Commission: Zelda the Blimp by P1nkApple on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

"Okay, it's installed!" said Purah, grinning widely at the Sheikah Slate in her hands. "So nice of the princess to leave her slate just laying there on her bedside like that whilst she's sleeping. Makes it much easier for me to borrow and experiment on and now I've discovered a whole new rune! Let's give it a whirl and find out what it does!"

Glancing around her darkened lab, the first rays of dawn sunlight shining dimly through the windows, the young, formerly-ancient girl's eyes settled on something. An apple, sat on the tabletop beside her, a single bite taken out of it from when she'd started to snack before getting caught up in her research. A perfect candidate! It was organic and no-one would care if it blew up, or anything, like they would if she experimented on a living thing. Standing back a little, unsure of exactly what would happen, the Sheikah carefully lined the piece of fruit up in the slate's camera, saying "Snap!" as she activated the new rune.

...There was a flash of pink light and, after the girl rubbed her eyes, there wasn't an apple anymore. There was... a spoon? The scientist blinked in surprise, before trying again, grabbing a piece of blank paper and activating the rune on it. Another flash, and the paper turned into a loaf of bread.

"Incredible!" the little girl gasped. "I've just discovered a transformation rune! This demands further playing wi- I mean, experimentation!"

Flash after pink flash flared inside the quiet, gradually-brightening laboratory as random objects all around her were made the subject of Purah's continuing research. The child giggling maniacally to herself as stones, screws, jars and a spare pair of shoes became a cuddly toy, a dress, a candle and a bowl of salad.

"Interesting..." said Purah, as she changed an old, broken pair of glasses into a flannel. "This seems capable of transforming anything I use it on, but I have absolutely no control over what they turn into, the only common thread being that they all became inanimate objects... But think of the possibilities! This might just be a random object convertor for now, but if I can refine the technology, then it could be the end of world hunger! I need to note these discoveries down! To officially begin the research into Purah's Incredible New Killer App, Polymorphing Particles Literally Easily! Yeah, that sounds like a nice, simple codename..."

Smiling to herself, the Sheikah girl tapped in that name, applying it to the new rune installed on the princess of Hyrule's device, and rushed upstairs to her bedroom, leaving the slate behind for further experimentation in a minute. Once in her own, private space, Purah excitedly threw open her journal and began to hurriedly scribble down the results of her night's research so far, keen to get back to fiddling with her new rune. ...But she forgot that she had the body of a six-year-old. The excitement of her discovery and the fact that she'd been up all night - waiting for Zelda to fall to sleep so she could experiment with her slate - catching up with her child's form all at once. The little girl yawned deeply, her eyes drooping heavily and, before she knew it, she was fast asleep. Snoring quietly with her pen still in her hand and her head resting on her open notebook, the birds starting to sing outside her window as the rest of the world began to wake up around her...

Princess Zelda yawned deeply, rubbing her eyes blearily as she sat up in bed, blinking in confusion for a moment at her surroundings before remembering where she was. That was right. Link's house in Hateno Village. The princess smiled drowsily at the cozy room as she climbed out of the sheets, stifling another yawn as she got to her feet. What a stroke of luck it was that Link had bought this place whilst she was locked in battle with the Calamity. She'd needed to stay in the village a while to discuss some medical research with Purah, so it was nice that there was somewhere pleasant and comfortable to sleep, rather than the chaos of the girl's lab. And it wasn't like Link was using it right now, being off on a journey to gather materials for her planned experiment... Oh, that reminded her! He was supposed to be coming back to the village today! It may only have been the first cucco's calling, but she needed to get ready! Busily, the girl slipped out of her nightdress and began to get dressed, pulling on her top, her trousers, her shoes, grabbing her- Wait. Where was her Sheikah Slate? Zelda checked and double-checked around the bedside table where she was sure she had left it before dozing off, but found absolutely no sign of the device, before rolling her eyes irritably.

"Purah," she said, with a sigh. "She must have snuck in here and in taken it while I was sleeping. Ugh, she's probably installing some weird, experimental rune on it as I speak..."

Shaking her head, the princess of Hyrule stepped out of the building and made her way across the village, waving cheerfully at the few people she passed, already out farming their fields, until she was climbing the hill at the edge of town, eventually arriving at the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab. She knocked, but got no response. Too busy fiddling with my slate to notice, I assume... thought the blonde-haired girl, with a sigh, pushing the door open and stepping inside.

"Hello?" she called, gently. "Purah? Are you here? Did you, um, borrow my slate?"

No answer. Zelda placed her hands on her hips and frowned at the empty, dishevelled room around her. Maybe she was wrong? Maybe Purah was innocent and she'd just misplaced her machine back at Link's- Wait! There it was! Her slate, laying on a table, surrounded by... all manner of odd objects. What had Purah been doing with this miscellaneous assortment? The girl shook her head slightly. Did Purah's experiments ever look like they made sense? She'd ask her about this later - and inform her about the poor etiquette of sneaking into another girl's bedroom to steal from her, as well - but for now, she'd just take her slate back and get ready to meet Link at the village entrance. She plucked her device from the table and hurried back outside, closing the door quietly so she didn't wake up the girl who must have been sleeping in the room above the lab...

"Okay," said Zelda, smiling at the still-mostly-dozing village stretching peacefully beneath her. "Link and Symin could be getting back at any time, so I need to make sure I'm ready to- Oh! I was in such a hurry to get up here, that I forgot to check the mirror this morning! What if I have unpresentable bedhead? I can't greet him like that!"

Flustered for a moment, the princess looked down at the device she still held in her hand and breathed a sigh of relief. Of course! Her slate's camera function! All she needed to do was switch it to the inner camera, focus it on herself and see if her hair was at all unruly. She lifted the handheld machine up to her face, the screen turned towards her, and raised an eyebrow at an unfamliar rune displayed on the screen. Purah's Incredible New Killer App, Polymorphing Particles Literally Easily? The heir to Hyrule's throne rolled her eyes. She had no idea what that was supposed to be, but she'd worry about that later. For now, she could just use her device like normal and grill Purah about what she'd been adding to it later. Not realising that the new rune was still active, she powered up the slate's photography function and switched it to self-picture mode, seeing a mirror-image of her own, perfectly presentable face on the slate's screen for the briefest of seconds before she was struck by a flash of blinding, pink light. A garish flare that consumed her entire body in an instant, not even giving her time to scream in surprise as she was swallowed from head to toe by an explosion of glittering pink...

And then it faded, Zelda watching the spots of pink fading from her vision in confusion. What just happened? Why had her own slate just attacked her with a pink flash like that? And why did she feel kind of... strange all of a sudden? ...Why did the whole world look so much smaller!? The pink afterglow now cleared from her sight, the princess stared in utter shock and bewilderment at the view which presented itself before her. At the building beside her which had just a moment ago loomed above her, but which now stood at roughly her own height. At the tops of trees beneath her when she'd just been looking at the underside of their boughs. At the village which looked even more distant at the bottom of the hill than it had done before she got hit by that flash, stretching out in almost toybox fashion below her. What was going on!? Had everything just shrunk around her, or had she suddenly ballooned in size herself? ...Almost certainly the latter, she thought, glumly. This must be the result of Purah's fiddling with her slate, changing its functions so that it had somehow changed her from an ordinary person into a giant of a young woman.

...Except, that didn't sound quite right. She definitely seemed to be gigantic now, that much was painfully clear, but, somehow, frighteningly, she didn't feel much like a young woman anymore. Everything about herself felt strange, different and bizzarely not human. She wasn't standing on the ground, seeming to instead be floating in mid-air, but, worse than that, couldn't feel the legs she was supposed to be standing on. Or her arms. Or head, or neck, or bust, or hips, or anything remotely familiar. She didn't even feel like she had any insides! It was as if every one of her organs had been removed, replaced by nothing but an enormous amount of gas, relentlessly pressing against the interior of her distressingly thick, rubbery-feeling skin from every conceivable angle. The intense air pressure inside her awfully empty, hollow-feeling self forcing what she was no longer sure she could think of as her skin as taut as it could possibly be, her entire body feeling as though it had swollen up like a balloon that was ready to pop at any moment, startching her very being to isa absolute limit from within as a strange, nerveless kind of agony tore relentlessly though her. What had happened to her!? Why did she feel like this surging gas inside her was the only thing giving her shape? That, if it was gone, she would be nothing but a flat, formless flap laying limply on the ground? Why did the shape she did have feel absolutely nothing like the one she had so recently possessed? The gentle curves of a princess given way to a humongous, vaguely ovoid-feeling ball of emptyness, completely devoid of features other than those odd, stiff, flat protrusions she could feel jutting out from her inflated rear? What was that... thing she could feel attached to her underside? A rigid, hollow mass that seemed to stick out in odd directions, parts of it feeling much thinner and more fragile than the rest and which seemed to be a part of her body as much as the rest of her unfamiliar-feeling self was... What was she!? What had Purah's stupid rune done to her!? Not at all worried about waking the girl up now, she tried to scream in fear and pain, to screech for the little scientist to come and help her, but found, to her horror, that she couldn't. That she couldn't open her mouth to produce even the slightest of sounds. That she didn't seem to even have a mouth anymore. Utterly overwhelmed by terror, wanting to choke back a sob that she was incapable of producing, the girl-who-probably-wasn't-a-girl-anymore tried to move, to turn around to look at her self which no longer felt like herself and discovered that she couldn't do that either. No matter how she struggled and strained, her body remained totally inert and unmoving, floating above the ground in gentle silence, even as the Hyrulean royalty shrieked inside her mind at the realisation that she was now completely, hopelessly inanimate.

She had to know. Even with the terrifying certainty burning inside her mind that discovering exactly what form she had been forced to assume would be a horror beyond anything the Calamity had ever inflicted upon her, she still had to know what she'd become. What her pretty, Hylian girl's body had been replaced with. Nervously, flooded with a level of dread she'd never felt, even after decades upon decades sealed in conflict with Ganon, not knowing if she would ever be rescued, she turned her gaze around as best she could without any form of mobility, around to look at her definitely-no-longer-human self...

She wanted to scream at what she saw, but of course, she couldn't. Not without a mouth, a throat, a pair of lungs, or any of the anatomy required to produce sound. Without the anatomy to do anything she had been capable of as a person. Her very worst fears were realised, the slightest glance at her entirely-altered form proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was no longer a princess, a girl, or a living creature of any description. Looking back at herself, she didn't see the slim form of the beautiful young woman she had always been, that she'd hoped so fruitlessly to Hylia that she still was, but instead a simple, gigantic curve of some kind of synthetic material, stretched visibly taut over the ocean of gas she could feel pressing against her vacant insides. Her skin, her hair, even her clothing, every sign of her recent humanity was gone. She was an enormous, straining, air-filled rubbery oblong and nothing more. Well, nothing except the rigid shapes that stuck out of her now-object's back end, and the contraption her hollow-self seemed to be attached to, glass windows set into its rigid frame with a pair of what she was depressingly sure were small engines sticking out of its sides. Tail fins for stability and a carriage for carrying passengers, the former-girl's scientific mind told her, with despondent certainty. She couldn't feel any of her familiar body parts, because she no longer had them. She felt like her interior was nothing but a cavernous void, because it was. She felt like she'd been inflated to near-bursting point because she had been. She felt all those things because she was a balloon. An enormous balloon, perfectly designed to be piloted through the skies with a full complement of passengers sat comfortably inside her. She wasn't a princess anymore, but a volitionless mode of transport! She'd transformed into some kind of inflatable airship!

The new dirigible wailed in absolute silence as she stared at her unwanted, blown-up new body. Why had this happened to her? Why was she a giant balloon!? All she'd wanted to do was look at her own face in the slate's screen and that face didn't even exist anymore! Replaced entirely by the curved, bulbous nose of her now-inflated self which continually bulged at the front of her vision. She couldn't live like this! Couldn't bear to spend another minute feeling the constant crush of the gas against her too-fragile feeling new form, the constant, numb pain of feeling like her horribly no-longer-existant skin was being stretched to breaking point, of not being able to move, or talk, or do anything but float in inert, literally-unspeakable misery. She'd only been an airship for a matter of minutes and she already hated everything about it! She needed to turn back into a princess right now! ...But how? It was obviously Purah's weird new rune which had reduced her to this pathetic, helium-filled state, but there was no way she could even pick it up as the inert, handless vehicle she now was, let alone try to activate it and reverse its effects... She was completely helpless! The former-girl screamed in awful silence as the true, horrific extent of her situation dawned on her. Trapped as a simple, inanimate object, she was utterly powerless to save herself from her own transformation, completely reliant on other, non-transformed members of her former-species to rescue her from this unmoving nightmare, but... how could she count on that salvation to ever arrive? After all, when she looked at herself, she saw nothing of the girl she had been, only the thing she now was, without a clue to be seen that may point to her lost humanity... How could she expect anyone to ever look at her vast, floating new form and realise that the lifeless-looking, rideable balloon before them had once been a flesh-and-blood person, just like them? She couldn't. No matter how she looked at the problem, there was no way she could imagine anybody ever recognising her as anything but the airship she now was, especially as she lacked all ability to communicate the fact that she had ever been somethingmore. She wasn't a princess anymore, but a silent machine for use in transporting passengers and cargo across the skies and that was all the world would ever see, or treat her as. And, if nobody could ever know what had happened, who she used to be, then all hope was truly lost. She wouldn't have to spend another minute in this horrible, uncomfortable new body, but an entire lifetime! She was going to be stuck like this forever!

No! voicelessly shrieked the transformed-girl, who would have clenched the top of her head and thrashed her body in despair if she still had the ability to do any of those things. No! That can't be true! There has to be hope! There's always hope! What if... What if someone saw me change! If somebody witnessed their princess transforming into this... thing, then surely they'd do everything they can to help me! Buoyed by this thought, as well as the helium keeping her unwanted carriage from the ground, the former-princess desperately scanned the tiny-looking village beneath her, praying from the very depths of her now object-bound soul that she would see at least one person rushing in her direction. ...But there wasn't. The early-morning streets were still empty, Hateno Village's inhabitants still cooped up in their houses, save for the few farmers who simply tilled their fields without a glance up at the lab or the new airship floating silently beside it, presumably too engrossed in their work to notice the pink flash that had condemned what had been a young woman to this inflatable form. One girl glanced in her direction as she stepped outside her house, which would have made the no-longer-human girl's heart leap in her chest if she still possessed either of those body parts, but it sank to new depths of despond as she saw the distant-looking, non-object person shrug and head off in the opposite direction. That shrug. That no-longer-fellow girl's motion of utter indifference upon seeing her, a recently-human girl, sealed in inescapable, inanimate torment, idly condemning her to continue enduring this nightmare of lost humanity, was the cruellest, most crushing thing the former-girl had ever witnessed. And what made it worse was that it was completely understandable. That girl cared nothing for her suffering, because she didn't know she was suffering, couldn't concieve that an enormous balloon like her was even capable of experiencing suffering. She'd stepped outside, looked up at her transformed-body with curiosity, then shrugged and got on with her day, presumably assuming that strange, monolothic object beside the lab was just another of the wacky inventions made by the crazy lady at the top of the hill and definitely never imaging that it had once been a Hylian. Nobody had seen her change. Nobody knew who she was, or rather, had been. Help was not coming from the village. And, if wasn't coming from Hateno, then surely it was coming from nowhere... The recently-human balloon desperately wanted to sob, to weep bitter tears of despair as the certainty of being permanently trapped like this crashed down on her again, but of course, couldn't even do that. Not without eyes to cry from...

This was all Purah's fault! If that girl just knew how to respect other people's possessions, had stopped to think that it wasn't right to steal her slate and install a weird, transformation rune onto it without breathing a word about it, then she'd still be a person, not an oversized balloon! Hyrule would still have a princess, instead of a new mode of transport! That new mode of transport screamed in deafening silence for the girl who'd reduced to her to this state. Begging desperately, wordlessly for the little scientist who'd unknowingly inflicted such misery upon her to come and help her. To notice her, recognise her and reverse the life-destroying effects of her awful rune. Even knowing that it was completely hopeless, that she had absolutely no way of rousing Purah from her bed, let alone communicating the fact that she hadn't been an airship when she woke up this morning, the former-girl screamed and screamed and screamed without a sound. What else could she do? It wasn't like she could march into Purah's bedroom and shake her awake, not with a body that couldn't even fit inside the building, even if it was capable of autonomous movement. Her unasked-for, inflated new form permitted her to do nothing but float in total, unbearable inanimation, all agency she'd possessed as a Hylian entirely stripped away from her and, as futile and meaningless as her unvoiced screeches for help unquestionably were, it was easier to let pointless desperation overcome her, rather than sit there as the inert object she was, incapable of doing anything to stop her mind focusing on just how terrible her situation was, how horrendous and hollow her entire future was doomed to be if she really was condemned to this uncomfortable, unmoving, unspeaking, helium-bloated form for the rest of her life.

"Huh?" said a familiar voice, dragging the former-princess from her sea of despond. "Wh-what is that thing!? Some kind of... huge balloon? I need to examine this!"

Purah! She'd seen her! And she was going to examine her! The idea of being scientifically examined sounded not at all fun to the recent-person, who wanted nothing less than to feel even more dehumanised than she already was, but Purah was some kind of genius, right? After all, she was smart enough to make a rune that was capable of transforming a Hylian girl into a huge, floating vehicle. Surely she was also smart enough to know how to undo that change? And to recognise that a change had taken place at all. For the first time since she'd been forced into this gargantuan, stretched-too-tight new body, the transformed-girl actually felt a flicker of hope. She was smart enough herself to know that it would almost certainly be extinguished, though. That the chances of being recognised as her former self in this inanimate state of being were slim to impossible... But that wouldn't stop her clinging to it like it was a sole, frayed rope suspending her above a bottomless abyss. What other choice did she have? It was either embrace this minute hope, or give up on hope altogether. Resign herself to never again being herself and fall into and inescapable, endless despair... She couldn't do that! As long as there was even the tiniest chance that this straining, speechless nightmare could end, then she would continue to hope that she would one day look in a mirror and see her own, pretty face looking back at her, rather than the bulging, gas-filled nose-cone of an expressionless dirigible. Every muffled sound she heard from the lab beside her making her no-longer-present heart jump a little more as she chose to believe that those approaching footsteps represented her nearing salvation, not just a precursor to yet another layer of unable-to-be-expressed misery as Purah proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the horrific irreversibility of her transformation from royalty to object...

"Wow, just look at the size of this thing! It's amazing! But what exactly is it? And how did it get here?"

The former-girl, so consumed with trying not to fall into despair, hadn't noticed that Purah had stepped out of the lab and was now directly in front of her her now-enormous form, her neck craned as she stared up at the helium-filled bulk of recent-princess before her. She looked so tiny! The new balloon only just able to see the little girl at the very edge of her newly-fixed field of vision. Augh, seeing her standing in the dark shadow cast by her own, bloated body only made her feel worse! To see up close a girl, so similar in everything except age to the one she had just been, and still feeling so distant, so entirely different in every conceivable way from the still-human figure below her would have broken her heart in two if she still had one. ...But this was no time to get mired in the misery of losing her own human form! Not when there was someone who could possibly deliver her from this inert torment! Desperately, the girl-turned-airship tried to tell Purah that, what exactly she was, was the princess of Hyrule, transformed into this pathetic, helpless state by her uninvited meddling with her possessions! That this was all her fault, so she needed to fix it, right now! ...But it was hopeless. As fervently as she tried to screech for recognition and rescue, she was uttely unable to. She could do nothing but float there and wait, hoping more than she'd ever hoped for anything in her life that the non-transformed girl she now dwarfed would work out what had happened...

"Hmm, it's able to float in the sky and those definitely look like engines..." said Purah, pacing around the transformed-girl, completely oblivious to the object of her study's pleading, silent wails for help. "And that's quite a sizeable compartment underneath the balloon... Oh, I know what this is! A blimp! I've seen schematics for something just like this in ancient textbooks, but I've never actually seen one before. What an amazing thing to discover on my doorstep!"

A blimp!? thought the former-girl, indignantly. That's what I am? A blimp? Somehow, being able to put a name to the thing she had become made her feel even more distraught than she already had been. Hearing herself be described with such entirely non-human terms by a girl she knew well just felt so... objectifying! ...And it didn't help that the object she had unwillingly turned into was called a "blimp", as well. She didn't think she'd ever heard a word so inelegant, so un-princess-like in her entire life and now it was the only title which could be accurately applied to her. To her who had been born a girl of royal blood and now had no place on the social ladder, being an item with no blood at all... She didn't want to be a blimp! Why was Purah still just talking about her like she was a scientific discovery, not a friend in dire need of help!? ...Because she hadn't recognised her. If she still had that royal blood pumping through her non-existant veins it would have run cold as the horrific certainty of Purah's cluelessness about her former-identity took root in the girl-turned-blimp's mind. The absolute, unbearable knowledge that, if Purah couldn't identify her, nobody could and she would therefore be truly stuck like this. Permanently.

"Oh, it's just low enough that I can climb inside," said Purah, blissfully unaware of the ear-splitting screech the recently-human blimp failed to voice as her last spark of hope was extinguished. "Let's take a look inside and see if I can- Huh? What's this underneath it? A... Sheikah Slate?"

Raising an eyebrow, the little Sheikah reached under the transformed-princess and picked up the device, her face paling as she saw her own rune displayed on its screen. "Purah's Incredible New Killer App, Polymorphing Particles Literally Easily...?" she said, a sinking feeling of dread entering her chest. "Then this is... Zelda's slate. Why is it here, under this blimp? I left it on my desk last night, so it should still be there... Did the princess notice it was missing and come to take it back? But, if she did, then why doesn't she-"

The still-human girl clamped a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream as she looked, wide-eyed, back up at the blimp, blotting out the sky above her. "Z-Zelda!?" she stammered. "I-is that... you?"

Yes! the former-princess tried and failed to screech in desperation, hope once more flooding her cavernous new form as she heard her own name directed at her inanimate new self. Yes, it's me! I turned into a blimp and it's all because of you! Please, please Purah! Everything about being a blimp is unbearable! Everything feels so strange and I can't move, or talk and it hurts and it's terrifying! Please, you have to help me! Please! Help me, help me, help me!

"Oh, it is you!" said Purah, unable to hear the new blimp's frantic pleas for help, but haunted by imagining them. "Of course it is! Why else would a giant blimp suddenly appear outside the lab with your slate right next to it? This is awful! ...But, kind of incredible, right? I'd barely tested this rune, so to find that it can convert a living, breathing young woman into an inanimate, floating vehicle is an outstanding discovery! This demands a ton of study! I've got to take notes and pictures and examine samples of your new body and- Wait. What am I saying!? My rune turned you into a blimp and all I can think of scientific achievement! I'm so, so sorry, princess! I had no idea this was even possible, you have to believe me! Don't worry, I'll turn you back to normal and then we can discuss your experiences as an inanimate thing when you regain your voicebox, so I can write a truly thorough journal entry!"

I don't care about your journal! shrieked the former-girl, soundlessly. I don't want to be a scientific discovery for losing my humanity! I just want to be me again! Please, just hurry up and save me from this nightmare...

"Okay, Zelda!" said Purah, taking a step back and lifting the slate up towards her transformed-friend. "Just wait there... Er, not that you can do anything else like that... Ugh, whatever. Just hold on and you'll be back to the pretty little thing you were in no time! Snap!"

The still-human girl pointed the slate's lens at the non-human girl and activated the rune, but nothing happened. No pink flash, no transformation. The formerly-princess blimp was still just a blimp.

"...Huh?" said Purah, staring up at the still-transformed girl in surprise. "I was sure that using it again would reverse the effects. Although... now that I think of it, I didn't actually try to change any of the stuff I transformed last night back into what they were..." A bead of sweat appeared on the non-transformed girl's face as she took another step back from the girl whose very humanity had been stolen from her by her own tinkering. "Heh. Just... hold on a minute, blimp-girl. I need to check on something really quick."

Wait, no! called the girl-turned-blimp in desperate silence. Don't leave me here like this! What if the wind picks up and I start to float away!? ...But the Sheikah was already gone, forgetting to even shut the door to the lab in her haste, leaving the now-inflated girl to listen in despondent silence to the frantic sounds coming from within a building she would never be able to fit in again with such an enormous body. Crashing, banging, the scratching of a pen, muttered, concerningly-horrified sounding words she couldn't quite make out... Something seemed wrong. Very wrong. Purah's nervous demeanour, her saying that she hadn't turned anything back with her rune before, the fact that she was still a blimp, rather than a person... The hope that had filled the transformed-girl's helium-filled body rapidly gave way to a terrifying dread. Purah could restore her to her original self, right...?

"Oh... Hey again, bli- Zelda," said Purah, as she stepped back outside after what felt like an age of interminable waiting for the former-girl, desperate to escape this horrible, inanimate fate and resume her life as a Hylian girl. "So... I've got something I really don't want to have to tell you. Something you definitely won't want to hear..." Unable to even look at the outwardly-emotionless, transformed body of her friend and princess, the researcher stared at the ground, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she drew circles in the grass with her toes. "So, the thing is... I said you'd be back to yourself in no time, but it turns out that you actually have to spend some more time stuck like that... A lot of time, actually. All of time, even. I hope you won't take this too badly, but I think it's impossible to undo your transformation, or even change you into a different object. See, the rune which did this to you was very experimental, based on some ancient texts I recently discovered and didn't fully understand, but, now that I've seen your, um, condition, I think I do. I cross-referenced it with some other old books I found and it turns out that what you used on yourself was forbidden technology that got deliberately buried because of the permanence of its effects. There were a lot of precautionary tales about young maidens being changed into buildings and pieces of art and machinery and stuff, never again to draw another breath as a human beings, despite the efforts of the kingdom's best minds, but I thought they were just dumb, unrelated old folk tales, so I just ignored them. But hey, looks like we found out they were real, right? Sorry, but it really does look like you're doomed to that form for all eternity, princess. Sorry to get your hopes up about turning back and everything..."

If she hadn't already lost the power of speech, the princess-turned-blimp would have been stunned to silence, all other thoughts forced from her mind as Purah's words, and the full weight of their meaning, washed over her no longer flesh-and-blood body. And then she would have screamed. Screamed so loud that the women of Gerudo Desert would have looked up in surprise if only she'd had the ability to vocalise it. But she didn't, because she was a blimp. A large, throatless, lungless, inanimate bag of straining, helium-filled synthetic fibres attached to an enterable carriage and nothing more. And, from what she'd just heard, she had no hope of ever being anything more than this big, silent balloon ever again. The former-girl wanted to sob, to shriek, to collapse to her knees and wail in utter, overwhelming despond, but she couldn't even do that anymore, because she no longer had knees. No! No, no, no, no, no! She didn't want this! Didn't want to be stuck as an unbearably taut, volitionless blimp for the rest of her life! After everything she'd done, all of her bitter struggles to prove herself worthy as Hyrule's princess before the Calamity, her century of sacrifice, selflessly sealing herself in endless, tumultous battle with the vilest evil ever to draw breath for the sake of her world and its people... After finally achieving the peace she'd spent her entire life fighting for, this was her reward? To become a helpless blimp, unable to live the life she'd dreamed of for so long and had finally achieved, doing nothing for the rest of time except having people climbing inside her to fiddle with her controls and fly her unwillingly through the skies, with no way to even communicate her distress? She was supposed to be a princess! A girl who'd been working to restore her kingdom to its former glory and one day be crowned queen! She wanted to fill her days with everything she'd longed for during her century of battle, to research interesting discoveries and find new ways to help people, to ride her beloved white horse, to pick Silent Princess flowers and, most of all, to spend time with the people she loved, chatting and sharing memories in peaceful bliss. And now all of those simple joys had been taken away from her, along with everything she ever was or had been and every single one of her hopes and dreams for the future, as she was doomed to eternity as an inert dirigible, filled not just with helium, but inescapable, unexpressible despair... How could she not take this too badly!? Her life was ruined! It was barely a life anymore, just a horrible, torturous existence! As devoid of hope and happiness as her new body was empty of anything but gas. And it was all because this depressingly still-human girl beneath her failed to take heed of ancient warnings and installed a transformation rune on her slate without telling her! Purah should have been the one to get transformed! She was the one who deserved to spend the rest of her days trapped in inanimate, floating misery, not her! What had she ever done to deserve this endless torment!?

"Purah, is that... a blimp? Is this what you've been working on with the princess?"

The once-human blimp looked down in surprise at the new voice, seeing Link and Purah's assisstant, Symin standing beneath her, staring up at her inflated, inert bulk with surprise, curiosity and, crucially, not the tiniest glimmer of recognition. The transformed-girl wanted to cry, to scream at the two guys that she wasn't just some lifeless result of the princess' experiments, she was the princess! That she was an innocent girl who'd been irrevocably sealed in this inanimate hell by Purah and, if they couldn't do anything to restore her to the young royal she had been, they could at least avenge her lost humanity by taking her slate and giving the little girl responsible a taste of her own transformation rune. ...But there was no use in even trying. Why keep torturing herself by imagining what she wanted to say, knowing that she'd never be able to breathe a word again? And anyway, even if she could enunciate all that, it would have been a lie. As much as she desperately wished it wasn't true with every now-synthetic fibre of her being, she was not the princess anymore. Everything she'd ever achieved, regretted and hoped for in her life as a Hylian girl was now just a memory, an irrelevant precursor to her new life as a huge, unmoving balloon. It didn't matter what, or who she had been, she was just a blimp now and that was all. ...Besides, what good would it do her if Purah got transformed and locked in despondent inanimation, as well? Yes, it was the non-transformed girl's fault that she was doomed to this painful, gas-filled existence, but she hadn't intended to inflict this misery on her, had she? Her life as a princess was over, her life as a blimp looked set to be nothing but ceaseless torture, but petty vengeance never solved anything. Purah being trapped forever as a fellow balloon, or something equally inert, may give her some slight feeling of justice being served, but it wouldn't bring her own humanity back and, really, she wouldn't wish this horror on anybody. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to forgive the scientist who'd inadvertently stolen everything from her, but she could at least stop wishing perpetual misery on the ancient child... Even as she was forced to look down on Link, her closest companion and the person she'd spent over a century fighting for and yearning to see again, staring up at her transformed body without a shred of warmth or affection in his gaze, just mild suprise mixed with cold indifference. The bag with the gathered supplies for the experiments she'd now never be able to perform in his hands being yet another reminder of how utterly, depressingly inhuman she was; of the fact that she was only an object now, incapable of sharing another moment or creating another memory with the guy she now dwarfed. The only form of connection she could achieve with him now being if he stepped inside her carriage and used her as his transport... Why wasn't she even allowed to cry with this horrible new body!?

"Oh, um... yeah! That's right!" said Purah, flashing a nervous glance up at the former-girl as she spoke. "I made this blimp from- I mean with the princess! Isn't it amazing? It's bound to be the next great innovation in travel, don't you think?"

"It is impressive, yes..." said Symin, placing a hand on the new blimp's carriage, the former-girl wanting to squeal in discomfort as she was unembarrassedly touched like the object she now was. But, more than that, why was Purah lying to them? Why pretend that she'd made the blimp instead of her being the blimp? Why not tell them what had happened? She wasn't exactly desperate to become the literal object of the world's sympathy as the news that Hyrule's only princess had become stuck as nothing but a big, helium-bloated balloon spread across the entire kingdom, the sorrow of the people she no longer shared a species with witnessing her in this inert condition sure to only deepen her own misery over her unwanted transformation as she just had to float there and listen to others weep for her lost humanity, with she herself hopelessly unable to join in... But it had to be better than nobody realising who she was! The sight and sounds of friends, acqiuantances and the closest of comrades looking at her and talking about her like she'd never even been a person being the most unbearably heartbreaking thing she'd ever had to experience.

"But I don't remember you ever talking about dirigible development," continued Symin, oblivious to the despair of the once-human object before him. "And why would the princess have us search for rare potion ingredients if she was working on this? ...Where is she, anyway?"

"I didn't tell you, because I knew you'd mess everything up like usual if I let you help. And as for the princess..." said Purah, the corner of her mouth twitching imperceptibly as she flashed a glance back at the transformed-girl who was unwittingly casting her enormous shadow over all of them. "She's around. She's the- I mean, she's in the blimp! Yeah, that's right! I was just about to take the princess on her first test flight! ...With me! Me and her both riding in the carriage, I mean. Sorry, I know you just got back, but she's really excited to get going, so I can't just leave her, the blimp, that is, floating here idly like this! Okay, you two go on inside and get ready for whatever it was that Zelda wanted to experiment on before she got turned... onto blimp development! See you later, okay?"

Hurriedly, the little Shiekah rushed to the girl-turned-blimp's door and, on her tip-toes, managed to push it open, scrambling up into her former-friend's carriage whilst the two guys were watching her in eyebrow-raised confusion. Quickly, she slammed it shut again and forced the bolt home before anyone else could follow her on board. "Phew," she said, leaning against her once-human vehicle's interior to catch her breath. "Thank goodness there's a lock on your door, Zelda. I was way too close to spilling the beans about who you used to be..."

The former-girl, though, was not at all relieved about Purah's ability to lock herself inside her. That meant she was inside her! A girl, a member of a species she had been a part of until no more than an hour ago was standing in her. This felt so wrong! She'd been entered! Penetrated by the entire body of a girl she could depressingly no longer think of as "another" girl. And now she could feel her moving around within her, the tap of her shoes thudding uncomfortably against her interior with every step she took, every breath and word that left her mouth echoing inside her like the scientist's mouth was pressed directly up against her non-existant ear. This was too much! Hadn't Purah already done enough to her without subjecting her to this strangest, incredibly unwelcome, distressingly non-human kind of intimacy? Every fibre of her now-airship's being wanted to scream at the intruder to get out of her hollow body and tell Link what had happened, but, even if she did have a way to voice that screech, she'd still have no way to actually force the non-transformed girl to leave. After all, Purah was a person and she was a giant balloon. She didn't have control of anything, least of all her own new body and who got inside it. The girl-who-was-still-a-girl was completely, unquestionably in charge here and the girl-who-was-now-a-blimp could do nothing but float there and silently take it as the one who'd boarded her made her way across her carriage's interior. They were no longer princess and researcher, no longer friends. She was a vehicle and the once-fellow person inside her was a passenger she had no choice but to accept. Someone who was simply using her as the helpless blimp she now was...

"Sorry about not telling them who you are, blimp-princess," said Purah, letting out a sigh as she finally stopped pacing inside the once-human girl. "But how could I break it to Hyrule's hero that the princess he worked so hard to save is now nothing but a blimp? Who knows how he'd have reacted? Escpecially since your transformation was kind of entirely my fault..." The girl sighed again, glancing around the interior of the former-girl she was now standing inside. "But look at me, talking to a blimp. I don't even know if you can hear me in that helpless new body of yours and you definitely can't respond, even if you are still aware like this... If you can understand me, though, I just want to tell you that I'm not giving up. Everything I've read tells me that it's totally impossible to turn you back, that nothing that's ever been tried has been even partially successful at reversing a transformation caused by that rune, but that's no reason to stop looking! I'll take responsibilty for this and search the entire world for a way to undo this mess and restore you back into the body of the princess you used to be! And, as luck would have it, you became the perfect thing to carry me on my journey! Hope this doesn't feel too uncomfortable, Zelda. If you can even feel anything anymore, that is..."

The blimp-which-had-been-Zelda wanted to cry, not so much from the sorrow of losing her humanity and the life that came with it, but because she was touched. She still felt angry at Purah for exposing her to the technology which had caused her inanimate nightmare in the first place, but hearing the little girl express sincere regret and an earnest desire to help her in spite of the almost-definitely impossible odds, when it would be so easy for her to just leave her like this, never tell anyone what had happened and get on with her life, touched the heart her transformation had stolen from her. ...And then Purah wrenched at her new controls. The sharp pull of a lever that was part of her, the rapid dizzying whirring of her own engines, air streaming through the blades of the propellers she didn't want to have and the fact that her new, blimp's nose tilted upwards, her entire body beginning to float leisurely up towards the sky without any input from her bringing a sharp end to any warmth and good-feeling that had blossomed inside her. It was easy for Purah to talk about hope and not giving up, she was still a girl! A sentient, autonomous being that still got to enjoy her own mobility, not a huge, taut blimp that didn't even have control over the direction she drifted! The non-transformed girl couldn't possibly understand how it felt, how distressing and frightening it was for her own body to move like this without her having any say in the matter, how depressing it was for her pathetically inert form to respond to the button presses, lever pulls and steering wheel turns of someone else when it absolutely refused to even twitch for her. How it felt to be controlled so completely and unresisistingly like she was just a big, air-filled plaything. The girl-turned-blimp looked down at the landscape passing slowly by beneath her unasked-for, occupied carriage and utterly failed to sob. The view from up here, seeing Hyrule spread out beneath her like a living, changing map, was breathtaking, something she'd have taken immense pleasure from witnessing if she'd still been a princess, but she couldn't enjoy it. Not like this. Not with a body that had no breath to be taken away. Not when seeing the land she will never be able to rule, feeling her own body gliding helplessly above it, occassionally wobbling terrifyingly as she was struck by a slightly stiffer breeze, was nothing but a horrible reminder of what she had become. Of her total removal from the kingdom she'd so recently been the princess of as anything but inventory, knowing that she was only able to see it like this because she'd lost everything she'd ever known and loved the second she'd transformed into a huge balloon... A balloon that wanted to scream in terror every time a flock of birds flapped towards her, watching their sharp beaks flash past her tightly-stretched material and realising just how easy it would be to get popped. To be punctured and feel the gas rushing out of her ragged, gaping hole, sending her plummeting back to the ground, her carriage shattering as it crashed into the floor, leaving her as nothing more than a useless, empty swath of material attached to a large piece of twisted, broken scrap... No! She didn't want to think about how it would feel to burst!

...But she couldn't not think about it. After all, she was just a blimp now and popping like the big balloon she was was a very real threat. A horrific experience she would probably have to live through one day if she really was stuck like this for the rest of her life. Which she was sure she was going to be. Purah may have been humming cheerfully to herself as she flew her transformed-friend's body across the skies, but for the once-human blimp herself, her mind flooded with nothing but fears, regrets, distress and misery, it was hard to feel even a shred of optimism about her situation. Yes, it was nice that Purah was trying to save her from this inanimate hell, but she'd said it herself; no transformation ever caused by the rune which did this to her had ever been reversed. Maybe, just maybe, there was something out there which could return her to the girl she had been, that she would spend every moment of every day of the rest of her life wishing she could be again, but, in the depths of her cavernous, helium-filled new body, she didn't believe that there was, or that they'd ever find it if it did exist. After all, her life had become nothing but endless, terrifying torture now, so why should she expect the goddess to suddenly smile on her again? All she could was hope and pray for Purah's success, but who would listen to the unspoken prayers of a blimp? And besides, Purah wouldn't last forever. What if the still-human girl spent the rest of her life searching for a way to fix her in her remorse, but never found anything? After centuries had passed, when everyone who'd ever known her as a person had passed on, when her balloon had long-since torn to shredded uselessness and rotted away, when she'd been reduced to nothing but the empty shell of her former-carriage, broken and festering in the middle of a rusty scrap heap, who would be trying to help her, an anonymous wreck of a blimp whose former-humanity was unknown to anyone alive? What hope would there be when Princess Zelda of Hyrule was just a figure of history, remembered primarily for her mysterious, unexplained disappearance shortly after the Calamity, nobody ever suspecting that she was still alive as the ruined, slowly disintegrating remains of a blimp? Perhaps Purah would succeed, perhaps the once-Zelda blimp would one day weep tears of joy as she embraced her friends with the arms that had been returned to her, but, when she pictured her future, she didn't see that. She saw the scrap heap hundreds of years from now, herself still a blimp - at least, what was left of one - still weeping in tearless silence for the human life a fateful attempt to check her now-vanished hair had forced her to leave behind...

Commissioned by an anonymous commissioner. Hope you like it!