"Blood and fire
Are too much for these restless arms to hold.
And my nights of desire are calling me,
Back to your fold.
And I am calling you, calling you from 10,000 miles away
Won't you wet my fire with your love?"

-Indigo Girls, "Blood and Fire"

Chapter 6

I kept myself busy attempting to find things to clean in the house and ended up frustrating myself and amusing Ilia, which wouldn't do. I wasn't about to be somebody's housewife comedy routine. But then I'd come down to the fact that, well, I really wasn't good for anything but somebody's comedy routine, was I? Pink lemonade and all that.

"Your pouts are quite terrifying, you know that?"

Pouts? I didn't pout. And at the moment I had been trying to destroy the stupid damn blanket that wouldn't fold up right with my eyeballs alone, not pout. It was like the thing was a pentagram instead of a rectangle. She told me to give up on it, but the idea that I couldn't even get a blanket right made me try several times, and I was in no jolly mood.

I ended up unfolding it to sleep under at night anyways…because that's how the damn ball rolled in my life. Next thing I knew I'd be told to scrub someone's freaking outhouse all day just for Bo or some other stinky man to have explosive diarrhea in it.

Cleaning toilets, folding blankets…this wasn't what I was meant for.

I ignored the whisper. It was just my pride all over again. But if I knew what it was, why couldn't I get rid of it? Why couldn't I just be happy to be fed and clothed? Did I not know how to be humble?

High born indeed…a princess…

I sighed to the silver moon beams and sat up. My skin hurt. My arms hurt. My back hurt. My legs hurt. And I couldn't let go of a strange pride when I had nothing to be proud of.

I didn't want to be a princess, because if I was, a princess was mighty useless.

Sitting alone, with nothing but my empty memories and aching body for company, I stood and left without bothering to put on shoes.

The night-cooled grass felt like water on the blistered soles of my feet, because no one had yet to find shoes in my size. But the instant I was out and in the dark, silver and shadow painted world, I took my first real breath. The river ran like crystal instead of a mirror for more suns, and I drank from it unhindered by gawking children or chatty women.

I wandered dream-like to the end of the town, past the windmill, to a quiet, lonely dock I had discovered that day in my attempts to rinse out laundry. There, after tucking the nightgown that only reached my knees under me, I eased my raw, bleeding feet into the water. Glorious relief. I could have sung.

I heard his footsteps before he spoke.

"Long day?"

What kind of stupid question was that? I flung my best drool stare to say that and ended up caught up in the transformation. Though he wore a shirt this time, it was baggy, lax, and I could make out a scar in its open collar. The darkness softened his gold hair to something like a mousse brown, and the shadows brought out the lines of premature age on his face.

Link sat down next to me on the dock and stuck his own bare feet into the water. He pulled up the end of a fishing rod to get to work on untangling the string.

"Your right," he said. "Stupid question."

We sat in something just a bit too tense to be called comfortable as he untangled the bobber and readied the line.

"So, what do you think of the townsfolk so far?" he asked. He had turned to finger through the grass, probably for bugs.

I shrugged and leaned back onto my hands. "Shopkeeper's a bit snotty. That Fergie lady seems sensible enough."

"Pergie."

"Close enough. Who'd name their daughter Pergie anyways? Doesn't sound cute at all."

"I'm sure there's weirder names where you come from. Ah ha!" He turned back around, grinning at a fat cricket squirming for dear life between pinched fingers. I recoiled.

"Eyugh! Hurry and spear it already."

"What, you don't like bugs?" He leaned towards me, wielding the cricket like a bomb.

I was not amused. "I'm taller than you," I said. "I'll push your sorry butt into the river."

"Fine fine, don't have to take it that far." He still had that quirky grin at the corner of his mouth as he hooked on the cricket and flicked the string into the water. "Btw, you left your hair at my house."

"Oh Din, burn it, or I will."

"No way, I've already hung it up like my prized pelt. I want to see your face every time you walk in and see your hair hanging off the wall."

"…you're a freak."

"Says the sunburnt ginger."

I flinched and hugged myself without thinking better. "I'd like to see you looking as good!"

His grin widened and one of his sharp eyebrows rose. It took me a full ten seconds to realize what he thought was so funny. I rolled my eyes and made sure to scoot away as far as possible. Idiot. Did he think I was going to blush and squirm like some girl with a crush? He knew just as well as I did that I wasn't flirting, no way in burning hell.

"No, I don't expect you to squirm and blush."

I jumped. "Excuse me?"

"That's what you were thinking, right? You did a little snobby roll of your chin with a sniff and everything—with the eye roll. Caught that too."

"Just how closely are you watching me, creep?"

"Maybe as closely as a creep who stands outside my house at night."

"I've never done that! I was walking by once, thank you."

"On your way to what? Your privy throne deep in the forbidden forest?"

I turned my head so fast my braid whipped to the other side of my skull. My teeth clenched and I could have dug my nails into his stupid pretty face. I had had enough humiliation for one day without him talking to me like he knew me, when I didn't even know myself!

The playful spark in his eyes softened and he sobered.

"Right," he said quietly. "Long day. And you're right, I don't know you."

"Stop trying to read my mind, I didn't say that."

"And I think I got a bite!" he tugged the pole. "Oh, nope, just grass. Tch, darn."

A chilly breeze brushed over us, tickling goose bumps from my arms. I shivered and ducked into my shoulders, glowering at some point on the water. Why wasn't I leaving? He irritated me, so what?

Like the night before, I found I didn't want to. And for not the first time, it frightened me, because I didn't know why that was and I didn't even know who he was or why he had moved me to…to what?

I turned my face to hide how the corners of my mouth quivered and my chin wrinkled. I put a hand over my brow and eyes, hoping to massage the surge of hysteria I had fought back since the beginning of all this. I may not remember anything, but I was not one who lost control…I didn't want to be one who did.

But, then…I didn't have control, now…did I?

He tentatively touched my back. When I didn't pull away, he drew closer and lightly ran his fingers in measured circles. It was almost as though he sensed my discordance.

"Who are you?" My voice came out brittle and bright.

"Nothing much."

I would have snorted at that, maybe demand he go into detail—whatever made it so he could guess my thoughts and read me, or why he could be the reason to anything—but my tenacious hold slipped and tears burned their way onto my sunburned face. It had, after all, been a very long day.

He didn't say anything when I couldn't help but breathe back a quiet sob or when I gave in to the sniffs. He just rubbed my back in circles, and when he had to pull back to reel in a fish, once the fish was back in the water his hand was back, soothing and warm against the cool of the night I had found so refreshing before.

"I don't like you," I said.

His hand stopped. "What I do?"

"Be irritating."

"Granted." His hand moved once more. I almost smiled. It all seemed so familiar. He was a stranger, and yet, sitting next to him beside the water, his hand on my back, the dewy smell of grass and moon, I could almost reach…

Pain splintered through my body.

At my pained cry Link flinched back.

"What's wrong? Hey, say something."

It throbbed with each of my heartbeats, sending splinter after splinter through my veins. I couldn't breathe, the moon suddenly seemed far too bright. I curled in on myself, pulling my knees to my face, the smart of my sunburns nothing to the broken glass beneath my skin.

Then, just as it had started, it stopped.

Link had gotten to his knees and had physically pulled me to him. Even as I lowered my knees, one of his hands fluttered over me, checking me for wounds, clear alarm written on his features. He caught my eye fast.

"Where does it hurt? What happened?"

His eyes…blue, even dilated in the darkness, and wild…like a wolf's.

"Midna?"

Spiking sparks. I slapped his hand aside and scuttled from him, teeth bared.

"I'm not Midna!"

Without a second glance back, I pushed myself to my feet and ran through the protests of my blistered feet.