2Entry 1: sometime in Hesount
It is a maddening experience, this waiting, unable to interact with people (for the most part), trapped, unseen, unheard, unperceived. I spend my days idly waiting to come upon purpose, for purpose to come upon me. And now, I have snapped, and picked up a notebook that was incinerated in a fire, and a liquefied bottle of ink, and a quill that has long since shed all its down, broken, died.
As I am dead, they are the easiest things to touch, those things that are themselves dead. Sometimes, I wonder that I did not yield to madness long ago. Sometimes, I think I did. When this happened, always before, there were things to see, to watch, to learn. Now, I take solace in recording my thoughts in this journal, which I have stolen from the ashes that surround it. No one will miss it; it was empty before the fire, and now, there is nothing about it, within it, and nothing comprises it.
A fitting place of record for a ghost girl.
I was not always a ghost, of course; it is my punishment for failure, perhaps; my warning against hubris and incaution, perhaps; a test of stamina, perhaps; that I watch the world move on, and time roll by without me, as I reflect back upon the past, and better days.
All those myriad better days, so many I can't recall them all, for many of them belong to a life before my last, and certain barriers remain even in death. Perhaps I could learn to break down those barriers, and sometimes, I pick at them, but eventually, I lose my courage, and abandon the attempt, sometimes with a new fragment of memory. But always, I wonder if a full knowledge of all that I have had, in the sum total of my past, would not drive me mad in truth. Those tiny slivers I have chipped away suggest I once lived in a glorious world of clear blue skies, vibrant towns, and verdant fields of endless green. A world at peace, with many happy, prosperous people, who were happy with their lives.
Nothing, in other words, like how it has been these past few centuries.
I spend most of the time by myself, a dead girl trapped at whatever age I had managed to reach, whatever maturity level, before it ended again, my connection severed, I mean. No. I will say it plainly. I remain at whatever age I was when he died, the last time. I only age once we have been reunited, you see. Neither a perk nor a drawback of being a ghost. My age always resets, falls back to more closely mirror his.
And he's usually about thirteen.
Evil arises every few centuries, with no predictable pattern save for that distinctive growing dread, the way the world fades out around me, and I have premonitions of the disasters that might come, if he does not rise again to defend us. And, shame on me, but I have grown to see it as my only moment to look forward to; I anticipate the arrival of the visions with eager ardour, anticipating the reunion to come, glad once again to have the outward trappings of life, glad again to be able to speak freely with another.
Once per cycle, I may make myself known to one person, independently of that bond. I have long since learnt not to squander it. I save that interaction until after our reunion, lest I choose to make myself known to him before he is ready (in all innocence!) and squander the opportunity for another to hear my voice, to see my translucent form.
I was alive once, but I do not recall it well any longer. For millennia, it has been as it is, and time, and the world, have passed me by. I don't understand the use of half of the institutions I see around me. I don't understand electricity. I don't understand school. I don't understand sports, or television, or computers. They are as real to me as I to them.
I live, if such it can be called, I exist, only for the reunion to come, when at last, there will be someone to see me, hear me, understand me, listen to me. And he is always patient, always kind, always understands, for he remembers even at the start, always, at least a little, and he guides me through it, with his great courage.
And after a few decades only, usually, he has been slain, always valiantly, always in combat, and the world loses its interest for me. I wander idly, waiting, waiting, mired so deeply in grief that I don't know that I'm grieving, only that, suddenly, there is no warmth or goodness anywhere in the world.
How will this world change, if we ever triumph? Millennia ago, I entertained the question, now and then, but I have since decided that triumph is impossible; we shall never win. He will never let me dissuade him from trying, anyway (he is valiant, after all), and he will die, far too young, far too soon, and I shall be alone, again, for the next few centuries.
It is a wonder I haven't gone mad, come to it.
I jolt out of a state of pseudo-somnolence (lethargy, not sleep, a heavy weight that prevents proper function), only when fear drowns out the previous torment, and I see the impending disaster, which we almost always manage to avert, though we might fail to stop every thereafter.
That greater evil, the threat behind the threats, the source of them all, the origin of the world's despair, remains sequestered in his safe haven; we have not come against him since the day I died, millennia ago. To face him again, we would need to demolish the evils he has installed throughout the world, lure him out of hiding, that one who slew me long ago.
Maybe, then, I would live again.
It will never happen.
It is hard enough, chasing down the rabble, wishing that there were more that I could do to assist, as I could, long ago, when I had a body of my own. I can still move things, use magic, but the ability is limited, and sometimes seems good for little more than sleight-of-hand, for entertainment.
He assures me that I am very helpful. He tells me that he always missed me too, even before he remembered. Somehow, he always knows—he has always known—how to make me feel better. He is my strength, the most genuinely good person in the world, and I still love him—how could I not?—despite how many times we have been made to start over again, from scratch. Surely, I have paid my penance now. Surely, the goddesses will take pity on me, give me the reunion I most desire, but can never have.
I am very selfish, aren't I? Perhaps any would be, whose existence was like mine. This crushing loneliness might make a nobler woman than I into a jealous little monster. And I don't think I'm that bad, yet.
Maybe I'll think better of it all, tomorrow. Don't count on it.
~-~Zelda, erstwhile princess of the legendary realm of Hyrule~-~
