songerein | log 🌻 the one left behind

Entry tags:

log 🌻 the one left behind

Who: Zelda and others
Which: Log with open and closed prompts in the comments
Where: Around Reverein- Wild Harvest, Archives, and Wishing Well
What: Zelda wakes from her sleep coma and is big sad about her bf being gone
Warnings: Usual TOTK spoilers, possible themes of self-sacrifice

[ Zelda wakes slowly, opening her eyes to sunlight filtering through the window, playing on the rafters crisscrossing above her head and illuminating a few dust motes drifting in the air. The ceiling of her bedroom in Songerein.

She lets out a slow, defeated sigh and closes her eyes again.

She failed again.

The day Zelda woke to discover Link gone, she laid down in her bed and willed herself to go back to sleep. His departure did not come as a surprise, but that did not make it any easier to bear. He had told her that he would soon return to Hyrule, as if he knew-- no, not just knew, decided to go, as if that conviction was all he needed to break free from the shackles the dream world placed on its residents. It was time for him to return, he said. He was going to bring her home too. Nevermind the permanence of the draconification transformation. Nevermind the obstacle of the Demon King, looming insurmountable over Hyrule. He was going to overcome it all.

He was going to bring her home.

If Link could escape Songerein simply through sleep and conviction, then surely Zelda could as well. Why stay, when staying meant being without him? She only agreed to set duty aside and live for as long as the two of them were together. Link was gone; time for Zelda to fulfill her duty and become the Light Dragon.

And she partially succeeded; the princess managed to slip into a sleep coma of her own volition, where she spent the entirety of a month. But of course, escape still eluded her. Three times, Zelda has tried to wake of her own volition. Once by trying to swallow her secret stone and force the draconification transformation. Once by throwing enough baubles into the wishing well to grant her passage back to Hyrule. And now, by forcing herself to sleep. All three times, Zelda has failed.

Really, she should not be surprised. Leave it to Link to succeed in something like this the moment he puts his mind to it, and for Zelda to struggle and fail repeatedly. Such has always been the way for the two of them, hasn't it?

Zelda continues to lay in bed for awhile, wondering if she should try again, until the bedsores all over her body become too much for her to bear. No, she needs to get up. She needs to do something. If she doesn't find some way to occupy her mind, her thoughts will drift to Link... and whenever they do, it feels like scalding knives driving into her chest.

The pain of being the one left behind. ]

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You have my condolences. It's hard to lose someone back to the waking world.

However, there is a slim chance he might return. Angel Dust woke up last year and has recently returned though he doesn't seem to remember his previous time here.

[ Zelda shakes her head. ] A possibility, but one I think unlikely. It was not simply that Link awoke unexpectedly. He seemed to know, somehow, that he would soon return to Hyrule. Almost as though he was choosing to return.

[ And he told her why, before he left. He told her that he was going to bring her home. That --in spite of the sheer impossibility of such a feat, of the irreversibility of her transformation into the Light Dragon-- he would simply go against all of that and return Zelda to Hyrule. To him, her home. ]

I said my goodbyes before he woke. Now I must simply carry on as I had before until it is my time.

I suppose it isn't too surprising all things considered. I never spent much time with Link but he has quite a lot of willpower. If one managed to completely focus it, it wouldn't be impossible to wake up.

[He sits back in his seat, propping his chin up on one fist in thought.]

Magic can be influenced by emotion and it is at the very core of dreamotion. So long as there was nothing subconsciously holding you back, it stands to reason you'd be able to will yourself awake. Many of the people who simply woke up without warning had been going through rough times before they left or were feeling particularly guilty about not being where they were supposed to be. Perhaps their subconscious desires to return home overrode their conscious desires to stay.

[ Alastor's musings on dreamotion get a frustrated huff out of Zelda. ]

I have tried to will myself to wake three times in this past year, with naught to show for my most recent effort but a month's worth of bedsores.

[ Dreamotion. The princess hates dreamotion. Yes, her disdain for it had lessened over the months of her current stay in Songerein, a pale shade of the vitriol she held for it in her adolescence, but all at once that negativity has come rushing right back. ]

I am fated ever to fail in the realm of magic, aren't I? First my sealing powers, then my power over time, and now this accursed dreamotion. [ Zelda's temper flares with uncharacteristic heat. An old sore, her struggles with magic, and to be reminded of it stings like a fresh cut. All at once, her deepest and most selfish thoughts come tumbling out. ] I wish for nothing save Link and if I may not have him, then Hylia give me my eternity of nothingness now so that I will not be tormented longing for what I'll never have again.

[ She's been balancing on a knife's edge all day, only barely holding back terrible feelings that should not be given voice. Link left for her, to do what should be impossible, to bring her home. And yet she remains trapped here, in Songerein, without him. Horrible, angry, selfish thoughts have been bubbling up inside her all day and Alastor has accidentally made them all boil over. ]

[Alastor sits back and calmly sips his tea as she unleashes all of her frustrations. Perhaps someone else would admonish her for her lack of decorum or flinch at being verbally assaulted for stepping on a landmine, but Alastor simply let her let him have it. Let her shout out her frustration and get that out of her system so she might then be able to focus.]

[Much like he'd done when Charlie had been sulking in her own bed.]

[In Charlie's case, he'd had the solution to her issue on hand. With Zelda's? Not so much.]

Your conscious will being at odds with your subconscious wouldn't surprise me. Perhaps our last discussion regarding the Light Dragon and her connection to you is still niggling away in the back of your brain. Perhaps some part of you feels you need that issue resolved so that you can be more effective when returning to your world.

Until my own recent unexpected slumber, I'd been in Reverein for over two years, but you want to know how much time passed back in Hell? A single night. And while I didn't consciously remember my time here during my dreaming visit, that doesn't mean my memories of here had no effect on my time there. There just isn't any way to prove it either way.

[He takes a moment to let that sink in, taking a sip of his tea.]

However, do you know what I find helps when I'm chasing my own tail with a problem? I focus on something else, and I've been thinking on our past conversations, particularly during one instance when I taught you a few things about the usefulness of different plants.

How would you like it if I taught you basic rootworking? I can't teach you everything I know given some of the advanced spells and rituals entail calling upon divine beings from my world, and I make it a habit not to deliberately annoy divine beings if I can avoid it and I'd rather not find out if your Goddess is the jealous type the hard way. However, there's much that can be taught using the properties of plants.

[He raises a brow before she can object to the subject change.]

Sometimes, my dear, you find the answers you're looking for in the places you'd least expect. I can't guarantee that this will solve your issue now but you might be able to apply some of what I teach to issues you seem to have with magic in general.

Edited 2024-06-11 17:40 (UTC)

[ Zelda is full of annoyance as she listens to Alastor, but she does listen. And argue...internally, at least. Because she feels like she knows all this already! She knows what it's like to return home and forget her time in Reverein, because she's experienced it twice. She knows about the need to align her conscious and subconscious thoughts-- it's a core component of successfully using dreamotion. Though it was the bane of her adolescence both at home and in Songerein, since her return to this world as an adult, it has not been an issue.

Alastor will receive an uncharacteristic huff of impatience from Zelda at his suggestion to put this problem aside and focus on something else. She doesn't want to! (Even if that something else is rootworking, that does sound interesting...) But no, she wants to deal with this! She wants to go home! She wants to be with Link!

As sound as his advice is (and it is sound), the princess remains stubbornly resistant. In fact, his mention about her issues with magic strike a nerve. ]

I've not had issues with my magic since I was a girl. [ Not true. ] Watch.

[ In a show of pure petulance, Zelda lifts her teacup over the arm of her chair and drops it. The cup and its contents go crashing to the floor. Then, without looking at it, she waves her hand above the mess. A -thunk- sounds from out of nowhere and waves of grey and gold magic ripple over the broken cup. Then it shudders and begins to rewind itself, accompanied by the ticking of a clock. The broken pieces lift of the floor and fuse themselves back together as the spilled tea pools back into the cup. Back up it rises, then hovers over to the saucer and sets itself down. Zelda snaps her fingers to release the spell. The floor is clean and the teacup is fixed, as though it was never broken in the first place. ]

Even Recalling the smallest item for the shortest amount of time would have given me trouble as a girl, but now it is effortless. I commanded this power in battle throughout the Imprisoning War, countless times over. I have this. [ She touches the curved yellow stone on her necklace, the one she hasn't taken off since she arrived. ] It amplifies my power exponentially. I see no reason why I should be struggling so!

[ Her hands are shaking with adrenaline from her own frustration. She just feels so powerless, like she hasn't felt since before the Calamity. It's hard to change direction and let this go when all she wants to do is throw herself against it over and over again until she breaks through whatever wall is preventing her from returning home. ]

[He watches her break his teacup before fixing it.]

And it's quite impressive, my dear. A true accomplishment!

But sometimes we do hit roadblocks even as adults. And since arriving here, I've found myself to be more limited than I am in Hell. I'm still having to find workarounds for those issues even two and a half years later.

[He sets his teacup down before melting into shadow, reappearing behind her.]

Teleportation is as easy as walking for me, but back in Hell I could pull people alongside me as I did it. I could even create portals with a flick of my wrist and hardly a thought.

Here though...

[He starts drawing sigils in the air, a circle starting to form between them. They hum with power...]

[...and then the whole structure simply collapses.]

It's quite frustrating. It'd be most helpful if I could create portals like I'm used to. I haven't tried pulling people along during a teleport since I'm not sure how they'll end up once we reach our destination, and I'd rather not watch a companion end up like some of my earliest experiments back in Hell when I was learning.

[He walks back to his seat, sitting down. Admitting his own weaknesses...ugh, it doesn't sit well with him. And Zelda can probably tell by his left ear twitching with agitation.]

I've practiced every day for two and a half years, but I only got as far as I do now because while working out a different bit of spellwork, I realized I might have some success if I invoke the veves one by one like when I was first learning than trying to use my usual shortcut methods.

[ It's often hard to tell if Alastor is being sincere or patronizing with his compliments, so when he doesn't seem at all surprised by Zelda's demonstration of her new power, she just bristles all the more.

She holds back an impatient retort when Alastor reappears behind her...and all the better that she does, because his demonstration is nothing like she expects. Zelda assumed he would give her a flawless display of his powers, because he always has in the past and she's not known him to struggle with dreamotion in the least.

So when he does and the portal he is creating suddenly collapses, Zelda is taken by surprise and a small gasp escapes her lips. Alastor has always used dreamotion effortlessly, only lamenting that Songerein limits him to a fraction of the power he commanded in his world. Even when he was overwhelmed with nostilium and transformed into a horrific noctaere, he was still powerful-- more so than in his previous form, in fact, because it took an entire group of fighters to suppress him.

To see Alastor fail with dreamotion... well, it smothers Zelda's anger as swiftly as a lid over a grease fire. (And though he masks well his displeasure for displaying weakness, she does notice it in the twitching of his ear.) ]

I see.

[ This time, Zelda's silence is a reflective one. She lets the adrenaline drain out of her, replaying Alastor's words and hearing all the sensible things she didn't want to listen to in the first place. ]

I apologize for my outburst. Link left so effortlessly that I thought surely, with how far I've come since the Calamity, I would be capable of following. When I woke today and found myself still here... [ She sighs and shakes her head. ] I should not have lost my temper.

[Alastor actually laughs but it's not mocking.]

Believe it or not, my dear, you're not the first blonde princess to use me as a sounding board for her frustrations! No harm done! A shame that I didn't have the solution to your problem like I did hers!

[He folds his hands neatly in his lap.]

Though I do understand the frustration of watching someone effortlessly do something you've been trying to do for ages. When Eustace made the portal to the corgi tree after I explained how to build portals in general, I was seething. Went home and tried for hours to duplicate his success to no avail.

Edited 2024-06-15 12:03 (UTC)

[ Zelda nods. Yep, she definitely understands that exact anger of watching someone effortlessly do what you've been trying and failing to do for ages. It's unsurprising that this anger is towards Link; it always was in the past, after all, ever since they were children.

The princess expels the last of her adrenaline in a heavy sigh and leans forward to grab a beignet from the table. She hasn't had an appetite all day, but at least now that she's gotten all of her frustration out, she feels like she could eat something. If she must eat, it might as well be sweets. ]

I don't believe I have ever heard you mention another princess before.

[ It's entirely possible that he has and Zelda has simply forgotten. Goddess knows her memories of her previous stay in Songerein are a jumbled mess in her head, muddled with sixty five years of other memories on top of them. ]

Likely only in passing.

[Alastor waves his hand carelessly.]

We'd practically just met when I first arrived here. My most recent visit to Hell spanned about six months.

[He snaps his fingers, producing an illusion of a young woman in a red pantsuit caught in mid-wave, a bright smile on her face and extremely long blonde hair.]

Princess Charlotte Morningstar, daughter of King Lucifer Morningstar and Queen Lilith Morningstar. Heir to the throne of Hell. She prefers to be called "Charlie" and recently gained infamy in trying to redeem sinners like myself to get us into Heaven to stop the annual Extermination.

[He chuckles.]

Redemption is utter nonsense, of course, but I had to have front row seats to the show! I became the hotelier of her redemption hotel!

[ Zelda's eyebrows arch up with interest as she listens to Alastor's introduction of Charlie. A crown princess who has gained infamy for her radical ideas about how to save the people of her domain from destruction and whom Alastor has taken a liking to. How very interesting. ]

What is so nonsensical about this idea of redemption?

[ If Zelda didn't know Alastor so well at this point, she would have asked why he's helping out with something he thinks is doomed to failure. But she knows why. It's the way he is. He is nothing if not a force of chaos guided by whatever intrigues him. ]

Especially in the face of "Extermination," I should think any avenue to avert such a fate would be one worth pursuing.

The majority of people in Hell are there because we were unrepentant sinners in life. We've all done terrible things and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near those who reached Heaven to begin with. No no no no, the chance we had was the life we lived before! There is no undoing what has been done!

[Ah, Zelda! You've gotten to know him so well!]

But not everyone down there is a complete monster. Some people ended up down there by making terrible mistakes that they regret even without the punishment of Hell. Circumstances differ, but for whatever reason they weren't as bad as the rest of us. Unfortunately, they're the ones who usually die during the annual Extermination. The nastier and by extention stronger demons will force them out of whatever shelter they've made for themselves and leave them for the angels to slaughter. I don't think Charlie will ever succeed in getting a demon into Heaven but I do admit that those sinners who just want to get by and don't partake in any of the more heinous sins don't deserve to be erased.

[He shrugs.]

Besides, if Charlie succeeds, imagine the chaos that would result from it: Thousands of years of precedent suddenly thrown out the window! Now there's a show I want front row seats for!

[ Unsurprisingly, Zelda can see Charlie's logic. Everything she has heard from Alastor about his world's afterlife seems very... extreme. The idea of categorizing spirits as either "good" or "bad" doesn't seem to leave any space for nuance, and most people tend to be a mix of both. ]

Perhaps the precedent should be changed. It sounds quite flawed to begin with, if you ask me. [ She makes no remark on Alastor's enthusiasm to popcorn.gif this entire upheaval. ]

Particularly this matter of "Extermination." Why should the spirits of the dead be "Exterminated?" Is not your world's "Hell" supposed to be punishment enough for their, how would you say it, "sins" in life?

[ This whole system sounds like it runs on one big points system, like some kind of game. It's weird and honestly kind of unsettling. Would the Princess of Hyrule be doomed to this "Hell" because of her failure to awaken her divine powers in time to save Hyrule from destruction? Would the deaths of her people be counted against her as "sins," despite all her efforts to protect them? ]

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log 🌻 the one left behind

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