Chapter Text
Two years after Ganondorf’s defeat at the hands of the storied Hero of Time, life in the kingdom resumes its natural course. The castle, a half-eaten silhouette of raw stone and scaffolding, stands atop the vestiges of its ruin. Towns and villages welcome the familiar faces of their survivors, no longer forced into hiding, and Lake Hylia shimmers below clear skies as the once-blighted fields of Hyrule teem with vegetation anew.
But not all is in its place.
Zelda is just nineteen summers and already so weary. Older, yes, wiser, no doubt, yet haplessly trapped in the shell of her making: those unchanging memories of younger days. Perhaps it is her penance. She was a mere child then, convinced she could right the wrongs of a future unwritten—and in her haste to act, the Door of Time was opened, the Triforce was seized, and the darkness she'd tried so desperately to seal spread as a plague upon the land.
A shudder wracks her frame. The evening air bears with it a hush broken only by the soft plunk of her harp’s strings, propped against her knees. This overgrown grove, nestled against the outer edge of the Lost Woods, has become a sort of sanctuary whither she can retreat from the burdens of queenhood. Strum her sorrow into song for the ghosts who haunt her still.
It is your fault, they often say, cruel, insistent. You led him to the Sacred Realm. You sent for its keys.
Zelda opens her eyes. The fading light of the sun has since dipped below the treetops. Heart-shaped leaves sway in the breeze, dappling the ground in dancing amber shards. She watches the shadows play, then starts at the sound of rustling grass, flicking her gaze to the source of the disturbance.
It is rare for others to chance upon her. The guards leave her to solitude, and no one from the town ventures this far without purpose. An animal, perhaps? A Kokiri who has lost their way?
“Who is there?” she calls out.
As if to answer, a boy in green emerges from the thicket. He stumbles to a stop and stares squarely in her direction.
Zelda rises to stand, blood singing in her ears.
“Link?”
For a moment, she believes she’s summoned some vision, brought to life the image of her longing… but he is not as she knows him. He is not the young man with whom the Demon King crossed swords and suffered his demise. He is a child, shy of eleven or twelve, and as he gapes at her from under the weight of many a belt and armament, she is struck by his slightness. Like the mantle of heroism has crushed him more than spurred him to grow.
“How did you...”
Her head spins. Link holds an ocarina, burnished blue, the one she had entrusted him—no, the one he had returned—it suddenly occurs to her that the flow of time has again yielded, allowed him to traverse its folds for reasons beyond her ken.
As she scrambles for an explanation, however, he’s shoved brusquely from behind, lurching forwards and dropping the delicate thing. The culprit, a slight yearling of a horse, trots into the clearing beside him.
Epona, Zelda recognizes the girl.
Link and Epona.
Zelda watches Link shake his head; rub his tired eyes; blink and rub them again, seemingly struggling to make sense of his surroundings. “Are you real?” he asks at last, and she chokes out a laugh despite her horribly heavy heart. Little did the Link she knew speak. He must be as startled as she is.
“I am,” Zelda says, stooping to level their line of sight.
She tries a second time to give form to the words caught in the back of her throat.
“How did you find this place?”
Link pauses, wracked with uncertainty, but Zelda is patient. She waits until he has retrieved the ocarina, then closed the gap between them with small, steady steps. The grass crunches audibly under his tawny, leather boots. Epona whinnies nearby, clapping her hooves against the dirt.
“I… I don’t know,” he admits, a weak sound. “I was playing a song, and it…”
Link trails off, looking around the grove before meeting her gaze in silent entreaty.
“Brought you here,” she finishes in his stead.
He nods, tightening the painful snare around her heart. What song? She knows many songs—of the forest, of fire and water, of spirit, shadow, and light—but nothing comes quickly to mind. Not even the Song of Time should reveal to him these lost threads of their fate, frayed and forgotten.
Zelda smooths down the back of her dress to sit.
“Come,” she beckons him. “Talk to me.”