For a moment, a small blonde child flew through the phantom castles' walls, tagging knights in short succession. She talked to them with the excited fervor that only a toddler could, her legs stamping rhythmically to any distress. Where her father might have ridden off to, she neither knew nor cared, not while playing tag. Her best friend followed the little princess everywhere, in and out of reality like no one else.
Now, that tiny child flittered more than Sariah had in her youth. Zelda couldn't bear to think on it any longer, the walls she used to tell all her secrets in rubble on the ground. No knights had survived, not since her father's death. She hadn't meant to let them die out, but their nobility and stature had waned and inside they'd decayed. She let each go, as they asked for relief.
She had no one anymore- Not even the walls.
The hem of her gown tattered as she wove her way through the cable. Long ago she'd abandoned her slippers, and that damned tiara. That damned sword and that damned belt those damned shoulder guards- all gone, everything cast aside with her castle…
Zelda collapsed, exhausted, prostrating herself underneath the noon sun. The trip back to Hyrule had taken the entire night, and her own worry kept her awake. Link had trampled off, to where only the goddesses knew, and might die out there. The light shined onto her bare arms and feet, warming them… burning them.
She couldn't bring herself to care. After all this time, after all she'd sacrificed just to keep her kingdom alive, why keep moving? No more imminent threat, and the Hylian princess had voided every meaning she could muster.
Her eyes wandered about the sky, watching for menacing clouds… The sun shone more brightly than it ever had before, curling about her face as though molding to her very skin. She bathed in the stuff, nearly in sleep, so close to the walls she could feel giving way to death in her mind.
"Princess, princess…" Zelda paced across the freshly sweating stone of Lanayru's cavern, quietly disturbing the sacred place with her own mutterings. "You've done it this time. Ran off the only friends you ever had. The only people that bothered to treat you like a human, anyway…"
She glanced at her hands, ornamented only with her protruding sleeves. Two slender wrists held the pale tentacles upward, before the incandescent liquid. She couldn't have shone brighter if she'd been a star herself, as though something came from deep within her skin. Oh, but she knew.
"Nayru, my goddess, you entrusted me with something I do not deserve. What can you do now but ...take it back?" Zelda's whispers barely reached to the end of her nose, her nearly silent opposition in effect. What could she do? Why did this glow not grant her wisdom, as the legend stated? She felt so lost now, so unsteady.
How ironic that, now that she had the wisdom granted by the tri-force, that she shouldn't want it. Knowing the right path didn't make taking it any easier- why hadn't her father taught her that one? When he'd shown her, 'proved' to her, that she had a proper right to the gift of the goddesses, and Link… then might have been the best time to warn her. Her mother hadn't developed this problem, and Link hadn't. Ganondorf certainly hadn't.
Damn her 'wisdom.' Rational or irrational, she got the short end of the stick, she pondered. She couldn't rescue Midna with her 'wisdom,' or defeat Ganon with her 'wisdom.' She couldn't put the Mirror of Twilight back together or rebuild her castle or even figure out why she kept getting these gods-forsaken headaches with her too-little too-late 'wisdom.'
She clutched her head and covered her eyes as well as she could, but that stupid light got into her everywhere. But what had she expected? The goddesses were everywhere. Even, apparently, in her blood.
She shook her aching head. How long could she maintain a diplomatic front… inside her own body?