Fields of Gold

The Beckoning Darkness

               

The air was clearer.

Somehow, the stench of Twilight seemed less pungent. Zelda breathed deeply and sensed the freshness of the air drifting in through her open window. She leaned her head against the hard stone of the window frame and drank in the strange yet familiar clearness. In her mind's eye, she imagined that it was evening time past the reaches of Twilight. The air was gentle and cool, feeling like true dusk, if that was something that could even be sensed. Regardless of what time of day it was beyond the wall of Twilight, it could not be denied that there was a tangible difference in the atmosphere of the captive Hyrule.

Still reeling from her latest encounter with the Gerudo King, Zelda had stubbornly positioned herself in front of the window, trying desperately to sort out the wild tempest of emotions in her heart. She had the wool shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders as if the soft fabric would shelter her from her internal storm.

The admission of her bitter past still burned on her lips and she wished to wash herself clean of her words. She nearly regretted telling Ganondorf of the truth of her parents' death and her own dark mourning, for it had ripped open old wounds in her already vulnerable state. Since her last visit in the field, she had been trying to patch up her torn soul. This raging pain of her past was something that was unfortunately familiar, but it was something that she could handle. Eventually Zelda would be able to push the memories and the pain aside and move on, for the time being, until the time would come and her wounds would be opened again. It was the endless cycle that would haunt her until her dying day. She had accepted this fate already.

It was another secret revealed that turned her stomach and flushed her cheeks at the mere thought. Zelda groaned and turned away from the dim sky. A cold and gray room greeted her as she turned around.

"I am afraid of myself when I am with you," she whispered to the emptiness, repeating what she had admitted to Ganondorf. How he had taken that, she could only guess. What other way could he have understood? It only had one possible meaning. The time she had spent with the Gerudo king was turbulent and confusing, but one thought was perfectly clear.

His hands holding her own, the way he gravitated to her, always needing to stand near, Zelda pushing herself away only because it was wrong to want him near...

Zelda closed her eyes and shoved that wretched thought down into the depths of denial. How could she even entertain that fantasy? Internally, Zelda shuddered at the word "fantasy."

No, it was not a fantasy. It was just...it was just forbidden thoughts escaping their rightful prison. Yet even as she tried to imprison her fantasy, her willful mind wandered back to that first vision, of him standing in the field looking like a Gerudo man and less like the enemy. That was her first time realizing that her feelings toward him were not as hostile as she wanted them to be.

"Stop this, you silly fool," Zelda reprimanded herself as she shook her head crazily. She stormed over to the bed and threw herself on the hard mattress. As she glared at the ceiling and cursed herself, part of Zelda wondered what would happen if she just let herself fall into whatever feelings had struck her heart?

Without wasting a breath, Zelda answered her own musing.

"It would be nothing short of a disaster," she muttered under her breath, faintly echoing in the Twilight. She answered with another question; how could anything get worse?

Zelda's voice of reason fiercely countered. She could almost hear herself in a sharp reprimanding tone, "how can you say that as if there is no hope? The Hero is out there fighting this evil. As long as there is hope, then you must continue to fight your own battle as well."