if i die tomorrow - permanent hiatus

her

     An entire week trickled through my fingers.

     Lurelin Village was untouched, thankfully, I didn't know if I could take another loss, so soon.

     How much I didn't know.

     However, she wasn't there. I knew as soon as I stepped through the gateway to the quiet seafaring town. 

     I turned and walked directly out. 

     Numbly I took in the ruins that once was Goponga Village. Without sparing a second look, without even searching around for any survivors, I turned my head away, blinking rapidly. 

     There were no survivors. I didn't need to seek them to know that.

     I coughed just to break the deathly, suffocating silence and walked away, my feet sending lazy ripples unfurling its reach across the calm face of the water. 

     As I left behind the broken-down town, I wondered detachedly if I was still sane. I didn't even feel the smallest glimmer of shock anymore as I watched my world fall apart, one bit at a time. 

     What once was the unthinkable had now become my entire life. I shrugged it off, pointedly ignoring the bitter taste on my tongue, the heat rising behind my eyes.

     Deya Village had fallen as well. It must have been easy, to place a battalion of Guardians over the hill and attack from above. My face remained impassive, my hands cold and still by my sides. I turned my back and left quietly.

     All the stables had survived. I hadn't been expecting that. Perhaps Ganon didn't bother with them, pinning them as hardly a force of resistance. He was an idiot. She could only be at one of the stables at this point.

     With every one I visited, I felt a tiny, chilly chip of panic settle in my stomach, desperate urgency rose a touch in my ever-tightening chest.

     Snowfield Stable was my final hope. I urged Epona faster forwards, her hooves throwing up tufts of snow. 

     The straggly soldiers littering the place looked up as I raced forwards, skidding to a stop.

     I ignored them, their sharp-eyed stares searching my scuffed body. My icy blue eyes, shining from underneath the shadow cast by my travelling cloak scanned the stable, people bustling along with a harried look on their bright-red faces. 

     My hands tightened on Epona's reins and I had to fight down a surge of nausea, my head spinning, reeling from the sudden weight of everything crashing down on me at the same time.

     She wasn't here.

     How? How?! 

     I took a deep breath, tasted the mountains' sharp scent flare in my lungs, and pushed down the mounting pressure brewing in me. 

     There was only one more possibility. Yet...

     The world tipped for a fraction of a second. I jerked my head, impatient. Weariness, the limitation of a mortal body mattered nothing to me at this point. I must keep going. 

     I nudged Epona's head away from the tantalizing warmth of the stable, the presence of real, actual beds so close to me, yet so far from my reach, and raced away.

     I was returning to Dueling Peaks Stable.

     I galloped without a stop across the fields of Hyrule, tearing across the grass, dodging monsters and Guardians alike. Riding made me feel as though I was leaving behind myself, my troubles whistling through my hair without leaving a mark on my ravaged spirit.