Void. Endless void. He stood there, filled with confusion. He reached out one hand, looking for something to grab onto.

It burned.

He flinched and clutched his hand with the other, attempting to soothe the pain. It did little to help. His hand continued to burn mercilessly.

He wanted to get out of this place, yet everywhere he looked, he was lost and alone. He walked forward. There was nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing?

His ears picked up the sound of feet, walking behind him, as if he was being followed. The feet were soft and clawed, it sounded… and there were more than two. As the footsteps drew closer, he heard heavy breathing accompanying them. He finally stopped to look over his shoulder to find out what had been following him, in fear of what he might find.

The first thing that caught his eye was a pair of intense bright blue eyes staring back at him.

The beast that had been stalking him was a fearless wolf. He took it for a demon, as it did not bear a usual silver, brown, or white coat of a common wolf… The beast he saw before him was large and had a coat of many unnatural shades of dark green, brown, and a cream underbelly. Its left-front leg had a broken shackle that hugged its fur tightly. Its ears were pierced with sapphire earrings, and its eyes… they glew with a ferocious intensity that bore into his soul.

A demon, he thought, it must be a terrible omen…

The creature bared its long glistening fangs. He could feel the thirst it had for blood. His blood. It let out a terrible snarl and lunged for him, knocking him over. The beast pinned him down on the dark ground as it snarled angrily into his face, standing over him and freezing him with terror.

"Come back," It growled, "Come back to us."

He didn't know how to respond. He tried to speak, opening his mouth, yet no words could escape his lips. He wanted to scream.

"COME BACK," The beast repeated, growing louder and more impatient, "COME BACK,"

A sudden wave of sadness and grief overwhelmed him while he lay on the ground, and tears flowed down his face uncontrollably. He wanted to get out. He couldn't rationalize his sadness. He had to get out of the void. Maybe that would stop it.

His eyes shut tightly and he saw and felt no more. The beast's voice grew more and more distant with each repetition of its words:

"Come back…"

Link awoke to the ear-piercing screech of the cuckoos outside his window, with his eyes shooting open and nearly falling out of the bed. He took a moment to regain his senses, make sure everything was as it should be, and reassure himself that it was only a dream.

Only a dream…

He slowly sat upright and ran his hand down his face, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He was soaked in sweat and his heart beat quickly. He recalled that he had been having those types of nightmares more and more often, making his sleep restless and always leaving him especially exhausted the next day. Staring at his hands, he noticed they were trembling quite violently.

Link let out a heavy sigh and reminded himself again, "It was only a dream."

He sat there for a moment, contemplating what the recurring nightmares could mean, if anything at all. They were so vivid, so real. He wanted to wrap his head around the meanings behind it all, yet he came up with no definitive answer. He was stumped. They grew more and more cryptic each time and would often be the causes of him oversleeping every day.

Oversleeping. Oh-oh no.

He bolted from the bed, throwing the sheets to the ground as he changed out of his sleeping clothes as quickly as possible, stumbling and knocking things over in the process. He muttered curses under his breath. He grabbed a wadded up, off-white undershirt that he had thrown on the floor after wearing the day before, a pair of umber-colored trousers, and a dark brown vest and threw them on in a flash. They were all wrinkled and had been worn before, as he hadn't had the chance to wash them. He didn't care, at this point. They were the first thing he saw to put on and make himself look decent enough to interact with other human beings.

Link made his way upstairs while hopping on one foot, slipping his brown leather boots onto his feet. He lived in the basement of his employer's estate, near the kitchen where he worked as a cook, being paid in ruppees and a safe living space. He scrambled around the kitchen, rummaging around through the pots and pans to grab a mixing bowl, ingredients, and baking supplies to get the task he was supposed to be doing two hours ago done. He had promised a woman in their village to make lemon cakes for her as a way to earn a few extra ruppees. She was very specific about wanting the cake delivered in the morning because she was planning on leaving for Castle Town to sell vegetables she had grown herself. Link hoped with all of his heart that she had not left yet, as he very much hated to disappoint. People often told him that he was too much of a people-pleaser, but he didn't mind at all. He always loved to make the ones he cared about happy in any way he could. Oftentimes, he wasn't mindful of his own well-being and would neglect simple self-care duties. In this particular situation, he sacrificed clean laundry.

Link was halfway through mixing the batch of cake batter when Karane, the woman who owned the estate and was kind enough to let him live in her basement, stepped into the kitchen. "You sure are up early," She joked, a playful, smug grin plastered across her face. Link didn't enjoy the joke as much as she did and shot her an irritated look. He wasn't in the mood to be made fun of. "Oh, lighten up," She said, patting his shoulder, "You shouldn't worry about this. Mrs. Luv hasn't left for Castle Town yet. I can let her know you're running a bit late if you need me to."

He sighed and continued his work, "Thanks, I'd really appreciate that."

The tall, red-headed woman gave him a reassuring smile that spread across her pale, freckled face. "No problem," She replied, "I can tell that this isn't the only thing that's been bothering you, though." She started, "You haven't been sleeping well."

"I…" He didn't know how to explain it. He had told her before that he kept having extremely strange and realistic dreams that left him exhausted in the mornings, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they were something more than just dreams. It was bothering him. The images he would see were sometimes horrifying, but he felt petty for being afraid of simple dreams, because they weren't real, no matter how real they felt.

They weren't real.

"I don't know. It's nothing, really." He lied.

Karane was silent for a moment, then gained the courage to ask what she had on her mind. She felt like what she was about to say would upset him or cause bad memories to resurface. "Link, do you think these nightmares could have something to do with… you know, your mother?"

He could almost physically feel the anxiety hit his chest like a brick, "Actually," He began, "I've been doing just fine, recently, moving on and such until you brought it up just now."

"Link, you know it's unhealthy to suppress trauma. I only bring it up because this isn't the first time you've had a… breakdown, of sorts."

"I'm not having a breakdown."

"I just want to make sure you're okay,"

Link sighed, bothered by the fact that she had to make it about that, yet understanding her intentions behind it. He had managed to end the chapter in his life where he worried about his past and was starting to be a fully functional individual in a village where no one would wish him harm. In Kakariko, he was safe. His past no longer haunted him one bit. The nightmares that had been plaguing him more recently had nothing to do with his past, he felt. They were a new development and completely different from anything he had seen in his dreams before.

"Look, Karane," He turned to her, "It's not about that, I promise. These dreams have nothing to do with it, which is why I'm bothered by it so much. I don't understand why they keep happening."

She looked into his bright blue eyes, knowing that there was something he wasn't telling her, but then sighed as she silently told herself that she would need to have patience with him. He didn't open up easily and she would have to wait for him to bring things up rather than try to get answers out of him herself. "Alright," She said, "I shouldn't keep you any longer. I'll go and tell Mrs. Luv you'll be late."
"Thank you," Link said, preparing to put the finished batter into the oven. "I won't be long."

After the door shut behind Karane, Link took a moment to calm his nerves for the first time since he had woken up, now that the cake was comfortably sitting in the stone oven's flames.

After a short amount of time, Link donned a pair of oven mitts and pulled the lovely golden cake from the oven, poking it all the way through with a fork. When he pulled it out, there was no wet batter stuck to it, indicating that it had cooked all the way through. The cake was still hot, yet Link wasted absolutely no time to let it cool in order to deliver it to Mrs. Luv as he should have done hours before. He hurried across the small village of Kakariko, feeling the warm, dry breeze that blew off of Death Mountain in the midmorning. The town had been abandoned and desolate in the past, but in recent years, due to its fame from being a known sanctuary to the Hero of Twilight, many people had resettled and began building a new life for the town. The soil was even capable of growing valuable crops again, and many people often traded goods with the intimidating but kindly Gorons who resided in the neighboring mountain, mining precious stones of all kinds. Link had grown close to the residents of Kakariko, as it didn't house many people. Travelers would often visit to take a rest stop on their journeys to Death Mountain or Hyrule Field, which made the inn a popular place for travelers and residents alike. In Kakariko, Link truly felt happy and safe for the first time in his short fourteen years of life.

When he finally found Mrs. Luv, she was almost finished loading her wagon with the current season's harvest of crops. A warm smile ran across her dark and freckled face as she saw him approaching, handing her the cake, which was wrapped in a small cloth to keep from getting stale.

"My deepest apologies, ma'am," Link said, attempting to hide his breathlessness as he had just run across the entire town to catch her before she left, "I had no intention of sleeping in this morning."

"Don't worry about it, child," She chuckled, handing him a small sack of ruppees as payment, "Karane told me you would be a little late, and I understand completely. Work gets tiring."

But you don't really understand, he wanted to tell her. "I guess so," He shrugged, thanking her for the ruppees and wishing her a safe journey to Castle Town.

As he watched her leave, he could feel an unexplainable wave of sadness wash over him. He grabbed his left hand with his right, and for only a moment, he thought he could feel the same burning sensation on it that he had felt in his dream the night before. He could hear the mountain's wind howling behind him as it ruffled his ash blond hair, whispering almost inaudibly:

Come back to us.

Author's Notes

There he is, our favorite little hero.

At some point, I'm probably going to go back and edit this chapter to fill it in with more body and narrative.

Reviewers are always welcome to give suggestions regarding grammar, style, and things to add in to strengthen the story's descriptions as a whole. That's what reviewing is for!