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#musings on mortality

cooking-with-hailstones · 3 months

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To be mortal

Happy Loftwing Letters @mistresslrigtar!

This was written for the valentines gift exchange with the wonderful @zelinkcommunity, and thanks to @bahbahhh for beta-ing!

Read it here or on AO3

The strangest thing Zelda noticed, after they sealed Ganon away and collapsed into a heap together on Hyrule field, was having a body again. For a century Zelda had been incorporeal, everywhere and nowhere all at once, one with all things and yet nothing. She had been watching Link, watching Hyrule, watching Ganon struggle against the bonds that she had trapped him in. For a century she watched. And now here she was, all of her contained in flesh. It was like the sensation of returning to land after a long voyage at sea, but magnified through every cell of her being. She had cells again.

Adjusting to the limitations of a physical body took its time. For weeks after they returned to Link’s home in Hateno, she walked on wobbly legs and found herself stumbling around like a newborn calf. At first she barely recognized the sensations of exhaustion or hunger. Link began to figure it out as she got increasingly irritable in the evenings, and he would sometimes forcibly bundle her into the small loft bed, despite her feeble protests. Every time, she was out like a light within minutes. When her growling stomach forced her back into the waking world, Link would be waiting by her bedside with fresh bread and a steaming mug of soup.

There were times that she missed incorporeality. When the wind rattled the shutters of their small home, she wished that she could allow her consciousness to drift away on the breeze. When she sat by Firly pond, splashing the cold water with her feet, she longed to slip her spirit into its murky blue waters, looking at the world through the eyes of the frogs and the fish. It was strange to be contained all in one place, a separate entity from the earth and sky around her.

But she also delighted in the sensations of the flesh. Once after she came in from a long walk through the village, Link surprised her by excitedly handing her a slice of cake. Apparently he had discovered an old recipe that was bookmarked as the princess's favorite. He had spent a great deal of time perfecting it, and watched with delight as she took her first tentative bite. She relished the taste of the wildberry and apple mash in between two light and fluffy layers of sponge. The sharp tang and taste of the fruit mixing with the sweet sugars of the glaze.

Another time, Link took her climbing along the Hateno cliffs, hiking down to the beach one afternoon after visiting Purah. They played in the waves and danced in the glittering spray of the sunset.

He also brought her silk trousers he had acquired from Rhondson in Tarrey Town, and she marveled at the exquisite softness of the material against her skin.

She was learning once again to love being mortal. To be skin and bone and sinew and muscle; that ate and drank and ached and sweated and slept. It was a journey of rediscovery, and her scientific mind, delighted and reacquainting herself with all of the molecules and atoms of herself.

That is, until she got a cold.

______________

Link had enjoyed witnessing Zelda's return to the corporeal. In many ways. It mirrored his own return to his body two years prior, when he awoke to her voice in the Shrine of Resurrection. The luxury of feeling the sun on bare skin, of drinking fresh cold water, eating a full meal and feeling your belly expand; there were so many delights to experience. He couldn’t wait to share everything he had rediscovered, that they could rediscover together.

Her brilliant scientific mind was a perfect complement to his enthusiastic experimentation. She analyzed every fruit tart, wrote notes about how her feet felt numb after sitting still for too long, lingered over the feeling of every fabric in his inventory, marvelled at the brightness of the morning sunrise.

The head cold caught her completely off guard.

“How did this happen?” she moaned from the loft as he added a dash more salt to some fortified pumpkin soup and ladled it into a large bowl.

“You were talking to the village children, and one of them sneezed on your face?” Link ventured teasingly as he walked up the steps to the loft, careful to not spill anything from the full bowl.

“Hylians shouldn’t be so susceptible to diseases from their young” she grumbled, sitting up slightly to allow him to place the soup in her lap. This was the third day in a row of such grumblings.

“One more thing for you to research once you’re healthy again.” he smiled, brushing a loose strand of chin-length blonde hair behind her ears. He liked the shorter hair. Zelda had very quickly decided that she did NOT like the sensation of long hair on the back of her neck, and now there was no one to complain if she sheared it off.

She slurped the soup loudly, an affront to any remaining royal manners that she was now gleefully forgetting, before looking up at him quizzically.

“Yes?”

“It tastes... different” she sighed in frustration.

“You’re still sick. Things taste different when you’re sick.”

“But WHY? ”

Link shrugged. Zelda muttered something to herself, grabbing her notepad from the bedside table and jotting down some questions for later. She had tried to keep working after falling sick, but Link had insisted that she rest. The pencil and notepad was a compromise.

“What good is having a nose if it’s going to behave like this?” she lamented, slurping down more of the soup. Link couldn’t help but laugh.

“Get some rest, Zelda.” he said, tucking the covers more comfortably around her. She caught his hand in her own, and gave it a little squeeze of thanks.

He paused, startled by her unexpected, tender touch. They had touched each other before, of course. Jostling each other in the kitchen, or leaning on each other while climbing down a steep cliff. But somehow this felt different. Before he could think twice, he leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.

At that point, his brain caught up with his actions and he quickly pulled away, blushing furiously. He barely registered Zelda’s shocked face, spoon frozen halfway to her lips. Instead, he whirled away down the steps, panicking slightly and raking his fingers through his disheveled hair.

______________

Zelda didn’t see Link the next morning. Which was just as well, since she was feeling significantly better and was frankly uninterested in spending a minute more lying in bed. Still, it was unusual of him to not be at her bedside when she woke up. Instead she found another steaming mug of soup and a slice of bread on her bedside. She took advantage of the hot breakfast - which finally tasted normal again - before changing into a fresh linen shift and making her way downstairs.

Pumping some water into the basin so that she could wash up, she glanced briefly out the window. Her breath caught in her throat.

Of course, he wouldn’t have gone far.

Link was outside in the yard, drilling sword forms with an intensity she hadn’t seen from him since before the Calamity. Even in the cool morning air, he was shiny with sweat, muscles rippling across his bare back. She couldn’t help but stare. The strange fluttering in her stomach that she had felt the night before, after his unexpected but welcome kiss, came back a hundredfold.

She forced herself to look away, scrubbing the dishes with unusual vigour.

She spent the rest of her morning paying fierce attention to her notes, refining all the scribbles she had written from bed during her convalescence and making a list of questions that the village healer might have some answers for. Her fluttery innards were finally starting to calm down when Link came back in, still shirtless and soaked after having briefly rinsed himself off in the pond.

She sucked in a breath. The sight of him was causing all kinds of physical sensations that she had no rational explanation for.

He paused, meeting her startled gaze, before hastily pulling out the Sheikah slate and materializing an old comfortable linen shirt.

“You’re out of bed?” he mumbled.

“Yes, I am feeling much better today, thanks to your care.” she smiled, cursing this sudden awkwardness.

The silence stretched out long and tense between them. Her stomach started fluttering again.

“Link, I - ”

“Yes?” he said softly.

“When you kissed me, yesterday...”

He blushed a deep shade of crimson. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have...”

“No!” she cut him off, crossing the space between them and grabbing one of his hands in her own. “No, its... I wasn’t sure how to react. It was, well, it was a new sensation for me.”

Link hadn’t moved away after she had taken his hand. In fact, she wasn’t sure if he was still breathing.

A sudden impulse struck her. “Would you... would you do it again?” she whispered.

A beat of silence passed between them. She was just about to apologize, to let go of his hand and say forget it, when he pulled her close and pressed another, gentle kiss to her forehead.

Like lightning in a summer storm, she felt it again what she felt the night before. The fluttering, the jolt down her spine that was entirely unlike anything she had felt since returning to her body. She shivered with delight.

“Again?” she gestured to her cheek, and he obliged without any hesitation. Heat spread across her face from where his lips brushed against her. She needed more, needed to know more, to feel more.

“...Again?” she sighed, hardly daring to point at her lips. He leaned in, this time without any hesitation, and pressed his lips ever so gently to her own.

#zelink #fanfiction #zelink fanfiction #post botw #sickfic #pre-totk #zelink first kiss #first kiss #canon compliant #musings on mortality #legend of zelda #breath of the wild #emily writes #my writing

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weaversweek · 7 months

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Fear of Mu21c: "Someone to you" and "Mourir demain"

This is part of #FearOfMu21c, my personal take on the best 50 singles of the 21st century. Here is an index post.

Someone to you - Banners

The great sweep of twenty-first century music allows me to make some interesting connections. Jimmy Eat World to Banners, for instance.

Banners - Mike Nelson to his friends and family - released this emo love song in summer 2017, on the Empires of Fire ep. It's brotherly love, it's a search for meaning and validation in life - themes that the Jimmies had lived with at the start of the century.

"I wanna be somebody to someone Someone to you"

The song was popular amongst Banners' fans, it quickly became the show closer. The world at large ignored it. And then the world stopped, someone on Tick Tock discovered the choon, and it became a massive viral hit in early 2021.

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Mourir demain - Natasha St Pier & Pascal Obispo

Established francophone singer Natasha St Pier worked with singer-songwriter Pascal Obispo for this song. It's about the fleeting uncertainty of life, thoughtful and poignant. Even if you don't speak a word of French, you'll get the emotion here.

From Natasha's 2003 album "L'instant d'après"; a top five single in France and Belgium in '04. It's the first of five songs not in English to make the top 50; the list doesn't include Pascal's sometime lover Jenifer, whose Ma révolution made the top 100.

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#banners #someone to you #human connection #emo #natasha st pier #pascal obispo #mourir demain #life is fleeting #musings on mortality #francophone music #musique francophone #fear of mu21c #fear of music #FearOfMu21c

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red-dead-sakharine · 5 months

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I'm dragging this out of the comments and into the light, because I really like this angle. @adarlingmess

I love this idea. I don't think he'd even be making the decision to play it safe with Haarlep (well, "safe") consciously. So when he starts to feel something towards Tav, he's kinda caught off guard.

He does write about Tav in his diary, and dreams of them. Of course it's also related to the crown, but I do believe him when he says "I've grown quite fond of you, in my way".

And I always thought his "You." when he catches us in the HoH sounded particularly laden. With a combination of surprise, pain and anger (on god, Wincott did such a stellar job).

Totally agree with OP, that he's hurt we betrayed him, and lashes out. Because it's his only way of coping.

I wonder if his affection(?) for Hope turned into despising her over time, and he doesn't want to go through this again with Tav, so he just decided to kill us and be done with it. I mean, imagine the person you have some form of affection for, refuses you. So you chain them up and torture them, only for them to keep refusing you for tens, hundreds(?) of years. What must be going through his head during that time? "Why can't I break them?" "Am I so undesirable, that they refuse me this vehemently?"

Ok, I think you catch my drift. I'll shut up now.

#bg3 #raphael #baldur's gate 3 #hope #adarlingmess #musings #that damn mortal half having feelings #this man lives in my head rent free and is driving me mad #bg3 raphael

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mournfulroses · 5 months

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May Sarton, from Gods & Mortals: Modern Poems on Classics; "The Muse as Medusa,"

#lit #may sarton #poetry #muse as medusa #poetry collection #excerpts #selections #fragments #gods & mortals: modem poems on classics #p

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mintspider · 7 months

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I get the vibe that EVERYONE in the Black Dragon has had at least one unwelcome elicit sex thought/dream about Kano.

#minty musings #mk kano #kano #mortalkombat #mortal kombat #the black dragon #it cant be helped

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puwumats · 1 year

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seeing raishan in tlovm s2 has awakened me like a sleeper agent. i want to study her i want to throw her in the wash on a high spin cycle i want to kiss her on the lips i want to put her on a reamer and juice her like a lemon i want to leave her out to dry and then gently press her between books i am losing my mind

#its not technically spoilers because we all know she's in it (its in the trailer) and i didnt mention anything so dont come for me #but OUGJOGUFJGGOGIJGOGIH #shes my lover shes my mortal enemy shes my muse shes my beloathed i am passionately kissing her on the mouth #critical role #vox machina #the legend of vox machina #tlovm #cr #raishan #vm

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absentlyabbie · 11 months

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this post from @imwiremother got me imagining vampires who take humans as familiars, but not in a renfield way.

the familiar is a blood donor, sure, and gains things like extended life, somewhat enhanced healing, maybe a little increased stength or slightly faster speed, etc, but the sweetest part of the deal for both is a different exchange entirely.

the vampire and familiar share a connection which, when the familiar opens themselves to it, allows the vampire to share certain experiences and sensations. such as the taste of a strawberry, or the warmth of sunlight on the skin, the decadence of chocolate. but it has to be the choice of the familiar to share their experience. they can unilaterally shut down the sharing connection, as a sort of failsafe against abuse.

it's a positive symbiosis which encourages the vampire to provide comfort, safety, health, pleasure, and joy for their familiar, ensuring through self interest if nothing else that the familiar is well cared for and given the best life has to offer so that the vampire may experience the echoes and edges of it, which without a familiar is denied them and eventually lost to them.

quite literally the vampire living vicariously through their familiar. and the familiar gets the better end of the bargain to balance out being on the lower end of the power balance between them.

#vampires #fiction musing #fiction #i'm just saying #immortal vampire and their mortal best friend with extended lifespan #sharing together in comfort and pleasure and looking after each other's wants and needs for the good of them both #vampires with familiars are more human themselves for having that slender thread of connection with humanity and life #it makes vampires better and enriches their long lives and it keeps humans safe from over-predation and most cruelty

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themadsonneteer · 9 days

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Half

By Bud Koenemund (Written: April 2024) Half of my heart is still in love with you; A notion foolish as it is sincere, When that affection’s forever imbued By sadness: growing more and more austere. Half of my mind is still in love with you; Yet condemned to recall happier days, ‘Fore passion incandescent went askew; Leaving intellect and sanity razed. Half of my soul still belongs to you; Though ‘tis now mortal – crushed beyond the repair Time can grant; a solace long overdue – As I stumble about in my despair. I seek a peace I fear I’ll never find, While memory and shadow intertwine.