"It's my opinion…" Malon began matter-of-factly as she pulled her shirt over her head. Once, many years ago, that would've been enough to bring them both to awkward blushes or worse, but the years of marriage had calloused the pair of them to the point where undressing together was nothing more than a nightly event.

"…that we should harvest early this year." She continued, "The past few winters came out of nowhere and we lost some of the crops."

Link was sitting on the edge of their double bed unlacing his leather work boots. The moment she finished talking, he had a retort already prepared. They'd had this argument the past few nights and it was all well-rehearsed. It wasn't even much of an argument, just something to bridge the gap between day and night, between when they were sweaty hardworking farmers and when they were a man and a wife.

"But don't you remember what happened when we harvested early the year before last," Link said, pausing to grunt as he tore the dust coated boot from his foot, "Half of what we harvested wasn't good for anything but compost and feeding the animals."

As Link got to work on the second boot, he heard Malon sigh behind him and she said, "That's true, but at least it was something. If we wait too long, it'll all wither where it stands and die while we watch."

Link noted the tone in her voice as he wrenched the boot from his foot and tossed it to join its brother in the corner. She was thinking about the dark times a long time ago, when the entirety of Hyrule was controlled by an evil tyrant. There had been something in the air during his rule. Plants would die suddenly, animals would inexplicably get sick and die a few days later.

Sometimes it wasn't just animals.

Talon, her father, had gotten sick during the final days of the tyrant's reign. When he was overthrown, she'd expected him to get better, hell, they all had. But he didn't. Talon continued to get worse and worse and there was nothing to be done.

One day he died, leaving her alone on to run the farm. Link had returned a few days later, but it hadn't been soon enough. It couldn't have been. Being alone in that house for a second would've been too long for her. She'd had to bury her father, and the memory would sometimes return to her unbidden.

Link sighed and walked around the bed, approaching his wife where she stood. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, but her hands were clenched into fists.

As gently as he could, Link pulled her close to him. She melted into his embrace, her arms snaking up his back slowly, still slightly shaky from the memory.

Resting his chin lightly on her shoulder so he was speaking directly into her ear, Link whispered, "I'm here, don't worry. I'm not going to leave, not again, not ever."

As if the words had truly possessed magical qualities, Malon relaxed and her strength returned. She wrapped her arms tightly around him. For those few moments, they were like one person. So close together, both physically and emotionally.

A chill ran through the air, slipping through the cracked bedroom window. Link felt Malon shiver involuntarily in his arms and he released her reluctantly.

"Come on, "Link murmured, "Let's go to bed, we've still got some work left to do in the morning."

Stepping toward the window, Link slid it closed with one hand and latched it with the other. The cold steel pick slid into place with a hollow sounding click.

Link walked around the bed, blowing out the flickering bedside lamp before climbing in with Malon. A moment later they were absentmindedly embracing each other, lying wrapped up in the thick wool blanket and a comforting tangle of limbs.

A calm air of safety fell over them, a net that could catch anything.

Link awoke to a tickling itch on the tip of his nose. He fought to ignore it for as long as he could, hoping instead to remain in his peaceful sleeping state for the rest of his life, but it won in the end.

Sitting up, Link looked around the room through bleary eyes, rubbing them with one hand and propping himself up with the other. Link leaned over to shake Malon gently by the shoulder, there was a good deal of light in the room already so they should be getting to work soon, but she wasn't there

Link was alone in the bed, and alone in the room. It was completely empty, and for some reason the emptiness seemed to expand the walls so that it was a massive chamber left barren. Link clambered out of the bed to stand on sleep-weakened muscles.

Link started to head for the door, intending to go downstairs, but something caught his eye. It was like a smudge at the corner of his vision and once he noticed it, the thing was impossible to look away from.

Link moved slowly as he approached the window, warily intrigued. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before, and it fascinated him. While the room was full of light like that from the early morning sun, it truly had no source. The window seemed to be painted over, but that didn't quite express the truth of what Link saw.

It was as if the window were a pool of water, dark water, black as ink, and thick too. The surface of the window moved slowly, its surface shifting like the surface of a wind beat lake. In one place the surface erupted in a circular mass of ripples that stretched across the entirety of the window.

After a few moments, though, the ripples faded away and the surface was unmarred once more.

Link stepped back, away from the oddity and turned toward the door. Whatever that was, she might be interested in seeing it.

Link grasped the doorknob and twisted it, but was surprised when the door didn't budge. Trying again, Link pushed harder against the door, hearing the old wood creaking beneath the pressure.

Link was about to push again, push harder and try forcing his way through but a thought occurred to him.

"Malon? Is that you? Are you… holding the door shut?"

There was no answer, only more silence.

Link pressed against the door again, assuring himself that it truly was stuck.

He sighed, and prepared to through his weight against the brittle wood. He didn't want to destroy the door, or damage it in any way. Like most things in the old farmhouse, the door had been made by Malon's father and thus had special meaning to her.

But Link didn't like the idea of being stuck in their bedroom for hour after hour until they found a way to get the door open.

Link took a step back from the door and, bracing himself for the impact, threw his shoulder against the door.

At the last moment, the door swung open and Link found himself falling into an unimaginably vast space where there seemed to be nothing at all as far as the eye could see.

Link fell into the nothing and became a part of the nothing. And in doing so, he became nothing.

Nothing…

The air was cold, so very, blisteringly cold. It seemed to bite and claw at Link's exposed skin, trying to get inside and freeze him there too.

Each stinging whiplash of a gentle breeze sent shivers down his back and forced him to hold his harms tightly together to keep them from shaking uncontrollably and to preserve some semblance of body heat in that cavity near his chest.

"Where am I…?" Link heard the words but couldn't believe they were his. He couldn't believe they had found a way past his violently chattering jaw and managed to come out un-mangled.

Link looked around, trying to take in everything; trying to find some clue as to what this place was.

Glassy white walls rose from a glassy white floor. There were no corners, just rounded edges and curves. The walls, floor, and ceiling all had a thin layer of mist on them.

A weak cry of laughter drew Link's attention. He spun around and found himself staring at a man lying on the floor. His fingers were blackened and his wrists were an ugly mix of deep blue and cracking white. His clothes were torn and ancient, barely more than rags.

A few stands of golden hair still hung from his head, though the others had long since disappeared.

"Who are you?" Link asked, "What is this place?"

The man laughed again, the sound coming out in a wheezy gasp that ended in a coughing fit. Finally when the man had finished coughing, he started to speak, "Wish I knew I don't know why it happened don't let it go away…"

His words trailed off into a slow gurgle, but he suddenly became animated again, leaping up from his place on the floor and grasping Link by his shirt collar, "It's been forever but that's no time at all It just started one day don't let it take you oh goddesses don't let it. Don't let it in…"

The man collapsed back to the floor, and continued to repeat that last line in a tortured whisper, "Don't let it. Don't let it in. Don't let it…"

His eyes seemed to be staring at something far away, far beyond the reach of any normal person's eyes. He just kept repeating that phrase, getting quieter with each go around until no sound came out as he twitched his lips.

Link felt his balance shift suddenly. Something changed, somewhere. As Link watched, a hairline crack began to climb up one of the icy walls, growing and splitting off until the wall was little more than a spider web of broken ice and the darkness beyond that.

He felt something land on his shoulder, and, looking down at it, realized it was a shard of ice.

With horror, Link looked about the cavern and realized it was coming down. Link felt his feet begin to move on their own before he could even think to order them to. The icy floor was slick beneath the fiery cold soles of his feet, and his progress was slow.

A painful sounding cough came from behind Link and he immediately remembered the decrepit man. For a moment he considered leaving anyway, leaving the man behind. But his instincts wouldn't let him; he had been a hero, once.

Link twisted around but found himself alone in the icy cavern.

Dry raspy laughter floated through the air, sounding like something from a nightmare.

Link shook himself and, doing his best to ignore the now hysterical laughter, made a break for the only way out of the room. By a stroke of luck he was able to slip through the uneven archway just moments before it collapsed into a pile of ice chips, sealing the room off.

Link ran through the tunnels, taking some passageways while ignoring others. There was no way for him to tell if he was making the right decision, or even heading the right way, so he trusted his gut.

With a groan of desperation, Link found himself in a dead end. He was standing at the mouth of a room with only one exit. As Link prepared to turn away and continue his mad dash, the ice above and around him began to rumble even more violently than it already was.

A deafening creak was Link's only warning as the archway collapsed, utterly decimated.

Link scrambled over to the ravaged wall, searching desperately for some way to bypass it. But the search was useless, as Link quickly realized the barrier was solid as stone and utterly immobile.

Turning to examine the rest of the room, Link saw it in detail for the first time. Up against the far wall, nestled into what would have been a corner if this place had any true edges, was a pool of water. From this distance, Link couldn't see enough of it to determine its depth.

Approaching the pool, Link gazed down into its crystal clear depths, amazed by how far he could see through the still water. Also, horrified by the same thing, horrified by how many dozens of meters seemed to stand between Link and the bottom. But down there, Link thought he could see something, though the great distance made the image blurry.

Link was still unsure of whether or not to dive when the cavern began to shake with unprecedented ferocity. The roof above seemed to be peeling away in huge chunks and layers, falling down and crashing against the floor in a spray of razor sharp ice. One of the shards caught Link in his left forearm, digging into the flesh and sticking there.

As Link reached to tear the ice out, something struck him in the center of his back and Link found himself flung down into the transparent water.

The water was so cold as to feel like fire, biting and burning every inch of Link's body and rendering his muscles rigid and slow. He struggled to move his arms, his legs, but they refused to do anything but sway weakly.

Link could see a shadow filling the narrow vertical passage, and it wasn't until he was plunged into complete darkness that he realized what was happening. A portion of the ceiling must've fallen over the opening, blocking out any light.

Vaguely, Link wondered where that light had come from.

Link felt himself sinking slowly through the water. His body was still mostly immobile so he couldn't do much more than sink. As he progressed downward at the sluggish pace, Link felt his lungs start burning. His thoughts began to move more slowly, each one becoming more and more indistinct.

Link felt his vision fade to black while distant laughter rang in his ears.

Like awoke to the feeling of grass poking the back of his neck. He sat up and looked around, confusion and curiosity filling him. He hadn't been in a forest since…

This was that very same forest. The lost woods. The home of the kokiri children.

The thought was interrupted when he realized the lower half of his body was submerged in a cool blue pond. Climbing to his feet, Link looked around in wonder. The woods didn't seem to have changed at all; just the same as they had been all those years ago, and all those years before that.

Link left the pond behind and began to walk out among the trees. Anyone who came into these woods, the lost woods, were supposedly never seen again. Link wondered if the same rule would apply to him, since he had grown up believing he was one of the kokiri.

As he walked, Link could hear children's laughter in the distance. It was light and full of joy; the sound of it made Link relax. He took a deep breath, inhaling the lively forest air.

The ground shuddered beneath Link's feet. The sudden motion nearly threw him to the floor. As it was he only steadied himself by grabbing hold of a nearby tree.

The earth was still again a moment later and Link released the tree. Link tried to dismiss the sudden turmoil, but he couldn't. The recent memory loomed over him.

Link stared at the ground, his eyes locked on the shadow that lay there. It wasn't his shadow, it wasn't the shadow of any of the trees. It was much too large for that. The shadow seemed to go on and on for miles, stretching on forever.

Feeling as if his body was far away, Link turned slowly and stared up at the shapeless form that blotted out the sun. Link couldn't make out what it was, but the massive size was enough to bury Link's curiosity. He started to step backward, retreating away from that thing, but his foot caught on a tree root.

He went toppling backward, letting out a quick shout as he struck the ground. To Link's great despair, the massive thing shifted in the sky so that its attention seemed to be on him alone.

Scrambling to his feet, Link turned and ran. He had gone no more than a dozen feet, however, before something wrapped around his chest with the strength of a Goron.

Link felt himself being lifted away from the ground.

The wind blew downward as Link was lifted into the air at an incredible speed. All of a sudden he was motionless again and left gulping for air at the extreme altitude.

Looking down at the thing that hand him in its grasp, Link saw something that looked like a human's skin, wrapping human fingers, giant human fingers.

He was moving again, being pulled toward something. Link saw a massive human eye, watched as it seemed to grow more massive by the second.

Link could feel the terror welling up in him like a solid thing, like living thing.

He couldn't control it anymore, his body seemed to act of its own accord, fueled by the solid living terror. One arm flew out, already balled into a fist, and dug into the soft tissue of the giant eye.

Suddenly Link was released, and only then was the full extent of his panic-born plan revealed to him. Link could feel the air whipping past as he fell at indeterminable speed. The wind dug into his eyes, pulling tears out, and forced its way into his mouth, pushing back the scream until it lay dormant in his chest.

Link saw something coming for him from the corner of his eye. It was that giant hand, reaching down for him at lightning-like speed. As Link watched, half frozen with fear, half flailing wildly, the hand swooped underneath him and tried to catch him.

However, the only part of Link's body that made contact was his left hand. It brushed the edge of the giant's hand and Link immediately knew something was wrong.

Looking over toward his left hand, Link realized with a sick sense of horror that the whole limb was gone from the elbow down. The sudden impact must've torn it off and flung it away in a different direction, or else it was lying there, dead, in the giant's hand. Link could see a scarlet trail of blood spurting from the ruined stump only to be torn away by the wind and lost.

Link felt like he could be sick, look at his ruined appendage.

However, when he finally managed to wrench his attention away from the stump, the alternate sight was not much better.

The ground was nearby, now, rushing up to meet him. Link tried to close his eyes, but the upward windstorm tore them open immediately.

Link made contact.

Author's Note:

The idea for this came from several sources and is a meld of several ideas I've had over the last month. The first influence for this was the short story by Harlan Ellison "I Have No Mouth and, I Must Scream". For whoever hasn't read it, it's about several people who are being perpetually tortured by a sadistic supercomputer. Also they're immortal. The second big influence is the move Fight Club. Mainly one quote by Tyler, "You have to consider the possibility that God doesn't like you." It's kind of easy to see how that plays off of the short story. As for the actually plot mechanics, a cross between the accepted test in the white tower in The Wheel of Time, and the concept of the movie Groundhog's Day, though that doesn't come into play during this chapter. I hope you liked this, I was going for a stark contrast between the extremely realistic first scene and the surrealistically fantastic final two scenes. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you stick with it because it will only get better from here on out. I'm going to try to do two updates per week, one on tuesday night, and one on saturday night. But that might be too much, I don't know, we'll see. Please review, let me know what you think so I can give you the second chapter.

P. story title and chapter titles have a correlation, try to figure it out :)