left behind as the sole survivor after death descended on the world, Zelda cannot deny that she is fleeing from more than just the memories haunting her as each passing day adds to the weight of her despair, and when a chance meeting allows for her path to cross those of two strangers, it soon becomes clear that they all have more to make peace with than merely their own past.

12. Chapter 12

The gentle lull of the sidecar kept her in the realm of almost being awake enough to notice her surroundings, grass flying past her, mountains rising up above her, only to disappear once again to make way for the roar of a river, and being fully asleep for the entire journey to Kakariko Village. Unable to form a proper idea of where they were, Zelda could only guess, could only try to look up at the trees that passed by above her head in the moments between total darkness and think that they did not look like the trees that grew in the Faron Province. But other than that, she was not sure exactly where they were going, how long they had been on the road, the sun rising up above her twice, but with the periods of sleep in between leaving her unable to know for certain what it meant for the time, or when they would reach the village that belonged in legends and books on mythology rather than on a map. A couple of times, Zelda tried to turn her head to steal a glance at Ganondorf, trying to gauge if he would be all right, but even if she had been able to clear her mind of the presence of sleep, she would still not have been able to know whether or not the fact that he had yet to wake up was a sign that his body was beginning to shut down or if it was an attempt at directing every last bit of strength to the process of recovering from the wound and subsequent escape from Clock Town. Link was visible as little more than a shadow out of the corner of her eyes, Zelda lacking the energy to bring herself to lean forwards to look past Ganondorf. Instead, she ended up spending most of those short minutes that interrupted the darkness looking towards Dorian.

He was leaning in over the handle of the motorcycle slightly, Zelda seeing how he anticipated every turn of the road, gently leading the bike along it without making any sudden turns or stops. Though she could not see his face, there was nothing about his reactions that would suggest that he was tired. But he had to be. With the passage of time being a blur to her, all Zelda had to guide her was the sight of the sun above her head, but even that was enough to let her know that they had been on their way to Kakariko Village for more than a day if not several. Granted, she could not completely deny the possibility of Dorian sleeping when the rest of them did, but it seemed unlikely with how she had yet to wake up to find him asleep. Rubbing her eyes in an attempt at getting herself to feel even slightly more awake, Zelda was halfway about to ask him if it wasn't dangerous to continue on like that, when they rounded a corner, the mountainsides that had stood tall next to the road suddenly opening up to reveal the clearing that lay between them, surrounded by cliffs and hills, and all words fell away as Zelda looked at the sight in front of her.

It looked nothing like any city or town she had ever seen before, that much was clear. There were no skyscrapers, nothing that hindered her view of the village from the top of the hill where the road continued down towards what looked like some sort of main road. Instead, Zelda saw houses scattered throughout the valley, some of them located closer to the mountains, giving them a view over the valley, and other closer to the river that cut through the landscape. But more than anything, the thing that set the village apart from everything she had seen since she had first left her home behind, since the world had first fallen apart, was the fact that there were people. As Zelda sat motionless in the car, she saw two children run past a staircase leading up to a house that had been built on an elevated platform of rocks, one of them turning to look at them, only to gesture towards the other as the two of them began to sprint towards them, yelling something that Zelda wished she had not heard.

"Dad!" the younger one of the two reached them first, barely giving Dorian a chance to swing his legs over the side of the motorcycle and stand up before she had launched herself at him, Dorian merely laughing and picking her up like he had not just been awake for days as she laughed. "You're back!"

"Yes, I'm back." Dorian laughed, the sound making him seem much younger than before. "And I have brought some very dear guests along with me—they have had a very long journey behind them, so please give them a moment to rest before you bombard them with questions." the last part was said in a slightly more serious tone of voice, but Dorian was still smiling as he turned towards Zelda. "Impa should be here in a moment. She will make sure to tell you everything you need to know about… about this village and what place the three of you hold within it."

Without giving her a chance to protest, to beg him to stay until she had at least got a chance to wrap her head around the fact that there were people, far more people than what should have been possible, Dorian, Olkin, Steen, the two children, and now this Impa whoever that was seeming like they only made up a fraction of the population of the village, to ask who Impa was exactly, or why he talked about them like they belonged in the village they had thought of as a myth until that very moment, Dorian allowed the two children to pull him away from both the motorcycle and its three passengers to instead lead him down the road, chattering animatedly, Zelda catching little more than snippets of words as she looked after them.

There were people there. It should not have come as as big of a surprise as it was, not when she had seen the signs of it since the first time she had entered the museum to see that the Yiga Clan was more than just the creation of two souls who had been fortunate enough to find someone in the wake of the apocalypse, and yet, Zelda sat there, unable to tear her gaze away from the proof that there were really other people out there that the smoke rising up from little fireplaces scattered throughout the hills was. It was the kind of hope she had been able to cling to for so long, and yet, as she took in everything that had happened over the last few days, the cold sense of dread kept on building in her stomach as she remembered what Dorian had said.

The Yiga Clan was attempting to cause the apocalypse, believing that the Master Sword would serve as some kind of way to identify their enemies. Zelda wished that she could brush off all of that as the talk of a man who had known that he was outnumbered, and maybe she would have been able to think of a convincing enough lie to do just that had it not been for the fact that she could still see the afterimage of how Link had changed in front of her, losing the awkwardness and the fear that had first characterised his attempts at wielding the sword in a matter of seconds to instead charge with the sword held like he had spent in his entire life training to prepare himself for doing just that. That was something she could not ignore, the fact that, somehow, the sword seemed to have changed his behaviour. And if the sword seemed to hold some kind of magic, then, surely, it would mean that she could not eliminate the chance that Dorian might have told the truth about the Yiga Clan.

The apocalypse. Zelda whispered the word to herself, feeling a shiver run down her back as she did so. What would it look like? Not so long ago, she would have had an answer ready in a heartbeat, would have thought of fire pushing through any barrier or an army that could not be stopped. Now, however, she was not so sure anymore. What could possibly be categorised as an apocalypse if what had already happened, almost everyone around her dying, could not?

Zelda did not get a chance to find an answer, nor did she think she would have been able to even if she had been given all the time in the world, for the next thing she knew, an old woman had stepped out of the house built up on the raised platform.

Even from all the way up on the hill, Zelda could see her age in the way she moved, reaching out to hold onto the banisters of the staircase connecting the house with the rest of the village as she slowly made her way down towards the road running past the house. But for as much as her movements spoke of age, there was something about the woman that made Zelda have to look at her twice before she was able to say for sure that she was really as old as she had first thought her to be. It wasn't something tangible, something Zelda would have been able to point towards while declaring that that was what had made her pause, but as she watched the woman make her way towards them, the metallic ornaments that hung from the hat that kept Zelda from being able to properly look at her face drawing her gaze upwards, towards the eye and the drop of tear that had been painted onto the front of it, there was an undeniable aura of something hanging around her that made Zelda sit there, silent and frozen as she watched her approach.

The woman stopped next to the motorcycle, looking down at them with an unreadable expression in her eyes for a moment before nodding, the gesture seemingly meant more for herself than for them. "Zelda," the woman said, saying the name with a confident tone of voice, like she had known her for ages, "it is good to see that you are safe."

"Uh…" looking back up at her, searching for any sign that the woman was about to continue to explain to her just how she had come to know her name, Zelda fought to think of something to say. "Thank you… Impa, I presume?"

"That is correct. However, you look at me as though you are confused about how I came to know your name." looking from Zelda towards first Ganondorf and then Link, Impa shook her head. "I take it that Dorian has failed to inform you about what meaning this place holds for you." without waiting or a response, she let out a deep sigh, having already halfway turned from them again when Zelda thought to move, swinging one leg over the side of the car only to almost trip as the hours of not moving caught up with her, making her movements slow and sluggish.

"Wait!" Zelda called out, running to catch up with Impa as she twirled around to look back over at her once again. "What do you mean? What should he have told us about?"

But Impa did not answer her. Instead, she leant to the side, clearly looking towards where Ganondorf and Link had yet to wake up, a frown slowly forming on her face. "Perhaps he was right. With how they are looking right now, I doubt that any of you would be able to handle the truth."

Zelda could practically feel her only chance of receiving any kind of explanation for what was going on, why the Yiga Clan had decided to guard a sword they had named after the sword of legends, why Dorian and his men had been willing to risk their lives to save them only to abandon them the moment they reached Kakariko Village, a village that should not exist, how there could be so many people there when almost the entire world had perished, or why they all talked about them like they had known that they would arrive, slip away, but she refused to give up just yet. Somehow, Impa held the answers to at least some of her questions, and she had not come all this way, had not decided to trust Dorian after someone from his group had chased her into the icy waters of Regencia River, to give up, and so, she reached out, barely managing to catch hold of her sleeve.

"No, please, Impa, I need to know what is going on." Zelda heard how her voice rose, could practically see it in Impa's face as she turned back towards her, casting a single glance towards the fabric of her sleeve that was undoubtedly crumpled now that Zelda had grabbed onto it, but other than letting go of Impa's sleeve, she did not relent. "We were attacked, at first by the Yiga Clan, but Dorian certainly gave give us reason to believe that he wanted us dead as well. We decided to trust him and come here because we were promised some answers—my friend, he got injured in the attack, and Dorian told us that he would receive the help he needed if we just came here with him!"

"And so he will." Impa motioned towards a point behind her.

Already halfway knowing what must have happened, Zelda turned around with her heart beating madly in her chest, only to see how a group of about five people she had never seen before in her life had gathered behind them, two stretchers lying on the ground next to the motorcycle as they lifted both Ganondorf and Link out of the sidecar with expressions that did not betray any kind of surprise at their presence. Instead, they seemed weirdly calm about it all, Zelda seeing a woman lean towards the man standing next to her, gesturing towards something in the car, no doubt having spotted where they had ended up placing the sword at their feet to try to keep the risk of further injuries at a minimum. They stood there like they did not find any of it weird at all, leaving Zelda as the one to stare up at them while she tried to recall just when they could have arrived, how she had missed them moving towards the motorcycle with two stretchers. But she was at a loss for answers, the only explanation she was able to think of being that she had been too preoccupied with trying to get answers from Impa to notice her surroundings.

Impa touched her hand, instantly bringing Zelda back to reality to look over at her as she pointed towards the house she had just left. "Come with me. You need rest as well. I promise you that everything will make sense very soon. You just have to remember and allow yourself to forget what you think you know."

With how Zelda was no longer sure about anything in her life, it should have been a simple enough task, and yet, she found herself resisting, continuing to look back towards her friends as Impa began to lead her towards the house, tugging at her hand to make her follow. The people who were lifting Ganondorf and Link out of the sidecar seemed gentle enough, one of them moving to support Ganondorf's head as they carried him the short distance between the bike and the stretcher, but Zelda still felt her heart skip a beat as the sun shining down from the sky above them allowed her to fully take in his condition for the first time in days, revealing how the bandage had turned almost completely red, the blood dripping from where Link had tied the ends of the strip of fabric together to keep it in place.

"And my friends?" Zelda heard herself say the words, part of her mind still replaying the moment the drop of blood hit the white fabric of the stretcher over and over again. "Will they…?"

The answer came immediately, Impa not even looking back at them. "They will be just fine, trust me."

Everything about the situation seemed to tell her nothing else than to do the exact opposite of that, to tear her hand out of Impa's grasp and run back to her friends to demand to stay with them wherever they might be taken to, and yet, Zelda found herself nodding, allowing Impa to continue to lead her towards the house without protesting. Not that protesting would have helped much as she walked along, following Impa through a village she had not thought was real until just a few minutes ago, without supplies and with the only weapon they had having already been found.

Casting a glance over her shoulder, Zelda saw how the very people who had just lifted Ganondorf and Link out of the sidecar gathered around the fifth member of their little team, all of them looking over at her as she held up the sword, gesturing towards it. It was apparent that they were discussing something, but the distance between them was already far too great for Zelda to be able to overhear any of it. All she knew was what she could see, that they seemed to reach some kind of agreement, the woman shaking her head in response to something the man to her right said, the group splitting up, lifting up the stretchers to begin transporting Ganondorf and Link away from the motorcycle, with the woman following along after them, still carrying the sword. But where Zelda would have assumed that they would take them towards the same house Impa was leading her to, they turned away from the main road, instead heading towards a little cluster of houses towards the right side of where the mountain pass had opened up to reveal the hidden village. The next moment, they were no longer visible from the road leading towards Impa's house, and so, Zelda followed along behind Impa as she walked up the steps to her house, opening both doors at once and holding them open while Zelda ducked below her left arm.

The room, despite being located next to a mountain that Zelda had assumed would make it difficult to get enough sunlight inside the house, was well-lit, the windows behind her aided by a couple of lamps scattered throughout the room. However, it was not just a matter of lamps and sunlight. As Zelda stepped forwards, there was an undeniable glow coming from an orb located directly next to where the wall opened up to a staircase leading towards what Zelda assumed was the second floor of the house.

"Impa—" Zelda began, not looking away from the orb as she began to ask whether or not she was the only one seeing it.

She never got to finish the question, for the next moment, the sensation of being hit by what felt like the momentum of a train knocked her off-balance, Zelda having to grab onto the orb to keep herself from falling over as she looked back to see perhaps the last person she would have expected to meet again.

Her old physics teacher had just almost tackled her in an attempt at hugging her, having seemingly only stepped away because Impa had walked over to, with a patient smile, pull at her arm until she gave Zelda some space. The sentence kept on repeating in her head, Zelda soon giving up on making it make any more sense by continuing to tell herself that it was really happening to instead simply stare at her.

Purah looked just like she had always done, the huge dress that seemed to be the one exception to the rule about how they had to be careful not to wear anything flowy lest it might somehow be blown into the flame of their Bunsen burners during experiments and the big glasses instantly dispelling any idea Zelda might have had about the possibility of the woman in front of her being anyone but her old physics teacher.

Zelda had barely got more than half a second to try to make sense of what she was seeing when Purah began speaking, her voice having the same the same slightly shrill edge to it that it had always had. "Zelda! I can't believe that you are really here! I mean, I know that Impa told me to be patient and all that, but after all those weeks, I was beginning to prepare for the worst—tell me, how was it out there? I am sure that you would have done a great job of preparing for this if you had been able to know about what was to come—you were always such a good student, after all—but I wouldn't blame you if you were unable to do much, though I hope that you were able to use some of the things I taught you to stay safe—speaking of which, I heard that there was a battle between you and the two others and the Yiga Clan. Is that true or was it just Olkin being angry that Dorian sent him back home? I mean, I get it if it was; Dorian always complains about how Olkin and Steen let their own rivalry get in the way of their missions, but it sounded like it might be true, especially considering how careless the Yiga Clan has got, coming so close to the village—speaking of which, did you get any scars during the battle? I heard about your companions, but what about you?" Purah spoke so quickly that it approached a point where it felt almost like she was trying to break through the sound barrier by throwing out the words like projectiles, not giving anyone around her as much as a single second to try to think of an answer before she had readied the next metaphorical attack.

In the middle of all the things she did not know, while staying in a village that should not have existed, without her friends around her and without any way of making sure that they would be all right, it was the greatest comfort Zelda could have received. It was indisputable proof that she had really found her old teacher in the ruins of the world around them.

"I don't know, Purah," Zelda admitted. Though she tried not to let it happen, she could hear the twinge of bitterness in her voice as she glanced towards Impa who was still standing behind Purah, not giving any indication that she was about to tell her anything about what was going on or where exactly she was, "I have just arrived. But I do know that Olkin told you the truth. We really did meet the Yiga Clan in Clock Town. They—they seemed relatively friendly, if a bit…" Zelda paused, trying her best to conjure up a word that could accurately describe the monotonous voice, the way only one of them had actually spoken to them, the total lack of gesticulation and how the masks had covered up any facial expressions, "peculiar, at first, but then they showed us some sword, and Link walked towards it, pulling the sword out of the pedestal it had been left in before any of us could stop him, and before we knew it, the Yiga Clan was trying to kill us."

"Link?" seeming oddly calm about the fact that they had almost been killed, Purah tilted her head to the side. "His name is Link? Is it—"

"He didn't attend Castle Town Gymnasium," Zelda said, interrupting Purah before she would have got the chance to list the dozens of Links in their year, "he grew up on a ranch in the Akkala Highlands… I—I assume that he went to a school over there."

She knew almost nothing about him. It was something she should have realised before then, something she should have made a better attempt at changing back when she had the chance. As Zelda looked back at all the hours they had spent in silence, first accompanied by the clear animosity between Ganondorf and Link and then the fact that she knew that they had been talking and sharing secrets when they had thought that she would not notice, she could see all the times she should have walked over to them to insist that they should tell each other more about themselves. But she had remained silent. She had remained silent and now, she was alone in a strange house in a strange village from the legends, talking with her physics teacher whom she had believed to be dead, with Impa standing next to them, not quite glaring daggers at Purah, but also not looking anywhere near as welcoming as she had done when walking out to greet Zelda, without knowing when or if she would see them again.

Zelda refused to cry, not when she could not be sure that she was entirely safe yet and certainly not when in the presence of a stranger and her teacher, but she could still feel the sting of tears as she found herself looking directly down at a spot in front of her left shoe where a ring of slightly darker wood spoke of a burn in the past.

"Purah." Zelda heard Impa's voice as though she was underwater, barely able to make out what she was saying above the sound of movements as Impa reached out to place a hand on Purah's shoulder. "I think it is time for Zelda to head upstairs to get some rest. These last couple of weeks must have been exhausting for her."

Impa was more right than Zelda had been able to realise before she had found other people and finally experienced the blessing of being told to let other people handle her problems. However, for as much as she should have let them do it, listened to the people around her, Dorian, Impa, and Purah, as they all seemed to tell her, whether explicitly or implicitly, to relax, Zelda could not bring herself to obey the instruction, fearing that if she first were to let out the breath she felt like she had been holding since the phones had stopped working, she would collapse completely, without any hope of ever being able to find the strength to rise from the ground again.

So even though she wanted for nothing more than to do exactly as Impa told her to, Zelda shook her head and straightened her back to look down at her. "No. I was told that I would be given answers if I came to Kakariko Village; Dorian promised me that you would be able to tell me what was happening, why we were almost killed by a group of people that were obsessed with some sword and the idea of us being some kind of chosen ones, but I am here, more confused than ever, and you have told me nothing. I was told that there would be people here who could help my friend, but so far, all that has happened is that I have been separated from him and my other friend, making it so that I can no longer be sure that they are safe. And that is not even to mention the fact that Link was not gravely injured when we agreed to come here with Dorian, and yet, he still has not woken up." Zelda took a step towards Impa, the eye painted on her hat making her feel like it was staring at her as she continued. "I was promised answers, and now, I demand that I receive them."

Sending her an unreadable look, Impa let out a sigh. "Look, Zelda, I know that you have every reason to be frustrated, but trust me when I say that you want to get the chance to sleep in a proper bed before hearing the truth about what has happened to you." holding up her hands in a placating gesture, Impa brought an early end to Zelda's attempt at telling her that she did not care about anything other than the truth. "Your friends are perfectly safe. Purah was the one to think of the… let us agree to say that it is an alternative method that we are currently using to heal them, and she will tell you the same thing if you ask her. As for Link, I assume that he was the one to wield the Master Sword?"

Hesitating to tell her the truth, debating whether or not she would be able to get a proper answer if she asked why she was calling the sword by the same name as the Yiga Clan, Zelda ended up giving in with a nod. "Yes, he was."

Impa opened her mouth, but before she got the chance to say anything, Purah had cut in, both metaphorically and physically jumping in front of Impa as she squeezed herself into the space between them, forcing Zelda to take a step back as she began to talk, her hands moving rapidly in front of her, almost giving off the impression that she was trying to carry on two conversations at once. "Your friend will be all right, Zelda, don't worry about him. What has happened to him is perhaps not normal, but also not unexpected, given the circumstances. I assume that you got the opportunity to see him pour his very soul into trying to use the sword to defend himself or attack others who posed a threat to him." pausing for a fraction of a second, Purah looked up at her, appearing to find the answer she wanted without Zelda having to say anything, as she did not let herself be slowed down at all. "Yeah, I see that you did. In that case, unless the texts were wrong, you must have noticed that he fought with a kind of strength and skill that far exceeded his own, and, like you know, energy cannot come from nothing, so the Master Sword would have had to use his energy to give him the strength and skill he did not possess at the time. Your friend—Link, you said? Yes, Link will be fine. He is merely very tired right now."

"Thank you, Purah," Impa said, cutting in with a tone of voice that did not leave any doubts about how she would not have her interrupt her again as she stepped around her to come face to face with Zelda once again, "and just as Link is currently doing everything he can to help himself by giving his body time to rest, you, Zelda, should really try to get some sleep. Then, once you are fully rested, I promise you that you will be given an explanation for everything that has been happening to you and to the world around you." after she had gone all the way to Kakariko Village to receive exactly that, only to be told once more that she would have to wait for a bit longer to get some answers, Impa must have known that Zelda would not have accepted her suggestion, for she did not give her even a moment to protest before she turned away from her, raising her voice as she looked towards the staircase leading up to the upper level of the house. "Paya! I know that you have been listening in on the conversation, so will you please show Zelda where she will sleep?"

A girl stepped out of the shadows.

With how her white hair created a stark contrast to the shadows she had just left, the symbol of the Sheikah that had been drawn onto her forehead and the tear continuing down the bridge of her nose only serving to make Zelda further unable to look away from her, Zelda could not understand how she had been able to miss her, the girl walking through the room to reach them with quick, unsure steps that made it clear that she would have preferred to have been left in the shadows, her eyes darting back and forth between Zelda, Impa, and Purah as she stopped in front of them.

Smoothing out what had to be an imaginary wrinkle in her clothes, she bowed her head at Impa. Zelda did not miss how she kept on looking down at the floor as she spoke, just as she noted the way the tips of her ears became dusted with a light blush as she spoke. "Zelda, grandmother?"

Grandmother? Zelda mouthed the word to Purah, receiving nothing but the same wide grin that usually preceded some kind of experiment that would have made the principal give her a lecture on the importance of safety practises in the laboratory if she had been there in return. Trying her best to fit in the knowledge about the girl being Impa's granddaughter next to the first impression she had got of her, Zelda looked back over at her, catching her looking at her, only for Paya to immediately avert her gaze when she noticed that she was watching her.

Glancing back and forth between them for a moment, Impa sounded almost amused as she nodded towards her granddaughter. "Yes, Paya, this is Zelda. We will talk about her past and her reasons for being here tomorrow. Zelda has a long journey behind her, so now, it is important that she is able to relax and get some rest."

Casting another glance in Zelda' direction, Paya turned bright red before looking back at Impa. "I—" Zelda could hear the protest that was about to come, but the moment before Zelda could have sworn that she would have refused to do it, Paya turned towards her. She did not quite meet her gaze, looking at a point directly next to her face as she spoke to her, but had it not been for how she had so clearly been nervous and tried to avoid being seen before, Zelda doubted that she would have noticed any of it as Paya spoke. "Come with me. We didn't know that you would arrive today, so we didn't have time to prepare anything special for you, but there is an extra bed upstairs that you can use."

There was something she was not saying. In fact, as Zelda looked towards Impa and Purah, she was willing to bet that all the things the people around her seemed determined to avoid talking about were all somehow related to the reason the Yiga Clan had been so determined to kill them, the reason Dorian had been willing to throw himself and his team headfirst into a deadly battle for a group of strangers.

The Master Sword. Zelda tried to turn the word in her mind. A sword that had, according to the legends, been blessed by Hylia herself and created to be part of the key to defeating evil. The fact that they referred to a sword as the Master Sword would certainly appear to imply that, no matter what the exact details of it may be, part of their group built on the idea of the Triforce. It was the only thing that would make sense, the only reason Zelda could see for them being convinced that they might be able to cause the apocalypse and for why they had insisted she, Link, and Ganondorf were some kind of chosen heroes. In a world where Link could really have drawn the Master Sword of legends, it was certainly a probable conclusion to draw, and though the Yiga Clan having latched on to the old legends to use in their delusions did not explain everything that had happened, it was enough to explain just why they had been so determined to see them dead, why they had turned their weapons against them the moment Link had drawn the sword.

From out of the corner of her eye, Zelda noticed that Purah was smiling at her. Noticing that she was looking at her, Purah sent a telling glance in the direction of Impa before, holding up her hand to block the sound from reaching her, whispering a handful of words to Zelda. "You are so close to seeing it, Zelda. Promise me to think about it as you go to sleep, will you?"

"Purah," from next to Zelda, Paya let out a sigh that was more than enough to let Zelda know that Purah behaved the exact same way outside a classroom as she did inside it, "please. You heard what grandmother said."

Making a show out of winking at Zelda, Purah returned the pleading look with one of total innocence. "I am not telling her anything. I am merely letting Zelda know that, as her teacher, I advise her to think about what she is seeing and keep in mind the fact that even if it appears unlikely to be true, sometimes the first explanation we can think of is actually be the one that is correct—nothing that my dear sister could ever fault me for after how much time she spent convincing me that I had what it would take to become a teacher."

For the second time in a matter of minutes, Zelda found herself staring back and forth between the people in the room, from Paya to Impa and then over at Purah. If she had been asked to say who the odd man out in the group was, she would not have hesitated to point towards herself first and then at Purah, and now, Purah stood here, the physics teacher who had once drawn a triangle on the blackboard to illustrate the concept of how oxygen, warmth and flammable material were all necessities for a fire before bothering to extinguish the small fire that had spread to her notes on the table, calling Impa her sister like it was something Zelda should in any way, shape, or form been able to realise on her own. Looking back and forth between the two, Zelda tried her best to try to find any similarities, but other than the white hair, there really was nothing that would have made her guess that they could be related.

"Don't ask about it." Zelda was pulled back to reality by Paya whispering to her, her entire body angled away from her and the blush still apparent in her cheeks, but whispering to her nonetheless. "If you do, she is just going to begin talking about some kind of device she built that she claims is responsible for her youthful look—her words, not mine—and then you are never going to get her to stop again."

That much, Zelda could believe, so, sending Paya a grateful smile only to regret it as Paya froze up, simply staring at her for a moment before averting her gaze and mumbling something about having already prepared the bed, Zelda followed her up the stairs, hearing how a discussion between the two sisters began the moments she turned around the corner, the little snippets she could hear appearing to be about some kind of healing liquid Purah wanted to test out.

Hoping that Impa had been able to somewhat keep Purah from acting the way she had done back in the physics classroom and that the thing she had talked about when assuring her that Ganondorf and Link would be all right had actually been tested before being used on her friends, Zelda shook her head and tried not to think too much about what she could not change, instead focusing on finding the energy to lift her feet enough not to trip over one of the steps as she walked up the last few steps to reach the second floor, soon finding herself stepping into a large room, the ceiling above her head seemingly being the direct underside of the roof. There were no doors, nothing at all to separate the room from the rest of the house below, but as Paya turned around, looking at her for a moment before motioning towards a bed that had been pushed into the left-hand corner of the room, it was easy enough to ignore the sound of raised voices, the wooden flooring beneath her feet doing a relatively good job at muffling the voices.

"Yeah, so this is where you will sleep." Paya glanced over at her, looking almost apologetic as she shrugged. "I know it is not much, but we didn't know that you would be arriving today. Though I guess that we still would not have been able to do all that much even if we had known, I mean with how we still haven't found out if there's—" she slapped her hand in front of her mouth, her eyes widening. "Oh. I probably shouldn't say that, not if Impa wants you to rest before being told about all that."

There was something there, Zelda was sure of that. It should have felt wrong to try to gain more information when she had just been saved by Dorian and brought to a village that was both safe and not a ruin filled with death, like she was asking for too much, but as she stood there, watching as Paya seemed torn between continuing and falling silent, Zelda knew that she could not allow the chance to pass by without at least trying to pursue it, not when she had no way of knowing when she would be presented with one like it again.

Doing her best to keep her demeanour casual, Zelda shifted her weight to the side before looking over at Paya. "Your grandmother, right?" Paya's silence along with the way she looked down at the floor gave away the answer in a moment, Zelda pushing aside the fact that she had not realised the connection at first to instead tilt her head to the side. "Ah, I see. And with Purah being her sister, that would then mean that—"

"Three people in my family survived. Me, Impa, and Purah. But everyone else… they died. My parents too." Paya whispered the words, directing them more towards the floorboards than towards Zelda, but she still heard them as clearly as if Paya had yelled in her face.

Was it ever going to stop feeling like a kick in the stomach to learn that everyone around her had lost someone? Zelda doubted it. Having experienced the moment before did nothing to take away the fact that, in that moment, she could almost feel how the world came to a halt around her as Paya wrapped her arms around herself, looking every bit like she wished that she could be anywhere in the world but there, opening her mouth a couple of times like she wanted to add something onto the whispered confession, only to close it again without saying anything.

"Oh," Zelda said, hoping that the fact that she could not figure out what to say, how to take back the words that had escaped her before she had got the chance to realise how tactless they were, could all be blamed on the exhaustion, "I am sorry, I didn't realise that—I mean with how many people are living in this village, I just assumed that everyone would have had to have survived, you know perhaps because the mountains around it would have hindered the disease from reaching—" taking a deep breath, Zelda interrupted herself before she could make it even worse by continuing to ramble. "I didn't think about what I was saying. I am sorry."

Paya still stood like a statue next to the bed, but at least Zelda could see a hint of light come back into her eyes as she glanced up at her for a moment before once again talking to the floor. "No, it is fine; I get what you were thinking. I also thought that we had found a village that had managed to escape the disease completely when I first came here and Impa told me that it was a place where we could be safe as we waited for—" Paya fell silent, but the silence did more to let Zelda know just what she had been about to say than any words could ever have done.

Holding up her hands, Zelda felt the crease forming between her eyebrows as she added up all the things Paya had said, the fact that the disease had managed to kill what seemed to be most of her family, leaving only three members alive, merciful by the standards she had seen before, but still vicious in its own right, the fact they were not the only ones who had only come to the village after the disease had brought an end to the world they had known, and now this, the fact that they seemed to have come there to wait for someone or something, the way they had treated her, Ganondorf, and Link leaving Zelda with what she assumed was a good guess about who it might be. As she took in the way Paya had clasped her hands in front of her, the action only serving to strengthen the suspicion that she had come seconds away from revealing just what Impa had not wanted her to learn, Zelda knew that she was so close to pulling at the last string that would untie the entire knot and reveal the answers to the mystery.

Careful to keep her emotions from seeping into her voice, Zelda took a step further into the room, bringing her just a bit closer to Paya, hopefully strengthening her attempt at making it seem like an innocuous question when she gestured towards her. "So you also came here recently—just like me, I mean?"

"I…" something passed across Paya's face, a little of the anxiety that had been present in her eyes fading as she sat down on the bed, "please don't tell Impa that I told you this."

It took a moment of Paya sitting there, looking straight ahead, for Zelda to realise that she was waiting for her answer. With what she hoped was a relaxed stance, she walked through the room, sitting down next to Paya before nodding. "I promise that I won't tell her."

Another short glance, this time lasting a bit longer than the last one, a couple of seconds of Zelda looking into Paya' eyes to see something that she could not quite name, something that so clearly differed from the nervousness that seemed to hang in a cloud around her, and then, once again tearing her gaze away from her, Paya began to talk. "All right. I haven't lived here for very long, just a little over a month, actually." Paya must have noticed that Zelda was about to open her mouth to remark on how that was nearly the same period of time as what had passed since the world had changed, for she held up her hand, silencing her before she would have got the chance to state the obvious. "Before that, I lived in Deya Village along with… along with the rest of my family. And then—well, given the fact that you are here, you know what happened, I was alone and without anyone to talk with or get help from for the first couple of days before my grandmother appeared at the hotel I had fled to one morning. It—today, I cannot explain why, and to be honest, I am not even sure I knew why back then, but there was something about the fact that she had survived that just… it felt right, like it was something I should have realised before. No matter what, she told me about there being some village in the mountains where her and some other survivors had gone, saying something about prophecies and cycles, and, well," a hint of something akin to a smile flickered across her face, only to disappear a fraction of a second later, Paya looking down at her hands like her life depended on it. "I was not sure what to think about what she told me, but if there… if there might be other people out there somewhere, I knew that I had to find them, so I went with her, and now, I am here."

It was a story that left Zelda with more questions than answers. Still, a single look at Paya and the way she had begun to fiddle with the fabric of her tunic, running her hand over it over and over again, how she continued to cast glances in the direction of where the wall opened up towards the staircase, nothing but air separating them from being overheard by Impa, was enough to tell her that she would not be able to further pursue the subject.

However, as Zelda sat there, feeling how the bed rose a little as Paya stood up, she was not sure she would have been able to ask another question even if she had not been absolutely confident that Paya would have refused to answer. It was not about the fact that Impa might hear her, not about how she should be grateful for the village even being there at all and, that Dorian had brought them there, and Impa had welcomed her. Instead, Zelda stayed quiet solely because there was nothing she could have said as Paya hesitated for another moment before leaving the room, the sound of footsteps quickening as she all but ran down the stairs again, only barely giving Zelda enough time to note how the tips of her ears had become even redder than before and that the expression on her face was one of grief and horror.

Flopping down onto the bed, Zelda looked up at the ceiling above her head, the beams that supported the roof almost disappearing into the darkness of the room. It did not get easier. Hearing about how other people had lost everything and seeing the honest grief on their faces as they listed the family members they had lost did not get easier with time, not at all. Instead, it felt almost like it built up inside of her, Zelda closing her eyes for a moment only to see a girl with the same red hair and Ganondorf, a girl who had plaited her hair and piled it up high onto her head, her facial features unclear but having a bit of Link's general demeanour in the way she laughed, and now this, a vague picture of two people who had the same white hear as Paya. Around her, it seemed like everyone had lost so many people, and there she was, lying in her bed, knowing that she had lost only one. Even that loss was one Zelda had not been able to mourn properly. Why was it that where Paya had told her about Deya Village with a voice that was thick with emotions, running away the moment she had finished her story, but at least telling her when she had asked, Zelda had not been able to do the same and tell about those she had lost? Not to Paya to repay the gesture of telling a total stranger about what was clearly a traumatic event, not to Ganondorf and Link, the people Zelda was closest to picturing when thinking about the fact that Paya still had some family left around her. Inevitably, the thoughts would turn around to make her try to rationalise the fact that, where everyone around her seemed to have lost so many who had been near and dear to them, almost entire families if not all of them, the only family she had had left to lose at the time had been her father. She could count her losses on one hand, and even then, even when it should have come to form a source of grief to have what little family she still had left taken away from her in the blink of an eye, she had spent so much time still holding on to a grudge, first for everything he had done while he had been alive, and then for the fact that he had died before she had got the chance to confront him about any of it.

It felt wrong to even think it, like she should have gone back to Hyrule Castle Town the moment it went through her mind to apologise to his corpse, but as Zelda lay there, closing her eyes and trying to imagine what the families those around her had lost might have looked like, picturing Ganondorf and Link on their sisters' first day of school, Paya and her parents in Deya Village, her mind closing the gap in her knowledge about just what their home might have looked like with the one memory she had of having glanced at the page on Deya Village in the atlas, she could not help but wonder just why it was that she was picturing Urbosa more than her father when she tried to do the same for herself, Urbosa's voice and the feeling of how she would never be the first to end a hug fading into the sound of how Link had yelled at them to stay on the ground before jumping in front of the bear and the sensation of Ganondorf's sweater against her cheek when he had pulled both her and Link in for a hug. The conclusion was right there in front of her, the answer waiting for her to reach out and accept it, and somewhere deep down, Zelda supposed that she might already have done just that, even as she forced herself to push it away, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing the heels of her hands against her eyelids until she saw little patterns of light appear.

A distraction. She had to force her thoughts away from the subject. For as much as she had felt like she had been ready to sleep for a thousand years when she had first set foot in Kakariko Village, Zelda could feel how her thoughts continued to make noise inside her head, refusing to quieten for even a second to give her the peace that would have allowed her to fall asleep. It would not do, not if she wanted to be able to try to convince Impa to tell her what was going on, why they had been attacked and why both she and Dorian treated them like they were somehow important in a way that exceeded being among the few people who had survived the outbreak of the disease.

Hearing Purah's voice as an echo in her thoughts, Zelda tried her best to empty her mind, to think of nothing but the facts she knew to be true.

The Yiga Clan had clearly expected for someone to come to the museum. That was a fact she could not deny, not with how there had been no signs of surprise to be seen in their behaviour, the leader having led them through room after room, completely focused on what lay ahead as they approached the sword. They had known that they would come, just as they had clearly planned to attack anyone capable of drawing the sword. Closing her eyes, Zelda thought back to the blinding light that had followed. At the time, it had felt natural, like it was something she should have known would happen, the ensuing fight stealing away her attention and the flight that followed making it easy to brush it all aside as a sign that her mind was trying its best to make sense of what did not rationally appear to be possible, but now, lying in the empty room, the voices of Impa and Purah little more than vague mumbling from below, it was no longer so easy to brush it aside as being little more than an effect of having already been on edge, not as she remembered the feeling of being pulled towards the Master Sword, like there had been a voice towards the back of her head urging her to follow Link, Link who had moved as if he was obeying the order of an entity outside his own body as he reached out for the sword.

The Master Sword. That was what both the Yiga Clan and their saviours had referred to it as. Zelda could see their point, at least on a superficial level. With the hilt and the blue and purple colours that had twisted around it, covering the crossguard as well, it certainly looked like a sword that could have been taken from the legends. However, as much as Zelda wanted to leave it at that, to conclude that they had been saved from a group of people obsessed with mythology by another group of people who were perhaps even more absorbed by the legends, living in a village that had been named after the hidden village of legends, there was something about the theory that did not add up, lacking the explanation for just why they had been the ones to be involved in it all. Not only had they been unlucky enough to stumble across the Yiga Clan and for them to decide that they were somehow marked as their enemies, now, Zelda was lying in a bed that had been given to her by strangers, with the promise that her friends would receive the care they had needed, a promise that had been given like it was a matter of course, just as Dorian and his group had risked their lives in an attempt at saving them, the fact that they had then also made Zelda almost drown in her desperation to escape notwithstanding.

Zelda could imagine what Purah would have told her, how she would have sat down next to her the same way she had done in class when explaining to them that they had to record exactly what the experiments showed them rather than what they should have showed, stressing the importance of figuring out common sources of error and uncertainty above getting the expected results, if she had been able to summon the energy to go down to talk with her again. As little sense as it made, it had to be the answer. After all, she had already gone through every other explanation she could think of, none of them capable of explaining just why she had been blinded by light or why there was a village she had never heard about before that was able to support the lives of several survivors while having an uncanny resemblance to the illustrations of how Hyrule had looked centuries ago she had seen in her history textbook.

It was real, and maybe that was what scared her the most, the fact that she did not have an easy answer or something to blame the last few days on that did not also open up the risk that it would become even worse. If her theory was correct, Zelda could only imagine what was to come, the way Paya had seemed to open up just enough to share her story with her only to then raise her guard a moment later, moving away from her in a way that did not leave Zelda with a chance of figuring out just what she had done wrong, playing out in front of her eyes over and over again as Zelda recalled all of the times she and Purah had interrupted themselves while talking to her.

Even if she was wrong about the explanation, that was the one thing Zelda knew for certain: they were trying to keep the truth secret from her. Impa might have insisted that she would tell her when she was rested, but as Zelda turned in the bed, the mattress alternating between being too soft and too firm beneath her for her to find any rest, she could not deny that she refused to believe that that was really the case. They had left the last thing they had been able to cling to, the plan to head to Lurelin Village, behind to go with Dorian, and though Zelda would be the first to admit that she had made the decision while looking towards the bloodied bandage, part of her still felt like she had been tricked, having been made to abandon what had allowed her to make sense of the world to instead find herself without anything to cling on to other than the feelings of guilt that grew in her stomach as she tried to imagine what Ganondorf's reaction might be once she would have to tell him that she had made the decision to, at the very least, move his goal of sailing across the sea to Labrynna even further into an already uncertain future.

It must have been sometime into the early hours of morning if the time that had passed since she had pretended to be asleep as Paya walked in, the even breathing from the other bed that filled the room within minutes of Paya turning away from her letting Zelda know that she was the only one who had trouble sleeping, was any indication, that the exhaustion finally defeated the racing thoughts, leaving her to first face absolute nothingness as she looked out into the darkness and then nothing at all as she finally fell asleep.