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Sometimes, when Link’s body is awake and Blue is not, he dreams.
Or at least, ‘dreaming’ is the closest comparison he has for it. He pads through some derelict backroom in his mind where covered furniture towers over him and little details shift whenever he looks away. Buttons change size and color. Needles multiply and then vanish. An empty jelly jar regains its dust as soon as he wipes it clean. He finds a polished plate with a floral trim, but he can’t find his reflection in the gloss.
Sometimes, he seems vaguely Hylian, but usually he feels more Minish, scampering around like the young ones do. Up and down tablelegs, just trying to get himself oriented in this dim, endless room. There’s no door; a single window provides the only light. He never seems to get closer to it.
But if he’s lucky, he bumps into Vio or Red.
Vio tends to wander around in an odd daze, talking to shadows and using spools of thread to try and chart out the place. It’s a pretty pointless endeavor when the furniture changes position all the time.
“Anything we do in here is pointless, in a sense,” Vio refutes, unruffled. “Sleeping doesn’t make me well-rested outside of here. Neither would eating help, I assume. I try to make plans, but half of the time I forget them once I wake up. I can’t even read. If I crack open a book, the words are gibberish. So, we might as well do whatever we fancy, if nothing productive is to be done.”
“Then what kinda pointless thing do you fancy that you’re doing now? Are you trying to get to the window too?” Blue asks, watching a white thread bleed into lilac as the other color twirls it in his paw.
Vio blinks. “What window?”
“...?”
Blue points the obvious out.
When Vi’s eyes skim the bright spot in the wall, his tail twitches uneasily in contrast to his deadpan. “You mean, the mirror?”
How he could mistake the window for something like that, Blue can’t even imagine. Or he can’t, until he glowers at the bright spot again, and sees a mirror hung on the wall, reflecting the sun through a skylight that wasn’t there before. It hadn’t been a mirror all along, had it? No. Wrong. Blue is pretty sure that it had a proper cross frame before, not a dainty silver-gilded edge.
He turns back with a shrug. “Yeah, okay. Good luck with your breadcrumb trails when this place can pull shit like—”
Indigo thread snakes around glass bottles and under a tablecloth. Vio has already moved on.
By comparison, Red navigates the chaos with a boundless and aimless optimism. “It makes hide-and-seek more interesting, doesn’t it?” is as far as it worries him. Whenever they meet, Blue inevitably gets pulled into a hug and some silly nonsense, like playing tag around a battlefield diorama strewn with knight and monster figurines. Dandelions and crimson clover grow through the cracks in the table planks.
“You can see the window too, right?” Blue hesitantly asks in a pause in their game, peering around a leafy frond.
“What about it?”
“Don’t you want to see where it goes?”
“Oh, does it go somewhere? I thought this was a dream.”
“Well, things can still go places in dreams?” Blue lamely argues.
Red ponders that for a moment, then snuggles up to him. “I guess so, but I’d rather stay here for now, where I can see you guys!”
Fair enough. Well, to the extent that they actually see each other. The attic might be small by Hylian standards, but it might as well be a continent when he’s intentionally trying to find someone.
It’s both too empty and too cluttered in here. His feathery tail drags through thick layers of dust; motes haze the air. Cold pockets and reaching shadows occasionally startle him into hiding. He tries carrying around a needle for a sword, just in case, but that also vanishes on him if he looks away from it for long enough.
Despite his tirelessness, it gets tempting to curl up on a throw pillow and just wait until he’s taken in by the pull of the real world, heavy and vivid with certainty.
From time to time, he catches a glimpse of Green way out in the distance, napping on a high shelf. Bastard thinks he just gets to kick back and relax, eh? Not if Blue has anything to say about it! But getting to him is like getting to the window. Scamper up an armchair, jump onto a chest-of-drawers (don’t trip on the slingshot laid out), clamber up a lamp to reach the shelf, and fuuuuuck, the damn cabinet’s at the other side of the room now.
This happens over and over, until a day where he loses his grip while climbing and falls into an empty hamper. Confusingly, the inside of the hamper spits him out right on Green’s shelf. Bits of sand crunch underfoot as he regains his bearings.
“Where’s a feather duster when you need one?” he gripes, shaking the grit off of his paws.
The shelf is lined with the bottles and jars filling crates and cluttering cabinets. Some are clouded with abstract colors. He spots Green easily through all the refractions. The only spot of, y’know, green lying inside one of the bottles. There you are, bastard.
Blue hurries over to kick the glass. It’s almost scalding from the ray of sunlight beaming through the window. “Hey! Leader guy! Stop snoozing. You’ve got shit to answer for!”
Green’s ear twitches in his sleep. He wraps his tail around himself more tightly.
Kick. Kick. Kick. Kick. Kick.
After a minute, Green sits up, staring blearily from under his bedhead.
“Yep, that’s right. You can’t ignore me!” Blue bangs on the glass a few more times, just for emphasis. “What in Hyrule are you doing in there, anyway? Get out so I can kick your ass.”
Green’s glazed gaze lifts to the lid.
“Wait. Are you stuck?”
Why does that thought make him nervous? It’s not like Green doesn’t deserve it. Still, Blue circles around, trying to find some way up to climb up and pry the top off. He can’t find any purchase on the slippery glass. After a groggy moment, Green rolls over into the sand and silk scraps at the bottom of his jar again; his breathing evens out once more. Fuck, he’s just gone right back to sleep.
“Oi. We weren’t done talking, Verdant! See if I don’t push you straight off the shelf.”
He doesn’t, though.
He slumps against the jar, basking in the weird warmth of the glass.
💙 • 💙 • 💙 • 💙
Blue begins to miss the aimless wandering once he starts finding himself tucked away in chilly bottles during the daydreams, shoved into dark nooks just out of sight.