Disclamer: Although I wish I could, I do not own Zelda: OoT. But, I do own Helen (C) ;) This particular story is one I have been working on for 2 or more years, so please R&R!
Also: Words in Italics are interior monologue. In english: the character is talking to themselves. A line is just a break between scenes :)
Arrow of Light
I could start my tale with "once upon a time". Though it seems fairly cliché, it is the way that all good stories start. In a beginning. And so: Once upon a time, there was a girl.
The sun shone freely into the glade when my eyes fluttered open that fateful morning; drops of dew shining like lamps in the misty light. A sigh escaped me as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, my body aching with the morning chill.
"Why is life never easy?" I muttered to myself. I could not sleep in my own bed anymore; eventually, I would make my way to the pond, like a zombie hungering for flesh. It is not normal for me to be so reckless, to give in to the urges that pulsed in my veins. I was foolish. I didn't realize how much danger I was in by just looking at the pool, let alone sleeping by it. It had been rumored that mischievous spirits lived in this place, however, rumors are rumors; if lying in a tiger's belly would get me to sleep, I would ask it to eat me, regardless of the warnings I had heard.
But I was foolish.
One night, I awoke to find my arm thrown over my head, trailing my fingers in the water. Frantically, I drew my hands out and wiped them on my tunic, but it was too late. Even the touch of the Lake of Spirits will haunt the bearer forever, they say. Even though I had no idea who "they" were, I realized that something bad would happen to me, though no one could agree exactly what. I waited for two months with bated breath, but nothing happened.
Just when I thought myself safe, I began having a reoccurring dream.
In the dream, I can see my father. I am on the battlefield, the final battlefield where the fate of Hyrule was decided. He reaches to me, the handkerchief I had made for him stained red with blood. I run to him, except the closer I get to him, the closer he is to death. And as I reach out to him to catch his fall, I see the light fade from his eyes. I can hear someone screaming somewhere, but I can feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing. Nothing but my father's gray eyes; the eyes that used to smile when I had brought a frog to the table, even though his face was stern; the eyes that would taunt me when we sparred. He knew I could best him with an arrow, but he wouldn't admit it aloud. But he is gone forever. My heart is bleeding onto my hand, as if I have really broken it. A soldier wraps an arm around my waist, dragging me away, kicking. Setting me down on the edge of the battle field, he disappears into the night- as a dream soldier would. I crawl under a tree, sobbing with unladylike gulps of air. Suddenly, everything silences. I spot a man on horseback getting near where my father had died and I stop crying. What is he doing? He dismounts effortlessly and kicks bodies out of the way, my father's body among them. He falls against a pile of the dead, his eyes pointed heavenward. His hand relaxes, allowing a golden object to tumble from where he had died protecting it. He had died. He had died.
"No!" I cry, shattering the stillness. I run as fast as I can toward my father; if I cannot have my father alive, then I will have him dead. The man with yellow eyes picks up the gold from the mud; he closes his eyes, seeming to savor the moment. But it explodes.
The first thing I think is my father's body is gone.
The second thing is pain. Unimaginable pain. It feels as though my hand has caught fire and it was spreading through my veins toward my toes. The last thing I can see is blood running from a triangle shaped wound on my hand.
It is always the same. But the morning I awoke from the dream the first time, I knew my father was dead. I didn't need the officers to formally visit a week later, clearing their throats as they tried to think of a way to phrase the awful thing they had to say, to tell me there were no remains of my father. Nothing remained but a memory in my heart. From then on, I sported a shiny triangle shaped scar on the back of my left hand.
A memento for the loss of my innocence.
But that was long ago.
The last tattered remnants of the dream fled as the sun tossed a ray of light over the horizon. Yet again, I awoke to find myself at the Lake of Spirits. The inhabitants of Yumno Village used my voyage home as a clock. Every morning, I walked back through the forest, passing under the pitiful gazes of my neighbors. I want to scream at them: "You know nothing of my pain!" but I never did. This village was not my own anymore. My house was not my own. It was haunted by the conjuring of my heart, the consequences of touching the pool.
As I reached my father's home, I turned to the water trough, its contents as still as glass. My reflection gazed back at me with brown and rebellious hair; like my father my heart admits, but my brain tells it to shut up. Your eyes look like his too, says my heart softy, haunted. My reflection in the water blinks, seduced by its words.
"I am not like my father," I whisper to the mirror. "I have not the courage." I cannot bring myself to enter the house, not yet. I know I will find my father, sitting at the table eating breakfast. Even from here, I can hear the tinkle of a spoon against a bowl. That is my curse, for to touch the Lake of Spirits is to become haunted by the thing that pains you most.
Sighing, I lay against a rock, fingering my ocarina in silence. My father told me my mother had made it. She had died giving birth to me, and since I had not known her, I was not haunted by her. With so much rubbing, the ocarina had become smooth with wear. Putting it to my lips, I lost myself in one of my favorite songs.
I had learned it when I was little. My father had loved to sing, more then he loved to breath. This particular one was his favorite, telling of forbidden love. The couple was prohibited from ever seeing each other and they eventually died from broken hearts, but the Goddesses took pity on them and smeared their souls upon the evening sky to make a sunset.
"It was fate my dear," he would mourn playfully, "It is man's punishment, to be the subject of fate forevermore."
As I finished, I could hear the trill of another ocarina join in the last part: Love cannot be seen, but broken. Love cannot be found, but lost. Sunset is the magic spoken, color thrown across the world.
A silence settled as I searched for my hidden duettist. Perhaps it was only the ghost of my father, I thought. Am I to be cursed for the rest of my days? But I laid my eyes upon someone I had never seen before. Green amongst the green. His eyes fluttered open as he put the ocarina in his lap. They were as blue as water. His golden hair played lightly across his brow as he stood up and put the instrument into his pack. He was not dressed like the elves in the south; he had a green tunic with a leather belt. A sword's sheath crossed his waist, and a quiver of arrows rested lightly on his back. A shield with a mirror on the back had the desert symbols for the moon and the stars as well as the sacred triforce engraved upon it. He had gloves on, with gold engraved on the top. The only part of him that I could recognize was the leather boots made in the southern elfish community of Kokiri.
He wasn't watching me asses him; his eyes were turned upon my father's house. I glanced through the window. He was cleaning up breakfast, humming as he plunged his hands into soapy water. The man frowned, his brow furrowing in concern.
"Who is he?" he finally asked. His brashness was surprising. Obviously he was not from around here; the townsfolk could not see my father.
"My father," I croaked. Why was I telling this stranger these things? Foolish! my brain cried with triumph. Shut up already! replied my heart, I've heard enough from you. The man crouched down next to me. With his thumb and forefinger, he tilted my chin until I could look into his eyes. But in them, I found no comfort.
The man with yellow eyes peered back at me from within his eyes. I have found you at last! came a painful voice from within my head. Suddenly, I found myself on the ground, staring at the sky. The shadow of my father passed over my head as he walked toward the trough.
"Are you playing a game again?" he teased. Thank the goddesses that the apparition chose that moment to dissolve into dust. I could not have taken a moment more.
"I am tired," I said to the dirt that had been my father, "I am tired of being. If you wish to kill me, then you are succeeding for I cannot take much more." I turned my head and found that the strange man was still there, watching me with pained eyes.
"I can help you," he said quietly, "but you have to trust me." Don't do it… warned my brain, he could be dangerous. Oh bugger off will you! cried my heart, you know as well as I do that she will die without help.
"Why would you feel obligated to help me?" I said, mentally telling both my heart and my brain to shut up before I came in there and hit them.
"Why not?" he said simply, "You are in danger."
"Ah. A hero type then. Am I really that pitiful?" I said sorrowfully. The man bit his lip, but it was no use. He began laughing, a long, rich laugh which made me blink at the newness of it. I had not heard laughter in many years.
"You don't know who I am, do you?" he chuckled, shaking his head. "Well, this is refreshingly new."
"I… don't understand,"
"Ah, well, I think I owe you a story then."