#probably my body is not ready for the brutal winter of the interior

[forestal-ramblings]

Apparently I'm going to spend new years eve in a freezing medieval town with my two best friends (we did a poll and it defeated fucking barcelona), but it will be my first new year party out of the house since the pandemic so bring it own.

[keltonwrites]

Where no one knows your name

How many times is a person meant to make new friends? When I moved into an apartment in DC with an absolutely iconic girl from Craigslist, I wrote in my journal, “you never know when you’ll meet your next bridesmaid.” Charmingly juvenile, as I was 24 years old. Ironic, as I never had any bridesmaids. And embarrassing, knowing I wrote something that’s surely been embroidered on a bachelorette party t-shirt by now. My point was: you can meet people you fall in love with anywhere, anytime, assuming your heart (and calendar) are open. Now my heart and calendar are open and I am one of Elizabeth Bennet’s sad sisters, cloying and desperate for attention while everyone at the ball ignores me. Meeting people here is unnerving and hapless and eye-clawingly vulnerable. My first new friend told me she was moving away in a few months. Do you invest deeply in hopes of another faraway friendship? Do you just go back to waving as you pass on the street? I like this girl! What an embarrassing thing to have to say to someone! Do you just invite people to every and anything like a lunatic? I can’t even remember to call the people I am forever-and-ever in cahoots with. I’m also deeply bound by what I’ll call the Movie Trap: say it’s 3pm during not-a-pandemic, and you get the urge to see a movie. You look at the showings, and there’s one you really want to see at 7:15. You think to yourself, “I should make an effort,” and you text a friend. “Hey, you wanna go see This Cool Movie at 7:15 tonight?” No one ever says yes. Don’t give me an example of when someone has, because it’s always one of these answers:

“Oooh, I’m actually seeing it with Kate tomorrow - wanna come?”

“Can we go to the 9pm showing? Stuck at work.”

“Yeah but let’s see Movie You’ll Fucking Hate instead.”

Now maybe I’m just lighting flares guiding you to the worst parts of my personality, but this drives me nuts. No, Liz, I don’t want to go tomorrow. I want to go tonight. At 7:15. So I can be in bed by 10. And you’d have to drag my dead body and prop open my eyes to get me to see something like Marriage Story in theaters. The Movie Trap is a big reason I usually hang out by myself, or I make plans weeks in advance. (Don't I sound like a blast.) Just the idea of being like, “I like you! Wanna hang out in October?” makes me want to collapse into a puddle of sad adulthood. Which is why on Friday at 4:30pm, when a girl I’d met a week prior asked if I wanted to grab a drink, I just said yes. I put on a pretty dress, did my makeup, put stuff in a purse, and drove the 25 minutes to town. It was really fun! And how novel to have new contacts in my phone like “Maggie blue house” and “Jess concert friend” — a throwback to the days of “Greg guy on L train” and “Devon ad party.” The very concept of not knowing someone’s last name or even needing it, and a year from now updating their contact info and smiling at your origin story. But for the most part, no one is in our phones. In terms of phone numbers collected, here is the list:

Two friends we knew prior who thank god you guys exist.

New friend who is moving away.

New friend who is game to drink tequila and ride mountain bikes.

Neighbor-not-yet-friend who I really fucking like and am not sure how to cross hang-out threshold with.

​Not to say there aren’t any other prospects or people I’m platonically gaga over, but I don’t have their phone numbers. There are honestly a lot of people like this because when you live in a small town (and you’re from the Midwest) you say “oop, sorry” to every person/object you bump into, and you say “hi :)” to every person you see. These are the rules. If I drive by you and don’t wave, it’s because I was so deep in a daydream I probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. This isn’t acceptable, because in our urgency to tattoo our vaccination status on our foreheads so we can make friends, it turns out just driving by someone can be a viable strategy. A few days ago, a man was driving by our kitchen window and then our driveway, and then he reversed back up to the kitchen window and started waving. Ben went outside — it was that kind of wave. The man had seen from his car a smokejumper emblem on the back of a truck in our driveway. “Hey, are you a smokejumper?” We aren’t. But my dad was, and he was in town visiting, accompanied by the emblem on the back of his truck. The guy said we should drink sometime. Numbers were not exchanged. We’ll call that a node, because it’s not quite a connection. And it’s mainly nodes, waiting to be connected, to have relevance. But first, no matter who you’re trying to befriend, you have to answer everyone else’s Do I Care Quiz. The quiz is employed by 93% of locals to determine how they feel about you existing within their personal 50-mile radius. The first question is non negotiable:

1) Are you visiting?

Variations on this question include “how long are you in town?” or “what brings y’all to town?” or my least favorite and most insulting, “did you just finish Jeeping?” I know I have blonde hair and say y’all, but how dare you. (Also, to be clear, you can own a Jeep, customize your Jeep, mod out your Jeep, and love your Jeep, but you’re not Jeeping until you drive too fast through a tiny town so you can hurl your Jeep over a mountain pass without ever getting out of it.) So the answer to “are you visiting” is “no, I live here.” Which brings us to the next question, my favorite for how loaded the gun, kneeling in the grass, scope on, target locked it is.

2) Are you part-time or full-time?

The first time I answered this question, I didn’t realize it was essentially like asking how someone voted in the 2020 election. The judgment was cocked and ready and the palpable relief/joy/or at the very least, tolerance, exuded by answering “full-time” was like when the sun comes out from behind the clouds on a 40 degree day. I was fine, but wow that does feel better. The third question though does not have a standard hoped-for answer. This is where nodes turn to connections turn to phone numbers.

3) What brings you here?

It seems like the best possible answer would be saying you work in town, and you’re going to begin construction on displaced-worker housing to ensure the people who run this town can actually live in it. We’d have everyone’s phone number. Saying you’re a writer who works remotely and bought a house from a legendary and beloved local who could no longer afford it is really something you keep to yourself. But in the interest of making friends, I just word vomit my entire history. We might as well find out at the onset if I make your eyes roll back into your skull. Not at all threatening that all it takes is a single social signal misinterpreted to be the absolute death knell of my ability to make friends in a town of some 1400 adults. In fact, I’ll share one such interaction. I was hiking with Cooper, about 5 miles by foot away from my house. I was on a trail, crossing a sloped meadow, and a group was traversing up the hillside to the trail. I said hi, where y’all coming from. One girl answered and we talked about the trail. She eyed me up and down. “Did you just move here?” “I did!” “I served your family last week,” she said. “Oh,” that phrasing. “Must have been my in-laws.” “Heard you bought Jack’s house. Such a bummer when locals like that are forced out.” “We didn’t even know about his house,” I said. “We were looking at another house and he asked his realtor if he could get us to come see his house. We just loved it, and him!” She had no emotional reaction to this. “You moved from California?” she asked. (Dangerous question.) “Yeah, got these sea level lungs, haha,” attempting to disarm with humor was a failure, “but couldn’t be happier to be out of California.” “It’s not like this all year. Winter’s really hard here, you’re in for a rude awakening.” “Well California’s the last place I lived, but I’m not from there. I’ve lived in brutal winters. At least Colorado gets sun!” I laugh with cloaked loathing. “It’s different when you live at altitude,” she said, like no human aside from her had ever been literally anywhere. “Are you trying to go around?” She indicated the path behind her. “No, y’all go ahead, just gonna wait to give you your space. I’m sure you’re faster than me.” “K, good luck making it to the lake." Maybe she was thirsty. Maybe she was hungover. Maybe she just has vicious delivery, but it felt like every blade of grass was leaning against the wind to listen. She was with four other people and not one of them said a word. I left that interaction not wanting to see another human ever again. But that interaction, and her intimate knowledge of exactly which house I lived in, made me want to decorate like we lived in a gingerbread house, all candy canes and plum drops, screaming to any passerby that we’re friendly. One of the mayor’s first questions to me was “what are you going to do to the house?” There are rules here about what your house can look like, and I kept emphasizing we bought the house because we loved it, not because we wanted to change everything about it. And now, instead of wanting to decorate the interior, I want to put up shades so we don’t contribute to light pollution, I want to hang a sign by the water spigot saying “grab some if you need” for hikers and mountain bikers, I want to paint a sign for the wild mint by our door that says, “I mint to tell you to take some,” because our neighbors were openly panicked they wouldn’t be able to just grab mint from the cabin’s garden anymore. Without question, COVID makes things harder. Dinner parties feel like dares. Dropping cookies off at someone’s house feels invasive. Grabbing a drink feels like the ultimate sign of trust. But at least we have nodes who can connect who can think to invite us and who can see that despite having lived in California, we’re not all that bad. In the meantime, I’ll be painting signs about water and mint, hoping to garner the benefit of the doubt from the so beautifully, earnestly, and waiting-to-see-if-you’re-worth-it doubtful.

Subscribe to the newsletter at tinyletter.com/keltonwrites — high altitude relocation and renovation in a tiny mountain town.

[punishandenslavesuckers]

She has no throne. Girls without thrones should not have knights, but hers won’t go. Princess Zelda – the girl who killed Calamity – would love to fade into legend, but Link’s bought a house, he’s fighting off monsters, and he’s selling giant horses to strangely familiar Gerudo men. She'll never have any peace now. (ao3)  

(chapter one) (chapter two) (chapter three) (chapter four)

Like in most villages, Link’s arrival at the Rito Village main bridge gets a disproportionate amount of attention. As they board their horses at the village Stable, half a dozen Rito drop out of the sky and into the yard beyond the fence.

By the time Zelda and Draga finish talking to the stable hand, Link’s surrounded by a small flock of the massive bird-like tribespeople, three of whom greet the shorter Hylian with a warm mo’a – gently butting their foreheads against his and turning their faces aside to briefly press along the side of his head. It’s a strictly Rito welcome. Not usually shared with non-Rito on the basis that non-Rito often find the bird-like race welcoming and polite but ultimately somewhat stand-offish after a certain degree of familiarity. ‘Stand-offish’ generally meaning that they liked you well enough to test your friendship a little, as was customary. But the average Hylian doesn’t know they should be excited about a bit of Rito ribbing and take the new cold-shoulder as a hint to get lost.

Link, having dealt with Revali (who did not actually want to be friends at all), doesn’t let ribbing of any kind deter him. Generally. 

Link slings his pack to the ground as a massive white-feathered Rito makes a smooth but high-speed landing directly in front of him, straightening up to tower over the Hylian hero, head tilted with a positively predatory lean. He’s a warrior for sure – broad-shouldered frame roped with avian muscle, a massive bow clipped to his back. Brutal, eagle-like features make his expression difficult to read. Of the assembled Rito, he appears the most likely to embody the warrior reputation of his people – that he may slit a man’s throat on the raptorial hook of his beak and hurl them hundreds of feet to their squalling death. But presently, he just looks… worried? No. He looks impatient.  

“Teba?” Link says, tone a sure sign he’s noticed. “What’s wrong?”

“Is this your priestess?” he says, wasting breath on not a single pleasantry. His voice, rough, shockingly deep, matches Draga’s for pitch and intensity. “You vouch for her skills?”

Link, startled by this, nods.

“Good. Apologies, but we need you immediately.” The giant Rito gets down on one kneel, facing her. “Get on,” he says, indicating his back.

“I –” She looks at Link for guidance and gets an urgent nod. “Okay of course.” She rushes to loop two arms around Teba’s neck, careful to sit high so she can rest her armpits over the top of his shoulders, weight against his chest and not his throat. “I’m okay. You can go fast. I’ve done this before.”

He takes her at her word and launches skyward.

The air screams, her stomach drops, but Zelda keeps her head tucked against Teba’s neck, feeling the impossible power in the musculature of his upper back and chest, freezing mountain air tearing her hair into a tangle. She peeks over his shoulder just in time to see a large wooden platform rising to meet them and she realizes, blankly, that it’s Revali’s Landing. Built like the rest of the village into the side of the impossible white spire of porous stone that marks the Rito stronghold – she knows it better than any part of the Village even a century later.

Teba drops into the center of it and lets her down. He leads her quickly to a private residence one landing up where a pink-feathered Rito in white physician’s garb is waiting at the door. Strange that there even is a door – most Rito homes are open air platforms left exposed in the day so their residents and come and go by sky as needed. The open walls have been enclosed in thick canvas and cloth tenting, creating an enclosed winter dome. She can smell incense and medicinal herb from the interior.

“You’re a healer?” the Rito woman demands, in a voice that would be musically sweet if she wasn’t deathly serious.

Zelda is ushered her into the tent, but Teba stays outside. Quarantine possibly? Zelda rolls her sleeves up as she enters.

“Yes. I read Teba’s letters. I’m ready to start.”

“Good. I am Saki. Head physician. Teba is my husband.”

Zelda nods. “Thank you for the letters. Where’s the –?” She stops cold, almost stumbling. “The patient?” she finishes.

There’s a Rito male lying on a reed mat near heated stone hearth. He’s lying on his back, visibly in pain, both his wings curled to his chest, pressing into his sternum. He’s breathing in short, wet, asthmatic gasps that rack the Rito’s whole body. There are patches of molting feathers along his shoulders and back. The floor is dark with them. Before the illness, he was probably blue-black and cream-colored in plumage, a beautiful mohawk-ish head crest and a dozen warrior braids. Now, he looks dusty and grey.

He looks, with some exceptions, almost exactly like Revali.

“What is it?” Saki demands, edgy. “Link told you what’s happening?”

“Yes, I… what’s his name?”

“Mishi. The illness started in the house of his father and mother, then spread through the rest of the family and –” She stops. “He’s dying. This is the last stage. I’m only asking you to… try.” Then, with un-Rito-ish desperation, she says, “Please.”

Zelda goes to Mishi’s bed side and very gently draws his hands away from his chest so she can see. He can’t speak by now. He looks at her. He’s less eagle-like than Teba in facial structure. More like a raven. His eyes are neon-green and afraid. She tries to smile as she, carefully, places two hands palm down over his heaving ribs. The feathers beneath her fingers are soft, more downy fluff than the plumage lining his shoulders and arms. Rito hearts beat faster than human ones, but his feels like a humming bird snared behind a hollow-boned cage.

“Hey, Mishi? I need you to stay with me,” she says as her palms begin to glow, begin to infuse a warm light into the dense muscle beneath her fingers. “Breathe, okay? Try to breathe big, deep breaths for me.”

He nods and, with great effort, tries to keep breathing. Instead, he coughs until he gags, then struggles twice over to breathe. She cups his throat, very gently with two hands then slowly moves them down, spreading them across the band of his clavicles, then over his chest, over his lungs, then down to below his ribcage where the Rito’s waist begins to come in. Then she does it again – dousing for the damage that’s killing him. Feeling it under her fingers as pressure and cold. Sweat runs down her cheek.

“You’re fine,” she says warmly. She can feel something burning away under the radiant gold that she’s flooding into the dark, afflicted interior of Mishi’s chest. “Stay with me.”

Her head is swimming a little from exertion – focusing entirely on the indefinable sensation of organic systems finding their right configurations by her hand. It’s a blind shot, the magic of healing. Done by instinct and repetition, like braiding her hair. Or drawing a bow.

“You’re pale,” Saki says.

“I’m fine.”

She hears heavy footfalls outside, voices. A triangle of light opens across the wall as someone draws the curtain back and a very large person enters the room. 

“What are you doing?” Draga says.

She doesn’t look up from Mishi. “Healing. Where’s Link?”

“Outside. You’re using too much energy.”

“Go away. Send Link in here.”

“Why? Because he won’t tell you to stop?”

And he’s right, so she just redoubles her efforts. Light flares between her fingers, a heat rushing from her hands, lifting her hair from her shoulders. Draga immediately moves to kneel beside her, one fist set against the floor so he can lean near her without touching her.

“You need to stop,” he says.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snaps. Gold is gathering in her arms like candle flame. Her teeth ache from gritting them. Her head pounds. There’s a pain gathering in her lower back and mounting her spine. “I can do this. This is nothing compared to what I’ve done before.”

“This is nothing like what you’ve done before.”

Saki looks sharply at her.

“It’s taking longer than it should,” Zelda explains, glaring at Draga. “That’s all. I can do this.” Her arms are starting to shake. The golden shine beneath her fingers flickers. “Goddess. Where is it?” She stacks both hands over Mishi’s laboring heart. “Draga, just trust me. I can get this.”

“You need to stop or it’s going to kill you.”

Saki, hearing this, shakes her head and starts to push Zelda away. “Okay. I’m sorry, but I won’t allow that.”

“No! Just wait,” Zelda cries. “Please, I can save him.”

Saki glances at Draga, then back to Zelda. “Priestess, the champion descendent vouched for your skill and cited your healing work in Hebra and Akkala as proof of your ability. I trust his judgement as far as your skills collude it, but this cannot continue. I thank you for your efforts as they are.”

 “I didn’t say we’re letting the boy die,” Draga says somewhat drily. He pulls a piece of white chalk from his belt and starts surreptitiously marking the floor in sigils Zelda doesn’t recognize, then stares hard at them. Zelda smells copper – like warm metal or blood. He looks at her. “Zelda, I think your power’s being drawn off. You won’t be able to heal him entirely, but you can stave off the killing blow. Pick something very specific to heal, then stop.”

Mishi sits up a little, making it easier for her to lay hands along the curve of his windpipe, then against his chest again. He’s breathing slowly now, evenly. By the time she’s finished, he’s dozed off into what Saki informs them is his first unlabored sleep in three days. Draga grunts, frowning at the marks on the floor. Then he sits forward, presses his palm down over them and Zelda watches a quick, dull flash of red snake across the lettering and fade. The markings smoke slightly, burned into the wood. He wipes his palm off on his trousers.

“Saki, Mishi is the last in his familial line. If he dies, that ends it, correct?”

Saki tenses. “How do you know that?”

“That’s not important. What else can you tell me?” Draga presses. “Was there’s anything special about Mishi’s family? Were they a political target? Did they have enemies.”

Saki looks shocked. “No. No, if anything the opposite.”

“Why the opposite?”

“They… they were from the same clan as the Rito Champion, Revali.” Saki does not notice the look on Zelda’s face or if she does, she does not give a sign. “But why does that matter? This is an illness. It began in their family and spread as the healthy family members came to help.”

“This isn’t a disease,” Draga says, calmly. “It’s a curse. I suspect one tied to his family in some way. I’m afraid if Mishi dies, it’s going to jump to the next group of tribesman that meet its… criteria.” He glances at their patient who sleeps on, surrounded by people, yet somehow completely unprotected. “I’m going to need time and Zelda will need to recover. First, we must break the curse. Then we can save your tribesman, but I would recommend you limit all Rito contact with him until I determine the vector of transmission.”

“But if what you say is true,” Saki murmurs, “then there is a murderer to blame for this?”

There’s a pause, because there’s a very Rito flash of… intention in Saki’s eyes. Like an archer seeking a target.

“Possibly,” Draga says. “Generational curses are indistinguishable, generally, from a pre-meditated hex. It could be one person in the family encountered a cursed object or entity and it spread from there down the line. I can try to find out and if there is a party to blame. Does this meet with your approval?” When he receives a nod from Saki, he turns his attention back to Zelda. “I will need you strong. Go get Link and get some rest. I’ll call you back when I have something for you to fight.” Then in Gerudo, “Is that acceptable, Princess?”

That annoys her, but she thinks he’s trying to make her angry at this point.

She stands up. “I can do that. Thank you, Draga.”

His expression loses a touch of its edge. “I’ll fix this,” he says.

Zelda manages a very brittle smile. “I think we got here too late for that.”

“Draga’s mad at me,” Zelda says.

Link sits forward, scowling, and signs, ‘I am also mad at you.’

“Right.”

She spends two more days sitting with Mishi to stave off the effects of the curse. Draga spends that same time stomping around the Rito Village, disappearing for hours to walk about the foothills around the lake, scaring off large animals and writing things in a small grungy notepad. Link goes with him sometimes. He stays with her other times. When asked what Draga is doing, Link’s not sure because 90% of what Draga does looks like “scribbling in the dirt” and “squinting really hard at nothing then cursing”. He says Draga is doing ‘spellwork’ to trace the source of the curse.

He kind of fumbles over a slang sign for ‘spellwork’ that’s dangerously close to ‘magical bullshit’.

They’re sitting together on Revali’s Landing, side-by-side with their legs hanging over the edge. Link is not actually mad at her, despite his insistence because he’s far too worried to make room for being mad as well.

Link signs. ‘Don’t worry so much. Draga will get it.’

Zelda sighs. “I didn’t even notice it could be a curse.”

‘Were you ever trained for that? Detecting curses? Who curses people? That sounds fake.’

“You literally fought an incarnation of ancient evil and fight magically tainted monsters all the time. You have several semi-cursed objects in your travel pack that are so magically afflicted that Draga hit you in the face once because he thought one of your masks was taking root in your skull.”

“Psh,” he says in that tone that is largely responsible for 90% of Draga’s anxiety. Then he signs, ‘Were you trained?’

“Well, no, but… I don’t know. I thought it would be natural to feel and dispel such things.” She sighs. “I am… resigned to the notion that my power is waning but I thought more highly of my abilities.”

‘Draga said it was subtle. It’s why he’s so annoyed with it.’

“Your point?”

‘It’s easy to miss.’

“All my training as a girl was so… academic. The powers passed from my mother and grandmother were divinely sourced. Not something one could learn from practical wizardry so, while I have some training, none of it was… none of it was anything I could practice. Nothing I learned were things I could take with me in any useful fashion and I find that so… frustrating.”

Link says nothing to that.

“I’m a little embarrassed, if I’m honest. Aren’t I supposed to be good at this?”

Link snorts.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Relax,” he says out loud.

“I can’t just relax,” she says, offended.

“Not with that face,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

He smiles at her.

“If you’re trying to improve my mood, you’re doing a poor job of it.” She stares out over the massive glacial basin that makes up Rito Lake, to the mountain range beyond. “If Draga is right, then someone killed Revali’s family while we were... elsewhere. I can’t stand it. I honestly… I can’t.”

Link’s not smiling anymore.

“It’s just absurd,” she says, aware that she’s starting to babble, to become frantic. “Because there’s nothing to gain from it. I mean… of all the Champions... Revali is gone. Revali’s abilities were singular. That was the… the whole point with him, you see, that he was the first of his family to do what he did. There was nothing he inherited. Nothing special in his bloodline. He did everything he did on his own so attacking his family is unwarranted and…” She shakes out her hands. She was clenching them, you see. “That’s stupid, Link,” she says angrily, choking a little. “That’s stupid. Why would someone do that to them?”

“Maybe no one did,” Link says gently. “I could be an accident.”

“That’s worse though! Don’t you understand? That’s worse!”

Link says nothing to that.

“They’re gone.” She covers her mouth with her hands. “They died while I was doing other things.”

Link says nothing.

The sun’s starting to fall in earnest now, a warm blush of orange receding from the clouds over the mountains. She can see her breath in the air and she thinks of sitting here, one hundred years ago while Revali filled the silence with assurances that, hey, most people are idiot nay-sayers and morons. Whiners and charlatans worthy of nothing but her contempt and fuck them anyways. They could go to hell. What did they know?

Zelda bends a little at the waist, leaning forward over the edge until the vertigo rushes her. Her hair slides forward over her shoulders and hangs, framing the fall to the icy waters below and –

“Did you know he was shot down?” she gasps.

Link, who instinctively looped an arm around her waist moments before, says nothing.

“They say he… he faced the Windblight on top of Medoh and he was… they all saw him fall.”

Link says nothing.

“He would have hated that.”

Link, still, says nothing.

“You know, we were friends?” she says though it hurts to do so. “He would fly to meet me at the castle and, sometimes, he would sneak me out to do field surveys when I should have been praying. He… he thought praying for salvation was stupid. He liked that I was trying to find practical ways to fight back. He said it was ‘very Rito’ of me.” She laughs, but it stings. “Goddess, it’s been one hundred years. Why do I keep thinking I’m going to see them again? Why does it feel like I still have time? And then I remember and its…”

Link has his arms around her ribs, somewhere between a hug and cautionary hold to keep her from rolling off the landing. He commits to a hug then, pulling her against him and kind of collaring her arms between her chest and his. He always hugs her way too tightly, but for whatever reason she prefers that – the feeling of being contained somehow. Like she could scream for days and it would be okay to do so. Link would just absorb it, like lightning coursing to ground.

They watch the sun set over Revali’s Landing.

  Draga is looking up at her. He’s seated by a light source of some kind, a fire maybe or a hearth with the remains of a fire, something dim enough she can’t see his face in full detail but even in the dark she knows his features – the dark dramatic line of his jaw and brow, that he’s thinking about something, a hundred miles away. And yet, when he looks up at her he’s unfamiliar. His eyes – green in the dark, but there’s something beyond the surface, like live coals in deep water. The sands shift under her feet. She can see her own breath in the desert cold. Draga tilts his head and asks her what she is doing. He asks her very calmly.

He asks her because she’s fitting an arrow to the string of a bow. The bow is gold. Her hands are also gold, dripping with gold, a warm oily honey of gold soaking her arms from the elbow down. The shaft is platinum. The arrowhead has dull internal luminance.

“What are you doing?” he says again.

She draws the line back, smearing gold across her cheek.

“What are you –?”

 She wakes up.

There’s a thin, watery line of sunrise visible through the slits between the rug walls of their room. For a moment, she can’t recall the strange octagon shape of the apartment, the feather bed and heavy quilt around her, the elaborate patterns in the tenting walls. The soft creak of wood brings her slowly back. They’re at the Rito Village inn – a sturdy wooden structure built (like the rest of the village) into the side of the impossible central spire that marks the Rito stronghold. The rooms are dozens of nest-style wooden platforms enclosed by retractable cloth walls and warmed by depressed stone hearths at the center of the floor.

She can hear the faint sound of birds outside.

She lies there, shocked by her calm. Horrified by Link who sleeps on undisturbed beside her. Horrified by the sham of his safety in her bed – one they share by habit now despite what that might suggest. For a while, she lies there, hopeful that Link’s sleeping façade will break apart and he’ll wake too. He’ll ask her if she saw Draga like he did once before and she will not be alone with it.

But Link lies dead asleep with his arm under his head, his bangs in his eyes, pale lashes laid against his cheekbones. Even in the dim dawn light he looks peaceful. Not like a man having a divinely shared nightmare. Not like someone she can blame for infecting her with some viral strain of violence. She hates the small hopeful part of herself eager to pin the problem on Link and rolls away from him, throwing the covers back so she can creep across the cool wooden floor and make use of the water basin and clean washcloth laid out by the door.

She dresses quickly, shakily. Picks up her water canteen from where she left it just outside the door to chill in the mountain air. She rinses her mouth out, puts on her boots and that’s when she hears a faint knock against the door frame from outside. She answers slowly, peering out into the cold dawn morning. It’s Draga. He’s over-dressed in Snowquill gear and a scarf. The cold in this region irritates everything in him that can be irritated, but it’s 4am and he shouldn’t be awake much less knocking at their door and for a moment a tiny frisson of dread curls around her heart and –

“Mishi is in danger,” he says.

She blinks. “What?”

“The curse,” he says impatiently pulling his scarf down. His nose is a red from the cold. She can see his breath. “I know it’s structure now, but it’s accelerating. I can break it, but I need you. Both of you.”

Link’s awake and dressed in seconds. They follow Draga up the multi-tiered spirals of steps and landings that comprise the Rito Village, rushing to keep pace with him as he only uses every other step to climb. The wood groans every time he pushes off, none of this village being built for someone his size and density.

“What’s going on?” Zelda demands.

“The spell is designed to resist magical defense,” he says, skipping two stairs and forcing the smaller Hylians to race up the steps after him. “Ancient sorcery. Something changed when you began to treat Mishi with magic and when I stripped out the obfuscation from the spell, it triggered some kind of failsafe.” He sounds frustrated. “We need to break it now, before it can get its teeth into Mishi. I have a… a way to do it.”

They reach the small quarantined platform that makes up Mishi’s apartment. The moment they enter… Zelda knows something is wrong. Mishi’s lying, seemingly asleep, surrounded by a series of wire and paper lanterns. Draga’s plastered paper protection wards on every wall. But there’s… something in the room. Like the air pressure inside his home is twice what it shoulder be. The air’s harder to breathe and tastes… chemical and sour. Like fermentation and machine oil. She knows that smell. She knows it in her nightmares and Zelda moves to kneel on the far side of Mishi’s bed, laying a hand over the Rito’s temple and forehead.

“He’s cold,” she says. “He’s breathing but he’s cold.”

She tries to heal, yelps when it rebounds against her palm. Frantic, she spreads her hands and tries to push a purification but, again, nothing happens.

“I can’t… I can’t heal him. What –?”

Draga shakes his head. “He’s not sick, the curse is drawing off his life. We need to break it to heal him.”

“How?” Link demands.

“I can do it,” Draga says.

Then he hesitates.

“Draga!” Zelda cries. Mishi’s breath is visible now. He’s shivering, violently. “Draga, he’s dying.”

“I can do this,” Draga whispers.

He sounds afraid. She’s never heard that before, not from Draga and it shocks her how profoundly she’d cemented him in her mind – a fixed point, unshakable as the fucking sun. Hearing him now, it puts a fine surgical line through the image she’d constructed of him. He looks at her and his eyes are undeniably lit by some internal flame – like fairy lights but darker and older and that fire of it sets something in her heart racing. He starts to say something but the words catch on his lips and that surgical seam splits into a wound, pulling it open and suddenly she can see past her assumptions: He’s not just afraid, he’s terrified.

“I can do it, but I need you ground me.”

“What?”

“You and Link. I need you to shield me.” He’s pushing his sleeves up to his elbows, kneeling now so he’s on both knees beside Mishi’s bed and there’s something… threatening in that: Draga on his knees. He looks at her, tone low, urgent. “We don’t have time. You source your power from Hylia so I need you to hide what I’m doing in that power. Do you understand?” And when Zelda stares, frozen, he raises his voice. “Zelda, do you understand me or not? I can’t do this unless you –!”

Link moves to stand beside him.

 Draga stops. They both stop. The whole room (the whole world) seems to stop.

Link’s got the sacred blade out. (When did he draw it? Did she see it? Why?) He’s calm. He stares down at Draga and his eyes aren’t human for a moment. They’re composed of the same ancient metal as the blade, lit from the inside by the cold silver flame that sets the air around him moving. His breath is visible in the air, his hair and clothes disturbed by a wind localized to him alone and… Zelda can feel it. Her skin warming, her palms heating like a skillet to flame. She can taste whatever Link’s drawing on – bitter sweet, like licking the residue of sap from summer-hot skin. It makes her want to move… to yell… to set her teeth in something and bite down. She –

Link drives the blade point first into the floor next to Mishi’s bed.

Before their very eyes, thin sap-green branches start to thread up from the old floorboards, infused with borrowed vitality. Link goes down on one knee before the sword, reversing his hold on the hilt so he can grip it like a mountaineer grips a cliff-face, not a weapon but a handhold. Then he lays his opposite hand against Mishi’s chest.

The Hero looks at them both.

“Move,” he says.

Draga does not hesitate.

He pulls a blade from his belt and cuts his right palm open.

Blood splatters the floor. He closes his bleeding hand over a bone and ruby pendant at his neck. He rips it from the cord and holds it in his fist against his heart. His other hand he lays palm down on Mish’s chest, covering Link’s hand, but Link doesn’t even flinch, not at the blood, the violence of it, or the sick lurch in the air when Draga begins to speak. He casts in a language Zelda can’t understand – too old to fathom, in a voice that seems less like one man speaking and more like a dozen, three dozen, a hundred voices speaking at once – and the shadows gather in the corners of the room. Shadows deepen, lengthen, darken and suddenly the only light in the room is the silver from the sword, gauzy ribbons of radiance thrown around them on an erratic wind.

Draga sees the shadows, but keeps going.

He keeps speaking until he’s shouting and Zelda realizes the voices aren’t him. He’s trying to speak louder than the shadows in the room which are beginning to slither toward him, sending forth rhizoids of darkness across the flowering floor, probing the edges of the light, seeking a path to the source. The room stinks now – of blood, of rot, of flowers and fresh sap, of iron, and the forge. Draga is bellowing now, as loud as he can but the shadows are buzzing, are loud, a deafening cacophony rising like an infinite field of cicadas around them.

Zelda knows without knowing that if Draga loses his voice in the riot, the shadows will penetrate Link’s barrier wall and have every drop of blood from the caster. She knows without knowing, that every voice in the shadow has a name, and every single one of them knows Draga by his. They are clawing, frantic, cannibalistic and mad trying to get past Link to reach him. Link they know, but they can’t look at because (there is a Wolf composed of woven moonlight stalking through the valley of shadow) he’s impervious to them.

But she…

She is their Enemy.

Zelda moves now. She grabs the hilt of the sacred blade, her hand closing around Link’s, her other hand grabbing Draga’s bloody wrist where the pendants has begun to burn him now. She can smell the sick acrid scent of his palm. She can feel Link struggling to breathe. She closes the circuit of three, Mishi at the center, and the shadows begin to scream.

She opens her eyes. She thinks they’re filled with light.

“I can see you,” she says to the legion.

The screaming stops.

Gold runs from her palms like water, translucent and infused with sunlight, running down her arms and dripping from her elbows. Her skin’s begun to shine internally, golden light sparking along the tracery system of her veins then shining from within. Her palm on Draga’s skin steams, a gold mist rising from the place where their hands meet, like an ocean finding a lava-flow. Her fingers around Link’s are electric, rain infused with lightning.

“I can see you,” Zelda says again, louder, and the shadows flinch back from her voice. “I can see you, damn you, get out!”

in whose name, says the darkest corner of the room.

The shadows are burning away before her light, but the in the corner of the room, directly behind Draga, the darkness seems to pull inward, deepening infinitely into the wall, like a mouth opening behind him and Zelda can feel Draga feeling it – that there is something behind him. It’s nothing. It’s just a dark corner in a room. It’s a black hole. It eats every ounce of light that sears from her skin. She rises to her feet, gripping hold of Link and Draga more tightly. There is something in the darkness and she can almost see it.

in whose name, says the thing in the darkness.

Draga is still speaking, but when the thing speaks he falters. He starts to look.

“Don’t look at it!” Zelda shouts, pulling on his hand. “Look at me! Don’t look at it!”

in whose name, says the shadow behind Draga.

And Zelda can see now that the shadow is Draga’s shadow, cast against the wall but impossibly large.

in whose name, it says again, closer now.

Draga’s hair moves like something is breathing on him, some terrible maw inches from the back of his neck. But Draga keeps casting. A line of blood opens along Draga’s right cheek. But Draga keeps casting. The voice from the shadow shakes the room.

IN WHAT NAME DO YOU ACT

Zelda’s right hand ignites. The sword ignites. Link moves. Time twitches infinitesimally and he’s there, then gone, a silver after-image snapping into follow-through and the Hero’s put the Master Sword through the oak beam in the corner. But there’s no shadow there any longer. The blade’s dark again where it rests in the solid wood block, buckled and splintered outward now as though struck by a blow far greater than Link’s one-armed killing-strike. (If there were, in fact, a greater blow possible.) Link breathes hard, slowly, through his teeth, and Zelda can see a line of sweat run from his hairline to his jaw.

Then he wrenches the blade free and stares at the mundane wreckage he’s made of the wall.

“Zelda?”

“It’s gone.”

He turns, afraid. “Mishi?”

“He’ll be fine,” Draga says.

He’s wrapping his palm calmly in a clean strip of bandage. Mishi – still unconscious, still identical to her eyes as the fallen Champion a century past – lays quietly, breathing the slow, deep, even breaths of slumber. There’s nothing dark in the room, just the usual shade where the lantern light can’t reach and, in the face of true darkness, every shadow seems bright as day.

Zelda covers her face, pushing her hair from her eyes. “Thank the Goddess,” she says.

Then, she looks at Draga.

Link is also looking at Draga.

He finishes wrapping his other hand. Then he sighs, running a hand through his hair, disturbing only a few of the gold clasps there. “I guess we should talk,” he says.

 They congregate in Draga’s room. He’s so big, the Rito gave him their only entirely wooden cabin – a sun-facing room, the balcony open to the dawn. There’s nothing but the mountain range stretched out beyond the basin, a long, jagged line against the horizon and beyond that – the faint shimmer of light from the highlands beyond. It occurs to Zelda, that he’s very near his homeland now. That it’s, perhaps, three or four days ride into the valley that feeds into Gerudo country and suddenly he seems strange – less the traveler on the road, more a desert creature drawing back relentlessly to the habitat that produced him.

That said, it does nothing to stop the three of them from sitting down, cross-legged in a circle near enough that their knees are touching while Draga tries to figure out the vocabulary in Hylian for what he did.

Zelda knows what he did. Link probably… has some notion, his intuition being a match for any academic knowledge. The Master Sword is laying in his lap. The naked metal, she knows, is comforting to him. His hand lays on the cross guard, bare fingers worrying the details in the hilt. Zelda has a hand on his knee because Link is her totem in times of uncertainty. Draga has his elbows braced against his knees, one hand set against his chin, fingers curled over his mouth. Thinking.

Eventually, Zelda makes the first move.

“Draga, that was unfathomably dangerous.”

“That is ironic coming from you.”

“I overstrained myself using my magic inefficiently. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you made a minor pact with a demon to break that curse.”

“With a spirit, Princess, not necessarily a demon, though several were present in an opportunistic capacity.” There’s a short beat of horrified silence from his Hylian audience. His eyes narrow. “I’ve been on the road since I was fifteen. I like to think I am fairly dangerous myself, Zelda.” He lowers his voice slightly, tone softening. “That does not mean I did what I did lightly.”

“You opened a door –” Zelda begins.

He cuts her off. “The door was left open decades ago. It wasn’t I that left it so or did you think I didn’t see what stands on the other side?” He looks away, staring at the floor between them. “What you saw… the shadow on the wall, Princess, was just that, a shadow. I knew the demon wouldn’t dare show its face in the presence of Hylia’s acolytes.”

Link, eyes never leaving Draga’s, speaks up. “The demon?” he says.

Draga says nothing for a while.

“Curses are difficult. I needed something more.”

Which is an evasion.

“The shadow we saw,” says Link, startling the other two. “It wasn’t there because you summoned it. It was there because it’s always there. You used blood magic, but that wasn’t dangerous. What was dangerous was that… thing in the corner because it’s waiting for you to slip up.” Link’s hand on the Master Sword curls into a fist and she wonders if the blade is speaking to him. “You’re cursed. That’s why you know so much about it, because you’re cursed. There’s a demon in your shadow.”

Draga, finally, looks Link in the eyes. He seems tired. “That was a lot of words and yet… succinctly put.”

Zelda leans forward. “Draga, are you in danger?”

He laughs, broad shoulders shaking with the effort. “I am always in danger, Princess. That’s the point.” He sighs. “But presently? No. The curse is dormant except in the very specific circumstances that Link described. It’s a family curse. So, I’m used to it.”

Zelda feels her eyes start to sting. “What?”

“Generational curses,” Draga says, almost conversational in tone. “They’re indistinguishable from a pre-meditated hex. My entire family for generations has carried the curse. We have no recollection now of where it came from or who crossed some demon in their actions, but it’s always been there on the edge of our lives. My mothers and my sisters and my ancestors before them were all ward-workers and war-maids of Din’s acolyte for a reason: to defend themselves.”

He shakes his head.

“So now you know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but, like I said, it’s dormant unless I try to barter for power beyond my own.”

“But you directly summoned a spirit to break the curse on Mishi.” Zelda waits, but he doesn’t answer and she feels this… heat rising behind her throat, behind her teeth. “Why would you do that?” And when Draga looks away, she sits forward. “Look at me, why would you do exactly what that thing has been waiting for you to do? I saw your face. I know it terrifies you. Why would you put yourself in its way?”

“I needed the power,” he murmurs.

“You can’t do that.”

He looks at her. “Why not?”

“This was our task, our responsibility. Link and I. You shouldn’t have risked yourself just because I wasn’t strong enough to –”

“Zelda,” Draga says, “believe it or not, perhaps I didn’t do it just for you and Link.” Draga’s staring at her, unreadable. “Perhaps watching an entire family die in the throes of abomination is more than I can tolerate and perhaps that was the entire reason I left Gerudo Town in the first place: To learn how to protect people from exactly this kind of thing.” He shakes his head slowly. “I understand that, for a time, the world largely revolved around you and your hero, but this was not about you.”

Zelda blinks, stunned.

“I… that’s not what I meant!”

“I know. You never mean it,” he murmurs in a tone that she can’t interpret any other way than affectionately sarcastic, which is really just a nice way of being condescending.

She wants to hit him so much her fist curls in anticipation.

He notices, pale green eyes flicking idly to her half-cocked arm. “Are you going to punch me, Princess?”

“No,” Zelda says. “You’re just… trying to make me mad to distract me.”

“So you’re not going to hit me?”

“I am,” Link says, which the only warning either of them get before Link lunges.

He punches Draga right in the face. So hard, it knocks the bigger man backwards onto the floor. This, apparently, was not one of the scenarios that Draga had anticipated because he ends up sprawled out, swearing over the sound of Link yelling, “Not about us, huh!?”

Link tackles the larger man with momentum that shouldn’t apply to someone his size, hitting Draga at his waist as he rises. He hits him the way a cannon hits a building, knocking the Gerudo back down with a crash. Then he’s on top of the other man and just swinging with everything he has. Draga tolerates that for exactly zero seconds and literally, again, throws Link off. But Link’s hitting his stride now so he comes out of the throw with one of those infuriating little… flip things that he does, landing on his feet like an absurd cat. Which makes Draga really mad.

And then they’re just brawling.

“Stop that!” Zelda shrieks. “Are you kidding me?!”

Link kicks Draga in the chest. Draga grabs his leg with one massive hand and throws him into the four-poster bed, smashing it. Link doesn’t even stop. He’s up and charging Draga immediately, body checking him so hard he crashes into the wall. Zelda, panicked, thinks they are doing the Rito Village a lot of property damage in a very short amount of time. Link and Draga are both yelling at each other now. Nothing intelligible, just angry fighting noises as they crash around the room, destroying things.

“We are half a mile up in the air!” she screams, jumping out of the way as Draga bull-rushes into the wall spine first because Link is trying to choke him from behind. “If you go through a wall you will fall to your death!”

Link’s still clinging gamely on, arm hooked around Draga’s throat from behind. Draga ducks forward, hard, throwing Link over his shoulder where he slams flat on the ground, air going out of him. Then Draga just sits on Link’s chest which, when you’re Draga’s size, is an effective end to most fights.

“I will light you both on fire!” Zelda screams, not sure if she’s serious.

“Are you done?!” Draga’s yelling at the man beneath him.

Link hisses. Literally.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Bite me!” Link snarls.

“What in the name of the gods is wrong with you?”

“Are you with us or not?” he snarls.

“What?”

“Are you with us or not?” Link repeats, through his teeth, shoving at Draga’s knee so he can sit up. He’s sweaty, hair sticking to his forehead, face red. “Well?!”

“Of course, I am, you infuriating madman!” Draga pantomimes like he’s going to choke the Hero of Hyrule right here on the floor. “I didn’t dodge a demon because it was the right thing to do, you dense son of a bitch! I did it because it would have killed you both to watch Revali die again like it kills you just to speak their fucking names. Are you happy now?”

Link flops back on the floor, exhaling. “Yeah.”

Draga, disgusted, stands up and marches out of the room. “I can’t even look at you.”

Link makes no move to follow him.  He just lies there breathing hard, arms spread on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Zelda, very primly, kneels next to him so she can stare down at her duly appointed knight, who has bits of shredded feather pillow in his hair and a bloody nose.

“Really?” she says.

“He’s with us,” Link informs her.

It’s infuriating that, somehow, that was exactly the question she wanted to ask.

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go to chapter 6...