If I Just Dreamed

Sympathy- (7 of 13)

It was just as she imagined, but... larger.

At the sight, she melted. She could drip like sweat at any given moment, however, what good would that do for anyone? Rock was cindered and scorched. Lava shot up from their geyers an debris rained, barely within an inch of their bodies. Regardless, they moved with purpose. They jumped from the platforms, and juggled with pressure plates, and time. Link and Niah moved with a pattern, but they spoke little as they moved in tandem. There was no time for gawking and gazing.

When they got to the center of the temple, the main room, Niah could see the giant magnet, the midpoint of it all, and the rotating floors to the left of them. Link pulled out a notebook and what looked like a stick with a shard or charcoal attached, a pencil.. They had hardly just started.

"Why are you doing that? You'll get a map later, I'm sure."

Link didn't respond as he looked around. The magnet, the platforms. He saw everything, and wrote it down. Had he been doing this the whole time?

"Well, duh," Link removed his hat and tucked it into his belt. "-but the last time ." His voice trailed off.

Niah offered no comment.

"It's funny," Link said, but he didn't look up from the notebook. "This is the second run through, and there's a theme to it."

Niah raised an eyebrow and brought her hand to her hip. "And what's so funny about that?"

Link shrugged, and folded the notebook close while he put the charcoal pencil behind his ear. "Nothing, nevermind. I'll tell you later."

Niah did not know him very well. But she knew he wouldn't.

Again though, they leaped over the platforms, retrieved the key, and made their way back across. As tedious and annoying as it was, there was no rest with him. Link could parry-thrust a spear from the shadows, yet even then, never did any weariness show through as they progressed.

The next room unlocked, and when the door opened, a heat swelted their faces. The were closer to the lava than the previous two rooms. Dodongos were prevalent as well, and-

"Blood."

Niah fanned herself with her hand, "What?"

"Blood," Link held his gaze at the wall. Through the ashes and red, she could see it. "I'm surprised. Gorons don't bleed." It was to himself. He reached up and touched it. It was cindered, but it crumbled, dry, all the same. "They were specifically evolved to avoid damage to the skin. To make one bleed takes a lot of power."

Niah grimace, "I never heard of it." And that was the truth, there was no story or plotline about the Gorons, they were creatures - a species - all the same.

"No..." Link trailed off, his eyes followed the trail on the wall. No matter how many times he traced it, how many times blood curled from the heat and fell, Link still pressed himself into it. The mystery.

"It could be the Fused Shadow."

At that moment, he again pulled out his notebook. Filtered through the filled pages, and as Niah peeked behind his back, the words were a jumbled mess. At first she assumed that the handwriting was bad, but just a moment after, realized that this was not English, this was Hylian. A language that she did not know. She could not read it, or decipher it. With each stroke of the pencil, it was with intent, like her father when he used to write in his own journals, or when he'd write messages in her lunch box before school. Curved and meticulously thought of from years of practice.

It was hot, and Niah fanned herself some more, nearly she mentioned something to Link about getting a move on, but deep in her mind, she knew better than to press him. Link said nothing until the pencil was back behind his ear, and the notebook was back in his pocket.