CHAPTER 1
Finally, the last of our usual visitors left for the night, leaving my two roommates and me to engage in more solitary activities. It was a Sunday night before another week of classes, and these final hours of the weekend seemed awkwardly calm compared to the bustle of the day. The three of us lived in a room designed for four on the fourth floor of the second-farthest dorm away from the academic side of campus. It had been converted from a lounge into a quad some years ago, and our fourth roommate – who barely spent any time in the room anyway, even to sleep – had moved out after first quarter to be with his friends on the third floor.
It's a nice room, with slightly newer furniture than the doubles and singles, and one large window spanning the entire outer wall. The window provides a very clear view of the entire room from the outside if it’s dark out and the lights are on, but it conversely offers a nice view of the tree line on the opposite side of the parking lot across the road, and its Eastward perspective dramatically lights the room with the rising sun in the morning. All the beds in the room – one along each wall – are lofted, with desks underneath. I occupy the one adjacent the large window, and the bright sun on my face helps me wake up in good spirits during certain times of the year, at the expense of some privacy.
Several factors contribute to our room being very lively in the evenings. One of my roommates knows a lot of people in the building from his high school, and our room being the largest on this side of fourth floor makes it the popular place to hang out. We replaced our nomadic former roommate with a TV and a Wii that is frequently used. The large space on the floor in the center of the room invites people to sit or lie on it doing homework or other activities on their laptops while chatting with the others in the room. I can’t recall the specific events of that evening’s gathering, owing partly to my less than stellar memory but mostly to the overshadowing intensity of the extraordinary events that followed it.
It was probably around midnight when we were left alone and the more responsible of the three of us got to bed early for his eight a.m. class on Monday. The lights were turned off, and I and my other roommate worked independently on our laptops. Pretty soon I was the only one awake, still lurking around Zelda Dungeon, checking e-mail, seeing if BEN was up to anything, and other various things too trivial to have been committed to my memory. I wasn’t doing anything particularly engaging, but I didn’t feel like going to bed despite it being well past one a.m. Some more lurking followed, I checked a few sites I hadn’t been to in a while, and finally I managed to convince myself that it really wasn’t too early to go to bed since I had a class at ten and I might as well be well-rested for it.
After I climbed up to my lofted bed, I took off my glasses and set them atop the wardrobe next to the bed, where my Zune was resting. The latter I retrieved and turned on while deciding what to listen to tonight. I always have to listen to music to help me get to sleep; my mind is too active otherwise. I had decided to listen to my Zelda soundtracks chronologically through the games and had just pressed play when something rather unexpected happened. Instead of the classic 8-bit intro, I heard a high-pitched voice coming from my laptop below which I instantly recognized.
“Hey! Listen!”
It looped in the same manner as the youtube video I frequently used to troll my roommates. However, Sunday night while they’re asleep is certainly not a good time for trolling. I was stunned for a second in confusion and alarm while my mind fished for possible explanations. Several weeks ago I had experimented with setting a scheduled event on my laptop to play the Morning theme from The Wind Waker as an alarm, but that hadn’t worked out. No bite. Either way, I hadn’t watched this Navi video recently, and I never saved it to my hard drive, so why would it be the sound to violently break the silence? My mind didn’t have the patience for fishing. Surprise turned into concern for the two other people in my room who no doubt would be very much disturbed by this prank.
I jumped out of bed, landing very hard on my feet and nearly falling into a roll. My laptop resided directly beneath my bed, under which I had to carefully duck so as not to hit my head and make even more noise. Feeling in the dark for the correct key combination, I tried muting it. That had no effect. I tried the next key to turn the volume down to zero. Still nothing happened. I was squinting at the keys to double-check that I was using the correct ones when I noticed that the power light was off. The laptop wasn't even on! How could it be producing sound? More importantly, how could I stop it?
Worried that it was taking so long to stop the sound, I glanced up for a second to assess the damage so far. The roommate that was visible from where I was crouching, usually a sound sleeper, remained motionless (to my relief) so that I couldn't be certain if he was even in bed or if his blankets were just bunched up in such a way to make me believe so. I was certain however that failing to terminate this alarm quickly would lead to at least one very grumpy roommate, and possibly an angry bunch of blankets as well. Unable to think of anything else to try, I unplugged the laptop and started for the door, hoping to buy some more time to figure this out. My feet still hurt from the hard landing. I should have rolled.
On the way to the door I'm fairly certain I heard a stir from my other roommate's side of the room, and maybe even a low grumble. At this point it didn't matter. I was out the door so it wouldn't bother him anymore, and I could explain it in the morning. He's usually a reasonable person, and he should understand that I was completely powerless and was just as disturbed - no, much more disturbed than he was. Before the door was closed behind me I remembered all the other rooms in the hall. The sleepers within may not appreciate someone loudly calling "Hey! Listen!" from the hallway. Without losing any momentum, I dashed for the stairwell, the nearest door that didn't lead to a room.
I sat down on a step, opened the laptop and turned it on. Perhaps the volume controls would work when it was powered up, even though the speakers apparently worked regardless. The booting process was boring and familiar, so I let my eyes wander around the stairwell, which was equally boring under normal circumstances but slightly less familiar since I rarely used this one. My surprise returned and grew tenfold as I unexpectedly beheld something quite familiar.
I hardly need to describe the winged ball of some peculiar form of energy, except that its color was not that of any of the fairies in any Zelda game. It was some shade of green, perhaps a little bluer than a green LED, brighter in the center and dimmer toward the vague ‘surface’ where the energy wasn’t clustered as tightly. I stood up and blinked for several seconds. My mind must have been working very fast, but I don’t remember thinking anything during this time. My arms went limp and I nearly dropped my laptop before I managed to conjure enough sense to tighten my grip. My thoughts became more rational. What can explain this (certainly incorrect) perception? Did someone put something in my water? Am I dreaming?
Yes, that must be it. I’m still in bed with the Zelda soundtrack playing, inserting things into my unconscious imagination. But I’ve never achieved lucidity before. Could this be my first time? Without even trying? No, these sensations are too real. There are too many details in here in the stairwell - spots on the metal railings where the paint had peeled off; the aged and splotchy look of the concrete steps; the dust in the corners; the cold… I shivered.
The unearthly sphere still hovered in the air, slowly tracing a sinusoidal path around in a circle as if it hadn’t noticed me. I tried talking to it, nonchalantly so it wouldn’t be scared off.
“Is Link around?” I couldn’t think of any other reason it would be here.
It stopped moving in circles and faced me (as far as I could tell; it had no face of course), continuing its vertical oscillation. The answer I expected never came. I realized that it probably couldn’t talk, though it was still strange that it didn’t seem to attempt any type of communication. I had hoped it would at least be able to lead me to Link in an attempt to answer affirmatively to my question. Instead, it seemed to be waiting for some other response out of me. Okay, so if Link isn’t around somewhere…
I humored its expectant inaction. “Am I Link?”
It rapidly bobbed up and down as if it was attached to a string that had just been plucked. But the sound that echoed through the stairwell was more like it was ringing a bell, as if it was dancing on a glockenspiel. I pondered how a mere ball of light with wings was able to create such beautifully resonant tones. It wasn't something that had crossed my mind before; I had always just taken for granted that the fictional physics that allowed for the existence of such fairies in the games also allowed for the other inexplicable things they do. The fairies in the games can do whatever their designers want them to do. In fact, I remembered Tatl exhibit this exact behavior in Majora’s Mask.
I had to do another reality check at this point. Was I just piecing together experiences from the games in my imagination? I wasn’t aware that I still had an imagination. No, this was still as real as I knew reality to be. There I was, in the stairwell down the hall from my dorm room, in the middle of the night, in my pajamas, with my laptop– I now realized that my laptop wasn’t playing that awfully annoying “Hey! Listen!” loop anymore, although I never noticed it stopping. Another sound echoed through the stairwell: “Look!” This time my attention was focused on the right object. This sound – and probably the previous one – had come from my laptop!
I sat down again and opened it. It had finished booting by now, so I logged in, throwing several anxious glances up at the increasingly mysterious fairy. I had to try my password several times because my shaking hands made it difficult to type accurately. Once my desktop loaded, a notepad file automatically opened. On the screen appeared one question that I will never forget.
“Are you ready for an adventure?”
Also, adding the link to the "Hey! Listen!" Soundtrack really made the story more real because every time you read the fairy parts you can hear it. I like it! Pretty original.
? I hope not lol I'm not smart enough.
