God Gave Me Feet So I Could Run (and Instead I Stood And Came Undone)

god gave me feet so i could run (and instead i stood and came undone)

a drabble inspired by @breannasfluff's eldritch wild series :)

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Smoke and ash and a burning, smoldering oil, like the scent of a gas lantern fills his nostrils. Mixed in is cold, dead coals and ice and the sharp needles of pine. A moonless night in a glade should be comforting, should be familiar, but it overwhelms him, fills him through and nearly guts him in its intensity, in its animosity.

Midna laughs under his feet, where his shadow moves without his consent. “Still scared of me, farmer boy?” she hisses in his mind.

“No,” he says out loud, because it doesn’t matter if he is. Because he can’t act like it because his shadow exists under all his clothes, because her needle-like teeth could sink into him and rip his throat out before he realizes--

“Good.” Another cackle follows the statement, ghostly fingers smoothing over his neck and leaving burned, crumbling flesh in their wake. “You Hylians never know who you should actually be scared of.”

It’s a long time before he understands her words. It’s a long time before the ice-cold crackle of burning coals under his feet and the dripping weight of oil riding his back become familiar, welcome sensations. Before losing them feels like some part of his soul has been wrenched away and thrown into the ink-black sea that bore his friend.

It’s a long time before he stops expecting to feel the whisper she left behind.

It’s a long time before he feels something like it again.

The kid washes over him almost without warning. And at first, he jerks away, no longer used to the sensation of a fog rolling through and choking out his breath, of how the light of dusk is too little to see in but enough that you think you can, of dusty fingers leaving dirt in their wake and sharp teeth at his neck--

Everyone else tends to skitter away from Wild’s very being, and he doesn’t. Instead, he grabs the kid’s hand and imprints the memory of rotten bark and rain on dead leaves into his palm, into his being.

“Ain’t it funny,” he asks with a wink, “how Hylians ne’er know who ta be afraid of?”

Whispers and words churn behind him, the others wondering what he could mean, and he ignores them. Because the kid’s too-blue eyes flicker over his form before a grin breaks over his face like a piece of pottery cracking open, and the hand he holds grips him back like he’s the shadow Wild’s been looking for, too.

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