#ftlsd

[thenwhokilledtheworld]

best thing about writing fic in a fugue state is you don’t remember any of it. Just reread chapter 39 of my totk retelling good god it’s worth it sometimes

[thenwhokilledtheworld]

from the light sent down is one chapter from being completed. it is never forgotten is finally up!

[thenwhokilledtheworld]

while trying to write the last two chapters of ftlsd i have started and finished a 30k durgestarion prequel fic, which, i mean, at least im a productive procrastinator

[thenwhokilledtheworld]

today's update of from the light sent down, my totk rework, is very short, so I'm just going to post it here in its entirety.

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Link comes to like a drowning man. He doesn’t know at first if the roar in his ears is his heart or the ocean unfurling on the strand, rimming the gray sand in dark shapes. His lungs are full of water. Then he’s heaving for breath. 

Gray flat evening. Cold merciless wind, battering the gulls, battering his chapped cool skin. Light, dim, from nowhere, disappearing under the iron sky. 

He thinks the movement around his feet is a crab at first. When he looks down, instead he sees green stems, unwinding from under the beach. Silent Princesses don’t grow in sandy earth. But what is this place, in Hyrule’s reaches, if not the wild? They unfurl their leaves. 

Each one lifts its bud and opens up its glowing heart. The beach becomes a field of stars. She loved these flowers. In her thorough codexes that she’d written and hand-bound, back home in their library near the hearth, she named them lilium liberum. He can taste their heady perfume in the back of his mouth as their blue petals spread, and their golden stamen rise to kiss the gray sea air. Their beauty is superabundant, more than the world demands. 

A few dozen yards out to sea, something shining splashes into the water. 

Then another, then another— like golden sea urchins, star fragments rain from the sky and scatter across the spiral strand. Saltwater and sand both burst under their fall. Link looks up, stunned out of his sorrow by the minor meteor shower. 

Just beneath the clouds, the light dragon sails through the sky. 

Link kneels to cup a flower in his hands. 

He’s never understood her particular kind of courage. He’s stumbled into death before, clutching his dented sword, fueled by nothing but love and defiance. He’s faced down mortal danger without feeling so much as a trembling in his chest. He’s lost limbs, cauterized his own vocal chords, lost her. Kept going. None of what she does is like that. 

Zelda holds hope like a struggling bird: like it’s always trying to escape, and she’s almost too afraid to grab on. In the end, she can accept the loss, and close her eyes. With those last words, she’d trusted him that he would take her sacrifice and make it worth it. Link has never been even half as animal-scared as she was, and kept the march, to the bitter end. She’s a comet. She has always been a dragon.

She lost everything. Link is not going to return her promise void. His fist closes around the Silent Princess stem. 

And then at last, as he plucks it loose, he understands. 

Link lifts his tear-streaked face upward and takes a deep and burning breath. 

Then he slings his sword from its scabbard and turns it in his fist, and the feel of its hilt is the same as the feel of her hand in his.

[thenwhokilledtheworld]

Chapter 36/40 of from the light sent down, my totk retelling feat. Depths Zonai, Ganondorf and Sonia being siblings, lots of delightful pining, Zelda's POV, and not least of all, Kass, is up!

here is my favorite scene from the chapter:

The recent rain has made the grass wet. 

Dew-damp blades cling to her cold feet through her sandals. She hugs her knees into her chest with her arms around them; the wet linen of her dress bunches under her, and the ornaments around her arms dig into her shins. She watches a cricket rocket from place to place toward a grove of apple trees. 

Her usually perfectly-pleated white skirts are in rags. She buries her face atop her knees. Stupid. Her father will be furious with her. A priestess’ raiment ought to be spotless. Not to mention how expensive it is to make. The hem is all brown with mud and pulled to tatters. 

Somebody’s feet are crunching in the grass. Zelda doesn’t look up to see who it is. She doesn’t want to acknowledge whoever it is in such a state. Maybe they won’t notice her at all. 

There’s more shuffling and scooting, very close by, and Zelda hears the sound of the somebody sitting right next to her in the field. Blood heats her ears. 

“I’m terribly sorry. I’ll be right along,” she tells them. 

“You don’t have to be,” says the person in a gentle and familiar voice. 

Zelda risks a glance up. It’s Link. She shouldn’t be surprised. He’s in just his wading pants, with sweat shining on his back and mud caked on his bare feet. That makes her feel better. Link won’t mind that she’s a mess right now. 

“Link!” 

“Hello, Zelda.” 

“Have you been fishing?”

“Nope. Looking for you.” 

“Oh.”

She looks down at her lap again. She’s still looking at her lap when he reaches carefully for her hand and slips it into his. More gooseflesh, more heartbeat hammering in her neck vein. She knows him, she reminds herself. Sometimes when she’s nervous, he feels like a stranger all over again. 

The ruddy tip of his finger follows the lines and angles of the triangle shape now permanently burned into her hand’s back. It just looks like a funny-shaped tan. Faint, hard to see if you don’t know what you’re looking for. 

Link follows its perimeter once, twice. Zelda just watches, stunned, like she can’t quite believe that her hand is attached to the rest of her. 

Speaking of— Link is touching her with his left hand. His right ends just beneath his shoulder in a clean knot of scar. 

“It’s lighter than I remember.” 

Her gaze darts back to her hand. Maybe it is. For her, the mark has changed at such a glacial pace she hasn’t noticed. 

“I saw everything,” he confesses. 

She believes him, too— not only that he saw what happened in her past, but that in them, he’d seen straight into her heart— the way only he could. 

“Everything you wanted to show me. I was there.” 

He rubs the back of his neck with nerves— with his left hand now, instead of his right. 

“I just wanted you to know you weren’t… alone. Even though I couldn’t help. I wanted to, though, all the time.” 

Their shoulders touch, their knees knock. Zelda looks up into his face— his same old face, his sunspotted freckled and worry-wrinkled face, his sky-glass eyes, the same as they’ve always been. 

“It feels like it didn’t really happen,” Zelda admits in a voice so little she’s afraid it’ll disappear. 

“That’s okay, Zelda.”

“I can’t go back,” Zelda continues as her eyes blur with tears. “I’ll never be the person you knew again. Too many awful things have happened, and I’ve had to give up— everything I thought I’d never have to lose— not again— I’m sorry, Link— I loved our life, our little house, and I wanted— I wanted— I wanted to tell you—”

His arm curls around her shoulders and pulls her into his body. He’s warm, and he smells like river water and sweet hay. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her, like none of it matters. “I love you anyway.” 

[thenwhokilledtheworld]

my totk retelling is updated!

[thenwhokilledtheworld]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

my tears of the kingdom retelling is officially 75% done! chapter 30 is posted!

[thenwhokilledtheworld]

New update for ftlsd should be up in like half an hour!!