I tried this once when I was ten. I tried it again when I was thirteen. Now, I'm nineteen, started this rewrite when I was still eighteen; third (fourth?) time's a charm, right?

This first chapter will include a rewrite of the original first five chapters. Enjoy!

Gentle blue seas covered the room. White-capped waves, seagulls in the distance, "cell-shading," they called it; a peculiar style for the paintings on a bedroom wall. But it was a style—that is, the style of a once-hated, now-loved game's iconic characters. It was the bedroom of a young girl, one who had begged for her mother to commission some poor artist to paint her walls when they redid her room for her "teenage years."

Adelaide Blake was a really, really big fan of The Legend of Zelda.

As shown by her room—decked out to look like she was sitting smack-dab in the center of The Wind Waker—Adelaide had absolutely no shame when it came to her… obsession. Especially not on the dawn of her birthday, where she was wriggling excitedly in her bed, waiting for her alarm to go off so she could run downstairs and find out what goodies her parents had in store for her. Her mother wasn't a fan of anyone running around the house before a certain time, which is why Adelaide had to wait for her alarm in the first place; she had no intention of starting the day off with a scolding.

The alarm sounds. The beginning notes of The Wind Waker's title theme begin to ring, but barely a second passes before nimble fingers are pressing "off" on the unsuspecting alarm—nine o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. When everyone else was sleeping in, Adelaide was jumping out of bed and rushing to her bathroom down the hall, pajamas flying off in the process, to get ready for the day.

Her shower was quick. Shampoo, body wash, conditioner, face wash. The brush dragging through her shoulder-length just-kinda-wavy blonde hair cries out in muffled whines as it tears through sleep-curled knots. The hairdryer barely dries her hair past the damp stage before, as quick as she ran in, Adelaide is running back out into the hallway and down to the confines of her room clad in nothing but a towel.

She doesn't care much for her appearance on most days, but there wasn't a doubt in Adelaide's mind that if she dressed like she normally did—hair pulled into a lazy bun, leggings, and an oversized t-shirt—her mother would throw a fit. It was her birthday, after all! A nicer outfit was due. Instead of leggings, the fashionista opts for a pair of obviously-higher-class jeggings, a flowy, white summer blouse with lavender-colored flowers printed on it, and instead of a bun, her hair is left down. She's supposed to have layers framing her face, but her hair has grown out since her last haircut, so the framing isn't as obvious. Not that she cares much for it, anyway. Her mother is the one who is obsessed with appearances.

While she was getting dressed, Adelaide could smell the food her mother was making for her birthday breakfast; it was another thing, besides presents, that was spurring the girl on so early in the morning (early for her, that is. She tended to sleep in pretty late). Still, in the back of her head, there was this feeling she couldn't shake.

A feeling of being watched.

Blue eyes squint slightly to adjust after being fitted with a pair of thin contacts. Adelaide wasn't blind, per se, and could go without her contacts, but straining her eyes for too long gave her a headache. That usually took a few hours, though, especially if she was staring at something akin to a computer or TV screen for a long time.

So why was her head hurting now?

—

The kitchen table was empty. A middle-aged woman was working quietly at her station in front of the stove, flipping blueberry pancakes for her daughter's birthday breakfast. No father was seen downstairs; he had left for work earlier that morning, without a goodbye, as he did every morning. Yes, even on the weekends, and even in the middle of the summer on his daughter's birthday. Adelaide's older sister, Skye, was still fast asleep in her bed upstairs.

"Good morning, Addy," the woman greeted, hearing her youngest daughter bounce down the stairs. "Happy Birthday, baby. How old are you, today? Forty?"

"Fourteen, mom," Adelaide grumbled in faux-annoyance. She was interested in the pancakes for all of five seconds before her eyes were glued to the small pile of wrapped gifts in the center of the table.

"Ah-ah," her mother clicked her tongue, not even needing to see her daughter to know her fingers were already itching for the gifts. "Not until your father and sister are here."

"But that won't be until tonight!" Adelaide whined, stomping with a single foot onto the kitchen floor. "Dad doesn't come home until late! Can't I open them now, with just you and me? I know you're the one who got me everything, anyways!"

"Adelaide."

The conversation halted at that. It was no secret that the patriarch of the Blake family wasn't particularly invested in his daughters' lives. Did he love his girls? Yes, with all his heart, but he couldn't tell a single thing about their interests, even down to their favorite colors. Mrs. Blake was the one who took care of the shopping; Mr. Blake provided the funds.

Before Adelaide's good mood could be soured in its entirety, her older sister, Skye, came bumbling down the stairs.

"Hey, squirt," Skye yawned, still clad in her pajamas. "Happy Birthday. Are you in high school yet?"

"School doesn't start for two months, airhead," Adelaide was quick to retort, a smile breaking over her once-sullen face. "Where's my present?"
Mrs. Blake was about to scold her youngest once again for being rude, but Skye was quick and tossed a small, poorly-wrapped box into Adelaide's lap. Her legs had to snap together to catch it, but still, she lifted it in her hands to inspect it with a discerning eye.

"This looks like shi—"

"You're welcome," Skye cut her off before any sort of foul language could be heard and punishments could be dealt from the lovely Mrs. Blake. Without waiting for a reaction to the gift, Skye took three of the largest pancakes available in her bare hands and trudged back upstairs, where she would presumably stay for the rest of the day lest someone drag her out of her room by force.

Only after taking a moment to steal a glance at her mother, who gave an approving nod, did Adelaide rip off the measly wrapping paper to uncover a small dollar-store jewelry box. Squinting down at it, Adelaide could only hope that Skye didn't buy her a pair of cheap earrings or something else of that caliber. Needless to say, when she opened the box to find a necklace with a golden charm composed of three connected triangles—the elusive Triforce—on a silver chain, Adelaide was stunned.

It was nerdy. Definitely nerdy. Completely and absolutely nerdy. But it was just minimalist enough that Adelaide could wear it without getting made fun of at school or given weird looks by the gas station attendant when she goes to buy snacks. Slipping it around her neck, she felt almost… blessed by the jewelry, like it held some sort of magic properties.

But that was ridiculous. It's made of metal—no, it's probably just plastic. It's not like it's the real Triforce, it can't be… magic.

But she could pretend it was.

—

The day came and went. The Blakes didn't go out to eat to celebrate the occasion, and other than that morning, when Adelaide shared breakfast with her mother, the family of four didn't see each other. Mrs. Blake cleaned up around the house and did the laundry, Skye did whatever it is she does when she's alone in her room (seventeen-year-olds are weird), and Adelaide spent the day doing what she always did: playing games in her room. Once night came, Mr. Blake left work a little earlier than normal so he could eat dinner with his girls. Adelaide opened her gifts: a copy of Four Swords Adventures from her mother since Adelaide had been begging for it after beating The Minish Cap, a Legend of Zelda-themed chess set "from" her father, and a little keychain of her favorite character, Vaati, in his Minish form to put on her Nintendo 3DS. After thanking her family profusely, they all called it a day. She spent the rest of the night absentmindedly playing through the first two chapters of Four Swords Adventures and reading fanfiction, as fourteen-year-old girls do, on a particular publishing website until she was tired enough to go to bed.

That same, uneasy dread of being watched that Adelaide had felt earlier that morning settled over her heart in full-force as she prepared herself for bed. She found herself staring out her window into the night sky for a short moment, which in and of itself was strange because she rarely ever had her curtains open; they were always drawn shut so the sun wouldn't blind her in the morning. The full moon, in its pale beauty, was the only thing blinding her now.

It was a dumb idea, but at that moment, Adelaide felt a yearning in her chest: she wanted to make a wish as though she had just seen a shooting star or the time was exactly 11:11. Strikingly-average blue eyes flutter shut as she brings a hand up to rest over the Triforce necklace hanging at her collar, which she had yet to take off.

"Give me something impossible," she thought. "Give me something that only happens in dreams. Give me… give me a friend. Give me an enemy. Give me something to make my life interesting. Like… like… I don't know, like a monster, like… Vaati, I guess. Give me something like Vaati."

With Four Swords on her mind, Adelaide draws the curtains tight and crawls into bed. The moon shines bright among the stars; the wind begins to howl as it falls from the sky. No one hears its thud.

It's dark.

It's always dark.

Something he had grown accustomed to. Once, he had loathed it, cursing it for its emptiness, its solitude. He had no one except for himself—no monsters, no minions, certainly no enemies—and even that was a stretch. In the dark, he possessed no corporeal form; he simply existed in shadow, waiting for an eternity to end.

It was dark.

And then it wasn't.

One moment, he—our very own wind sorcerer, our Vaati—was nestled comfortably in non-existence, locked away by the power of the Four Sword after he had, ahem, tried to destroy the country of Hyrule and steal all of its Light Force, and the very next, he was tumbling through the sky from two stories in the air, howling in terror, and crashing to the ground with a resounding thud.

The poor wind sorcerer cannot even cry out in pain, for, ironically enough, as his body collides with the ground, the very air is knocked out of him and his voice is cut short. For a few terrifying moments, Vaati can do nothing but lay there, grasping at his chest, gasping silently. Spots of black dot his vision; the sky is dark, and smacking his head against the ground didn't exactly do him any good.

For the first time since the hero drove the Four Sword into him and ended his life, Vaati was scared.

He never knew how much time passed after he fell to the ground; his understanding of the passage of time was lost after being sealed away. Even then, he wasn't sure how long he was gone—minutes, days, centuries? It didn't matter, for he'd never know now. Pulling himself into a sitting position, Vaati cannot help but let out a groan of pain as he takes a moment to survey his surroundings.

This… isn't Hyrule. At least, it's not the Hyrule he remembered. All around him, buildings reached up into the skies, higher than any little one-story shop he'd seen in the market town. Surely this had to be millennia after he was sealed away, right? Technology… advanced.

If this was still Hyrule, however, even after so much time… then this was his chance for redemption.

Out of instinct, a pale hand comes up to brush the hair away from his face and then reaches back to trail over the hat that normally adorned his head. The keyword here is normally. It seems that, as his body reformed, he was left in the form he took after he put on the Minish Cap for the first time, save for the hat itself. Most likely, he would never be able to return to his form as one of the Picori. In other words, Vaati was now entirely Hylian.

There's a tugging at his chest, something heavy and melancholy. Deep down, a part of him is saddened to know that he will never be able to join his fellow Picori ever again.

Crimson eyes look to the night sky, finding solace in the beauty of the full moon. Seeing movement out of his peripherals, Vaati found his gaze shifting from its glory to the highest window of the building directly in front of him, to see a somehow-familiar girl staring up at the very same moon. Perhaps it was the sheen of her golden locks or the way it fell around her face, but something was set racing inside of Vaati's chest.

Yes, it made him furious.

As the girl turned to leave, the glimmer of the necklace hanging over her chest caught his eye. Was that… oh, what was it called… the Triforce? A relic lauded in Hyrulean history, but only vaguely known to the Picori. Vaati's interests when he was tearing up Hyrule solely included the Light Force, but he somewhat knew of the Triforce's power.

Perhaps if he could grasp the relic in his vice, it could tell him what he needed to know, and give him the power to seek revenge against the hero and the princess. At the very least, perhaps it would reveal a way to return home.

And so he would take it for himself.

—

Vaati should have thought his plan through a little more thoroughly before trying to break into a random family's house to invade the room of an innocent young girl who only somewhat resembled one of his greatest enemies.

(It was the bangs. It was the bangs on that girl that made her look like… Zelda.)

He didn't think. He didn't think at all, and now there was no turning back—cursing himself for thinking that sneaking into and around an unknown house was a better plan than to just scale the wall outside and climb in through the window.

Currently, Vaati was hidden inside a lovely coat closet near the front door of the house on the opposite side from where he snuck in. Fortunately for him, the family's patio door had been unlocked; unfortunately, the girl's father was still awake and sitting in their family room, staring intently at some… box... that was displaying… magic, moving images… on the... front. It also made noise, but he couldn't quite make out any of what was happening. It was like any speech he heard was garbled, entirely incoherent. Very strange. The man was a threat so long as he stayed in that room; when Vaati had originally sleuthed in from the patio and made his way across the kitchen, which was adjacent to the family room, all the way to the front hall and into the closet, the man had heard him make some sort of noise and came to investigate. Leaving now was too dangerous.

And so Vaati waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until finally, the sound of snoring came from the direction of the room the strange man had been in, just barely loud enough to be heard over the murmur of the magic talking box. The man was asleep—now was Vaati's chance to sneak upstairs. After all, if this guy was asleep, surely everyone else in the house had to be, too, right?

Holding his breath, the wind sorcerer edged the door to the closet open, stopping in his tracks if he heard any noise whatsoever. Once it was open just enough to slide through the opening, he made his way out into the open and quickly shut the closet, as it had been before he entered it. Vaati exhales slowly through his nose, and with a feather-light touch, he tiptoes along the stairs to the upper level of the house. It was only appropriate that he moved as swiftly and as quietly as the wind itself.

There weren't that many rooms on the top floor. Of the four rooms, two of the doors were open, revealing one bedroom and one bathroom. Of the other two doors, one was decorated with flowers and brightly-colored shapes, only able to be made out in the darkness of the upstairs of the house by the dim light filtering in from up the stairway. Tracing his path back to where he had been outside, Vaati confirms that this is the room—the room housing the damnable Zelda look-alike with the Triforce hanging from her neck. Reaching out from the darkness, Vaati grips the handle of the brightly-decorated door and opens it without a sound.

—

He expects the girl to wake.

There's complete darkness in the room once the door is shut, the only sound being that of the girl's soft, even breaths—for he holds his own, fearful that the slightest disturbance may cause her eyes to flutter open.

He expects the girl to wake.

… She doesn't.

Vaati doesn't know how long he stands there, waiting. Watching. His eyes—eye—eventually adjusts to the darkness, and even then he doesn't move. A hesitant step is placed across the plush carpet adorning her floor, and she doesn't wake. Another step and the same follows. Eventually, Vaati makes his way to the window and draws the curtains open just enough to let a soft light filter into the room.

The moon smiles down at the earth. The wind mage doesn't smile back.

The necklace practically glows in the moonlight. Were Vaati a caring man, he'd have adjusted the blanket over the girl's body after seeing how she practically kicked it off in her sleep. Thankfully, Vaati is not a caring man and doesn't give a single care in the world about whether or not this strange princess-look-alike is cold while she sleeps. Pale fingers twitch towards the golden triangles, ready to snatch them up and whisk away with a simple spell.

He doesn't expect the girl to wake.

And she does.

Someone is watching her.

That's what Mrs. Blake always said. When you wake suddenly between the hours of twelve and three, my dear girl, it means someone is watching you—intently! Adelaide always laughed at this and playfully batted at her mother's arm, like you would know, mom.

Adelaide never thought it could be true.

… And maybe it wasn't. Her eyes opened suddenly, and she thought, just for a second, that someone was standing over her. For those first few groggy moments, she couldn't hear; even longer, she couldn't move. It was a condition of sleep paralysis, no doubt, but no demons were waiting for her at the foot of her bed.

Was the figure she saw the "demons" those people online talk about? No, it couldn't be. All of those stories mention little creatures staring at them for long amounts of time, or figures closing in on them while the only self-defense they have is the ability to squeeze their eyes shut again. Adelaide wiggles her fingers and then her toes and pulls herself into a sitting position in bed. Nope, not paralyzed. And nothing is waiting to gobble her up from the shadows, either.

Whatever she saw must have just been a dream, a remnant of some nightmare she was having but didn't remember once she woke up. A little shake of her head and Adelaide lays back down in bed, pulling up the covers to shield her eyes from the moonlight filtering in through her curtains.

As she drifts back off to dreamland, Adelaide only has one thought: didn't she close the curtains before she went to sleep?

Vaati watches blue eyes flutter open and he imagines himself dissipating into the wind, as he's done time and time again, and then—

Nothing.

Nothing happened. The spell didn't work.

Acting fast, the wind mage drops to the floor with the softest swoosh imaginable and scoots beneath the girl's bed. Once safe from her view, he tries again. Be the wind. Be the wind. Be the wind.

Nothing.

It takes every ounce of restraint not to let a flurry of curses go flying from his lips. Why in the name of the goddesses can't he cast his magic? Fingers flex out as he tries for a simple small whirlwind—nothing! It's like his magic doesn't work! It's like—

His magic doesn't…

Work.

His magic doesn't work. Vaati doesn't have the Minish Cap anymore, so he doesn't have any magic. Of course.

Unable to retain his sigh, the wind mage—can he even call himself that anymore? Or is he just Vaati, now?—drops his head low, face burying itself into the plush floor. He's powerless. His only hope now is to get that damn necklace, and no doubt the girl will be on edge now that she's woken up and seen him standing over her.

He won't push his luck. Once again, Vaati plays the waiting game. Once the girl's breaths are evened out, he allows himself to relax and roll onto his back. Glaring up at the bottom of the bed frame, he allows sleep to take over his senses for the first time in millennia.

It's a comfort he never knew he missed.

Adelaide wakes in the morning feeling surprisingly refreshed. Dimly can she remember waking in the middle of the night, but can't remember why. To her shock, a glance at her phone tells her that it's still before noon—score! Plenty of time left in the day to play video games, since she didn't waste all afternoon sleeping! Grabbing a change of clothes, she skips down the hall to the bathroom and takes her sweet time in showering, not rushing like she had the morning before. After dressing in her usual attire of leggings, an oversized shirt—today, a purple sweater with two light purple stripes across the center—and a messy bun, she makes her way back to her room to finish up her morning routine before heading downstairs to grab breakfast.

She doesn't expect to see anyone in her room when she opens the door.

She certainly doesn't expect to see a lavender-haired, purple-clad gentleman rifling through the items on her desk.

The door clicks shut behind her. The stranger looks up, a single crimson-red eye—as his long, weirdly-silky hair cascaded over half of his face, hiding his other eye from view—stares over at her. Adelaide stares back.

The stranger raises his hands. Adelaide opens her mouth to scream.