Triforce of Essence | Legend of Zelda Fan Fiction

Chapter 5: Blood

The next day, I feel like the walking dead—not fully awake, but not fully asleep. I haven’t pulled many all-nighters before, so I feel like I have a sleep hangover.

“Neri? Neri, are you listening?”

I flash back to reality to see Midna waving her small hand in front of my face. “Sheesh, you just zoned out completely.”

“Sorry, just tired is all,” I mumble, and try to make my eyes open a little wider.

Midna gives a disapproving ‘humph’. “Link can stay awake for five days at a time, and you’re falling asleep after one day.”

“Hey! Back in my world, people sleep all night every night”—except for the party-hard drunk idiots—“until morning or noon the next day, so get off my back.” It occurs to me that I sound exactly like my old man after he subsequently sleeps for fifteen hours straight.

Midna snickers at my short rage fit and turns back to Link, who is still asleep. I follow her gaze to the young man sprawled out under the blanket. His arms are uncovered, as are his legs, and his mouth is wide open as he snores absently. Midna sighs. “This is the problem,” she says, “once he falls asleep, the real issue is waking him up.”

“What do you mean?”

She gets a devilish grin. “Let me demonstrate.”

I watch with slight horror as she leans over to his ear. Why do I get the feeling that this will backfire on us?

Midna hovers over to his body, jumping into the air and fluttering before landing again; reminding me of Neil Armstrong’s first few steps on the moon. Her lips part, and she declares loud enough for me to hear, “Hey Link, wake up.”

He doesn’t move an inch. His chest rises and falls evenly, his snores uninterrupted.

“Hey, Link, listen!”

His snores pause for a second before his hand itches his nose and he rolls to his right to face away from Midna.

“Link, Neri was murdered while on watch.”

Link cringes slightly and his hand swats the air. Midna barely dodges, and then laughs. The whole time, an uneasy feeling settles in the pit of my stomach. I brace myself for what will probably be the brunt of the impact. Midna grins and her crimson eyes flicker to me. She nods, letting me know that this will end it. “Hey, Link... Breakfast is ready.”

To my surprise his snores falter and then halt, his cobalt eyes blearily open and he sits straight up, then slouches and tries to rub the sleep from his eyes.

I can’t contain my laughter. My hand flies to my mouth, although it does nothing to dull my loud laughs. Midna gives me a huge grin and flies back to my side, and I grab onto her shoulder to make sure I don’t fall. My laughter is the only sound that is heard a within a mile’s radius, alongside Midna’s hissing snickers. Link finally looks to us when he’s aware of his surroundings, to see Midna grinning devilishly and my face as red as a tomato while I asphyxiate from giggling. When I feel my gut starting to ache, it only makes my breaths come faster and causes me to chuckle harder.

“Wha’s so funny?” Link slurs sleepily.

“Apparently, you care more about breakfast than Neri’s life,” Midna relays back to him.

“Tha’s ridiculous.”

She rolls her eyes and holds out her hand as if showing off a specimen on display. “The most oblivious man in the world, everybody.”

After another half an hour of Link waking up, we decide to leave camp. I smother our fire and bury it under some loose dirt and then move the stones that surround the white ashes elsewhere. Link hauls the logs from the fire back to the woods, and then we start. Because Epona was injured a month ago, we have to walk. Link told me that she broke her ankle trying to run from bokoblins, and I could tell he was depressed when he told me. Someone was nursing her, he told me, but I felt bad for wishing that she’d hurry up and heal because walking everywhere was going to be a major pain. Literally and figuratively.