Written in Blood

XXIII . Patched up

As you might expect, Nightmare Land has its fair share of nightmares. In sleep and in wakefulness.

After the princess and I went out on the town- an enthralling experience, by the way- we retired to the room in clean clothes and started to patch ourselves up.

———

Those arrows bit back when we had to pull them out, the heads of them ripping up more skin coming out.

"Do you mind?" I snark at her.

Neither of us are medics, at all, but we managed to wrap up our wounds. The pain is the worst part by far, mixed with how quickly our first coating of bandages saturates with blood.

I swear... how is that stuff gushing out so much? The blood seems to have surpassed the amount that should be healthy.

Zelda ignores me, taking off the soaked bandages, dyed a deep red. The first batch only lasted for around an hour, the sun hasn't even completely set yet, still hanging onto the dregs of the day.

Anju didn't give us enough bandages, we're already running low, but I guess we'll use these until we run out.

There's a bowl on the table next to Zelda, filled with water and a cloth to clean off the blood. The water stings as it makes contact with my once again infuriated skin, trying to douse the fire in my body. I'll have to redo her bandages next. We've both degraded to the point of barely hanging on, and I know my eye bags look like bruises too. My feeling of panic has yet to subside, running on empty back in this familiar nightmare. I know it sounds stupid, that thing in the sky is long gone, and even if it wasn't, I'd be fine. Why does that sound like a lie?

After the damp cloth, I can feel her slathering the red potion lotion onto the wound on my back, and then onto the rest of them. Against the raw pain of the multiple holes in my body, the goo is as cool and as full of relief as I remember. If I can focus on that I can ignore the feeling of this place that still haunts it, the same and yet so different.

"Okay, your turn to play medic."

I slip out of my thoughts, gingerly inching my body off the bed and onto the chair.

Thankfully, she only got cuts on her arms, I was the one who mainly felt the wrath of those Gerudos. Oh, and there's the slice on her neck.

She starts to roll up her sleeves, and I see her's are soaked with blood too.

I get to work untying the cloth- much gentler than her, I might add. The one on her throat was wrapped up too, but the blood's mostly clotted, although I can see some new beads forming between the forming scab, not to mention the dried blood still practically smeared across her neck like a grotesque second mouth. A bloody mouth.

I reach to get the cloth soaking in water, which has already been stained scarlet from my own wounds.

I start to mop up the blood on her, feeling her arm muscles tense against the pain, eyes squeezed shut.

In the silence, my mind travels through town, watching people disappear as those three days ticked on. Some remained, even as their death was clear in the sky. They'd been in denial at first, still in a hurry to get their carnival ready, but they all crumbled eventually, seeing their fate as it crashed into the earth. And they all had to accept it.

I go through that hole in the wall that's since been patched up, seeing the doomed couple, awaiting their death together. The swordsman- who looks exactly like that weird guy in the desert- huddled up behind that block of wood, shaking with terror. Then at that ranch, where Cremia let Romani have some Chateau Romani, accepting that nowhere in this accursed land is safe from Majora's wrath.