"Doppelgangers frighten because they are fakes in place of the real thing and might never be discovered."

-Wisdom of Horror

Chapter 7

With the anti-sunburn lotion slathered on every bare bit of flesh I had, I set out with the pickax over my shoulder, jaw set. Ilia had only watched in wide-eyed bewilderment as I took the torn rags I asked for and tied them about my blistered hands and set out to attack more grass. The morning sun still sat white and cool between the hills.

Because a great, thrilling ambition had taken over me last night. I would become independent. Included in that package was my own place, which meant I'd have to harden my body a bit in order to build myself a house—or work for one. But as I slung down the pickax into the defenseless tufts of unwanted weeds, I cackled: why settle with just a house? I was going to get myself a freaking palace. The steps to getting there were a bit blurry at the moment, but I was positive that once I got a bit more of my memories, if not all, I'd have more than enough on hand to figure out just how to do it.

"A castle," I hissed to the grasses, as though to defy them. "With freaking battlements and towers, and a bed as big as a house."

"What would you do with a bed that big?"

Half-way through a swing I turned and pitched the pickax at him without thinking. The moment it left my hands a thrill of horror took me as I realized I had chucked with the gut impression that he'd be fine, but chucking pickax's killed people! I, at the charity of everyone in the town, was about to become—

He caught it. He looked almost as surprised as me, but then it melted into a smirk that fit the tousled gold hair and sun kissed skin (if only my skin were so nicely tanned, ugh)far too well to be fair.

"You trying to kill me?"

I jerked my head, trying to pull off haughty. "Don't sneak up on me."

He slid the pickax to hold it under its head and leaned it to his hip to eye me with more than a little bit of cockiness.

"You knew I'd catch it, didn't you?"

I just about lost it like a cat struck by lightning.

"Leave me alone, you creep!"

"You're Midna."

"No I'm not!"

"How would you know? Being so insistent clearly says you are."

"Shut up, stop—stop projecting on me!"

"Projecting on you what?"

"People! Don't make me into someone I'm not!"

He barked a laugh, and his dry delight possibly made me even more wild. "Calm down, I'm just stating who you are. You want to know who you are, don't you?"

"You said I wasn't!" I shrieked. "She's supposed to be an alien!"

Just then, the door to the house banged open and the bulk of Bo appeared, horn mustache bustling.

"What's the commotion?" He narrowed his eyes at us. "Link, what you doing to that poor girl?"

"Nothing! I've just figured out who she is—"

"NO YOU HAVE NOT!"

"Good Ladies above—" he puffed, and was cut off by the door flying open behind him.

"What's going on?" asked Ilia.

"You can calm down, now, Midna."

"Give me my pickax! I'm going to gouge your eyes out!"

"Yep, she'd threaten me like that too."

"SHUT UP!"

Ilia's hands flew to her mouth. "What the—" then her features flashed to stony indignation. Just as I lunged forward for the pickax, her clear, icy voice cracked out Link's name.

And I got distracted with how he turned into a little boy to his mother and cringed.

Not distracted enough to take back my ax, though.

"How low can you sink?" she hissed. "If she says she isn't Midna, she isn't."

"Come off it," he said. "You don't even know Midna—"

"And I don't intend to if she says she isn't her. What right do you have going around and forcing your beliefs on a girl who hasn't a memory to her name? Do you have a soul?"

Even her father, who had been all apoplectic alarm before, had shrunk back behind his daughter, toeing back for the front door.

"Ilia, this doesn't concern you—"

"Concern me?" Oh yeah. Wrong thing to say. I almost cackled as his shoulders hunched for the blow. "For one, you're on my property, and secondly, until she can hold her own, she's a member of my house! So get off my lawn, leave her alone, and for Din's sake, grow up!"

He had stopped hunching. He looked less funny by the time those last two words slapped him, but I tried hard to laugh (at least inwardly) anyways. I was right, he was wrong, and he was being sent away like a dog between his legs—

As a wolf he had never done that. And even now, facing Ilia, his head was bowed, his expression hidden by his bangs. He seemed from a different world from her, listening to words from a script he no longer played a part in.

Suns popped in my vision. A cry of pain bubbled to my throat, but it never made it out before the ax grew immeasurably heavy, dropped to the ground, and me along with it.

I tried catching myself—my arms even moved to listen to me—but when my hands found the ground they found their load too heavy.

The sun's were bursting like blisters to bleed out more painful white. I felt oddly…bleached, like a blanket left too long in the sun is bleached of its color. No energy, too hot, too blindly hot—

"Ilia! Get a blanket! Get her in the basement!"

I'd felt this before: his arms. But not like this. His arms were the same—oh, his arms were the same, and he there was that hint of hay I never grew use to, because I didn't know what hay was until I met him.

The moment I was inside, I knew it. I gasped for air as though the sun had been smashing my lungs flat. The shade poured on me like ice water to a burn.

And at last, sometime after the pain had faded like a bad dream, the suns a bad nightmare, I opened my eyes to the friendly darkness of Ilia's basement and a familiar pair of feral, furious eyes…no…not furious. Frightened. Concerned. But it mixed to fury.

"What happened?" he snapped. "What happened last night? Did you remember something?"

"Link, give her a moment to breathe," said Ilia, her sharpness robbed of her by apprehension.

He ignored her. "Please, where does it hurt?"

I felt a quick stab of hot pain, but nothing came to me. As I looked at him blankly, rubbing my sun burned arms and feeling faintly drained, a faint memory of a few minutes before came to me and I frowned.

"You're a wolf?" I asked.

Ilia gave a sharp little giggle, as though surprised, "Oh, silly, you're seeing things. Too much sun can do that to you, and you did get awfully sunburned."

That turned my frown to her. Sounded like someone who would cover up something, but she didn't know, did she? Know what? He wasn't a wolf, where'd wolf come from? It must be from that fang impression I got. When he bared his teeth and snarled like he had, it would make anyone look like they have fangs. Freaking asshole must have given me a hell of a conniption or something…

I looked back at Link, whose expression had frozen. His sky blue eyes jumped from one of mine to the other, searching them out, dissecting every thought he could glen.

"Where'd you get that?" he asked.

"Well, I was just thinking," I said lightly, trying to dissipate the heavy air that I'd brought (all I'd done was faint, really), "that the way you were acting to Ilia was like a dog with its tail between its legs, and I thought for some reason that if you'd been a wolf—or, rather, wolves don't do that—or but they do." I screwed up my face. "Hey, I'm okay. I really did just get too much sun. Wow, seriously, I thought I was blind for a moment there. I'm so sorry, Ilia, I think I might have burst a vessel or something, I didn't mean to worry you like that. I'm okay now, really. Is it okay if I do something inside for today?"

"Of course," she said, a hand to her chest. Then she turned back on Link, ragging mother hen back. "This all happened because you got her so riled up, you bully! Get out of my house."

Strangely, he did just that, without a fuss. A strange coolness had settled over him, which I found more disturbing and nerve racking than any form of rage he had shown me before. He apologized to me and Ilia individual, promised Ilia to make up for it by finishing my yard work for me, and left without a glance back.

Afterwards, with little coaxing from Ilia, I ended up falling asleep in the basement right where he had left me, with my back to the wrestling ring and as much as my skin pressed up to the dark, cool, hard-beaten earth. I dreamed strange dreams that almost woke me occasionally in fits of cold sweat and alarm, and at one point I almost pushed myself up to chase after him, as though he were still just leaving, but by the time I woke up in the pitch black with the sound of Bo's snoring above to tell me the time, I couldn't remember a single thing I had dreamt.