The Witch of Northester

As Past and Future Bleed into the World Below

"Zelda? Zelda, wake up!"

I'm drowsy. Too drowsy to wake. I want to sleep, but not like a few more minutes or even hours. A deep slumber. I want to sleep and never wake.

Someone is shaking me. Stop shaking me! Let me sleep. Let me die in peace, never to be disturbed. It's what I deserve. Good for nothing daughter traitor am I.

"Zelda!"

And the sudden voice brings me out of my would be coma. I look up, and realize I'm in the arms of my lover...

...I mean, the one I love.

"Bren?" I blink several times. It's still dark, but like that early dark of dawn, where the frost has blanketed everything and deep indigo is giving way to sunlight. "What're you doing here?"

"I...kind of pulled a fast one." He smirked. "I created a distraction. Burned Northester to the ground."

I gasped. "You what?"

"I thought it was only fitting. They did so to your shop."

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

He sobered. "You don't have to tell me."

I sat up, feeling my head. "I'm terribly dizzy, but...why? Why did you come back for me, Bren?"

"I meant what I said before. I don't care what my father says or anyone else in town." He took me by the arms, facing me dead on. "I choose you. I want you, Zelda. I choose us!"

I felt my eyes wet again, and I collapsed into his arms, the two of us embracing tightly as I whispered into his shoulder, "We don't have any money."

"We'll figure something out."

"I don't have a home!"

"Neither do I!"

I sat back, sniffing as tears still trickled down my cheeks. "I don't deserve you."

Smiling, he stroked the tears away from my cheek. I tilted my hand, letting his palm cradle my face. He pulled me against him, holding me tightly in that moment and it felt as if all the world and its hatred had gone away. He took a deep breath, and I listen to the thrum of his heart within his ribcage, throat humming with his simple response-

"I could say the same about you."