Work Text:
No way of knowing the answer for sure, Link was to be restrained in this dungeon – staying close to the candle in his hand – until he figured out the answer to this puzzle. He wasn’t about to make it out of this without help. He could only pray that Zelda would hear his silent cries among all the work she must have been doing right now. But as his prayers went unanswered, the darkness of this dungeon seemed to swallow what little light he had. Every flicker of the little flame felt like another step to his doom.
Zelda’s nose began to quiver with a desperate need to rid itself of a distracting sensation that had suddenly sparkled to life. Sniffling lightly, she flared her nostrils and wiggled her nose a little, both hands full with many scrolls that had been left at Hyrule castle after Calamity Ganon’s rise. The princess had a job to take on as the new face of Hyrule, but that face continued to twist with irritation.
“hhHAAIT-t’ZZzt’chh!!-chew! TtzZZ’chh’t!-cheww!!” As usual, her sneezes came out in explosive bursts that quieted down to the kind of sneeze more befitting of a princess. “Hh-hih—!!” But maybe she wasn’t a princess anymore. “HHAAt’tCCH’zzTt!!-shu…”
“Oh, my. Bless you, Zelda.”
The princess whipped around to the apparent witness of her private sneezes. There she saw the prince of the Zora standing at the doorway. “S-Sidon!” Zelda stammered, rubbing her nose. “I mean— thank you, I — -snf- I feel like I need t-to —hih!— sneeze again—!” Fanning her face, Zelda turned her head away, nearly dropping a scroll as she wedged them between her arm and her torso. “HhAACch!!-chhu!”
When she opened her eyes, Zelda noticed a wide-eyed look on Sidon’s face. For a moment she was horrified that he was reacting to a runny nose, but she quickly realized this was not the case. “Do you need something, Prince Sidon?” she said, bending down to pick up one of the scrolls she had dropped. “I still have much to do.”
The Zora blinked. “Mm— no, not exactly,” he said. “I just, ah… thought maybe Link would be back with you.”
“He is not,” Zelda sniffed. “As far as I am aware, he has gone to the shrine of luminance and he said he would be back by the end of the day. At least I hope he makes it back.”
To that, the shark-like prince grinned. “I know for sure he will make it back. After all, it is Link! Which reminds me—” Suddenly pausing, Sidon reached into a compartment in his belt, pulling out a little cloth. “You sound like you could use this.”
Zelda blinked, surprised and pleased by the offer. “A handkerchief?” she said. “That is sweet of you, thank you. If you could just put it on the counter over there—” As Sidon went to do as she said, Zelda paused, a thought occurring to her. “Wait – why do you have that?”
“This was Link’s,” Sidon said, putting the cloth down. “The poor guy had a cold and he asked that I hold onto an extra handkerchief while we were about Zora’s Domain. But he never ended up using it.” Thinking about those couple days with Link made Sidon shiver – and not in an uncomfortable way. “I have to say: I am still most intrigued by all those noises he was making. I had no idea what sneezing was before that day.”
To that, Zelda’s eyebrows shot up. “You really didn’t?” she commented. “Most people I know do it on a normal basis.” She started muttering under her breath. “But if Zoras don’t have nostrils, let alone any kind of olfactory organ, then…”
“Ah, it was quite a thing to experience!” Sidon interjected, not hearing half the things Zelda had to say. “The fact that he could not predict when another one was going to come, the way he completely lost control whenever he sneezed – it was fascinating to watch.”
The prince’s enthusiasm made Zelda’s lip curl up in an amused, yet empathetic smirk. “Is that so?” she said. “Well, then I certainly hope I fascinated you with my fit earlier.” But simply hearing Sidon’s reminiscing of Link made her sigh. “I do hope you are right that he will make it back, though.”
Sidon hesitated. “You know,” he began. “I think there is very little our friend has not seen after all he’s been through in his quest to bring Hyrule together again. And there is little he hasn’t done. He will make it back in one piece, as he always does.”
“Of course,” Zelda began. “You are right; he is truly extraordinary.”
He wasn’t sure, but the dungeon seemed to be getting darker and colder. Worse: Link’s nose had been itching for the past few minutes, forcing him to rub the tip of it to make the feeling go away – but now the feeling was stuck. He could barely keep his eyes open as his nose twitched right in front of them.
“hhETT’t-t’SSscCHun!!”
Closing his eyes, he saw black. When he opened his eyes, he could only see more black – as if his eyes were never closed. He smelled smoke. The candle was gone – except it was’t, because he could still feel the hot wax when he touched the tip of it.
If Zelda could send him a miracle, now would have been the time.
As if to add insult to injury, another sneeze had started to build up inside of his nose, tickling him in the worst kind of way. Link’s breath started to hitch and he turned his head away from the candle.
“HhAETT-T’CHH—!!!”
Right as he sneezed, bent at the waist, something in the darkness slammed against his forehead, practically cutting him off. He was about to groan in pain when he opened his eyes to see the room awash in blue. His ears perked up and he blinked a few times, not sure if he had just seen things correctly or not.
His head exploding with bludgeoning pain, he looked ahead at what he had hit, noticing a giant square stone button – which had a few chips broken off of it, as well as a smattering of blood on its face. Just, he also noticed a walled-off shrine: his key out of here.
Feeling a great weight off his shoulders, Link sighed. “You should think about me more often, princess,” he chuckled to himself as he rubbed his forehead, readying himself to leave this place and return back to her and the friends he had made since his return from sleep.