15ch. 2 of 2
by:GoldenSilence
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A/N=Very light f/f romance in this. I am still so very nervous about this story. Its sort of my pet project of the moment.:) Thanks for all the reviews of the last chapter! They encouraged me! Sorry this part took awhile, but what with always being down and me going on vacation to Belize...well, my writing got quite pushed aside.
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She was but a small object between the war of the elements, torn at in equal measure by wind and rain, both of which appeared in their maliciousness to be trying to obliterate her from Malon's view entirely but were not succeeding. If Malon pressed her nose hard enough against the rain spattered window, she could just barely see Zelda, who looked to be doing her best to finish the job the wind and rain had begun. She was curled up as small as possible with her head buried within her arms, her hair streaming behind her, coaxed by the wind to flow as many directions as there was sky.
The scene outside the windowpanes was not entirely clear, the images muddy as if seen through layers of fog, or, thought Malon, a dream. A dream was a most accurate way of describing it, of describing the surreal-ness of that figure crouched on the ground, her fancy shoes and clothes forgotten as they became speckled with mud. Slowly, the figure unfolded from within itself and rose to stand. When she did so Malon's eyes widened and she stepped back from the window as if the sight she withheld was a painful one.
Zelda, her face resolute, her hair flowing behind her in a tangle of yellow that Malon's mind could not attach to any other thing of substance, looked for the first time since she had come to Malon for shelter from the rain, as unearthly and inhuman as Zelda sometimes felt she was. The rain and dirt should have made her more human, but instead the served only to elevate her higher. It was the distance that contributed, the distance that made Zelda seem less a familiar person and more something wild and alien, a wayward nymph standing as still as the trees she inhabited, something that shouldn't be viewed.
Whatever Zelda was doing out in the rain, rocking to and fro, Malon felt distinctly that it was private.
As she awaited the knock on the door she was sure would come, Malon strived to calm her nerves as her sensitivity fought against her self control, the former in favor of going out to Zelda in the rain and being the first to offer apology and seek forgiveness.
Malon did not budge, interested in seeing what Zelda would do if she didn't, for Zelda was probably, she figured, counting on her to.
I am my own and I refuse to allow myself to become subject to anyone simply because they have more abundance. I won't for her sake. She either drives people away on purpose with her words or on accident with her beauty. Well, I won't be driven away, even if only for this day.
I refuse to let anyone intimidate me.
Of all mantras (and Malon had a decade's worth sown in her blanket of memory thanks to constant reading) it was the hardest lesson. It was also the one that least applied to herself, thought Malon, forcing down bitterness that would have filled the heart of one less determined than she. She had, when she was a child, not been shy at all, the issue of words from her mouth more comparable to a flood than the babbling of any brook.
She and her father were poor, but yet their farm was a profitable enough venture with the milk and eggs they sold, and more importantly, she and her father were happy. She should have seen it coming. Her father took to sleep as a drunkard to liquor. Put bluntly, he was asleep more often than not dreaming and the precious time he spent awake was daydreaming of his dreams. Put with a nice, sharp edge to it, he was quite possibly the laziest man aside from a corpse.. or the leader of Hyrule's carpenters; who would move only if bodily carried, and as this was a feat impossible, seeing as was he an anchor all his own, simply stood in one place. A fat head like a balloon and legs that wobbled inward; He reminded Malon of a squid. Malon had a strong inclination for comparing people to animals and other magical creatures (only in her head after her first attempt at otherwise.)
Ingo, on the other hand, looked not so much like any member of the animal species as he did a person who had been dragged around by his nose for half of his childhood, and his ears for the other half. Malon always giggled when she saw him as a child. A clown his looks made him appear and she wondered why someone who looked so the clown would be so sad. With his long, thin moustache, big nose, and bushy eyebrows, he had a face made for smiling, she thought. He was overworked unfairly, she admitted.
She shouldn't have felt sorry for the man, but she did. For all he'd put her through, he had been through-no, not as much-but a little of the same. She had tried as a little girl to do in vain what her father avoided or ignored as petty matters of no consequence, but even she could not take on so big a task nor no everything that it was made of. Keeping a ledger of goods sold, making sure every animal was accounted for, seeing every promise for deliveries of milk kept. These were all things Ingo took care of tirelessly, for little money..and that when her father remembered to pay it.
Her father was a thinker, not a doer, and in this, Malon was not ashamed to admit she was her father's daughter. Like her fright of Ingo, it had not been so once, but now, when her waking hours and more were crammed of work, she did her jobs with body only and without mind, her mind a million miles away in a place more comfortable and secure. Without her dreams, she would not still have belief in the positive. She believed in the good in everyone, no matter how hidden, and if that made her a naive little girl, then so be it.
Beliefs, some taken from books, some from her own fanciful head, and dreams composed of such beliefs were all she had left. Ingo had been a different person once, for all he had been so sad. This Ingo of the present wasn't the one of the past. It wasn't him. Thinking thus erased any guilt Malon felt over her treatment, any thought that this was a wrong in return for another. He had been wronged, but this Ingo that beat her now, that worked the animals and her with spite and malice, was not doing so for revenge. Revenge was human and Ingo, he had ceased somewhere to be that. Still, Malon's heart went out to the man buried somewhere within, the man that had been so sad and dour. Malon felt sadness for he who could no longer feel and the pathetic figure in the rain outside who hid from what she felt, even as Malon wished she could do the same.
To feel so acutely as she did, it brought the highest joys, but with them, the most intense lows. Link had given her both. Malon could have saved herself from both, but she was not sorry she hadn't. Just as she was not sorry for a word she had said to Zelda. Usually timid, she wasn't sure what had moved her to speak to Zelda so boldly. Because she's a spoiled, self- centered, rotten brat, that's what, Malon thought. And she's had her proverbial boots licked clean every time she soils them for far too long. Even so, it was more than that. When Zelda was in her presence, there was a way about her that commanded you to challenge her.
Even now, any one of the words she had said could be considered reasons enough to have her harmed if not killed. All Zelda had to do was tattle tale to her father, and Malon, who found little to trust in the world, could not trust her not to.
The knock on the door at last came. Malon snatched a wayward book and busied herself looking, well, busy. Her offence might be beyond forgiveness, might claim her life, but she would not allow it to color her into fawning over the princess like everyone else did, treat her as if she was more than she was. She had been scared of Ingo for long; she would not be scared of Zelda as well.
For all her eyes roamed up and down the page of her book, Malon digested not one word of it.
***************
The chilling rain soothed Zelda's agitated spirits, washing over her and cleansing her of self loathing, anger, and fright. Like an cornered animal at a hunt, her wariness was not at ease, and she had been sent into a high state of protection and defense by a human hand reaching too close to.. to what?
Zelda put a hand to her heart and was surprised to hear the rough, steady rhythm it beat, as if she had thought the appendage had ceased to work altogether. Ah, but perhaps it would be best for her if it had. The rain did nothing to smother the noise of the beat. On the contrary, to Zelda, the rythm filled the air until it surrounded her, until the trees, the ground, and the sky shook with it, beat in unison to it. It was a menacing sound. There was no escape from her feelings, the barren branches, bark slick with droplets, whispered to her. There was no escape from facing herself, the rain, too thick to see beyond its icy grasp, and the sky, too dark to see beyond that which was illuminated by erratic strikes of lightning, concurred.
Zelda wanted only to make it all cease and so as a young child would do, she curled herself into a small ball, ceaselessly rocking in an attempt to dissemble the rhythm of her heart, the presence of that which would save her from herself, suffocated her, pressed her in with no method of escape. No method other than backtracking the way she had come, retracing footprints back to the cozy house and further back to angry words she had let fly without thought of retribution.
Her mind goes even further back then her feet itch to go, goes back to things that were, words that could not be taken back as Malon's or Zelda's of a few minutes ago could, words set in granite, with only time as their unpromising cure.
"Never apologize," he said. "You must be absolutely certain of each and every thing you do. And if you are not born of that mind, then you must pretend to be absolutely certain so others will be mislead. Certainty leads to trust. People gravitate to one who knows what he's doing. Don't ever give them, or me, cause to doubt that trust. "
Silence. The little girl doesn't understand it all, doesn't presume to. For all she is royalty, for all the expectations placed upon her, she is still but a little girl, and while her mind tries to grasp the words of her father, it fumbles and falls.
And the little girl is ashamed, because whatever she is ignorant of, this she knows. She must never fall. Never, ever, ever fall, because her daddy has told her that a true queen never, ever, ever falls.
So the little girl pretends to understand. She only five and already she is versed well in the art of pretending. After all, pretending is just another game. Only five, she thinks she can stop playing whenever she wants, thinks that this game is just a game. It's just a game, one that contains pawns instead of people. What are other people anyway? The little girl is secure in her protected circle of three. Impa, her father, and herself; three, just like the number of the goddesses, she thinks and is proud of her thoughts, because they show she is clever. That even though she doesn't understand daddy when he talks like this, she is clever.
The three will always be there, she thinks, when the games end. They know, and they understand her without games. Her father continues to lecture, but she is not really listening, the drone of his voice comforting her. She doesn't need to listen; she realizes then, a sudden realization that fills her with a strange feeling of lightness. She doesn't need to listen because she doesn't need to play these games! If three people are hers without these games then the others don't matter. She never cared about the nameless faces she must impress. They all blend into three, anyway. Three that she doesn't have to play games around, that she can just exist around without being asked to perform anything more of a miracle than that.
"...Zelda, are you paying attention? This is important!"
An uncharacteristic smile fills the little girl's face, wide and brilliant, carefree as the birds that she loves to run around the palace gardens trying to catch. It is not the smile of a child with worries and restraint. It is not the smile of a child with deadening responsibility. And it most certainly is not the smile of his princess.
"What is it?" he snaps.
She opens her mouth to tell her daddy of her enlightenment, of how simple it all is, of how silly of her daddy not to catch it. But something in her daddy's face holds her back from speaking, something dark and dangerous. The little girl has always believed her daddy can read her thoughts and now she is positive of it.
He knows what I know, she thinks, and that is why he frowns. Her smile vanishes instantly. Then, a ray of sunshine through the clouds. He knows what I know but he doesn't understand, she assures herself. If only I could explain...
"Noffing, daddy."
"Zelda, darling," her father tries to be gentle and firm, but doesn't quite suceed, the tremor in his voice giving him away. To wrench himself away from his daughter's closeness is not an easy thing by any measure, even for a hard hearted man such as himself. Zelda's father does so only because he knows he must. He takes a deep breath and reminds himself that it was only such actions that saved him from drowning in despair after his wife's death.
Such actions are not foolproof, warns a cautious voice in his head. They could not save you from guilt and they will not save her, will not protect her.
"What is it daddy?"
He puts a hand on her shoulder. "From this day forward, Zelda, I can no longer be daddy to you. In public as in private, you will address me as 'sir'."
"Why, da"-the little girl caught herself in time-"sir?"
"It is time you grew up," her father said simply. "You are dismissed."
Zelda stood in shock, not fully comprehending. Her father had never dismissed her, it was what he did only to the nameless faces, to those who weren't in the circle of three, in her safe haven.
"Zelda, one day, when I am dead, you may disobey whoever you like. But while I am superior, disobedience is not tolerated. Now go." It is not said father says this because he knows that when he is dead, the girl will still function as he has geared her to function. She is a good girl. She won't forget what he has taught her.
"Yes sir." She won't forget. She will never forget. She is properly chatised, but she still has one last question. "Sir.." she trails off, scared to voice her question, but she does not stutter. Gathering courage, she tries again. "Sir, I don't understand. Why can other people do things we can't?"
Why can they love? Why can they trust? Why can't we be happy too? she asks silently.
"Other people have not our privileges."
"I hate other people." The little girl is decided on this answer. Other people make her daddy act like he is now, make him change into a person that sets her on uneven ground that will crumble at any minute. She envies other people. She wishes she was them. They have something she doesn't and the little girl doesn't like not having everything.
As the little girl leaves, she gives her father a look of condescension. Her haven has been shaken, but she is still secure in her secret knowledge. Poor daddy. He doesn't realize that the game isn't needed, that there's a path out. If only she could tell him...
Others don't need the game, why should they?
They are not others.
And the thought is an isolate one.
Later, She would destroy things, deliberately go against his orders, do anything only to take the starch out of her father's voice when he talked to her. He didn't just cease to be her daddy in terms of name only, but in actions. His face was blank. Was he empty?
She used to dream he was. Nightmares of an empty body filled with flies and maggots. The nightmares held truth. Her real father was dead.
Zelda continues to rock back and forth, the motion becoming manic now, with no end and no beginning, just like the rain that pours off her, dripping from her shoulders to the damp earth and running in tiny rivers and streams at her feet.
"Father, for all your lessons, I know nothing." The words were spit towards the ground, the mutterer of them bloated, misshapen clouds in the sky as if daring them to send forth lightning to strike her upon the spot for her spite. Then, her every move violent defiance, Zelda picked herself up from the mud and walked back towards the house, lips mumbling words she had never said before. I'm sorry.
With each step, Zelda's head raised a little higher, her step became a little lighter.
***********
The words so carefully planned died in Zelda's throat the minute she entered back into the house, warmth driving away the chill in her body. Malon turned her head from the window where she sat, absorbed in reading some book or other. Zelda frowned in distaste. A romance if the cover was anything to judge.
One glance to make sure it was Zelda and Malon went back to her book. Zelda, used to a minimum of forty people groveling every time she so much as breathed (and quadruple that number on festival days and Sundays) was not used to being so blatantly ignored. She cleared her throat. No effect. Next, she tried loudly coughing.
When she got to the hacking stage, Malon at last gave her benefit of one eye, the other still greedily perusing her book.
"Well?"
Zelda was baffled and her temper, the one emotion she had never managed to keep in check nearly as well as her others, returned full force. Really! She had meant to apologize..but she had expected Malon to apologize first.
Malon, watching as Zelda fought some internal battle, felt her face turn in sympathy. Maybe she was being slightly too harsh, it was her fault more than Zelda's. Apologizing was hard, especially for Zelda, who had probably only apologized for one thing in her life; her birth. Not being a male was a heinous crime for the firstborn of any monarch.
"I came back here to allow you the satisfaction of apologizing."
So much for sympathy. Malon strived to hide a smile behind her book, but Zelda glimpsed it.
"You find something amusing? Need I remind you that I am Princess K-"
"In the name of Dinn, please don't start with all the titles. I find nothing amusing, your highness."
"Then why are you smiling?"
All pretense of reading the book was given up. "Because I'm happy? Because the sun is up? Because I'm too tired to frown? Pick a reason, any reason. I am not royalty, and therefor am not forced to keep my mouth in a line straighter than a picket fence from sunup to sundown." Zelda was driving her to such snappiness with her egotism. Honestly, that girl expected the river to split itself in two for her on whimsy.
"You are far too liberal with your words. I could have you killed for them."
Zelda liked being feared because it encouraged distance. She who was required to placate and please nobility, also had a perverse delight in toying with people of no importance to see how far they would go before they snapped. Of course, the point was not necessarily to snap them, only to make them bend as far as possible in uncomfortable directions.
"I know." Malon prayed her voice didn't sound as nearly as hesitant as she felt. She was rewarded for her prayers when it stayed steady and strong, not betraying her.
There was acceptance in the words even as there was a small bit of fear. But in spite of that small bit of fear, Malon wasn't going to give Zelda any distance. Even Zelda's walls of ice and disdain would serve little purpose here. Malon was so damn...secure. She'd just keep right on talking even if Zelda gave her the worst of insults. Zelda had changed her mind. Malon's mouth closed only when her eyelids did.
To see Malon so brazen was strange though Zelda had encouraged it. The girl had always been so demure and timid when Ingo threatened near. Link had spoken angrily of her lack of assertiveness, how she had done nothing to help herself out of her present situation. It was one of the few occasions Zelda could truly remember agreeing with him, though she knew the only reason he said so about Malon was because of his frustration at not being able to do anything himself to remedy things. For all Link could be so selfless, he could also be as selfish as Zelda. Or perhaps that was only her wishful thinking. Cor, she had to have something in common with him, didn't she?
Link and Malon would make a perfect couple, both pretending to be selfless, going around with the lofty goal of..of something or other, Zelda wasn't quite sure what, but whatever it was, it elevated their heads so high in the clouds, the rest of their bodies were definitely floating in the stratosphere. Not to mention it was infuriating. You got the feeling they were trying going somewhere in life, while you, on the other hand, stood still, watching them pass by as they ran in circles, getting the sick feeling one of these days they weren't going to make the return trip at all, but just be lost Out There. Out There, to Zelda, consisted of any place outside Hyrule, though a few guards would have told you it was more like any place outside the sheltered castle walls.
It was all fine and well to have goals. Zelda liked people with goals, it made them more interesting. But Zelda's experience with goals was strictly defined to one type, the single-minded-I-will-bloody- kill-you-if-you-get- in-my-way-you-incompetent-mouse kind. With these types of goals, it was always better to view people, as mentioned previously, as mice. Or little sticks that just happened to have heads and flailing legs and arms. Anything, so long as the brain was a mere asset and not an actual component of a personality. Even Zelda wasn't so hard hearted that she could crush people if she thought of them as people.
Apparently, Malon and Link had goals that involved thinking and treating people as people. Heroic goals about saving the world, making the world a better place, and stuff like that. Well, if they thought they would become happy by doing such deeds, they were sorely mistaken, from Zelda's point of view. . Zelda measured happiness purely in terms of profit, and profit purely in terms of money and power. How could Malon or Link hope to get any of that by their goals? Sure planting daffodils across marketplace would make it more beautiful and so forth, but you personally wouldn't gain anything from it except the knowledge you did a good deed and really, what would you do with that? Tally it on some kind of chart?
Zelda shook her head. She just couldn't understand it. She didn't like people she couldn't understand. How on earth was she supposed to exploit them that way?
************
Ye gods and goddesses (and minor druids of the inner circle, outer circle, and middle circle) Zelda was self absorbed. For the past ten minutes, she had failed to notice the fact that Malon was reading her book upside down.
Malon was sure of these facts, both the the ten minutes passing of time and the reading upside down, because one, Malon had been watching the clock tick every second and two, anything Zelda noticed, she would comment on. Especially something stupid like reading a book upside down.
She was sitting there like a bloody rock.
Ever of an active imagination, Malon looked at Zelda, shuddered, and amended her words. Okay, maybe not exactly like a bloody rock, though Malon's eyes themselves were practically bleeding in sympathy at the way Zelda's own eyes continued to stare without so much as blinking. It was very unnerving. Thank goodness they were staring at the unseen spot above her head, and not her. Malon was glad of that.
She would have rolled her eyes, but having done so a high quantity of occasions within Zelda's company thus far, her eyes were stuck only being able to move rather pathetically sideways.
The only way to read a book upside down is to be upside down.
This particular nugget of wisdom lodged in Malon's brain was making itself heard over and over again, loud and clear, while the rest of her thoughts told it to shut the hell up.
Malon listened to it. She was one of the select few persons in the world that didn't just occasionally tune in to her thoughts, but payed close attention to them constantly.. She tried to act on all her thoughts and dreams to the best of her ability.
Malon didn't just try to live up to her own dreams; she of course tried to make everyone else. This was what essentially was bad about it all. The law of fate said you couldn't possibly live out as many dreams as Malon had. Else, Malon would be wife to five husbands, all handsome, all owners of white stallions, and all princes of the same country.
So, in obedience to that one thought, Malon immediately flipped herself upside down on the chair and reopened her book. She was getting desperate for Zelda's attention without being sure exactly why.
It was the stare, it had to be the stare. Besides, one couldn't possibly sit still for such a length of period without vegetables or other various vegetation starting to grow on them. Malon read that in a book once.
*******
"Link really sho-"
Zelda came out of her private retreat to find herself adressing Malon's toes. Malon's dirty toes. Her dirty, wriggling toes. Sort of like worms after you chopped them in half. This was disturbing, even more so than Zelda coming to terms with the fact she had an imagination after all.
"You're reading that book upside down."
"Have been for the past twelve minutes or so."
"No," Zelda commented. "Not reading the upside down book, reading the book upside down."
"That's exactly why I'm doing it," Malon stated in a matter of a fact way.
"Ah." Malon was either using extremely sensible or extremely obviously wasn't much of a line drawn between the borders of the two. Not that Zelda was fully listening (she never fully listened to anyone out of habit) but even if she had been, she knew she wouldn't have understood a word of what Malon was saying.
"What's the difference?" Zelda ventured.
"You don't understand a word of what I just said, do you? It's really all very practical."
"Of course I understand!"
Malon generously allowed Zelda few minutes to catch up to the conversation and grab hold of it from behind, while it tried to fly away. "Though, if you're upside down to read a book upside down, then why not save yourself the effort and just read the book right side up? I mean, not the upside down book right side up, but the right side book upside up. Wait, no, that's not right..."
Malon put the book down and turned right side up again. She laughed, then as if sensing Zelda's hatred of laughing, cleared her throat and changed the subject. She was talented at this, considering it like playing poker, the exception being you only had to fool one person as opposed to several. Why, whenever the sheriff came along for taxes, Malon could get him to forget his original purpose with a few carefully chosen words meant to encourage. Within half an hour, she was pouring him a glass of sweet tea while he talked about his family and his personal preference for the new fashion of wearing double garters.
It was simple to be encouraging. Well, for Malon it was, anyway. Flowers did all but grow from seeds overnight with her dodged coaxing.
"So Link should what?"
"What?"
Malon tried a more direct tactic. "Oh, you know. What were you saying about Link earlier?"
"Oh that. I was thinking, you and him are two peas in a pod. Going around all sparkly eyed, vying for the good in everyone, etc. Really, he should love you."
The way Zelda said this just dared Malon to try and find anything sentimental in the previous statement. Her voice had all the personality of a mop, while still managing to suggest that her opinion of Link sat somewhere between a blur of discreet nothing and constantly chattering chipmunk.
"But he doesn't. He loves you."
"Yes, well I'm sure I'm flattered, but I don't love him." Zelda was slowly talking herself out of the wedding backwards. It wasn't a very wise move to marry Link if he loved or was loved by another, was it? Sure, she would have had the satisfaction of breaking his heart, but there was that tiny chance his heart wouldn't be broken at all, that he would continue loving another even as he married her. Zelda didn't truly believe he'd do so ghastly a crime, because she knew if Link was anything, it was honorable, but still, didn't love have the power to make fools out of kings, kings out of fools? Best not to marry someone unless, Zelda decided grimly, he was both of those. She must have absolute and utter devotion if she wanted to be The Ruler and not a ruler, submitting her and the reign of the kingdom to her husband's rule.
What Zelda, for all her "wisdom" didn't realize, was that behind her grand first reason, there was a second one lying in wait. "You could make him love you," advised she.
Malon shook her head in the direction of her lap, playing with her hands as she always did when ill at ease or upset. "No, that's not the same at all. That's not what real love is."
"Sounds horrible," said Zelda with the maddening conviction of one who not only doesn't grasp the topic, but is furiously pulling at it to get it down to her level. " I don't see why you keep trying. You're only going to get hurt again and again."
Malon's face at this point was not only turned towards her lap, it was bowed so low, it was very nearly sitting in it. "But I can't stop trying. Someone out there.. I have to keep trying until I find them. Someone who won't make it hurt so badly."
Zelda hmphed and tried to ignore the fact that Malon's voice wavered. Zelda self consciously said nothing. Sympathy and words of comfort were to be administered to others only when she was caught in enemy territory looking for a path of security.
Malon rallied herself. "So, what went on out there in the rain earlier? Not that I'm that curious or anything, but you did spend an awful lot of time out there for one who believes rain comes with toads and other nasty aspects."
"I had a nightmare."
Malon forgot about her own problems at once. (She was adept at doing this. Her own problems had long since burrowed themselves at the very back of her mind in a dark closet.)
"So even your dreams aren't your own? That's terrible! I hate my life, but at least I can get away. "
"They're why I can't let myself feel"-Zelda sounded as if she was discussing another's problems and not her own-"In my dreams, I used to feel all the pain of everyone. I used to feel his pain. He's not human, but he has pain of his own kind-I couldn't take it anymore. I can't save them. Any of them."
"From what?"
Zelda didn't answer.
"Are you talking about Ganon?" Malon's was horrified. "You have dreams about him?"
"Ganondorf, not Ganon. Or maybe he's in between the two somehow. He cares not a whit, but yet he still has this pain lodged inside." Zelda ran a nail up and down her own arm. "I think I'm becoming him."
However Zelda was becoming Ganondorf, it was not in the physical, but in the head. Was she crazy?
Zelda's eyes told Malon she was not. They saw so far away, yet were so close. They may have been here, but they were not seeing here. Whatever they saw was not pleasant. Zelda blinked once, twice, then shut her eyes tight.
"I don't want to feel. It hurts."
"Of course. It always hurts. More and more each day. Like an arrow that twists itself in deeper and deeper."
"Can I ask you something? Have you ever thought of-?"
Zelda was still stroking her own arm, like a cat licking itself. Her fingers suddenly stopped running up and down and became an immobile grasp on either side of her arms, a desperate cling to save herself from going where henceforth only her eyes had gone.
Malon responded to Zelda's question without delay, with it hoping to bring her back to herself from whatever nightmare of day she had just experienced. "I have. But as much as I hate my life, I don't hate life itself. I wouldn't go through with it. What if I miss..."
"Love?"- there was none of Zelda's previous apathy in her voice now- "You aren't killing yourself for love? Hah!"
Malon didn't rise to the bait. "You've thought of it too, haven't you?"
" I'm not weak."
" That's not true. Do you ever think of people as anything besides something to lever yourself higher or better serve your needs?"
"I am where I am because I think that way. And you are where you are because-"
"It has nothing to do with that! Don't you damn act like I deserve what I was given. I don't. I deserve better...I will get better." Malon didn't sound proud as much as hopeful.
"You don't fully believe that. When will your prince charming come, huh? Years from now? You're living for vengeance, for absolution, for proof."
"And you are dying for it. You didn't get where you are alone. You deserve everything you've gotten."
"That's not true!" The exclamation at the end of that claim could have formed itself in the air.
"'Tis. You want to know yourself? You're a self centered, conceited, annoying brat, who only wants more and more power. You want something without even knowing why! You'll end up with naught but power and money!"
Zelda smiled.
"Is that all you want?" questioned Malon. "Well, is it?"
"Yes."
"That's not wise."
"Neither is love. You think Ingo's broken your bones, it will break your heart."
"I take that risk. With love, all else is incomparable. What is money for except to please people? If you have love, there is no one to please, no need for anything to add to yourself."
"If you have love, you are forever lost, and the poison seeps into your mind."
"Oh and how would you know? You've never loved. You're more scared than I am, afraid to find out consequences for yourself instead of from daddy dearest. For the goddesses sake, life has choices. Make them for yourself instead of having someone else make all of them for you! Good lord, I swear, you're so frightened of everything you don't understand or haven't experienced, that your father doesn't allow, I wager you'll ask to be buried with an axe in your coffin, just in case you're still alive."
"And you, for all you ever talk, talk, talk, do you ever act? You just go around stumbling in day dreams. Why? Because don't have strength to make them reality. Do something for yourself instead of just waiting. What are you waiting for? The sky to turn green and the grass blue?" Zelda leered.
Right, thought Malon. If ever she'd been waiting for a go ahead sign, that was it. Blocking her brain and all the jitters and warnings contained in it, she leaned over close to Zelda's face. "Just be," she whispered. And then she kissed her.
Zelda's thoughts swam in an inner pool of blood and tears. The kiss was nowhere near perfect, and both Zelda and Malon were too self conscious to fully enjoy it, but that was not the important matter. The important matter was not the casting of the stone itself, but the ripple effects it would cause.
She wished the kiss would never stop, because she knew when it stopped, it would never start again. The kiss was like drowning in honey, that you felt the despair and melancholy even in the sweetness of it all.
Zelda loathed wishes. They were a dangerous mutilating tool. She had let them get too close, too near and dear, they had and would dilute her, sully her until she was no longer herself, composed of nothing but wishes and dreams destined to disappoint. But then, who was she, herself, anyway? A personality built on other's wishes, not her own.
Zelda decided instead that she loathed other's wishes.
In the process of learning to mold others, she had been molded herself. By Ganondorf and Ganon, by her father, by rules, even by this..by Malon.
*********
"I must leave now. You have to understand," Zelda said firmly when the kiss ended. She put her palms in front of Malon's face carefully, startled at the closeness and proximity of another human being, never touching the skin there, but spreading her palms so that the fingers were like a fan, the contours, tones, and planes of Malon's face peeking out from beneath.
"Don't run away." Malon reached up to grab Zelda's hands and Zelda's hands withdrew like a cobra after a deadly strike. "Everyone else always runs away," said Malon sadly.
Zelda stared at Malon, uninhibited, her gaze memorizing what her hands were too reprehensive to dare to do. "Oh, how I want to not.."
Her voice broke off, and then continued, firmer. "But I can't." Zelda turned away from Malon. "Ugh, why is this happening? I hate love! I wish it never existed!"
Zelda sought comfort from herself and found none.
"Don't you ever say that! Not ever! If I didn't believe someone out there cared what happened to me.." Malon changed her mind about finishing that sentence. "I love you."
"Since when?"
"Since now."
"You can't." Zelda was definitely not in her element now, not judging by the way she was backing away from Malon rapidly towards the door, an expression of revulsion on her face. "You can't rake in love so casually."
"You wouldn't know, you've never been in love."
"Don't want to be!" said Zelda, her voice sprinting for the door, even though she had not quite reached it. "I'm still marrying Link!"
"Not because you want to. You've tricked yourself into believing duty is life. It's not. I never thought you were a coward."
"I am NOT a coward. I AM marrying Link. And I WILL never forget this day. Goodbye."
Zelda went out of Malon's house into the rain similar to how she had entered, slamming the door.
************
The Zelda that came back in a few ticks of the clock later was a bit more mellow. "I meant what I said about not forgetting this day, but I didn't mean what I said about marrying Link. I've decided I won't. No point to it. So, he's yours."
Refusing to marry Link, Zelda concluded, was partly identifying herself at the same time.
*************
When Zelda woke up the following morning, she found herself wondering if it had all been a dream. The fact that the events of last night were as lucid as a foggy pond did not matter, for with Zelda, the line between reality and dreams was a thin one, one blending into another until she was not sure where truth began and lies broke off. For Malon, it was alike, her dreams more remembered than any petty thing she did during the day. Malon lived in dreams because she could not live in reality. Zelda had heard the fable once of a poor man that blinded himself in order to no longer see the poverty in which he lay, in order to be free to imagine with no restrictions. Malon would never cease to dream, Zelda hoped, not even after...
But Malon was stronger than one might think. She had had her dreams crushed and trampled beneath the dust of despair multitudes of times, and yet she persisted. One more slap could do no worse.
At the same time, a treacherous part of Zelda hoped it did, wanted Malon to feel as much pain as she was feeling, wanted the slap of uncertainty to be brutal. Malon was chained as she was chained, forever, bound to one another by their circular cages, full of spikes and thorns that intertwined around and around, closing them in on all sides, piercing them until they could do naught but try and become that which destroyed them.
It was not a dream, though Zelda never could determine how she knew this. Too tangible. In Zelda's dreams, she could taste, touch, hear, smell, see the world around her, but this was a different sort of awareness, her senses so acute it hurt, not with a sporadic, intense urgency that spoke of the shadows that filled the light in her dreams but a dull pain, aching just enough to let her know it was there, a constant reminder of life, a life which was still in the dark, but with shadows cast across it now, coming from a window she was too afraid, there in the dark, all alone, to open.
The pain was coming from her heart. Malon's hands had shaped it for better or for worse, and at least she had warned zelda before she hurt her. How had Zelda returned such kindness? By running off herself, running before the wound could become any worse. Instead, it was intensified, gaping as if torn at, whispering whatifwhatifiwhatifwhatif.
On an inkling, Zelda inclined her head to stare out her window once again. No return image greeted her searching eyes except for the bleeding of red and gold, the sun shining through the window mixing with the tones of her deep carpet. The window had been repaired. It can't be allowed to be broken. I can't be allowed to be broken. But how can I manage to appear whole when I'm in pieces?
"I can't see myself," she whispered.
Her view began to blur with the stained glass until a hazy rain of intertwining hues danced before her eyes, bleeding downwards in her vision like a rainbow of tears.
Zelda's hands reached up to her eyes in wonder, touching the dampness there, feeling it drop down her nose and cheeks in small droplets and stain the blankets beneath her. She was crying.
********** "What sort of finality will this bring?"
"None. But one day, you will stop, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, and you will remember, and I will too. And the distance won't matter anymore, because we will be together."
And she stops, wherever she is, whatever she may be doing.
***********
On that rare day, when the sun shows gold through the pale threads of a cloud, it reminds her of then, of their hair mingling, a river of fire and ice.
And she stops, wherever she is, whatever she may be doing, and smiles, a sight not near so rare as it once was.
But regretting then will not change the now. Then is in the past, and her future awaits, one that promises to be exciting for as long as she does not forget..how it all once was. No regrets, she remembers. No regrets. Louder than this voice is the persistent one, the one she has learned to embrace, the constant ache. Whatifwhatifwhatif.
She smiles wider and finds its makes her heart lighter and more at ease.
I remember, Malon..
Do you?
********* The End *********
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