A/N: Welcome back! I hope everyone liked the prologue chapter, I put a lot of work into actually fleshing out Claire's home life on Earth. When I looked back at the original, there wasn't a lot there to work with, and it just didn't... fit. I changed things up just a bit (read: a lot) so that Claire had some personal stakes as far as Earth went, and the decision to make Julie (Bethany) her adopted sister made sense to me so that Claire would have that personal connection from home that really meant something to the story - Rose's siblings in the original were just... characters mentioned in passing, and yeah, she loved them a lot, but they weren't crazy important to the story. Either way, enough of my babbling! Here's the official first chapter!

Updated July 16th, 2021

Down, down, down she fell, twisting and flailing and flying. She fell for an eternity, through swirling lights and sounds and colours, everything and nothing, existence itself. She was slipping, she could feel it. Everything that made her who she was, falling away piece by piece. Sand in the hourglass, and she was almost out of time. When solid ground touched the soles of her bare feet, she was hollow. She just knew she had to go home.

...Home? Where was home? Where was she?

...Who was she?

"Who's out there? Show yourselves!"

Claire jolted awake with a start, stumbling to her feet before she was fully conscious. Where am I? What happened? She tripped over her own feet, falling hands and knees into the water.

Wait, water? Claire opened her eyes blearily, taking in what she could as her eyes adjusted to the dark. She was still outside, but none of the area looked familiar to her in the night. She could make out the outlines of towering trees blowing in the soft wind over her head - a forest? Keaton park? No, the park doesn't have a fountain, or a creek, or... whatever this is. Where the hell am I?

Turning in a full circle, Claire saw a wooden gate covered in vines that seemed to block off this little spring from... whatever else was in the forest. She thought it was starting to look familiar, but it wasn't exactly her focus right then. Well... maybe it should be. If I find out where I am, I can find out how to get home. God, I'm so grounded when I get home... Then she noticed something else, as the moon peeked out from behind the clouds, and she could really see her surroundings and herself.

"What the hell... what am I wearing?" Claire's clothes had been swapped out for something else entirely: her floral blouse and purple tennis skirt had been replaced with some sort of long shirt - or a short dress? - with a belt around her waist, a pair of white (possibly some kind of light brown?) pants, and dark boots that wrapped around her calves.

What. The. Hell.

"Okay, this has gone far enough. I gotta get out of here..." Claire mumbled, pacing back and forth in front of the spring and trying to keep her breathing steady. Her phone had been in her hand when she'd woken up, but it had fallen into the dirt when she stood up. Looking at it now, there was no signal - and the stupid screen had a crack in the corner. That's the least of your problems right now, Claire! All the same, she turned the phone off and pulled the battery out; she didn't know how long she'd be wherever the hell she was, better safe than sorry. She hesitated, because where was she going to put it? She patted around, feeling for pockets in her clothes and coming across some sort of leather pouch on her hip, attached to the belt.

I didn't ask for this, but I may as well use it while I'm here... It wasn't like she could do much with her phone if there were no cell towers in range, anyways.

In her musings, Claire didn't notice how the spring water had begun to softly glow - didn't notice until it got distractingly bright, outlining the rocks around the spring in a softer blue, and it really illuminated where exactly she was. It was startlingly familiar, but that wasn't reassuring. If Claire didn't know better...

"No, no way... Everything's fine, it's just a dream, and you'll wake up any second now…" Claire muttered, fingers twisting into her hair as her palms pressed against either side of her head. Heedless of her denial, a golden orb rose from the water. It looked like it was made of pure light, drawing in the glow of the spring around it like a magnet. It seemed to be bending the light into a specific shape, coming together to form... Some kind of animal. Claire knew what it was, but she wasn't going to say it. Wake up, wake up, wake up! God, this can't really be happening, right?

Claire wasn't able to do much but gape until the spirit - because that's what it was, it was a freaking Light Spirit - spoke to her.

"You do not need to be afraid, little one. You are safe here," the spirit's voice was soft, warm. The Very Fictional Goat Spirit was talking to her. It didn't help much, but Claire's panic felt less like it was going to crawl out of her throat. Either way, communicating with something she knew was fictional wasn't really helping the whole panicking thing. She itched to begin pacing again, feeling too jittery to just stand there, but she felt rooted to her spot in the dirt.

"Doesn't seem like it from where I'm standing," she retorted shakily. "I-I don't know who or what you are, or where-or where I am, or-" She stopped, biting her lip til she tasted blood. She couldn't get answers if she was busy falling apart, and she couldn't imagine she was important enough to waste the spirit's time with her mental breakdown.

"You do know, but you do not want to believe it," the spirit corrected gently. Why did it have to sound so serene about it while it was calling Claire out like that? She huffed, annoyed, turning to try and stomp off before she remembered; right, I'm locked in here until someone opens the gate. Sure, she could climb over the gate, but was that really smart? If it broke because it couldn't hold her weight, that'd only make people angry. And even if she did get out unscathed... where would she go?

The spirit waited patiently while Claire ran the numbers in her head, considering her options. There's nothing for it. She trudged her way back towards the spring unhappily, and the spirit still waited. Claire got the feeling it wanted her to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Ugh...

"...Ordona," she bit out morosely, a grudging acknowledgement. The spirit dipped its head in a single nod. "Well, it's great to know I've finally snapped. You're not real. None of this is supposed to be real! If-If I'm where I think I am, then... No, there's no way. Guess I just finally went off the deep end, huh?" The sharp tone was undercut by the obvious tremor, and Claire tapped one booted foot into the dirt looking for something to ground her.

"I'm afraid this is all very real. I know you must have many questions, little one, but you are not yet ready for the answers. All I am permitted to say is that you are here for a reason: this world needs your help. When it is time, you will know, and we will speak once more..." Ordona began to fade, and Claire panicked.

"He-Hey! You can't just leave after dropping something like that on me! Are you kidding?!" She protested in a cracking voice. "I don't know what I'm doing, you can't just leave me with that!" Too late, the warm glow was already seeping away as Ordona disappeared. Claire was once again left in the dark with only vague outlines of the trees, the rocks in the spring, and the mossy walls that left her boxed in. I really am stuck in here...

"Have faith, young Rowan. The Goddesses have not left you unprepared for the trials ahead of you." Rowan? There was that damn name again. It chafed something under Claire's skin, to hear it. And of course that would be the last she heard of Ordona.

...damn it!

Claire let out a huff that came out more like a sob. "Cryptic spirit garbage..." she muttered with a slightly hysterical laugh. "God, what do I do?" she whispered as the panic set in. The teen collapsed into a small nook in the far end of the spring, holding her knees to her chest as she tried not to completely fall apart. Truthfully, Claire wanted to scream and cry until whatever brought her here sent her back, but she knew that wouldn't work. Besides, throwing a tantrum in the middle of the night where people would surely hear her would only make her look crazy, right? As if this situation isn't already crazy! You just got poofed into a fictional world with no warning! And no nachos!

Assuming she wasn't actually just living in a padded cell and sporting a straitjacket, at least. Claire didn't know which option was worse; that everything she was seeing was real and tangible, or that she was just delusional. Dad and, well, dad are going to be heartbroken either way, crap! And what about Julie? Was she going to see her again?

'You are here for a reason,' Ordona had said. Claire wanted to believe that was utter crap, but... well. All evidence to the contrary. For now she just curled in on herself and cried into her knees until she fell asleep under the light of an unfamiliar moon.

At least this one doesn't have a face...

It was raining, the wind was howling, but she heard none of it over the din of the battlefield; swords banging and scraping against shields and chainmail, the cries of terrified civilians running for safety, soldiers and monsters alike being cut down where they stood. In the center of the town square, two more fought separate from the rest. Gerome was one of them, the other was quite possibly the most terrifying thing Claire had ever seen.

It towered over Gerome and the surrounding soldiers by a good few feet, brandished a wicked two-handed sword with a jagged edge that was painful just to look at, and its armour was a black stain against the lighter grey stone of the townhouses around them.

The fight seemed very one-sided; the monster was barely fighting, yet Gerome was struggling and looked worse by the second. Claire ached to help in some way but stayed rooted to the spot, forced to watch as Gerome slowly lost the battle – a part of her noted that even if Gerome won, he'd bleed out too quickly to get help. There was a nasty gash on his arm where the chain mail ended, bleeding profusely into his un-armored sleeve. His other arm dangled limp at his side, broken from the looks of it. How he continued to fight was baffling – he had to know he couldn't win this, so… why was he fighting so desperately, like he was the only one who could? Surely there was someone else who could have done it, wasn't there?

"Fall back, you idiot!" Claire tried to yell, but no sound came out. She was just an observer, after all, of events which had already taken place.

The battle truly ended when Gerome's sword flew out of his hand, clattering to the cobblestone street. Claire barely had time to process it before the monster lunged, sword tipped forward and going in for the kill.

"Look out!" She knew it was useless, she knew she was dreaming, but that didn't stop her from trying. Claire's screams fell on deaf ears, and the monster's sword pierced through armor, flesh, and bone like they were made of tissue paper. The crunching and snapping of the man's ribs as his chest was pierced were nauseating, sent a chill down Claire's spine. Somehow, over the roar of the battle and her own horrified scream, she heard the choked cry from Gerome, and a chilling hiss from the monster;

"You can't protect her from the grave!" The monster ripped its jagged sword from Gerome's now-limp body, and Claire heard herself screaming again as his body fell to the cobblestone, eyes already becoming glassy and lifeless–

I'm going to be sick, Claire thought when she jerked awake with the sun peeking through the trees. She stayed on the ground while she waited for the nausea to pass, doing her best to breathe deeply – she'd never had such a graphic dream before, but that... God, dream or not, the smell of blood lingered in her nose.

Don't think about it. Get up, get moving, and forget it happened. She finally forced herself to sit up, wincing as the muscles in her back panged with the movement. She'd definitely slept on the ground last night.

"Not all a dream, then... or maybe I'm still asleep," she muttered wearily, wiping chilled sweat off her brow as she tried to take in the world around her. The sky was a sort of creamy orange that precluded full sunrise, little golden rays of early-morning sunshine just making it into the spring through the trees and lighting up patches of water like gold. Claire might even enjoy it if she weren't so damn freaked out by the post-nightmare 'everything else' she was stuck with.

With a drawn-out sigh, Claire pushed herself up onto her knees and scooted to the edge of the spring. Splashing cool water on her face and drinking heartily, she felt a bit more like a person as the last of the nausea faded with the vestiges of her nightmare overtaken by the 'real world' around her. For given definition of real, at least, but it was the principle of the thing. What's that comic, with the dog drinking coffee? Where he's saying 'this is fine,' and everything is Visibly Not Fine? That's what this feels like right now.

"Awake, alive, and possibly insane," Claire scoffed to herself. I have to figure out what I'm going to do next. "But... what can I do? I'm unarmed, I don't... damn it, what about when the Twilight stuff happens?" she realized with a gasp. Ordona would've said something if Link's journey had already begun, right? Then... it probably hadn't yet, so... what was Claire supposed to do when it all started?

Video game logic, I should find out if the powers-that-be left me with anything besides a new outfit. To be fair, it came with fancy leather bracers - like the super-detailed, fitted kind that cosplayers with money could afford to custom order. Further exploration showed some sort of chainmail under what Claire now knew was a long, deep blue tunic, but the mail seemed flimsy and cheap - it hardly weighed a thing, and she knew chainmail had to be heavy; it was a metal shirt.

"What is this, some kind of mithril crap?" she wondered aloud, thinking back to Tolkien's books. Light as a feather, hard as dragon scales? That didn't seem likely, but maybe that was the same deal Link ended up getting when he got the Hero's Clothes. Then again, he could wrangle goats, Gorons, and a giant metal ball and chain with relative ease in the game, so maybe he just had super strength. Chainmail would comparatively weigh nothing, contending with all that. Or Nintendo doesn't give a damn about real-world physics no matter how MatPat applies them to Zelda, because that's also an option. Waving the inconsistency away as 'magic' isn't satisfying either, though. I'll have to see if I can figure it out.

The real treat was in the leather bag - not only did it have Claire's phone where she'd stashed it last night, it also had some kind of weird bottomless magic, and there were daggers inside!

"I guess that makes me the rogue," she scoffed to herself, but unable to ignore how exciting that was. At least They don't expect me to lug around a solid metal shield. And hey, this explains how Link carries all that heavy crap with him throughout the game: it's a Mary Poppins bag!

The moment of giddiness over her fancy new weapons - which were carefully packed back into the little pouch with her new bracers, chainmail and white undershirt, because Claire was more likely to get herself hurt than successfully take down any monsters with those, and had no need of armour in quiet Ordon village - was interrupted by the creaking of the gate to the spring. Someone had unlocked it. Claire shrank back with a jolt of terror until the gate revealed a tall blond man with a sword on his back and a white cloth around his head.

Oh, it's Rusl.

Claire remembered him from Twilight Princess, but he hadn't looked quite so much like Sean Bean with the GameCube's polygon count. Either way, she was positive it was Rusl eyeing her with suspicion. Ordonian clothes were fairly distinctive, and there were only so many residents in the village, right?

"Um... Hi," Claire waved awkwardly, wincing when her voice cracked. What a wonderful first impression, knelt in the dirt with some truly impressive bedhead going on and rumpled, slept-in clothes that -at least in presentation- looked more fitting for the aftermath of a crazy night on the town. Ha! Like Port Anderton has a nightlife.

"What brings you to Ordon, stranger?" Rusl asked, breaking Claire out of her odd tangent. His defensive posture hadn't changed, like he was waiting for her to attack him or something. Did he seriously think Claire was a threat? Really... In the moment, she panicked.

"I have no idea," Claire blurted out. "I was on my way home, and I passed out and woke up here last night." It wasn't a lie, not really: Ordona was incredibly vague, but Claire probably should have come up with a convincing lie - the truth really was stranger than fiction.

"One of ours came to me not long ago, saying he heard screaming coming from the spring." ...Oh, that was just peachy. Definitely not embarrassing at all, especially if the one who got Rusl was who she thought it was... He lives closer to the spring than anyone else... ugh, I hope it wasn't him.

"Nightmares, can't help it," Claire shrugged with nonchalance that she didn't feel. Fictional characters she was semi-familiar with or no, there was something very uncomfortable about strangers being privy to her violent nightmares.

Claire must've been more transparent than she thought, because when she looked back at Rusl he seemed sympathetic. Then again, with no makeup and little rest she probably looked like a sleep-deprived zombie at this point - she was exhausted, and Rusl was still contemplating her. That was fair, she supposed, but the staring was uncomfortable.

"I, uhm, I'm Claire McKinley," she introduced herself with a half-hearted wave. And I have a feeling I'm not in Kansas anymore, she didn't say - Rusl wouldn't understand, and she didn't even live in the States anyways. Apparently I don't even live on Earth anymore, and I don't care for that at all.

"My name is Rusl. If you don't hail from nearby, where is your home?" Rusl questioned, narrowing his eyes. The visible apprehension was really not reassuring.

"Port Anderton, British Columbia. Wait- Damn it, that... that doesn't mean anything to you. I'm sorry, I'm just - I'm not from Hyrule, and I... don't think there's any way for me to get home anyways," Claire admitted, disheartened. If the Goddesses wanted her in Hyrule, they wouldn't take too kindly to her trying to go home before they were done with her. Pissing off the divine is never a good idea, and if I'm part of their grand scheme for this era, then... well, I'm kind of screwed. Hey, at least I didn't start off anywhere more dangerous, I guess? Hell, I could have ended up in the Era of the Sky, and been stuck on a damned Loftwing.

"You've no friends or family to look to for help?" Well, concern and possibly pity was better than thinking Claire was lying or a threat, even if she had to bite back an automatic retort that she didn't need anyone's help. That would be one hundred percent wrong, especially here, and she didn't want to get snippy with someone who could help her.

"Uh... not really, no. My family's back home - my sister and our parents, they're... probably wondering where I am..." Claire was supposed to bring the fixings for nachos home last night. Was time passing on Earth, did they think she had run away? That she'd been kidnapped? Or was it like in the Chronicles of Narnia, where time stood still until she got to go home? God, I hope so.

Rusl nodded to himself, like she'd given him a much clearer answer than she had. "Alright. Come along, then. We'll meet with the mayor and see if we can't accommodate you for a few days. One of ours will be going to Castle Town in about two weeks, perhaps you can travel with them." He offered one hand to Claire, pulling her to her feet before gesturing for her to follow him out of the spring.

Well, this ought to be interesting.

A/N: I'm finishing this chapter the day after my final exam, so now I've got all summer to write! I mean, this following week (which'll have already passed by the time I post this) will be a bit crazy as I'm moving in exactly 7 days, so, y'know, packing and all that garbage. I'm hoping to maintain a weekly update schedule over the summer, but. I'm not super great with structure, haha.

(well, at least I admitted upfront that I'm bad about structuring my time...)