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He wished the memories had not been this painfully vivid, yet so far out of his grasp.
Quill pen hovered atop paper, forming inkless lines in the air. He placed the pen back in its stand, before picking it up again and letting it drag across the page. No coherent words, only a deep swatch of black ink, almost blinding on white surface.
He did not even know where to start with this madness.
Another page of his notebook crumbled and ripped, a soundless grunt, and he was back to staring at the blank page – frustratingly empty, in stark contrast with the thousands of images flashing in his brain. Legend wanted nothing more than to rip his head open and let them speak for him, yet to his dismay, no magic could transfer thoughts into words. The only way to do that was to write them down, and he was spectacularly failing at it.
Legend swore he could scream from how desperate he was.
Dipping the quill into his ink bottle, he once again placed it against the paper, finally writing something down. A handful of words fell from the tip of his pen, laying neatly on straight guidelines.
- The captain…
He read back on the few letters, shook his head and ripped them away.
That did not sound right.
He tried a different starter, murmuring along as he wrote. A frown soon weighed on his brows, his fingers curled around the edge of the page.
The crumbled piece of paper missed its destination inside a small box sitting at the corner of his room.
Leaning back on his chair, the hero cast a glance at the drawings scattered about on his desk. His hands reached and pulled a couple of them out from the messy pile of paper. One depicted a man with his back turned, the scarf he wore trailing behind his back majestically; another one portrayed a young lad with long bangs that covered most of his face, his headband the only thing keeping lustrous strands of gold from falling entirely into his face. Then there was a drawing of a man surrounded by the warm light of fairies, a contented smile on his face – a smile he remembered rarely seeing during their adventure. A young boy with his arms swung up, a grin bright as the sun…
That did not look right.
A ripping sound. Then another. Then another.
One by one, the drawings were brutally torn into pieces. He did not throw them away like the notebook pages though, they were swept to a corner of his desk, lying in pathetic shreds.
…Only to be taken out of their place again the next morning. With a bottle of handmade glue he bought somewhere in the market, Legend carefully mended every tear with pure dedication, each stroke of his brush so delicate it almost felt like he was afraid he would hurt them.
He wondered when this meaningless cycle would end.
~~~
The sun had only peeked out from the blanket of morning fog, its light reflecting in the dewdrops hanging on the leaves of the apple trees and bouncing off the metallic shine of his sword.
- The back slice.
He heaved, readying his stance, eyes locked on the wooden dummy he used to practice with. A shout, a hefty swing, and the dummy’s head lost a large chunk, while he steadied himself behind it. Wiping off the sweat on his chin, Legend stopped to bask in the light of dawn. The skill he had performed was perfect, and yet that ugly frown still nested on his face.
That did not feel right.
The hero decided it was enough training for the day. He picked up the towel hung on the clothesline nearby to clean himself up, not even bothering to bring his blade back into his house, instead dropping it somewhere in the orchard. He would come to collect some apples for potion making anyways.
Legend only stopped wandering his garden after filling two baskets with ripe apples and herbs and disappeared into his working space after bidding a brief good morning to his housemate Ravio who was not even surprised by his change of attitude. The cauldron was cleaned of his previous batch of potion, and the room smelled of fresh lilies, which were all Ravio’s doing. He reminded himself to thank the merchant later and started getting to work. A bucket of water filled to the brim, a generous sprinkle of fairy dust from a fountain nearby, a large dump of bright red apples. He also listened to their medic’s words to put a couple of droplets of rosemary extract in “for the taste”. With the cauldron now full and covered, he sat back at his desk, taking a quick breather. While letting it simmer, he could read for a bit.
Legend found himself writing and ripping, tearing then mending again, to no fruition.
The potion was only ready when the sun had already half-dipped below the horizon. He inhaled the scent of rosemary in the air, mixed with sweet fairy dust and a lighter aroma coming from the apples he grew himself. It was a little strange, yet so familiar – this might be the first time he was so eager to taste the potion he very much despised all his life from just how many times he had to chug it. Giving the crimson elixir a few quick stirs, the hero took a sip. And that disappointed frown made its way onto his face once more.
It was great, but not right.
The liquid was soon divided into shiny bottles, ready to be taken away to the market and the front of Ravio’s shop.
~~~
Legend decided he would cook today.
Ravio was stunned when he saw his housemate, the hero that had never, ever stepped into a kitchen without making a disaster before, with an apron on and standing before the large pot he always used for cooking soup. Legend seemed confident though, waving the merchant off with his free hand while the other kept on stirring something.
- Five clockwise, one counter. Cheese in… Alright.
Although he was not able to get the exact ingredients (for instance, the Ordonian goat cheese – he was sure Ordon only existed in that timeline), he tried to trust the process. Ring-hugged fingers glossed over his box of spices and herbs, carefully choosing jars after jars as he murmured the recipes over and over under his breath. Now, he remembered tucking away that bottle of Goron Spice somewhere…
Ravio had come to a conclusion: letting his housemate cook sometimes was not entirely a bad idea. Legend’s cooking had definitely improved after his latest journey, and he would thank whoever taught him these recipes forever – heck, maybe make them his favorite customers and give them massive discounts even. However, the Hyrulean hero did not seem to be happy with what he made, for he kept staring at his bowl, brows furrowed, as if pondering something. And indeed, he was pondering.
The soup did not taste right, and nor did the stew. Perhaps it was because he used substitutes?
Legend did not enjoy his meals that day. He dragged himself into his room again for the Hylia-knew-how-many time of the week, ready to throw himself in that useless loop of trying to note down something only to reap it away. Well, that was until he spotted the bundle of instruments piled up just beside his bed. He had not seen them in quite a while now, hadn’t he?
Ocarinas next to harps, bells and horns, a marimba, a small triangle, and a cello nestled just in a corner, hovering above them all. His eyes paused at each and every one of them, and only fully stopped at the sight of an ocarina – a blue one, no less. He could not hide the fondness in his gaze as he gingerly picked it off the mess, blowing some of the dust away to reveal the weathered clay beneath. It was nowhere as glossy as their leader’s instrument, but he liked to pretend he was borrowing it from him to play a song or two.
The notes that flew from the ocarina were flawless, weaving together into a tune he learned from the man. Outside his window, rain started to fall, rhythmic drumming on the glass a beat to his lonely song, as he kept playing it over and over.
Heaving out a sigh, Legend lowered the ocarina from his lips, letting his hands fall into his lap. He stared blankly at the egg-shaped instrument, ignoring the horrific shouts of the merchant when he frantically gathered their fresh clothes from the clothesline, now soaking wet.
That did not sound right.
He tried another song, then another, another, until he was all out of breath and his mind could not register any more of melodies he was taught.
None of them sounded right.
As he was cradling the blue ocarina in his palms, he wondered if it possessed the same power as the Ocarina of Time itself.
~~~
Legend wanted to visit the castle’s library that day after delivering the fresh batch of red potion and the remaining blue ones left in his cupboard. He still flinched when the guards eyed him when he passed by, the feeling of them charging at him in the past still lingered in the pit of his stomach. He silently breathed out a sigh of relief upon not seeing them chase after him like before – he really had to get used to this.
The maids bowed when he walked past them, and he nodded in return with a small smile. The surprised look on their faces as they glanced at each other in astonishment was almost hysterical, and he stifled a chuckle. He had never had these manners until he met that cocky captain. He had learned from the way he greeted people, from the respect he had for everyone no matter high-ranked knights or mere peasants. He would never have thought it would rub off on him through the time they spent together, the captain showing off his royal flamboyance and him poking fun at his performance. But it did, and he was thankful he could keep something of his closest comrade in his way of life.
He could tell the surprised look on his half-sister’s face as he dragged himself into the library. Fable did not shower him with questions, though, and for that he was thankful. He was in desperate need of some privacy anyways, and nowhere was better than between the many shelves of books exclusive to the Royal Family.
The history book was heavy in his lap, filled with handwritten events and myths. He recalled being halfway through the stories of the Hero of the Skies – someone he now knew a little bit too well. Ring-cladded fingers skimmed through weathered pages, gliding across the tattered edges yellowed by the hand of time, across blurry lines of ink smeared on paper. The legends of the First King were surprisingly accurate, and they brought a smile to his face. The Hero of the Four Sword – yet another person he had come to know and be fond of – was more unfortunate. An uncontrollable snicker rumbled in his chest when he read through the articles; he would have to rewrite a lot of this misinformation. With his journal opened and pen at the ready, he diligently erased and filled the blanks with real stories coming from the smith himself that he jotted down, careful not to crumble the paper. Each word was written with dedication, and while Legend tried his best to make his handwriting as neat as possible, he still doubted whether people could read it or not. That pulled a chuckle out of him – the Chosen one never liked his handwriting, but despite his consistent effort of training him, it remained the same messy, incomprehensible cursives.
The sun was setting, the sky a dying shade of orange. Instead of his regular quill pen, he had switched to a piece of graphite. Fixing illustrations seemed to be an easier task, for he remembered exactly how the smith looked: short, with bright hazel eyes and a cheeky smile. None of the drawings depicted him with a smile though, and that did him no justice – the smith was a smiley little comrade, a ball of light if he had to make it poetic. And so, Legend added the dimpled grin into each and every image he saw.
He did not stop until it was well past midnight. He must have dozed off at some point because when he woke up, he was in the castle’s guest room, his tools neatly put away next to his boots.
~~~
There were days he missed them just enough to slide past the threshold of “too much”.
Everything he did reminded him of them, of the ups and downs they had suffered together. Of the laughter and the tears, of the nights around the campfire, their faces lighted up in the warm caress of the dancing flame. He had realized, hopelessly, that they had become too big a part of his life, of himself, and yet no matter how hard he tried, he could not find the right way to remember them as something in the flesh. In his mind they floated, like ghosts of the past that haunted his dreams, making him shoot up in the middle of the night with tears streaking down his chin and a bittersweet taste on the tip of his tongue, his hands reaching forward in a desperate attempt to keep them by his side.
His only way to cope was to keep his mind busy. However, he knew the ordinary tasks in his everyday life were never enough.
He needed danger. He needed the thrills. He needed an adventure.
And as he stubbornly stuffed weapons after weapons into his pouch, put on the gadgets he used to wear on his journey with them, Ravio’s warnings of him never coming back faded into oblivion.
The Hero of Legend had once again gone on another adventure, away from the land of Hyrule, and never come back.