Hello all. This has been sitting around on my hard drive for a while. I haven't posted a story in a while and I was toying with the ending, but I finally worded it in what I deemed to be an acceptable manner… so here it is. Hope you all enjoy.

………

Vigor, Jars, and Fairytales

Teeth gnashed as they grappled toward a flying creature's wing. Unable to fly, the creature crumbled to the ground. Swinging around, the wolf leapt forward and wrenched a goblin-like being from its saddle. Wolf and being tumbled across the ground before the wolf shot up once more through the torrents of water falling from the sky. Next fell some sort of lizard creature, and then another bird, and then a bony creature. The wolf never relented, even as blood spilled down its rippling shoulders, even as muscles ached from strain.

It was all Midna could do to keep from falling off, grabbing large handfuls of matted fur and squeezing her thighs tightly to his side. The wolf strove onward through the enemies that were as unyielding as the rain.

Midna wondered how. How, after a day of traveling through the snowy peaks of the east, then the yeti's ruins, pushing, and jumping, and fighting and fighting and fighting—then the trip from the west to the north in an effort to regain Ilia's memory, running and biting and swinging and rushing—how could he keep going? She didn't want to watch anymore and buried her face into the base of his neck. She was so tired. All around her the sounds of battle raged on. An arrow whisked past her ear, and she held on tighter. The ground left the wolf's muddy paws only to meet them again moments later as he sprung forward. How could he keep going?

Stop…

He had been fighting for twenty minutes now, twenty minutes straight. The air was gasped into his mouth and wheezed out. Muscles bunched and relaxed beneath Midna's body as some weapon slammed into his side.

Stop!

The wolf howled in pain as he slid backward through the grime. Midna could barely hold on. She felt him tense as his quaking limbs began to gather beneath him.

Please, stop!

Midna had been trying to figure out who was begging the beast beneath her to stop when she realized it was her own panicked voice she heard, screaming through the confines of her mind like the coward it was. She didn't have the courage to tell him to run, because she knew she was the one who couldn't take this, and she wasn't even getting hurt. She had long ago lost her energy, which seemed to flee whenever it rained, and now she relied on him for everything. But she needed the courage. She gripped him harder.

"Link," she whispered as he stood and limped toward his newest enemy. He paused, an ear tilted back in her direction. "Link," she said again in a husky sough. The wolf hesitated, eyeing the opponent before him warily, but tilting both ears back. "Don't do this anymore. You should run away." Link brought his head back to cast a curious gaze at his passenger, mouth still struggling to bring in enough air. "There are too many," Midna said more desperately. "You haven't slept in three days and you haven't taken a break in two!" She didn't dare look up at him; her face was still hidden in his neck.

Midna heard a small noise creep up beneath the din of the rain, and she realized Link was growling. She looked up to see an ogre-like thing—no doubt King Bulbin—astride Lord Bullbo, the disgusting pig, Midna always thought. "No more, Link!" Midna murmured earnestly into his neck. She wondered if he had heard, but he stopped growling, and seemed to be struggling to move instead. Midna pulled her face away once more to find Link's front paws stuck in the slick mud. He whimpered as he vainly tried to pull himself out.

With a slimy sneer on his face, King Bulbin raised his axe high in the air. Link tugged and yanked, his tired haunches pulling and repositioning and pulling again, but his front limbs were stuck.

Help him, you fool! something in Midna screamed. How? An energy field would do nothing if the wolf could not move. Midna had been active for days herself, and Link had continued forward long after she had fallen to her exhaustion. The axe began to descend, and Midna did the only thing she was really capable of doing at all.

She recalled the evil object that Zant had bestowed on Link and threw it into her other dimension. With a bark that turned into a cry of surprise, the wolf glowed and molded backwards and then upward—just as King Bulbin's giant axe whistled downward, splattering muck everywhere.

In surprise, Link had fallen backward, and Midna had been flung from his back into a rock. She sat in the mud, trying to regain her breath as Link pulled his feet from the deep grime with a suctiony pop. King Bulbin struggled in vain to pull his axe out of the mud.

Midna looked back at Link. In human form, without fur to cover wounds, Midna saw the extent of his injuries more clearly. His right shoulder was bleeding dangerously. In the dim night, Midna could barely make out cuts and scrapes up and down his entire body. But that wasn't what horrified her the most. An arrow, shot no doubt by some cowardly Bulbin archer, protruded from his left thigh. Midna wondered in horror just how long it had been there.

"No more, Link," Midna said. But in human form, his ears weren't nearly as powerful, and her words became whispers of wind. He drew his sword and shot forward at the horned servant of Zant. The grotesque thing still yanked at his great axe and was not prepared to defend against a sword. The blade cleaved into his arm, but without the necessary force to do much damage. Link seemed surprised at his own state as he stumbled backward, away from the King Bulbin's mount. Bulbin finally wrenched his axe from the mud and set his sights on Link, a sinister grim crawling up his cheeks.

Midna flew forward and wrapped her small arms around Link's large one. "Link, let's go." He wanted to stay and fight. She felt it in his muscles, in his breath, saw it in his eyes, but somehow, he turned away from King Bulbin and nodded. Suddenly, he was a wolf again, and then both Midna and Link came apart and warped away.

…

Mida hovered weakly behind Link as he led the way through the dark, stormy night. She was so tired. Somehow, they had escaped the enemies who knew they would be after the statues that Link could now move. Midna looked up when she heard a small explosion. Link had opened a cave with a bomb, and he turned around to beckon her along.

The cave was cold and damp. Link disappeared out the entrance, returning minutes later with an armful of wet wood.

"You'll never get that to light," Midna said tiredly.

Link reached into his bag and pull out a spare bottle of lantern oil, uncapping it and dousing the firewood with just enough. Then he took out his lantern and carefully brought the fire to life. The lantern oil burned almost immediately, but the flame from the oil was just warm enough to evaporate some of the moisture from the wood, and the logs caught the blaze and lit the cavern up cheerily.

Midna looked away from Link, ashamed of her own pessimism, and ashamed of being wrong. She hated the rain, how it did this to her.

Link slid to the floor across from her, stifling a groan. The arrow still jutted out stubbornly from Link's leg. Midna crawled around the fire to help him get it out, but as she reached for it, Link shoved something at her. It was a bottle of orange substance that smelled of… She took a whiff. Cheese. "Soup?" she asked. He nodded slowly, pushing it at her again. She took it and drank half, feeling its effects almost immediately. New energy ran through her, and her stumbling mind regained its composure. She shoved what was left of the bottle back at him.

"Don't you want it all?" he asked, giving her an inquisitive look.

"Half is enough. You have the rest."

He nodded gratefully, bringing the bottle to his lips and throwing his head back. Midna watched him curiously. She knew he didn't have any other healing substance on him, and she wondered idly why he had been willing to give it all to her. She turned her attention back to the arrow.

"I'm going to get this out," she decided, not waiting for his opinion on the matter. Using her magic, she carefully created a field around the arrowhead, which was imbedded deep in his flesh. As she clenched her little imp hand, the magic field she created mirrored her actions, crushing the cheep and weakly forged iron arrowhead. That done, she reached for the wooden shaft and worked it from his leg as tenderly as she could. He grimaced, but did nothing more, watching her all the while.

Next, Midna directed her attention to his right shoulder. She collected water from the cave's entrance on a piece of cloth and returned to Link, dabbing at the blood until the wound was mostly clean. She moved on to the other cuts and scrapes she could see scattered across his worn body. When she thought she was done, Link removed his shirt to dry it by the fire, revealing numerous other wounds. These he insisted on cleaning himself, so she returned to her corner of the cave and watched absently.

Hours slipped through Midna's fingers, and the rain did not stop. She opened her eyes at some point to discover that Link had fallen asleep, and she found herself hypnotized by the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest.

All at once she felt guilty. He could have defeated that pretentious King Bulbin, even in his tattered state. Her judgment must have been wrong. He was right to keep on fighting, and she was just a coward who couldn't watch him get hurt anymore.

She pushed her rebellious thoughts back with a haughty laugh. Couldn't watch him get hurt? What do I care? He's just helping me make things right in my world. But she couldn't lie to herself about what she felt—one can never truly lie to oneself about that—and the truth floated up above the lies like air bubbles through water. She wasn't using him; she was helping him, or trying to, and failing miserably. He didn't need her. She was just a weight on his back or stain in his shadow. The only time she ever really helped him was when she decided to coax him from his cell deep within Zelda's castle, when he first experienced the world as a beast.

And even then, he would have figured it out on his own.

But she needed him. Oh how she needed him, his spirit and his kind words and actions. She couldn't deny it, not now, and never again.

She felt miserable and tired and guilty and cold and torn between sticking around and leaving their worlds in Link's confident and now experienced hands.

The fire's light dwindled, and Midna saw that they needed more firewood. She hovered numbly to the cavern's entrance, but before even having to go out in the rain, she noticed something in a dark corner. It was a pile of more firewood, stacked in such a way that they would dry out quickly. When did Link get more firewood? she found herself asking. Then a dreadful thought occurred. Had she fallen asleep?

Yes, something inside her confirmed dishearteningly. She had fallen asleep just after helping Link with his wounds, and he must have gone out to look for more wood. Angry with herself, Midna scooped up two logs and brought them back to the fire, blowing on the small flame to aid in its spread. The fire blazed up happily, lapping at the air for more oxygen.

Midna retreated to her corner and decided, for lack of anything better to do, to play with the object that morphed Link into a wolf. She twirled it around with her magic, amused by the silhouette of glow the fire created behind it.

Link stirred. Midna, preoccupied with her new plaything, didn't notice, and when she turned and saw him sitting up, she started in surprise. Link yawned. "You're awake," he said, smiling sleepily.

Midna nodded slowly, backing away from the fire. "Sorry," she said.

He looked puzzled. "For?"

"Everything," she blurted. "I should have been more help. And I should have let you fight that dumb ogre. And you definitely should have been the first to sleep." She shut her mouth before she said anything more, glaring angrily at the ground.

"You're wrong," Link responded quietly. "You're plenty helpful. We never would have gotten Ilia's memory back without you."

At the mention of the girl's name, Midna's eyes narrowed. She looked away from Link. "You guys are pretty close, huh?" she sneered.

Link nodded, missing the antipathy in her voice. "We've known each other for as long as I can remember." He smiled fondly at surfacing memories. "It's thanks to you she remembers who I am." He threw his sincere eyes toward her. "I'm sorry if I didn't thank you earlier."

Midna had a sudden awful thought. She wished she hadn't helped bring Ilia's memories back, and she looked away from Link in shame. "You're welcome," she muttered bitterly.

Link frowned, puzzled. This time he had detected the animosity. "What's wrong?"

She met his gaze for only a moment and smiled sadly. "You seem so much more at ease, now that she remembers who you are." Still Link was quiet, so Midna's mind continued to reveal itself. "I was thinking about leaving things up to you. You don't really need my help anymore, right? Eh heh, you can get the last shard back no problem, so why don't I just stay out of your way here and wait for you?"

He was silent. She desperately wanted to know what he was thinking. The curiosity drove her insane, and she finally allowed herself a peek at at Link to read his expression. She saw what she feared. He looked pensive. He looked like he was considering. But considering what—her suggestion that she stay behind?

"Midna," he finally said, waking her from her reverie. "I was exhausted. I wanted to keep on going because—" he threw up his arms tiredly and motioned toward the environs. "—because I'm afraid we don't have time for this." He rested his arms on his knees. "I'm afraid that taking any sort of break could give Zant all the time he needs to muddle things up more." He sighed. "You are, among other things, a voice of reason. I couldn't have gotten this far without you, and I can't go on without your help."

Midna studied the ground with a look of intense grief. She didn't want to see the 'all business' expression that she knew would be on his face. He just wants to save the day, he just wants to get through this. That's what I should want too.

She realized that he hadn't spoken so much in… well, forever, as far as Midna was concerned. Conversations with Link were usually one-sided. She realized the best she could expect from him now was silence. A wordless rejection.

She heard his clothes shuffling, and then he was walking across the cavern. He sat down beside her, rubbing his injured leg before turning his gaze on her and brushing a finger lightly along her shoulder. "You're cold."

"I'm fine," Midna muttered in quiet and hurt obduracy. She pulled away from his hand. "I don't need your sympathy, wolf-boy."

"I'm no good with words," Link said.

"Yeah. You can cleave straight through metal, flesh, and bone, and you can run and fight for three days straight, but you can't talk worth a damn, eh heh heh!" she said, shrugging as though it were the silliest thing.

"We're a team, Midna."

She looked up at him, trying to figure out what he meant by that. It implied that they couldn't function on their own, but did it go beyond that notion? She realized his expression was trying to communicate something that it had never communicated before, which to Midna was astonishing, because he said everything he needed to say with the curve of his lips, the slant of his brows, the depth of his eyes. Now he was struggling.

"The two of us, we… we were friends since birth." It took Midna a moment to connect the dots and figure out that he was talking about Ilia. "We did everything together… but nothing happened." He blushed suddenly at the connotation. "I mean, nothing was ever accomplished, you know, nothing happened."

Midna tried to follow his logic and couldn't. "Speak in a language I can understand," she ordered sarcastically.

His face was a portrait of frustration: his brows were knit tightly together, his bottom lip caught firmly between his teeth, his eyes searching restlessly beyond the floor of the cavern and into his own mind.

"Ilia can… do a lot, she can do lots of stuff," he started dumbly, clumsily sticking words together like puzzle pieces. "She can read well, and she's smart, and she's good with animals." He scratched his blonde head absently. "But she can't… she isn't… I mean she wouldn't… argh." He took a deep breath, fishing for the perfect words. "I can't trust her with my life," he said decidedly in a rush of breath, smiling first at his victory of choosing the right words, then directing his lopsided grin at Midna.

Midna wasn't quite sure how to respond. Of course it was understood that Link would fight to the death for Midna, and Midna would do the same for him. That unspoken law had been drafted on allegorical stone through days and days of fighting by one another's side, and the law had been passed the day that Zant attacked Midna with raw light. Link's desperate struggle through the rain to bring Midna to Zelda said more to Midna than his ephemeral words could ever say. Midna had known this already. So then, she decided, it must be what he literally said that was important—that he couldn't trust Ilia with his life.

"Why not?" Midna found herself asking, not really sure why she let the words leave her mouth.

Link kept on grinning, despite the new challenge of answering Midna's question. "Our bond," he said after a few moments, "is like a bottle and its lid." He put his hands together as if to signify this. "She is one, and I am the other, and we make a complete object, but we are still an empty bottle." Link's smile faded a little as he focused on forming the perfect answer. "With you, I am the bottle, and you are everything inside."

Midna met his eyes. An empty bottle is worthless, she thought to herself. Midna was caught by his gaze as her tired brain tried to process what exactly he was saying. Finally, she snapped to attention and looked away in embarrassment. "That's a dumb analogy," she snapped, "and you didn't even answer my question."

Link's face turned serious. "Ilia has been my closest friend, and I would die to protect her, but she does not have the strength in spirit to take on everything you do." She saw him fight against the silence that normally pervaded. "As willing as she would be to take an arrow for me or the kids back home, she would falter at the task of saving her home…" He paused. "…or even a land whose people are not her own, whose ground is unfamiliar, whose loyalties lie with something foreign to her."

Midna was stunned into her own silence by his words. I mean every bit, his eyes said. "If you leave," he whispered quite suddenly, somewhat urgently, "I wouldn't be able to go on."

"Just an empty bottle, eh?" Midna asked weakly with as much sarcasm as she could muster, which in fact wasn't much at all. Link nodded and smiled. Ilia could be there, Midna realized, and Link still wouldn't be fully capable. A bottle had a lid, thanks to Ilia, but it was Midna who made the bottle have a purpose. She tried to hide her grin, but she was just as unsuccessful hiding that as she was hiding her relief. "Well, whatever," she muttered, "not like it matters."

Link's hand suddenly reached for her own, but instead of taking up her tiny imp limb, he took the object inside, Zant's evil object that was once imbedded in Link's skull. In a sudden glow, Link sprouted fur and a muzzle and long, sharp ears. He sniffed at Midna for a moment before rubbing his head affectionately on her shoulder. Then he curled up around her and settled down to sleep.

Be warm, his expression said now.

Midna, encased in fur and warmth, smiled to herself. The princess kissed the frog, she thought, and the frog became a prince. Was there an error? Was the frog truly a dog?

No, she realized, the error is not there at all. The princess touched the prince, who was never really a prince at all, and he became a dog. But the princess was an imp, so it was okay. She smirked.

So it goes. Many moons later, the imp became a princess once more and left the world, but not without the love of a dog-prince tucked securely within her chest.