Chapter Text
Link has always known he was destined to save the world.
Granted, pretend fighting a pretend dragon at his friend Zelda’s house with her moms, one of their friends, and a few others of his fellow recent elementary school graduates isn’t exactly the same as rescuing all of Hyrule from a world-ending threat, but hey, it makes for good practice. He’d deliberately made his ranger as much like him as possible, so that when he gets bigger he’ll already know how best to use all the cool abilities he’s totally going to develop over the years.
If Mipha’s able to heal small cuts, and Revali’s working on his summoning-wind thing, and Urbosa and Daruk are actual adults who’ve had years to practice electrocuting phones to charge them and materializing spectral shields, respectively, surely he and Zelda will get cool powers eventually too. Never mind that Zelda’s mom doesn’t seem to have any, (or at least none that Link understands,) and he’s pretty sure that if either of his parents were able to control the weather, he would have figured it out by now. But whatever. There’s no sense in being pessimistic about it.
Besides, Zelda’s dad seems pretty convinced that she’s going to be someone special, though coming from the likes of him that’s probably not a good thing. There’s a reason she only ever wants to stay with her moms, and Link certainly can’t fault her for it.
All this to say: Link spends a good chunk of his childhood utterly obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons. By the time the kids in the group graduate from middle to high school, they’ve been meeting up on the last Tuesday of every month playing the same campaign for close to five years.
Of course, the kids in the group practically live at each other’s houses the rest of the time, too. Mipha’s in some sort of accelerated learning program that’s setting her up to go to college next year, so she almost never has the time to loiter out behind the public library with the rest of them, but Revali finds himself staying with Link or Zelda until he absolutely has to return home more often than not. At this point, he’s probably had more meals at Link’s house than at his own. It’s a system that works perfectly for all of them, and after a while Link’s all but convinced himself it will never change; he and Zelda and Mipha and Revali and Daruk and Urbosa, playing as Lank and Sheik and Trebol and Ikea of Furnichar and Speck and Nabooru under Miss Saphira’s careful guidance forever.
Then the fall comes, and Link and Revali and Zelda start at Akkala High, and things slowly but surely begin to go wrong.
Revali’s attendance gets more and more sporadic, his frequent arguments with his father keeping him away from school for days at a time, sometimes to return with bruises he only allows Link to see. Urbosa’s sister overseas falls very, very ill. Mipha’s so wrapped up in the stress of college applications that she barely even has the time to come to sessions anymore. Daruk offhandedly mentions that the school is struggling for funding, and might cut its janitorial staff by half. Urbosa’s sister dies, and she leaves for several months to help her niece pick up the pieces of her life. They’ll be coming back eventually, once the immigration papers get in order, and Link and Zelda and Revali collectively agree to make the new member of Zelda’s family feel as welcome as they can.
They never get the chance. A month before Urbosa is set to return, on a Tuesday night that Mipha has finally managed to make time to spend with her friends, Zelda is interrupted in her struggle to set up the trundle bed as a piercing scream rings through the house. When the kids finally work up the courage to go downstairs to check, Zelda’s mom is lying alone in a pool of blood, several wounds slashed across her chest.
One of the group's collective parental figures bleeding out in front of them is, understandably, not the sort of sight that any kid would see every day, or that any kid should have to see at any point in their lives. Consequently, no one immediately notices the dark-clothed figure crouched in the corner, gaze shifting between Link and Zelda with an expression of quiet befuddlement in his eyes, the one part of his face that isn't obscured.
No one notices them, that is, save for Revali. Who sees not the attacker himself but the glint of light off his sword, and who promptly throws himself at someone considerably taller and bulkier than him with a incoherent yell that sounds suspiciously like the words GET FUCKED!
Mipha rushes in, trying to put pressure on... something, anything. Zelda just freezes up, until Link dials the emergency line and shoves his phone at her, because unfortunately he can't sign on a phone call and he's also panicking at the moment.
Somehow the police get called, and the paramedics. Somehow—element of surprise, maybe—Revali manages to keep the man who attacked Saphira from hurting anyone else before red and blue lights start shining in through through the front window, at which point he drops the entire sword he’s carrying and bolts for the back door.
“Oh no you don’t,” Revali snarls, darting to pick up the bloodstained blade in his own wings before chasing after him.
“No! Don’t—” Zelda chokes back a quiet sob. “Mom…”
“I—I can help,” Mipha whispers, and Link hopes to Hylia and any other gods that might be listening that she’s right. “Link—”
She doesn’t have to say it twice. She doesn’t even have to say it once. Link dashes through the house that used to be much more welcoming, past the table they’d played all their games but the first at, after Revali.
He’s not holding the sword when Link catches up to him. He is holding a wing to his side, like he’s winded, yet his head snaps up before Link is close enough to touch him.
“Link! You shouldn’t… it’s not safe…” Revali chokes back a sob, and Link realizes there’s tears in his eyes too. “I lost him. I’m so sorry. Is—”
“She’ll be fine,” Link signs, because she has to be.
The look on Revali’s face at that proves that he believes Link about as much as Link believes himself. He opens his beak to respond, then nearly doubles over with a pained groan.
“I’m… I’m fine,” Revali snarls, at precisely the same moment as Link notices the blood dribbling through his feathers onto the pavement below. “I need to… you called the police?”
Someone did. Link isn’t sure anymore if it was him or wasn’t.
Link doesn’t really care either way right now. He wordlessly nods.
“I-I can’t… they’ll keep us all there overnight,” Revali says. “My father will kill me if I’m not home. I can’t stay. I need to… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have done better.”
“Revali, wait,” Link signs, but Revali’s already turned and ran. If he can just catch him before he takes to the air—
“Hey, kid! Are you Link?”
…He can’t.
The paramedics, when they come, practically have to pry Mipha off of her, too-weak, untrained healing magic fizzling at her fingertips. The three of them spend the night at the police station, huddled together and refusing to sleep, and Saphira is pronounced dead before morning.
With Urbosa so far away and essentially unreachable, it’s not too difficult for Zelda’s dad to sweep in and take over everything, no matter how much Zelda struggles and protests. He moves them across the country and cuts contact with everyone from before, so that when a frantic Urbosa finally arrives home there is nothing there for her but an intense session of questioning regarding her wife’s murder, and Daruk is the one who has to explain the details when she’s finally released.
Things are honestly a bit of a blur after that. Mipha’s off to college somewhere—she got accepted to every school she applied to, and Link hadn’t gotten around to asking which one she’d chosen before she was gone. Urbosa leaves town as well, niece Link will never get to meet in tow, not that he can blame her. The school makes good on their promise to reallocate funds by laying off nearly a third of the staff, and so Daruk’s gone too. Neither he nor Urbosa had a hope of keeping those particular jobs after being even tangentially involved with such a gruesome murder anyways, no matter how obviously innocent they both are—the school just isn’t willing to risk any sort of negative publicity.
Link’s dad gets an offer for a new job, something that will be better for all of them in distant Hateno Village, and Link is so resigned to never seeing any of his friends again that he doesn’t even bother to say goodbye to anyone. He gets a phone of his own for his birthday that year, supposedly so that he can stay in touch with his friends from before, but Link doesn’t have the heart to tell his dad that he doesn’t actually have contacts for any of them. That had been Zelda’s job, back when the group was still so inseparable that being able to contact each other by means other than in-person wouldn’t have mattered much anyway.
Hateno Village is… fine. They find a house on the edge of town that’s not in need of too many repairs, and Link spends most of the summer sitting with his feet in the pond out back and staring into space. Aryll, at least, is mingling with the new neighbors, so hopefully by the time school starts everyone will have a vague idea of who he is and the fact that he won’t be talking to them. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with… anything, really, right now.
He tells himself it won’t get better, but it kind of does, eventually. Slowly, painfully. Not by choice, on his part. He mostly throws himself into anything he can that doesn’t involve other people, and steers clear of anything that reminds him too much of the friends he’ll never see again, one way or another.
High school comes and goes, with nothing particularly memorable apart from Link’s ongoing crusade to exploit every loophole in the rules that he can. He applies to colleges like he’s supposed to. He gets into one.
By the time his luggage is loaded into the back of the car and he and his dad and Aryll are hitting the road towards the University of Hyrule, Link has pushed his memories of Akkala as far away as they will go. Nothing good will come from dwelling on that part of his past, so it’s probably best to just keep making new memories.
Besides, he has new horizons ahead of him, now.
The listing on the realtor’s website is almost certainly carefully designed to make the available building look significantly nicer than it ever has been, but the rent is cheap and Daruk’s getting a little desperate. It seems that Akkala High was far from the only school in the area to cut its janitorial staff so severely, and the time Daruk had taken off to deal with the fallout of, well, everything had been more than long enough for every other laid off worker to fill what few similar positions remained. He certainly doesn’t regret it—Urbosa’s his best friend, and for her to have lost both her sister and her wife so suddenly and also to have a niece to take care of now is not something he would ever wish for her to face alone. Besides, Riju’s a good kid. Daruk thinks she and his grandkid will get along splendidly, once she’s had a little more time to adjust.
Unfortunately, having good friends doesn’t pay the bills. Nor does it directly help him reach for his lifelong dream of becoming a chef, exactly, but the moral support is definitely nice.
All this to say, Daruk’s been looking at rent prices in Castle Town for the last hour. Urbosa’s just texted him that she did, in fact, accept that job offer from the University of Hyrule, and if there’s going to be nothing left for him in Akkala anyways and he has to move himself halfway across the country to start his little business it’ll probably nice to do so alongside a good friend. He’ll just have to actually make the trip over to visit, and to ensure that the little apartment on the second floor is actually livable for a Goron, but from what he can tell the location, at least, is very good. He’ll find a couple more options just to be safe, but this particular listing is looking more and more promising the longer he stares at it.
Definitely worth a second opinion, at least, which is why he texts the link to Urbosa as well as a note asking her to call him when she can. He drums his fingers against the sheet of plywood he fashioned into a worktable some time ago as he waits, which luckily isn’t for long.
“Hey, ‘bosa!” he says, trying to put a little extra cheer into his voice.
“Hello, Daruk,” Urbosa replies, and she sounds exhausted. Not too unhappy, though, or at least he’s pretty sure she isn’t doing any worse than the last time they’d talked, which had been longer ago than they’re really used to. The stress of moving across the country so soon after such a major life change is definitely getting to her. “The listing you sent me looks nice. Did you schedule a visit?”
“Not quite yet! I wanted to know what you thought of the place first,” he says. “But since it seems like you approve, I’ll definitely be in contact with the realtor now!”
“It’s not very far from the apartment Riju and I chose,” Urbosa says, voice finally perking up a little. “We’d be happy to stop by when you open, I’m sure—yes, Riju is nodding as I speak. Well, best of luck! Let me know if you need anything as you arrive? We will officially be moving on the first of next month, once I… ah, finish closing with the buyer of the house.”
Daruk makes a face, grateful that the nature of phone calls means she can’t see it. That house is probably the only chance Zelda would have of finding Urbosa again, if she ever manages to get herself out from under her father’s iron rule. Daruk had done his best to defend her when Rhoam had swooped in to claim sole custody during Urbosa’s absence, but in the end, there was nothing to be done. Daruk still thinks about how things could have gone differently, no matter how much Urbosa assures him he’d done everything he could. It’s a little hard to believe her words when she’s still so clearly shaken by grief that he could do little to assuage.
“Best of luck to you, too,” he responds, not entirely sure what else can be said. “Tell Riju hi from me! Maybe in a couple’a years when I get the business booming, my family will come out from Eldin to visit, and she can meet my grandkid!”
“I will pass on the message,” Urbosa says. “Feel free to send along any other options you want my thoughts on, though I may not manage to get to them in a very timely manner….”
“Hey, don’t sweat it,” he says. “You just take care of you. The great Daruk can handle himself!”
“Alright, great Daruk,” she says, and he can finally hear the smile in her voice. “I will see you later.”
“Sure thing!” he agrees. Even if they haven’t decided on exactly when later will be yet, he knows it’ll be soon. She would never leave town without a proper goodbye, no matter how soon he’ll be following. “Bye now!”
They hang up, and he looks over the listing one more time before taking a deep breath and dialing the number to schedule a viewing. Finally, things might be looking up.
Urbosa’s new office is… fine? It’s definitely a space she could make her own, but it’s admittedly a little hard to conjure up a vision when the blank canvas she has to work with consists mostly of flickering fluorescent lighting, a desk that’s probably twice as old as she is, and an extremely suspicious stain on the carpet right as she walks through the door. It had taken nearly ten minutes of wandering up and down the building’s twisting hallways and asking two separate people for directions, one of whom was most likely a student but the second who was definitely a colleague, just to get here to begin with. With only her one box of decorations in hand, and a still fairly nervous-looking Riju at her side, Urbosa suddenly feels like she’s gotten into something way over her head.
“...The view is nice?” Riju offers after a beat of silence. “And there’s probably enough sunlight for some plants.”
Urbosa nods. There’s probably enough sunlight for a lot of plants—the angle the window is at bathes the majority of the room in it, especially around this time of day. Urbosa wishes she hadn’t had to abandon so many of her plants in the move, even though she’s sure that lady down the street with a borderline unhealthy obsession with flowers will take very good care of them. She’ll have to make a list of species she wants. Something leafy and green, she thinks—flowers had been Saphira’s thing. “Good idea. Would you like to help me choose some? Something you used to have at home, perhaps..?”
“Okay,” Riju says, going suddenly closed off again. Urbosa tries not to take it too hard. None of this is fair to either of them. “Did you want to put out your decorations?”
She hadn’t been planning on it just yet, but anything to make Riju feel that her input is appreciated. “Alright!” she agrees, trying to go for just the right amount of enthusiasm. She probably comes up a bit short, but Riju does relax a little, so she’ll take it. “Where would you like to start?”
“Well, I, um… made you this?” Riju says nervously, pulling a folder out of the box that Urbosa definitely hadn’t put there and extracting what looks to be an overly inked sheet of printer paper from it. “Since my mom always said your sense of humor is a lot like mine, and I thought… well—“ She flips the paper around so that Urbosa can see, displaying a brightly colored lesbian flag with the silhouette of a molduga edited over it, complete with a set of cartoonishly evil angry eyes and the caption “FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT.” It is, without a doubt, the greatest thing Urbosa has ever seen in her entire life.
“Makeela Riju,” Urbosa says in the most comically over-serious voice she can muster, “that is, without a doubt, the greatest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.”
Riju grins, the tension finally melting from her shoulders. “Right? My friends and I used to make these all the time. Our teachers weren’t nearly as amused as you are, so. I think this means you’ll be a really good teacher.”
Urbosa smiles back. “I would love to hear more about your friends someday. And maybe I could tell you stories about your mother when she was young? She was an absolute menace at your age.”
Riju nods, now seemingly lost in thought. “…I’d like that.”
They begin decorating, in comfortable silence for the most part, though it is broken by a fit of laughter when Urbosa tapes the molduga lesbian icon flag to the wall above her desk directly at eye level and they both stare at it for a while. The decorations that one relatively small cardboard box could hold don’t do a whole lot by themselves, but by the time they have everything set out Urbosa is starting to have an easier time imagining this space as her own.
“…I should get a couch in here,” Urbosa muses. “If I have students coming to my office hours, they may as well have something to sprawl on. Or cry on. College is a pretty miserable time for some.”
It probably says a few things about the mess that is Revali’s life that waking up feeling like his head was dribbled around like a basketball does not even number among the top ten worst positions he has woken up in. It’s somewhere in the top hundred, but his head hurts too much for him to figure out where in the top one hundred. At least he’s reasonably sure, from cracking his eyes open and trying not to flinch away from the resulting light, that he’s not at home.
…He probably should consider that to be a bad thing. He’s probably concussed, or something. Even if he isn’t, he has an excuse for considering not being at home to be a good thing.
Still. Where is he, how did he get here, and why does it feel like he’s lying on someone’s couch?
The answer to that last question is, as it turns out, because he is lying on someone’s couch. He manages to pull himself up into a sitting position on the couch, that is honestly far nicer than the one at home, and—tries to think. What was he doing before this?
He’s in his work uniform, so that answers one question. At the cost of raising several more. He has way too strong of a headache to deal with this shit. At least it’s not too bright in here, except for the faint sunlight streaming in through a window, a window that’s…
Why, exactly, the fuck is there blood on that window?
Revali has the distinct feeling that he’s missing something important. His work bag is sitting on the floor next to the couch, so it can’t be that. Which is good. His boss might kill him if he lost that, though honestly, his boss really isn’t that scary.
There’s a reason he prefers work to being at home.
That reason does not at all answer the question of where he is at the moment, even if he has a slightly better idea of how he got here. Then a door opens, creaking loudly. He turns quickly, immediately regretting the quick movement. There’s—someone standing there? Rito, he’s pretty sure. Mostly sure. Sure enough. White feathers, quite possibly bigger than his father, which isn’t an encouraging thought.
“Who are you and what do you want with me?” Revali tries to ask, but much to his embarrassment it comes out more along the lines of who’re you’n wh’d’you want wi’me.
The strange Rito looks at him. He almost looks… concerned, but that can’t be right. The only adults who have ever actually been concerned about Revali are dead or were otherwise gone without a trace when he went looking for them.
“My name is Teba,” the white Rito says very slowly. “I am a physics professor. I believe I ordered several textbooks online, to be delivered to my home today?”
Revali doesn’t trust his voice anymore, so he nods. Very slowly. (It still hurts, but his brain no longer feels like it’s going to explode out of his eyes, so that’s an improvement.)
“As to what I want from you,” Teba continues, “that’s rather simple, actually. Given that you flew into my window hard enough to knock yourself out for over an hour, I’d like you to get yourself to the nearest hospital sooner rather than later.”
His eyes widen. He shakes his head.
He forces the words out, even as he finds himself slurring them, “No ‘ospital.”
(His father would kill him. He can’t let that happen. He almost has enough saved up to get himself and his brother far, far away from him, and—he can’t let that happen, not now, not when he’s finally so very close.)
“O… kay,” Teba says. There’s a note of suspicion to his voice. “Well, I’m at least giving you a ride home, you do not look like you’re in any state to fly right now.”
“M’fine,” Revali lies, because he has to.
“...No, you absolutely fucking aren’t, and if you try to fly when you can barely even speak you’re only going to hurt yourself more. How old are you, kid?”
Revali glares at him. Legally, he does not have to answer that. (Though he’s sure that his irritatingly persistent cheek spots are an answer in themselves.)
“Right…” Teba sighs. “Is there somewhere I can give you a ride to?”
Great. This random physics professor is stubborn. On a better day, Revali wouldn’t even consider giving in. On a better day, he doesn’t feel like he—did Teba say that he flew into a window?
Still. As long as he makes sure Teba lets him go somewhere down the road from his actual house, it… should be fine. He can fly back to the post office from there. Or, if Teba’s right about him not being able to fly, he can sneak home without too much trouble.
So he nods, very carefully. He opens his beak to tell him the address.
He closes his beak, eyes widening further.
“Well?” Teba asks.
“Don’t ‘member,” Revali mutters sourly. He can picture the house clearly, he can picture the street clearly, but the actual address—why can’t he remember? It shouldn’t be that hard.
“I… see.” Teba looks more concerned. Revali would be impressed if he believed it for a second. “I’ll call the post office, then. You have a name?”
He glares at him wordlessly.
“That you can remember,” Teba adds. “It’s going to be real awkward for both of us if I have to ask the post office who the blue-feathered kid with cheek spots glaring at me is before I tell them that you thumped your head hard enough to—”
“Revali.” The glare intensifies. “S’Revali.”
“Revali,” Teba repeats, nodding. “Well. It’s nice to meet you, Revali, though I wish it had been under better circumstances. Let’s get you home.”
Personally, Revali thinks he’d rather fly into another window—but he says nothing as Teba pulls out his own phone, dials a number he knows well, and starts to talk about him. He just glares, and wishes—not for the first time, certainly not for the last—that he hadn’t been so stupid as to avoid talking to all his old friends for so long that they’d all abandoned him.
(He misses them all, far more than he’d ever want to admit. But right now, with his head throbbing, he misses Mipha and her healing powers most of all.)
There is blood on her hands. Blood, flowing too fast, too much despite her desperate efforts to staunch the flow. She knows, even as she reaches for what little power she has inside her, that this is too much. But she cannot—she simply must—
“Mipha!”
Her eyes snap open. She remembers, staring at her brother—she is to graduate Hyrule University soon, or at least their undergraduate program. She had only meant to sit down for a moment, to close her eyes for a moment, and…
Well. Perhaps she was more tired than she thought she was.
“Sidon! Hello,” Mipha says, forcing a smile that really should not be as forced as it is. “I am so sorry, I… what time is it?”
“We have plenty of time, sister! You need not worry about that!” His own smile falls, as he bends down—it seems impossible how much he has grown in a few short years, and yet now he towers over Mipha despite his young age. “Are you… alright?”
“Why would I not be?” Mipha asks. “...Well, barring the fact that by all reports, medical school is significantly more grueling than anything else I have faced thus far, but I have made it this far.”
“I am certain that you will make it much farther, and I will be right there to support you!” Sidon’s grin, nevertheless, does not quite return. “Though—”
“I have seen your grades, my dear brother.” She taps his arm lightly. “A single B is hardly anything to be ashamed of, particularly not when you are still adjusting to university as a whole.”
“I appreciate your kind words! That is not, however, what I meant.” He pauses, glances over his shoulder—it seems like most of the other people have moved out of this lounge area, a thing that Mipha is as grateful for as Sidon is given that sitting down was apparently all it took for her body to decide that she needed a nap. “There is no easy way to say this, but you were crying.”
“...Oh,” Mipha says softly. She raises a hand to her eyes. Her fingers come away wet—which is not exactly a strange occurrence for a Zora, even a Zora out of water, but she knows without checking that this is the saltwater of tears.
“Nightmares?”
“The same one, unfortunately,” Mipha confesses. “I wish I could have done more, Sidon. Perhaps then—”
Her brother takes her hands in his own, and she falls silent.
“There was nothing more you could have done,” Sidon says, at a much lower volume than he would normally speak, and she knows this to be true but that does not change the fact that she will continue to feel guilt for, perhaps, the rest of her days. “Not then. If it were to happen today—”
“It would not,” Mipha says resolutely. “I… doubt I would ever have thrown myself into my studies quite so much as I have if it were not for what happened to Miss Saphira, and yet… what I would give for it to never have happened at all…!”
Sidon hugs her. Tightly—though really, that is the default state of being for Sidon’s hugs.
She hugs him back.
“I will be alright,” Mipha says gently. “I do believe that I did need that nap, and… I have found that I tend to have nightmares far less when I am well-rested, so it is a good thing that summer vacation is coming up.”
“A very good thing indeed,” Sidon exclaims, as she pulls away and stands, blinking away the last remnants of sleep and the regrets she carries with her wherever she goes.
“I hope I do not have to tell you this,” Mipha teases, “but you also should rest up over the summer, dear brother. I cannot imagine that acting as a resident assistant will be particularly restful.”
“Oh, certainly not!” Sidon’s smile, at last, returns. “Still, I believe that it will be very enjoyable for all parties involved! I have many fun events planned already, and I do have all summer to come up with more!”
She giggles. “Are non-residents allowed to attend?”
“I have absolutely no idea! However, it is far easier to ask forgiveness than permission!”
“You are learning well,” Mipha says wryly. “I will do my best to attend whenever I have the time, in that case!”
She fully intends to attend Sidon’s residence hall events as often as is remotely possible. She cannot be stopped… unless, of course, she is asked nicely.
Somehow, she does not think that Sidon would be particularly inclined to stop her in the first place.
Zelda slams her bedroom door as loudly as she dares (which is to say, barely audibly at all,) and runs a hand through her hair, unable to prevent herself a little smirk as it tugs free just above her shoulders. Her father is still absolutely livid, over an hour after she’d returned from the salon to a fully anticipated shouting match, which probably means that he’ll be fuming downstairs for quite a while and she can expect plenty of alone time to dig a certain box out of the back of her closet without worrying that he might discover its contents and do something to remove them during her absence.
The box in question hasn’t been opened in over three years now; consigned to be buried under a pile of laundry forever during what little she remembers of the tear-stained aftermath of… well, everything. Honestly, she has no idea what’s even in here. She almost hopes it’s nothing; tax documents or old newspaper clippings or something equally tedious and therefore unlikely to send her into hysterics just moments before her video call with her new roommate, to discuss move-in plans and just generally try to make a decent first impression. With less than a day left before the cross-country drive, Zelda’s nerves are in full swing.
…But if it is just boring garbage or soulless forms, then she truly does have nothing left of her mother, or of Urbosa. That, perhaps, would hurt more than anything.
She struggles to slice through the layers upon layers of packing tape with just the old desk scissors she’s had since she was a child, but eventually it gives way, and she pushes the flaps of the box aside before she can lose her nerve and just kick the whole thing back under the laundry pile of doom. Breathe, little bird.
At the top of the box, sitting on what at first glance appears to be some sort of curtain or dress, but with definitely more papers below that, is a well-worn and achingly familiar notebook.
Zelda stares in shock at her mother’s campaign notes for what simultaneously feels like less than a second yet more than a century, before she is startled from her thoughts by the ding of a received text from her phone.
Riju (roommate): Ready when you are!
Right.
Almost as if on instinct, only barely realizing what she’s doing, Zelda tucks the notebook between two heavy religious studies textbooks in her backpack before hastily closing up the box and sliding it back to its place beneath the concealment of the fancy clothing her father insisted on but she never wears, sneezing once again at the dust that kicks up as she does. One crisis at a time: she has a roommate to call, a final suitcase to coax shut, and quite possibly a father to appease, unless she wants the entirety of the eight-hour drive tomorrow to be spent in glowering silence.
But once she’s dealt with all that, she decides, and once her father has gone to work and will leave her alone for a while, there are going to be a few memories to explore.
