* * *
Pain.
That was the first thing that she noticed. That was really the only thing she could notice. The reason was that, at the moment, that was all there was. She couldn't see anything, and she couldn't feel anything besides. She wondered if her eyes were closed, but at the moment, she didn't care. She was half asleep anyway.
The main thing she noticed was the pain in her head. It was like somebody had dropped a boulder on it. Because of this, her surroundings, whatever they might have been, were skippy and surreal. She tried to open her eyes at all, and barely managed to do anything more than give herself a worse headache.
That was when she heard the voices for the first time.
"Found.......girls......Hyrule....."
It faded in and out, and she couldn't tell right away if the feminine voice was coming from the inside of her head or not. She thought that the question was answered, though, when another voice answered it, though after how long she didn't know.
"I......castle............Zelda..."
Zelda? She tried to think through her dizziness which was now seeming to take what remained of her consciousness, although it nearly made her pass out from trying. Zelda was the name of....Why was that familiar to her?
Then she remembered that Zelda was the name of a past Queen of Hyrule, right at the time the Hero of Time was still living. Why would anybody be talking about her? And what did it have to do with them?
Them?
It was at this point that she started to panic about the well-being of the friends and companions. She remembered something about a tunnel, and they were all together....
Unfortunately for her train of thought, it was also at this time that her consciousness began to totally slip again. Though, she could have sworn that she heard some things before she was completely asleep. Or, at least, kept waking up to hear them. She couldn't tell if they were one conversation, or if they were spread over a periods of time. And the voices were all muddled together, and she couldn't tell whom they belonged to. She could only really decipher some of the, what she thought were, the later ones.
"..one girl.......Gerudo....That other.....twin......redhead.....Looks just like you, Link...."
Rynita didn't have time to panic before she lost grip on the real world...
* * *
Malon rode into the castle town, wondering what she thought she was doing. She had just spent about nine hours in a wagon to make a trip to the castle town for deliveries. She hadn't planned on making that little pit stop to pick up five complete strangers, although she knew that she wouldn't have been able to just leave them there. Weird necklace, or no weird necklace, she was going to have to find some way to shelter them until they woke up. Or, at least until someone else could take care of them.
She also wondered how she was going to find Link to ask him about the necklace in the first place. She knew that he had a place in Hyrule Market, but she couldn't be sure he would be there. In fact, she couldn't be sure he would be anywhere hear Hyrule Market at all. She rolled her eyes at this thought. He was always going somewhere or doing something....One would think that saving Hyrule would be enough for one person, but...
She was pulling up through the busy market place right to the place where she needed to be. She got out of the wagon and went around to the back. She got down the crates with the proper labels on them, and went inside to do her usual bartering. After the annoying process was finished with, she made sure that she had all of the crates in the back, that the five girls were still there, and that there was nobody in front of the wagon when she took off again. The next stop was Hyrule Castle...
Hyrule Castle! That was perfect. The perfect place to leave those girls! Princess Zelda lived in the castle, and Zelda always seemed to be interesting in anything and everything in Hyrule that had to do with myths or legends. She'd go out of her way to get involved in them, although her royal duties often made it difficult for her to go outside of the castle to do anything about it.
Malon also happened to be one of the best friends of the Princess. She and Zelda had met when they were both eleven, and things from there had just kind of clicked. Whenever she was in town, and whenever Zelda had time, they would get together and do the things that normal young women did. Zelda would surely be all too willing to help her with these girls. Now, if she could only find Link.
She pulled towards Hyrule Castle, its tall spires towering above anything else in sight, except for a distant Death Mountain. And, as luck would have it, she saw a familiar face walking in the same direction she was.
"Hey!" she called out to Link as she rode up next to him. "Going my way?" She stopped the cart, ignorant of all the other people surrounding her in the market.
"Oh, Malon! Hi! Yeah, I guess if you're also going to the castle then I'm going your way," Link responded.
"Great! Hop on." She started the cart moving again, and they headed towards the castle. It was only about a ten minute ride from this point, but it was nice to have some company who was conscious.
"So, why were you headed towards the castle?" Malon asked.
"Just visiting. I haven't been there in a while, and I just thought I would stop by. You?"
"Oh, making deliveries. I think I'm going to go see Zelda too. Oh, also..." She lowered her voice at this point. "I found these girls out on Hyrule Field. They weren't looking so great just laying out there unconscious on their own. What's more, I saw something strange on one of the girls. It's a necklace, but the weirdest thing is that its that same one you have, that one with the legend about the past, present and future coming together and a dream...I forget exactly what it was about. But I do distinctly remember you saying that it was a one of a kind."
"It is," Link said. "I got it from Zelda, who got it from the Sheikah. It's a legend that one of their seers saw a long time ago. They only make one of these kind of things."
"Then I find that odd," Malon muttered. "When we get to the castle, I'll show you that necklace. I could swear that it looks exactly like yours!" She shook her head, and continued forward.
Only minutes later, they arrived at the gates to the castle. By now, the guards were familiar with Malon's frequent stops to the castle, and everyone knew who the Hero of Time was. So, the two had no problems entering the gates. Malon rode around to the back of the castle, and Link helped her take out the crates. The kitchen staff in the back of the castle was only too happy to get deliveries, and they took care of things once the crates were out of the wagon.
It was then that Malon turned her attention to the girls in the back. Not moving her cart, as it wasn't in they way of anyone way back at this side of the castle, she got inside of the cart. She went up to the redhead who had the necklace, and very carefully took it off of her. She then handed it to Link.
"See what I mean? Doesn't it look exactly like yours?"
Link looked at it, and then pulled something out of a bag he had. That something was the necklace. By now, it was apparent that the two were exactly alike, except the one that the girl had seemed to be a bit older. Since it was so old to begin with, it was hard to tell.
It only begun to get weird, however, when the older of the two started to glow faintly when Link held them both together.
"Whoa!" Malon exclaimed. "Okay, I think I can classify that as odd!"
"I think that now is a good time to go inside the castle. I want to ask Zelda about this."
"What about those girls?" Malon asked.
"Stay here, I'll get someone to take them inside. They aren't really looking so great."
This was true enough. Not only were they not conscious, but they seemed to have, as Malon put it, "gotten in a fight with a stalfos and lost."
* * *
Zelda's reaction to the girls and the necklace was just what Malon had thought it was going to be. Link had gone in and got the Princess to go outside to see them. She was interested in their case immediately, but she didn't waste any time before she first made sure the five girls were taken care of. Zelda had some guards take them from the wagon outside to one of the many spare rooms in the castle. She had a nurse look after their injuries, and then she left them to talk with Link and Malon.
Malon always enjoyed staying at the castle, because Zelda would always insist that she stay the night, and that the two of them go shopping. She usually came every three weeks or so, and she savored ever minute.
Link, a more infrequent visitor, liked staying there, but somehow always felt uncomfortable when there were lots of people around.
Zelda was simply glad that today wasn't one of those "meetings and then banquet and then dance and then meeting" type of days, because that meant that she could basically do whatever she wanted. When her friends were there, she always enjoyed them even more.
Later on in the day, after endless conversations between the three, and after dinner, Zelda was standing at the entrance to the bedroom that held the three girls. Malon had gone to bed already, and she wasn't quite sure where Link was. That was why it surprised her when he walked up behind her and stood next to her.
"Oh! Link, you scared me," she said.
"Sorry. I saw you standing there, and I wondered what you were doing."
She glanced at him, and then back inside of the room. "Just looking at our "visitors." They look like they're from Hyrule, you know? But, it also feels like they aren't from here."
"Yeah, just look at their wardrobe," Link said.
"Hm. You're one to talk," Zelda said, smirking. She was only kidding, but she liked to tease him for the reactions that she sometimes got.
He turned away from her to look inside the room at the sleeping girls. She laughed slightly.
"You know, that one girl, the one we got the other copy of that necklace from, she looks almost Gerudo. Her hair's red enough, and the way her ears are shaped. That other girl could probably pass for her twin, despite the ears."
"That is kind of odd," Link said.
"And that other redhead.....there's something about her I can't quite place. Well..."
She walked forward into the room a bit. She stopped when she was at the end of the girl's bed. Link followed her.
"Now that I think about it, and see her up close....She looks just like you, Link."
He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "Really?"
Zelda nodded. "Yeah. I don't know why, but she really looks just like you. Almost...like you were related."
"Kind of," Link added as an afterthought. "But, at least when she's sleeping like that, her eyes really look like yours..."
Zelda looked at the girl's eyes for a moment before her brain seemed to slow down and she realized what they had just said. She started to blush, and glanced at Link through the corners of her eyes. When he turned his head towards her with the same kind of expression she wore, she hastily turned her gaze back towards the girl and blushed harder.
There was a kind of awkward silence before Zelda announced that she was going to go to bed. She exited the room and went down the hall towards her bedroom, Link going down the hall in the opposite direction.
* * *
**So, you like? I had fun writing this chapter, but I'm going to go back to more with our girls the next chapter. I'll still talk about the regular Zelda peeps, but my girls will be included more.
Heh, what did you think about that last part? I was having a fit when I wrote it. I kept laughing, and my family just kinda kept looking at me like I was insane! ^_^() I'm trying not to lean towards any couplings in the evolution of Rynita, but here I just couldn't resist! You can imagine whatever you want when it comes to that, I was just having a little bit of fun here. Well, what did YOU think about it?
I really hope you people are still interested in this story! I'm having more and more fun working on it! AND I'm done with my summer project for next year's honors language arts, so I should be able to get chapters out faster!
Thanks for reading, and please review!!
SailorZelda