if i die tomorrow - permanent hiatus

steed

     I woke to a slice of sunlight cutting across my face.

     Almost immediately my hand flew to my throat, the bony, burning fingers wrapping around the smooth skin of my neck seared into my mind. 

     Nothing. No burns, no wound.

     I took a long breath, savoring the feeling of oxygen filling my lungs.

     It was only a dream. But a dream.

     I smoothed down my clothes, my chest heaving, my eyes running wild.

     As though the bed burnt me, I jumped out of it, leaving behind the blankets in a crumpled heap. I pulled on the Hylian hood as I made the bed hastily, stumbling as I tried to hobble as far away from that table, that cursed table as possible while I zipped up my boots.

     I was attracting strange glances but I couldn't care less.

     May I check out Epona? I scribbled down these words and shoved the notebook over to the stable master, keeping my eyes down and away from his searching face. I had to hold it together. Hold it together until I was alone.

     "Of course, sir." He turned his head back and yelled at a pair of girls working, their backs bent, at the horses. "Sadie!"

     My eyes narrowed. One of the two girls snapped her head up and bounded over.

     I noticed three things in that split second.

     Number one: the two girls were identical, but for their hair. This girl - Sadie I assumed - had flowing, long chestnut hair, and the other's was chopped short, lightly caressing her shoulders.

     That was hardly the most unsettling.

     Number two: Sadie was the one that had woken me up from the nightmare.

     She was a stable hand. Why was she at the inn at that hour? Just in time to... pull me back?

     My breath froze in my throat.

     Number three.

     When her eyes met mine, my entire balance shifted. It was as though the universe had tilted ever so slightly and I was the only one that could feel its magnetic force, dragging me down, down, down.

     I showed nothing on my impassive face. This girl nodded at me, her eyes showing clearly that she remembered what had happened last night, glittering bright with barely held back curiosity. Yet she said nothing as she quietly led out my horse and handed the reins over to me.

     Our hands touched. My eyes narrowed even further, expecting something, anything, at this point. 

     Her skin was warm. Nothing more, nothing less.

     Relief fizzed at my fingertips as I dipped my head in thanks.

     I was about to walk away when I turned back. 

     She was still standing there, her hair waving slightly in the wind. Her brown skirt rippled, like a flag raised proudly towards the morning sky. Sunlight set her eyes on fire. Although her hands were folded submissively, her stance, her straight back, her head held high, was somehow, somehow, more than just a stable hand.

     Could I be wrong? Could I possibly be wrong?

     My heart thudded erratically.

     Slowly I raised my hands, almost scared to move them into such a familiar position it almost hurt. Sadie was staring at me, dubious.

     "Sir?"

     What is my name? I signed, my hands whirring, perfectly placed with years and years of practice. It had been months since I had last signed. Months since Zelda had healed me, only to leave me and break me down further into the pit than I had started from.

     Sadie just looked at me, confusion written all over her face.

     I sighed, both my hopes and fears crashing back down. I mustered up an apologetic smile for her and turned away, the place where my heart used to be but a throbbing, hollow hole.

     Suddenly it crashed into me, riding into the wilderness, alone but for my steed, her muscles working smoothly beneath me, quiet in concentration.

     Suddenly, like an arrow flying through the air and piercing clean through my chest, it crashed into me.

     It would never be the same. Zelda was gone. Gone. Even if her Triforce still existed in this world, she would never come back, never return to me, never tell me again that she loved me. 

     She had abandoned me for good.

     She had left me alone to struggle in a world as broken as I was.

     I wouldn't know her, Zelda's replacement. I wouldn't know her face and her voice and her touch and her eyes and her smile and the expression she makes when she's angry and her interests and she would never love me. She would never love me like Zelda loved me. 

     Who would love me anyway, as flawed, as angry, as sad, as scarred as I was? Zelda was an idiot.

     I dug the heels of my hands into my hands, trying in vain to chase the tears away.

     Epona huffed softly, sensing the lack of force on her reins. I patted her detachedly.

     I could always rely on her, right? I would always have Epona, unjudging Epona, accepting Epona, gentle Epona.

     A single leaf fluttered down from the canopy of branches weaving over my head, riding the air like a bird reluctant to leave the endless skies. I watched it as it gently twirled its way to the carpet of leaves underneath Epona's hooves, a single splash of emerald green in an ocean of rotting brown.

     Soon the darkness of death would claim this stubbornly living thing, would leach it if its colour and throw it aside, ugly, forgotten.

     I looked away. Epona's hooves churned up the mulch and set the leaf airborne again, a rip stretched through its middle. I didn't have to look to know that it fell like a stone, graceless.

     Broken.

A/N: I hope y'all are enjoying this, cause I am :) 

All criticism welcome, I love comments!