. . .

Moment: So On We Worked And Waited For The Light

In the days of the Hero the ruins had been a theatre, with the vast glittering span of Lake Hylia and the Great Bridge of Hyrule as a backdrop to dramas no less epic. The themes, invariably, were the exploits and tragedies of a past that was dimly remembered even then. Midna, who wore a Fused Shadow of unimaginably ancient provenance upon her head, found the antique history of place oddly comforting.

She had come here from Ordon because it was the only path left to her after the desert and the things she had heard there. Had she never been given any reason to believe that Link loved her- was capable of loving her- she could have stayed cheerfully by his side forever. But the things he had done that day, the porcine glint of rage behind his neutral expression-

The not knowing was what made it unbearable. A sliver of doubt had wormed its way into her mind and, gradually, consumed her. He loved her or he didn't. The question, once asked, could never be taken back; she would have to live with the consequences of asking it. Zant and desperation had burned most of her cowardice away but there was enough left in Midna to leave her paralyzed. She had to know and at the same time couldn't know, needed to ask the question and knew she never could. It was too much for her; she gathered the things that she owned and the things she could not bear to part with and stole away to rest her body in a far land, under a stranger sky.

More and more she remained in her physical form, disdaining danger and sleeping beneath the stars. One night she spent under a fallen tree, soaked and shivering and cut to the bone by a squall that had broken with a sound like thunder over the vast greenness of Hyrule Field. Another she feasted on birdflesh, slow-roasted over a burning leafpile. The frailties and exultations of the flesh were changing her, slowly, into something that might be worthy of happiness, someone able to tell a friend she loved him.

At first she fretted constantly over the danger- she recalled, faintly, the slice of a steel blade through her shoulder, and her hand strayed from time to time to a wound not yet wholly healed. But as time wore on and she met no enemies more perilous than a raiding party of Bokoblins she easily sent packing, the concern began to drain away. If the solidity of her body made her vulnerable, her anonymity made her sacrosanct, inviolable. Nobody knew who she was anymore. Nobody would recognize her face. Midna was held up and bolstered by the armor worn by the forgotten, the inconsequential, and the petty.

She had no reason to believe that she was being hunted.

Now, in the crisp clear night of her eleventh day, she lay on her back on the cold flagstones and watched the ballet of the heavens as they wheeled above her. The cobbles on which actors had performed their stylized and rigidly choreographed dance in ages before Twilight had come into the sunlit lands pressed uncomfortably into her back, but she accepted that small discomfort as the consequence of a greater pleasure and was still.

The stars comforted her in the same way that the stage did; they whispered that her actions had no implications beyond her lifespan and reminded her that what mistakes she made would be forgotten, were only temporary.

Then a pike smashed the cobblestone by her head and Midna was fighting for her life.

. . .

Five of them, wearing long black cloaks with cowls over their faces. Five, with daggers strapped to their sides and long pikes to keep the dusk beast away. A cloud passed over the moon, denying Midna the refuge of shadow; suddenly, the night was very black.

Link's legs felt as if they had been carved from a single block of marble, prescient of the inevitable monument. His lungs were full of fire that fed off of every short, hungry gasp he took. He ached to the very center of his being but his mind was alive and racing in its burning cradle.

Too tall to be bokoblins and they moved too fluidlu for guards of the realm. Twili? No. Sorcerors? There were always dabblers in the unspeakable arts, initiates into the forbidden, and the scraps of arcane lore Midna's ancestors had left behind- such remnants as the gods on high had been unable to eradicate- had never faded into their final obscurity of their creators. The power of the Twili would be a tempting target- but how would they have found out? Who had told them?

Who had betrayed him?

Then a tall assailant snapped a weighted net over his imp and further consideration became impossible. With a single fluid motion Link nocked an arrow to his bow and let fly. The missile punched into the center of a swirling cloak and sent the bastard swooning to the cobblestones with a steel blade biting at his guts.

The rage was too terrible to be born. Link flung the bow away and came bounding down the stairs, his great sword singing in his hand.

Midna saw her attacker pitch backwards, heard the crack of his skull against the rock, and wondered why she had ever thought she could get away. There were the men who had struck out against her, ominous in their swirling cloaks, and there was the one that Link had killed, and there was the man she loved, coming down the stairs so fast he looked as if he were flying. He was daring and courageous and had never in life been defeated.

In that moment she despaired that he would ever be hers. How could the Hero, champion and survivor of a hundred life-or-death battles and a hundred sworn enemies, be brought low at length by anything so banal as love?

But she loved him now, as he came flying down the balustrades like a storybook angel with a flaming sword, risking all that he had and all that he was for a woman who had been too afraid to tell him the truth.

Link came running with murder writ large on his face.

Caught off guard, the second cloak went down under his weight. Link bounded to his feet and spun to administer the coup-de-grace and did not see the graceful fingers arch into agonized claws and then relax in death. He was distracted by the knife that blossomed in his arm.

The third one was no dilettante; he had used the slaughter of his brother-in-arms for a distraction, tossed his knife when Link was ill-prepared to deflect it. With an agonized hiss Link tore his sword from his enemy's cooling body and charged, right arm cradled uselessly to his side; the only hope now was to end it, quickly, before any real resistance could be mounted. The knife-thrower saw him coming, raised his pike to block.

Link's sword smashed through the weapon and struck a mortal blow to the cloak behind it. Blood, horribly black in the faint starlight, gushed from a fearsome wound as the man fell to his knees and then flat on his face in a gruesome parody of slumber. By the time his body hit the ground Link was on the move.

The fourth was armed as the first had been, and Link barely had time to react before the net was rippling out over him, dragging his arms down and provoking a burst of pain from his wounded right. Link saw his enemy moving in for the kill, dagger at the ready, and planted a boot in the loose coils of rope. He brought his sword up, cutting the net in half and feinting right just in time to escape a second wounding. Off-balance, the net-thrower had no time to prepare himself for the Master Sword before it bit lethally into his neck and even the blackness of the night was swallowed by a deeper darkness.

Utter silence reigned on the blood-soaked stage. Link sheathed his sword and turned to Midna, cowering wide-eyed under the thick mesh of the net.

"Midna-"

There had been five of them.

The sound of a pike, darting through the air.

Link caught the pike one-handed and tore it from the hands of its wielder, whipped it through the air as if it were a club. The thick handle struck flesh with a meaty thud and sent the fifth cloak falling backwards, cowl slipping down as he hit a stone wall and slid to the ground like a punch-drunk boxer. In that moment the moon came out from behind the clouds with murderous complicity. By the milky light Link saw the face of his enemy.

The long wattles of flesh that hung down on either side of his pale face were still slightly plump, lacking the bladed look that among the Zora presages maturity. His eyes were the brilliant green of a child emperor's. The skin above them was studded with tiny jewels that made a broad vee down his forehead. Terror was present in his quaking hands, his staring eyes, and in that moment Link felt almost brotherly.

"You're a Zora," he said, with a surprising gentleness. The Zora nodded frantically.

"Yes," he said.

"Ralis sent you."

"Yes."

Link hesitated. "Your friends-"

"Ralis sent them too."

"No, I understand. They're not guards, though."

"No."

"So this was a planned action. You're a soldier of Zora."

The Zora wavered, then nodded his head, making his wattles quiver. "Yes."

Link paused. "Do you like being a soldier?"

"I thought-" said the Zora "I thought it would make my family proud."

"Do you think it did?"

"Yes," said the Zora. "I think." There was a long silence, and then Link leaned the pike gently against a broken jut of pillar. He dropped to one knee before the Zora and looked deep into his fear-bright eyes.

"Go back to Ralis," he said, "and tell him that I've chosen my side. Can you remember that?"

The Zora hesitated. "Yes," he said.

"And tell him- tell him-" said Link, and paused. "No. Just… tell him what I said."

A pause.

"I'm sorry about your friends."

"Yes," said the Zora. He glanced around at the carnage the human in the green tunic had dealt out with an unshaking hand and knew that he would not remain in his Prince's service. He would deliver the message and decamp, quietly, into the night. He would go to Lake Hylia, where the old women Zora lounged in the warm shallows; he would live out his life in safety. With a last fearful glance behind him he darted up the stairway and melded with the night.

Link looked up at the stars with a funny expression on his face. Almost absently, he picked up the pike again and with a sudden ferocity dashed it to pieces against the pillar. He turned to Midna, now fumbling off the net. His boots were quiet as whispers against the cobblestones as he walked over to her. There was a suspense in the air, tightly wound as a baited breath.

"I love you," said Link, and the breath came out. Midna's eye widened into a perfect circle. Her mouth opened and closed; for once in her life she had no words to say. Link closed his eyes.

"Will you come back to Ordon with me?" he asked without opening them. "In the morning I'll explain, but I'm sorely tried and if I had to spend another night without you I don't know that I could bear it. I'm sorry about the desert. I'm sorry about everything. Please-"

He hesitated, plunged on.

"Please. Come back to me."

She took his hand in hers by the waning light of the moon.