A/N: I'm sorry this chapter is so late coming out. I started it a long time ago, but I think I was going about things the wrong way so I decided to restart. Maybe someday I'll finish that scene and add it in... or maybe I'll just add all the scenes I don't finish at the end of the story, like the deleted scenes in a movie. shrug who knows? But dangit, I'd better start getting some reviews here! It's frustrating not getting any feedback. :P Oh, and in case no one has realized this yet, this story's going to be absolutely packed with spoilers.

Life, Going On

Elizabeth had slipped into more ordinary dreams by the time the sound of a harp playing brought her awake.

The lift of her eyelids signaled a full return to consciousness, though Elizabeth was not ordinarily among those few for whom this happens. Feeling somewhat surreal, she lifted her torso upright, noticing as she did how unusually soft her mattress was. Pressing one hand down against it, she sought the metal springs that were present in every modern-day mattress, but they weren't there. Looking up, she realized that her surroundings were not those she had gone to sleep in.

Somehow she was not surprised, and nor did this realization alarm her. Perhaps it was the night playing its tricks upon her mind.

Or perhaps it was the harp music played by the figure who sat on the windowsill.

"Hello?" she asked softly, then immediately realized how little her solid, ordinary voice fit in with all this. The music stopped. The figure's head moved, presumably to look at her, and yet whoever it was remained silent. "W-who are you?" she asked, feeling more awkward with every word she spoke. "Where am I?"

For one long moment there was no response. Elizabeth was trying to think of something else to say when the figure spoke, in a resonant voice that came from everywhere and nowhere, all at once. "You know me, but we've never met. I am the son of shadow and the prisoner of the sun. You are the child of another world, come at last to the home you never knew." Elizabeth arched one thick, dark eyebrow, though whether it was at the stranger's melodramatic manner or what he had actually said was a mystery even to her.

"But above all," the man continued, "you are the Fourth, and I..." he drew his fingers across the strings of the golden harp he held, creating a rippling sound, "...am your guide." He stood in one fluid motion that would have made a cat jealous. "Get some rest." He threw something to the ground, resulting in a flash of light. Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut just in time, and when she opened them he was gone. The teenager rolled her eyes.

"Like I couldn't guess where he went," she muttered, and slipped out of the bed to go over and look out the window. But he was gone. She looked in every direction she could think of, even up; after all, in Ocarina of Time Shiek hid from Link in a tree right above the hero's head. He could certainly do that again.

For that was who the stranger was. When she saw the harp Elizabeth began to suspect, but the motion with which he had thrown the object to the floor was unmistakable to her eyes, which had seen the game played so many times.

But how?

I'm dreaming, she decided. I'll wake up and I'll be in my own bed again. There's no way this is real. Trying to ignore how tangible everything felt, the girl went back over to the bed and slipped underneath the covers again. As she sank into the pillow and and of consciousness, one more thought penetrated Elizabeth's mind: Besides, there's no way a girl could imitate that kind of a voice...

Dreams faded into warm darkness as slowly Elizabeth began to regain consciousness. After a moment her eyes opened, and immediately she knew something was wrong. Her mind still clouded by sleep, she tried to figure out how she could be lying in her bed that things would look like this. Was she facing the wall? Was her head down by the window? ...How could her head be by the window? She never slept that way anymore...

Then it hit her, and she bolted upright in her bed as if someone had shocked her with electricity. Eyes wide, she looked frantically around the room. She was on a large, fluffy (she wasn't sure yet if it was comfortable) bed with a pink-patterned comforter. Straight ahead was a dresser made of some dark wood with a large, elegant mirror over it, and there was a window in the left wall a few feet beyond her bed. The walls themselves were made of what appeared to be large stone blocks and the floor was similar, though there was a thick, red-and-gold oval rug in what was almost but not quite an oriental design beside her bed. Looking directly to her left, Elizabeth saw a small bedside table similar to the dresser with what appeared to be an old-fashioned oil lamp sitting atop it. Her mouth slightly agape, she reached out to touch it, but just before her hand made contact the door set into the right wall opened. She jumped, snatching her hand away as if it had been burned, and stared as a young woman perhaps a couple of years older than her entered.

She appeared to be a maid of some sort, but her clothes... well, they were... medieval. She wore a black gathered skirt that fell to just above her knees and black bodice with a simple white blouse, and her wavy, dark brown hair was held back by a white handkerchief. Her shoes were sturdy black clogs (or they looked like clogs to Elizabeth, she didn't really know) and appeared to have seen a good deal of use, though they were still in good shape. The maid jumped a little upon seeing her. "Oh, you're awake!" she exclaimed, and hurried out again, shutting the door behind her.

Elizabeth stared after her. Through her numb shock, all the confused teenager could manage to think was that something was very, very wrong with all this. She didn't even realize at first what she was doing until she was out of the strange, fluffy bed and standing in front of the window, looking out. What she saw made her catch her breath.

The view was everything Elizabeth had ever dreamed of seeing. Green rolling hills stretched out into the distance, interrupted not by the squarish, tacky ugliness of modern civilization as she knew it but only by small, simple brown buildings and not too far away, a simple stone wall.The sun was just rising, bathing the world -- wherever in it she was -- in a soft pink glow and painting the sky a cotton-candy combination of blue and pink that looked like something a professional photographer would take a picture of. She could see deep green forests just barely poking out from beyond the hills, and when she looked down there was something very familiar about the castle grounds with their yellow bushes and flowers. Come to think of it, those hills... I know their shapes... Then she caught the thought trying to slip into her mind. No, no, no, Elizabeth told herself. It's not possible.

But what if it was...?

Just as this whisper, this barest echo of an idea ricocheted against the walls of Elizabeth's mind, the door to her room opened. With a gasp, she whirled to face it, clutching the windowsill behind her with both hands. "Wh-who are you?" was the reflexive question that flew out of her mouth before her eyes took in the young man standing there.

Floppy, pointed green hat. Matching tunic. Chillingly familiar blue sword hilt peeking out over his shoulder.

As she took in these things, Elizabeth found herself unwilling to look at his face. There was no way this could be happening, there was just no way...

And then he spoke. "Well, um..."

It was then that Elizabeth knew. She didn't know how or why, she just immediately understood that this was real. She wasn't dreaming. It had happened. Without thinking her mouth opened and she said in a shocked, almost-whisper: "I've never been to Kansas before, but I'm pretty sure that's not where I am right now..."

It felt like a bare moment later that Elizabeth was sitting cross-legged on her bed, staring with wide eyes at the two figures standing in front of her. She could never have imagined this moment before it happened, even if she had tried. It was like meeting a celebrity, only ten times worse -- better? -- because celebrities have one thing going for them that most video game characters do not.

They exist.

And yet here they were, the Hero of Time and the Princess of Destiny, standing in front of her as plain as day. Living. Breathing. Apparently solid (Elizabeth hadn't the nerve to just reach out and touch either one; that would have been a little weird). Staring at her with solemn expressions on their face, much like the game but so full of life that for the first time the figures Elizabeth had watched on their adventures for so long really did seem like glowing dots on a screen. False. Nothing.

And then as she stared at the two people standing in front of her, Elizabeth realized suddenly that maybe this wasn't so fantastic after all. All of her daydreams about coming to Hyrule involved her suddenly becoming brave and outgoing, and everyone loving and understanding her. But these were real people, pointed ears notwithstanding (though she found herself staring at them a lot), and to Elizabeth, real people were scary people. Real people were unpredictable, and you never knew what they were going to do next. How they would react. The worst part was that they usually seemed to feel the same way about you.

This wasn't going to be the answer to her prayers, hopes and dreams. It was just life. Going on.

Somehow this realization made Elizabeth want to cry.

A/N: I'm sorry if some of this is so disjointed, and I'm also sorry for the abrupt cutoff, but I've been trying to get this chapter done forages. I had to scrap a huge scene involving the Chamber of Sages, and how Link, Malon, and the Sages brought Elizabeth to Hyrule because it was going nowhere. I really liked it, too... :( Oh well. Such is the life of an author.

Hope you enjoyed this, there might not be more coming for a while whatwith school starting up and everything... heck, I should be doing my homework right now.