I've literally spent days musing, cogitating and speculating about the meaning of the first two minutes
of the intro to the newest entry of our most beloved gaming series,
Breath
of the Wild. And
even now, over a month after E3, it still won't leave me alone. I
guess that's the magic of The
Legend of Zelda
captivating me once again. And to be honest, I didn't expect anything
less.
In
this short writing, I tried to capture what Link might have been
feeling and thinking during the first minute of his new existence. I
wanted to do this not necessarily to answer questions, but rather to
create new ones and to try out the idea of how one might feel when
being resurrected (the shrine must be called the ''Resurrection
Shrine'' for a reason).
Reality
''Open your eyes...''
A faint, calming sound of rippling
water, repetitive but never quite the same. That's the first thing I
remember.
Soft warmth encloses me and dandles me
in security. The sound of bubbles rings in my ears whenever I breathe
out; silence pervades at every inhale. My senses slowly pass through
my body, becoming aware of every limb and member. I know the name of
each of them. My head is resting on something hard, but my stirring
fingertips cannot discern the material of the surface I am lying on.
My arms are slightly stretched out, just like my legs. There is a
tighter feeling around my middle that I can vaguely relate to fabric,
like clothing.
I have had many of these dreams before.
They are my favourite, for reasons I have never considered until now.
I feel a flutter of excitement inside of me whenever I enter this
world in which I am able to be and to move. Dreams in which I have a
body, in which I am sitting, standing upright, even walking. But in
every former dream, the feeling my soles shed to my sleeping mind
felt blunt and did not satisfy me for long.
The sensations I am witnessing now,
however, cannot be compared to any dream I had before. Everything
feels enhanced a hundredfold, the sounds around me fill my mind with
swirling notes while my searching fingers are electrified with the
perception of touching for the first time. Everything feels new,
grand, overwhelming, spectacular, terrific!, it feels –
… real…?
Am I real? Are my limbs real? Are they
not the fruit of my dreaming mind that never uttered a single
rational, comprehensive thought but exists only through fantasies?
It is a new word to me. One I have
never heard before, yet its meaning seems obvious. Reality; the
antithesis of a dream. And still, I am convinced that all of this is
but another voyage into the depths of my mind where all is secure,
calm and serene. For a dream to become reality, it would need the
presence of the only sense I know of that I have never experienced
fully. Blurry flashes of colour played with me before, but they did
not last. My dreams were never powerful enough to see.
A new feeling enters my body, this time
a slight tingle in my chest. Something in there is tickling me, and
my next breath bubbles out louder. Rushing rings in my ears as my
heart tests its strength, beating slowly at first, then faster, until
it is pounding so hard that I fear it might jump out of me. I hear my
voice sigh out softly at the power surging through my extremities,
but something is still keeping me down. The doubt. The mystery.
What is happening to me? I know that I
am moving. My head rolls from side to side lazily in the warm water,
my chest rises and falls with deepening breaths.
Am I entering reality? Am I…
awakening?
''Open your eyes...''
It is a voice.
That voice woke me.
Softly it echoes from afar through the
water. It speaks softly, yet its command is clear just as its meaning
is clouded to my mind. I feel my brow crease with a frown of
uncertainty. How? What am I to do to obey? I have never had the
feeling of moving orbs or lifting eyelids. Is my body made to see?
''Open your eyes...''
The warmth around
me is shifting. I feel it dance over my body at a greater speed, as
if it wanted to crawl underneath me. A rushing sound startles me, but
still I am unable to do what the voice asks. Fiercely I flex my
cheeks and forehead to find the pair of lids I am meant to lift, but
nothing feels as if I could move it except for my twitching nose, my
opening lips and my frowning brow.
What does reality
feel like? It is not a perception I would call pleasant, but rather a
state forced upon me that I had no right to choose or deny. It is
just happening. The soothing, cradling warmth slips through my
fingers with the sinking water, and suddenly my breaths enter my
lungs much too fast. I hear myself moan out through a distant veil
while a cold touch moves from the tip of my nose down across my face
and to my throat. Then the sounds brighten to a crystal clarity, and
I am greeted by a deep droning I have not noticed before. It is
constant, soft, and calming. But it compensates only little for the
chill draping over me like a cold blanket. I frown more.
''Wake up, Link...''
I perceive the
answer to my doubts as a faint, jittering touch beneath my forehead.
The glue of sleep holding my lids sealed dissipates in the cool air
surrounding me, as if it was washed away by the vanishing water. And
just like that, I begin to see.
A little peek at
first to test the power of my newly discovered pupils, and I am
greeted by blue light. I lower my lids to rest for a while, then
attempt a second glance. The light morphs into short criss-crossing
rays aligned in a circle above me, like… like a sun. I can discern
dots below them, with a single blue point in the centre. How strange
reality looks, I wonder.
The cold now
enshrouds me completely, warmth being long gone, and my body does
something odd. It shifts of its own accord, tiny side-to-side
movements, even though I did not give it the order to do so. I find
myself wishing that the warmth would come back, that my newly
discovered eyes would disappear once more and let me forever dwell in
the darkness of my dreaming mind.
But I know that
this time is over. The heart I have been given fills me with power
with every beat, a power I know I can – and have to – use. That
voice is right.
It is time to wake
up.
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