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“What’s it s’posed t’ look like?”
Midna’s sure she’s hearing things, at first. It wasn’t often her travelling companion spoke, and when he did it was with a low, soft yet gravelly voice that’d be all too easy to mistake for the leaves crunching beneath his boots. The night’s dark but young. It could’ve been the scuttle of a chipmunk returning to its nest.
When she looks down at Link from the branch she’s perched on, he’s where she left him. The Master Sword, snug in its sheath, leans against a tree stump, its passive glow barely illuminating its wielder’s efforts to slide his left boot off. As he pulls it free, a bare foot wiggles in the night air and he grunts, angling the boot toward the sword’s light and sticking an arm inside to fish around for his lost sock.
Midna sighs and leans back against her tree, turning back to the forest with a shake of her head. What a bizarre situation she found herself in. The stories she’d been told in her youth hadn’t described the ‘divine beast’ in great detail, but she’d filled in the blanks. She’d imagined a thing. Monstrous, brutal in its power but still beautiful in its own, nearly deific way. Instead she’d discovered a rancher - gentle, intense, fearless and soft. A bleeding heart if ever there was one. At times, also painfully useless. At first she’d resented him for it, repulsed by how different he had been to her expectations. Now - though she’d never say it aloud - the contrast is endearing.
One of her claws taps the skin of her arm in a slow rhythm. As she hears his shuffling below, the fond nickering of that beast he rides, a sharp, familiar pang spreads through her stomach. Above and despite everything else, Link is normal, or he had been. He isn’t, now. She’d seen it for herself the many times he’d been engulfed in flames and risen from the ashes a man he wasn’t before. All because of the choices made long before he was born. Because of the wars that had been waged, the blood that had been spilled, the anger that had been nurtured and stoked. Midna curses that ‘Hero of Time’ whose tunic he wore for not finishing the damn job. She curses her ancestors for letting their greed taint the magic she still cherishes. She curses Zant and the politics that had bent him into such pathetic shapes. And herself, for everything else.
“Midna?”
She looks down. That silly boy is staring up at her with those big blue eyes. He still has a boot on, just one bare foot buried in the grass.
Midna’s voice catches on a giggle. “Come on, hero, you don’t need my help for that.”
“Wha’?” He follows her gaze down to his boot. The horse snorts. “No- ‘Pona! No, I- well, I…” Link shuffles a little, looking rather bashful. “Would you get down here for a minute? Please?”
She takes pity on him. Hopping from the branch, she watches him limp one-booted away, dropping to the grass with a huff and crossing his legs.
“Are all light-dwellers as strange as you?” It comes out a little softer than she’d have liked. The withering look he gives her, though, still gives her some satisfaction. He beckons with his head.
Sighing, she floats over to him, bringing herself closer to the forest floor. His eyes are boring into her, narrowing ever so slightly. Suddenly, she’s feeling more scrutinised than she ever had by the council members back home. “If you’re going to keep staring me…”
“Y’ overthinkin’ again?”
Curse him and his stupid observational skills. “Ugh, here we go-“
“The tappin’.” He demonstrates on himself, bopping a finger on the inside of his wristguard. “And, uh, you ignored me.”
So that had been him speaking earlier. Oops. She looks away. “Well, if you insist on mumbling all the time, excuse me if I don’t hear you.”
A smile quirks his lips. “I feel like ‘m shoutin’.”
“You’re not.”
“‘Pologies.”
The something-feeling doesn’t get much of a chance to bloom in her chest before she’s stamping it back down. In its place settles a hint of guilt. She looks back at him. He’s still smiling. “What did you want?”
“In the desert, you mentioned your home. And your magic.” Link begins to pick at his nail. Hypocrite. “I got t’ thinkin’. I only seen the nasty stuff, ain’t I? What’s it, uh, look like? Your magic. Proper.”
Midna gently bats at his hand with her own, flapping it away from the poor nail he’s made bloody before. Conceding, he stuffs both hands under his thighs. She thinks. “It’s… it was… cold. Like ice on an aching muscle. It was normal, and wonderful and us. Zant spoke of it as if it wasn’t who we are, like it’s not the same as our blood.”
“Weren’t talkin’ ‘bout him.” Link hums. He wiggles his hands free and lays his arms across his lap, offering his palms out to her. “Show me? What it’s like without him?”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Midna draws back a little, looking at the grass and hoping the fused shadow on her head does enough to obscure her shame. “I can’t- not like that- not since…”
A long moment passes. Branches creak in the breeze. She looks back up to find that Link hasn’t moved. Bare toes absently wiggling, his arms still rest on his shins, hands awaiting hers.
His sheer stubbornness irritates the life out of her. Only she’s allowed to be this insufferable. Still, his determination is catching. Her hands rest upon his, against the worn leather of his gloves. His fingers curl in slightly, steadying hers as they begin to tremor.
Midna doesn’t know what the man wants from her. He’d seen her snap chains, hold his sword and shield in a space pocket - that’s the extent of the magic she has left. He’s going to be sorely disappointed. Regardless, she knows he’ll just keep annoying her until she at least tries, so, she tries. Something easy, something harmless, something from home. She closes her eyes, reaches both down deep into her soul and out into the night air, beckoning from both directions to an energy she knows is still there, she knows she can still grasp, however weakly… and redirects it to the skin of her palms.
With a flicker, that familiar coolness trickles across the nerves in her hands. She cracks her eyes open and somehow, despite having little expectations, finds herself disappointed. A teal and orange light twirls upwards, fizzling out like smoke. She holds twilight itself in her palms, little black squares dancing about and fading within its tiny enclosure. This is something she used to do in her childhood, learning the bounds of her magic, taking the very twilight she lived in, and - with some effort, she wills the squares into a pattern, spiralling and condensing into the shape of a bird. With her full power, she could have given it false life. At home, she’d often create these little birds to keep her company at her desk. Fleeting reminders of whimsicality. Now, it was a shape, nothing more. Frustration gnaws at her chest. Her fingers twitch as she considers breaking the spell-
A tiny, breathy giggle comes from the hero.
She looks up. Link’s watching the display with childish wonder, eyes wide and shining in the teal-orange light, lips slightly parted as he follows the bird’s every movement. The way his hands cup hers reminds her of how he would hold one of those golden bugs, as if he’s been granted the honour of protecting something very delicate and precious.
Too late for her liking, Midna notices the ripple of her hair, creeping around to the rancher’s back and raising in the form of a hand to… what? At first she’s sick with the thought that the hand is there to rip him away. But then she looks back at the unhidden awe in his face and recognises it deep in her own head, and she realises that her hair had moved to hold him in much the same way he now holds her magic - her blood - her - in his hands. With wonder.
He’s the one her people’s legends spoke of. And he is delicate, and oh, so precious.