Prompt No. 14
Word count: ~1780
Universe: Breath of the Wild; sequel to "No. 9 — Ritual Sacrifice"
Pairings: Zelink
Rating: K
Themes: Fever, pair bonding
Fire
She couldn't sleep. It was the dead of night, and the dragon was still roaring. When the sun had begun to set, she had her wits about her enough to scour the cave for anything useful before it was too dark to see. She found a few things, presumably his, that she gathered up and brought closer—a cooking pot, a cup, a few bundles of herbs, a small knife. She had ventured to the mouth of the cave and stuffed the cooking pot with snow before setting it beside him, letting his heat melt it into drinking water.
It had been hours and he hadn't improved. She honestly hadn't known what to expect—after the spring rite, when she had been chosen, the elders could tell her very little about what would happen once she was taken except that she wouldn't be seen again—but she got the distinct impression this wasn't normal. He was in too much pain to function, and she was barefoot and barely dressed. She wouldn't survive long outside the protection of the cave and his heat. Unless he made a miraculous recovery, starvation was a real possibility.
She had to help him. Not that she was particularly thrilled with the idea, but he was her best chance of survival. Even if he had started off their relationship by snatching her off a frozen altar and then carrying her across the world with depraved intentions.
Another stream of fire erupted from his mouth, which had been happening fairly regularly—whenever the emberglow in his chest pulsed too bright. Fortunately, he always angled its trajectory towards the ceiling, though it was hard to say if that was a coincidence or something he did for her benefit. He hardly seemed to know she was there anymore. Still, it would be a while before he breathed fire again, so now was her chance.
She gingerly padded behind him in her bare feet, and then knelt and lifted his head onto her lap. She dipped the cup into the pot and brought the water to his mouth, cradling him so it would be easier to drink. He leaned for it when it touched his lips, lifting a trembling hand over hers to keep it close. He let his head fall back after he had downed it, panting, and she brushed his matted bangs away from his forehead.
"Can you drink another?" she asked, and he managed a weak nod.
She couldn't help but marvel at his warmth as she helped him with a second cupful, radiating from his head on her lap to heat her right down to her toes. If there was any doubt he was what he was, that was evidence enough—though his Hylian form was very convincing, handsome even, with firm features, a tangle of sun-bleached hair, and, in the brief moments she had spied them, startlingly blue eyes.
"Thank you," he said, hoarse and breathless, after he had emptied it again.
"More?"
"No," he whispered, swallowing, and turned his face into her skirt.
Her brow furrowed as she watched him—the sudden, relieved sag of his shoulders, the deep, full breaths he drew, his electrifying, peaceful silence. She threaded her fingers at his temple, stroking his hair from his face, and he sighed, his breath washing through the fabric of her skirt to warm her knees. The knowledge that she could soothe him so easily made something strange and frightening stir in her chest.
"Do you have a name?"
That was a strange way to phrase the question. Who didn't have a name? Maybe dragons didn't, she thought idly, and raked her nails softly across his scalp when he trembled, his throat bobbing in discomfort, coaxing him through it.
"I'm Zelda," she said.
He nodded, turning his face even deeper into her leg.
"It's a good name," he whispered.
"Are you…" Her mouth tugged towards a frown. But there was really no way to be delicate about it, was there? "Are you sick? Are you dying?"
"I don't know. I've never felt like this before."
The biting Hebra winds howled outside the cave and she held onto him a little tighter. Her thoughts were running everywhere, imagining one horrific scenario after another. Maybe he was already at death's door, and she would be trapped and alone on that mountain within the hour. Maybe he would weaken until he was mad from hunger and turn on her in his dragon shape, cleaving her in two with his massive jaws before gulping her down. Maybe she could beat him to it, plunge his knife into his chest and steal his boots and his tunic and take her chances with the mountain.
She must have been overtired.
She set her lips into a line, leaning a little closer so the heat from him warmed her face.
"At the risk of sounding selfish, I need you alive," she murmured. "I won't last long up here without you."
"I know." He swallowed again thickly. "It's the song."
"What song?"
He met her eyes, his gaze so strikingly blue that it seemed to glow. He whispered, "Yours."
She frowned, bemused, but his attention was already moving elsewhere. The emberglow pulsed in his breast, like a jewel strung on a chain beneath his tunic. But it wasn't bright enough to worry her yet.
"I'm sorry about before. I don't know what…" His eyes pinched closed, like talking about their first encounter made him hurt worse, and rolled onto his shoulder with a groan. "I need to get you off this mountain."
He moved away from her in the dark, and then the cavern was warmer, darker, and she knew he had changed. He pushed his snout into her hands, slipping slowly past to encourage her to feel up his neck, to his shoulder, and then stopped in apparent invitation. Smooth, hot scales gave way to the leathery hilt of his wing just behind his shoulder, and she braced herself, one hand curled around his pinions and the other on his withers, and hoisted herself onto his back.
His spine twisted beneath her with the first, great step of his gait, and she sunk to her belly, both for an easier ride and for the heat. His shoulder muscles flexed and stretched as they stepped out of the cave onto the mountainside, his massive wings unfurling part way to protect her from the buffeting winds. It was too dark to see them, but she could make out their shape where they were blotting out the stars and the iceglow, hear the wind whistle and moan where it slipped along leathery seams. And once in a great while, the ember near his heart would burn too hot, and he would turn his head down into the mountain and breathe a whorl of fire that was eaten by the snow.
Nestled safely between his pinions, his rocking steps turning familiar, she rolled onto her back to watch the aurora borealis glimmer and ripple across the midnight sky, and eventually nodded off.
The sun rose as they rounded the East Summit.
She slipped higher up his neck to watch, shivering as she sacrificed some of his heat for the view. It was a clear morning, the ice crystals in the snow lit up in a glittering spectacle as the sunbeams breached the horizon, and the surrounding peaks casting massive, forbidding shadows. She had never seen a sunrise like it. She imagined few ever had.
With the light setting the dragon's inky scales aflame, they began their descent. It was hardly smooth—more than once, huge snowdrifts gave out beneath them, carrying them too suddenly down to the next outcropping—but besides the sensation of her stomach flying into her throat, she was no worse for wear. The last bit of slope before they reached the south Snowfield gave way, and he changed, his body slipping out of its dragon shape as they slid into the valley so she landed in the snow with a squeak.
He was on his knees, arms around his middle and hair tangled every which way by the Tabantha winds, and for the first time it occurred to her that his condition might have been worsening all that time. She slid closer, urging him into the shelter of a few evergreens, and propped him up against one of the scabrous trunks. He steamed in the sun.
"Follow the road south," he told her, panting. "There's a village not far from here. They'll help you."
"What about you?"
His brow furrowed, like that was the strangest question he'd ever heard. Then he tugged her closer, turning his face into the hollow of her throat, and exhaled a long, penetrating breath into her skin, warming her from head to toe. Even when the wind blew again, she hardly felt the cold. He let his head fall back against the tree.
"Go home, Zelda." He smiled weakly, a wry, scheming smile. "Tell your people their offering displeased me greatly, and if they do it again, I'll burn down a village."
Another gust tugged and pulled at them, willing them apart. But something kept her rooted. Something in the wind that sounded like a song.
"Did I?" she asked, breathless, and his smile faded.
"No," he whispered, reaching to touch her mouth with a trembling hand. "You were perfect."
She looked back towards the road, winding down towards a village and the way home, back to…
...back to what? A chance at a normal life? She had never found that notion particularly appealing. She had always longed for something more—for adventure, or magic, or at the very least something more than the pastoral confines of Necluda province. Offered up as a ritual sacrifice to a dragon wouldn't necessarily have been her first choice, but now that it had happened, and she was here… the whole arrangement didn't seem as awful as one might have imagined.
And he wouldn't survive this fever much longer. Leaving him here meant leaving him to die.
So she did the only thing that made any sense to her in that dizzy, directionless moment. She scraped together her courage, watching the way his brow knitted when she lingered, and then shut her eyes before she could change her mind and kissed him. She was slow and inexperienced and not entirely sure what she was doing. But he didn't need much more encouragement than that.
He pulled her into his lap, suddenly renewed, eagerly meeting her clumsy advances and then outpacing her, chasing her mouth as her fingers knotted in his hair. She melted further into his possessive hold, into the surprisingly pleasant heat of his tongue, into the sweet song climbing in her mind until she soared.
"Just don't burn me," she sighed against his mouth, breathless, and the fire in his eyes outshone the sun.
"Never."