Chapter Four

Night Wolf

Ilia

I'd only been walking to Link's house, when that wolf jumped out at me. It snarled something terrible, probably daring me to fight or run. That's how wolves were: savage and vicious. I unsheathed my dagger, but every time I got near the wolf, it would jump away. It made no further advances to try and hurt me, but I knew it was just waiting for me to get too close.

I felt my blade hit something, and there was a splash of bright red across the wolf's paw. It ran away, injured and whining, and I returned home, glad that I'd done something to scare them away.

Wolves were a menace in our village, always taking things that didn't belong to them. We tried as hard as we could to get them to stop stealing the goats, but they were quite relentless. As I fell asleep that night, I realized that I had forgotten to go and see Link after fighting that beast, and I laughed at myself for my foolishness. Well, it was far too late to go and visit him now.

I awoke early the next morning, as always, and decided to go see Link. True, he was not a morning person, but didn't mind being woken up earlier than usual. I climbed up the ladder and opened the door, surprised to find him already awake and attempting to bandage his arm, which he'd apparently injured.

"Link, what are you doing?" I asked, and he started and fell over.

"Ilia!? What are you doing here this early?" he demanded, and then seemed to realize exactly how angry he sounded, and stopped talking.

"I just came to talk with you," I explained. He sighed, and finished toying around with the bandage on his arm. I looked curiously at the wound. "What did you do?" I asked. The cut appeared to be near his wrist, and almost on the top of his hand.

"Erm… I was… practicing with my sword, and I cut myself," he said. Something seemed to be wrong about his explanation, but I didn't recognize the fact that he was lying, and believed that he was just embarrassed to admit that he'd hurt himself with his own sword.

I left his house a moment later, as he was trying to reply to Zelda's letter, though he wasn't making much progress. The rest of the day, I saw little of him, until that night when something even stranger happened.

The moon was bright and round above me, and I smiled, looking up at it. A full moon meant that there were supposed to be werewolves. I laughed. Who in Hyrule thought of that old myth? I was going to Link's house to ask if he'd finished his letter to Zelda. I'd been talking to him a lot lately, for some odd reason. However, when I approached his house, something rustled in the woods.

Was it that wolf again? I hid nearby, as the creature appeared once more, growling and hissing again. Suddenly, as a cloud floated over the moon, the wolf's body began to change, and Link stood there. It took me a while to realize that he was the wolf. Any smart person would have confronted him then and there, but I dashed away to my house and cried. He was the wolf.

I was lying in my bed, tears falling from my eyes. Was he a werewolf? Would he hurt me? I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to tell anyone else, for fear of alerting the entire town, but I wanted to know. Why hadn't Link ever told me? Had he been a werewolf his whole life, even when we were little children? I tried to think back to any other times when I'd been with him and there was a full moon, but it was impossible. I couldn't think of anything right now. I continued crying, until sleep overcame me that night.

Link

Ilia started acting oddly the next day. I noticed it straightaway when she didn't come and see me that morning like she usually did. She jumped every time I spoke, and wouldn't be alone with me at all. Something was wrong. I could instantly tell she'd hardly gotten any sleep the night before. And she'd been crying.

I figured I would get her alone and talk with her, as our conversations weren't things she'd like to discuss in front of many others. The truth was, I really loved her, and had long cherished a strange passion when it came to her. But there was still one thing that Ilia didn't know about me, and a few nights ago, she'd been on the verge of finding out. I was a wolf. Not all of the time, but only when I wanted to. Still, no one would understand if they knew. So I wasn't about to tell her. Someday I might have to, but I procrastinated it.

That night, I found Ilia alone on the porch outside her house. "Hey," I said, approaching her calmly. "Can I talk with you?"

"I'd rather you not," she said, glancing behind her at the full moon that had been in the sky for the past two nights. Now why would she look at the moon like that, unless…

"No," I whispered.

"What do you mean?" she asked nervously. I chuckled.

"How did you figure it out?" I asked.

"What are you talking about, Link?"

"You know, don't you? You know I'm a wolf," I said.

"T-that's right," she stammered. I took a step closer to her, still smiling, and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Ilia it's fine. I can turn into a wolf when I choose. And I'm still myself. It's just something I learned how to do on my journey. I'm not a werewolf. They don't exist," I explained. She smiled, just a little bit, and hugged me. She didn't have to worry. It would be impossible for me to hurt her.