Zelda was burning away. Her memories, like rooms in a house on fire, vanished as they were licked by the purple flames. Memories. Feelings. Everything that made her who she was. She saw it all go up in flames as she ran through the rooms of her mindspace.
"Stop! Stop!" she cried, but there was no way to stop everything from burning.
Here, the excitement of her first appearance in court cracked and flamed. There, the whispers of the forest as she ran away from the attack on castle town on Impa's arms faded to nothing.
"No! No!" she yelled, trying to grab onto the memory, as painful as it was. It was still her. It was her own pain.
"It's alright," said a weak female voice, echoing in the halls of Zelda's mind. She knew that voice too well. It haunted her dreams since she was a child. "I need to rest, and you need to sleep. We'll work on your embroidery in the morning."
Zelda ran to another room on fire, where she had said good bye to her mother for the last time, before she had passed away during the night.
"Don't take her away!" shouted Zelda, seeing the flames erase her mother's voice and face from her memory. "I need her! I love her!"
As she fell to her knees, she realized that she needed her as much now, as she had when she woke up the next morning, five years old and alone.
Strange footsteps sounded behind her, and a cold voice spoke. "So you are still here," it said.
Zelda looked up to see a copy o herself, with purple eyes and white hair.
"Burn already. Your noise is too annoying," it said, and vanished.
"I won't burn!" yelled Zelda, standing up. "Tear me apart, but I won't leave! This is my body! Mine!"
Nothing answered.
She needed to find a safe place. Away from the flames. She had to survive, memories or not.
She ran through white and golden hallways, up and down staircases made of half remembered conversations, across the shadows of murmured voices that she could no longer identify. There had to be something else. There had to be somewhere in her own mind where she could be safe. Or at least something she could use to protect herself.
And yet, as she looked around at the labyrinths and towers of her mind, she knew that it would lead her nowhere safe.
'It will collapse. –I- will collapse. Into myself,' she thought
She ran across the gaping holes left by the fire, crossing through unrelated memories, and through the voids that her burned memories left. There were no black voids where the flames devoured her mind, but only a plain, quiet nothingness.
She ran, looking for a way to escape her own mind. Refusing to descend into her own destruction. She knew she could escape. She had to be able to. Everything was connected. The magical energy flowed from and through her into everything in the world, so it would not be too wild to think that there was a way out of herself.
She blinked, realizing that she had been listening to something among the sounds of the flames. Following a voice that called at her with a familiar tone.
'Are you hiding again? Come out. Come here, it's time for dinner,' said the voice. 'You're doing great, next time, you might even defeat me.'
A shiver ran down Zelda's spine when she realized that she was hearing Impa's voice. Her presence lingered on so many of her memories, that she was a constant throughout the expanses of her mind.
She kept running, despite the tears that filled her eyes. Of course, she had come to fill the gap that her mother had left after dying. The thought that she had come to love Impa the same way that she had loved her real mother was something that Zelda had never forgiven herself for.
And yet here she was. Once more. Following Impa's voice, now that the memory of her mother had been destroyed. Ah, but the guilt. The guilt would remain.
Zelda gasped, seeing something green flickering in the distance.
'You will be ok. You're doing fine,' said Impa's voice, a motherly whisper in her ears, and Zelda used all her strength to run into the soft green light.
A great expanse of grass opened up before her. And beyond, an emerald sea glittered under a bright sky with no sun.
Link waited there.
Zelda ran up to him, exhausted. "Link, is it you? Is it really you?" she asked, desperate to know that this wasn't another one of her memories, ready to burn into nothingness.
Link turned to her, a sad look in his eyes. "Zelda…How did you…? You shouldn't be here, Zelda. This is me."
Zelda wiped the tears off her eyes in a rage. "So it really is you. Link, I'm burning! There's something inside me. It's tearing me apart!"
Link nodded. "Farore said as much. When she took my body," he said.
Suddenly, everything fell into place for Zelda. "So they…they are taking us, because we have the triforce…," she whispered.
"I thought it was only me," said Link. "They created me, after all. But of course, they would take us all."
He kicked the surface of the green water. "I won't allow this Farore!" he shouted. Beneath the waters, Zelda could see the flickering lights of bright green flames, licking their way to the surface.
"No…No, Farore is burning you too?!" she asked.
"There isn't much to burn, but…yes," said Link in a whisper.
"We have to do something!" said Zelda, trying to grab Link's hand.
Link jerked away from here. "Don't touch me! That's too dangerous. Zelda, you have to go back. Go back and hold on for as long as you can. If you stay here, it will tear you apart before Nayru burns you completely."
"What? Just go back and endure? That's your plan? I'm sick of sitting in the sidelines and enduring. I had to wait for you for seven years. Seven. Years. You were just gone, when we needed you the most. The world crumbled before me, and you had gone to sleep. And I had to wait for you. That's all I could do. Wait and not die."
Link hung his head. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't be strong when you needed me. I'm sorry I…can't be stronger now. But please…know that I won't abandon you Zelda. Even now, I will fight until there is nothing left of me," he said, stepping deeper into the emerald sea, where Zelda could not follow him anymore.