if i die tomorrow - permanent hiatus

step

     "You've got it?"

     I nodded, holding out the new note. Sadie snatched it from my fingers and held it close to her face, her eyes sliding over the numbers. 

     I watched her carefully, the shadows behind her eyes, the hard set of her mouth. She was more shaken than she would admit, my revelation of who Sorrah was as taxing for her as hers was for me. 

     Suddenly I understood. 

     Maybe she would not have even told me that I was no hero if I had not revealed Sorrah. After all, she had known who I was -- or rather, who I wasn't -- for a while at that point. She had only played her final card to shift the momentum back to her, to give her some time to think this through, to avoid questions, let herself struggle with this fact on her own without my interference.

     I had to admire her. 

     What had gone though her head while I was making my climb? What had she considered in her haze of denial, shock, fear, her already divided loyalties utterly shredded?

     Maybe I shouldn't have left her behind. Maybe I should have stayed and helped her sort through this. 

     I cringed away from just the thought. No. There was nothing I could have done that would have made it any easier for her or me. I understood better than most the need to be alone.

     "They look like coordinates." Sadie's voice jerked me back from my thoughts. She was holding the paper at arm's length, then brought it closer to her squinting eyes. "But it makes no sense. There are so many of them!"

     I took back the parchment and, for the first time, seriously scrutinized the paper.

(17, 2); (2, 1); (4, 4); (14, 3); (25, 4); (11, 4); (4, 2); (8, 1); (10, 3); (19, 1); (26, 3); (6, 3); (11, 4); (24, 1); (12, 1); (19, 1); (22, 6); (20, 5); (8, 1); (17, 2); (28, 1)

     That's it? I flipped it to the back, but it was empty, pristine in its blankness.

     A wave of disappointment crashed into me. 

     "Let's try to draw it, I suppose." I said, dubious. 

     "I have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking at." Sadie exclaimed a few minutes later, on a roughly drawn Cartesian graph, hastily scrawled black lines squiggling all over a page in my notebook.

     The lines led everywhere and nowhere, tangled together in a mess of ink. If there were answers hidden between these slashes, I couldn't see it behind the seemingly meaningless strokes.

     "No, this isn't right." Sadie rubbed her temples wearily. "It can't be right."

     Frustration fizzed through my veins. I was exhausted. I was constantly in pain. I was running dangerously low on nearly everything. My life had been torn apart. And my downfall was a few pieces of paper. "Then what? What other way is there?"

    "Hmm..." Sadie looked from the numbers to the graph. "Maybe we're thinking about this the wrong way. This note should be connected to the other ones, but the way we're doing this, it's standing on its own."

     "The Triforce reaches full power when it is united." A glimmer of an idea scratched at the back of my mind, the beginnings of a hope that I was afraid to approach.

     I brought out the other notes, excitement slowly taking over my mind despite myself. 

     All three of the notes were arrayed there, the only result of over a week of non-stop travel and frantic prayers, the same slanted handwriting coming together and falling apart in my mind, possibilities whirling through my mind. Sadie crouched beside me, her lips moving to each of the words, her eyes sharp with focus.