if i die tomorrow - permanent hiatus

wandering

     I ended up sitting there for a long time.

     About half an hour later, King Rhoam followed Queen Zelda out of the room. His steps were heavy with trouble. I didn't bother looking at him. I didn't want to acknowledge either of them. 

     Thought after thought shoved their way to the top of my mind, then almost immediately was dragged down and replaced by another. I dimly wished I could silence them. 

     Zelda wasted ten years -- ten years -- of her life in misery, striving for something that would never be hers.

     Was it my fault, then, for stealing what rightfully belonged to her?

     I shook my head as if the thought was a fleck of dust I could simply flick off.

     But he knew all along. King Rhoam. He knew all along but he pushed her harder and harder all the same.

     What if he allowed me to become Zelda's knight just to keep a closer eye on me?

     How much was the royal family involved in my upbringing? Did they have a hand in my childhood and I never noticed?

     Why? Why would my father abandon me just to cover up some stupid mistake for good? Did he ever really love me?

     So were we both failures, Zelda and I? We could never have fulfilled our roles in the world. We could never have fit into what Hyrule expected of us.

     How could we have been so clueless?

    What about the autopsy? Who was it that lay on the table, that we have examined with such careless abandon? Was that... my mother?

     I sucked in a deep breath, feeling a sudden urge to throw up. 

     The final thought to enter my mind:

     Those nobles were right. I am a bastard. Only, my dad was the private lover. 

     Private lover. 

     As if someone had pulled the plug in my mind, all those voices, clamoring for attention, drained out of my brain and I was left with nothing but a dull, ringing silence. Numbness.

     My head dropped to my knees as I, without warning, lost the strength to hold it up. I was barely breathing. 

     They knew. My father. The King. The Queen. 

     I didn't move again for hours.

     Night had truly fallen when I finally scraped together the energy to look up again. Moonlight reached in the crystal windows and caressed the red carpet over the hall. It looked like a brushstroke of pure silver. 

     I stared at it for while. Funny how the lightest touch of beauty in the world seemed so profound, so sacred, when you were as lost as I was then. 

     I breathed out, slowly. Touched the knife sleeping at my belt. Salvaged for the remaining scraps of my resolve. 

     I had just made up my mind to stand up, if just to banish the stiffness in my muscles, when suddenly, the floor disappeared.

     My scream froze in my throat. The world dropped beneath me, a yawning darkness, blotting the streaks of moonlight. I was falling, falling through time and space, through nothingness and through everything. Years and years of history blew past me like a gust of wind. 

     I didn't have time to choose when to end up. The Goddess led me. 

     Finally I found my voice to scream. The sound was swept away by the currents of time.