Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The click of a door unlocking echoed in the dark, and then the apartment door opened, casting a single strip of light on the crooked wood floors. Luda stumbled in, releasing her heavy bag of reference books as she pushed the door shut. She had an actual bed in the one-room affair, but she only made it as far as the shabby couch before falling face down, moccasins still hanging off her toes.

She slept for hours. Studying under Hyrule's top physician was not fun or easy work. Luda was beginning to despair that dissecting so many dead animals would never help her with real patients. It was disheartening. (Sometimes literally, as the heart of a large goat had been sitting on her desk for much of the school day.)

The roar of rain outside her single, curtain-staunched window finally roused her again. Thunder rocked gently as she stood, lit a fire in the round clay alcove that chimneyed through the ceiling of her corner kitchen, and set to making herself tea.

The firelight did not flatter her living situation. It was little more than four walls, with the bed buried in piles of rumpled clothing, the kitchen littered with her very few dishes, and the tea table in front of the couch a mess of both unfinished homework and unsent letters. Of those, most were the same: crumpled and crossed out, addressed to her father in Kakariko, and consisting of various ways to say one thing.

“I want to come home.”

Luda had been living in Castle Town almost two full years. Her school provided the housing, at a cost, and though it was little more than a roof over her head, she’d grown used to every crack in the floorboards, every bug that had made its home in the dark corners, every neighbor’s voice that filtered in through the walls (all from fellow students, none friendly enough to know well). It was not home. Home had never made her feel like a stranger to herself.

She could decorate the apartment however she liked. Her mother’s dreamcatcher with the story of her family twined in, her father’s blanket draped over the couch, the smell of ground herbs and burning incense. None of it could make her feel like she belonged.

The kettle hissed, and Luda pulled it from the flame.

Someone knocked on the door.

Luda held still for a moment, the kettle swaying on its wooden handle. She didn't get visitors. Surely someone had the wrong address. But they knocked again regardless, so she called out “just a moment!” and set the teapot down before answering.

She saw first a badly stained lace parasol. It had clearly offered no aid against the rain outside to the hunched figure beneath it, who was dripping wet from pigtails to petticoats. Luda would not have recognized the girl, tall and strange as she had become, except that when she raised her rain-and-tear-stained face, Luda saw tattoos, three dots under each eye, that had been there since they were both little girls meeting in a summer garden long ago.

“Agitha,” she gasped, immediately pulling the door wider.

The parasol wobbled in one of the insect princess's cold shaking hands as the other gripped her muddy dress. More tears drew trails down her tattooed cheeks as she spoke, the first words Luda had heard aloud from her in over six years. “You're the only one I can trust. Please, Luda. I need help.”

*

Luda had never expected to see Agitha again. They had met once, both twelve years old at the time, and it had been enough to change Luda's life. Everything about Agitha, from her clothes to her unusual passions, her maturity and her independence, and even her painted beauty made poor village girl Luda admire her: a self-proclaimed princess, living alone in a bustling city and devoting her days to whatever she pleased.

Luda had been chasing a beautiful butterfly when the other girl appeared, a beautiful butterfly herself, decorative cloth wings and all, lace parasol balanced elegantly against one shoulder.

They caught the bug together, gentle as lambs with its tiny, delicate, multicolored body. Its wings fluttered against Luda's cheek and she giggled at the sensation.
"Oh! Aww!" The girl exclaimed, jealous. "He kissed you! He must like you very much."

"Does he?" Luda let the insect crawl across her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Butterfly. I'm Luda."

"Luda, like a ladybug?" The girl said delightedly. "My name is Agitha. Where are you from, li'l ladybug?" Agitha asked. "Do you like insects, too? We should be friends."

Luda fell back on formal introductions shyly. "I am from Kakariko. My father is in the marketplace, trading."

"Well, the sun is going down. Would you like to have tea at my castle?"

Luda looked at the Hylian girl. Though they were the same age, Agitha carried herself differently, not like a child but rather like a noble, her hands folded daintily in front of her.

"...Only if my father may come too," Luda said, cautious.

Renado had managed to sell most of his tanned leather goods and hand-woven blankets in exchange for things they'd been in sore need of since Kakariko had begun its rebuilding. He met his daughter in the market street and agreed to the impromptu tea party, shocked to learn Agitha did indeed live alone in a well-furnished and friendly-insect-populated town home in Hyrule.

“Where are your parents?” Renado asked, bewildered by the dusk light glittering through the stained glass into the room, which itself looked like an indoor garden, as he sat at a velvet-clothed table and held a delicate and extremely ostentatious teacup in one hand.

“It’s a secret to everybody,” Agitha said with a little wink. The butterfly had been transferred to her hand and she admired it on the end of her fingers idly.

“My mother died,” Luda piped up. Renado winced beside her and she sobered. “She got sick.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Agitha said. “My mother isn’t sick. But she had to go far away.”

“And...your father?” Renado asked, uncomfortable.

Agitha gave him a smile and a shrug, her puffed sleeves rising to her pointed eartips.

This exchanged defined the tone for the rest of their visit, with Agitha’s carefree hospitality, Renado’s stiff, uncomprehending concern, and Luda squirming in her chair, wishing this tea party felt more like a playdate. The girls discussed their favorite bugs, a topic that was quickly growing from a mild interest to a full-blown obsession for Luda the more the little princess told her.

But more than that, another interest was growing. That night, they said goodbye to Agitha, who refused all of Renado’s offers of assistance. She was living on her own in Hyrule, and that was the way it had to be, she claimed, but she had her friends nearby to take care of her. This relieved the man somewhat, though Luda quietly knew she just meant the insects she had filled her home with. And Luda wanted that. To fill a home filled with things she loved, to live life free and follow her own unusual passions. She wanted to leave Kakariko.

A letter arrived a few weeks later from Agitha’s ‘Castle’, and it was the beginning of a long correspondence. The girls wrote to each other often as they grew up and their lives changed. They sent each other dried flowers and cricket wings and Luda made mention of her interest in medicine, and Agitha wrote about the bustle of Hyrule Castle Town and festivals held in the marketplace; about a life that seemed to move so much faster in comparison to the quiet village.

At sixteen, Luda was accepted into an apprenticeship. She wrote frantically. “Dear Aggie, I’m coming to Hyrule, I’m moving into an apartment above an old doctor’s office that has been converted into a school for people like me, we’ll be neighbors soon!”

The letter back was unexpected, and late, only coming a week before Luda was set to move.

“Dear Luda, we cannot be neighbors, for I am leaving Hyrule to find my mother.”

Luda sat in her room, clothes packed tightly into a single duffel, childish things set neatly away, and the letter cold and fragile in her hands, incomprehensible.

But she went. She went to Hyrule alone and enrolled into the medical program along with twelve other students she didn’t know, always hoping to catch a glimpse of Agitha in the square every time she went shopping for her little one-room apartment, passing the ‘castle’ that had once seemed so glorious and was now overgrown, the tree housed within bursting out through broken glass windows, moss creeping over the stuck door. The letters came further and further apart in time, and finally stopped altogether, but Luda was too busy with school to write anyway, so she couldn’t fault Aggie for the same transgression.

Agitha had been gone for two years. Luda’s grades were beginning to slip behind the other students. She’d developed an unhealthy eating schedule out of exhaustion, purchasing single-serving, often unhealthy edibles from the market when she could muster the energy to get out of her dorm after class. She connected with no one, her studies and her own self-sustainment keeping her too busy to socialize. She hadn’t thought about her penpal in months, despite half of the unsent letters cluttering her apartment being addressed to the bug princess herself.

And now she was back.

The tea set rattled in Luda’s hands as she carried it to the little table in front of the broken-down couch. Her friend was here, emerged from the rain like a ghost, trying to smooth the wrinkles from her damp, muddy petticoats.

“You cut your hair,” Agitha noticed, her voice still hitching with the occasional whimper.

Luda blushed, putting the tray down, one hand flying to her black, close-cropped fuzz that hugged her scalp. “Yes, it kept getting in the way.”

Agitha sniffled. “It looks nice.” She pulled a lacy handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes, then blew her nose, then collected herself somewhat. “I’m sorry to intrude like this. I just couldn’t bear it anymore. It’s a terrible secret.”

“A secret?” Luda asked, pushing a mismatched teacup towards her guest. Her mind buzzed through the years of letters they’d exchanged, wondering if Agitha had ever referenced such a thing in them.

“It’s not what you think. I couldn’t tell anyone because I didn’t know who I could trust. But you’ll be able to help me, I know you will.”

“Of course!” Luda’s eyebrows furrowed in concern. “But you have to tell me what it is.”

Agitha’s mouth turned up in a smile that didn’t quite reach her watering eyes. “You look just like your dad, you know.”

Luda gave a wry smile, looking away. “I guess the one time you met him, he was pretty worried about you, too.”

The Hylian girl accepted the proffered tea and blew on it once before setting it back down, no apparent appetite. “That was so long ago. Before any of this started happening.” Agitha buried her face in her handkerchief for a moment, squeaking a confession into the fabric, her words muffled.

“What?” Luda asked.

“I said,” Agitha took in a heavy breath, “My mother is the Great Fairy of Hyrule, and I think I’m starting to turn into something like her.”

She twisted her elbows over her head to reach the back of her dress with fumbling fingers, and Luda just stared, uncomprehending.

“I think my mom was supposed to help me with this,” Agitha was explaining, grunting with the effort of her contortions. “But I couldn’t find her in time. I couldn’t find her anywhere.”

Luda still hadn’t blinked since the initial reveal. She still wasn’t fathoming the first bit of this story, never mind what her friend was trying to do now. “Your—fairy mom? In time for what?”

Agitha yanked the buttons of her dress with enough frantic force to pop a few of them off entirely, letting the fabric split over her spine. Luda’s mouth opened, but before she could speak, she saw it: the blister, the swollen hunch over her friend’s shoulder blades. She slid across the couch until she was behind Agitha, hands hovering over the exposed area.

“Does it—hurt?” she asked in alarm.

Agitha’s chin quivered as she nodded. “I think...I think my wings are coming in.”

Standing, Luda found her moccasins where they’d fallen and pulled them on. She wrung her hands for a moment. “Stay—stay right there,” she said, still thinking. She raced across the small room and yanked the comforter off her bed, sending laundry splattering across the walls and floor in her haste. She tucked the blanket around her still-damp friend. “I’ll be right back,” she promised.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Agitha whispered hoarsely, her eyes huge.

Chapter Text

Luda took the stairs down three at a time, flying around the corner into the darkened lecture room. One of the tall medicine cabinets was open, a variety of dried herbs displayed hanging. Luda took just enough to not be missed. Not much was needed, anyway, for her purposes. She’d have to make a very different type of tea for Agitha.

She recovered her own bag of instruments as well, something she had never bothered to take out of the classroom before. Inside was a mortar and pestle, among other things, and—though goddesses forbid it should go so far—a set of scalpels.

When she came back into the dorm, locking the door behind her, Agitha looked pale and afraid. Luda rolled her sleeves back. There was still water left in the kettle, and she set it back to boiling.

“Pull the back of your top down as far as you’re comfortable, all right?” Luda ordered, already pressing the herbs together in the mortar. An affirmative squeak answered her, and she went on making her concoction, which just smelled worse as it came into fruition, which was, unfortunately, a good sign.

Agitha gave another whimper and Luda went over to her. The pale red, soft skin of her back was taut, pulled over something unseen that shifted under the surface with each shudder. Even the gentlest touch made the poor girl flinch, so Luda pulled her hands away.

“Well, you seem pretty accurate in your own assessment.” Luda pursed her lips. The shapes were definitely some type of limb, but what exactly couldn’t be described by any traditional medical science. This was something mystical. “I can do something for the pain, but I want you to stay here with me. Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you.”

Agitha nodded, clutching the blanket to her collarbone. “What happens when they come out?”

“We’ll see. If it’s fairy magic, it might not be as bad as you’re imagining.” In the kitchen, Luda found all that remained of a mostly-crystalized honey jar and spooned it into her makeshift medicine. “Here,” she said, handing the mug over. “It’s not gonna taste good, but it’ll help you.”

Agitha’s face screwed up at the first sip but she made a solid attempt to pretend it was just fine, her big eyelashes fluttering and her eyebrows raising until she finally gave up and just went “Eugh.”

Luda giggled. “Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s quite all right. I’m just very happy to know such a professional.”

“Hardly. You’re my first patient.”

Agitha blinked at her curiously. “Really? You just seem so practiced.”

Brushing her sleeves back down along her wrists, Luda shrugged her response. “I'm just a student. But I’ve always been pretty cool-headed in emergencies.” She mused briefly on the time Death Mountain had almost erupted, or when Kakariko had been overtaken by unearthly monsters, or the first time her mother had collapsed…. “It used to make everyone think I was strange. But it’s just how I am.”

“You’re very strong. I’m a crying mess in a pinch.” Agitha winced and rubbed one shoulder. “Speaking of pinching.”

“How long has that been going on?” Luda asked, once again sitting next to her.

Agitha chugged the rest of the small cup of medicine and stuck her tongue out as she dropped the empty cup on the table. “Bleh. Some time, I suppose. I mean…” She sank against the couch arm. “I mean, I think I always knew something was going to happen, but...it never hurt before. I thought I would find my mom before then.”

“Did it start two years ago? Is that why you had to leave?”

“Sort of. I didn’t feel anything bad, but I knew...something was different. Like my senses were getting sharper, sharp enough to see things other people couldn’t. And I couldn’t ask anyone in town about it, because you know how they...they bottle fairies.”

“Oh, Aggie.” Luda gripped the cushion with both hands. On the one hand, it seemed so silly. On the other, Luda had never even considered that a Hylian with fairy blood might be valuable to all the wrong people. “Did you know all this time?”

Agitha nodded. “I’ve always been able to talk to my bugs and to the fairies. They tell me about my mom. They told me I was one of them, but not one of them—half and half.”

Luda swore softly. Agitha’s eyes widened but she said nothing. Renado would be horrified with his daughter’s language, but the situation called for it. “I’m not...I don’t want to blame you for not telling me, but...oh, Aggie, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I had to tell you in person or you would have thought I was playing a game with you. And you never got to visit, and then when you did move to Hyrule, I needed answers more than I needed…” Agitha sighed. “It was dumb and terrible of me.”

“No, no, I understand…. Now I understand.”

The two girls sat quietly on the crooked couch. Agitha played with the blanket fringe, her breathing evening out as the pain in her back faded slowly. “Did your dad make this?” she asked.

Luda glanced at it and nodded. “Yeah, that’s one I’ve had since I was little.”

“And you took it with you?” Agitha gave her a little smile. “Cute.”

Luda didn’t smile back. “I do not have much else from home here.” She stood up again, driven by a need to feel busy. The apartment was a wreck and every second Agitha was in it made her more and more self-conscious of the tiny, dingey, messy environment. She stooped to gather up her fallen clothing. “Um, I'm sorry, I didn’t notice how dirty it was in here. I guess you’re not used to places like this.”

“Oh, it’s fine. As long as it’s out of the rain, we could be in Hyrule’s sewers and I’d still be happy to see you.”

Luda gave a forced laugh. “H-hopefully it smells better than that in here.”

Agitha was sinking onto her side on the couch, cheek pillowed by the folded edge of the blanket, her eyelids drooping. “Mmhm.”

“Do you want my bed?”

“No...I’m fine here. I feel a lot better.”

“That’s good. Yeah, I forgot to mention, the medicine will make you sleepy, too.”

“So I am...noticing,” Agitha yawned.

“Maybe I could help you find your mother tomorrow,” Luda suggested, folding her clothes together into a pile on the floor.

Agitha gave the tiniest shake of her head. “I couldn’t find my mom in two years. I don’t think we can do it in just a day...”

“Well, then, maybe we don’t need her at all. I can take care of you.”

Agitha gave a soft snore.

Luda’s lips pursed again, this time into a smile. “Sleep well,” she whispered.

The fire burned down and Luda got into her own bed, glancing over at the couch every now and then to convince herself she wasn’t living some kind of dream. Her penpal was here. Her friend was back. They had so much to catch up on, as soon as Agitha was feeling better.

Since her blanket was in use, Luda pulled a coat over herself and fell asleep.

*

The lancing pain faded to a dull ache, and when Agitha stirred awake with the first lights of dawn, she could no longer feel even that. The room was warm and still dark, with neither Hyrule’s sun nor wind able to find a direct path inside through the single open window. Agitha found that a small pillow had been placed near her resting head and took it, rolling over to bury her face in the back of the couch, which smelled faintly of incense merely from being in Luda’s presence for so long. This was how her letters had always smelled, too. It was too faint to be nostalgic, but it was strange how much of the girl Agitha had already been able to recognize from her letters, even though her physical appearance had so drastically changed with her age.

Luda had always been so curious about her, so quiet and careful with each word. Now she was much older and speech came much more confidently. She’d gone from a twelve-year-old with straight, shoulder-length black hair, stocky and shy in her bearing, to a young woman with a thin frame and buzzed head. Her eyes were the same, though, a deep and beautiful brown; her father’s eyes.

How odd for her to be so real again after all this time.

Agitha could hear her breathing across the room. The insect princess had never slept in the same room with anyone but her small, many-legged subjects. It was unnerving in a way that excited her.

Somewhere in the market, a cucco crowed.

And crowed again. And a bell sounded, long and low, five, maybe six times, Agitha did not keep up to count, sleepy as she still was from the medicine.

Luda gasped awake. There was a thud as she fell out of her bed.

Agitha flopped onto her stomach, startled, raising her head over the couch arm to look. “Err you ‘right?” she slurred.

“Agh—I’m—I’m gonna be late for class—” Luda stuttered, wrestling with a change of clothes behind the bed frame.

“Hmm, skip?” Agitha suggested innocently. School had never been a priority for her.

Luda made a frustrated sound. “I can’t, it’s the internship program and I’m already behind and they’ll cut me out of it if I—I can’t. I’ll be back later.”

She staggered out from behind the bed, belting clean, somewhat-ironed pants on over a white dress shirt. Agitha sat up, staring. She looked so different in modern Hylian fashion compared to the comfortable ornamented trappings of Old Kakariko.

Luda noticed her alertness as she tied the collar into a lopsided bow. “You don’t have to get up. You should really rest.” She was already getting her shoes on, a weighty bag of books slung over one shoulder.

“Will you not have breakfast?” Agitha inquired, alarmed.

Luda grimaced. “I normally don’t, I’m sorry. I will bring something home for you as soon as I can.”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about me, I just think you ought to eat something,” Agitha murmured, watching her, concern growing a wrinkle in her brow. “Maybe I could make you something quickly?”

“No time, got to go.” Luda pulled the door open. “I’ll see you soon.” She closed it.

The apartment was dark and still for ten seconds before the door broke open again and Luda rushed back in. “I forgot my—my bag,” she panted. She clattered her tools and medicines back into the dull carpetbag she’d retrieved last night and soon was gone again, carrying it along with the collection of books that was the size of a treasure chest.

Agitha looked around the room in her absence. The mess did horrify her, just a bit. It was no worse than her own Castle had become when she was younger, but Luda could not possibly have the free time to tend to all this, as a young Agitha had. A small cauldron with a fat, sticky coating lay abandoned next to a scrubbing brush in one corner. Clothes lay all around and on the bed, and trash from  packages purchased in the market—not to mention papers, papers and more papers—scattered wherever the window, which she saw now was nothing but a broken pane with a curtain, had let the breeze take them.

Testing her back with a stretch, Agitha stood. The lump was uncomfortable but in no way debilitating this morning. The girl rolled up her sleeves, determined to be a good house guest. It was time to get to work.

*

One good reason Luda had stopped taking her own breakfasts in the morning: it kept her from hurling whenever a new carcass was brought out for the student to dissect. Gross anatomy, the finest of early morning subjects. She’d mainly gotten over her revulsion for the activity, but really, did it always have to be such bloated dead things that got passed around?

“Pay attention, Kakariko,” the teacher snapped at her.

Luda blinked blearily and glanced at the scalpel in her hand. She was fairly certain she hadn’t done anything wrong yet. Or anything at all.

“Do I have to do it for you?” her partner in this particular exercise whispered, the words dripping with disdain.

“No, I know how to cut open a liver,” Luda hissed back. For a minute she entertained the thought of it being their liver, or at least that it belonged to the teacher who had started the trend of referring to her by hometown rather than by name.

Apparently, though, she didn’t, because while no one said anything to discourage her work as she did it, she was graded poorly on her work anyway at the end of the class.

“Can I ask what I did wrong?” she attempted.

The teacher just shot her a look. “Talk to me after the ending bell,” she advised.

“Um, I, I actually have...to go home early today,” Luda stammered, her thoughts flying to Agitha, alone in the room upstairs. Hopefully she wasn’t in pain again already, but there was no way the medicine would last much longer.

She felt every eye on her, the other students in open-mouthed disbelief at her rejection of the teacher’s offer. The teacher merely continued to pass out graded sheets, shrugging. “Fine, then. Don’t. Pursue whatever’s more important than this class. I’m sure it’ll be worth it.”

Luda’s eyes dropped to her desk. Shame burned her face. The students whispered and cackled amongst themselves.

“Well, if she won’t accept help, then she shouldn’t expect it.”

“Clueless.”

“It’s a boyfriend,” one of them said.

“No, it’s not. Haven’t you heard, Kakariko’s a—”

The teacher barked sharply to restore order as she returned to the front of the room. “Right, then, since you all have been very noisy about my tests being ‘unfair’ and—what was it, Dinni? ‘Too surprising’? I’m giving you all fair warning in advance this time.”

Luda wrote down the chapter names as the teacher put them on the chalkboard, but there just seemed to be more and more of them and she could already feel her planned week with Agitha falling apart under the weight of all the studying she was going to be doing. She had to read it all, and fast, if she wanted to help the fairy girl at all. Her head drooped.

“Kakariko!”

A ruler came down on her hand with stinging force, leaving a flat, red mark. Luda jolted in her seat, staring up at her angry teacher.

“Do not disrespect me by falling asleep in class again, Luda!” The teacher shouted. She levelled the ruler around the room. “That goes for all of you! I want discipline in this classroom!”

Snickers broke out again as soon as the teacher had walked away. Luda straightened in her chair this time. She was blinking back hot, angry tears, but at least she was sharply awake now.

For the rest of the school day she was holding herself together with very thin threads. Despite not eating (or rather because of it), she felt nauseous and weak and had trouble focusing on anything. Agitha was waiting for her. Everything else seemed unimportant.

She snuck more of the medicine into her bag when the other students were busy crowding out the door. Thankfully only one of the three teachers had asked her to come back after class so she snuck out unaccosted, despite knowing looks from the other students. She didn’t care about them. They didn’t know her. Very few of them had even bothered to learn her name, assuming she would drop out soon.

They’d almost been right. But now, she had to learn, because she had someone to help.

Luda ran to the market first. It kept her away longer, but she had to get something for her sick friend, anything to prove she could do this. It was only when she was standing in front of the stalls that she remembered her wallet was not in her bag. She couldn't do even this. She didn’t even know if there was anything left in her wallet after the rent payment for her dorm.

She was ready to cry when she reached her door. She didn’t know how to face Agitha on the other side. She could make more tea, more medicine, but she didn’t have anything else to offer.

Apologies were already on her lips as she opened the door, but her mouth hung open instead. For a second she stepped back, thinking she had opened the wrong door. But no. Her dorm was spotless, clothes folded and stashed under the bed, dishes clean and put away in the cupboards. More than that, there was a paper bag overflowing with produce on the table. The smell of broth and warm bread filtered into the hall.

Agitha was bent over the little fire alcove, tasting something in Luda’s little cauldron. She gave an “mm!” of surprise and waved the ladle at the door. She was wearing an apron that Luda had been gifted but never used, with white pleated frills sticking in every direction—it suited her.

“Welcome home!” she exclaimed.

And then Luda really did cry.

Chapter Text

“How did you do this?” Luda sniffled, comforting herself with slices of a warm loaf of bread that smelled and tasted like rosemary.

Agitha smiled at her across the table, her hands folded. She’d shed the apron, but Luda noticed she had borrowed a nightgown from among the laundry she’d put away, something soft, comfortable and just pretty enough to look like an actual dress on her without the constricting waist or necklines. It hung off her shoulders, leaving her bare to her collarbone except for a purple ribbon necklace adorned with the jeweled face of a mantis, and her long hair, which she had finally let out of the twin ponytails. It flowed in twin flaxen rivulets down either of her shoulders. “A magician never reveals her secrets!” she exclaimed, then added, “But this isn’t a secret, I just went to the market.”

“The market didn’t clean up after me! You did all this by yourself?” Luda’s eyes were flicking around the single room, admiring the changes.

Aggie nodded. “Whatever you’ve been giving me has really helped. I almost feel like a normal girl again.”

Luda was getting that feeling, too. Sitting down and eating dinner with someone was a luxury she hadn’t experienced often since she’d left Kakariko Village. Luda felt like a year-long hunger had been satisfied by the simple broth. “I feel foolish. You were just telling me how strong you think I am, and I’ve already ruined it by crying about soup.”

“You have a lot of other things on your mind,” Agitha said, staring at her half-downed cup of medicine and gathering up the nerve to finish it.

“I’ve had a terrible week. Is it that obvious?”

“It was, from your letters. I found them while I was cleaning up.”

Luda grimaced. “You mean the ones I didn’t finish?”

Aggie’s hand shot to her mouth suddenly. “Was that rude of me? I only read the ones with my name on them.”

“Well, I might have preferred if you asked, but…” Luda shook her head. “No, you know what, no. It’s my own fault for never sending them to you in the first place.”

The fairy girl deflated visibly. She drained the rest of the medicine and slouched down in her seat. “I feel awful about disappearing for so long. We could have had such fun, and my own quest was pointless anyway.”

“You were looking for your mother, right? If I’d known...I would have understood, even if you hadn’t told me the fairy part.”

Agitha sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I was in places even the postman wouldn’t come.”

Luda could see the medication already working on her, her eyelids sinking ever so slightly with each blink. She took Agitha’s cup and bowl from across the table, stacked them with her own dishes and stood up. “Well, why don’t you have a rest now, and then you can tell me more about it, if you want?”

Agitha’s head swiveled up at her. “I couldn’t possibly, I still have the dishes to do!”

“You already made dinner, let me take care of that. You’re my guest, and you’re in the midst of an ordeal, you shouldn’t be doing so much anyway!”

She rose from her chair, blinking sleepily. “But I must be a good guest.”

Luda chuckled, guiding her by the wrist towards the bed. “Oh, Aggie, you don’t have to be a good guest. You just have to be you.”

“Hmm.” Agitha didn’t protest any further, and she was soon curled up with Luda’s blanket again. The sun was setting, and Luda lit a lamp and set it by the bedside. 

Luda sat on the edge of the bed next to her. “Can I check your back again?”

Agitha nodded, shrugging the nightgown down over the swelling. Luda could now define an indent separating the area down the middle, over her spine, into two individual lumps under her mottled-red skin.

“Any pain?” Luda asked.

Agitha shook her head, eyes closed. “No. It just feels like something’s twisted. Like having a knot in your hair. It doesn’t hurt, but you know it’s there. Uncomfortable.”

“Good to know. I’m going to find out if there’s anything more I can do for it, all right?”

She hummed again as sleep overtook her. Luda gently tugged the nightgown back into place and then the blanket over that.

 Luda took the dishes to the source of running water for her block, a small washhouse, cleaned them amongst a crowd of old women gossiping in the lantern lights, came home, and got out her textbooks. Agitha slept on for several hours. Luda turned page after page in silence, occasionally taking notes in the margins, and at first she didn't notice Agitha's breathing hitching. Then the breathing became a whimper. Luda stood up, alarmed, wondering if the medicine had failed. Agitha woke herself up with a startled “Ah!” and wriggled upright, looking around in confusion.

Luda stood a few feet from the bed, brow furrowed with concern. “Are you all right? Does it hurt?”

Agitha blinked at her surroundings. Her eyes dropped to the blanket. “Oh, dear, I’ve taken up your bed, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but—I’m happy to lend it, there’s no need to get up—” Luda assured, but the girl had already swung her legs onto the floor, wrapping the blanket around her like a shawl.

“I’d rather not sleep anymore right now anyway,” she said.

“Oh. Does it hurt?” Luda asked again.

“It did in the dream.” Agitha rubbed her shoulder absently. “But not anymore.”

Luda glanced at the little kitchen. The fire was barely more than cinders, but it could be stoked if need be. “Can I get you anything?”

“A distraction.” Agitha wandered to the window and pushed the curtain aside, her hands careful around the broken pane. The street below was silent, nothing but crickets and cats mewling. The day’s crowds had long retired.

Luda blurted it out without thinking. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

“A walk?” Agitha tilted her head, interested.

“Yes, you know, see the fountain square at night, maybe. Nobody awake. Maybe it will help you feel better.”

“That sounds…” Agitha closed her eyes and inhaled the fresh air from the window. “Marvelous. Let’s do it.” She went to the meager pile of her belongings in the corner of the room to retrieve her shoes while Luda found her long fringed vest, another gift from her father, and slipped it on to protect against the damp chill in the spring night air. She held the door open for both of them.

“We match,” she said, pointing at the blanket-turned shawl Agitha was still holding around her shoulders. The girls tiptoed down to the street, giggling.

“Oh, I know. Have you ever been to the viewing deck?” Agitha asked, suddenly excited.

Luda shrugged. “I haven’t really found the time.”

“Then that’s where we shall go!”

“Wait, isn’t it locked up at night?”

Aggie pulled her along, holding the blanket clasped at her throat with her other hand. “Oh, no one ever checks that door. Come on!”

The market square was deserted, fountain burbling and glimmering in the moonlight. A few guards passed on patrol, giving polite nods to the young women, who strolled sedately by. Agitha waited until they were gone to rush the little door , jerking Luda after her. It opened easily.

“Lucky,” Luda whistled.

Agitha led her up a set of stairs in almost pitch dark. The next thing Luda saw was well worth the temporary blindness. Hyrule Castle, dazzling in its new moon-white stone. Windows of colored glass had been installed, goddesses and symbols and eyes patterned into them to watch over the town, each sparkling like jewels at the bottom of a night-dark sea. The sight of it was broken up only by bits of scaffolding where the construction was still unfinished on the needling spires. A castle took a long time to raise from the ground.

“It looks so different from when I left!” Agitha exclaimed, delighted. “They’ve done so much work!”

“Yeah,” Luda agreed. “It’s beautiful.”

Agitha leaned over the rail on both elbows until Luda expressed concern that she might fall off, at which point the insect princess laughed at her, and then sank down to the stone balcony, wrapping the blanket around herself. Luda sat down, too, smiling.

“How have you never come up here? It’s the best spot in the whole town, and you can’t tell me you were in school every single day since you moved here,” Agitha asked. “I don’t know much about school but I’m fairly certain it doesn’t work that way.”

“No, but I do work for the doctors there, too, I am an intern, after all. But it only pays for the tuition, so I grab another job over the holidays, too. It’s not so bad with the doctors, at least, they give me enough time to do my homework. I don’t think they really need me that much, I mostly just keep the environment clean, stuff like that. Or maybe they just don’t want me around.”

“I don’t see how anyone could not want you,” Agitha assured.

Luda dropped her head. “Oh, I, er, thank you.”

“What about the classes?”

“They’re fine. I certainly learn a lot. Maybe too much…too much to process, not enough time to really let it sink in. That’s why I do a lot of reading after.”

“Do your classmates help you study?”

“Er, no. Not in the slightest. I don’t really have any friends in the class, more like…there’s a handful of decent people who don’t go out of their way to mess up my day.”

 “Oh.” Agitha’s face fell. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, it’s...it’s fine.” Luda winced, grasping for a new topic. “So, what happened to your old house here? Did you sell it?”

“No,” she answered idly, staring off at Hyrule Castle. “I expect it’s still empty, except, of course, for my golden courtesans.”

“Oh, the bugs! They’ve probably taken the place over. I’d love to see that.”

“Perhaps.” She gave a slight nod and sighed. “Sometime soon. I’m not ready to go back yet. After all, I abandoned them.”

“I’m sure they’re fine. Bugs are hardy.”

“But they won’t know me anymore. I’ll have to introduce myself as royalty all over again.”

Luda grinned at her. “Anyone, even an insect, could tell you’re someone special.”

Aggie turned to her. She wasn’t matching her grin, no, her smile was soft and genuine, her piercing violet eyes meeting Luda’s in the dark.

Luda cleared her throat. “Are you ready to go back to my apartment yet?”

“Yes, I do believe I’ve drunk in enough of this view.” Agitha gathered the blanket again, stroking it like it was made of the finest furs in Hyrule. She got to her feet primly and gave a mock curtsy with the hem of the nightgown.

Luda offered her arm. “Shall we, milady?”

Agitha snorted and broke into a laugh that was so hideous and joyful at once that it became infectious. Soon they were marching arm-in-arm back through the square.

“Princess Agitha?”

The giggles died on their lips. Luda’s head jerked about, trying to identify the source of the low voice. It belonged to a young man, who stepped from the shadows as though born from them. He was hefty, tall, maybe in his twenties. He had long dark blond hair knotted behind his head, and a bulbous nose that dripped down his face. His expression was sour. Luda felt Agitha shrink away and stepped between them instinctively, despite the man still being several feet away.

He took a step closer. “So it’s true. You really are back.”

Luda stiffened, one foot shifting towards him into a fighting stance, but Agitha pulled on her arm. She was trembling.

“Let’s just go,” she whispered.

Luda had no idea why she was frightened of the stranger, but she wasn’t going to ask her right now. She led the way, shooting a parting suspicious glare at the man.

“Wait!” He lunged after them, but his foot turned on the cobblestones and he crashed to the ground, cursing. The girls sped their walk into a jog. He yelled after them. “You! Hey, you! You know she’s cursed, right?”

Luda paused, long enough to shoot Agitha a does-he-know? look, but the princess was staring at the street beneath her feet, mouth parted, chest heaving like her breath would not come.

“Don’t hang around her long,” the young man called after them, on his knees, trying to brace himself to stand against the base of the fountain. “She’s bad luck. She hurts people.”

“Come on, Aggie, I’ve got you,” Luda said, ignoring the voice as she touched her friend’s shoulders, steering her forward. Agitha moved shakily and Luda pulled her into a sidestreet, glancing behind. “He’s not following us. The guards must have heard him yelling and they’re helping tow him off. He must have hurt his foot.”

Agitha still looked distressed. “I know. He can’t follow me. He wouldn’t...wouldn’t be allowed to.”

“Allowed? By whom?”

Aggie shook her head and broke back into stride. “I just want to go back. I’ll sleep on the couch, I promise, I just…”

“No, don’t do that, you can have my bed.”

“I don’t want to be more of a burden than I already am.”

“You’ve been a blessing, Aggie, not a burden. It’s really no trouble. Besides, my books are all over the couch, I still have to finish reading. We’ll swap, just this once.”

She was too tired to argue further. Once the door was open, Agitha went right to the bed and crawled in, slumping in a very un-princesslike manner.

The apartment was still quiet, and clean, and beautiful. It felt like it had been renewed, somehow. Between her schooling and grabbing jobs in the summer to help cover her costs of living, Luda had not felt the pressures of daily tasks completely lifted from her mind since the moment she’d arrived in Castle Town. No matter how much she’d done, it had never been enough for one person alone.

Fetching the lamp to relight it, Luda paused at the bedside of the sleeping princess, who lay on her stomach. Her long blond hair blanketed her shoulders and hid the side of her face until Luda brushed it, gently, behind one pointed ear. Agitha did not stir but for a flicking of her closed eyes. She had no idea what kind of gift she’d given her old penpal.

“Aggie, I think you’re good luck after all,” Luda whispered.

There was no response but the feather-soft intake of a new breath as Agitha slept peacefully on.

She set the lamp on the little table and settled on the couch to finish her homework.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Luda was able to find clean clothes, have two slices of rosemary bread for breakfast and pack an apple for a lunch, and get her school things together without disturbing the still-sleeping Agitha. She left another dose of medicine with a note that said “just in case” on the table, and clean clothes out next to the small pile that consisted of Agitha’s few belongings—her wallet, a satchel, her parasol—and made her way on to school without panic. And after the day had gone by, she was once again greeted at home.

It quickly became a routine. Aggie slept or went where she pleased during school hours, but by the fifth bell she was always there, eager to welcome Luda back to the apartment. She wore a cloak and held her parasol close to keep prying eyes from noticing anything out of the ordinary about her back, and, on free days, she and Luda went out like this together to see Castle Town.

The young man who had accosted them did not reappear, but he was far from the only person to recognize Agitha. In all corners of the town, they could hardly go two steps without someone calling a greeting for the princess of bugs. Old acquaintances would ask her where she’d been all this time, and she’d respond with her old sparkling charm.

“Oh, Princess Agitha has been on a pilgrimage,” she’d announce, curtsying apologetically to her fans. “A very special journey to unite the Insect Kingdom.”

They would feign appropriate bedazzlement at this momentous revelation and Agitha would walk on with a smile and a wave. Even though she hadn’t returned to her castle, the game of playing princess went on, and it had evolved from a child’s play-acting to a narrative of dense political webs (sometimes literally, as tensions were apparently high between her humble kingdom and the fictional Land of Spiders).

“Who do you have with you?” many would ask eagerly. Luda became quickly self-conscious. So many eyes had never been on her before.

Agitha squeezed her close, shoulder to shoulder. “This is an honored correspondent of my kingdom! She has been a precious ally as Agitha has been on her special quest, yes she has.”

“What was the quest? Trying to find the Insect King, were you?” one person called after.

For a fraction of a second, Agitha’s mouth made a soundless “oh,” then her smile popped back into place. “No! The quest is a secret,” she said cheekily, and parted the crowd with a few determined steps, taking Luda’s hand.

The crowd went back to its regular milling. Luda smiled in a way that was half grimace. “This is exhausting. How do you do it? It seems like everyone here knows you.”

Both the attention and the medication were making Agitha tired quickly. She wrapped her arm around Luda’s and leaned her head against her shoulder. “Nobody knows me,” she said quietly, and then, “Let’s stay away from the main streets.”

I know you, Luda thought, but did not say. “Do you want to avoid people?”

“Yes.”

Luda’s dark eyes searched her friend’s face. “Are you afraid to run into him again?”

She gave a noncommittal shrug.

Taking the lead, Luda pushed through the market street. There were many more people here, but too many to even pay attention to the two young women forcing their way through. Luckily, Aggie seemed to know where she was being led. They both nodded to the guards at the wallgate as they passed out over a short drawbridge and into the gardens.

This was where they had met. As soon as the gate closed behind them the voices of merchants and shoppers faded into a murmur, replaced by the hiss of a breeze through the trees, birdsong, the hum of a grasshopper in flight. Agitha took a deep breath, releasing Luda’s hand. She drew in her parasol and sat by the fountain, the image of tranquility if not for the way one arm was drawn up to her collar, as though she was about to reach for the uncomfortable spot on her back but was thinking better of it.

Sitting by her, Luda watched her carefully. “Will you tell me who he is?”

Agitha played with the parasol across her lap, twisting her fingers in the lace. “His name is Kert. He used to stand outside my house and look into the windows.”

“He did what?” Luda shot to attention, but Agitha flapped a hand.

“He was just a child, like me. I think he had a crush.”

Luda’s nails bit into her palms. “That doesn’t excuse…”

“He couldn’t have hurt me. Even if he wanted to, or tried, he…. Well, I suppose one day he did, he did try.”

Luda swallowed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Oh! Nothing bad happened to me,” Agitha's sad eyes finally found Luda's face as she assured her, but her expression grew no less unhappy. “I don’t think Kert really even meant harm. He knew I was leaving and he wanted me to stay, that’s all. But since...since I didn’t want to stay….” She looked away again. The parasol creaked with the strength of her grip.

“Aggie, you’re trembling,” Luda said softly, touching her arm.

“He was right. About the curse. I should have told you before, I’m just so ashamed.” Agitha stared at the folded parasol, the crumpled lace. “It’s not something I can control. It’s why I lived all alone in Castle Town, yet no one ever robbed me or hurt me. If they tried, they wouldn’t...they wouldn’t be able to. Bad things would happen.”

Dots began to connect in her head. The man's sudden inability to follow after them, despite his apparent anger. This melancholy as a kind of guilt. Luda did not let go, her hand gently cupping Agitha's forearm. “Did something bad happen to Kert?”

She nodded. “Just as he was begging me not to leave, he grabbed my wrist, and I couldn’t get away until, just, out of nowhere, a sign fell on him. It broke off one of the old shop doorways and landed on his head.” She glanced at Luda’s face and hurried to add, “It doesn’t sound bad, but it hit him so hard, his eyes rolled back and he fell onto the street. It was terrifying. If he hadn’t been groaning I’d have thought he was dead for certain. Several people saw what had happened, but nobody could explain it.”

A cloud stepped in front of the sun, dousing the gardens in cold shadow. The stone was still warm, soaking in light as it had been, but the air grew so chilled that Agitha hugged her cloak about her, shrugging away from Luda's touch. Eventually she stood.

Luda finally spoke. “It could just be a coincidence, you know, it doesn’t have to be a curse.”

Agitha shook her head emphatically, helping her up, too. “No, this has been happening since I was very little. People tried to take my jewelry and somehow cut their hands on it. People threw rocks at my windows only to have the rock bounce back at them. One time a man tried to touch my hair and withdrew like he’d burned his hand.”

Luda chewed her lip thoughtfully. She wasn't sure, yet, whether she bought into it, but she would not outright dismiss her friend's feelings, either. “To me...it sounds like all of them were getting what they deserved. You were just a little kid, and no one should have been trying to take advantage of you.” They started the walk back, moving through the crowds, their conversation stalling in patches as they moved around passersby.

“No! No! That’s not the problem…. If it was just a way to defend myself, I wouldn’t mind. But I’m not the one doing it, and not everyone it affects is trying to hurt me. Luda," Agitha said, stopping to look her in the eyes, lowering her voice. "I'm afraid the curse will affect you too. Even if...if you're trying to help me, if my wings came in and I was in pain, I don't know what would happen…"

Luda gave her a half-grin, pushing onward. "Then I'll just be extra good to you."

Agitha frowned and started to speak again, but as they came back to the apartment block, they were stopped one more time.

“It’s the Insect Princess!” someone shouted. “You are back!”

A small flock of people surrounded them and the usual back-and-forth followed, but Luda was alarmed to realize that several of the faces were ones she knew, from her own class. Their eyes passed over her, drawn to the magnetic beauty of Agitha in all her glory, tall and lacy and colorful, and barely saw short and plain and drab Luda there at all, never mind recognized her.

“Can we visit you at the Castle?”

“No, dear, at the moment the Castle is not a place for visiting.”

“Wait, then, are you living there still?”

“Are you staying in our building?” one asked, but Agitha just pushed past her like a breeze weaving between reeds. Luda met eyes with that one and finally found recognition there. The student’s mouth popped open just before Luda closed the building’s front door behind her. She had to stop to laugh.

“That was gratifying. It just seems like a hard game to keep up,” she said.

As usual, Agitha’s smile had disappeared the moment the crowd was no longer watching. “When you start out lying to protect yourself, eventually you can’t figure out where the truth ends anymore.”

“I’m not saying you have to stop.”

“I wish I could. You don’t know what it’s like. You haven’t had to live with secrets like this.”

“I have secrets, too,” Luda said, a bit sharply. “Just because they’re not magical…” She stopped herself. It was a half-truth she could not explore.

Agitha looked away, her mouth folding shut. “Of course. I’m sorry.” They walked on.

Luda could not think of anything that hadn’t been relayed before in their chain of letters. Her mother’s sudden illness and death, her struggle to make friends that had followed her from childhood, the Ordonian children that had inspired her to explore beyond the world of her village with their easy kindness and unity, and who remained distant friends to her to this day. All these things had been written about as their correspondence became more and more important. But something else lay under the surface.

Luda had always thought of the Agitha she had met and the one as the receiver of her letters just slightly different. After Agitha had announced her egression from Hyrule just when they might have been able to visit each other at last, it had gotten harder and harder to think of her as a flesh-and-blood person. They had both changed as they’d grown into adults, apart. This secret felt like something reserved for the Agitha at the tea party, those many years ago, and it was something Luda could not give a name to. Or maybe the Agitha in the letters had never come back to her after all, and this one, sitting quiet and hunch-shouldered in her apartment, was what Agitha looked like when the tea party ended.

The air was stiff and hideously quiet until the Princess perked up again, tipping her head with an “Oh!” and dashing to the window. Luda watched her, perplexed, as she held a small-voiced conversation with the air outside the broken window, then let one hand breach the pane, sticking her arm out into open space.

“Luda, come here,” she said excitedly, her gloom banished.

And Luda came, curiosity piqued.

In the light of day she didn’t even see it at first, but Aggie kept saying “Look, look!” until Luda found, along the length of her pale arm and alighted on her wrist, a white fairy resting, its wings fluttering absently every few seconds as if to keep its balance. Luda let out a small gasp in spite of herself. She’d lived near a spirit spring in Kakariko and had seen many fairies before, but not since the move. She’d thought no fairy would visit this city at all until Agitha came to her.

“Can I let her in?” Aggie asked.

Luda nodded, “Of course!” and they both pulled away from the window.

The fairy babbled in a voice like fine porcelain clinking, like glass beads rolling together on a necklace. Agitha nodded at it. “I agree, it is homey in here.”

“Can you...understand them?” Luda asked, a bit dumbly.

“Oh, yes, of course. She’s like a part of my family. Did you want to ask her something?” She stood patiently, the fairy drawn close to her face like an ordinary pet bird.

Yes. What is this? What is inside me? Luda could think of no question that the fairy would be able to answer. She shook her head. “She can stay here too, if she wants,” she said, though the dorm was beginning to look crowded. Who would ever desire to live here, and yet? It had become desirable. She rolled up her sleeves. “I’ll make dinner tonight.”

The pigtails swung as Agitha looked to her. The words that came were careful. “Thank you.”

Luda worked in the kitchen corner while Agitha sat with the fairy, listening to its small, chiming voice, her face aglow. Sometimes she laughed, like the fairy laughed, the sound of a clear golden bell.

This was a private Agitha that Luda had not met before, except, perhaps, in those letters. The pretense, the play-pretend game was all gone. She was with her family, what little family she could find, and she was unashamedly herself with them. For a moment, Luda ached to be a part of it.

And then, she was. Aggie glanced up at her and smiled.

The secret welled up and flowed over.

Oh, Luda thought, but did not say. I love her.

Chapter Text

Luda had gained a new, secret status with her schoolmates. The whispering about her increased, but when she caught their glances she often found jealousy and sometimes admiration. With the proper motivation to learn, schooling itself felt easier and Luda had come home in high spirits.

The apartment was twinkling. Lights rested on the back of the couch, on the counter, on Agitha’s head while she cleaned up—one bold sparkle clung to the top of one of her pigtails. She usually let her hair down indoors but she was feeling like herself, and, Luda suspected, she did not want to dislodge the fairy hitchhiker. There must have been eight with them now, all told, and more every day. Agitha attracted them, though how they were finding her here, neither of them knew. The fairies themselves would shrug whimsically when asked.

“I can adjust the recipe,” Luda said, looking up from her textbook, “so it doesn’t make you as tired.” That day they’d already picked up a fresh stock of the necessary herbs in the marketplace—her teacher had informed her of where it was sold.

Agitha was humming, dripping fresh honey into her tea, another treat from the market. Her wallet’s supply of rupees was seemingly endless, and Luda was beginning to suspect there was something magic about that, too. She paused, raising her head, the fairies scrambling to stay astride her blond crown. “Actually I think it’s fine, so long as I take it at night. It helps me sleep deeper.” Distracted, she lifted a tray from the counter and brought it over to the couch. “I made biscuits.”

“Are you having trouble sleeping?”

Agitha gave a half-hearted laugh. “A bit.”

Luda blinked and was suddenly overcome with embarrassment. “Oh, it’s this horrible couch, isn’t it.” They traded off sleeping places more often than not, but the more she thought about it, the more Luda realized the bed wasn’t much better—certainly nothing fit for a princess.

“No! No! Really, I don’t care about that! I’ve just been having dreams about, you know, things.” Agitha nibbled at the edge of one of the biscuits.

Luda’s head nodded with the barest motion. “I know you’re scared, but I’m here for you, all right?”

Crumbs dusted Aggie’s lips, her eyebrows drawn up anxiously. The biscuit remained at her mouth but she seemed to have forgotten she was supposed to be eating it. Her other hand curled in on itself, fingernails tucking into her palm as she went still, and one of the fairies on her head perked up enough to lean down over her forehead, wings waving in front of her face.

Pushing her hand into Aggie’s, Luda laced their fingers together. “I’m here.”

Aggie came back to her, some of the fear drifting out of her expression as she looked down at their hands. Then she dropped the biscuit onto the tray and the spell was broken. The two broke apart again. Luda’s gaze swerved away.

“I know, I know, it’s just, the curse and you, I don’t want you to be hurt, and…” Agitha babbled, stirring her tea and retrieving the fallen biscuit.

“Have you had dreams about that?”

“Maybe.” Aggie sighed. “Once or twice. I know it’s silly. I mean, I’m, I’m worried about you being here, but there’s nothing to be done. Just, be careful, all right?”

“I will be. You know me, level-headed and boring,” Luda said airily, trying to shake off the feelings that were combatting inside her now, spurred by those few moments of contact. She’d held Aggie’s hand before, of course, there was nothing different about doing it within the privacy of their shared home, she reasoned, but reason had no foothold against it.

“Never boring,” Agitha countered, smiling again.

The conversation clung to Luda well into the next day, and her classes were a blur. She doodled on parchment, trying her best to pay attention to the lessons but was often distracted by imagining that quiet smile, the Agitha that only she had been permitted to see.

“Hey. Village girl.”

Luda ignored the whisper, and then the prodding finger on her shoulder, until the urgency increased.

“Hey. I wanna ask you something.”

Luda nearly snapped her quill in half mid-doodle and glared at the interrupter. The lecturist was turned to the blackboard and the entire class was murmuring amongst themselves, either about the lesson or, more likely, about whatever her fellow student was staring at her about, eyes wide as plates. Several others were committing the same invasion, paying no attention to the teacher and instead resting their chins on one hand, turned towards her. Luda felt the weight of their eyes in a way that she hadn’t yet this morning. She turned her eyes back to her paper, where sketches of butterfly wings unfurled across the lines of notes.

“Is the bug princess really staying with you?”

A whisper from her other side joined in. “Do you know the bug princess? Do you know where she went?”

The room was musty and stagnant, but her skin was cold, despite the sweat that rolled down her temple. “What bug princess.”

“Oh, come on, village girl, you can’t be that ignorant.”

She wasn’t, in fact, she just didn’t want to have to be the one speaking.

“Everyone knows the insect princess. She’s like our very own Princess Zelda but she walks among the citizens instead of staying away in her castle.”

“No one knows where she gets all the money for those beautiful dresses.”

“They say her parents were a giant golden bug and a maiden from Hyrule.”

Luda scoffed at this.

The student beside her scowled. “You wouldn’t know anything about Hyrule even though you came here to study. If you want to stay so aloof, just go back to your village, village girl.”

“I’m not aloof. I just have no desire to talk to rude people like you!” Luda’s voice broke out of a whisper as she shot glares back at every single student who had dared to observe her.

Only, now, the professor was looking, too.

“Kakariko.”

Luda’s eyes shot back down to her desk, her face heated.

“Please don’t disturb the lesson.”

Her mouth formed a protest but the sound never escaped.

“...See me, after.”

The woman turned back to the blackboard and a new wave of murmurs rose through the class. Luda heard nothing of the rest of the lesson. She sat and burned.

The one room apartment usually kept Agitha from feeling small. She sat alone on the little loveseat, staring into space. Her back itched, but she knew touching it would hurt, so she kept her hands nestled in her lap, picking at the lace in her petticoat. She had not felt up to her usual walkaround today. She wasn’t in much pain, but she was tired, almost unbearably so, and with no desire to actually sleep.

The room was hot. She hadn’t opened the stifled window, and the air within grew more and more stagnant. She had hoped the warmth would be comforting, but it merely made her sweat.

The fairies grew listless, fluttering around and relaxing in the room as though it were their very own hot spring.

“I’m sorry I don’t have much more to offer at the moment,” Agitha had told them.

“That’s all right,” one fairy jingled happily. “We are merely spending quality time with our sister.”

Another had landed on her shoulder at this, as though to drive the words home. “Oh, that’s very kind of you,” Agitha said.

“While you were gone from Hyrule, did you ever find our mother?” another asked.

Agitha shook her head.

Family was complicated. Even the desert, long rumored to house a Great Fairy, had turned up nothing, merely an abandoned system of caves with a hint of magic still lingering inside, but no trail to follow. She knew she was far from the only being to quest after the Great Fairy. But...she wished being her family gave her some sort of head start, as greedy as such a thought seemed.

After all, it wasn’t like she wanted to find her mom for the sake of glory or riches. She just wanted to come home.

But nothing was home anymore. The Great Fairy had chosen not to be a part of her life, for whatever reason. And when Agitha had left her little castle, she hadn’t known how sick it would make her feel to try to come back to it, resigned to failure.

Agitha tucked her legs under herself and eased herself sideways until her cheek met the cushioned arm of the couch.

“Is big sister feeling okay?” a fairy chirruped.

“Big sister sick,” another called, her voice almost lost over what was, to her, a vast expanse of a room.

Agitha sniffled. “Maybe I am,” she said. Maybe it wasn’t the room that was hot, perhaps she was feverish.

The fairies circled her idly.

“We’ll help you feel better.”

“Yes, we can help the princess.”

“Heal the princess.”

Agitha gave them a smile. “Thank you, little sisters, but I think I’m hurt in ways you can’t help.”

“Then what can we do?”

“We can make the room pretty!”

Lights flashed and glimmered until the apartment was brighter.

“We can do the dishes!”

Agitha heard a tremendous crash and sat up.

“We can fold the laundry!”

Clothing was flung from one end of the room to the other. Agitha was halfway between heartened and horrified. “Oh, no, no, don’t do that. Well, let me help?” She stood up.

The fairies cheered at her initiative. One darted around her legs and circled up her until its light sparked against the ceiling, and Agitha felt suddenly better. She took a deep breath and rolled up her sleeves.

“You’re right, little sisters, we should make the house pretty for Luda to come home to.”

Maybe home wasn’t for her. But by the goddesses, she could make one for someone else.

“Let’s get to work.”

Dutifully, Luda waited after class, though her mind was on Agitha. She’d been late coming home before. She hoped Aggie wouldn’t worry.

The professor adjusted her glasses and regarded her, pen perched over a series of ungraded papers. “I just want to have a talk with you. Please, sit.”

Luda did, her head lowered, already expecting admonishment.

Instead, the professor cleared her throat and gestured at the empty desks. “I’ve noticed that the...attentions of the class are drawn onto you. I’m no fool. I know this attention is unwanted.”

Something in Luda broke. She stared at the professor, mouth open pleadingly for a moment. Then her mind was clouded by her struggle through the semester. “You’ve waited quite a while to say anything about it, ma’am.”

“I think the best route for you to take would just be to blend in with your fellow students more. Take an interest. I know you have more...professional clothing.” The professor waved vaguely at her vest, the dyed leather patterns her father had designed. “Get in touch with the...cultural atmosphere of Hyrule.”

“I...excuse me? You want me to wear different clothes?”

The professor stared, her neck cocked pointedly towards her, like a bird watching an approach to its nest. “I just want it to be easy for you. You don’t have to make this so difficult.”

The force by which Luda stood up pushed her chair backward with an unpleasant scrape. “I’m not going to change my lifestyle so you can feel like you have any kind of control over your class, pat yourself on the back for ‘doing everything you could’ and ignoring the actual problems that go on, and will continue to go on. If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else, and maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t be encouraging a divide between your students by mocking them, using nicknames that disrespect their heritage, and letting the rest of the willing minds in your care believe there’s something wrong with them for looking a little bit out of place!”

The woman’s mouth was rapidly pumping out what may have been an argument as she spoke, both of their voices rising over each other until Luda was screaming to be heard. It was futile, so at the end of her tirade, as the professor went on and on, Luda was already picking up her bag and walking out. Her eyes blazed angrily at anyone in her path, and the few students remaining backed away in a hurry.

Somehow, though, once she reached the street, Luda took slow breaths, and the anger was gone. The evening sun was pink and gold over the rooftops, she could hear music drifting from the square, her bag was slung over her shoulder and her hands unclenched. Aggie would be waiting. Luda could run and get her something special to share, a treat to make up for her less than stellar day, shake off the anxiety that came from getting into a screaming match with her—she couldn’t even think about it right now.

So she came home with a little ribbon-wrapped box full of confectionaries, bouncing up the stairs. The apartment was quiet when she opened the door. Aggie wasn’t in the bed, and the curtain was closed. Perhaps she’d had something important to do in town. No matter, the surprise could wait for her.

Luda set her parcels down, noticing with a flat smile that she’d accidentally brought her medical tools back with her, too. There’d been no time to store them in her desk when she’d left.

The apartment was dim, the only lights coming from the apartment’s fairy denizens, and rather than their usual habit of exploring the room separately or clinging to Aggie, they were gathered on the back of the couch.

All of them. Their lights flickered, swarming the backrest.

Luda almost wrote off this behavior. But it was strange enough to make her pause, and in the silence, she heard something. The smallest breath. Strained, a whimper. And suddenly she was darting around the couch and dropping to her knees to examine the body on the floor, the body that the fairies were both illuminating and attempting to heal.

Agitha lay facedown, the back of her dress dark with her own blood.

Chapter Text

Luda remembered praying.

Her father had screamed. It was such an alarming sound, one that set her hair standing up on the nape of her neck, and Luda had run to him but stopped in the doorway of their home. Renado’s head was pressed into his wife’s chest, plaited hair draped over his face in such a way that Luda only remembered seeing his mouth, torn wide with his cries, in such an expression of despair that she knew, then, her life had changed irreversibly.

So Luda prayed. She was barely old enough to speak. But her father had told her, prayer was in the heart. If she truly wished for something, the Light Spirit would hear her, and would carry her prayers to the spirits of her ancestors reborn, and fate would make room for her. So her every prayer was for her mother, who would not move, her hand ashen and limp on the floor. Luda could not see her face, either, her head turned aside with the way Renado cradled her. But fate, it seemed, had other plans.

A slow parade meandered through Kakariko for her. Renado led it, and he sometimes carried Luda, but sometimes placed her in a cart to be taken behind, and held his own face in his hands instead. The village sang and wailed, and some laughed and danced, even Renado at times. Luda sat quietly and played with a straw doll and understood none of it. Her mother had become one of the ancestors that the Light Spirit carried prayers to, perhaps reborn already somewhere in Hyrule, as her father explained, but no longer part of their lives. A stone was put in the cemetery for her.

Luda had grown up with that grief, slowly learning its name and accepting it as a part of her, sending prayers to her mother when she thought of her. But when she found Agitha, she was brought back to being the child who walked in on her mother’s body.

Not her, too. Not her, too. Not her, too, mother, not her, too.

She prayed. And then she got to work.

The fairies broke from their huddle watching over the form when Luda rushed over, ringing their little bell-voices. Agitha’s pale hands were underneath her, stopping her fall, and there was no sign of head injury. Aggie made the smallest of sounds as Luda lifted her, carefully, like a baby goat lost from the fold, and laid her on the couch. The bag of tools splayed in an organized chaos across the floor beside. Since the dress was already ruined, Luda didn’t think twice about cutting the back away to see the source of the blood. Dried rust-red blotted her shoulder blades and wandered down her spine, but there in the freshest flow was something Luda did not expect at first: horns. Bony points had broken through her skin above the usual swelling, like a demon emerging head first. They both pointed towards the back of Agitha’s neck, and below them on her back, Luda saw what she needed to do.

She boiled water first. The fairies pulled on her hair. Luda swatted at one. “Stop! I’m doing what I can to help!”

Their voices jangled at her. She stubbornly cleaned first her equipment and then took a wet cloth to Luda’s back to clean her wounds. The fairies persisted.

“I can’t understand you without her! Let me do my job!” Luda’s hand roamed across her tools until she found a scalpel. A fairy stood on her hand abruptly, and when she looked close enough she saw the waving arms and shaking head. A wag of her wrist dislodged the creature.

Luda reached for Aggie.

Her back hit the floor faster than she could process. Her moccasin had slid forward on the wooden floor, under the couch, knee popping up to bruise on the frame, and her head hit the floor just hard enough for her to lose her grip on the scalpel. It shot straight down and embedded itself in the wood next to her face, severing a tiny strip of hair.

The fairies erupted in a chorus of sound, half concerned, half I-told-you-so’s.

“The curse,” Luda said dumbly. “Won’t let anyone harm her.”

She sat up carefully. Her other leg was bent uncomfortably under her, but thankfully nothing had broken in the short fall. Her cheek stung. Aggie lay undisturbed on the couch, cheek pressed into the cushions, the fairies alighting on her back. Their glow intensified.

“N—no, stop. Stop it!” Luda waved them away, still rattled. “You can’t heal her! You’re making it worse! It has to open up for her to get better!”

Their little lights swirled in confusion, regaining their backrest perch to stare at her. The room was silent but for the ringing in Luda’s ears. She closed her eyes.

“It has to be open. It has to hurt in order to heal.” Luda touched her face and her hand came away bloody. The scalpel had grazed her cheek. She cleaned her face quickly, her brow furrowing and her anger reignited. “It has to bleed! Otherwise it will fester underneath and make her sick! It will kill her!”

The fairies looked on helplessly. She scavenged through her belongings, overturning a stack of unsent letters on her dresser before finding a hand mirror to properly bandage her face. “She didn’t come here because she wanted to ignore it until it went away. She didn’t come to me to make it stop. She needs help to become who she is.” Luda stared at the mirror an extra moment. Her eyes were wild, hot, unshed tears pricking them. She blinked and wiped her face and they were gone. “I had my father to help me. I want to be that for her.” She set the mirror down. Folding her hands, she knelt. “But you have to let me.”

A hand laced through Agitha’s hair.

It was bedtime. Her cheek was pressed into her father’s lap, small hands gripping his knee, seeking his comfort. His fingers were steady and firm, slowing at the frayed tips of her hair so as not to pull tangles out. They didn’t own a comb. He kissed her head.

“That’s my special girl. That’s my princess. Was that so scary?”

She couldn’t remember what had brought her here. A nightmare, perhaps, of wings clawing their way out of her back. A skinned knee when she fell on the apartment floor. Apartment?...

Her cheeks were stiff with dried tears and her nose felt too thick to breathe through as the calming motions of her father’s hands brought her back down. “Papa?”

“Yes, dear one?”

She couldn’t look at him. Pain lanced through her shoulder. “I’m afraid.”

“I know, sweet girl. We’re all afraid sometimes.”

She sat up. There was no apartment. Luda had never been here, never seen the inside of Agitha’s Castle. The tree glittered with insect families, butterfly wings fluttering against pink curtains. She knew her surroundings as home, otherwise she wouldn’t have recognized them in the dark. Her eyes strained against it. Daylight flickered in through the windows, but it barely reached her.

Her father continued to finger-comb behind her, but when she turned, his features were lost in shadow, far away, even as he continued to brush her hair.

“Papa, I can’t see you.”

“No, I don’t suppose you can. Hold still, princess.”

Her shoulder throbbed and she gasped. “That hurts.”

This time, the tree spoke to her. “Don’t be so weak.”

She turned again. The golden lights of the tree had coagulated into a body bigger than her own, six arms outspread in the canopy and two legs dangling below, bent like pincers.

“You?” Agitha breathed.

“This is my gift. Don’t you dare throw it away by being a weak human.”

She hung from the tree, perched like a spider over its prey, shifting body golden and green, with only minute details certain: piercing eyes, wings like dew on gossamer, and pointed ears. This was not Agitha’s first nightmare of the Great Fairy.

She knew better than to ask her usual thousand and one questions. Irritation won out instead. “Why are you here?”

“Someone has to keep you alive once you end up alone again.”

“You don’t care. You didn’t care when he died.”

Her father’s fingers faltered slightly. With a sigh, he pulled the rest of her blond hair over to one shoulder and let it be.

“I didn’t know.” The spider faded into a woman for a moment, closer to something Agitha might actually call mother. Her face was turned aside, lost in the leaves, the greenery that was woven interchangeably with her hair. “I couldn’t have known. I’m not one of the gods of this land, child, I am but a servant.”

“That’s a lie.” Agitha stood. There was no lap for her to lie on any longer, anyway. “You bring people back from the brink of death. You could have helped him.”

The spider inched closer, human legs and hands balancing on threads that stretched across the floor of her rotting castle. Agitha could not see her mother’s face at all. “Even if I had all the power of a god, why would I waste it on a man so greedy, he tried to steal from his own daughter?”

“He was desperate, and I was just a child. I didn’t understand what you’d given me, even back then. He needed it more than I did.” She’d had enough time to justify this, over and over. The wallet. Her father’s fingers curled around the pouch. She’d pulled against him. Why had she pulled? There was no reason to pull. She had let go. The unexpected momentum had sent him backward… “You did this to him! You left us both alone!”

“Oh, Agitha,” she heard her father sigh.

The Great Fairy was gone. Agitha’s castle was in ruins, pink curtains shredded with age, floorboards rotten and pockmarked with the tunnels of her insects. The tree was dead.

Her father’s hand rested on her shoulder. She didn’t turn to look at him. Ghosting to her side, his fingers played over the Great Fairy’s wallet.

This isn’t where it happened, Agitha thought. But then, she couldn’t remember where it had happened. A random alley, a staircase in Hyrule Castle Town. Stone steps. She could still hear the crack of his head against them.

Agitha shook her head.

“Your mother didn’t understand what we would need,” her papa tried to assure her, tugging at the wallet. Agitha hadn’t cared about money, just the gift that was her only physical representation of a mother who was not there.

“Just give it to me, I can’t keep asking you every time we need to eat, give it up, give it to me—you stupid, spoiled little girl, give it—!”

Crack!

“He didn’t die because I left,” the Fairy’s voice echoed.

Agitha buried her head in her father’s lap, small hands gripping his knees, her cheeks soaked with tears. “He didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean to.”

The spider tickled her ear.

“He died because he loved you.”

Chapter Text

Sleep was tricky. Luda did not mean to collapse on the edge of the mattress, arm resting on the ragged towels that were drying Agitha's curled-up wings, but once she had, her exhaustion betrayed her. Her eyes closed. Her eyes opened. Aggie had rolled to the side, the towels sliding off of her. Luda tugged them off the bed and touched the feathery scales, gentle and cautious as a deer. They were dry. Aggie's wings were fully unfurled, opening and closing with her breathing. In the dark, they shone white. Luda's eyes closed. Opened. Aggie had rolled to the other side, her face forming a slight pout, one wing framing her shoulder. Her mouth made voiceless words, and then a cry escaped her.

Luda placed her palm on Agitha's cheek. "Shhh…just a dream."

Agitha was silent. Luda closed her eyes. She was curled around a warm body.

Then, she was not.

Morning came. She woke clutching handfuls of blankets imitating the shape of the fairy girl. Her cheek stung, and the bandage peeled away from her face, a thin stripe of blood staining it down the center.

The apartment was silent. The fairies were gone. Agitha was gone.

Luda lurched out of the bed and then checked herself, hand to her forehead. Aggie was just out shopping, right? She couldn't have possibly left without a goodbye after getting what she wanted.

But how was she hiding her wings, now that they'd been set free?

Or perhaps they'd already been crushed in the night. Maybe now Agitha was seeking a way to remove them, after all her strife ever since they'd begun to grow.

With the sunlight hidden behind a stuffy curtain and the mess left behind from the scramble last night, now more than ever, Luda felt like a beast encaged in the apartment. She stopped only to grab her moccasins before rushing out and down the creaking wooden stairs, out into the street. Crowds chattered without taking notice of her. People prayed at the edge of the burbling fountain. Merchandise was ferried through the streets or displayed on colorful tabletops. There was no sign of Agitha, no fawning crowd or lacy parasol or swaying petticoats.

Luda felt out of breath and disoriented, as though locked in the moment where she had just woken to the silence.

A mother and child passed by, giving her a wide berth when the mother caught sight of her face. She remembered the cut under her eye first, and then, when she looked down, she realized her apron was spattered with blood. Agitha's blood.

She retreated quickly back into the apartment.

Agitha's belongings were gone. They'd always been stashed tidily away, and now they were stashed nowhere at all. Luda made her bed and started recovering her floors, as though cleaning up would reveal the fairy girl's hiding place. Bloody couch, bloody floor, bloody bed. Not large stains, not enough bleeding to kill Agitha, Luda assured herself. But enough for her to give up on her furniture. It would never be fit for company again.

Cleaning turned into gathering. Her father's blanket, her mother's dreamcatcher, her moccasins replaced with leather boots, her bloody apron abandoned. Her clothes, a pot and ladle, and the instruments she'd needed for school—she'd needed to help Aggie. She tossed them all together.

She found the letter on the little tea table. Even just spotting it made her heart hurt, the truth a knife in her ribs.

My dearest Luda,

I cannot thank you enough for your help. I also cannot stay. I must continue my journey. Know that I will miss you every time I spread my wings.

Yours, Aggie

It was another goodbye. Luda had sunk onto the little couch while reading it and dropped it into her lap when she finished. Salt stung in the wound on her cheek. Her breath was thick, but she made no sound.

Agitha was traveling again. Letters would not reach her. But there was someone else that Luda could write to, at least. Someone she'd been trying and failing to tell the truth to for a long time.

Dear father,

I've found Hyrulian schooling to be unsatisfactory. Someday I will go to Old Kakariko and learn my ancestor's medicine instead. But for now, there is something important I must do. When I have done it, I will come home.

Mother is guiding me.

Give the village my love.

Luda

She closed the letter into an envelope and pursed her lips around it as she gathered her belongings into one rucksack. She left everything she could not carry. This was fine.

None of it was home. Agitha was home. And Luda was going to find her.

Chapter Text

She'd woken up so afraid.

The last thing she'd known was that the pain was here, it was getting worse, and she didn't know what to do about it. She'd kept distracting herself with work. Luda would come home and she would help and this would all go away for a while again. Luda was late, but it would be alright. Then she'd felt something tear the skin of her back open and passed out before she could even imagine the worst.

She was in bed. Her face was sticky with drying tears. She shivered off nightmares and blinked away her bleariness. Just under her jaw, warm and still, Luda's hand was tucked, thumb featherlight on Aggie's chin. Her sleeping face was a few inches away, lit up by the equally sleeping fairies. Her cheekbone was bandaged.

Aggie sat up, the smallest vocal whimpers escaping as she did, clutching the blanket to her chest in lieu of her long-gone slip. Her wings shifted with her.

She trembled, hearing them move behind her like silk sliding against silk, feeling them in a way that felt wrong—nerves that had developed under the surface of her skin were now a framework outside her body. Even in the stifled room, the air shifting against them made her feel raw, flayed. But it didn't hurt. Nothing hurt anymore, not even in the background for the first time in months.

It was tricky to extricate herself around Luda, who looked all set to fall off the edge of the bed. Aggie nudged her gently onto the pillow in her place and went for the mirror on the table, a single fairy clinging to her hair until it was awake enough to fly around her and cast a glow onto the carefully angled reflective surface. The light flitted around her bare shoulder until she could see her…new additions. The wings hung from her shoulder blades like long, silken ruffles. Every breath and twitch of her body moved them, the wings themselves had no musculature within to move independently. As she focused and tensed her back, they lifted and spread, each triangular panel the size of a pennant flag.

The fairy made a happy chime and glowed even brighter. Aggie's wings reflected the light like the rainbow in the mist over a sacred spring. Each feathery scale shone in different colors.

She didn't want to wake Luda, even as she stood there shaking. She didn't know what she wanted.

The couch was ruined, a murder scene that trailed dark stains onto the floor where she'd passed out yesterday. Luda's tools sat clean beside bloody rags. Aggie stared, helpless. This wasn't something she could help with. This was over. This was done.
Her feet brushed something dry like paper, hidden in the rest of the bloodstains. She sank onto the floor and picked it up gingerly, watching parts crumble away under her fingers. It was something shaped like a dragonfly wing, or the shell of a lima bean, the thin and breakable membrane coming to a horned point that was black with dried blood. There was a second one on the floor. It took her a while to realize what it was and she dropped it in a hurry. These had kept her wings safe inside her. The sharp calcareous point had developed like an eggtooth to free them when the time was right. Now all that remained were dusty chrysalises.

Agitha's wings had come into their own, grown and freed and spread. But Agitha the girl wanted nothing more than to crawl into a chrysalis and stay until she felt grown.

Luda told herself every step of the way to Agitha's castle that she wouldn't be one of the simpering fans, stationed by her windows for days at the slightest chance of a glimpse of her golden hair. But something had to be done. It had felt like their time reunited had only just begun. Agitha couldn't just disappear again.

The streets were a bubbling stew of people, as usual, the high noon sun baking the cobblestone. The fountain laughed from the center of the square and booming voices performed some sort of comedy on the inn stage. Luda had to press into the wall of the alley to get through the flow of the curious crowd walking against her. She breathed a sigh of relief that at least they weren't going the same way.

Agitha's castle was just as before, the paint peeling off in finger-sized chips from the door, the glass in the windows foggy with dust and neglect. There was no sign of life within. She cupped her hands around her eyes to keep out the oppressive sunlight and pierce the shadow, but the heat on her dark hair quickly grew unbearable and she stepped away to the nearest source of shade, a hanging tapestry over a cave-like door.

“Oh, don’t block the breeze, let the spirits in!”

A deep and theatrical voice called out to her and Luda startled before slipping inside, embarrassed. She had seen Madame Fanadi around town before, of course, though she’d never patronized her before. They subscribed to different flavors of spirituality, but Luda respected the grace with which the fortune teller approached her craft. She had all the gimmicks: the building her practice was located out of was fully draped into the shape of a tent and lines of hollow, clacking sea-and-snail shells, a crystal ball larger than her head glowed with an inner (or probably under) light, and she was decked out in gold ornaments. But her fortunes, as Luda had heard from classmates, seemed to focus more on the practical steps to improving someone’s situation.

“Sorry, I was just looking to get out of the sun,” Luda told her.

“All the more reason to let the spirits in, phew,” Fanadi laughed, a throaty hah ho ho, fanning herself with an elaborate paper fan that resembled the painted seashells surrounding her. Heady, floral incense smoke swirled with her movements. She gestured at Luda. “Come, come, I long for conversation today. Luda, isn’t it? The little doctor.”

Luda felt herself blush, hoping her classmates hadn’t spilled anything unpleasant about her. “Yes, Madame.”

“You’re from Kakariko. My ancestors hail from Old Kakariko, so in some form, we are blood. No need to dispense with the shallow frivolities,” the big woman said with the comforting familiarity of an aunt looking to spoil her niece.

A bookshelf bumped Luda’s shoulder out of the smoky dimness, and Luda squinted at the titles of general mysticism and Sheikah histories. “I’m from the Eldin tribe.”

“Yes, I know of it! I have a mutual friend with the chieftain there. Ah, you’re too young to know Telma.”

Luda barely heard this, her brain suddenly skipping several steps ahead in the conversation. “Did you know the girl who used to live next door?”

“You’re looking for her,” Fanadi hummed.

Luda blinked. It would be foolish to ask a fortune teller how she knew anything. “Have you seen her?”

Fanadi stared at her crystal for a few second, chewing the inside of her rounded cheek. “Not in person. Come, sit, new customers get a Love Fortune for free.”

“I can pay. I don’t need to know how to woo her or anything like that. I need to know where to go.”

“Love is love is love, dear, you would not be looking if you did not love her.”

“Yes but it’s not—” Luda’s hands curled into bear claws, knuckles pressed to her heart. “It’s not because I want to kiss her.”

Fanadi smiled. “It’s because you see her in your future.”

Luda agreed with this.

“Come close. The sacred eyes show the truth.” Fanadi tapped her forehead, the golden symbol of the Sheikah crying golden over her brow. She waggled an arm at the ball. “That’s just for show.”

Self consciously, Luda drew close to the table and let Fanadi stare at her, trying to meet her gaze as long as possible before she looked to her sandaled feet instead. “Sorry.”

Fanadi was silent and still, but then nodded. “Movement of the eyes tells me as much as a steady gaze. You have seen her, but she has gone away.” The fortune teller sat back heavily, thumb dragging down her lip in thought. “Her path is complicated. She will run from decision. It makes her difficult to pin down.”

“That’s alright,” Luda said, heart sinking. “Thank you for trying.”

“Shh, shush,” Fanadi said with surprising force. “I’m not done. I cannot locate her, but there is one who can, one whose eyes I have gazed into before…yes…” Now she turned to the crystal. She rolled her shoulders at Luda, giving a sheepish grin. “Well, it’s not just for show.”

The crystal, previously clear glass, turned milky, and then a vibrant blue, and then green and brown. Fanadi’s palm circled it. “Yes…this one has senses beyond my own.” She sniffed. “Though, not spiritually. You will find him among the trees of Hyrule field to the south. You must not fear him. He will need your help, and then he will help you. Bring something of the girl’s if you can.”

“How will I know him?” Luda asked. She didn’t want to sound at all dubious—she respected Madame Fanadi, but she did feel she’d given her the benefit of a lot of doubts so far and it was only practical to clarify before she left Hyrule Castle Town, possibly for good.

“He will not be what you expect,” Fanadi begrudged, nodding. “But you will know him, nonetheless.”

“How can he be what I expect if I have no expectations?”

“You have them, whether you can put them to words or not,” the lady laughed, the gold jewelry on her chest jingling. “I cannot tell you more than that because I genuinely don’t see it. But you will know him,” she added, “by his unusual blue eyes.”