The world is swimming in and out of focus. Each time it seems clear, it's different from the last moment of clarity. It doesn't stay that way for long anyway. In or out of focus, it doesn't actually matter. It's an everchanging mess and there is no making sense of it.
The room is white, then it blurs and it's golden. Immediately after that it's suddenly aged stones full of moss and then it's an ancient paved garden with trees that shine gold and clouds that feel too close, somehow. In less than a second it blurs again into a dark cave lit only by the light of a torch.
There is no torch. There is a torch but no oil. The bird had some to sell, it was a mistake not to buy any. There is a torch but it's powered by magic and there is no magic. A green potion would fix that.
There's no need anyway, the room is brightly lit, has been through the last several shifts. And then it isn't because the papered blue walls seem to bleed black until there is complete darkness. The room turning white again, even though it's not the same room as the last white room, would have been blinding except the darkness didn't last long enough for that. The room blurs into a forest before turning into a dusty street in a dusty village.
They think it's all hallucinations.
They wonder why they don't have a fairy like all the other kokiris.
They're fantasizing about strangling the King and making the fucker's eyes pop out of their rotten royal head.
More urgently, they think they smell the kids under the dust.
They're going for it, they're going to walk like Mommy and Daddy, they're up on their feet...
They also think they heard a voice that woke them up, calling for help.
They're horrified because they just learned of the sleeping Princess Zelda.
They're annoyed because a boat just called them dim witted and they just want to save their sister already.
They lie down wondering if this is the night their old heart finally gives out and they find out what the afterlife is really like.
They also think it's all just memories.
They wish this ceremony could be over already, the Princess is obviously distraught by it.
Rage wars with grief as their uncle draws his last breath.
Exaltation and relief flood their heart as Hyrule is restored following their wish.
Zelda laughs loudly at her own bad joke and they start laughing too.
They're worried for their bird but the memory of Zelda telling Groose off will never not be cherished.
Did that blasted dragon get another head again since they last fought?
They can't stop wondering how many Gorons Volvagia already ate as they search the Fire Temple to save the ones they can and to kill the dragon servant of Ganondorf.
These thoughts and more drown each other, each of them fleeting and yet dominating, countless moments fighting to be perceived as reality. Thoughts and feelings from far too many lifetimes, all feeling like they're happening now and worse, like the entirety of each life, from childhood to death, is all happening right this moment, and that every second of each is fighting for attention. They have no idea which of them, if any, belongs to the lifetime they're currently living. They're not entirely certain that they are in fact within a lifetime right now.
They're the boy without a fairy and Mido might be mean but Saria makes them happy. They're also the same boy but now a grown Hylian, fighting to set everything right. They're the orphan Ordon adopted and they live there happily. They're a kid who just saved the world and lost everything and they are fucking furious. They're the princess' best friend and with help from the minish, the successor to the hero of men. They're a student at Skyloft Academy and the Hero chosen by the Goddess. They're an old man who wishes people remembered the events that destroyed their soul if only to make sure they don't happen again. They're the Hylian Champion and they failed. Those lives and dozens more and every second of every one from birth to death all feel like the present moment and coherent thought is impossible.
Forward. All those lives agree on this much: they need to go forward. But every loss they've ever suffered, every loved one who died or left, is doing so right at this moment. Dozens of them, simultaneously dying or leaving, simultaneously just being there and perfect and THERE and alive, yet still dying or leaving at the same time. It's ripping them apart but they're desperate not to add to the pile and they believe the key is forward. So they make the legs and arms currently attached to their souls move forward.
All four limbs are required because they're crawling. They made their body stand and try to walk several times already, and they keep trying, but they're seeing dozens of different terrains and they can't tell from one moment to the next how long their limbs are or whether they have arms and legs or paws, whether they could roll in boulder form instead or whether they have fins or barely have limbs at all and need to hop around, so they trip immediately each time they try walking, and they resume crawling. Even that is difficult because what their hands and knees and paws think they feel is not at all connected to what their eyes and ears think they see and hear, and there's no telling whether any of those sensations match the present. It seems unlikely: the present moment is after all only one out of millions of moments fighting for dominance in their thoughts.
Forward.
Through all of it, that one thought keeps coming back so they push on. They push on when it seems like they're about to crawl right through a wall and whenever they actually do hit one, they feel their way around until the way forward opens again. They push on when it seems like they're about to go through lava and thankfully, so far that hasn't been the present moment. They push on through waterfalls that don't make them wet because they're not really there, they push on through snow and sand that last a mere moment to their overstimulated senses, they push on through grass that begs for them to just lie down and rest, they push on through all varieties of floors and terrains that aren't really there but that appear to be. Knowing where they really are right now or what they're actually crawling on or through is out of the question. For all they know, they're actually bleeding out in a ditch somewhere, or drowning in the ocean, or long dead, and ALL of this is past moments.
Which way is forward remains clear because it's pulling at their very essence. They feel it on top of every other feeling they have ever felt, even though they're all fighting for dominance over their heart right now. They feel the pull through anger at countless things. They feel the pull through happiness over just as many things. They feel heartbreak because the woman they love just literally shut them out of her Universe and through that, they still feel the pull. They're elated that their sister is safe and the pull still lurks beneath. They're head over heels in love and still feel it: the pull towards the goal, towards the Triforce, urging them on as surely as siren's song. Wonder why would require a level of thought they're not currently capable of.
They can see it. It blurs in and out of existence like everything else, but there are moments when it's there, just a few steps away or off in the distance. They have no idea what it is and at the same time, know exactly what it is and they know that they need it. They know why they need it and at the same time, they don't. But they're drawn to it regardless, wholly and completely. They ignore it when a stone hallway changes to the bottom of a lake, ignore it when it changes to a river of lava, ignore everything but the three golden triangles that are sometimes almost within reach, sometimes nowhere to be seen, sometimes almost too far away to make out.
And then, eventually, they're touching it, the hand of the body they're currently inhabiting is touching the Triforce. It's happening seven times all at once, at the same time as everything else, ever. They're about to make a wish but they're also herding goats, they're also kissing their bride, they're fighting some abomination or other, they're also proposing to their boyfriend, they're also fishing, they're also playing ball, they're also eating, they're sleeping and waking and living lives where normality always eventually surrenders to fate and only sometimes comes back again, and they're watching people suffer, and they're walking through ruins upon ruins, the whole Kingdom nothing but a giant cemetery and also intact and full of thriving communities and beautiful fields and farms and forests and villages at the same time.
Over and over and over again, death and destruction and life and rebirth and death and destruction again. People are dying in their very arms, or just next to them, or too far for them to offer even a bit of comfort and the same people are also alive and laughing and happy. Fire rains down from the sky, explosions shatter homes, an endless stream of suffering and Demise laughing through all of it, and children playing and adults living happily and peacefully until the next cataclysm, and more suffering.
They can't endure it any longer. They don't know that the feeling of having already been broken by just one lifetime's worth is part of their latest lifetime, the one associated with the body they're currently using. It's also part of several other lives anyway, it's all the same by now.
Too many people, too many they loved, too many they didn't know but that were probably loved by others. Too much death, too much pain, too often. It can't go on. Not one more time, not ever again.
Their thoughts are scrambled over dozens of lifetimes still, their sense of self is non existent, but because they know everything they ever did, they know of the curse, and they know what they need to do. Across all their lives, from childhood to old age, through countless hardships and heartbreaks and moments of joy, the same wish pushes through.
They speak the words in dozens of voices at once, echoing each other in at least twenty distinct versions of Hylian.
"Let me end this. Let me break the curse and truly save Hyrule!"