#draft zero

Avelyn awoke with a start. 

She became aware of her sleeping state immediately, her mind still standing in the door of Amorellan’s room, but her mind registering how she was laying in her bed. Her body weighed a lot, and her limbs did not move. She slowly seemed to drift back into the dream, the figure’s presence turning sharper. 

No, she resisted.

Her eyes peeled open as she used her sense of wake to force them obeying her will. A heaviness lingered over her eyelids, yet she kept them open. Slow blinking for taking in the world. 

The tree leaves’ shadows like dancing claws wiggled on the ceiling. She could hear the wind that ruffled them evenly, making them look like a too long fingered palm.

The last time she had such an experience was so long ago, she couldn’t really recall it. And still, she had a lingering dread in her bones, one that felt way too familiar. 

Avelyn kept staring at the ceiling.

Her eyelids moved heavy and slow, the dream’s luring sensation evenly snaking out of her reach. She shivered under the fur blanket, even though the cold had no room to sneak under it. Its touch, however, was able to keep caressing her face, and helping her break the unnerving spell of another dreamwalk. 

The trees’ shadows danced, but their shape softened. They did not seem threatening anymore, and the wind’s wandering breeze turned more refreshing. She could finally breathe evenly, her eyes not jumping from one corner to the other anymore. The weighing shards of a scattered nightmare lifted from her limbs. She could finally move. 

“What was that?” she muttered into the soundless night, sitting up slowly. She didn’t expect to hear an answer, of course, yet the words rolled off of her tongue anyway. 

Soft dread sat on her shoulders, as she straightened, exhaustion hanging heavy from her eyelids. There were moments, when she would awoke during the night, but this felt different. She had nightmares before, yet the after effect was nothing like this time. Avelyn wasn’t even sure she could have called it a nightmare at all. 

Yet, the unease remained. 

She stared at her blanketed legs, awareness of the nightgown’s touch on her body slowly reaching her. Cold air swirled in the room, sneaking in through the open window. The tree’s shadow waltzed on her blanket. 

Avelyn sighed, taking in a deep breath before deciding to stand up. 

It was an awfully quiet night. 

However much she saw of the shadows, and smelled the sweet scent of winter blooms, she felt more as if she woke in frozen time, as if the cold would have stopped it. Every smell was tainted with the tempering touch of snow, muting it into a barely noticeable sensation. 

Perhaps it was the night that brought her such thoughts. 

Avelyn shivered, when she slipped out of the warm embrace of furs, leaving her veil on the nightstand as she approached the window. She tended to like night time, for the world turned as black and white for a short time as she ever saw it. In these hours, she could belong, as if the world was a place she was a part of. That must have been why she was never afraid of the dark before. 

Why was she hesitant to keep herself awake then? 

Truly, that dream was strange, but it was only that; a dream. Nothing she should have been frightened of. The details blurred in her memory, but the feeling still lingered, however faintly. It was the dread of a nightmare, unsettling Avelyn into a frown. 

She pulled her clothes tighter on her chest, when she looked out from the window. Foolishness lay in her worries, so she forced herself to take her mind off of it. Instead, she focused on the bold Phravani wind that softened into a gentle caress. 

Outside the world showed her the view of a snowy scenery, the mountain’s various mounds reaching upwards. Every top has been blanketed with white glistening under the moonlight. Almost the same way as the other abodes’ rooftops, the covers of every bud in their gardens, and the Temple itself.  She couldn’t remember seeing snow falling, yet from the amount of it, it should have been falling for days or maybe weeks now. 

Or, well, in Evalon it should have been. 

Perhaps it was a common thing in Phravan. Indeed, as Avelyn’s tired mind slowly recalled her brief studies, she could remember some pieces mentioning the frequent snowing. There was a reason why they wore such thick clothing after all. 

What she drank in with growing awe, however, was the scenery itself. The neatly arranged abodes beside the Temple, that stood proud and tall under the Moon. Its glowing orb seemed to be the building’s own reflector, the shining light nearly turning it into a flaming sensation in the dead of night. As if Veilnieve herself would have been present, so even nature dressed up for her arrival. 

Avelyn smiled to herself. 

She pulled her clothes closer in her chest when the wind found her window again. The Moon somehow seemed to lighten even the breeze’s path. 

Still, as she travelled her gaze lower, the brightness was waning with it. Under the curving rooftop of the Temple, shadows lurked. They weren’t completely black, Avelyn could recognise the faint outline of the magnolia trees dancing at the centre of the main garden. For a moment, she seemed to forget about the dread in her bones, as her infinite companion, the darkness successfully calmed her nerves. 

Many races in Hyrule believe it was created by the goddess Hylia in time immemorial, though this is by no means a consensus. While they are seen as crude and animalistic by many, the bokoblins have a complex faith. They believe the Great Creator Otom Ayim has created and recreated Hyrule numerous times, and the lives of all its inhabitants follow a series of rigid, preset patterns for the entertainment of beings who inhabit another, ineffable plain of existence.

As such, they believe the Triforce was created as a cruel cosmic joke, an omnipotent MacGuffin to make the otherwise dull daily life of Hyrule entertaining to the invisible masses. The handful of scholars who have translated bokoblin runes think this belief is a load of Molduga's kidneys. The bokoblins, for their part, cite this ultimate futility as the reasons they fall in line with Ganon again and again.

(You might wonder if moblins have a similar faith. They do not. They are just assholes.)

The Church of Hylia is quick to assert that the Triforce exists in accordance with Her Divine Plan, though they are notoriously silent as to what this plan is or why it seems to often involve the revival of Ganondorf and the routine subjugation of the people of Hyrule. Everything that happens, they assure the masses, is the will of Hylia. The routine abuse of the Triforce's nigh omnipotent power happens by Her design.

Unbeknownst to even the High Priests, not a word of this is true. Hylia, exhausted by the demands and criticism of the people of Hyrule, finally snapped and created the Triforce with the divine words of, “You think you can do better? Give it a try!”

Some time later (after a few self actualization classes, a few breathing techniques and a handful of appointments with the God of Therapy), Hylia saw this didn't help matters. But by then, the Triforce had become sentient and resented the notion of being destroyed. The goddess and her creation finally came to an agreement. The Trifoce would live on, albeit separated into three component pieces.

And so, the Triforces of Wisdom, Courage and Power were created. In theory, the three would remain separate and, in so doing, preserve the land and people of Hyrule. In practice, people are still people and no one just forgets divine power. The end results is that the three Triforce siblings often have family reunions with terrible wars instead of awkward family photos.

It has been this way for millennia. Yet in the Age of Calamity, the Triforce was notably absent. Unknown to even those who trained her, Princess Zelda's golden power was in fact the Triforce of Wisdom.

Which begs the question, what became of the other two?

To give the scene a little context: This is set in a world where experimental human/animal hybrids have been freed and live in their own small city/reservation on Coronado Island in California. The narrator is Owen, a rabbit thief who was contracted to help on a heist. He wasn’t told their target was a hybrid like him, one who’s never set foot outside of her lab before.

RD-01 has mostly been trained in science and lab work, but that was supplemented by a diet of 80s pop culture, particularly cartoons. She’s a relentless optimist in contrast to Owen’s pessimistic outlook.

The heist goes bad, as heists often do, and they barely manage to escape. Trapped in an abandoned section of the island, they’re now forced to find their way home. After she shoots down a half dozen options, RD-01 finally decides to go with Owen’s flippant suggest of calling her Pandora (since she’s a red panda hybrd). This is the first slower moment they have together, and it sort of sets up the dynamic of their relationship.