Moments tick by, and Tali grows tired of staring at the horizon, her face all scrunched up from the rage and misery she felt inside.
Despite her boredom, though, she wasn't quite ready to come down and be forced into the tight space of interacting with Link again. She wasn't even sure if he was still down there anymore, now that she thought of it. Maybe she had scared the hero off. The idea gave her conflicting emotions—if Link were to leave her, she would be relieved to have him gone, but—and she really hated to admit this to herself—that also meant she would be hopelessly lost. He'd go back to his camp, and everybody would be so happy to see him, they wouldn't even notice the weird Yiga girl was missing until somebody from her clan pointed it out.
She squints, wondering where that thought came from, why her mind had wandered to that dark place inside of her all of a sudden. The weight that had settled in her chest had grown so heavy, it must have started to push against the other doubts and pain she had been trying to keep in.
Tali settles on the topmost branch, snapping off a thin branch jutting out from the side.
Wounds that were only starting to heal were now being pressed, pinched at, scabs pulled off and revealing the layer underneath, stinging as the metaphorical blood gathered and leaked out.
So she does what she does best.
Tali takes out one of the fire arrows in her quiver, and flicks the very tip to safely ignite it (an old trick she learned from a friend).
She presses the flaming arrow against the twig, watching the flames lick at it, tasting the wood until it wraps itself around it, transferring some of its glow.
When she separates the twig and arrow, the two small fires in each hand are enough to bathe her white mask in a warm orange pulse.
She shakes the arrow to extiniguish it and puts it away, but doesn't take her eyes off of the flaming stick. She just lets it be. Lets the world narrow around her, become as dark as what was eating her up inside until nothing but the flame remained, its presence like a warm embrace as it slowly crawled down the wood.
Link could be down there. Link could not be down there. She found that at the moment, as her heart started to feel a little lighter, she didn't exactly care. Things would work out, somehow. She would be found.
The Yiga blows out the flame, a line of smoke curls upwards from the blackened stick. When she blows again, the black turns to grey, flecks peel off and scatter to reveal a blazing orange underneath, small glowing threads of life still living within the charred remains.
Her hand unconsciously seeks out another small branch to snap off while she watches the twig and waits. Tali wasn't an idiot; in fact, she likely knew the rules of fire safety better than anybody else in all of Hyrule by now. She used to not really care about them, but not-too-recently had been encouraged to more-or-less follow them by people that cared about her. People that did so without any intention to stifle or shame her, but to try and help her have some control over it...and prevent anything too important from being burned. Which was something she couldn't exactly blame anyone for wanting to avoid.
As soon as she is certain that the small twig wasn't hot enough to light any brush beneath her anymore, Tali tosses it away to who-knows-where, snaps off a new branch, and quietly repeats the process.
