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It is in scarred hands and eyes of Sheikah-tech blue that Link finds his purpose.
在布满伤痕的双手和希卡科技般湛蓝的眼眸中，林克找到了他的使命。

At the end of any journey, there is a lull where the Hero is left to flounder — if he’s still alive, that is. Some train in a skill. Some take up the sword. Some wander into the woods and are never seen again.
在每段旅程的尽头，总有一段沉寂的时刻，勇者在此徘徊不定——当然，前提是他还活着。有人在此修炼技艺，有人拿起剑，也有人步入林中，从此再无音讯。

Link didn’t know what to do with himself when his story came to an end. He stood there, stupidly, sand-grit in his boots, so very green in age and in clothing, dusk dripping sick and ugly purple-orange off the back of his neck. Glass shards glittered like stars and crunched under his feet. He still smelled that ozone brush of magic that Midna carried with her. 
林克在故事结束时不知该如何是好。他愣愣地站在那里，靴子里满是沙粒，年纪轻轻，衣着也显得稚嫩，黄昏的余晖从他的颈后洒下，呈现出病态而丑陋的紫橙色调。玻璃碎片如星辰般闪烁，在他脚下发出嘎吱声。他仍能嗅到米多娜随身携带的那股臭氧般的魔法气息。

He knelt on the ground, hands pushing into shattered glass like it was cutting sand, and its sharp edges sliced into his palms. The Queen of Hyrule said something to him, and he did not hear her, tracing Twili designs into the dust.
他跪在地上，双手如同切割沙子般插入破碎的玻璃中，锋利的边缘划破了他的掌心。海拉鲁的女王对他说了些什么，但他并未听见，只是用手指在尘土中勾勒出图利族的图案。

Midna and Hyrule and Zelda and Ordon had been his purpose. What is a hero supposed to do with nothing to save, he wonders, and pours Arbiter sand out of his boots. He herds goats the first few weeks, and then he gets antsy. Over the next few, he studies the City in the Sky with Shad. Then, he wanders. He keeps the roads monster-free. He leaves Hyrule and comes back battered and bruised and sand-blasted. Zelda then relegates him to court life as a figurehead and nothing else.
米多娜、海拉鲁、塞尔达和奥顿曾是他的使命。当一个勇者无所拯救时，他该做些什么呢？他一边思索，一边倒出靴中的仲裁者之沙。最初的几周，他放牧山羊，随后便感到焦躁不安。接下来的日子里，他与沙德一同研究天空之城。之后，他开始四处游荡，保持道路无怪。他离开海拉鲁，归来时遍体鳞伤，满身沙尘。塞尔达随后将他安置在宫廷生活中，仅作为一个象征性的存在。

Her Majesty wants him to become a knight. He knows the silhouette of a tri-horned helm intimately and refuses.
女王陛下希望他成为一名骑士。他深知三角头盔的轮廓，却坚决拒绝。

There is nothing.  什么都没有。

He’s older than he’d ever expected to be, he is useless, and he is alone.
他比自己所预期的要老，他觉得自己毫无用处，而且他孤身一人。

Green hills roll in a nauseating tide in front of him. Scrubby trees and rusted-out spider-automatons splatter the countryside. Pathetic ponds glitter in the sun. Skittish spotted horses dance away, Epona regarding them with a baleful eye. The grass billows like laundry on a line in the breeze. It is so green, bruised with blast craters, gashed with dirt roads, the wind hacking at his hair and rattling the borrowed shield on his back.
绿色的山丘在他面前如潮水般起伏，令人作呕。稀疏的树木和锈迹斑斑的蜘蛛自动机点缀着乡野。可怜的池塘在阳光下闪烁。胆小的斑点马儿翩翩起舞，伊波娜用恶狠狠的眼神注视着它们。草地如晾衣绳上的衣物在微风中翻滚。这里如此 green，被爆炸坑洞砸得青一块紫一块，被泥土道路割裂，风撕扯着他的头发，震得他背上的借来的盾牌格格作响。

This plain is quiet. The travelers that pass slouch under the gaze of eight heavily armed men and boys, suspicious of decadently-dressed strangers. Mountains rise around them and loom overhead. Link wants to hold his breath and cower with his tail between his legs. There are gods in those mountains, but the skinny horses and the tired merchants and scarred earth are blinded to it. 
这片平原静悄悄的。过往的旅人在八名全副武装的男子和男孩的目光下佝偻着身子，对那些衣着奢华的陌生人满心疑虑。群山环绕，巍峨耸立。林克只想屏住呼吸，夹着尾巴畏缩不前。那些山中有神灵存在，但瘦弱的马儿、疲惫的商人和满目疮痍的大地却对此视而不见。

There is a boy on a black horse. His gelding trots with power, the muscles under its silky coat strong, its sure hooves striking true in the yellow dirt. He hums in the back of his throat and the gelding slows, tossing its mane. Epona comes to an unsure stop as well. 
一个男孩骑在一匹黑马之上。他的马儿有力地小跑着，丝滑的毛皮下肌肉坚实，稳健的马蹄在黄土地上敲击出真实的节奏。他喉咙深处轻声哼唱，马儿随之放慢了脚步，甩动着鬃毛。伊波娜也略显犹豫地停了下来。

Eyes like the moon in daylight, wheatfield hair, scar-gilded cheek and ragged Hylian ear. His dark hood pools around his shoulders, rain stained.
日间月华般的双眸，麦田般金黄的头发，脸颊上镀着伤痕，海拉鲁风格的耳朵参差不齐。他深色的斗篷在肩头 pooling，被雨水浸染。

“I don’t know you,” he says, words crackling out like a campfire. His voice is gravel underfoot, tenor in timbre. Rasping cold sand. Disused. Young. 
“我不认识你，”他说，话语如同篝火般噼啪作响。他的声音如同脚下砾石，音色低沉。如同粗砺的冷沙。荒废的。年轻的。

“And we, you,” the old man says. Horrible, awful armor plates clack against each other and catch the weak white sun. 
“而我们，你，”老人说道。那可怕、令人厌恶的铠甲板块相互碰撞，捕捉到微弱的白昼阳光。

He tilts his head at the crowd of blonde Hylians that surround a warhorse in farm tack, and astride her, the Hylian clad in wolf fur. If this boy dismounted his gelding he would come to Link’s shoulder, but Link knows his masked power by the sure set of his chin.
他微微侧头，望向那群金发海拉鲁人，他们围绕着那匹套着农用马具的战马，而马背上，是一位身着狼皮的年轻海拉鲁人。若这少年从他的马儿上下来，身高几乎能与林克齐肩，但林克从他坚定的下巴上，已识得那面具下隐藏的力量。

His gelding’s sides heave and sweat. Mountains crowd overhead. Apocalyptic quiet gusts between them.
马儿的两侧剧烈起伏，汗水淋漓。群山在头顶压迫。末世般的寂静在它们之间阵阵袭来。

“What’s your horse’s name?” Link ventures to say, his voice shattering the careful silence. Out the corner of his eye, prettyboy gapes, and Link ignores him.
“你的马儿叫什么名字？”林克试探着问道，他的声音打破了小心翼翼的寂静。眼角余光中，那位俊美少年张大了嘴巴，林克却视而不见。

“Ĕha,” he grunts. The two syllables rip out of his throat and it sounds like dragging a hook out the gut of a fish. It’s an old word, one Link has heard before but doesn’t recall the meaning of.
“呃哈，”他低吼道。这两个音节仿佛是从他喉咙深处撕扯出来的，听起来就像是从鱼腹中拖出钩子一般。这是一个古老的词汇，林克以前曾听过，但已记不起其含义。

The knight from the sky lights up, Bonfire Night and meteor showers and sunset, trotting up to pat Ĕha’s neck. “ Night. Aye, beauty.”
天空中降临的骑士点亮了，篝火之夜、流星雨和日落，他轻快地走上前，轻拍着埃哈的脖子。“夜晚。是啊，真美。”

Ĕha mouths at Sky-Knight’s rat’s nest hair. His rider’s hands tighten on the leather straps of his reins.
埃哈对天骑士那乱糟糟的头发做了个鬼脸。他的骑手双手紧紧握住皮革缰绳。

It is in that graveyard of a plain that Link knows something has clicked into place. Maybe it’s that singing wind, maybe it’s the way Epona nibbles at this boy’s pantleg, maybe it’s the careful suspicion in eyes poison-blue.
在那片荒原的墓地里，林克意识到有些事情已然契合。或许是那吟唱的风声，或许是伊波娜轻咬这男孩裤腿的方式，或许是那双毒蓝眼眸中流露出的谨慎疑虑。

“And what’s yours?” Link asks. A futile question. He knows the answer.
“那你的呢？”林克问道。这是一个徒劳的问题。他知道答案。

The boy raises his hands and Link knows what he will spell. He has known it since he looked him in the eyes and felt something shift, since Epona leaned toward him like a moth to flame.
男孩举起双手，林克知道他将施展出什么法术。自从他凝视那双眼睛，感受到某种变化，自从伊波娜如飞蛾扑火般向他倾斜，他便已知晓。

“L-I-N-K.”  “林克。”

In a verdant, mountain-ringed bowl of giants, Link finds his purpose. He does not know it yet.
在一片青翠、群山环绕的巨人盆地中，林克找到了他的使命。他尚未意识到这一点。

There is a copse of flowers in a swamp.
沼泽中有一片花丛。

Someone has to have planted them. Flowers don’t grow in perfect little clumps naturally and Silent Princesses less so. These flowers sway in the breeze, even when it’s not windy. After dusk, they glow with a silver lambent gleam.
必定有人栽种了它们。花朵不会自然地生长成完美的小簇，静谧公主更是如此。这些花朵在微风中摇曳，即便在没有风的时候。黄昏之后，它们会泛起银色的幽幽光芒。

They are untouched. The swamp around them is upset. It has been gored from combat and scorched from wildfire and still has yet to regrow all its grass. Killing machines rust and decay, arced around the flowerbed, leaning haphazardly on useless spindly legs. Nowadays, children like to climb on them. The killing machines are none the wiser. They doze.
它们毫发无损。周围的沼泽地却一片狼藉。它因战斗而伤痕累累，因野火而焦黑，至今尚未完全恢复植被。杀戮机器锈迹斑斑，腐朽不堪，环绕花坛而立，随意地倚靠在细长的无用腿上。如今，孩子们喜欢爬到它们身上玩耍。这些杀戮机器对此毫无察觉。它们只是昏昏欲睡。

In Hylian, ‘garden’ and ‘cradle’ are the same word.
在海拉鲁语中，“花园”和“摇篮”是同一个词。

There is peace and sleep where those enchanted petals fall, a soft bed of swamp-grass, a cradled towhead boy, and dripping sunset.
在那被魔法花瓣覆盖之处，宁静与安眠降临，柔软的沼泽草铺成床榻，一个金发男孩被轻轻怀抱，夕阳的余晖滴落其上。

The flowers take root between mounds in a valley the size of a boy and soften the yellow dirt with bedding of petals. If he leans in close, he can hear them whistling a lullaby, ghosted away by the wind. A funeral march, disguised as a lullaby; a lullaby, disguised as a funeral march.
花儿在山谷中的小丘间扎根，那山谷不过男孩般大小，花瓣如床铺般柔软了黄色的泥土。若他贴近细听，便能听见它们轻声哼唱着摇篮曲，随风而逝，似有若无。那是一场葬礼进行曲，伪装成摇篮曲；也是一首摇篮曲，伪装成葬礼进行曲。

In Hateno Hylian, ‘grave’ and ‘cradle’ are the same word.
在海特诺海利亚语中，“坟墓”和“摇篮”是同一个词。

His funeral procession, two in number (a girl with bruise-color eyes, a warrior with cornsilk hair), has no sedan to carry him gracefully — only a weak shoulder and weaker hands. They are so weak, so weak, so weak, and that is why he is dead. 
他的葬礼队伍仅有两人（一个眼眸呈瘀伤色的女孩，一个头发如玉米丝般的战士），没有轿子能优雅地承载他——只有一副孱弱的肩膀和更无力的双手。他们是如此虚弱，如此虚弱，如此虚弱，而这正是他离世的原因。

They drop him a few times. In the dirt. It’s not dignified. They are so sorry, so sorry, so sorry, and yet he still stares.
他们几次将他摔在地上。尘土飞扬。这并不体面。他们连连道歉，如此抱歉，如此抱歉，然而他依旧凝视着。

There is mud and blood on his cheek and his eyes are still open. His head lolls back and forth to the rhythm of the chant in his pallbearer’s head, dead, dead, dead, we killed him.
他脸颊上沾满了泥泞和血迹，双眼依旧睁着。他的头随着抬棺人脑海中那低沉的吟唱节奏前后晃动，死了，死了，死了，我们杀了他。

He’s not dead. He’s been rotting for half a day and his hands are snarling and his skin is going cold and he’s stopped bleeding but he’s not quite dead. She has hope.
他还没死。他已经腐烂了半天，双手扭曲，皮肤逐渐冰冷，血已经止住，但他仍未完全断气。她心中尚存一线希望。

He’s dead when they lay him in mirror-still water.
他在被放入如镜般平静的水中时已经死去。

He’s dead when they close the Shrine’s doors behind them.
他在他们关上神庙大门后便已死去。

He’s dead when he wakes up in a century and stumbles into the sunlight on new-fawn legs.
他在一个世纪后醒来，步履蹒跚地走进阳光下，双腿如新生的鹿崽般脆弱。

There’s blood caked in the seams of Link’s tunic.
林克外衣的接缝处沾满了干涸的血迹。

This is not unusual, but he is sticky and gritty with dirt and there is blood in his tunic, so he wants to tear his clothes to pieces. 
这并不罕见，但他身上沾满了泥土，衣服上也染有血迹，因此他想要将衣物撕成碎片。

“Give it to me,” the kid signs. He hunches over cold river water, pebbles and dirt from the riverbank digging into his trousers. The early morning fog is staining pink and yellow behind him. The forest is rendered into hazy suggestions of distant trees.
“给我吧，”孩子用手势说道。他俯身在冰冷的河水之上，河岸上的鹅卵石和泥土嵌入他的裤子里。清晨的雾气在他身后染上了粉红和黄色。森林变得朦胧，远处的树木隐约可见。

“I don need you to do my laundry, but thanks,” Link says, yanking his tunic over his head. It crackles with dried mud. His wolf pelt is pinned under a rock and drifting in the current upstream. Soft voices carry through the fog. Downstream, Sailor sticks a brave toe in the river water. Their smithy crows with laughter at his yelp.
“我不需要你帮我洗衣服，不过还是谢谢，”林克说着，一把将外衣从头顶扯下。衣服上干涸的泥土发出沙沙声。他的狼皮被压在一块石头下，随着上游的流水漂动。轻柔的声音透过雾气传来。下游，水手勇敢地将一只脚趾探入河水中。他们的铁匠铺里传来一阵哄笑，回应他的尖叫。

“I have good soap,” the kid signs, gesturing to the oilcloth bag that sits at his heel.
“我有好肥皂，”孩子用手势表示，指向他脚边放着的那只油布袋。

“I got soap, don you worry,” Link says. He plunges his tunic in the water. It leeches darkness over the forest-green cotton weave and the water gets cloudy. The champion is still looking at him. He feels eyes on his neck and a moon-pale moon-round face turned toward him at the corner of his eye.
“别担心，我有肥皂。”林克说道。他将外衣浸入水中，那深色的污渍逐渐渗透进森林绿的棉质编织中，水面变得浑浊。那位勇者仍在注视着他。他感到颈后有一双眼睛，眼角余光瞥见一张月光般苍白、圆月般圆润的脸庞转向他。

He’d told them ‘Champion’ was his title, but offered little else. Link suspected Sky-Knight knew more than he let on by that sharp look in his eye the day they met Champion. Sky-Knight cradled that sword like a baby. Link could’ve sworn it was glowing, but firelight and exhaustion play tricks on anyone’s eyes.
他告诉他们“勇者”是他的称号，但除此之外并未多言。林克怀疑天骑士那天见到勇者时，眼中锐利的光芒表明他知道的远比他透露的要多。天骑士怀抱着那把剑，如同呵护婴儿一般。林克几乎可以发誓那剑在发光，但火光和疲惫总会让人眼花缭乱。

Champion’s hands have stilled in the water.
勇者的双手在水中静止了。

Link sends him a look and finds him staring sightlessly out at the morning fog on the other bank of the river. Eyes glassy, mouth agape. Link falters.
林克瞥了他一眼，发现他正茫然地凝视着河对岸的晨雾。眼神空洞，嘴巴微张。林克不由得停下了脚步。

“Champion,” Link says, with no small amount of nervousness. “Champion, you good?”
“勇者，”林克说道，语气中带着不小的紧张。“勇者，你还好吗？”

His hands tremble.  他的双手颤抖。

Link reaches for him. His eyes jolt to Link with all the abruptness of snapping ribs.
林克向他伸出手。他的目光猛地转向林克，那突如其来的剧烈如同肋骨瞬间断裂。

“Don’t,” His voice claws out of his throat and slashes at the air. Its raspiness cannot be softened by his lilting, musical accent, and Link might have mischaracterized its sharpness for anger if not for the prey animal reflected back at him. The kid stares, shaking, ears pulled back and teeth bared in false threat. A wolf would know.
“别这样，”他的声音从喉咙中撕扯而出，划破空气。那沙哑的质感即便被他那轻柔如音乐的口音也无法抚平，若非那映入眼帘的猎物般的神态，林克或许会将这锐利误读为愤怒。那孩子瞪着眼，浑身颤抖，耳朵后缩，牙齿露出，做出虚张声势的威胁。狼会懂的。

They sit in silence. Sugar-sweet birdsong trills in their ears. The kid plunges his laundry into the muck at the bottom of the river, elbow-deep in water cold enough to purple his fingers.
他们静静地坐着。甜美的鸟鸣声在耳边响起。那孩子将衣物浸入河底的泥泞中，肘部深陷在冰冷的水里，手指被冻得发紫。

Link should apologize. ‘I’m sorry’ sticks in his throat.
林克应当道歉。“对不起”这三个字却卡在他的喉咙里。

“Can I get some of that soap?”
“我能用一些那种肥皂吗？”

Champion glances at him sidelong. His arms retreat from the water a little.
勇者斜眼瞥了他一眼。他的手臂微微从水中收回。

“Take it.”  “拿着吧。”

“Get me the washboard.”  “给我拿块搓衣板。”

A towhead boy obeys dutifully. He flushes with pride when his mother pats his hand in thanks. Wet smallclothes drip and sway on a clothesline while the washbasin swirls with suds. The river flows over the boy’s feet, wetting the hem of his trousers where he hasn’t hiked them up high enough. A toddler in Hateno costume sleeps in the basket of clothes at her mother’s hip.
一个金发男孩顺从地听从着。当他的母亲轻拍他的手以示感谢时，他的脸上泛起了自豪的红晕。湿漉漉的小衣物在晾衣绳上滴着水，随风摇摆，而洗衣盆里则泛着泡沫。河水流过男孩的脚边，浸湿了他未能足够高挽起的裤脚。一个穿着哈特诺服饰的幼儿在母亲身边的衣物篮里安然入睡。

“You bought the good soap, mót-ĕr!” The towhead boy crows with delight. He wilts a little at his mother’s hushing, but plunges his face into the sack of soap flakes all the same. “It smells different.”
“你买了好肥皂，妈妈！”那个金发男孩高兴地叫道。听到母亲的嘘声，他稍微蔫了些，但还是把脸埋进了肥皂粉袋子里。“这味道不一样。”

“Miss Ephie made it with daisies from our garden this time,” she says. She scrubs a petticoat over the washboard. “We gave her some of our apples.”
“艾菲小姐这次用我们花园里的雏菊做的，”她说。她用力在搓衣板上搓洗着衬裙。“我们还给了她一些苹果。”

A young man with shaggy, tawny blonde hair climbs down the steep hill, clothes basket on his hip, clothes rumpled. His odd smattering of plaits is disheveled.
一个年轻男子，头发蓬乱，呈浅褐色的金发，沿着陡峭的山坡爬下，臀部挂着装满衣物的篮子，衣服皱巴巴的。他那零星散布的辫子也显得凌乱不堪。

“Ach, look at that. Erling is finally in the land of the living. Go tell him it’s almost noon,” Link’s mother says, patting him on the rear in the direction of the boy, still picking his careful way down the shady, grassy slope.
“哎呀，看那儿。埃林终于醒来了。去告诉他快到中午了，”林克的母亲说道，一边轻拍他的后背，示意他朝那个仍在小心翼翼地沿着阴凉草坡下行的男孩走去。

Link careens into Erling’s legs, arms trapping his knees together with all the strength of a forest giant. Erling lets out a hoarse laugh.
林克猛地撞向埃尔林的双腿，双臂用森林巨人的力量紧紧夹住他的膝盖。埃尔林发出一声沙哑的笑声。

“Mama says it’s noon.”  “妈妈说现在是中午。”

“It is not.”  “并非如此。”

“Yuh-huh.”  “嗯哼。”

“I’ll have you know it’s eleven-thirty. That’s well before noon.”
“我得告诉你，现在是十一点半。这离中午还早着呢。”

Link giggles. Erling scoops him up onto the hip opposite his basket of laundry. 
林克咯咯地笑了起来。埃尔林将他一把抱起，放在与洗衣篮相对的髋部上。

“Good afternoon, Erling,” Link’s mother calls.
“下午好，埃林，”林克的母亲喊道。

“Hi, Auntie Camita. ‘Afternoon’ is generous. See, look, Aryll’s still sleeping.”
“嗨，卡米塔阿姨。‘下午’已经是很客气了。看，阿瑞尔还在睡觉呢。”

Link leans into Erling’s shoulder. Erling’s voice rumbles in his chest, and Link can feel it as he curls short arms around Erling’s neck.
林克靠在埃尔林肩上。埃尔林的声音在他胸膛中低沉回响，林克能感受到这声音，同时他短小的双臂环绕在埃尔林的脖子上。

“Aryll is a baby. You have no excuse,” Link’s mother says. “Do you need washing soap?”
“阿瑞尔还是个孩子。你没有借口，”林克的母亲说道。“你需要洗衣皂吗？”

Erling smiles and brushes the single braid on Link’s head behind his ear. “No. I got soap.”
埃林微笑着，将林克头上那根单辫拂到耳后。“不，我带了肥皂。”

Around Link, the darkness writhes. Midna’s sardonic giggle chitters in his ears at his every startle. The lantern light flickers, making monsters on the uneven sandstone walls. His eyes invent every creature to peer out at him from the dark, and he hunches his shoulders against the weight of night and a thousand eyes pressing down.

What, you scared? Midna teases, her shadows twirling around his ankles and sending goosebumps up his legs.

“I ain’t fuckin scared,” Link tries to declare, but his voice shakes. Midna, of course, catches this and echoes his voice back at him from her mouth.

Nooooo, I ain’t scared, Midna, my heart’s just poundin for no reason and my hands are shakin cuz I’m cold in the middle of the desert, she taunts, her high, grating laugh echoing off the cold stone walls. Big damn hero, huh? Hero of Light? Hero of Legend? Scared of shadows?

“Not scareda you,” Link protests, weakly. Instincts tell him he should keep his voice close. There is something hunting in here.

His skin crawls. Midna’s shadow curls, warm, around his legs. It fights off the creeping sense of being watched, having her here. She is an odd comfort.

There is a blood-freezing shriek in the darkness ahead. Spindly limbs lurch out of the shadows, stinking of rot and death, bandages rasping across the stone floor. Midna’s claws dig into his calf, spurring him like a spooked horse to move.

It is not often he feels like prey. It is not often that someone is there to help.

Her Majesty takes a delicate sip of her tea, ignoring the screaming of the winter wind battering the window. The snow that had gathered on the windowsill that afternoon had long since been whisked away, replaced with twirling, frantic flurries and harsh ridges of icicles and frost. The window fogs as Link’s breath hits it, blurring the lantern light behind him into a warm smear on the glass. 

He can’t hardly see past the wall-walk out the window, howling snow painting the castle gardens in sterile white and inky shadow. He catches glimpses of snowflakes in every whip of wind that passes through the window’s light. Beyond the walls, Castletown is little more than a suggestion, murky in the darkness.

“...a past incarnation, you say?”

Her Majesty’s cold voice comes to him, clipped and steadfast. Link wrings his hands in his lap. His tea sits on the gold-filigree saucer at his elbow, ignored and cooling.

“While yes, in my historical expertise, there have been past incarnations of the Princess and the Hero — and, of course, our third counterpart — beyond just folktales, I must admit I have never heard of such a thing as two incarnations meeting,” Her Majesty says. Her voice is musical but constrained, without Ilia’s dancing lilt or the soft, sweet melody of Queen Rutela. “I am not so hostile to the idea as to not listen to what you have to say.”

Link looks up at her. Ice-chip, feline eyes pierce him with singular focus. He shrinks a little in his seat. Her Majesty’s natural intensity combined with her high-necked, train-sleeved reception gown has him balancing on knife’s edge.

“Yeah — yes, it sounds…”

“Improbable?”

“Crazy, I was gonna — going to say, Your Majesty,” Link says. 

Her Majesty does an odd half-smile, something like pity softening her features, and she places her teacup down on the saucer, pinkie out to cushion the landing, fingers held just so.

“Link—” she says, leaning forward. She hasn’t called him that since then. Always Sir Link, or my compatriot, or Hero, but never Link. She keeps that distance. She pauses, hand coming off her knee.

Her Majesty must have seen something in his eyes. Something perturbed. She settles back in her seat, the silkscreen of Queenhood rolling down over her face once more. The guard in the corner of the room shifts slightly.

She studies him for a moment, the melting ice on his newly won wolf-hood, his hastily tidied hair, the scabs on his forehead where desperate hands had scrubbed til he bled, and sighs.

“What do you ask of me?”

Link bites his lip, fangs he had not yet grown used to digging into the skin. He breaks eye contact with those ice-chip knives and stares resolutely at the parquet floor.

“I don’t know,” Link lies. His thumb rubs over his knuckles, again, again, again.

Comfort, he thinks. Understanding. Friendship. Sympathy. More than weekly chaperoned appointments over tea while you wear stuffy dresses. To get called Link again and not The Hero.

Her Majesty is quiet. The fire crackles in the silence between them, fighting back the cold that seeps in through the window.

“Excuse my prying, may I ask what happened there?” she says, tapping her forehead with a pale finger. “Have you been in some skirmishes on your travels?”

There is blood still staining the washcloths that hang on the side of his washbasin. If no one’s come and emptied it out today, the water is still pink. The pale grey marks are fading into view, no matter how much he fights it.

“Yes,” he lies, again. 

“I cannot imagine what kind of battle maneuver would allow a scrape on your forehead of all places.”

“Well, fallin on yer face,” Link says without thinking. He bites his cheek right after, but it’s too late.

Her Majesty blinks at him for a moment, then actually bares the slightest glimmer of teeth in her smile. She lets out a small, twinkling giggle. “Yes, I believe that would do it.”

He offers her a smile he hopes doesn’t look too forced in return. She accepts it.

At this point, her knight can sense when she’s gotten into trouble.

He wakes up in the blue hours before dawn, a bit unsettled, and squints out of his tent toward camp in the grey half-light. He can tell without crossing the ten paces between their tents that her tent is cold and empty, and has been for a while. He groans and scrubs his hands over his face.

If he got paid, he’d think he didn’t get paid enough for this.

The early morning chill of Necluda bites at him. His breath clouds in front of him as he pins his cloak shut and fastens his scabbard to his back. That weight hanging off his shoulders was a comfort, once upon a time. 

Deer are traipsing through the high grass as he surveys Blatchery Plain. They eye him warily and scatter as he approaches the riverside. A head of gold-blonde hair catches the weak sun. Her arms are plunged into the river, sifting through the riverbed, a pile of glistening stones at her hip. Her fingers are flushed with chill as she lifts them from the water to study her new handful of rocks.

She lets out a soft gasp of delight and holds a brown stone up to the light. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for, and he’s not going to pretend to. His feet announce his presence as he drops off the ledge onto the pebbly beach she kneels on.

She freezes. Her posture stiffens as her guard goes back up.

“I don’t know why you feel the need to babysit me at every waking moment. I’m twenty feet from camp,” the Princess says. There’s the edge in her voice again. She’s testy today.

All it takes is twenty feet, he doesn’t say. There are bears in Necluda, as I’m sure you know, he doesn’t say. It’s my job. You get hurt, it’s my head, he doesn’t say.

“Well?” she challenges him, standing. Stones drop from her hands and clatter onto the beach.

Link doesn’t rise to the challenge. He inclines his head back toward camp. She groans and stomps off to fume, leaving him by the river. 

The sun has risen now. Link glances at the rock pile, where every stone has a tiny fossil set into it. He pockets one for later.

Link sits with his feet trailing in Firly Pond, the light of dawn at his back. The water is freezing, but this morning’s romp through the forest yielded one boar and very muddy feet.

“You’re up early,” a voice calls softly from the outcropping above him. Link cranes his head back and meets Zelda’s eyes, crinkled with a small smile. Her hair is still in the loose braid she wears to sleep, and her thin nightgown probably does nothing to chase out the foggy chill.

“I got us breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” he calls up at her. His voice crackles in his throat, still. He suspects whatever damage had been done to it was going to stick around.

“Oh?” Zelda says, tilting her head. “Don’t tell me — boar.”

Link snickers as Zelda sighs dramatically — and is interrupted by her sharp gasp. His head jerks up on instinct, but he sees not fear on her face but unfettered delight. She points behind him.

It’s a stag. The cage of bone on its head looms out of the foggy shadows of the forest, and its huge body follows after, muscles shifting under its coat. The frost in the grass crunches as it strides up next to him, close enough his nose could brush if he turned his head to the side. Heat radiates off it. Its sides rise and fall with every breath.

“Link," Zelda whispers, grinning, so clearly struggling to bite back a squeal. He laughs at her softly. He’s been close to a deer before. Ridden one, even. But never before has one approached him, and not this closely.

It passes him and dips its head to drink from the pond, right next to his still-muddy feet.

Zelda nods at him frantically, gesticulating as wildly and quietly as she can. Link shakes his head — he’s not petting it, Zelda, what if he scares it — and freezes as the stag stops drinking and turns back to him. It affixes him with one big, black eye, and huffs in his face. Its head raises, antler crown rising into the shafts of rosy light streaming through the trees. It saunters off into the mist.

Zelda finally lets out her squeal, wiggling on her perch atop the rock outcropping above him. Then came the demands for an explanation of the stag’s behavior, of which he had none. Zelda’s scientific curiosity wins out over hunger for breakfast and she walks off to find a piece of paper and a book on wildlife. Link bends over to continue washing his feet.

Zelda calls him to the castle early one morning.

“It’s urgent,” the royal messenger had said, shoving a scrap of parchment in his hands. Its surface had been marred by her chickenscratch handwriting, somehow messier than usual. He knows something’s wrong when there is no mention of a dress code, no ‘ cordially,’ and no greeting.

It’s early enough that the streets of Castletown are deserted. Even the castle hallways, usually bustling, are quiet. He spots a few guards and a handful of scullery maids doing laundry, but other than them, he is alone.

He’s not sure what he expects when he reaches the Queen’s office, but it’s not Zelda with her hair loose and trailing, wearing nothing but a high-necked dressing gown and silk slippers, alone. He forgot to comb his hair and he still feels overdressed. 

There are sturdy, elegant bookshelves lining the walls. A mahogany desk sits in the middle of the room, a straight-backed velveteen chair against it. The creaky wood floors are covered by a smattering of plush rugs, some Gerudo, some Ordonian, some Hylian. The windows are high and bright, and in one, Zelda curls up in the bay seat with her elbow on the windowsill and chin in hand.

She looks up at him from the window.

Her eyes are tired. Her hair is bedraggled. Her skin is sallow and dull. A frown pulls at her mouth. The sun coming from the window bleaches the edges of her white and harsh. She gestures for him to sit in the chair opposite her bay seat. 

He does so, and they sit in silence for a while. She turns back to look out the window.

When he can’t take the silence any longer, he ventures forward with, “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Link,” she replies softly. The leaves of the oak tree outside the window rustle in the breeze. They lapse into silence once again.

“Why did you call me here? Is something wrong?”

Link blinks in surprise as she gives a little laugh. She looks at him, imploring him with ice-chip eyes that are less piercing than usual. Her mouth opens and shuts as she fails to articulate what she has to say.

Her pin-straight posture slouches as she says, “They’re ‘requesting’ I marry.”

Link frowns. “As far as I recall, this isn’t a new request.”

Zelda’s next laugh is just a little hysterical. “You’re not understanding me.”

She stares into him, mouth thin, and Link’s chest hollows out. 

“But — but you’re a Queen. Shouldn’t you marry — I dunno —“

“I’ve refused every other noble suitor they’ve thrust in my path, and they’re getting desperate,” she says, forehead in her hands, looking much, much older than twenty-three. “They need an heir. Any heir.”

“I — I, um — what?”

“It’s not common, but there’s historical precedent,” she says, with the same detachment as though she were reading him military reports. “You don’t think I called you Sir Link to just be polite, do you? Honorary nobility comes with that sword.”

Her agitation proves to be too much and she stands, pacing the red Gerudo rug by the window.

“You’re the Queen of Hyrule, they can’t —”

“They can’t make me do anything,” she says, stopping dead in the middle of the rug. Link doesn’t miss the minute shake in her hands as she raises them to comb through her hair. They catch on a brunette tangle. “But I have noble cousins that are far more obedient than I.”

Link gulps, picking at his shirtsleeve, desperately searching the floor for answers. When he speaks, his voice is unsteady.

“I mean, I guess it would be better than marrying a stranger. I, um, I’d be willing to, if it meant you’d be—” 

“Link, I can’t.” 

“If you don’t have any other choice—”

“ Link,” she says, sharp, and he jerks up to meet her eyes. There’s something awful and bright in them. Something desperate and animal. Her hands are fully trembling now, her face white, and when she speaks again, her chin wrinkles. “Do you understand me? I can’t.”

It takes him a moment, and then he knows. He saw the way she looked at Midna.

He stands — still shorter than her, years on — and his arms hover in front of him, unsure. She steps away from him. Her fingers are snagged in her hair now. Her chest heaves with panicked breaths.

He doesn’t know what in Farore’s name possesses him, but all he says is, “Zelda,” and crushes her to him in a tight hug. She stiffens for a moment, then melts, and the dam breaks and she’s crying. They sink to the floor together.

The shoulder of his shirt is all wet, and he rocks with her in silence. They’ve never touched beyond hands before, and now he can feel every knob in her spine and the harsh jut of her shoulders. She’s gotten so thin. Her dressing gown swallows her.

He clears the lump in his throat and shares a secret.

All it takes is an arrow. White fletching, flint head, oak shaft. Shoddy workmanship, really, no self-respecting fletcher would let their nocks have splinters. But monsters don’t care about workmanship. What they do care about is if their arrows hit their marks.

This one does.

A whistle, a squelch, and an arrow is sticking out Champion’s gut. Bullseye.

“Oh,” he says, a moment too late, and tumbles to the ground like a stack of firewood.

Link pulls his blade out a moblin’s stomach with a wet squish. He sprints toward Champion, a crumpled pile of blues and golds at his archers’ post behind a crumbling wall. Link comes up on him fast, a couple new nicks in his arms and monster blood on his face, but he makes it there whole.

In the beginning — when it was just Link, Old Man, Captain, and the Traveler — Captain was the first to get hurt. The very first. Dagger in the outside of the thigh, not too deep but right under his hip. Link had been nervous, of course. That was his teammate. They hadn’t gotten close yet — it had been a mere week together before Captain found himself on the business end of a blade — but it was a new, sick kind of panic, seeing a stranger bleeding out on the ground.

This is different. Champion is new, if not newer, than Captain had been. He’s little, too. Captain is a soldier and a war hero. He had bitten down on his belt and ripped out the offending blade himself. He has known blood. Champion is young enough he still has pimples and that particular physical awkwardness of teenage boys. And gut injuries are bad.

…Link is freaking out. He can’t let a kid die.

Champion is blessedly unconscious. His round face has gone white and peaked. Blood drools out of the wound in his gut, blackening his tunic. A clatter of metal behind him. It’s Captain.

“How bad?” Captain asks, digging through his belt pouches.

“It’s in there,” Link says, already flipping his pocket knife open to cut off Champion’s tunic and undershirt. “Gut, left side, under ribs.”

“Shit,” Captain says. He raises a hand out over the battlefield and makes a sign. A few straggling monsters remain, keeping their teammates occupied. “Injured!”

“Acknowledged!” replies the formally trained half. “Gotcha!” replies the other half.

“Arrowhead?” Captain asks. He pulls out a matchbox, needle, thread, liquor, and bandages.

“Broadhead,” Link says. “I seen these though. They made em shittily and they got all these pocks and ridges.”

Sharp edges slice. Dull edges rip.

“We can’t pull it out then,” Captain says. Link scowls and rips through the last layer of clothing. His hands are cold with sweat. Champion’s body is so hot it burns.

“We cain’t very well leave it in,” Link says.

“If you want to pull it out and tear his organs to fucking shreds, have at it, cowboy,” Captain says.

“You wanna heal it inside em?” Link snaps.

“We need to wait for someone with a delicate healer’s touch,” Captain says. “Don’t kill him.” 

He stands in a whirl of blue silk, perfume, and blood-iron, and makes away to find Traveler. He spares Champion the barest glance before leaving.

And Link is alone with a bleeding, dying kid. It’s not that he’s not good with sick or injured children. He’s just not good with ones he don’t barely know. Champion is breathing, shallow but hard. His pulse thunders where Link holds his wrist. His forehead drips with sweat. A muscle jumps in Champion’s jaw as he grits his teeth.

Link brushes soft, golden hair off Champion’s sweaty forehead. Blood trickles down his waist and the mountains and valleys of his ribcage. His stomach and chest heave as he breathes. The arrow is steadfast, tall, swaying with every breath.

Link does all he knows how to do, and grabs Champion’s hand. Champion squeezes back, hard enough to bruise.

The sheets of Champion’s sickbed are dark with sweat. Bloodied bandages strike bright and ugly against the skin of his torso.

“He’s askin for his mama,” Link says. He rubs a thumb over the kid’s knuckles. 

“What?” his progenitor says, darting around the room, making himself busy. He’s a worrywart by nature; Link has learned this firsthand. He stands by their bedside, wringing his hands. “That is...he hast a mother?”

Link frowns and looks up at his progenitor. He looks down at Link with big, concerned eyes. Link shakes his head minutely. Something behind the other’s eyes goes all sad and soft.

“Oh,” he says. The premature line between his eyebrows deepens. Sky-Knight feels everything, entirely. “Do you hold it wouldst do him good to…?”

“Tried that. Kept callin me Ahling, somethin like it,” Link says. Champion gasps.

Fever-bright eyes snap open and stare at the two of them with alarming clarity. He takes in a shuddering breath.

“I don’t want to die,” he croaks. For one, sharp moment, he stares into Link’s eyes. 

Sky-Knight laughs a little. Nervously. “You might not but survive, I hast not known you yet. We shall be brothers, you and I.”

The clarity dissolves, and he’s unconscious again. Link watches Sky-Knight fret over Champion for a moment, tucking in sheets and checking bandages. Uli was like this when any of the children were ill. Nervous, fidgety, looking to busy herself. Sky-Knight jolts upright, clapping his hands together, smiling. His eyes are bright with nerves.

“I am off to the town store,” he says, cheerily. “I shall search for supplies! Or… perhaps aught you need.”

“I’m good, but ask them other boys,” Link says. Champion groans in his sleep, turning from the morning light.

“Aye, cowboy,” Sky-Knight says, patting Link’s shoulder. Link watches him go, steps bouncing but wringing his hands.

Link’s hand continues to stroke Champions’ fever-hot knuckles. He does not think to stop.

Champion wakes up three days later, dizzy with red potion and shaky, but alive. Link lets himself breathe for the first time in almost a week.

I am not letting that happen again, he decides, helping Champion put his boots on. It’s still hard for him to bend over, even after healing. Old Man watches on from the doorway, arms crossed. His face is impassive and his gaze is stony.

“Ready to head out?” he asks. Champion looks up. His messy plait shifts off his shoulder. It wasn’t Link’s best work. Kept the sickbed tangles out, though. Champion nods and shifts to stand. Link claps his hand to Champion’s knee to keep him from rising.

Champion narrows his eyes at Link, imperceptibly. Confusion more than irritation.

“You’re ridin on Epona,” Link says. He keeps his voice firm but quiet.

“I can walk. It was my stomach, not my knee,” Champion signs. 

“I wudn’t askin,” Link says with finality. He stands and offers a hand that Champion hums at, but eventually takes. Link doesn’t comment on how Champion lists into him hard. Link is supporting half his weight.

It’s chilly and damp outside. The town they’re in crawls up the sheer mountain face and into it. Though the sun is high, the mountains block the sun and keep the town’s main street in bluish shadow. Further down the mountainside, roofs glow in bright sunlight.

Those gathered outside perk up once they see Champion, Old Man, and Link exit the Mount Khio Inn. Sky-Knight’s, Traveler’s, Smithy’s, and Sailor’s faces light up immediately, relief palpable. They approach, chattering to Champion. Veteran and Captain hang back.

Sky-Knight reaches out to take his share of Champion’s weight from Link, asking how he feels. Champion flinches away. Sky-Knight does not stop smiling, but he does pull away. He gives Sky-Knight an apologetic twitch of the mouth.

Link squeezes Champion’s hand. Champion squeezes back and lets go. Epona snuffles at Champion’s hair as he approaches her and pets her neck.

Old Man huffs behind him. Link turns and raises a brow. Old Man stretches his arms.

“You have younger siblings,” Old Man says. Not a question, but a statement of fact. Link doesn’t know what gave it away this time — before, Old Man had guessed within minutes of meeting him that Link was raised on a farm, ‘Boots and farmer’s tan notwithstanding,’ he had said. Old Man was so deadpan that it was hard to tell when he was joking, but Link was reasonably confident now that he could tell when Old Man dared to joke. And that first interaction had been a joke.

“Yeah,” Link says. He turns the hoop in his ear; it’s an old fidget. “Why?”

Old Man shrugs. His armor clanks.

“You hover. You got kids?”

Old Man pauses. Link looks back at him. He can’t read his expression, not yet.

“No, I don’t,” Old Man says, finally. 

“Just as well,” Captain pipes up. Link hadn’t heard him approach. He holds his bag open for Traveler to push in last-minute first aid supplies. The bottles clink against each other. “Snotty, needy little buggers, they are.”

Captain is joking. Link laughs through his nose, Traveler rolls his eyes, and Old Man says nothing.

Link watches Champion watching Captain root through his pack for nine portions of hardtack.

Champion starts out mildly interested, then concerned, then disgusted once Captain’s hand emerges with nine blocks of tooth-breaking soldiers’ rations. Champion stands. Captain looks up, and from his seat on a log, offers a piece of hardtack to Champion. Champion groans and shakes his head.

“You people live on hardtack?” Champion asks, casting a glance around at the others, setting up bedrolls around a firepit. He’s raised his voice to address the group at large. It’s hard to keep up, Link can tell, voice shaking and tearing at his still-middling volume.

Link shrugs and answers with, “Sometimes. It keeps.”

“Yeah, it keeps you shitting yourself,” Champion laughs slightly. His accent jumps up and down like a dancer. He shakes his head. “I have eaten monster parts when desperate, but I am also not nine people.”

Link and the others blink at him. Champion does not talk, not this much, and not this lightly. 

“What, you some kinda chef, then?” Veteran says, lounging with his boots off on top of his bedroll. He basks in the warmth of the fire like a housecat.

“Did you hear me say I cooked and ate monster parts? No, I am not. I will be if it means I never have to eat hardtack again,” Champion says. He lifts his tunic to unhook the glowing slate at his hip and begins tapping at it. He hums, eyes flickering over the screen.

Captain nibbles at a corner of hardtack, and, mouth full, asks: “Are you a soldier?”

Champion pauses. Link notices the hitch in his shoulders. He doesn’t know if the others do.

“I was, once,” Champion says. “But the taste of hardtack stays in your mouth about as long as it stays shelf-stable.”

Captain laughs openly at that, nodding in concession. “That it does. Show us what you can do, gourmand.”

Champion grins, showing teeth even. Even with those off-putting eyes and pallid skin, his first real, toothy smile does wonders to warm his entire face. His round apple-cheeks pull up and flush. His eyes catch the firelight and glimmer.

“Just watch me,” Champion says. He taps his slate and blue magic burns Link’s eyes.

Champion roasts hunks of meat and mushroom on wooden skewers over the roaring fire. The meat is tender and fatty, dripping with juice when Link bites in. The mushrooms are soft inside, crisp on the outside. It’s salty and peppery, a luxury Link has not indulged in for a while.

Once everyone has eaten their fill, mouths greasy from the meat, stomachs warm, Champion makes one for himself and sits with his back to the fire to finally eat. The others are dropping off into food comas. Sky-Knight is already snoring. Link has caught Old Man’s head jerking back to attention after nodding off more than twice.

“It’ll be good havin a cook around,” Link says. He picks at his left fang with the end of his third skewer.

“Who says I will be cooking for you?” Champion signs with one hand.

Link shrugs. “You’re good at it. You enjoy it. And there’s a need for it. We won’t twist your arm or nothing, promise.”

 Champion hums. He regards Link while tearing off a hunk of meat. Link sees the gears turning while he chews, slowly, hunched over his knees. Link gnaws on his skewer. 

Champion swallows and nods. “Alright. I’ll cook. I’m not the last one to eat like this time, though.”

Link holds his hands up and smiles at him. “You got it, bubba.”

Champion looks at him for a long moment, a hunk of mushroom halfway to his mouth. The fire is dying and darkness has set in, but his eyes’ glow has gotten no darker — if anything, it pierces even brighter out of the dusk murk and runs Link through.

Champion grunts and sinks his teeth into a mushroom.

Link clambers out of the cold river, paws padding against fallen leaves and forest detritus. He braces himself on the bank and shakes himself dry. The leaves under him shine wetly in the early evening light. He needed the dip — his fur had gotten to smelling more like death than dog. Free of the blood and dirt caked in his mats, he’s a new man. New dog.

Fifteen feet away, a branch snaps. Link’s canine hearing makes it a cannon shot in the quiet of the forest. His head jerks up. Across the river, he stares down a readied arrow. He yelps and hits the ground.

After a long silence, he dares to look up. The archer across the river has let their bow fall. Their heartbeat is racing.

Champion stares right at him, eyes wide and wet, glowing in the shadow. His hands are shaking. He threads his bow over his shoulder and sheaths his arrow. He steps out of the brush to the bank. 

“Hund-ĕr,” Champion breathes. He sniffles, teary grin breaking across his face like dawn, feet plunging into the river water. “Hund-ĕr, Hund-ĕr—”

He breaks into a run and collapses onto the opposite bank, bowling Link over in a bear hug, careless about the wet fur pressing into his face and clothes. He rocks back and forth, stroking Link’s head and face. He cries into Link’s fur. Link smells the salt.

Champion pulls back, face red and tear-streaked, but smiling wide. He pets his muzzle with gentle hands.

“You’re not grey,” Champion says. There’s a note of confusion there. That makes two of them — Link is baffled, to say the least. He has half a mind to turn back human to ask exactly why Champion seems to know his wolf form like an old friend but treats him like a stranger.

Link huffs and noses at Champion’s cheek. Champion giggles and wipes away the wetness, confusing Link further.

“How I missed you,” Champion says. He scratches a particular place behind Link’s ear and Link’s entire body relaxes like he’s plunged into a hot bath. This discovery has Link wriggling out of the cage of Champion’s arms to escape. “Ai, mutt, let me pet you!”

Mutt! Link lets his displeasure be known, yapping while Champion laughs. 

“Come, Hund-ĕr, I have pork bones at camp for you. I saved them, just in case,” Champion says. He stands, beckoning Link to follow. Link doesn’t have much of a choice — he can’t run off and come out the woods human again, Champion isn’t a dullard. He’s stuck like this until he can get away.

For the next several hours, Champion is glued to Link’s side, hand buried in fur. Link has never seen him this relaxed, and the poorly disguised looks of surprise from the others concur.

Champion introduces him as “Wolfie, my travel companion from my journey,” and they accept him readily. He tolerates the petting that follows. A few wonder aloud where their cowboy has gone, but those worries are short-lived.

Their camp, sheltered under the ruins of a shattered Colossus, winds down for bed once the moon is high in the sky. Old Man volunteers to patrol the surrounding area looking for Link. Captain takes the first watch. Link had planned to slip away once Champion went to sleep. That proves difficult. Champion winds himself around Link, burying his face in the fur of his chest, and promptly falls dead asleep.

Link will laugh about this later, he knows, but right now, he wants to scream. He hasn’t been a wolf for this long since…well, since. The transformation after a long period of being lupine is painful, and Link wants to get it over with. He rumbles in annoyance. Champion shifts at the noise.

“He’s got you trapped, huh, doggie?” Veteran teases, patting Link’s ribcage none too gently. Link glares at him, as much as a dog can glare. “You’d be scary if you weren’t a big ol’ teddy bear.”

Link growls. Veteran laughs and crawls into his bedroll.

A long, painful hour passes. Link fights sleep valiantly. Old Man comes back empty-handed. He and Captain are starting to worry a little. Link can smell it.

“You take a rest, old man,” Captain says, rising from his seat. “I’ll go look. He can’t have gone far.”

Old Man gives him a hard look at the jab, but sits down with a long groan anyway. Captain takes off into the forest, hands hooked in his belt, humming a tune. Old Man sighs, leaning on his sword. He casts a glance over the sleeping campers, counting. He meets Link’s eyes and smiles a little.

Champion gasps like rusted saw blades. His arms tighten, vices, around Link’s middle. His eyes shoot open, unseeing and wet. His breathing is fast and hard.

Link whines and huffs, nosing at Champion’s jaw. Champion’s breathing eases immediately. He looks down at Link, sniffles, and buries his face again. He says something that is lost in Link’s mountain of fur. He emerges and strokes Link’s withers.

“I don’t know what the dream was this time, Hund-ĕr,” Champion whispers. “It hasn’t gotten any better since you left.”

It’s not Link’s place to listen to this. This is meant for whatever dog he’s been confused with. He shifts uncomfortably, whining, but he doesn’t have the heart to separate himself right now.

Champion slowly, painfully, falls back asleep, hands on Link’s fur. Once Link is sure Champion is unconscious, he shifts to stand. Champion’s hands slide off his body and fall to his bedroll. Old Man startles a bit at Link’s sudden movement.

Link turns to look at him. His mouth is thin and tense as he watches Link. At this angle, with the dying firelight, Link’s eyes would be rendered into bright, flat discs in a hulking, black mass of beast. He doesn’t blame the fear, but it stings all the same. He stalks off into the forest. Paws tread silently on the forest floor.

“Travel safe in your forest, faor,” Old Man mutters as Link leaves. Link trots into the trees.

Once Link can’t see the embers anymore, he lets go of his fur form. It rips off his skin and peels away, bones cracking and settling, skin unfurling, dark magic fizzling off him like water on a hot pan. He stands on two feet and stretches out the kinks in his back. His limbs are sore and his head is killing him, but he’s standing upright, and that’s all that matters.

Tree limbs rustle and branches snap underfoot as someone approaches. A waft of camelia perfume arrives before its owner does — Captain, hefting a lantern to illuminate Link’s face, letting out a beleaguered sigh.

“We’ve been looking for you, rancher,” Captain says, frowning. “Let’s go.”

Captain leads the way through the forest, now dark and labyrinthian without lupine eyesight. His scarf whispers through the brush. Red lantern light makes his hair glimmer like fire.

“Where have you been?” Captain asks, lifting a branch for Link to duck under.

“I went to bathe at the crick,” Link says, which isn’t a lie. “Saw a deer, got distracted, got lost.” Which is a lie.

Captain laughs at him, shooting him an incredulous, dimpled grin over his shoulder. “Hunting isn’t your forte, then.”

“Naw, I’m an old hat,” Link says. “Maybe I just wanted a break from you, Cap’n.”

Captain throws his head back and laughs at that. He jabs Link’s side with his elbow, sending the shadows waving and writhing as the lantern sways. “Well, I definitely didn’t miss you.”

“It’s mutual.”

Link sees the campfire through the dark slats of the trees when Captain turns around to address him again.

Captain lifts the lantern, brows pinched, regarding Link with a look that isn’t scolding, yet. “Can you let someone know when you’re going to wander off for a few hours? If you get hurt, we’d rather find you sooner than later.”

Because of monsters. Or animal attacks. Not anything else, because Captain doesn’t know.

Link studies Captain for a moment. Captain chews the inside of his cheek, brows pinching further. Link says, “Sure thing.”

Captain nods and turns back around, pushing away shrubs and branches to clear Link’s path. At a tall ridge that serves as the camp boundary, he offers a hand to help Link climb up, and Link takes it.

Old Man glances up from polishing his sword when they enter the clearing under the destroyed Colossus. He scans Captain for injuries, then looks to Link and stiffens, so subtly Link may have missed it had he not been looking directly at their camp’s stalwart sentry.

He stares at Link like he’s looking into him, almost, so fiercely Link tenses under his gaze. Then the intensity dissipates. Old Man raises a hand off his sword’s hilt in brief greeting and turns back to his chore.

“Good night, cowboy,” Captain says. 

“Night, Cap’n,” Link replies.

The sun rises wan and cold the next morning. Link is already awake when white sun brushes through the trees. Champion stirs, and Link pauses while strapping on his boots. 

Champion stiffens when he realizes that Link isn’t trapped in his arms. He sits up like it pains him. He stares, eyes shadowed and exhausted, at where Link had rested the night before.

“Good morning, cook,” Traveler greets quietly. “I’m sure he’ll find his way back again.”

Champion gives Traveler a tired but grateful smile. Once Traveler turns away, it slides off his face like hot grease. Guilt rises so fast and hard it’s painful.

Link sighs and drags his hand down his face. He’s going to have to put up with keeping two identities. He just wishes his other form was a little less fuzzy and cuddly. He’ll deal with it, though, if he never makes Champion look like a kicked puppy again.

“Rest well?” Sky-Knight asks, smiling sleepily, tossing his chainmail over a wild head of bed hair.

“Not hardly,” Captain butts in. “Can’t you see his glowing complexion?”

Link glares sidelong at Captain, rubbing sleep out of his eye with his middle finger. Captain’s shoulders shake, suppressing laughter.

“Wouldst you prefer to bestride Epona today, as to rest?” Sky-Knight asks. He tilts his head at Link, watching him blink away the exhaustion. Link used to be able to rise with the twilight no problem, but court life has made him complacent and lazy.

Link shakes his head. “Kid needs it more’n I do.”

Captain stands, cinching his belt tight around his waist, tying it to dangle. “That was a month and five red potions ago. I reckon he’s alright on foot.”

“Might you ask, rather than quarrel excluding?” Sky-Knight scolds, lifting his arms to let his overtunic fall over his chainmail. The soft blue embroidery catches the light and shines. “He’s but a short distance yonder.”

Link hums but doesn’t go to ask. If he had his way, Champion would be horse-bound for another two weeks. He decides if Champion wants to walk instead of ride, he won’t force him. He allows himself to disapprove, though.

Old Man passes by, searching the ground for misplaced trinkets and supplies, and says, “You’re backward.”

Link looks down and he’s put his overtunic on backwards, collar straight across his neck. He flushes at Sky-Knight and Captain’s laughter and fixes it in a huff.

Epona nuzzles at his face when he approaches the tree he leashed her at the evening before. She lips at his cheek and he laughs, pushing her face away so he can fit her bridle over her muzzle. She accepts the bit and it clacks on her teeth. He guides her by the reins to the main camp. Her presence is hot at his back in the morning chill, heartbeat slow and heavy, hoofbeats a steady rhythm on the forest floor. 

She tosses her head when she sees the others. She nickers at Traveler — always the one to spoil her with treats — nosing at his empty hands.

“I haven’t any apples, ‘Pona,” Traveler giggles, running his hands down the powerful corded muscle in her neck. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Epona whinnies, bumping against his chest with her head, insistent. She snuffles at his belt bags.

“I would never lie to you! Check me, your Highness, I’m fresh out!”

Champion is watching Link and Epona. Link sees him out the corner of his eye. Link glances at him and makes unwelcome eye contact. Link just as quickly looks away.

The rest of the early morning goes this way — Link glancing at Champion, looking away, glancing again, adjusting Epona’s stirrups to be shorter. He gets antsier as the sun rises, glances growing in frequency. Champion finally takes mercy on him and approaches, an apple materializing in his hand in blue sparks, offering it to Epona. She chomps it greedily. 

Link opens his mouth to speak, but Champion beats him to it.

“Would it bring you peace of mind to make me ride instead of walk?” he signs. He avoids eye contact, choosing instead to finger comb Epona’s mane. She nips at his ear for more apples. Champion ducks to her other side.

“Don’t be ugly,” Link scolds, swatting her shoulder. She huffs in his ear. Link shifts uncomfortably, running his hand down Epona’s neck. “I won’t force you if you’re ready and able to foot it.”

Champion is quiet for a moment, thinking. His face is blocked by Epona, but Link can hear his fingers ripping through her tangles.

“I’m alright,” Champion rasps. He ducks under her neck and peers up at Link, who jumps at his sudden appearance. Champion’s face splits in a teasing grin. “Now, stop hand-wringing over me, and start making sure you put your clothes on the right way.”

Link squawks and Champion takes off, bouncing on his feet, humming something under his breath. Link breathes a laugh, shaking his head. 

“If he won’t ride, I will!” crows Sailor, who is immediately shouted down by all four adults, by now painfully familiar with what speed and Sailor combined will produce.

Link’s hands shake as he unties Colin from the spear his arms are bound to. His skin is covered in tiny scratches and his head lolls like a doll’s when Link cradles him in his arms, but he is blessedly alive. Blood seeps through holes in the knees of Link’s pants, dirt crusting onto his legs.

Blond hair sticks to the sweat on Colin’s face. His eyes slide half-open, bleary, and he asks, “Is everyone okay?”

Link laughs hoarsely and tucks a lock of hair behind Colin’s ear. At his nod, Colin relaxes. The children shout and crowd around, grabbing at Colin, making sure he still has all ten fingers and four limbs. Even Beth, ever the independent, brash girl who insists she never cries, sniffles a little. 

Colin says that he wants to be brave like Link is. Link smiles at him. He does not tell him that he never felt less brave than when Colin was in danger.

Renado takes Colin from him. Colin is limp, legs swinging as Renado walks. He could be sleeping. He looks so much smaller in Renado’s arms than Link’s.

Link watches numbly as Renado walks away. He sways a little as he stands.

Link tolerates the brush ripping through his mats just about as long as he can. Which, in his opinion, amounts to a saintlike patience. Every time he rumbles in disapproval at a particularly stubborn knot, Champion whacks him on the side with the back of the brush and scolds him for being grumpy. It doesn’t hurt — Champion is not trying to hurt him, and Link has too much fur padding for it to bite — but he does feel like he’s subject to Beth’s braiding experiments yet again.

“I do not know how you managed this,” Champion croaks. He growls as his brush catches again and he starts hacking at the tangle. “It is like you have never been brushed.”

Because he hasn’t. Not really. The only person who wasn’t scared of him-as-dog wasn’t around anymore, and he couldn’t very well ask the Queen of Hyrule to become a groomer. He didn’t feel like getting chased out of Ordon Village. So, over seven years, mats on top of mats knotted and twisted together until the mane around his withers and chest was one solid mass. He wasn’t planning to enter any dog shows, so what did it matter?

The birdsong fills the silence between strokes of Champion’s brush. Once Champion frees a lock of fur, he moves onto the next, and the ripping starts again. Link rumbles, louder this time, and Champion kisses his teeth at him.

“Stop acting put-upon,” Champion says. “Your tail is wagging.”

Link pauses and slowly closes his mouth. Champion laughs at him, fully, openly, arms coming around to squeeze him. Champion doesn’t let go. He sighs and relaxes into Link. His heartbeat pounds slow and steady against Link’s spine.

“I know you probably do not understand all that I say to you, though it seems like you do. I just wish you could tell me why you left at the end,” Champion murmurs. “Right when I needed you most.

“I know you are not just a normal wolf. I can see that now. Maybe whoever summoned you in the first place called you back. Maybe I had to go forward on my own to fulfill my duty — I do not know. I have never figured it out and no one ever told me,” Champion runs a hand down the back of Link’s head. “I wish you would stop leaving me behind. You were my one companion for as long as this life has lasted me, and you have returned to me. No one can ask for a kinder miracle.”

This is a speech meant for someone who understands its contents. Link is not the dog that Champion so clearly cares for, and it is disingenuous, invasive, and unkind to pretend to be. Even if his presence soothes. He whines and cranes his head back to look at Champion. Champion studies the hairbrush in his hand. Link turns and lays his head in Champion’s lap. Champion smiles, tiredly. He rubs one of Link’s velvet-soft ears.

“Perhaps you have been given life anew as well, Hund-ĕr,” Champion says. He contemplates this for a moment.

“Cook?” A voice calls from across the meadow.

Champion perks up, scanning the wildflower color-riot for the voice’s origin. Traveler jumps up and waves his arms wildly in the air. There is dirt smeared on his cheek and a rip on his sleeve. Link groans aloud. He’d better shed his fur sooner rather than later to make sure Traveler and Champion aren’t getting up to some dangerous mischief.

“Come here, I’ve something neat to show you! Quickly!”

Champion waves back, then turns back to Link. He sighs wistfully and strokes the side of Link’s face. “You will be gone when I return, won’t you?”

Link tilts his head at him in response.

Champion’s smile begins and aborts just as quickly. He nods, kisses Link’s head, and stands to humor his friend. He wades through the waist-high wildflowers.

Link shakes himself and takes off in the opposite direction to find a private place to turn back. He doesn’t want everyone to know his party trick. While they seemed more than accepting of a wolf when another Hero vouched for him, knowing that Link was keeping secrets — and a secret as big as hidden dark magic — may be more than enough to repeat Ordon.

Link ducks into a massive, hollowed stump, and after checking for observers, lets his fur fall away, sloughing and rotting off his body until all that remains is skin. His paws break and crack as hands reform, spine stretching, tail decaying, dark magic fizzing off his shoulders, and he is human again. He groans and stands on his own two feet. He stretches and relishes in the popping bones and joints. 

“I know what you are.”

Link’s heart jumps into his throat. He spins and there’s Old Man, leaning against a tree on the other side of the copse of birch trees. Old Man isn’t afraid or angry. His face is carefully neutral. Link had canine hearing up until thirty seconds ago and Old Man is in full plate — it’s impossible that Link hadn’t heard him coming.

Link freezes for a moment, mind flicking through possible cover-ups, and in his panic, settles on the objectively worst one.

“Do you got an issue with that? Cause if so we’re gon have problems—”

“My goddesses, boy, I don’t care if you’re gay,” Old Man groans, dragging his hand down his face. He pinches his nose. “I’m talking about our newest, fluffy addition.”

Link gulps. And does not say anything. A true return to form.

“We all have secrets,” Old Man says. Link does not know that there is an ocarina, a tree, a god, and a devil in the bag that rests against Old Man’s hip. Old Man does not know that he is wearing his burial shroud. “You can keep yours. Lying is where my problem is.”

“I cain’t have lied to him,” Link says. “He thinks I’m someone I ain’t.”

Old Man gives him a hard look. “We’re all nine attuned to magic with the luck of our draw. Whatever or whoever he’s mistaken you for, he’s right somehow, but not entirely. You need to tell him who you are. If not for the truth, for kindness.”

“I planned on it, anyways,” Link says. He passes through the bones-in-earth trees, coming up next to Old Man.

Old Man grunts. “Good. Keep on.”

“And you, old timer,” Link says. The Shade does not appear to him in the features of this living man, but the sternness, the disguised kindness, the hard lessons — that is something death cannot change. Link looks up across the meadow, and sees a few people upside-down that shouldn’t be upside-down. “You know what they say. Turn your back a second, and…”

He gestures vaguely. Old Man turns and sags like wet paper. Link laughs like he hasn’t laughed in a long while, and he takes off with The Shade to rescue both trappers and trappees from Champion and Traveler’s makeshift rabbit traps.

Veteran is most displeased with his situation, for reasons unknown.

The magic roils thick in the air here.

He lifts a torch above his head, red sparks flying and dancing in the unseasonably chilly wind, frost crawling up his boots. Ĕha’s breath puffs hot against his ear, cloudy in the air. He tugs on Ĕha’s reins and hooves thud behind him against the hard ground. Skeletal trees reach spindly limbs into the fog while forest children giggle and titter in the branches, hiding just out of sight at the corner of his eye, in the hollows, in the shadows.

His destrier whinnies and tosses his head, stamping testily as the magic grows, cold and strangling, dizzy and disorienting. The Undead knows the stories of tragic heroes wandering into the Misty Woods to find peace. It’s tugging at his mind, just in the back — come close, come here, step off the path, let us love you. The maze of bone-trees is the same in all directions. It is easy to be lost.

The magic lightens and the light goldens so quickly The Undead stumbles on flagstones and tree roots. Before him, a wooden behemoth, branches blocking out the sun and stars and the omniscient eyes that watch him. The Undead approaches the center dais of the blessed forest. His heartbeat and breathing fills the silence where birdsong and wood-child giggles would be. The foliage whispers. His skull buzzes. There is a sword sticking out of the ground.

He knows her.

Ĕha squeals and prances back from the center, jerking reins out of The Undead’s fist, stinging.

The buzzing is louder. 

His hands wrap around the hilt. He pulls. Screech. Metal on stone.

She’s burning him. She is burning hands that have wielded her since light was created alongside darkness, evil alongside good, she is killing him. His innards scorch and churn. His skin boils. He grits his teeth and his molars crack. The skin on his arms peels. Someone is screaming.

The buzzing stops.

The sword is out. Her blade is corroded from millennia. There’s old blood on the hilt. His skin is unmarked and his teeth are whole. And he remembers.

Ah, look at these trees, how he’s missed the forest. The forest is dangerous. He never wants to set foot in the forest again. The forest? What’s this about a forest? I found you in a forest, you were so little. You’re in a forest again. It always comes back to a forest. What is it with you and your sword and the forest? Stop talking about forests. It hurts.

There, around the base — there used to be a cord made of dried pumpkin leaves tied there, double-knotted. The green rope is grass, plucked from a meadow when grass was new, wrapped around the hilt to make it pretty. Where did the buttercups go, he wonders. He picked buttercups that were growing in the goat paddock and tucked it in the inside of the scabbard. And the blood on the hilt, the blood, goddess — he would never let her stay dirty, not as his one sign of legitimacy at the helm of his army. This isn’t his sword, where did his sword go? What the fuck is he doing holding this fucking sword again, he swore never to touch it, he swore never to touch it, not since he saw what he did to the future —

He knows them. In the parts of his spirit that ring with laughter and ancient joy, whooping in freefall, sighing at dusk, dancing in the rain — he knows them. He would know them by the way they breathe, the surety of their footsteps— it is his. They are him and he is them and he loves them. He loves so fiercely. He sees them now; just how he saw them in his mind’s eye when the barest impression of a voice asked him to please, just this once, tilt your head back and soak in the moonlight that shined on your face when Lanayru was a desert and Ordon was your home.

He knows them. They are imprinted on his soul like fossils in river pebbles and their bruises are his bruises, no matter how distant. He knows their pains and sorrows in every long-forgotten memory — strangers he has loved and lost, unfamiliar childhood homes left behind, deaths that are not his. Lightning crackles in his veins and time magic stinks like ozone. Lanayru is flooded and Ordon is a ruin and Skyloft is struck from the heavens. They are just as alive as The Undead, breathing and screaming and weeping and forever. He would know them by the blood on her hilt.

Who are you? Who were you?

The blood on the hilt is in the shape of fingerprints.

She is not awake but he knows she is grieving.

That’s the Hero of the Wild’s blood on the hilt. That, he knows.

The sword clangs like temple bells on the stone dais when he flings it away from him. Link curls up in a ball against one of the stone statues and weeps, ripping at his hair. The wooden behemoth waits to speak.

“So yours…talks to you?” Link says through a mouthful of rice. Champion sits next to him, casting a glance askance where Sky-Knight has the Master Sword laid across his knees. Eight heroes hang on every word.

“Aye, clearly as temple bells,” Sky-Knight says. He runs his hand down the flat of the blade. It’s flawless, supernatural metal, so purely silver it almost shines blue. The colors of the hilt are bright. The gold is untarnished.

“What’s she say?” Smithy asks. Veteran, next to him, tries to act uninterested. He’s been stirring his risotto for three minutes and not taken a single bite.

The rain outside the barn hisses. It rushes on the tin roof. It’s already lulled Sailor into an impromptu afternoon nap. It smells like storms.

“She oft speaks of you. All of you,” Sky-Knight says. Everyone stiffens. Sky-Knight looks up, confused, then gives a warm laugh. “Naught but good things. And not oft words…more so a… tapestry. Wherefore doth that worry you, pray tell?”

“I want to tell my stories in my own time,” Veteran says, softly.

“Me too,” Traveler concurs.

Sky-Knight hums. “I understand. Though, ‘tis impossible, putting her stories to the right heroes. No matter. Would that I — ah!”

Sky-Knight’s face lights up, and he grasps the hilt and end of the sword. With a soft, musical hum, the blade comes to life, glowing with a blue lambent gleam. It lights him up holy. The sudden magic and pressure in the room makes Link’s ears pop. Champion, Traveler, and Veteran, the three most magically-sensitive Heroes, shudder at an undetectable sensation. Old Man frowns. The glow dies, and with it, Sky-Knight hums thoughtfully.

Captain’s mouth opens and shuts, eyes darting back and forth between Sky-Knight’s face and the quiet sword in his lap.

“Listen, what it tells you, should you really—”

“Is mine own judgment unsound?” Sky-Knight asks, raising an eyebrow, daring Captain to doubt him — not unkindly, but firmly. Captain sighs and concedes, leaning back in his seat. Sailor, until now undisturbed with his head laid in Captain’s lap, groans in protest at this movement.

“Ai, doth all know your title?”

A few confused glances, of which Old Man does not partake in.

“I am the Chosen Hero, eke the Hero of the Sky,” Sky says. Thunder rolls outside. Quiet, powerful. “Will you to know? She knows.”

“I never learned mine,” Smithy says. “I was called the Hero of Man or the Hero of Light, but I don’t know if that was specific to me.”

“Naw, it ain’t,” Link says. “It’s what we’re all called, especially in the histories. That or The Hero.”

“You art the Hero of the Four Sword,” Sky says. Four considers, and nods. “Veteran, the Hero of Legend—” — Legend throws his head back and laughs at this, if a bit bitterly — “—Traveler, the Hero of Hyrule—” — Hyrule hums — “—and Sailor, the Hero of Winds.”

A sleepy thumbs-up from Captain’s lap. Sky turns and looks at Captain.

“No,” Captain says. He half-smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Old Man, next to him, shakes his head at Sky. Link watches him carefully out of the corner of his eye.

“I know mine, so don’t trouble yourself,” Old Man interrupts. “The Hero of Time.”

Legend squints at the hay-covered floor. Wind lifts up on both elbows to turn and stare at Time, but Time is too engrossed in his risotto to notice. Link wants to puke, a little.

“You’re the Hero of Time!” Wind says. His whole little body shakes with excitement. “My grandma told me stories about you when I was little! You’re so cool!”

Time glances up and laughs. “Is that so?”

“Yes! I can’t believe — this whole time — Grandma’s gonna to be amazed —”

“Do I have one?” Champion asks Sky quietly while Wind rambles on breathlessly in the background. Champion’s fingers are white-knuckled around his spoon.

Sky smiles, sunshine on a rainy day, and answers, “The Hero of the Wild. I find yours the fairest of all.”

Wild frowns and shakes his head. “But…that’s not right.”

“Are you being modest?” Hyrule teases, leaning into their conversation. “You’re a right druid, you are. You’re all wilderness magic. Coming from me!”

Sky and Link nod. Wild walks on the forest floor silently, loping like a stag. He hunts efficiently and viciously. Wild animals treat him like their own. Tree branches bend to make a path when he passes. He smells like wildflowers and earth. Wild shakes his head harder, gold-feather hair flying around.

“No, no, I know of that,” Wild protests. “I am not really a hero.”

Sky pauses. Link sees him rifling through all the appropriate, affirming responses, fingers picking at the seams in his britches.

“You are, though,” Link states. “Why else would you be here if you weren’t no hero?”

Sky and Hyrule hum in agreement. Link nudges Wild’s side with his elbow. He doesn’t react to the jab, considering the barn floor so intensely he might burn holes in it. Wind crows with delight after Time says something interesting that Link doesn’t catch.

“I suppose you are right,” Wild says. He exhales through his nose and clinks his spoon on the side of the bowl. “Mysterious ways, ai?”

Sky grunts, hefting the Master Sword in the air. Hyrule shrugs. Link watches Wild settle back, leaning against the barn wall. He looks lighter, brighter, younger. Link takes a heaping bite of his lunch and chews thoughtfully.

Link catches Sky later in the afternoon, alone in the hayloft. He lays a hand on Sky’s shoulder and Sky turns, curious.

“What was mine?” Link asks, ears burning a little. 

Sky chuckles good-naturedly and wraps his hand around the Master Sword’s hilt where she rests in the hay. She rings and glows.

“The Hero of Twilight,” Sky says. He turns, eyes bright with excitement. There’s a lump in Link’s throat. “You hast bested the Hero of the Wild. Perhaps I am biased toward my sky.” 

Link gapes at him. Uselessly. Sky’s face falls. 

“Is this unwelcome?” 

Link looks at him — he who wears his heart on his sleeve, ever-gentle, ever-kind, eyes like bruised apples. He sighs.

“Naw,” Link says. He scrubs his hand through his hair. “My travelin companion…that’s where she was from. The People a’the Twilight. Thought my title would be more, y’know, Hero a Light, Hero a Man, somethin. Didn’t think I’d done enough to earn that.”

Sky’s brows twitch at Link’s use of ‘was.’ He frowns and turns toward the sword. It sits there, unmoving, unglowing, like a hunk of metal would.

“Aft our conversation midday, I find that belief common,” Sky says. “Wast I able, I wouldst convince you otherwise.”

“You have,” Link says. Sky perks up, the shadow laid on his shoulders lifting just as soon as it had fallen. He cups Link’s face in his hands, nods brightly, and before Link can react, clambers down the hayloft ladder to the barn floor below. Link presses his hand where Sky’s had been a moment before and beams down after him, just a bit dazzled.

The castle is quiet this early in the morning. He knows this. He planned on it.

The only sounds in the hallway are the soft pats of his feet against the marble, echo suffocated by the deep purple wall hangings. The sky is a weak, watery blue-grey. It’s too early for even the birds to sing. 

It’s cold. He’s just in his nightshirt and drawers. He can’t quite feel the chill anymore.

Then, a voice from a winding servant’s stairway behind him, tucked into an alcove. The chill returns, deep in his gut. He contemplates running. He’s too tired.

“Link?”

He stops in the middle of the corridor.

“Where are you going at this hour?”

There’s a tense, quiet edge to her voice as she emerges from the servant’s stairwell. The Queen’s dark hair hangs around her face, limp and lifeless. Her nightgown droops off her. The silky material doesn’t hide how skinny her shoulders have gotten.

He turns to face her, a herculean labor in itself, and makes eye contact with her collarbones. 

“Out,” he rasps, then clears his throat, and tries again. “I’m goin on a walk. To see the sunrise.”

“Where to?” she asks. Her careful politeness and tense, closed-lip smile wouldn’t be out of place during a midday social event or political dinners. Here, it shows her cards.

He should’ve known, really. Eons upon eons, their souls intertwined for good and for bad, they are connected. She knows. Somehow, there is a part of her that is a part of him, and she knows everything.

He presses his mouth flat. He was never a good liar, and today of all days, he can’t put the effort in to even try. The silence between them stretches thin and brittle.

“Around,” Link says, finally. “Gardens. Market.”

She glances down at his bare feet and state of undress. Her hands are white-knuckling, strangling her crossed arms. Her silky nightgown whispers around her as she exits the alcove and comes up in front of him at a respectable distance.

“I will come with you,” she offers. Her voice is tenuous and quiet, morning-raspy. “You need company.”

Link glances up and finally looks her in the eyes. They’re red-rimmed and wide, glassy like she’s got a fever. She droops, all over, from her ears to her shoulders to the corners of her mouth. She gnaws at her cheek. Her eyebags carve a sickly, purple crescent.

“I wanna be alone,” Link says. His voice is flat. He’s not gonna try to be polite. Not right now. Not today.

The silence stretches out again. When it pulls too tight to bear, Link turns and continues down the corridor.

“Link,” she says, louder. Her voice breaks. “Please.”

He freezes. His vision swims. The panic that had risen in his throat upon her confrontation is coming back hard. This isn’t going as he planned. This can’t be happening. She’s gonna lock him in a tower or something. To keep him safe.

He slaps his hands to his face and digs his teeth — including the fangs that remain — into his palms. They break skin.

“You can’t.”

Cold anger replaces his panic. He whips around, nails digging into his palms, and whispers, “I cain’t?”

“I’ll write to Ilia,” she’s risen to her full height now, chin trembling but held high and proud. The blue-grey light is getting brighter. He’s running out of time.

“Don’t you bring her inta this.”

“Then please.”

He can smell that fancy, rich perfume she wears. The servants are going to be making the rounds soon. He cannot be caught, alone, with the both of them in their underthings. 

“Why not?” he gives a soft, hysterical laugh. “I served my purpose. What’s the use?”

“You are more than your purpose,” she says. Her hands card through her loose hair, ripping through knots. “Do you not think so?”

“It don’t matter what I think,” Link says. The light is creeping up the floor. The swirls and whorls of the windows’ ironwork are almost sinister in the half-light. “It matters what I know.”

Everyone else has left one by one. Ordon is as unfamiliar and cold to him as the bed in his castle chambers. He is a stranger to the people that raised him. His only friends are political. His one companion will never return to him. And he has sixty years left.

The Queen gnaws on her lip. Her eyes are wet. Link ignores this. Gone is every inanity of propriety and dignity. Good. Bad that this is what it took to get her to talk like a normal person, but finally. 

“You ain’t cared before,” Link says.

“You know that’s not true,” she bites out through gritted teeth. Her voice wavers. There is no authority or royalty now, only Zelda.

He glances away, shaking his head, clamping his mouth over his hand to keep his voice at bay. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

“It’s easier,” Link says.

Zelda curls into herself. Her chin still trembles, but she has not yet shed a tear. He can’t tell if that infuriates him or impresses him. Control and poise run deeper in her than divinity. When she raises a hand to press to her throat, her sleeve falls to reveal the greenish-black scars that creep across her body in diseased rivulets.

“Enough,” she says, finally. “Stay.”

He scoffs. His plan has gone to shit. The sun is rising and he’ll have to wait until tomorrow at this rate. “Is that a command?”

“No,” she gives him a watery, desperate smile. “It’s a request. From a friend to a friend.”

He blinks at her. Certainly not. She wants something.

“Why?”

“Because we’re the only two in this world who understand.”

The sun breaks through the haze of twilight, weak but rosy pink, warm on the marble floors. It catches the gold on the wall hangings. Hyrule Castle’s oppressive darkness and quiet dissipates. 

He breathes an incredulous, exhausted laugh. 

“Join me for breakfast. Just for a while,” Zelda says. Her long, delicate fingers wrap around his wrist and squeeze.

Link’s protests fizzle out as she drags him up the servant’s stairway.

He hurts.

The guilt is eating Link up inside. Wild keeps reaching to pet a dog that isn’t there and crumpling like a card tower when he realizes. He has to tell him.

The problem is that he can’t catch Wild alone. They travel as a group. They sleep as a group. They bathe as a group. Late at night, there is always at least one of them up for the watch. This is fine, usually. Not so much when you have a secret to share.

The opportunity presents itself in a tiny frontier town nestled in the boreal forest at the southern edge of this Hyrule’s tundra. Even in summer, here Link can keep all his layers on comfortably. The days are long. The sun lights the stark-blue, cloudless sky late into the night, save for a scant few hours in the wee morning. Spruce and fir shelter the town from the harshest winds and cushion the paths with fallen needles. The air smells of pine. There are no mountains in the distance past the last trees, just an endless plain. Herds of distant elk and deer graze on the scrubby grasses and wildflowers of a tundra in bloom. Hunters watch over them from stocky horses.

Link doesn’t like it one bit. At least Hyrule Field had larger hills. He thinks this place could do with a few mountains. Something more than the gentle rolling knolls.

The town is small enough that there isn’t even an inn. The second floor of the town hall serves that purpose, shared with the caretaker’s family. Cots covered in bright patchwork quilts serve as their beds, nestled next to each of the two woodfire stoves. Downstairs, the town hall is filled with pine tables and chairs covered in crocheted cushions.

The townspeople are excited by visitors. This far north, they never get more than two or three at a time. The butcher’s daughter interrogates Time about his weapons. The blacksmith is listening, rapt, as Sky displays the skilled embroidery on his tunic and sailcloth to a crowd of young girls. Four, every inch of him covered in delicate gold thread, tries to sneak away from them, but a girl with dark hair snags him before he can make his escape.

All of them are occupied with conversation — or interrogation — except for Link. He’s not complaining. He elects to polish his knives. Prevention is the best maintenance.

He’s midway through his largest knife when someone sits at the table across from him. They sit in the chair backward, facing him.

Link looks up. It’s the baker’s oldest son. He’s got a tall nose and a long, thin face, thatched with wavy light brown hair. He hitches his arms up on the backside of the chair and watches Link’s hands.

“Fancy knife you got there,” he says, jerking his chin at it. He combs his fingers through his hair. “What’s the handle? Antler?”

“Goat horn,” Link can do knife talk. “The blade’s steel.”

He nods. “Looks sharp.”

“It is,” Link says. He sheaths the knife. He whistles and pretends to throw it as a warning. He tosses it and the baker’s son's hand flashes out to catch it. The sleeve of his shirt rides up to expose his wrist.

The baker’s son hums as he studies it. He runs a finger down the flat of the blade. “This a gift?”

“Sure is,” Link says. “My dad gave it to me for my birthday five years ago.”

His dark brown eyes flick up from the blade’s edge to meet Link’s. He lets it linger. A sly smile draws across his face. “And which birthday was that?”

Link’s brain jolts through a few frantic theories about what’s happening here. The moment the puzzle pieces click together, Wild stands and sneaks out the front door of the town hall.

Ah, shit.

Link stands and the chair screeches behind him. The baker’s son frowns up at him, confused. Link stammers down at him. He could stay and talk to him. But Wild’s leaving now, and with that could go his one chance to make things right for a long while.

“I got to go,” Link says.

The baker’s son sighs, leaning his head against his arm, and lets his wrist fall limp to offer the hunting knife back. When Link grabs the handle, though, the baker’s son doesn’t let go.

“My name’s Irin,” Irin says. Link blinks at him, stupidly, and then Irin releases the knife from between his fingers.

Link takes it and hooks it on his belt. He feels Irin’s eyes on his back as he jets out of the town hall.

Outside, the midday sun — or, he guesses, here it could be midmorning or mid-evening or midnight — cuts through the clusters of pine. Wild’s footsteps crunch through the fallen needles around the side of the town hall, where the chicken coop and outhouse is. Link rounds the corner and calls out to him. Wild turns, confusion written all over his face.

“Kid,” Link says. “I hafta tell you somethin.”

“What is it?” Wild signs. He turns fully toward him now. Link sighs. Unsteadiness rises in his throat, with it, memories of swinging torches and hissing cats.

“I’m sorry for not tellin you sooner,” Link says. “But I think you deserve to know. The dog  — that’s me. I got an artifact that changes me.”

 Wild frowns.

He fumbles for the words to explain. But how does he explain Twili magic and the marks on his forehead, and how does he explain that both he and his fuzzy counterpart are not who Wild thinks they are?

“I’ll just show you. I’m sorry if it scares you,” Link says. He twists a finger under the cord that trails under his tunic and pulls out the dark crystal that lays against his chest. Its fiery marks pulse like a twisted heartbeat. Wild’s eyes go wide and his ears draw back. He has to be able to sense the dark energy that comes off it in waves once awoken.

Link wraps his fingers around it. His back splits open like a rotting log to an axe. His skull snaps and cracks into place, extra fangs cutting through his gums, claws ripping through the flesh on his paw-hands, bones breaking and healing into lupine limbs, fur sprouting along his legs, once two, now four. He sits on his hindquarters. His tail rests in the pine needles behind him. He pants up at Wild, who’s dumbstruck and pale. 

Wild shakes his head. His heartbeat ratchets up. The sour smell of fear-sweat stings in the air. His breathing comes hard. 

Oh, shit. 

Before Link can even begin to react, Wild goes still. His eyes glaze over. He stares into the middle distance. His fingers relax from white-knuckled fists.

Link shifts back in a panic, so fast he knows he probably sprains a ligament or something. His hands hover nervously over Wild’s locked shoulders.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

“Kid?” Link says. He lays his hands on Wild’s shoulders and shakes. “Bubba, you okay?”

Wild snaps back to awareness. There’s a half-second of shaky quiet and then he takes off like a shot through the pines, into the tundra.

“Goddesses alive,” Link says. It’s almost like the earth shifts to give him a clear path, feet blurring, scampering through the grass like a spooked deer. He’s fast. Epona, lashed outside the town hall, whinnies at Link as he just stands there, stupidly.

Link is faster.

He squeezes the crystal in his fist again. The pain and the fur and the claws come, but Link’s already halfway across town, four paws carrying him over the last of the taiga and into the endless plain faster than two feet could ever hope to. Grass and the bright arctic wildflowers blur under him. Wind howls in his ears. It’s been so long since he’s let himself run like this. 

The huntsmen swear and yell as a wolf shrieks past them at top speed, certain he’s after one of their elk. Link leaves them in the dust. His nose follows a thin blade of tear salt and wet earth and a tang like lightning. Wild is nearby.

He finds him a ways from the village, sitting in a creek. There’s no shoreline, the edge just drops off into the cool waters. Grass trails in the current. Wild heaves for air. The knees of his pants are stained with grass and mud, darkness leeching up his tunic, boots and pants soaked up to the calf. He must’ve fallen in his panic.

Link stops at the opposite bank. He pants. Once Wild’s breaths have slowed, he shifts back, bones cracking and scraping into place. 

“Are you alright?” Link says. It’s a stupid question and he knows it as soon as it spills from his mouth. Wild laughs, but nothing’s funny.

“You knew everything,” Wild says. He shakes his head. His features snarl up and twist, and a venomous face turns up toward Link. “You knew everything! The whole time! You let me act like an idiot, you — you — I told you everything! I should — I should —”

“No, no, kid, wait—” Link panics. He steps into the river and water splashes up to his calves. It’s cool, almost cold. “I promise I didn’t. I’m not the same one you know. I never knew you before now, I promise. Maybe that’s a different dog, or maybe it’s some other me, I dunno. I wouldn’t lie to you like that. I swear.”

Wild glares up from under his eyebrows as the words wash over him. His expression irons out as he realizes. Wild’s chest heaves as he pants. They stare at each other. Fog rolls across the tundra. The creek laughs. It rushes around Wild’s arms and legs. They’re getting pink from cold.

Wild shifts and cradles his knees to his chest. Link hesitates, then drops to his knees in front of him. The water soaks into his pants. He lifts a hand. Wild eyes it, then allows it to drop onto his shoulder. Wild frowns at the creek water burbling around him. The tundra grasses whisper. Wild heaves a great sigh. Link waits.

“You don have to talk about it if you don’t wanna. Do you wanna go back to town?” Link says.

Wild shakes his head. There’s a few moments of silence. Hunting dogs bay and elk call. Link will wait as long as it takes. He’ll wait here even if it gets dark.

“ I did not just wake up before my adventure, like I told you guys,” Wild signs. His hands are just as scarred as his face and neck. A few of his fingers don’t bend correctly. “I died. I was put in something called the Shrine of Resurrection. I woke up and I was someone else. I was me, as I am now. I have very few memories of the Hero before me.

“ The dog… I named him Hund-ĕr. He was my companion. I would have been alone for my entire journey had it not been for him. He was my best friend. He disappeared after my last stand,” Wild signs. “ I missed him like one misses a limb or a mother. I was overjoyed to have him back — and —”

Wild stops signing and gestures at Link. A little stab of guilt cuts into Link’s throat. “I’m sorry,” Link says.

“Don’t be sorry,” Wild croaks. “You cannot be sorry for not being someone you aren’t.”

Goosebumps erupt on Wild’s arms and he shivers. Link wants to scoop him up out of this cold river and get him to put on some warm clothes, but Wild is spilling his heart in front of him. He’ll nag him later.

Wild frowns. “He didn’t expect me to be anyone but me. Everyone else around me was telling me things about the person I used to be. Hund-ĕr was happy with me the way I was. Everyone else wants a hero.”

Wild’s eyes start to shine and his chin wrinkles. Link, overtaken by his own bleeding heart, forgets himself and gathers Wild up in his arms. Wild, thank the goddesses, doesn’t object to this.

“He’s dead,” his voice cracks, rattles like glass in his throat, ripping up and out. His features, scar-suffocated in places, delicate in others, crumple like paper between vengeful hands. Luminescent blue dulls through the shine of tears. “They — they expect. They expect him. Stoic. And - and dutiful. Noble. Heroic. I can’t —”

His words finally shatter. His hands snarl in Link’s shirt, and his head takes refuge in the safe hollow where Link’s heartbeat thuds a steady, soothing drumbeat, in time with the roll of the river. Link allows himself to curl his arms around those slight, shaking shoulders. He’s warm. He’s small — so small. 

Link’s shirt is getting wet, and it’s not from the river.

“I don’t think—” he starts, aborts his sentence, and starts anew, a crying rasp to it. “I don’t think he ever was. Who knows whose soul this is shoved in this fleshbag? Maybe it’s the hero’s spirit, but it’s all mixed up and fucked up and healed wrong. I hate it, I hate it—”

Wild lets out an involuntary sob, and curls further into Link. If he wants to be any closer, they’d have to meld together. Link squeezes him tighter anyway. Link’s bleeding heart cracks and smarts, letting in big, preternatural eyes and wheat-gold hair, guarding it jealously. He hums in his throat like Rusl used to do when he was little. Shaking shoulders relax a little at the deep rumble in his chest.

“You’re enough,” Link barely gets out, and is interrupted by an awful sob. Hands snake around his middle and squeeze him so tight his ribs groan.

Link’s eyes sting. At that moment he knows that, whether of his own volition or otherwise, he has found his purpose. His purpose is small. His purpose wakes up crying and can’t remember why. His purpose names horses for their color and feeds foxes his leftovers and covets shiny things with a magpie’s affixation.

“You’re enough,” Link says again, softer, words quivering behind his teeth. “You’re enough just as you are.”

The Hero of the Wild will be happy. This, Link vows.

Wild ducks out from under the roadside shelter and into the road, ignoring the calls from the others to come stay dry. He stands under the vast stretch of stormclouds, arms wide, and grins up at the pouring rain. Drops wet his face and soak his hair. Wild laughs and does a haphazard twirl. Link doesn’t join in on the warnings about lightning and getting a cold.

Once Wild has had enough, hair thoroughly wet, he strides back to the roadside shelter, just outside its dry interior. The others have given up on trying to entice him back.

“You’ll get a cold like that,” Link scolds, but makes no effort to force him back under the roof.

“So?” Wild says. “I like the rain.”

“Why?” Link says.

“It’s how she kisses,” Wild says.

Rulie comes up next to him and sighs. The way his ears droop tips Link off to his mood. The rainforest around them is lush, the tree cover thick. Flowers and ferns in vibrant rainbow colors blanket the ground. Tropical birds sing in the trees. A distant waterfall roars. The air is full of steam and so humid that the top of Rulie’s head is covered with little curly fuzzies.

“What’s wrong?” Link asks, nudging Rulie with his elbow. Rulie’s mouth curls into a bittersweet smile that doesn’t show any teeth.

“This place is so lush,” Rulie says. “I don’t think I’ve seen so many colors in one place.”

Link nods but he doesn’t understand. He waits for Rulie to continue. Rulie’s brows furrow as he searches for the words.

“Nowhere back home looks like this,” Rulie says, finally, in one breath. “It’s all dead. I suppose I’m jealous. I think it will, one day, but not right now.”

“I’m sure it’ll be beautiful,” Link says.

Rulie mulls this over. Steam and heat have condensed across his cheeks and nose like crystalline freckles. Metal in his ears gleams. Branches crack under their feet and their teammates talk in soft voices ahead and behind.

“Me too,” Rulie says. He straightens and his brows furrow with determination. He beams up at Link. “Me too!”

Link recognizes the treeline here.

His fingers tingle as he helps Legend stand, ignoring his groaning about how sweaty Link’s hands are, and gapes around at the road his teammates are strewn about on. There’s Ordonian oak, silken maple, sweet-smelling flowering whitebuds, and gargantuan pines. This birdsong was his alarm clock for years. He has trekked the blue mountain range in the distance. 

He lets Legend’s hand go and staggers full-tilt up the hillside to get a vantage point of Hyrule Field. Hills roll in a mossy green tide ahead of him, waves crashing against cold mountain streams and rickety wooden bridges. Less than an hours’ walk away, the unyielding knifepoint towers of Hyrule Castle stab at the brittle grey sky.

Link sways, going head over feet, bracing himself against his knees so he doesn’t tumble down the hillside. He spins, swaying in the brisk wind, and beckons his still-recovering teammates.

“Get a move on!” Link calls. His voice cuts through the wind. His hair whips around his face. “I got places to be!”

“What is it you’re prattling on about?” Captain says, hands on his knees as he trudges up the steep hillside. He comes up on Link’s left and rises to his full height. He drags his scarf up to his neck to shield against the wind. “Are we back in your time?”

“That we are,” Link smiles, leaning into the breeze biting at his cheeks. “Well, not really. My holler’s a day’s that-a-ways. But Castletown’s good enough.”

Captain looks at him sidelong. He elbows him in the ribs and then cradles Link’s arms, bouncing, face lighting up exaggeratedly. “Oh, love, I can tell! You are just simply glowing!”

Link shoves his face and Captain stumbles across the hillcrest, snorting unattractively.

“Fuck off, chickenshit,” Link says. “Rally the troops, tell em we got an hour til real mattresses and sheets.”

Captain gives a lackadaisical salute and skids down the hill to round up the stragglers. Time, Legend, and Wild are already making their way up. Wild beats the others and stops at Link’s right.

Wild lets out a soft whistle. Link turns and looks at him. There’s a streak of dirt on his face and Link has to stick his hand in his pocket to keep himself from licking his thumb and rubbing it off. He’s certain that wouldn’t go over well.

“So that is what Hyrule Castle looks like intact,” Wild says. He doesn’t sound bitter, just a little sad. Link reaches over and rubs his shoulder. He’d seen the jagged, shattered silhouette of Wild’s Hyrule Castle, far off. “It’s pretty.”

Link shrugs. “It is. But you should see the woods. All that green and all them trees.”

It’s beautiful in Faron and Ordon. It is as foreign to him now as Wild’s Hyrule had been.

The wind whistles through the hills. The sun is still far above the horizon but it’s sinking quickly, slanting the shadows and warning at dusk. Sky pants up the hill behind them. Wind chatters to him the whole way.

“I’d like that,” Wild says. He draws his hood up around his ears and heads down with a parting smile. Link calls for Epona to follow, and once all nine heroes have crested the hill, they set off toward Castletown. The walk there is quiet.

They’re at the West Nave Inn when the sun starts to set. Epona is stabled in the back, happy just to have alfalfa and a roof. The innkeeper — Fairdin, Link half-remembers —  blanches at the sudden, late-day arrival of nine new guests.

“We haven’t the beds for you, gentlemen —“ he starts, then clamps his mouth shut when Time waves his hand to dismiss his concerns.

“Whatever you’ve got, we’ll take it,” Time says. “Cots, extra sheets, anything.”

Fairdin shrugs and hefts the guest ledger onto the counter, flipping it to the fourteenth day of Deer. Almost four months had passed here since he’d been sucked into another adventure. Link will be twenty-six in four months.

Fairdin takes down their names. He and Time speak quietly. The others mill around. Some investigate the foyer’s nooks and crannies. Others settle onto cushy benches and stools to take a load off their feet.

The West Nave Inn is nice, if a bit homely. The main foyer furniture is solid golden cherrywood, cushioned with faded green upholstery and crocheted tablecloths. Brass lamps and lanterns cast a gold glow where the evening light from the windows is fading. Rugs and drying herbs hang from the rafters. An aproned hearthmaid stokes the fireplace to life to chase out the evening chill.

“Cowboy,” Time calls from the front counter, waving Link over. Link approaches and Time gestures, overwhelmed, at the mismatched pile of rupees he’s dumped on the counter. Fairdin looks just as perplexed but accustomed to the odd behaviors of the general public. “I don’t have any legal tender, apparently.”

“It was legal tender maybe three, four hundred years ago, sir, but I wouldn’t be much of a businessman if I took every suspect rupee a customer hands me without questioning it,” Fairdin protests. Link elbows his way in front of Time, untying his rupee pouch from its strap on his belt.

“You’d get more than enough to pay for your rooms if you took all that to the Royal Museum and sold it, believe you me,” Fairdin suggests, jerking a thumb in the general direction of the Royal Museum. Time makes a face like he’s considering it, but before he can single-handedly inflate the Castletown economy, Link slaps his rupee pouch on the counter with a jingle of coins. Time sweeps his retro currency off the counter into his bag.

“How much?” Link asks, rifling through his pouch.

“We’ve got five spaces in a room for you all — so two doubles and a single — three cots, and a pallet for the unlucky ninth. Let’s say…two hundred fifty?” Fairdin says. He scratches a room number next to the group’s name list on the ledger.

“I think you have yourself a deal, sir,” Link says. He comes up with two orange rupees, totaling only a hundred. His pouch is a disorganized mess, so he resigns himself to a few harried minutes of digging for his higher-valued coins.

Fairdin takes the two orange rupees without complaint and tucks them into the money belt at his hip. “You know, it’s the strangest thing. We had a few travelers come through here a few days ago, and they didn’t have good currency either. They had to go to the exchange and argue with the lenders there to get even a hundred.”

Link tuts politely to acknowledge him and slaps another orange rupee on the counter. He dives back in. Time’s shoulders shake with suppressed laughter at the hostage situation taking place next to him.

“Can’t help but feel terribly for the poor things, though. Caught something not a day after they checked in. They’ve been locked in room 205 since, sick as dogs. The city alderman tried to send doctors but they won’t open the door for anyone,” Fairdin yammers.

Link pauses and looks up. He is wrist-deep in his pouch. Time notices Link’s change in demeanor and his ears perk up. “Where were they from?”

“Somewhere farther west in the mountains around Kakariko, I think,” Fairdin says. So, not from Ordon then. Link relaxes a little. Fairdin cranes his head around Link to keep an eye on his teammates, who are doing everything but sitting correctly on one single sofa, shared between all seven of them. They chatter and argue over each other. ”They had some great stories about their perils through the West Wood.”

“Do you know what they’ve got?” Link asks.

“Couldn’t tell you,” Fairdin says. “Haven’t seen them, haven’t heard them, nothing. Not for lack of trying.”

Link frowns again and shakes his head, and then brandishes a purple rupee at Fairdin. Fairdin takes it, tucking it into his money belt and buttoning it with a peppy little bounce.

“Thank you, sir,” Link says.

“Thank you, sir,” Fairdin smiles. “Your business is appreciated. You and your group will be in 206, up the stairs, second on the left. Ipheta will be up with your extra beds in a bit. Dinner at six, breakfast at seven, baths down the hall. Enjoy your stay!”

Link thanks him and waves at the rest of the heroes up the stairs. In the evening, after an insufferable argument about who would make the heroic sacrifice of being relegated to the floor pallet (which ended quite abruptly with Link shouting, at the top of his lungs, “Good goddesses, enough! I’m taking it and that’s that!”) everyone starts settling down for sleep.

Wild lays down on his cot, hair splayed messily, bound to tangle up by morning. Link cringes at this. He has sisters — he knows how fickle long hair can be. He hesitates, then pats the bed next to Wild and asks, “Will you let me braid your hair? It’ll be a pain to brush out come morning.”

Wild sits up and looks at him, eyes wide as dinner plates. He glances around at the others and chews at his cheek. After a long bout of silence, he nods and shifts forward to give Link space to sit on his bed. Link celebrates on the inside. He climbs up onto Wild’s bed with perhaps a little too much eagerness.

Link is still braiding Wild’s hair for bed when the topic of the sick travelers across the hall comes up again.

“I wonder if that’s why we're here this time,” Rulie says, chin in his hands and kicking his feet, listening in on Captain and Link’s conversation from his cot. “It always seems like we’ve something specific to do every time we switch. Last time we met the champion.”

Wild’s ears twitch at his name. He holds so, so carefully still while Link’s fingers lace through wheat gold sheafs. Sky snorts and snuffles in his sleep, spread-eagle across the entire bed. He was automatically assigned to be a solo sleeper by the group at large.

“I don’t know about that,” Link says, shaking his head. “What are we meant to do about sickness? Can’t stab it. Can’t outsmart it.”

“The silent killer,” Wind pipes up, sing-songing theatrically, wiggling his fingers like he’s telling a ghost story. He giggles and flops back onto his and Captain’s bed. 

“What I’m more concerned about is if we’re in the line of fire ourselves,” Captain says. He fluffs his pillows and, upon settling under the covers, artfully arranges his hair on the pillow. Link rolls his eyes at him, and Captain ignores it. “I’ve seen what disease can do in close quarters. It can ravage entire armies, even more so smaller groups like ours.”

“That’s only if it’s contagious, innit?” Rulie says. “They’re travelers, right? What if it’s something in the central Hyrulean diet that didn’t agree with them?”

“For days? ” Legend says. He finishes tying the top fasteners of his sleep chemise. His stubby ponytail sticks out behind his ear like a bundle of hay. “I’ve never had food poisoning for days on end.”

Captain, Legend, and Rulie launch into a new dispute about the machinations of plague. Wind pipes up from next to Link.

“You’ve been talking all weird,” he says. He doesn’t say this unkindly, but rather with the bluntness of a kid who hasn’t quite learned adult social rules yet.

Link blinks at him. His fingers fumble for a moment in Wild’s braid. He rebraids the section and asks, “How so?”

“All proper-like. Your accent’s gone,” Wind says. “Why?”

Link blinks at him again. He truly hadn’t noticed. He frowns and settles on, “I dunno. Habit?”

Wind shrugs, satisfied with this answer. “Well, quit. It’s weird.”

Link laughs and reaches out with his foot to shove Wind’s leg. Wind retches, protesting about Link’s ‘smelly feet’ being so close to him. Link does what he is required to do, as per his occupation as an eldest brother of four, and continues to terrorize Wind. Wind is distraught about this.

“No harm in trying!” Rulie protests. Wind squeals and rolls off the bed onto the floor. Rulie offers a hand up without turning to look at him. “I’m saying I’ve never tried to cure a cold or a flu or anything with potions, and it might work.”

“Fine, whatever, but when it doesn’t work, don’t come crying,” Legend says, stubborn as ever. Rulie scoffs and opens his mouth to continue making his case. Time clears his throat from across the room, and every awake hero’s head whips around to look at him. 

“There’s nothing we can do about it now. We’ll ask around in the morning and see if there’s anything we can do for them. Now, it’s bedtime,” Time says from the bed closest to the door, voice more gravelly than usual due to the hour. Four is already dead asleep next to him, mouth agape and arm hanging off the side of the bed. “Good night, gentlemen.”

A chorus of good-nights follows. Time reaches over and extinguishes the camphene  lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Link finishes off Wild’s braid and leans forward to say good night.

Wild’s eyes are closed and his mouth is slightly ajar, chin to his chest. He’s snoring quietly. 

Link chuckles and combs Wild’s bangs back from his face. He cradles his head as he gently lays him down on the bed. He tugs the sheets and counterpane over his shoulders. Asleep, the dark circles ever-present under Wild’s eyes are invisible. His blonde eyelashes brush his cheeks. He isn’t chewing at his cheek or scowling at the ground in thought. He looks peaceful.

Link shakes his head and turns in for the night on his oh-so-comfortable floor pallet.

The next morning, they wake up bright and early for breakfast. The smell of bacon and herbs float up the hall from the inn kitchens. Heroes buckle and button and tie in a haze of half-sleep. No one notices Wind hasn’t got up until Four opens the door to leave.

“Oi,” Captain says, voice rough with morning husk. “The kid’s still in bed.”

Time scratches at the stubble on his jaw, grunting at Captain. “Someone wake him up.”

Sky reaches over and shakes Wind’s shoulder. Wind doesn’t react. He shakes harder. Wind groans softly and faceplants into his pillow, shoving weakly at Sky’s arm. Sky shakes his head at Time.

Time huffs and gestures out the door for everyone to head downstairs. “We’ll bring him something up later. Let him rest. He’s a growing boy.”

“I’m a growing boy, too, and I didn’t get to have a lie-in,” Legend grumps half-heartedly.

“You’d better get to growing, then, you’re running out of time,” Captain says. Legend very nearly pushes him down the stairs. 

After a breakfast of wheatmeal mush, thick-cut bacon, and chunks of goat cheese, they find Wind still asleep. Rulie sets the wooden tray of breakfast leftovers down on another bed and rolls Wind over onto his back.

“Oi, sailor, rise and shine,” Rulie says. He shakes Wind so hard the bed rattles. The group standing in the doorway exchange nervous looks. Wind’s eyes slit open.

“Hmngh,” he groans. “Whuh timezit?”

Sweat beads on Wind’s forehead. A weight lowers into Link’s stomach. The rest of the heroes file into the room, hands brushing at Wind’s sweaty hair, checking his forehead, testing his pulse, asking him questions. Link steps back. The solid cherrywood door swings shut, leaving Link in the hall.

He turns toward Room 205. The floorboards creak under him. Cherrywood rings solid under his knuckles when he knocks. There’s a soft, hoarse gasp from inside.

“You mustn’t approach. We’re in ill health,” they say. Their accent leans toward western Hyrule, but with a certain rural drawl he doesn’t recognize.

“I been told,” Link says. Feet scuffle on the other side of the door. “What’re y’all sick with?”

“Nothing we know,” they say.

“Tell me y’all’s ailments,” Link says. He crosses his arms and frowns at the blocked light coming under the door where the stranger stands, two inches of wood between him and contagion. The stranger hesitates. There is more whispering.

“Pox, white and red like… an archer’s target,” they say. “Fierce fever. Pains so bad you cannot walk. Your body is on fire but you’re always cold. The itch. Blueing of the ears.”

The weight in his stomach finally drops. Chill creeps up the back of his neck. He presses a hand to the door and leans closer.

“I think I’ve had what y’all got, open the door,” Link says. “I won’t come down ill. There’s a little boy in the next room and I think he’s caught it.”

The person on the other side of the door goes terribly, terribly quiet. The handle clicks and a single eye, deadly green and glassy with fever, peers out. The door creaks open. There are three people in the room, all about Link’s height, all with manes of wavy dark hair. Two of them are bedbound. The long-haired one opening the door leans on the door handle so heavily it groans. The room smells of stale sickness and the curtains are drawn against the morning light.

And they’re all covered in harepox.

By the time they’re Link’s age, every adult on this side of the mountains has had a bout of harepox when young enough that it only caused moderate aches, itches, and fevers. For someone from a place isolated enough that harepox wasn’t common, a later-life contraction could be debilitating. In the next room, there are eight people over the age of nine with zero harepox immunity.

Link sends the travelers medicinal potions later. The West Nave Inn is going to be a hospital for the foreseeable future.

One by one, throughout the day, heroes drop. Whether by high fever, severe pains, or chills, they all end up bedbound. All except for Link.

Link is appointed sicknurse. He wets cloths for foreheads, holds teacups of medicinal elixirs up to mouths when shaking hands cannot, dabs sweat away with his sleeve — anything he remembers Uli doing when he had harepox as a boy. He has been a caretaker before — four nearly-grown, still-alive children stand to testify for his competency — but eight people, delirious with fever, is pushing it. 

The first night was bad. The second night was worse. By the seventh, Link is sleepless and he is afraid his own carelessness combined with foreign disease may kill one of the Holy Heroes. 

Time, like most middle-aged farmers Link knows, will not stay down. It would take an accidental amputation before any of those men considered stepping foot in a doctor’s, and even then their wives would have to drag them along. Time’s mind is fever-addled. He is up wandering aimlessly doing nonsensical tasks just as often as he is unconscious. Link is one more broken plate away from strapping him down to the bed.

Four and Wind wake up for meals when they are able to eat and nothing else. Link knows sleeping while ill is a good sign — their bodies are using all their other energy for fighting off disease — but he has no way to differentiate between asleep and comatose. He’s taken to peeling their eyes open to see if they wake up at all.

Sky has not stopped muttering since the fever took him. Link can’t hardly understand him when he’s lucid and awake, much less when he’s woozy and half-hallucinating. He rocks back and forth when upright and horizontal. He stares sightlessly at the ceiling. Link notices a certain rhythm to his mutterings on the ninth day.

“Are you prayin, knight?” Link asks him. He switches out the warm, damp rag on Sky’s head for a rag that Ipheta the hearthmaid soaked with fresh, cool water from the inn well. Sky, stripped down to his chemise and smallclothes, is soaked with sweat and cemented to the sheets.

“I bespeak my sweet for her mercy,” Sky slurs, smiling dopily at the wood-paneled ceiling. He presses a hand to his throat and another reaches for the sky, fingers snarled like claws. “She is both parts kind and cruel. Ah, goddess of my heart, forsake me not, battle-dew on gold, divinity, divinity…”

Link guides his hands back to lay at his sides and Sky’s head lolls back. His chest heaves.

Legend sings to himself while he rides the waves of illness. At his worst, Legend is silent. Rulie is much the same, but at his worst, he reaches for comfort from whoever is closest — oftentimes, it’s Link, trapped into holding Rulie’s hand for hours on end; just as often it is Legend, hand hanging off his bed onto Rulie’s, fingers laced together. Link knows the barest brushing of cloth is painful when your fever is high, and it has to hurt when Rulie squeezes Legend’s hand in his delirium. He still doesn’t pull away until Rulie pulls away first.

The pox part hits Captain the worst. He is covered in more pox than any of the rest of them. He seems to be the most lucid, but moves the least, bloodshot eyes tracking Link as he moves around the room. There is nothing Link can do about the pox but keep Captain’s skin cool and his mind sound.

Wild breaks his heart the most by far. He shudders and cries in his sleep like a much younger child. He curls up into a ball and sweats out his fever, looking more like a drowned cat than any sort of person. Wild shies away from contact sometimes, even when hale and whole. When he’s ill, Link might as well be the one with a contagious disease with how Wild avoids any touch.

It’s on the eleventh day that Wild grabs Link’s hand when he bends down to brush hair and sweat out of Wild’s eyes. He squeezes hard enough Link’s hand twinges. He pulls him down, so weakly Link can’t tell he’s trying to pull him until he whines pathetically. Link lets himself be pulled.

Wild leans up and rasps, “It hurts.“

Link hums and brushes Wild’s sweaty hair back. He’s a horrible shade of pale green where there should be pink. His ears are blueish. “I know, bubba.“

Wild sniffles. He crushes Link’s arm to his body, hugging it like a stuffed animal, shaking his head and hiding his face in his pillow. “Make it stop,“ he croaks into his pillow, voice shaking. Link can only hope that Wild won’t be embarrassed by his own desperation later. “It hurts so much, make it stop.“

“I wish I could,“ Link says softly. He rubs Wild’s back. “I’d rather it be me than any a y’all. If I could take what ails you, I would, I swear.“

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… what did I do wrong… I’m sorry…“ Wild mumbles. 

Wild tumbles headfirst into fitful sleep not five minutes after. His arms go slack around Link’s captive hand. Link frees himself and stands. The room has been silent for two weeks, broken occasionally by delirious ramblings and groans of pain. Link has spoken only to Ipheta the hearthmaid and the alderman’s doctor on their sparing visits.

The sun is high in the sky. Ipheta will be delivering trays of lunch to their door soon, and more than likely taking several still-full trays back downstairs with her.

Link opens the door and is met with the sick travelers heading downstairs. They pause in surprise. They are thin and sickly from recent illness but their eyes are lively and their cheeks are rosy. One of the two younger ones — a young adult with shorter hair — has fresh pockmark scars on their arms. A second, the older woman, blinks at Link in recognition. She cradles an anonymous body wrapped in a white sheet. It must be the third, the long-haired youth that had opened the door when Link knocked.

Link is dizzy. That corpse was alive two weeks ago. They spoke to each other. Harepox shouldn’t have killed them. They may have survived the experience with scars, but they would have been alive. Sky and Captain are about the same age this traveler was.

He looks up at the older woman and her eyes are misting over. She breaks eye contact with him and tightens her hold on the sheet.

“Wait, oemamna,“ Link says. The woman pauses at the top of the stairs and turns to him. He presses his hand to where his heart is, then to hers. “May the goddesses deliver them gentle and their spirit know none but joy.“

The woman gives him a shaky smile. He did say it right, then — a Hylian prayer Rusl had taught him once but not really reinforced. She reaches one hand up under the body’s knees to touch the back of his hand. “I wish your brothers good health.“

Link nods and smiles at her as best he can. His voice shakes. “Thank you. D’you need help with anythin for your travels?“

The woman shakes her head and opens her mouth to reply, her hand dropping, but the other, younger traveler gasps like they’ve been slapped. Link and the woman turn. They’re staring at Link’s hand where it rests on the woman’s sternum.

Link isn’t wearing his gauntlets. The Triforce is in full display. The woman registers this and looks up at Link like she’s seen a saint. Which, technically, he supposes she has. She wraps her fingers around his wrist.

“A blessing from the Hero is no greater gift,“ she says. “Thank you for your courage.“

Link’s ears burn and he drops his hand to his side. He scratches at a mole on the side of his neck. “I’m sorry for your loss.“

The woman opens her mouth to say more but stops. She inclines her head at him and gingerly makes her way down the stairs, careful not to jostle the body in her arms. The younger traveler studies Link’s face as they pass. There is a quiet conversation downstairs. The front door of the West Nave Inn closes. The foyer is quiet.

Deer has gone and Fox has begun when Time emerges from his fever in a puddle of sweat and headache. He sits up and groans, legs sticking to the sheets. Link rushes to his side, meal tray at the ready. Time pushes it away.

“Almighty Farore, I would rather muck out a dragon’s den with my bare hands and my own toothbrush than ever do that again,“ he croaks. “Bath now, food later.“

Link holds his hands up in surrender.

The trees outside are fully shrouded in their autumn reds and golds. Frost creeps up the windows. Ipheta has begun bringing bed warming pans at night. They have lost nearly three weeks here — an almost-month they could have been using to further whatever goal the divine designated for them here. He would not be surprised if that opportunity has evaded them now. Link finds he doesn’t quite care. No one died. That’s enough for him.

Sky, Wind, and Captain’s fevers break next. Captain and Wind take their first meal in two days with wolfish hunger. Sky is grumpy as all-get-out and refuses food, instead electing that he must do his laundry right that second.

“I am afouled,“ he grumbles. Captain opts to follow him so he doesn’t tumble down any stairs on his wobbly knees.

Just as they had fallen, one by one, the heroes rise again. They’re shaky, weak, and tired, but they emerge unscathed. 

Link catches Captain studying his new pockmark scars on his neck at the inn baths. Captain frowns, running his fingers down the indented half-moons decorating his throat. They’re still a little red.

“They’ll fade with time,” Link says. His pocks had persevered on his shoulders and arms and now you couldn’t hardly see them without actively searching for them.

Captain gives Link a weary, grateful smile. “Ah, well. If they don’t, what’s a few more?” He holds up his hands and wiggles his fingers, crosshatched with thin white scars from blade incidents, sword callouses, and rough shiny places where he’s been burned.

“Don I know it,” Link says. He rolls up his sleeve and shows off the remainder of a particularly nasty gash. “At least yours didn’t come from somewhere stupid. Guess where I got this one. Go on, guess.”

“Ah, I don’t know,” Captain says. “Enemy sword?”

“I wish!” Link says, laughing at himself. “I got caught in barb wire tryin to free a goat that was also stuck in barb wire. Freaked the goat out, got dragged around the barnyard. I wudn’t no better than the goat. Screamin my head off.”

Time’s unhinged howl comes from behind them where he’s pulling on a clean tunic after his own bath.

“Sorry,” he says, stifling more laughs. He lets out a long, measured breath. He wipes his eye. “I can see it so clearly.”

Link rolls his eyes and stabs a thumb at Time for Captain’s benefit, asking, you see this shit, too? Captain snickers and sinks deeper into the bath so only his eyes and hair are above water. Link and Time leave Captain to soak like a root vegetable in a soup pot, the door to the baths swinging shut behind them. 

"Kid,“ Time says once they’re out in the corridor. Link stops. Time’s hand lands on the place where Link’s neck meets his shoulder and stays there. Link tries not to melt into it. "What you’ve done for all of us…that had to have been hard. You did a great job. The others may say it in their own ways, but I’ll tell you now. We thank you.“

Link pauses, then shakes his head. "There ain’t no favor to be grateful for. I didn’t have no choice. I had to keep y’all alive.“

Time’s brow furrows. He studies Link for a moment, long enough Link shifts uncomfortably. "No, you had a choice. I know the alderman’s doctor stopped by. They were more than capable of caring for eight infirm. You took it all on yourself. Take the thanks.“

Link glances down the hallway where Legend and Rulie are chatting just out of sight. He gulps. He does not meet Time’s eyes. “I had to.“

"No, you didn’t. But you did anyway,“ Time says. He pats Link’s shoulder, then guides him by the shoulder to the room that had been Link’s cell for two weeks. 

The door and windows are flung open. Brisk autumn air chills the room but chases out the smell of stale illness. Four and Sky are stripping the filthy sheets off the beds and tossing it onto a white cloth mountain for the laundry maids to collect later. The counterpanes and coverlets pile onto one of the double beds, a riot of yellows, blues, and greens. Wind is hanging precariously over the windowsill, grinning down the street at the main square.

Link yelps and scrambles to Wind, arms coming around his waist to cage him in, and drags him away from certain injury.

"What’s the big idea!“ Wind protests. He wriggles in Link’s arms. His skinny, awkward limbs flail in all directions as he tries in vain to escape. "I wasn’t gonna fall or nothing!“

"Famous last words,“ Link grumbles, then deposits his wiggly prisoner onto the closest bed, burying him in a mountain of quilts.

Wind’s legs kick and fling around as he fights his way out of his fabric tomb. He lifts a red counterpane to peer out at Link. "There’s something fun going on in the main square and I wanna check it out!“

Link pauses, then too cranes his head out the window at the square beyond.

City cleaners and stall merchants are hanging lanterns on the columns and buttresses ringing the central fountain. Little pink baubles, powered by fairies, dangle from the eaves of homes and awnings of businesses. Unlit candles cover the fountain’s lip. A person in colorful garb is dragging a paintbrush across the flagstones with practiced precision. In day, the effect of the lights and the floor mural is underwhelming, but at night it’ll be magical.

"Oh, it’s the second day of Fox,“ Link muses to himself. 

"And that means what?“ Wind asks. Four and Sky have abandoned their job and are listening in.

"It’s the second official day of winter,“ Link says. He turns and meets more eyes than he was expecting — Rulie, Legend, and Wild had entered while he was distracted. Wild frowns in concentration while wringing out his wet hair with a towel. "They’re preparin for the first day a’the Lights Festival tonight.“

"Oh!“ Sky perks up and claps his hands together. "Mine own home keeps a Lights Festival. It indues much felicity.“

Wild buries his head in the towel and shakes it around like a wet dog. Water droplets fly everywhere. Time wipes a stray droplet off his face with little change in expression. Once Wild’s hair is no longer dripping, he reaches behind his neck and braids his long hair with expert fluency and speed.

"Can we go?“ Wind exclaims. He frees himself from his blanket prison and bounces on his knees on the mattress. "It’ll be fun, I bet. We’ve been stuck here for for- ever.”

Link hesitates, glancing up at Time for guidance. Time shrugs and gestures at Link, deferring. 

"I dunno…“ Link says slowly. While they weren’t contagious anymore, they were fresh out of a rough illness. Link doesn’t want them to overdo it and exhaust themselves. They should still be resting, in his opinion, but woe betide whoever tries to keep them from a task they set their mind to.

"Nay, rancher, fret not,“ Sky says. He reaches across the bed and ruffles Wind’s hair, to much protesting and gnashing of teeth. "Joy oft heals the spirit quicker than sleep.“

Link glances where Four leans on the credenza by the door. Wild is still a little green around the edges. Sky’s eyes are dark and tired.

"If we tire ourselves out, we’ll come back to the inn,“ Rulie says.

He sighs, long and slow. Wind and Rulie cheer, knowing they’ve won him over.

Link hasn’t been to a Lights Festival in a good few years. Fox was the very last of the harvest season, and traveling two days all the way to Castletown just for a festival was impractical for Ordon farmers. The year he was eighteen, Castletown was threatened by the Twilight, and any inklings of having a Lights Festival was thrown to the wayside. He had gone to a few during his tenure at court, but not many others. He regrets missing out now as he stares up at the twinkling, colorful, enchanting mess of lanterns, fairy baubles, and candles in the Central Square.

Every surface, lamppost, and hanging bunting is lit with oranges, yellows, and pinks. The fountain water seems to glitter. The main square is so crowded that Link can’t quite see the full floor mural, but he catches glimpses of purple, orange, and yellow feathers. Merchant stalls line the edge of the square. Business’s doors are flung wide open. A band of fiddlers and drummers play in front of one of the cafes, music rising over the din of the crowd. Against the dark sky, Castletown is a bright, warm spot in the cold night.

Link enters the square followed by eight heroes, and not two steps in, his number of trailing ducklings reduces to four. Rulie runs off, enticed by a merchant stall, Legend following close behind. Wind and Four take off in much the same way, but with Wind hot on the heels of a woman with a tiny, fluffy dog.

Wild quails at the crowds. Link turns to him and seizes his upper arm before he can break through the levee of Sky, Captain, and Time into the raging tide of festival-goers. 

“You don have to,” Link says, almost having to shout over the noise. “You can go back to the inn, no shame.”

Wild shakes his head. His gold hair flies all around him. “I want to.”

“Alright,” Link says. He guides Wild by the shoulders toward a few of the merchant stalls where the crowd is thinner. “Do you want me to stick by you?”

Wild shakes his head. He’s making eyes at a stand selling fresh bread.

“You come get me if you need me, got it?” Link asks. Once Wild nods, he lets him go, and Wild makes a beeline for the baker’s.

The fiddler band picks up a new jaunty, energetic tune, and the surrounding revelers clap a steady beat. Link cranes his head over the crowd to get a better look. Sky has dragged Rulie bodily into the circle of dancers, whirling him around, laughing the whole way at Rulie’s clumsiness. Link warms at the joy on their faces and the cheering crowd. Maybe Sky was right.

"Link?!“ A woman hollers a short distance away. Link’s head jerks in her direction. Sky and Rulie stumble for a moment, surprised, but fall back into dance.

It’s Telma. Link gulps and finger-combs his hair as she approaches. He hasn’t spoken to her in months.

Telma is just as bright and overwhelming as she had been when Link first met her. She is unchanged, save for a light dusting of snow at her temples. She almost bounces toward him. Her hands come up, brushing off imaginary dust on his shoulders and lint in his hair. She has to look up at him to meet his eyes. Link never really got used to being taller to her.

"Look at you! I swear, you get handsomer every time I see you. Taller, too!“ Telma says. She reaches up to pet the top of his head. "How have you been? I haven’t seen you in forever.“

Link can’t meet her eyes. "Ah, I been good. Busy with hero stuff.“

"I’ll bet,“ Telma says. She tugs his arm and yanks him to sit on an empty stool a few steps away from the fiddler band. She sits across from him. "Speaking of, who are these dashing young men you’re with?“

The prickling, hot, uncomfortable feeling dissipates once the conversation is off him. He jumps at the chance to sing other heros’ praises.

"There’s nine a us,“ Link says. He points out Sky and Rulie, now roped into a line dance Link knows. Wild, Four, and Legend are perusing delicate glass blown vases and sculptures at a stall outside a guardpost. Time is accompanying Wind as he dotes on the stray cats of Castletown. Captain is nowhere to be found. "Met ‘em on the road. Turns out we’re distant cousins. Who’da thunk?“

"Who’da thunk indeed,“ Telma says. She’s frowning at Legend as he haggles with the glass stall’s clerk. "Why isn’t that one wearing any pants? Poor thing has to be freezing.“

Link considers this for a moment. "Ah, you know, bless his heart, they just don’t got pants where he’s from.“

"Wow, really?“ Telma does not believe him, based on the look she gives him.

"Yup,“ Link says, biting his cheek to keep from giggling. "And he’s so short, we can’t hardly find nothin that fits him. So he’s been ornery and cantankerous this whole time.“

"Poor thing,“ Telma says. She elbows Link and he smothers his laugh. Legend is glaring at them now. Link’s canine hearing can just barely catch him asking Wild if Link and Telma are talking about him. Wild shrugs, more concerned with the sparkling deer figurine he’s studying, held so close to his face he’s cross-eyed.

"How long have you been with them?“ Telma asks. She waves down a barmaid from the cafe and holds up two fingers — two mulled wines, maybe one for Link and one for herself, but knowing Telma they might both be for her.

"Near five months or so?“ Link says. "We got stuck here for the last month cuz they came down with an awful bout a harepox.“

"No!“ Telma gasps. "Where are they from, then, if they’ve never had it?“

"Around,“ Link says. "If you get to talkin to em, you can tell.“

Telma hums. She’s studying Link, a particular look in her eye that he can’t puzzle out the meaning of. The barmaid approaches and settles two mugs on the table at Telma’s side. Telma gestures at her coinpurse but the barmaid shakes her head. Little auburn curls are falling out of the barmaid’s braided hairstyle.

"First drinks are free for the festival nights,“ the barmaid says. "If you want a second round for you and the gentleman, then I’ll trouble you for coin. For now, cheers, oemamna Telma.“

Telma smiles at her and gives the barmaid’s hip a motherly pat to say thanks. The barmaid bows out. She glances at Link and her face drops. Recognized, then. She stammers through a ‘see ya,‘ and jets off to the cafe through the audience watching the dancers. Telma passes Link the other mug. He accepts.

Telma waits until he’s taken his first sip to say, "Link, I know Castletown can be hard for you. I just wish you’d have written or stopped by at least once. I get worried. Eight months is a long time.“

Link pauses mid-sip. The mug falls from his mouth to rest on his lap. He rubs his fingers over the ridges on the side. It radiates warmth into his hands. "I know. I’m sorry.“

Telma shakes her head and rests her hand on his knee. "No sorries. Next time you’re in town, just make sure you stop by to at least give Louise a few pets. There’s always a tab open for you, love.“

Link laughs. "You’re tryin to turn me into one a your best customers, ain’tcha?”

Telma winks at him. "Maybe.“

"Well, hello,“ Captain’s voice comes from behind Link. "Who’s this lovely lady you’re with, Link?“

Link turns and shoots Captain a glare so sharp he’s surprised it doesn’t kill him on the spot. Captain ignores this. He’s foregone his chainmail and green tunic for something warmer, but he still gives Telma a dazzling smile like he’s dressed as a dashing knight captain.

"An old friend a mine, Telma,“ Link says. Captain is standing right next to him. Credit where credit is due, he doesn’t flinch when Link surreptitiously pinches the back of his leg. "Telma, this is the ninth I couldn’t find.“

"A pleasure!“ Telma says. She reaches out to shake Captain’s hand. Captain does so, then turns her hand to kiss it. Link wants to strangle him.

"The pleasure’s all mine,“ Captain says, grinning crookedly. Link will strangle him. Captain drops her hand then plucks Link’s mug out of his grasp. Link only just stops himself from tackling him.

The moment Link’s hands are unoccupied, they are re-occupied with Four’s hands. Four cackles down at him and tugs him toward the fiddle band. The crowd of dancers has grown, and in the middle of the chaos, five heroes are laughing and spinning each other around.

“I ain’t much a dancer,” Link says. Telma is giggling at him behind her hand.

“And?” Four says. He tugs harder and Link stumbles to his feet. “Neither am I.”

As Link is kidnapped, Captain takes his place on the stool. While Telma is occupied with laughing at one of Captain’s jokes, Link mouths at him, I will kill you. Captain mouths back, I’d like to see you try. Then, Link is submerged in the crowds of dancers and audience members, and he can’t see Captain anymore.

Link is dragged into the undertow of twirling, kicking, clapping dancers. Wild catches his hand. The music drives higher, higher, faster, faster. Wild drags him around, missing other dancers by a hair, throwing his head back and laughing. Just as he’s starting to get dizzy, Wild lets go, and a woman snags Link by the arm. In the inner circle of dancers, people stomp and jump, letting the frantic fiddling guide them.

The song finishes on one last note and Link crashes into a pretty guy his age, who laughs at him and helps him up. The dancers’ audience applauds for the fiddlers. Link waves off Sky, trying to entice him into doing another song.

He leans against the wall next to Time, watching with a faint smile and clapping to the beat.

“Not gonna dance?” Link asks. Time chuckles and shakes his head.

“I’ve two left feet,” Time says. He nudges Link’s shoulder. “You at least seem to be quite the talent.”

“Naw, not at all,” Link says. The dancers twirl in dizzying, concentric circles, drawing inward and drawing outward like a pulse. “I near bowled someone over.”

Time cackles and they lapse into silence, watching their teammates celebrate a holiday they don’t know with people they don’t know, but still enjoying it all the same.

After past Lights Festivals, Link would return to his dark castle chambers, alone, the silence suffocating. Tonight, he will return to an overcrowded room, laughing and joking the whole way, surrounded by people he cares about.

Everything good has to come to an end, though. Link’s heart sinks a little. Wind emerges from the tempest, panting and sweating and smiling, face red, and is sucked back in just as quickly. Link doesn’t know if he can go back to the loneliness. 

He shakes himself and decides not to think about it.

Four has a shadow hanging over his shoulder.

Not literally, of course, but Link catches him turning to talk to someone behind him, only to stop when he notices that someone’s not there. Or, when their conversations are getting too ridiculous, he makes a face aside at nothing without thinking. He’ll find little trinkets and doodads at markets and stare at them for just a moment too long. Like they remind him of someone.

Link only notices because he does it too.

“I’m sorry,” Link says one day, bundled up from nose to toes, hauling a fishing net out of a half-frozen lake for their dinner that night. Next to him, Four’s gloved fingers clench in the knotted ropes. Four glances at him and puts his back into another heave. The net slides off the bank and tumbles onto the snow.

“What d’you have to be sorry for?” Four says. He pulls a knife from his boot and starts picking at the knots they’d tied.

“Your friend,” Link says. “The one that’s gone. I’m sorry.”

Four frowns. His knife pauses. He unfurls his fists from the net. Kneeling on the snow, he looks even smaller. His cheeks are bright red from cold.

“It’s fine,” Four says, but with a certain twinge to it that tells Link it’s not fine at all.

Link debates it, but ends up not saying anything back. He shifts in the snow and leans his side into Four’s, warming him, hands still. They sit together for a while, quiet.

The fifth time The Undead visits Hateno Village, something big is happening. The townspeople are dressed in bright, garish colors, talking softly amongst each other outside Medda the farmer’s house. The Undead approaches, shield and bow clacking against each other. The mud drying on his face itches.

A woman at the back of the crowd, hearing the racket he is making, turns. He thinks her name is Uma. She tends the communal cooking pots outside Ton Pu Inn. Her face is wrinkled like an old shirt, her hair wispy and white. It’s pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head. She steps away from the crowd of whisperers. She beckons The Undead over.

He approaches Uma, making a questioning noise.

"Hello, yung-ĕr," she says. "Have you eaten yet?“

He nods. She nods back, satisfied, and pats his side. "You’ll have trouble with your supply needs today, I’m afraid. Everyone’s taken off for the afternoon.“

He tilts his head.

"We’re taking Medda’s wife to her cradle today,“ Uma says, leaning in and glancing at the crowd outside Medda’s door.

He is new to human language, the particularities of dialects even more so. In Hateno Hylian, ‘grave‘ and ‘cradle‘ are the same word. He doesn’t realize this even when a tired man emerges from the house, cradling someone wrapped in a burial shroud. His tiny daughter — no older than four — follows and hangs onto the hem of his tunic. The burial shroud is a pale blue color, every inch covered in painstaking floral embroidery. Medda’s wife’s name lines the edge, but The Undead can’t read Hylian yet.

Confused and intrigued, he lets Uma guide him with the procession. She takes a white scarf from her waist and wraps it around his shoulders and head. 

"To make you blessing-presentable,“ she says, gesturing at the filth that clings to his clothing. He had been hoping to wash out the blood and dirt in the springs behind the dye shop before his plans were interrupted.

He doesn’t understand at first. He thinks the procession will go to a house where a new baby has been born to give birth blessings. He doesn’t know why they would bring a corpse to a celebration of birth, but he has learned by now that some questions are not polite to ask.

The procession climbs up a hill near the Ancient Furnace where low stones, carved with letters he can’t read, watch over the blue mountains and rolling hills in the distance. A rainstorm brews in deep, dark clouds far past Fort Hateno. It must be raining at the Dueling Peaks. The villagers speak to each other. Some hum songs. They brace covered wicker baskets on their hips, heads, and shoulders. Medda and his daughter are quiet.

A deep hole is at the edge of the stone-field. The long, silken grass around it whispers, rippling in the wind. Medda lays the body in the hole. Then, one by one, the villagers uncover the wicker baskets and dump their contents in the grave.

A wave of colors spills forth. Petals, flowers, bouquets. They rain into the grave until the shroud is buried in blooms. Medda kneels and starts placing objects that The Undead can’t see around the shroud, pillowed by the bed of flowers.

He wraps his fingers around Uma’s wrist. She turns. She adjusts the folds of the scarf that’s fallen around his shoulders.

"Flowers why?“ he croaks.

"Oh, you know,“ Uma says. "It’s tradition. You know, the lusher the grave, the lusher the life. The more flowers you have in your cradle, the more people that gathered to tell you goodbye. So we try to make sure everyone’s got enough.“

He worries the scarf’s thin material between his fingers. "Baby cradle?“

"No, not hĕraia like baby cradle, yüng- ĕr. Hĕraia like grave,“ Uma says. "You begin and end your life somewhere soft and safe. We are all born and we all die. Every beginning has an ending. That's what my mother always told me. I think it’s beautiful.“

He frowns. Medda is humming a song. The others are joining in.

He takes the Sheikah Slate off his hip and taps a few buttons. Silent Princesses materialize in his hand in a blooming burst of magic. They’re his favorite. He thrusts his hands forward and Uma smiles at him.

"Yes, yes, go,“ she murmurs, nudging him forward.

He weaves through the crowd of mourners. A few murmur as he passes. He kneels in the mud at the edge. It soaks into the knees of his pants, cool and wet. He cradles his bounty in his hands, curling his fingers gently so he won’t crush the petals. Even in the brightness of an overcast midday, they glow faintly silver. He sniffs at the fizz of magic that comes off them like fragrance does with normal flowers.

Medda looks up at him. His funeral scarf, wrapped around his shoulders and tucked into his belt, is the same pale blue as his wife’s burial shroud. The embroidery on it is half-finished.

He glances away from Medda to stare down into the cradle. The body beneath lays flat, covered completely by the bed of blooms. Coins and bits of jewelry sit where her hands would be. The flowers rise where her head and chest are, then dip where her legs taper. He stretches his hands over the cradle and lets the Silent Princesses fall. 

Medda nods at him. The Undead blinks back and gives him a smile that doesn’t show teeth but shows sympathy. He has known rebirth before. He doesn’t know his own death yet. He has not yet been to the misty forest in the north, but something calls him. He forgets his war and the weight on his shoulders for now and sits at the graveside of a stranger, wondering who she had been and who he once was.

Medda lifts a handful of dirt from the pile next to him and lets it pour through his fingers onto the flowers below. It sounds like rain.

The Undead learned a new word today. Hĕraia. It sounds like peace.

The child he’d saved beats him to Snowfield Stable. Link stumbles on a sprained ankle, lugging a great weight over the snow, so his return is a little less glorious. The bitter cold wind burns his cheeks. The snow envelops the tiny figure sprinting ahead of him in a great wall of white, the screaming wind drowning out her tiny footsteps and ragged breathing, leaving him alone with his own quiet.

The lynel head he drags leaves a great scarlet streak behind him. The blood is still so hot the snow steams and boils where it drips. He is covered in it, a dark, crimson figure on white, stark against the blue light of a blizzard midmorning. The lynel’s death mask is frozen into a snarl. Arrows stick out of its skull like a horrible pincushion.

A crowd gathers inside the stable’s windbreak. Someone drops to their knees and embraces the returning child with open arms, swaying back and forth. Once Link is close enough, he sees it’s Harlowe, the blonde stablehand. She had been kind to him the first time he arrived here. She glances up at him and jolts a little. He can’t be a pretty sight, hair matted with lynel blood, clothes stained so thoroughly red is rendered black, dragging his gory spoils behind him.

Harlowe stands. The elderly stablehand, hunched over from age, guides the child into the stable to warm up. The child is still hiccupping. She glances back at Link, hesitant to leave him with the adults, but he nods at her and she continues inside.

Harlowe reaches behind her neck and fumbles with a delicate silver chain. She unhooks it and dangles the necklace in front of him. The silver is bright, pure in color. A solid silver pendant embossed with a single Hylian letter sways back and forth.

One of the first lessons Impa taught him was about gifts. This does not feel like a gift. This is payment.

Link shakes his head. He drops the lynel head next to him. The snow crunches underneath.

"You won’t let us reward you for your battles?“ Harlowe asks. She seems confused, but retracts the necklace anyway.

When Link speaks, it is raspy and quiet, barely audible over the howling of the blizzard.

"People do each other kindnesses,“ he parrots.

Harlow smiles a little and puts the necklace back on. "Yes, I suppose we do.“

Link squats next to the head and jostles it by the horns, studying the fur and fangs. He’d really carved this one up. He’d wanted to sell it for parts, but he’s not sure if even Kilton would take these.

"You will not be bothered until next Blood Moon,“ he croaks. "If it causes trouble again, tell Beedle. He will find me.“

"I will!“ Beedle pipes up from the back.

"Allow us at least to thank you,“ Harlowe says.

Link blinks up at her. He rises, then nudges the lynel head with the toe of his boot. "A warm bed and a bath, I would like.“

A third stablehand claps a hand on his shoulder and guides him toward the stable. "That we can do!“

Link burns the lynel head later. He watches it crumble into ash until only the skull remains. He grasps the blackened bone, still hot through his gloves, and tosses it into the treeline. Hund-ĕr sits sentry at his side.

He doesn’t know what prompts it this time. They’re all talking, stitching wounds and nursing bruises, when Link looks over at Wild. He’s staring blankly at the torn bandage intertwined in his fingers. His gold hair slides off his shoulder and sways in front of him. The rest of him is deathly still. Link lays a hand at the back of Wild’s neck and rubs his thumb there. Wild doesn’t react for a good half-minute.

 None of the others notice. They’re too busy with a nasty gash on Rulie’s arm. Four presses a wet rag to a bruise on his temple. Time sponges gravel out of Wind’s knee. Wild and Link, the two least injured, are at the bottom of the priority list.

Wild blinks and his shoulders relax.

“What was it this time? Can you say?” Link asks, quiet.

Wild sighs long. “Royal Guard boot camp.”

Link’s thumb continues its path on the side of Wild’s neck. Wild shakes his head and stands.

“I need air,” Wild says, places the bandages in Link’s hands, and shoulders the water mill’s front door open. The night outside is anything but quiet, fireflies sparking, cicadas singing, bullfrogs calling. Someone makes an inquisitive noise when the door closes behind Wild, but Link waves them off. He lets him to his solitude. Wild’s journey had been one of both terrible and wonderful loneliness. At least from what Link knows. People-ing sometimes exhausts him more than any of the others.

Link tends to Wind’s scrapes and forces a medicinal tincture down Time’s gullet at Rulie’s behest. He’s subjected to a full-body inspection. Once he’s deemed uninjured enough, Link corrals all of them, save the most stubborn, into resting. Wild has been gone for half an hour.

Link leaves the water mill. Outside, the river rushes around the spinning water wheel and the cicadas buzz. Wild is nowhere to be seen. He thinks on it for a moment. There’s a ladder up to the millhouse roof. 

Link, halfway up the ladder, calls out, “Permission to enter his majesty’s office?”

Wild sighs from the roof. Link laughs at his own joke and climbs up. Wild lies on his back on the thatch, looking at the stars. The water wheel creaks as it spins.

Link lays down next to him. The spray of stars above them is thick and silver, gold, white, purple. He can spot the Wolf constellation, shifted further eastward than back home. There’s the Lion-Warrior, brandishing his shield against his attacker. The pines around the water mill strike up into the sky, black against the glow of a million distant suns.

“You good?” Link asks.

Wild shrugs. The thatch crunches under him. “I am now.”

Link nods. Wild’s profile is lit blue by the moon. The stars glitter in his eyes.

“I wanna understand,” Link says. Wild looks at him from the corner of his eye. “Tell me everything.”

Wild breathes. The breeze stirs his hair and makes the little dangly parts on his earrings clink. They glimmer in the starlight.

Wild tells him everything. His death, his rebirth, his journey, the sacrifices and losses, the joys and the friends he made. How now he can hear the land that is Hyrule breathing. How he is as much a part of the wilderness as any tree or bear. How he can’t remember the people who raised him. How he is both alone and never alone, always.

“You too,” Wild says.

“Me?” Link says.

“Yes, I want to know too,” Wild says.

Link sighs and frowns up at the galaxies. He tells Wild about his hometown. The Twilight. His battles. He leaves a few things out.

The moon is high in the sky.

They’ve gotten the fire roaring by the time he comes back from washing bokoblin blood out of his fur hood. He wrings it out as he approaches, the water trickling down the hillside and into the river. The crickets and cicadas are singing. Bullfrogs croak at the riverside behind him.

Someone is saying something, their inflection full of dramatics and volume a little too high to be normal conversation. It’s Wind, hands flung wide, regaling the tale of his battle with a sea serpent. His audience cheers as he slashes with an imaginary sword. Wild watches on, amused, turning kebabs over the blazing campfire.

"Are we havin storytime?“ Link asks after Wind finishes, bowing to his audience, who clap and whoop.

"We sure are,“ Captain says, patting the space next to him on the log for Link to sit down. Link does so. He lays his fur hood next to him to dry.

"Cook!“ Wind says, bouncing up and down. He’s invigorated by the cheers and over-excited. "Your turn, your turn!“

Wild jerks up, surprised at his sudden introduction into the conversation. He gestures at the kebabs he’s tending. Time waves him off to the stage and takes over. Wild fidgets once eight pairs of eyes are focused on him.

“Alright, alright fine,” Wild says. He tugs the cord out of his ponytail and lets his hair fall around him in a shining gold curtain. The audience cheers and whistles and Wild flushes at the attention.

“Well, when I woke up and forgot everything, I mean everything,” Wild begins. Time passes finished kebabs down the line. Captain, instead of passing one on, digs in. Legend, at the very end of the line at Captain’s right, affixes him with a venomous stink-eye. “Everything. I learned from scratch. I knew monsters would attack you but I had to learn to fight the hard way.”

Link winces, remembering the curved scars of monster teeth on Wild’s upper arm. Wild waves his hands to ease the worried murmurs that course through his audience.

“Anyway, I was crossing the Bridge of Hylia and out of the water comes a huge, green, fanged thing with talons and spikes. In my entire life, which had been about four days at that point, I learned that things with talons and fangs, in most cases, will hurt you. So I wanted to attack it before it attacked me. I caught an updraft with my parasail —”  Wild flings his hands in the air, holding them there, wiggling his fingers, then drops them, fingers wrapped around an imaginary sword hilt, “— and tried to stab it.”

“What was it?” Four asks through a mouthful of roast venison.

“A dragon,” Wild says. A chorus of ‘wow’s and ‘ooo’s follows this. Link huffs a laugh through his nose and tears off a chunk of meat from his kebab. Wild would never admit it, but he has a penchant for theater.  “I try to stab it, and it glances off the scales! It was stab-proof!”

A few gasps and hums. Wind tilts his head and leans forward, enraptured.

“Did it attack you?” Rulie asks.

“No. I was like a fly. It did not even react,” Wild says. “What did happen was almost worse.”

Wild raises his arm and tilts it, then uses two fingers on the other hand to represent himself. “I bounced off its back. All the way down, like a stone on a lake, until I fell in the water. Plop.”

He mimes this, his fingers flailing down his arm. His audience erupts into laughter at the image. Wild giggles at his past self’s predicament.

“That is how I learned not to stab everything. I got a dragon scale out of it, though, wanna see?”

“Yes!” chorus Four, Sky, and Wind. Wild taps a few buttons on the slate at his hip. A greenish-white scale, glimmering with magic and electricity, appears in his hands. It has an intrinsic glow, even when separated from its peers. They ooh and ah over it, weighing it in their hands, passing it between each other.

“The dragon’s name was Farosh,” Wild says.

“Like the goddess?” Link asks. Wild frowns and glances up. There’s confusion, not recognition.

“Oh, yes, that would make sense,” Time concurs. “They often manifest physical forms when the need calls for it.”

Legend nods. Wild’s confusion doesn’t clear. 

“Our patron, Farore,” Link says. “I guess it tracks that some eras don really celebrate the Golden Goddesses.”

“I, too, know not of whom you speak,” Sky pipes up. He lifts the scale above his head to better catch the moonlight. It looks sturdy, heavy, about the size and weight of a brick. “I wit a dragon titled Faron. Perhaps they two are of blood.”

Legend, unimpressed by the scale, elbows his seat-neighbor. “Captain hasn’t told any fun stories yet.” 

“No, my stories really aren’t much fun,” Captain says. He stretches and rises from the log. “And the ones that are fun aren’t appropriate for some of the present company.”

All those included in ‘some of the present company’ groan and protest, but Captain doesn’t budge.

Link wakes up late in the night. There’s some harsh breathing, a gasp, then silence. Link, always attuned to the moods of others by way of his canine senses, sits up to search for the culprit. As he rises, so too does Wind.

Wind, hearing Link’s rustling bedroll, turns, eyes wide. They’re red-rimmed and shiny. The dying embers of the fire crack and pop, throwing up cold, red sparks between him and Wind. 

“Nightmare, pumpkin?” Link mumbles, sitting up. His voice is gravelly due to the hour. In his state, he forgets himself, and lifts his blanket to offer a warmer place to sleep and a hug.

Wind’s ears flatten back. His whole face scrunches up at Link’s audacity to offer comfort. “I’m not a baby!” he protests, half-whispering, loud enough that Four grunts and rolls over. Wind has the decency to look guilty about disturbing the others’ sleep.

“You’re right, sorry,” Link says. “My little siblings need that sometimes.”

“Well, I don’t,” he says. “I’m thirteen, not three!”

Link nods but does not roll back over to leave Wind to his thoughts. Wind huffs at this, ears still flat back, crossing his arms. He doesn’t keep the offended act up for very long. His tightly crossed arms loosen to curl around his knees. He buries his mouth and chin in the crevice between his knees and stares off into the darkness of the night.

“What was it about?” Link asks.

Wind is quiet for a long, long moment, before heaving a slow breath. “My grandma and my sister.”

Link hums but doesn’t say anything else. He watches Wind for a few minutes. Wind can see him out of the corner of his eye, but doesn’t tell him to stop staring. Link lays back down and pulls the blanket back over him. An arms-length away, at his back, Wild sniffles.

Link closes his eyes but is careful not to fall back asleep. Minutes tick by. The cooling firewood in the pit cracks and tumbles to the ground. There’s rustling, quiet footsteps, and a bedroll falls onto the dirt next to him. Wind follows soon after. Link smells the sea salt that clings to his hair.

He dares to crack an eye open. He would barely be able to brush Wind’s shoulder with his fingers. Wind rolls onto his side, facing toward the fire and away from Link. Link makes sure to keep his closest hand free from his blankets.

Someone shoves a leather cord in his face. Link flinches back on instinct and glances up at the culprit.

It’s Wild, ears pinned back and resolutely not looking Link in the eye. He wiggles the cord again. Link glances between the cord and Wild’s face, offering up an intelligent ”huh?”

“It’s cold. My hands won’t behave,” Wild says. His ears go pink when he lies.

Link takes this for what it is — a cat exposing its belly. He doesn’t remark on how it’s warm enough that Wild’s shed his cloak and shoes without sacrificing comfort. The seat Link’s taken on a tree stump is a few feet from the water and no less warm for it. Link smiles up at him and pats the soft earth between his knees. Wild nods and settles down.

Gold threads between Link’s fingers and pools in his palms. He tugs the hair taut and muscle memory from hundreds of little-sibling braids takes over. Wild rocks back and forth contentedly while Link’s fingers brush through his hair and smooth it into a shining rope.

Children are scream-laughing down the road at the farmhouse they’d passed earlier. The wind whistles through the proud, tall pines. Wild’s breath and heartbeat comes steady. The others mill around. Epona bows over a thatch of yellow wildflowers at the side of the road.

Wild hums under his breath. Little beeps and clicks come from his slate while he digs through his inventory. Link clicks his fingers over Wild’s shoulder for Wild to hand over the hair cord. Link curls it around his middle and ring finger.

“How do you know how to braid?” Wild asks.

Link wraps the cord once, twice, thrice around the end of Wild’s braid. “Someone had to do the kids’ hair in the mornin. That fell to me.”

Over Wild’s shoulder, Link sees Wild twisting meadow grass into a neat plait. He rolls his eyes at the abandoned ruse, but remembers the expert motions of Wild’s hands back at the West Nave. 

“How’d you learn to braid?” Link prods.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just something I’ve known. If I had a teacher, I’ve forgotten them.”

Someone taught you, Link thinks but does not say. Someone loved you enough to teach you. A sister, maybe. You had a sister.

You had a family that knew your favorite food was meat stew and that when you laugh your hands get weak so you drop things, you had school friends you played tag with in the yard, you had a grandmother that spoiled you, you had a father and a mother and family and hopes and dreams, and things you liked and things you didn’t. And you had a sister.

And you can’t remember any of it. It has been stolen from you.

Link doesn’t say anything. He brushes a loose sheaf of hair into the braid, more gently than he had been. He pulls the cord to and ties it in a neat, tight bow. Wild draws the braid over his shoulder to assess Link’s work, and, finding it satisfactory, cranes his head back to grin at him upside-down. It rivals the sun.

Link rolls his eyes at him and pats his back to get him to shuffle forward so Link can stand. Link groans and his knees pop as he rises. Wild runs his fingers down the loops of his braid. Link watches him.

“Want me to do yours?” Wild asks.

“Mine ain’t near long enough, I don think,” Link says.

“Maybe not yet, but soon,” Wild says.

Wild’s cheekbones are sharper than they had been when they first met. It isn’t from hunger.

Link had suspected, really. Malon’s hair curls like Link’s does. Her fingers are squarish like his. Time’s brows are as severe and stark as Link’s. They both have one dimple, but not two.

Link has no doubt. Time claps his hands to Link’s shoulders and declares him his descendant, and Link’s chest gets all bright and light like his heart’s been replaced with a hot air balloon. 

Malon lights up and seizes him by the arms, excited. Link leans into her touch.

Link turns twenty-six on his deathbed. 

An axe has carved a cicatrix down his middle. He doesn’t remember this. He whimpers ‘mama,’ voice drowning in the haze of pain the world has become, and he isn’t aware enough to think to be embarrassed about it. People are arguing. He wants them to stop. It hurts.

“It’s okay, Link,” someone says, warm, familiar. He relaxes. Hands in his hair. Hands behind his ears. “Just rest. We’ll stop fighting, we’re sorry.”

His consciousness drops away underneath him like a trapdoor and everything is quiet.

Ordona, restored, gives him his hero’s tunic. The magic is dizzying. Golden light pours forth, pulsing with the heartbeat of the woods, pure and holy, pressing down on him. He puts the tunic on. It’s just his size. There is a place on the sleeve where someone patched a tear with careful, loving hands.

“Mine?” he asks.

Always was, always will be, Ordona says. Love it well, if only for those that come after.

Once they exit the portal, Wild gasps so loud that Link jumps.

Wild almost tumbles onto the ground in his excitement, then scrambles to his feet in a mad jumble of coltish limbs. As Link steps through, the magic oozing off his shoulders and knees, he stares up into a lush, emerald canopy. It’s humid and cool, speaking to a recent rainstorm. The light is blue — it must be right after sunset or before dawn.

"Come on!“ Wild calls, then takes off in a dead sprint uphill. Sky, emerging on Link’s right, groans at the prospect of running and leans on Link’s shoulder.

"Give us a minute, will you?“ Legend hollers. He shudders as the magic trickles off him.

Wild waves at the others to follow him faster. He bounces on his heels. He’s grinning so wide it has to hurt, eyes almost glowing in the dappled shadow of the tree cover. Birds haven’t yet begun to sing. Link thinks he hears an owl off in the distance.

"What’s all this excitement about?“ Rulie asks. He laces an arm around Link’s and pulls himself close, letting Link guide him up the rocky path toward Wild. Wind, riding on Captain’s shoulders, notices something from his higher vantage point.

"It’s huge!“ Wind calls, thrusting his arms in the air to demonstrate the scale of whatever he’s seen. Link ducks to see under the tree canopy.

It’s a bridge, but not just any bridge — it’s the Bridge of Hylia, no doubt about it. It’s much, much larger than it had been in his time, maybe not as tall, but he recognizes the shape of the gatehouses. Wild is halfway up the hill toward the first gatehouse.

"Wait up!“ Link yells.

"I’m not waiting up! You all are going to miss it!“ Wild says. "She always comes before the sun rises!“

"Who?!“ Legend yells back.

"You’ll see!“ Wild says. "Hurry up!“

They all reluctantly pick up the pace — not without grumpy mutterings from Sky, bracing his hands against his knees as he hikes up the hill. Wild meets them at the southern gate. Link has never seen him this excited. He glows with it, scanning all their faces with eyes wide.

"You ready?“ Wild asks.

"Why don’t you tell us what it is we’re ready for first,“ Time says, his armor clanking as he waves a hand at the bridge ahead of them.

"Remember how I told you about the stab-proof dragon?“ Wild says. He tugs on Link’s other arm. "We’re just in time to see her. Come on.“

Wild guides them onto the bridge. The others chat softly amongst themselves, a quiet air of excitement falling over them.

This Bridge of Hylia is massive. It could fit two carriages across. Its columns plunge into the churning, icy waters below, a surely fatal fall, so distant that the early-morning fog rolls around the base. Verdant mountains crowd this gargantuan Lake Hylia. In the distance, rendered hazy and grey by mist, there are more mountains, jagged, proud, silhouetted against the overcast sky. Mourning doves coo in the trees.

Someone’s fingers brush through his hair. Link blinks and looks down at them. It’s Legend, a leaf in his hand.

"Sorry,“ Legend says, a little abashed if the backward tilt of his ears is anything to go by. "You just…leaf.“

Link laughs a little. "Thanks.“

He plucks the leaf from his fingers and tucks it behind Legend’s ear. Legend rolls his eyes.

Wild gasps. Their gazes follow the direction his hand is pointing out onto the water. The wind changes. The barometric pressure drops so fast Link’s ears pop.

A serpent erupts from the water. The lake churns around her. She glows electric green, her scales shining white and flawless, a mane of horns jutting around her face and pulsing with the same green magic that makes her rival the moon. She undulates and rolls through the air, drifting in the wind, a bright, fantastical silk rope against the sky.

The others are struck silent. Wild smiles, hand over his mouth.

Link watches, enraptured by the way she never seems to end, her talons clawing at the air as though she’s swimming. She’s huge. Link has a brief moment of hysterical worry for past-Wild, throwing himself headfirst at this ethereal beast and living to tell the tale. She dwarfs this behemoth of a bridge. She could swallow all nine of them whole.

Link sees now, though, that she is nothing but benevolent. Even at this distance, quickly closing as she turns to drift toward the bridge, he senses a deep, quiet peace to her. She is old. She is wise. She is of the same cloth as the Light Spirits.

As she approaches, static electricity making the hair on the back of Link’s neck stand on end, the air crackling with energy and power, he sways a little. He presses a hand to his mouth.

"My gods,“ he chokes. His knees go weak for a moment, not enough for him to fall, but Wild catches him with a hand on his chest. Wild grins up at him, incandescent joy. His fingers twist in the fabric at Link’s sternum.

"Is she everything I said she was?“ Wild asks.

"Yeah,“ Link says.

The wind picks up into a roar. It blows his hair back and he stumbles. Lightning hums in his ears.

"Okay, time to run!“ Wild yells, tugging on Link’s arm.

"Run?“ Captain asks. Wind and Rulie have already taken off, screaming with laughter.

"If you don’t want to turn into a lightning rod, I suggest you run!“ Wild answers, sprinting toward the southern gatehouse.

The others follow, some screeching and whooping, others (mostly Captain and Time, the most metallic of their number), chanting no, no, no under their breaths.

Link doesn’t move. Someone notices that he hasn’t followed them and calls out, but it’s too late for him to run. He gazes up at Farosh, meeting her fierce eyes, and she soars over him. Her glow is blinding. He reaches up and his fingers brush against the smooth, cold scales of her belly, buzzing with magic. The wind screams. Her heart and breaths are mighty. She is glorious.

"Rancher, hit the deck!“ Wind shouts.

Link’s head jerks toward the others and he ducks out of the way just in time to dodge a ball of lightning, frying the ends of his hair. It snaps him out of whatever fugue he’d been in and he scrambles to join the others under the southern gate.

The first drops of rain darken the stone under his boots. Hands grab his arms and yank him into the cover of the gatehouse. People are shouting at him, admonishing him for his recklessness, but Link doesn’t hear it. His ears are ringing. The clouds break and a deluge pours forth. Thunder cracks.

Time grasps him by the hands, checking for burns. Wild punches him on the arm. Wind rants at him, breathless. Four is a little pale. 

"I’m fine, I swear, sorry,“ Link says. "She was beautiful.“

Captain squints at him.

Once the excitement has died down, the others chatter amongst each other, regaling tales of dragons and magic and old power. Link leans against the archway and listens to the rain. His hair still prickles. Wild leans into his side, warm.

"You lot, come on, look what I’ve found,“ Rulie says, stumbling back onto the path, out of breath but beaming. He grabs Legend’s hand and tugs, waving wildly at the others to follow him. Link glances at Time, but Time shrugs and steps off the path into the forest. Link follows, reluctant but curious.

The woods they’re in aren’t familiar to any of their nine. The paths are nonsensical and winding, curling around on itself at points, branching off to nowhere, dipping into caverns and coming out the other side. The trees are tall and skinny, crowned with bright, golden leaves despite the humid heat of summertime. Birds sing over the rustle of clacking branches in the breeze.

Rulie guides them on a heretofore hidden path, marked only by the crushed grass and cleared underbrush. If they hadn’t had a scout, they would have missed it completely. The path winds and twists through the forest down the hillside, narrow enough that there are spots Time has to walk sideways. The path terminates abruptly and old paving stones take its place. Moss, grass, and bright yellow wildflowers spring up between the cracks. The stones jut up at random points. No one has maintained them in a long, long time.

Rulie giggles and pushes a bush out of the way, beckoning the others to go through. Link walks through last.

A sheer rock face juts into the bright blue sky, water trickling down its cheeks into a clear pool. Yellow leaves float on the water’s surface. The paving stones stop and sink into the shallow pool, growing greener as they get closer, grass and moss subsuming their grey. Towering above them all, crowned with a fluffy cape of moss and lichen, a statue of a woman. Whoever carved the veil atop her head was skilled enough to make stone look like gossamer. Loose hair falls around her chest, laced through with braids and hair-rings. Her face is gentle but sharp, eyes closed, smile faint. Her hands wrap delicately around a bundle of arrows and a lyre. Her girdle, looped low around her hips, has the symbol of Farore dangling from its delicate chain. Little red orioles cheep and hop around on top of her head.

"Is it Hylia?“ Wild asks.

"Nay,“ Sky says. "Hylia hast wings.“

"It’s Farore,“ Time says. His jaw is set, hard. He does that when he doesn’t want to show how he really feels. It never quite works. Link can tell something about this upsets him.

"Ah!“ Rulie says. "I thought so. This must have been a temple, or—”

"No, it’s just a shrine,“ Captain says. He leans against a tree that sprouts from the ground, paving stones collapsed around its roots like crooked teeth. He unwraps his puttees and tugs his boots off. "A temple would have areas to purify yourself first. And walls.“

Wild hums, rounding around the shrine and careful not to step foot in the water. His slate clicks as he captures the shrine’s image. Four kneels at the water’s edge and dips his fingers into the water. Wind gapes up at the statue’s face. Captain’s chainmail clatters against the stone as he drops it.

"Whatcha doin?“ Link asks. Captain pauses, one foot in the water, hiking his pants up around his knees. Legend starts muttering and goes into the trees, careful not to get too far away.

"Praying, cowboy,“ Captain says. "What’s it look like? You’re welcome to join.“

Link frowns up at Farore’s kind face. The Ordonian version of Hylian religion was intimate and informal. He’d been subjected to the big, formal religious ceremonies as a member of the royal court and isn’t jumping at the chance to repeat those experiences. Regular Hylian ceremonies, though? Those he welcomes.

Captain doesn’t wait for him to finish his musings on religion. He strides in, water splashing around his ankles, and falls to his knees in front of Farore’s statue. He begins muttering to himself, hands on his thighs. Link can’t make out what he’s saying.

Link hesitates at the edge of the pool. Time stands guard dead-on in front of Farore. His face is carefully neutral. The wind makes metal on his belts clink.

Link wants so badly to ask. He can’t bring himself to.

Link leans down and starts undoing boot buckles. He strips down to just his pants and chemise and wades in after Captain. The sea of yellow leaves part in front of his legs. The water is cool and clear. Dragonflies buzz at the shore.

Captain is muttering when Link splashes down next to him. His hand comes up to his throat for a few phrases, then drops back to his lap. There’s no tune.

“You don sing?” Link asks. Captain frowns and stops muttering.

“Why would I sing?”

A few onlookers are listening to their conversation, some with more interest than others.

“There ain’t no music, none, durin prayers in your Hyrule?” Link asks.

“Well,” Captain says, tilting his head back and forth unsurely. “There’s maybe a lyre. Sometimes at festivals there’s a choir. I know some songs but I can’t say we sing, no.”

Link shakes his head at the ridiculousness of people separated from him by millennia. 

“Your people would have a conniption fit if they found out that sometimes we dance, ” Link chuckles.

“How are you meant to pray and dance?” Captain says.

“The dancin is the prayer,” Link says. “But, here, lemme teach you.”

Link claps a steady beat on his thigh and starts humming the easiest song he knows, oemamna-Farore ni madda-Maddas ĕ Aylar. He raises his eyebrows at Captain to tell him to echo. Captain does so, humming in the back of his throat, just half a second too late as he learns the melody.

Glory to Lady-Mother Farore and Hero is wordless, like most other prayer songs. It’s a collection of random syllables molded to fit the one thing that does matter: the melody. The melody rises and falls in modest, ethereal scales, suitable for any humble village lyrist or pilgrim. It was the mainstay of both noble and Ordonian ceremonies, but noble ceremonies don’t play it as free and joyful as Link thinks it should be played. He teaches Captain to sing it the way Uli taught him.

He graduates into the syllable singing and Captain follows him, call-and-response. A string instrument starts up behind them and Link stumbles over a note. He turns. Sky plucks at his lyre, pulled from goddess-knows-where, harmonizing with their melody. Sky’s bare feet trail in the water. Captain’s notes twist wide and bright as he grins at Sky.

Four and Wind join in, a little off-key.

The water behind them splashes. Wild has hopped into the pool and wades toward the singing pair. He bends at the waist, lays his chin on Link’s head, and wraps his arms around his shoulders and neck. He doesn’t sing outright, but Link feels him humming along.

“We don’t pray like this,” Wild says. He doesn’t wait for anyone to respond. “Not really ever in groups. You do it alone.”

“Marry, woe!” Sky says, looking up at Wild with eyes like bruised apples. “A side-piercing ordeal, doth it pain you? In no fashion conceive I a lonely prayer. Twas it biting?”

Wild shakes his head. It ruffles Link’s hair. “It’s peaceful.”

“As is this,” Sky says. He strums a chord on his lyre and it rings out over the pool. It echoes off the rock face.

Wild smiles. Link can hear it in his voice. “Yes, it is.”

Off to the side, Legend hesitates at the edge of the shrine, shadowed by the trees. Link jerks his head to get him to join them, but Legend smiles and refuses.

Legend closes his eyes and leans against a birch, listening to their song.

Link holds the ladder. Legend stretches for a book on the highest shelf, balanced precariously on one foot, fingers twitching uselessly just an inch from the book’s spine. Link is going to have a heart attack. Legend groans in frustration, and, in one last-ditch effort to grab the book he needs, goes up on tip-toe on the sole anchor point he has to the ladder. The ladder creaks.

Link hears Legend go “wuh-oh” and flings his arms out to catch him. He lands hard but weighs much less than Link expected he would. Legend is bundled up in Link’s hold, arms and legs bent awkwardly, a little shocked and bewildered that his lack of ladder safety led him here. He gives Link a withering look from behind the arm crumpled around his side. Link lets him down, but not without allowing himself a laugh at Legend’s predicament.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, fuzzy,” Legend grumbles. He brushes invisible dust off his clothes.

“Give it up. If I weren’t here your last words woulda been ‘wuh-oh,’” Link fires back. 

“Fine, fine, whatever,” Legend says, holding up his hand. “Well, since I couldn’t get it, you get it, buckaroo.”

Link rolls his eyes and waves at Legend to move out of the way of the ladder. “Let’s see if the foot I got on you makes much a difference.”

Legend squawks “Not even!” and Link ignores him in favor of climbing. He scans the top shelf for the book Legend had been going for — red, with gold embossed lettering. He can’t read any of these alphabets so he’s just going to have to guess. He plucks the one he thinks is right from the shelf and dangles it above Legend for confirmation. Legend nods.

Inside, there’s diagrams of organs and bones. He raises an eyebrow at Legend. He snatches the book from Link and curls his other hand into a fist. Every single one of his joints cracks. He does it again. They pop like firecrackers. Once more. Just as loud.

“All the adventures take their toll on you after a while,” Legend says, smiling, but not happily. “Good to know your enemy, especially if it’s right under your nose.”

Link grimaces at the musical instrument that hard battles and long labors have made Legend’s hands into. He doesn’t know how old Legend is, but he’s definitely not old enough to have those kinds of sounds come from his knuckles. Link’s twenty-six and the sheer volume at which his knees crack when he kneels is cause for concern from the royal physicians.

“How old are you?” Link asks.

“I could guess,” Legend says. “Old enough for five in just as many years. Not including this.”

“D’you—”

“Yes, yes,” Legend says, waving away Link’s concerns and tucking the book under his arm. “Heat, potions, herbal ointments. All of it. Only so much you can do, eh?”

Link hums. Legend gives him a hand to lean on as he hops off the ladder.

“Rabbits don’t got no hands,” Link muses. “And not really fingers neither.”

Legend considers this. “No, they don’t, don’t they?”

In the Hylian traditional art of swordplay, it’s both an insult and stupid to leave a blade buried in your opponent. Swordsmen teach their students a specific move to avoid insulting their opponent — the asayr-m ĕbh, an awkward kind of twist-pull maneuver that quickly and cleanly slides your blade out. It’s a good practice.

Link, however, was not trained in the traditional Hylian swordplay practiced by palace types and the Royal Army. Link was taught to scrap by Ordonian farmers and a dead hero who liked to play dirty if that meant he would win. He will throw sand in eyes and play tricks and slice tendons with a secret boning knife he’d tucked in his boot. Opponents don’t expect him to leave his knife stuck in their knee and that gives him the opportunity to finish them off with something else. He doesn’t care about disrespecting monsters. 

The problem, though, is that sometimes he runs out of knives if he's just leaving them. Link rarely has just one opponent. He has broken himself of the sword-abandoning habit. He still does it at the end of battles and has to go on a walk of shame to retrieve his weapons from the last monster to die.

Link is up to his ankles in swamp mud when it happens again. He tugs his sword free from the chest cavity of a dead moblin. It squishes. He wipes the blade clean on his pants before returning it to the sheath. He leans over and pulls his hunting knife — the one with the goat horn handle — from the moblin’s just-as-dead buddy. 

The mud sucks at the feet of more than one someones or somethings walking behind him. He whirls around. He clenches the goat horn in his fist. 

He doesn’t know what he’s looking at. It’s a creature of some kind, with flesh and blood and body parts, but that’s where his understanding ends. It’s pallid like a corpse, florid with inky blood in all the wrong places, covered in fur so patchy and rotted it’s beyond mange. It’s not humanoid. It’s a great, hulking mass of too many crooked, twitching limbs, sprouting from a skeletal, snakish body, heaving with labored breath and the agony of abomination. Its neck is too emaciated to hold up its boulder-sized skull. Its jaw hangs limp, teeth as long as Link’s arm dripping with viscera and saliva, its dark maw visible through gaps where teeth are missing. There are sockets where eyes might have been. Scarring tells Link someone blinded this thing a long, long time ago, but probably didn’t live to tell the tale. Arrows and spears bristle where they’re buried in its bony, hunched maybe-shoulders, shoulder blades jutting up like a pair of severed wings. It’s starving. It’s hunting.

Except it’s not hunting him. Wild, straddling the body of a bokoblin and midway through sawing through its horn to use for potions, stares up at the thing with his mouth agape. He’s frozen. 

A screamed “No!” fights, claws its way out of his throat, bubbling up from a prey animal’s fear rather than any conscious effort at words. In his panic, he forgets the weapon in his hands. He scrambles across the mud as the thing readies a limb over Wild’s head. He flings his body in front of Wild’s, arms outstretched, knife hanging uselessly in his hand. The limb shoots down just as Wild’s arms cage around his middle and drag him to the ground. Link lands on top of Wild and Wild lands on top of the unfortunate bokoblin. Inches from Wild’s head, the thing’s limb spears the bokoblin’s skull with a sickening, wet crunch.

 Link shoves Wild out of the way onto the mud. The others have noticed the thing, judging by gasps, swears, and a single scream. Link tucks his knife into the straps of his bracer. He stands as quickly as the thick, sucking mud will allow, sword scraping as he unsheathes it, and with a grunt and a heave, severs the limb skewering the bokoblin in the swamp earth. Freezing cold blood splatters his face.

The thing lets out a screech like nothing he’s heard before. It cuts in the ears and almost seems to split his head in two. Link rounds the back of the thing as it flails its severed limb, screaming at the loss, decrying its pain to whoever is forced to listen. Backing away, he pulls his shield off his back and clangs his sword against it. The thing stops screaming and turns. It’s frothing at the mouth. Its misshapen body undulates as it seethes. It hisses.

“Hey, ugly!” Link shouts. He tosses his shield to the ground. It’s too ungainly for his plans. He throws his hands wide. “Come and get me!”

Ugly obliges. It ducks close to the ground and skitters across the swampland like a millipede. Link darts away. The others are shouting and talking but he doesn’t have time to figure out what’s being said or if it’s being said to him. He feels hot breath at his back. It smells like death. There’s a snarl as Ugly rears back. Link spins back to face it and drops onto the mud. Its body rushes above him. He rips his goat horn knife from his bracer and buries it in the oozing stump of Ugly’s severed limb to buy himself some time. Ugly shrieks anew.

Link rears up on his knees. He pulls his arms back. The leather of his gloves creaks as he clenches his fist around the hilt of his sword. He pierces the gap between the wings of Ugly’s ribcage. He forces it through organ and bone and fascia, flesh ripping and squishing and crunching, cold blood drizzling down on him. He spits out the stuff that drips into his mouth. It tastes like decay and iron. Ugly wails, higher than its last cries, and the bone cage Link’s hands are buried to the wrist in shudders with the effort. Ugly’s limbs tremble. Link rolls out from under it. Swamp water squelches under him.

Ugly gives one last shake and collapses. The force pushes Link’s sword up through the last of its flesh and through its back. Link’s heartbeat thunders. He chokes and gags for air.

People are yelling. Some of them at him. Some of them just generally. Link isn’t listening. He staggers to his feet and surveys the damage he’s caused. Wild is alive. So is Link. Ugly is not.

It’s like a beached whale, the corpse of this thing. Link curls his lip at the image. It looked like a half-rotted body alive. He can’t imagine how it looks two weeks from now.

Ugly shudders. Its limbs give an agonal jerk. If Link had his blades, he could at least intercept the thing that flies at him. The point of Rusl’s sword gleams where it erupts from Ugly’s back.

A flash of royal blue in his peripheral. Someone grabs the collar of his shirt and tries to yank him to the ground. He chokes. It’s not enough. It saves him from a crushed skull. It does not save him from the spidery end of Ugly’s limb cracking across the side of his head, snapping his head to the side —

And h 

where

…

And he

…?

The ceiling is paneled wood. Link blinks. His eyes focus. They weren’t closed. He’s coming to, not waking up. 

“Hey, you,” someone says to his left. “You’re finally awake.”

Link turns his head to the left. No pain. Legend sits at his side. His booted foot is hiked up onto his other knee. He picks at the pebbles in its sole with the point of Link’s goat horn knife. Link frowns at this but doesn’t say anything. Legend looses a pebble. It clinks on the floor.

“You’re in some deep shit, mate,” Legend says. He flicks another pebble. “He’s apoplectic.”

“Who’s ‘he?’” Link murmurs. His voice is gravelly from disuse.

Legend raises his eyebrows and sucks his teeth, eyes big. He digs the knife into his boot sole and frees another pebble. It’s large enough that its noise is more of a clack than a clink.

Link sits up. His skin is raw and warm. Someone scrubbed him clean of blood and mud. Stitches pull at a scabbing gash on his forehead. Other than aches and stiffness from laying in bed for a while, he isn’t in any other pain. He lifts the blanket off his legs and wobbles to his feet. Legend watches him from underneath his brows. He stops picking at his boots to make sure Link isn’t going to tip over. Floorboards creak under him. Legend doesn’t move.

The room’s door opens to a narrow hall. There’s, assumedly, the inn kitchens across the hall. At the end of the hall, there’s a door with a tiny window that shows inky darkness outside. Link elects for some fresh air.

The cool night rushes to meet him when he opens the door. He steps out and breathes it in. His toes curl in the cool, wet grass. The trees behind the inn rustle in the night breeze. Animals hoot and call in the forest.

There’s voices in the hall. He recognizes all of them, but can’t figure out the words they’re saying. Rulie and Wild talk. Time says something. The door creaks open. Time asks a question. Legend answers. A bang. Stomping footsteps down the hall. Link stiffens. The door slams open on squealing hinges. Link’s ears pull down as he gets ready to hear the lecture of a lifetime. There is a difference between getting attacked mid-battle and running foolhardy into a fight with a monster they’ve never encountered. Link knows this. He’s not stupid. He’s a good fighter. But his biggest flaw is that he is human. And humans are illogical in the face of endangered loved ones.

“Tell me something, goatherd, are you some kind of fucking idiot? No, don’t answer that.”

That voice is posh and commanding and not at all deep. It doesn’t drip with disapproval. It spits its words out. Link suspects that if he had spent any time with the Royal Guard he’d be snapping to attention.

Captain’s nostrils flare and his fingers dig into the wood of the door. He exits and the smell of leather and steel comes with him, not camelia perfume. The door slams behind him. Captain’s an inch from his face, stabbing a finger into his collarbone, words coming from between gritted teeth. Captain has two solid inches on him and, right now, uses every bit of it to bear down on Link. Link stumbles back.

“Do you have any idea how stupid that was? On your own? No shield? No backup? Acting as bait?” he snarls. “If any of my men tried to pull something that fucking suicidal they’d be on their arse with a dishonorable discharge by sundown. Riddle me this. Let’s say this thing didn’t fall for Plan A? What’s Plan B? Die?”

Captain shoves him. Link’s exhausted brain has caught up to the situation. He bristles at the manhandling. He opens his mouth to retaliate but Captain won’t let him get a word in.

“Stupid!” Captain snaps. “You had no idea what that thing was capable of! Even I still don’t know and the geezer won’t fucking tell me! I have half a mind to — I — I —”

Captain lets a frustrated sort of grunt-yell. He fists his hands in his hair. Gold spills and curls between his fingers. Link squints at him and this uncharacteristic display of hysteria. Captain lets out a long, slow breath, releasing his hair.

“Do you know why soldiers wear helmets?” Captain asks. He doesn’t wait for Link to reply. “Have you ever dropped — I saw — there was an infantryman — You —”

He seizes Link by the wrists and squeezes. The pressure grinds the bones in Link’s wrists together. Captain’s eyes burn into him. 

“Goddesses dammit all, Link, I thought I’d seen you die. At least last time you twitched after you got hit. This is the third time I’ve seen you do a silly little jig in the face of your mortality,” Captain says. “Do you have a death wish?”

“Why are you —” Link starts. Captain interrupts him.

“What, are only the geezer and your pet kid allowed to worry when you act like cannon fodder?”

“Don’t call them that. That ain’t at all what I was gonna say. If you’ll let me —”

“I’ll ask again,” Captain says. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

The question catches Link off-guard enough that he hesitates for just a few seconds too long. Captain doesn’t expect him to hesitate and his grip on Link’s wrists loosens for a moment. Captain is silent. 

“No, I’m not,” Link answers. This is the truth, he thinks. His hesitance has damned him, though, and a litany of understandings crosses Captain’s face. 

Captain is blank. Link can’t read him. Captain has trained this skill of his, and it shows. The distant lantern light barely illuminates his cheekbones and his tall nose. It’s like someone lopped a nose off the marble busts in Hyrule Castle and stuck it on his face. He looks the part, honestly, more so than any of the rest of them.

Captain’s eyes are burning into him. His mouth thins and his heavy brows drag down over his eyes, squeezing them shut. Anger? Is that anger? Is Captain angry at him? Link can handle anger. He can handle disappointment. From Captain especially.

Then Captain’s chin wrinkles unattractively, he sniffles, and Link dunks headfirst into panic. Link can handle tears. Link’s a crier himself. Emotion bleeds from him no matter how much he hides it. From Captain, it’s a whole different infraction of the status quo. Captain’s all smiles and commands and confidence. Captain does not cry. And especially not from whatever this is.

“Fuck,” Captain sniffles. “Fuck, godsdammit!”

“Why are you crying?” Link asks, more than a little panicked.

“Why am I —” Captain starts, indignant, then cuts himself off. He scrubs away the wetness on his cheeks with the back of his hands, still trapping Link’s wrists. “You know what, I’m going to tell you the truth.” 

His voice breaks on every other word. Link’s mouth has gone dry.

“I care about you. A lot,” Captain says. He sighs. “And — goddesses, Link, you didn’t see yourself. There was so much.”

“I’m sorry,” Link says.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Captain says. “You just have to tell me the truth. Why?”

Link pauses. Eight years of burying, burying, burying, and in one fell swoop, Captain has unearthed the graves he’s interred. He breaks a promise that he swore to himself the day he saw the Shade’s armor on a living man. Time dies alone and forgotten and angry. So angry he spends a few centuries suffering in the place between life and death until some untrained, scared little hero stumbles upon him with a new sword and no idea how to swing it. And then he’s gone.

“This’ll end. I don want to be alone,” he says, simply. Captain laughs, but not cruelly.

“Alone?” Captain says. “We’re never alone. None of us. Comes with the territory. We all care about you. Stop throwing yourself in harm’s way because you want to go out in a blaze of glory — just think about it! Imagine if one of the others ever kicked it. It’d shatter us. The same goes for you, dickhead.”

Link doesn’t say anything to that. Captain has exhausted his words and uses his grip on Link’s wrists to haul him into a hug that chases away the cool night air. He lets himself relax.

“In all seriousness, if you pull some shit like that again I will kill you myself,” Captain says.

“What about you puttin yourself in the line a fire to save my dumb ass?” Link asks into Captain’s shoulder.

“We don’t have to talk about that,” Captain says. Link starts to protest but Captain hushes him and crushes his face in his shoulder. Link rolls his eyes and gives up. They sway with the grass, wrapped up in each others’ arms.

Wild finds him sitting in bed that same night. He storms in in a huff and comes to a stop at the edge of his bed. Link looks up at him. Wild glares down. He seethes.

“Stop swallowing your teeth,” Wild says.

His confusion at the phrase must show on his face, because Wild rolls his eyes and kneels on Link’s bed.

“All you do is comfort and shoulder our burdens,” Wild says. He stabs Link’s chest with a finger. “You need to let us shoulder stuff too.”

“...okay?” Link says.

“You scared me,” Wild says. He crosses his arms and his brows knit together. “Don’t do that again.”

“Sorry.”

“And for once in your life stop saying sorry!” Wild shouts. His hands come up to snarl in his hair. “I — You just — if you need a hug or something, say it. You do not have to grit your teeth and keep walking. I mean it.”

Link smiles at him. There’s an incandescent warmth sparking to life in his chest. Wild’s furious with him, but he cares. His eyes are big and his ears lie back against his head.

“Alright,” Link says. He opens his arms. “Can I cash in that free hug, then?”

Wild sighs through his nose, hard, and tumbles into Link’s arms. The anger doesn’t stay for long. Wild relaxes in his hold and they fall asleep like that.

Sky plummets and they all scream.

They collapse over themselves to peer over the edge of Skyloft, clamoring, yelling, searching the clouds and the islands below for splatter marks. Everyone’s arguing, screeching, wailing, wondering if they just watched Sky die in front of them.

Then, from nowhere, a screaming scarlet streak shoots from the clouds below. The wind rushes around them, blowing their hair back and sending the smallest of them stumbling back from the force of it. Sky is whooping and hollering. His speed swallows his voice in the wind.

His scarlet streak lands right where he had leapt from just moments before. It’s a bird, wingspan twice as wide as Link is tall, with sharp predator’s eyes and talons as long as Link’s arm. It coos and nuzzles Sky’s cheek like Epona does when she’s feeling affectionate. It ruffles its feathers. Sky hops off.

It stretches its massive head out to peck at Sky’s eight terrified friends, chirping. Legend, the closest, squawks and dances back, falling over his feet to slam into Captain. Sky laughs and yanks the bird’s head back by its bridle, swatting its side, but the bird barely reacts. The way it caws at their panic could be a cackle if it were human.

Sky’s face is red from windburn and laughter. "You might not but ken your countenances! Aye, merry!“

"Give us a little warning next time, would you!“ Rulie says. He gapes up at the bird. They consider each other. The bird tilts its head and chirps at Rulie. Its talons clack on the wood of the platform.

"Who’s this?“ Link asks, jerking his chin in the massive bird’s direction. He’d thought it was the size of a horse at first, but this bird would surpass even a work horse. Its legs are heavy and powerful, neck thicker than Link’s entire torso. Despite its size, upon further inspection, its face is almost goofy. The way the corners of the beak curl look like a dopey grin.

"’Tis a friend,“ Sky says, slapping the bird’s neck. "It beest Hotshot, mine own loftwing. I care dearly for my dear battle-brothers, but he hast been ‘ere our bond.”

"Huh,“ Legend says, recovered from his shock. "Figured you’d name him Fluffy or something.“

"Wherefore, before Hylia, wouldst I entitule a fierce sky-beast Fluffy ?” Sky says, acting offended but doing a terrible job of it. In clear defiance of Sky’s words, Hotshot caws at Rulie and nuzzles him, almost knocking him over. Rulie giggles and pets Hotshot’s beak. "Hotshot, for his speed. Out-vied by my Zelda — hers ‘twas Bluebell. Nay, laugh not, wast she ten!“

Ah, Link decides, this is just his weird horse.

The wind cards through hair, capes, and scarves. The afternoon sun casts an ethereal glow on the floating islands of Skyloft. Wildflowers sway. The strange circus tent at the center shines with all shades of pink, purple, and sunset, flags flapping in the breeze. In the distance, other loftwings coast through the clouds, silhouetted against the bright blue sky.

"So!“ Sky says. He plants a foot on one of the cords lashing a saddle to Hotshot’s back and mounts with an ease speaking to years of practice. "Who of our number jumps to soar first?“

Half of them balk and go a little green, stepping back. The other half cheer and clamor for the chance to have their stomachs fall out their ass. Link steps back but a sweaty hand catches his wrist and jerks forward. Wild is waving his other hand, beaming. Sky smiles back and yanks them both up on Hotshot’s back. Link’s protests are ignored. Wild’s arms come around his middle.

A "brace, cowboy,“ from Sky is his only warning. Sky lets out a screeching whoop, a command of some kind. Talons scrape against wood, the wind picks up, and they are plummeting toward the clouds. Scarlet feathers surround him. Hotshot dives.

Link will admit it. He screams. The wind shrieks in his ears. He’s squeezing Sky’s middle so hard it has to hurt. Clouds rush up to meet them. Wild is hooting and laughing in his ears. His cheeks sting. His chest swoops.

His stomach hits the floor. Link gasps. As fast as he had dived, Hotshot rockets into the air, bursting through the clouds, sun gleaming off his talons and fiery feathers. For a moment, they are suspended in air. Up is down and down is up. The sun illuminates them from below. Skyloft spreads above them. The vast blue stretch of the sky drops out beneath them. Link is dizzy. For half a moment, he floats off Hotshot’s back.

The upside-down sun lights the clouds on fire. Gold stretches across the grass sky above him in warm, holy arms of light, catching the heroes staring up at them in hues of day, mouths agape and smiling.

A thought rises in him, unbidden, bubbling to the surface from where he had buried it.

I would’ve missed this.

Then Hotshot plummets down the opposite cliffside. Link could stretch his hand out and drag it down the face. He yelps. Wild is laughing in his ear. Sky joins him, laughing at Link’s predicament, bouncing and bright. Hotshot levels out. They coast above the cloud cover. Feathers flutter in the wind.

Wild leans off Hotshot. Link almost has a heart attack. Wild drags his hands through the clouds, hand coming back wet. Link buries his face in Sky’s shoulder.

“Eh? Verdicts?“ Sky shouts over the wind.

"You’re a good flier,“ Wild replies. He’s so excited by flight he bounces a little, and Link’s hand comes back on instinct to dig into Wild’s knee so he won’t fall off.

"Rancher?“ Sky asks.

Link smiles against the soft fabric of Sky’s sailcloth, flapping in the wind. He shakes his head and laughs.

"This is silly,“ Link says into Sky’s ear. "But yeah, I got to agree with the kid back there. Pretty cool.“

"Prefer the ground?“ Sky teases. He pulls up on Hotshot’s harness to approach Skyloft, speed dropping as they near the platform they’d fallen off.

"Very much so,“ Link says. He loosens his arms around Sky’s middle. "No offense.“

"You could not offend,“ Sky giggles at him. Wild joins in, poking at a ticklish place on Link’s side.

Hotshot alights on the platform again. His talons clack against the wood. He chirrups and shakes his feathers to fluff them, flattened by the wind. Once Wild dismounts, he jerks at him with his beak, cawing softly. Link dismounts on much shakier legs. Hotshot watches him with one sharp eye. Link bows his head at him and Hotshot seems satisfied.

"Aye,“ Sky says. He strokes Hotshot’s neck. That kid is evil. "Who next?“

The others erupt.

Link watches them dream. They’ve tired themselves out from a loud night of festivity and conversation and dancing, for no reason in particular than to celebrate their victories, losses, and each other. 

They’ve shoved the furniture to the far corners of Wild’s main floor to make space in the middle. The hardwood is cushioned with spare pillows, every blanket Wild could muster, extra tunics, extra down comforters, fur pelts, and an odd smattering of unmatched socks. Heroes pile in the middle, collapsed over each other, limbs strewn wildly, heads pillowed on stomachs and legs trapped by others’ arms. Four sleeps facedown. Wind buries his face in Rulie’s chest, arms snakelike around his middle. Captain leans against the table leg, mouth agape as he snores, Legend’s face squished against his thigh and Legend’s limbs cockeyed in all different directions. Sky has the second-worst of it, almost the eye of the hurricane that is Wild, Wind, Four, and Rulie, with not a single body part to himself. 

And that’s where Link is, smack dab in the middle, held hostage by clingy brothers and his own lack of heart to wake them up. Wild snuffles and sniffles with his head on Link’s shoulder. Link’s back is warmed by the hearth and the vivid quilts he lays on.

Time isn’t asleep yet, as usual. Link affixes him with a disapproving eye where he sits in front of the fire at one of Wild’s displaced dining chairs. Time doesn’t budge. He’s too occupied with oiling the blade he lays across his lap. Without his severe armor, lit warm and orange by the fire, unarmed, face unguarded, Link sees the man that Malon might have married. No Shade. No hero. Just a husband.

“You gonna sleep soon?” Link asks. Time glances up. The firelight catches his eye and glints.

Time smiles at him. He shifts the sword off his lap to the ground with a clunk. The oilcloth drops with it. He crosses his arms and surveys the pile of heroes in front of him. Sky kicks Link’s leg in his sleep. Link glares at Sky without any real heat to it.

“Comfortable?” Time asks softly, voice jumping with a laugh. Link will not be swayed and raises an eyebrow. He can’t pull off disapproval as well as Time, but he can sure damn well try.

“Alright, alright,” Time says. “I will soon. Can you blame me, though?”

Link shakes his head. This is the only time it’s quiet around here. It’s also the only time that they’re all unguarded, unworried. Legend loses the perpetual crease between his brows. Sky stops chewing the inside of his cheek. Rulie doesn’t buzz with frenetic, anxious energy. Wind and Four look younger than they ever do while awake.

Time reaches forward, and Link, arms pinned by snoring teenagers and children, is unable to stop him. He tucks a loose lock of hair behind Link’s ear. It brushes his steel hoop earring. Link waves his one free-ish hand at him in half-hearted protest.

“You need a haircut,” Time says. Link squints at him and tilts his head at the unruly spill of ass-length liquid gold atop his chest. Wild’s hair covers his entire face where he sprawls across Link’s personal bubble. Time shakes his head and chuckles at him.

Link casts his gaze over the messy heap of heroes around him. Safe. Comfortable. Peaceful. “Y’know, I just wish…”

Time nods. His brows pull together. “Yes, as do I.”

A moment’s quiet passes.

“They always pain you,” Time says, voice like distant thunder. “Always. No matter how hard you try, you can’t keep them safe. You just have to do your best by them and hope it all works out in the end.”

Link wonders if Time isn’t just talking about the others.

“I don think I can take it,” he says. He crooks his half-trapped hand to brush hair off Wild’s face. Four sighs. Wind makes a noise. Legend shifts. Captain mutters something. Sky hums. Rulie’s leg twitches. 

“Ah, well,” Time says. “It hurts, but it’s worth it. You’ll always be a part of them. Part of it is saying goodbye.”

Link looks up at The Shade. His mouth quirks in a warm, fatherly smile, his eye so gentle, so brimming with affection it hurts; love is made physical in how he keeps his voice low, how he gazes over all Link’s brothers. The Shade will never say the words I love you, but he will take a stray blade in a heartbeat. He will watch dinner to make sure it doesn’t burn while Wild is occupied. He will re-bandage others’ wounds hourly without fail. He will remember that Rulie doesn’t like fish. He will make sure the fire is roaring after Link wakes up from a nightmare. He will massage sore fingers, old wounds, aching joints. He will stick by Legend’s side when it storms. He will ruffle hair and pinch cheeks and slap shoulders and hug so tightly your ribs pop. He loves quietly but he loves like the sky kisses the earth — entirely and always. It consumes.

And one day, long, long after this night, he will be reduced to a shadow of a man.

Link’s eyes sting. He glances away. Time sighs, long and low.

“You know something I don’t,” Time says. Link glances up and meets his stare. “Something about me. Something bad.”

Link hesitates but nods. Time’s hands come to rest on Link’s cheeks, thumbs resting where tears would fall.

“Please don’t burden yourself with it. I know saying not to doesn’t do much good, but you have to know,” Time says.

Link’s chin twitches and heat rises in his eyes again. He breaks his eyes from Time’s, glancing down where Wild is sleeping against his chest. He presses his lips thin and wills himself not to cry. His hand shakes where he angles it to brush through Wild’s hair. He sees skeletal hands, grinning skulls, soulfire eyes, armor eaten by creeping ivy. Anger and bitterness and hard lessons and truths, but also tough love and faith and strength. 

“I mean it,” Time ventures again. Link lets his head fall back onto the loose sofa cushion behind him. Link frees his other hand from underneath Sky and cups the calloused hand that rests on his cheek. His fingers lace between Time’s.

“I know,” he says. Time squeezes his hand, then frees himself and rises to get ready for bed, sparing a long, significant glance.

“I’m proud of you,” Time says. Not because he’s a hero, but because he’s himself.

Twilight smiles at him. It twinges, but it's a true smile. 

He falls asleep like that, buried in brothers and surrounded by warmth.

Captain, Rulie, and Legend talk in low voices at the far end of the table. Wind sways sleepily over his scrambled eggs, fork poised to strike. Time nurses a cup of gross black sludge he calls coffee. Wild scrubs a cast-iron pot in the washbasin by the hearth. Sky helps him — if serving as a towel holder is much help — and watches Wild’s hands with tired, gentle eyes.

Twilight leans against the door jamb, a mug of hot milk with a dash of coffee braced against his chest to indulge in its warmth. The house smells like hot butter, firewood, and cedar. A bushel of dried greens, hanging from a shelf, fills the air with an herbal fragrance. He lets himself space out, the dull rumble of the others’ voices lulling him to quiet.

The door bangs open. Twilight near jumps out his skin, his hot milk sloshing over the lip of his mug and splattering on the floor. The others shout and jump with varying levels of alarm. Time hisses when hot black coffee splashes on his bare foot. Twilight turns to admonish the culprit.

It’s Four. There’s a bushel of white wildflowers tucked into his belt. He’s panting from his run, sagging against the door jamb with his arms braced on either side. There’s a blade of grass in his hair.

“It’s— it’s—” he gasps, gulping and starving for air.

“Boy, come on, I done told you—” Twilight starts, but stops dead when Time rises from his chair, hand raised. His mouth closes so fast his fangs clack together.

“Smithy, what’s wrong?” Time asks.

Twilight then notices that Four is pale and distraught. His ears are drooping low. His eyes are wet but he hasn’t got the redness from crying. Twilight’s hand lands on Four’s shoulder. Four sags against the door more, then leans into Twilight’s arm.

“There’s portals in the woods,” Four says. His voice is croaky and quiet.

The others chorus with groans and sighs, chairs screeching as they rise to start packing up their belongings and dressing for the day. The dishes clang in the wash basin as Wild dries them. Time doesn’t move. Twilight starts to put his mug down. He’d better get dressed.

“Portals plural?” Time asks.

Twilight stops mid-motion and turns to Four. The others slow as well. Four’s chin quivers a little. He lets out a breath.

“Yeah,” Four says. His voice cracks. “Yeah, there’s eight.”

A dish crashes in the sink. The room is horrifically silent. Twilight doesn’t even think about it — he glances at Wild on instinct. Wild is already looking at him, jaw slack and eyes wide.

Time sets his mug down and the clack on the wooden table breaks the spell.

“That’s not funny,” Captain says.

“Fuck all this godsdamned motherfucking stupid bullshit, godsdamn it to hell,” Legend says, slamming his chair into the table and dropping his silverware so it clatters against his plate. He stomps upstairs. No one remarks on the sniffling.

“Well — well maybe we’ll all — maybe it's not the end-end, right? We’ll have another opportunity?” Rulie asks.

Wind buries his face in his arms and curls into a ball at his chair. His shoulders shake. Sky frowns at the floor. Time drops his face to his hand and lets out a long sigh through his nose.

Twilight sets his mug down on the stool next to him just a little too hard. His mouth opens and shuts like a fish out of water. It’s too soon.

It’s almost been a year.

It’s too soon.  

You’ve had longer with them than her.

It’s too soon.

Pathetic.

He remembers the quiet. He remembers cold sheets. He remembers how it felt to be alone.  

On the outside, Twilight stares at the ground, unmoving, a muscle jumping in his jaw, hands white-knuckling as he crosses his arms. His gaze flicks up to each of his brothers in turn.

It’s a gorgeous, warm, sunny day outside. No one speaks. Sky stands from his lean on the counter and slaps his hands to his thighs. His brows knit together with determination instead of sorrow this time.

“Hast we no deadline?” Sky asks, glancing around. He flaps his hand. “No arbiter to collect? Beteem us a gracious fare-thee-well. Nay, forbid it be hasty.”

Captain stands. His blue scarf tumbles around his knees. “I concur. We should 

Midna breezes in front of them. Her long dark clothes whisper against the sandstone. Her Majesty smiles at her, a smile Midna returns. Long white-gloved fingers brush against black ones, the barest contact. Something unspoken passes between the two princesses.

Midna turns to Link now. The sunset smears red and orange and gold on the planes of her face. Her hair dances in the desert wind. He knows how soft it is. For a moment, she just gazes at him. Her face softens into a smile. He drinks it in greedily: the eyes that burn, skin stark-sky blue and volcanic black, hair like wildfire. Her silver jewelry, dangling from her like icicles, catches the sun.

—take full advantage of the time given to us. Or, rather, the time we’ve stolen,” Captain says.

“What’s a few more hours?” Rulie agrees. He smiles, weak and teary.

Twilight scrubs his hand over his mouth. He shakes his head and screws his eyes shut against the cold voice in his head that hasn’t ever left. He refuses to think about it, but it’s his voice that speaks. He’s known why for forever.

Gone, gone, gone. Always leaving.

“There is a pretty picnic spot down the hill,” Wild’s voice comes, rasping, bright like bells. “At least a lunch?”

Twilight leans against the wall harder. He shakes his head. It hurts. 

“Link,” Midna says, then clenches her jaw. She shuts her eyes and turns her head away from him. Something wet on her cheek glints in the sunset. She’s crying. Why is she crying? “I… see you later.”

His neck prickles. Something isn’t right here.

“What do you say, rancher?” 

Twilight buries his face in his hands. He shakes his head harder. It hurts.

“What’s wrong, cowboy?” Arm around his shoulders. It shakes him a little. “You have something else you want

The Mirror of Twilight shatters. His heart leaps into his throat. He meets the eyes that burn, just for a moment, before her image fades into a mirage, and she’s gone. Forever.

He hates her. He shouldn’t hate her. He’ll drag her back here himself. He never wants to see her again. He hopes she’ll be happy. She didn’t tell him anything. It’s his fault. Link crouches on the sandstone. The glass glitters. He shoves his hands into the shards. They slice open his palms. It hurts.

Good.

—to do?” Time asks.

Twilight has forgotten exactly what her face looks like.

“Get off me,” he mutters. His hand comes around Time’s elbow. He doesn’t have the strength to move him.

“Are you—”

“I said get off me,” he snaps. He shoves Time’s arm off his shoulders. His hand comes up to his mouth on instinct, like when he used to gnaw it, but he stops himself before he does it. 

He hiccups. He’s going to cry. His ears burn. Wild is watching him. Time’s brows furrow.

“Sorry,” he says. He shoves the door open onto Wild’s front garden. The sun is blinding. His heartbeat roars in his ears. He finds himself against the massive oak at the corner of his house. The roots rise around him, tucked between its arms, shaded by its canopy.

He digs his fingernails into the bark. The wind rustles the leaves like windchimes. He breathes. Or tries to breathe.

A waft of camelia perfume. The grass rasps under Captain’s bare feet.

“What the hell was that?” Captain asks. Twilight looks up at him. The sun lights him from behind. He’s left the stupid scarf in Wild’s kitchen. Shining gold curls shift in the breeze.

“Let me be,” Twilight grunts.

“Uh, no,” Captain says. He kicks Twilight’s hip with the side of his foot, hard enough to shove him over but not hard enough to hurt. He wedges himself in the spot that opens. They’re both crammed into the same small space between the roots of the oak tree. Hip to hip. Captain watches him for a little bit. Twilight sees out the corner of his eye. His breath shudders.

“Oh, okay,” Captain says, and lays a hand between Twilight’s shoulder blades. Twilight drives his eyes into the safe dark space between his knees. He squeezes them closed.

“This can happen when —”

“I know why it fuckin happens.”

“Now, there’s no need to be an arse.”

Twilight shakes his head. “Sorry.”

They sit in the quiet together for a little bit. Twilight’s breathing slows. Captain’s hand cards through the shaggy, longish hair at the back of Twilight’s neck. It’s methodical. It’s soothing.

Twilight rubs the wetness off his cheeks and ruffles his bangs. Captain’s hand retreats back to his lap.

“Who saw?” Twilight says. Captain shrugs.

“Old Man. The cook. Me,” Captain says. 

Twilight sighs through his nose. The birds sing. Morning sun stretches fingers through the oak’s leaves and covers them both in shining dapples. He nudges Captain with his elbow. Captain nudges him back.

“Last time I did this, I ain’t never really…” Twilight trails off. “I ain’t much good with goodbyes, y’hear me?”

“Who is, though?” Captain retorts. “Nobody.”

Twilight shrugs and cranes his head back to hit the tree trunk and stare up at the blue sky through the leaves. Captain mirrors him. Captain’s hand makes an aborted motion. It stills in the air for a moment, then grasps Twilight’s and their fingers lace together. Their hands sit in the dirt. Captain squeezes, hard, rocking Twilight’s hand back and forth, more to soothe himself than Twilight.

Time comes out later. There are no words exchanged. He stares at Twilight dead-on, studies him for a moment, then nods. He leans against the tree and crosses his arms, standing watch at Twilight’s side. Wild peeks at them from the kitchen window.

They’ll go inside soon to join everyone. For now, they watch Hateno Village stir in silence.

The sun is sinking scarlet behind the mountains when all nine of them reach the woods. It’s a pretty forest. It’s high on the hill, so when the sun angles just right it stabs through the trees in glorious beams. Twilight catches a glimpse of a few early-bird fireflies through the slats of tree trunks.

It would be beautiful. Eight swirling portals scar the forest in front of them. Unfeeling. Unassuming. They’re lined up neat like toy soldiers. There is no dark aura, no magic that stands his hair on end, no nausea. The grass sways.

Someone sniffles.

“Does anyone want to go first?” Captain offers, gingerly.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Legend says. “Who in their right mind would want to leave first?”

“I don’t know,” Captain says.

They don’t go on.

The others are horribly still. Captain’s scarf floats as the breeze catches it. The last of the pink in Legend’s hair glows in the sun. Time’s armor clanks. Sky rubs at his eyes with his hand. Wind puts on a brave face. Four chews on his thumbnail. Rulie clenches his fists so tight his nails dig into his palms. Wild looks back at Twilight.

Oh. This was it all along.

Not just scarred hands and Sheikah-tech blue. Callouses that know a blacksmith’s hammer. Freckles and shining grins. Fingers glistening with rings. Smile lines that compete with god paint. White-blond hair fluffy from sea salt. Lightning-chip eyes. Camelia perfume.

He loves them. He’d do anything to keep them safe. He wants their lives to be long and happy. He never wants to leave them. He wants to stay forever. He loves their every flaw, every shortcoming, their short tempers, their nightmares, their ugly laughs, their messy hair, their everything that makes up them, good or bad. He has memorized the rhythm of their heartbeats. He knows them by the way that they walk. They are of one soul. He is them and they are him. He’ll love them like the sky kisses the earth, entirely and always. It’s going to tear him apart.

Wind breaks the line and clings to Captain around the middle. He almost comes up to Captain’s shoulder now. His voice has started cracking, but Twilight won’t be around to hear it drop.

The others follow suit. Rulie and Legend envelop each other, so tight that Twilight hears Legend’s hands pop. If it hurts, Legend doesn’t show it. Sky gathers up Wild and Four in a bear hug and, through big, fat tears, blubbers about missing them. It makes Twilight smile. Sky, just like Twilight, wears his heart on his sleeve.

Time appears in front of him. Twilight looks up. Time cradles his face in his hands, studying his face as if to memorize it. The frown line between his brows deepens. He looks older.

“Promise me you’ll live happily,” Time rumbles. Twilight’s eyes sting. His throat pinches. He doesn’t tell him that he’ll see him again, in another lifetime.

“You too,” Twilight says, desperately. He is begging him. Time doesn’t know what about. “Promise me.”

Time’s crows feet crinkle as he gives Twilight a sad little smile. “I promise.”

Twilight nods. “I promise, too.”

Time gathers him up in the kind of warm, squeezing embrace only fathers can give. He melts into it, the smell of aftershave and woodsmoke, the warmth around him, the rumble of a deep voice in Time’s chest. He shakes away images of skeleton teeth and ragged knight’s armor. He can’t think about it.

Wind is sniffling by the time Twilight gathers him up in his arms and squeezes him tight. He doesn’t say anything, but Twilight doesn’t expect him to. Rulie, Four, and Legend, too, all warm and so, so small, but they each say goodbye in their own way. Rulie at length, Four tenderly, Legend softly and firmly. He holds them tight and safe and lets himself bask in their heat and heartbeats one last time. Sky grasps Twilight’s face in his hands and kisses his forehead, but has to stretch to do it. Captain doesn’t so much hug him as he grabs Twilight’s head and shoves it into his collarbone. Twilight wraps his arms around Captain’s waist. 

Then Wild. Twilight doesn’t know what to say to him. He doesn’t know where to begin. His boy curls up into him like a flower to sun and lays his head on his chest and says nothing. He smells wildflowers and wet earth, feels him breathe against him. 

Too quickly, they’re all lined up in front of the portals. Wild hangs back. Twilight hears him sniffling. He looks down the line of heroes. Time, Sky, Wind, Captain, Four, Rulie, Legend — they all take deep breaths and glance at each other.

He isn’t ready.

They step forward.

He hesitates for a second longer than the others. A hand catches his collar and yanks him back from the portal. There is no sound when the other portals disappear. They just… stop. There is nothing where there used to be seven others. Twilight gapes. One remains.

Wild looks at him, desperate. “I have to show you something.”

Wild kneels at a spot under the graceful arc of a rusted spider-machine’s leg. The way the ground dips and rises, it could be an altar. Rolling hills spread around them and mountains watch from above. It is so green here. It is so quiet. He can’t imagine that he once thought this place was dead — it teems with life, spilling from the circled arms of the mountains. The wind sings. The wild horses dance. The dirt breathes.

Wild presses his palms to the dip in the hill. He turns a little, so Twilight can only see the jut of his ear.

“This is my garden,” Wild says. Twilight comes up next to him and kneels at his side. Their thighs press against each others’. Wild leans his head against Twilight’s shoulder.

“Don you have a garden outside your house, too?” Twilight asks.

Wild shakes his head and smiles. “Not hĕraia like garden. Hĕraia like cradle, or like grave. It’s the same word in Hateno Hylian.”

Twilight’s breath punches out of him. This is where Wild died. He tries not to let the gravity of this gift capsize him and instead wraps his arm around Wild’s shoulders. Gold flows down Twilight’s chest and onto his lap.

“When someone dies, we usually fill their grave with flowers and plant more on top,” Wild says. “The lusher the cradle, the lusher the life. There wasn’t anyone left to mourn for him when he died. I thought maybe we could do it instead.”

Twilight gulps against the hollow ache in his chest and his other arm comes around to squeeze Wild tight. Wild sniffles and shakes himself. 

“That sounds like a great idea,” Twilight says.

Wild summons a dozen Silent Princess bulbs from the slate at his hip. They roll around in his hands like little pearls. Twilight takes a handful. Together, they break the earth with their bare hands. The trees whisper like windchimes. The mud cakes under Twilight’s fingernails. The blood that was spilt here is long gone, but Twilight keeps thinking he can see it.

They bury the pearls in the dirt and push the gold earth back over them. Wild pats the dirt flat. There isn’t any sign of them, just a patch of upset grass. Wild sighs and leans back into Twilight, heedless of the dirt smeared on his hands, and Twilight wraps Wild safe and sound against his chest. The gods in the mountains hum. The sun warms their backs. 

Wild’s heartbeat drums where Twilight’s hands are pressed to his back.  Alive, alive, alive. I’m alive.

Wild realizes with a start that they have never said hello. Their first greeting was a suspicious prodding, a chance encounter with the threat of blades behind carefully civil words. He looks at his brother, who is still crying silently (his brother has cursed his own tender heart. It is softer than the meadow grass they lie upon and it has, against all odds, stayed that way.)

Tawny hair falls in front of his face. Fine bones, carefully sculpted, Twili symbols in muddy black, the proud angle of that hawks-beak nose, cheekbones glittering with tears, eyes bluish like dusk — he has been created with a meticulous, loving hand; he has been carved to be beautiful; he has been molded to bleed with devotion and too much love to give.

He has selfishly taken so much of what his brother has offered him, and at least he can give him this in return. He crushes calloused hands in his scar-embroidered own, and says desperately, “Hello.”

His brother gives a weak, wet laugh, and asks, “What?”

Hello, one part of his soul greets another. There will soon come a goodbye.

There are two heroes and one portal left.

They lie on the grass together and gaze at the shifting, swirling magic ahead of them.

Their meadow bed is navy in the pre-dawn murk. It glitters from last night’s rain. It whispers, its vast swathe of blue yawning to devour, whispers hello, hello, hello, and louder still, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

The star-grass is cold with dew. A sunrise is creeping over the eyetooth crags of the mountains, but there is no rose or warmth to the morning light— the fog in the forest is a cold grey-blue and the heroes’ teeth chatter at the chill.

Bandages roll up the younger hero’s arms and disappear under the shirtsleeve of his sky blue tunic. The embroidery is ragged, the blue faded, the hemline well-loved under worried fingers. A rainstained hood droops over his shoulders, broader than they have ever been.

Twilight holds the kid’s hands, sees the way his ring finger turns in just like Twilight’s, how his pinky is crooked, how the fine bones jump under his skin like piano strings, and presses those precious knuckles against his mouth. Not to kiss, just to cherish close like a breakable, vulnerable thing. Wild doesn’t know delicate. He doesn't know a gentle hold or a touch that is not a sword’s bite or a kick in the ribs. These dear hands are sacrosanct.

“You don’t have to go,” Wild says. His voice wobbles.

Twilight shakes his head. “Yes, I do. I cain’t stay forever. I don belong here.”

Wild hiccups. “Yes, you will. One day.”

Twilight sits up. His hand rests on Wild’s face. He feels its warmth. He lays a kiss at his hairline. “One day. But not now.”

The portal has a soft roar to it when they’re close. Twilight cradles Wild’s jaw. He takes in those big break-your-heart eyes, wheat-gold hair, and ragged ear. He wants to commit this face to memory. It is a greater act of worship for a saint to love someone this deeply than it is for them to pray. It is in his bones, this love of his. Someone will dig him up in centuries and they’ll be able to tell how all of them have marked him.

He squeezes Wild’s hand. The scars are soft under his fingers. He takes one last look and walks through.

He spills onto the palace grounds in an unattractive heap of snot and tears.

He stops crying. He sits on his knees in the dust and stares at the callouses in his hands. Months on months and what does he get for it? New scars and lost friends and nothing, as usual.

He curls into a miserable little knot on the dirt. He presses his face to his knees. His hair brushes the dust. He clenches his arms around his chest where the pang of loss has made itself into physical agony. His mind is screaming and wailing to find some way to justify why it hurts so bad, why it feels like he’s been gutted like a slaughtered pig but without any blood to show for it. No hands come to stroke through his hair this time. He breathes, controlled and slow.

Rain wets the dust. Petrichor strikes in his nose. He doesn’t move.

Once the clouds break and the sky pours its wrath from the heavens, he sits up. He looks out across the palace gardens into the stormy haze the world has become. 

Wild will be heading back to the house. Maybe he’ll nap under the apple tree. 

Captain will emerge into a bright, bustling Castletown. He’ll go visit his Zelda, probably. Reports and whatnot.

Four may be back at the forge now, a grandfather with a warm hug and a hot dinner waiting for him.

Legend will probably have a bit of a trek back to his home, his unwelcome visitor scrambling to hide the evidence of his activities as he approaches. His house is surrounded on all sides by an apple orchard. Maybe he’ll pick a few apples on the way back up the hill.

Sky has an entire sky-island and a surface village waiting for their hero to come home. He’ll get to see the girl he talked about, and they won’t be separated again for a long, long while. One, final hello without a goodbye.

Wind will be back to his world of beaches and endless sea and his sister and grandma. He’ll hang up his sword, at least for a little while. Maybe not. He breathes a humorless laugh at the image of Wind settling down — as if. 

Rulie, for all his world’s faults, misses his home. He could tell. Rulie has hope for it, and maybe he’ll start on making hope reality as soon as he gets back.

And Time… well, Time will have a kid in a few years. He has to. Twilight’s here, isn’t he? But, after that…

Twilight sits in the shadow of his prison, curled in the mud, swaying a little. He doubts any of the others are frozen stiff by grief, mourning those who are not yet dead. His shirt clings to his skin. Twilight cannot move. 

A guard comes across him on her rounds. She calls for her superiors and Twilight is eventually shepherded into the castle, mud and all, feet moving under him but uncommanded by his own will. People are speaking to him. He lets the words wash over him.

They found Epona on the castle grounds. She’s in the Royal Stables now, getting pampered by the stablehands. Do you want to go to her? She’s nervous. She probably misses you.

Sir Link? Are you ill?

Sir Link?

His chambers are dusty and cold. The rain splatters the windows. He lays on the bed without shedding his boots or anything. He curls into a ball. He doesn’t cry.

“Why’d you leave me?” he asks.

“We didn’t leave you. We will never leave you,” they answer.

“But you did,” he says. “I’m all alone.”

“Are you?” they answer. “Loving is letting go. With hellos come goodbyes. Love isn’t just a feeling. You give pieces of you and you get pieces of us in return. You feel it. Go ahead, tell us you are alone!”

“I’m alone,” he says. “I miss you.”

They don’t answer.

Mud crackles on the silk blankets that cost more than his house, horse, and wardrobe combined. His hair tangles and clumps on the pillow. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tea are sitting cold on the furniture in his room. The sun is setting and the room is getting dark. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is. All he does is sleep.

It’s Sparrow. With Sparrow comes rain.

He never told them, did he?

“You did in all the ways that matter,” they answer. “We knew.”

Did they feel the same?

“Seriously? Don’t be an idiot,” they say. “You know the answer.”

He brushes his hair. It trails past his collarbone, now, a feat he notes on but doesn’t really think about.

“Her Majesty will be taking tea in the library today,” a maid says. She offers a white towel to dry his hair off. “She would like to know if you’ll be joining her.”

“No,” he murmurs. “Not today. Thank you.”

The maid’s lips thin. She shifts her grip on the tray in her hands.

“I’ll let her know,” she says. “Ring if you change your mind, alright, Sir Link? She’d be delighted.”

He nods. “Thank you, Miss Nimue.”

“Just Nimue,” she says. She pulls the comb from his hand and it clacks against the silver tray. She looks at him, an up-and-down survey. His feet are bare against the area rug. His nails are clean and white. His hair hangs. “My apologies for the intrusion, Sir Link, but is it true you’re from Ordon?”

It’s not a jab. It jabs all the same, right at a bruise. The ache cuts through the nothing, nothing, nothing. “Yes, I am.”

Miss Nimue smiles at him. “I’ve been there on a pilgrimage. Beautiful woods.”

“Sure is,” he says. He smiles a little. “And… just Link, if you please.”

Nimue inclines her head.

He begs her to let his boy live. Let him, hundreds, thousands of years in the future, never know a day of pain or sorrow. Let him live long and let him live happily. May his life be boring. May his life be quiet. Take what she wants in return — just leave him in peace.

It is in vain. He knows. He just hopes in his heart of bleeding hearts that somehow, through some magic of their shared soul, his boy knows someone cries for him in a past lost to desert sands and buried ruins. He cries for all his brothers. He prays for all of them. He weeps about Legend’s exhaustion, Time’s unshakeable destiny, Captain’s nightmares, Rulie’s scorched lands, Wind’s childhood, Four’s lost friend, Sky’s crown.

He begs her for her mercy, something she never quite gave to him. Something he had to take. If nothing else, if his boy must be sacrificed, let him die too fast to feel it. Please, goddess, a mercy.

What am I supposed to do?

“That’s for you to figure out,” they say.

But I’m useless.

They laugh. “And? You’re a person, not a tool.”

But I am.

“Ha! Says who?”

“You need to check your horse,” Nimue says. She leaves the breakfast tray next to last night’s dinner tray. She hefts it onto her hip and then to her cart. “She's been a right terror to the stablehands lately. I think she’s acting out because she misses you.”

The late-season blackberries next to his oatmeal have been replaced with blackcurrants. He frowns. He stirs the oatmeal and forces a bite. Brown sugar, cinnamon, the tartness of blackcurrant juice.

He sighs and lays the spoon down. Hands on his knees, groaning at the effort, he stands. He doesn’t even know where his shoes are. Nimue helpfully kicks a pair of low leather boots his way, the type tied with laces around the ankle. He doesn’t ask about his riding boots.

People give him weird looks when he enters the stables. There’s a chill in the air, and all he’s got on for warmth over his chemise and trousers is a long, woolen jerkin. A pretty stablehand passes by with a gorgeous black stallion, coat silky, new horseshoes clacking against the stable floor. He smells horse and hay and leather tack. It’s familiar. He breathes.

Epona squeals when she sees him. She tosses her head. Her hooves bang against the stall door. It rattles. A harried stablehand jumps to soothe her, but he holds up a hand to stop them. They stop, but not without some unease. Epona sticks her neck out of the stall as far as the stall will allow her, snuffling at his hair. He settles under the curve of her jaw where her thick neck meets her head and curls his arms up to twist together on top of her mane. She huffs at him. She’s worried but pissed.

“Hey, girl,” he murmurs. Her ear swivels back to listen to him. “I’m sorry.”

She snorts at him and jerks her head to ring his bell. He knows her moods, though, and ducks. He doesn’t want to scare the poor stablehand behind him any more.

“Watch it, c’mon,” he says. He swats her neck and scrubs his hand through her coat. Her thick winter coat hasn’t come in yet. She sniffs him. She shifts uneasily, hooves clopping on the hay floor in her stall. 

He sighs and unhooks the latch to walk inside. The stablehand squawks, apparently having had enough of his antics, and stammers through a panicked, “That’s the Hero’s horse, you shouldn’t, she’s real mean!”

He turns and looks at them. They finally get a good look at his face and they blanch. “She ain’t mean, she’s just a brat. Ain’t you, girl, huh? A brat? Are you bein cantankerous with these poor stablehands?”

She stamps her foot and scrapes up the hay. He lays his head on her shoulder and flops his arms up over her back. She’s the biggest horse in the stable by a good hand or two. Her legs are thick and powerful, feathered, and her hooves speak to forest rides and goat wrangling. She doesn’t fit in with any of the glossy stallions and silky-maned mares. There’s some humor in that, the both of them stuck somewhere like this.

“Sorry I wudn’t here. I didn’t mean to leave you like that,” he says. Epona turns her head back to him and nuzzles his back. She lips at his shoulder.

She pulls away from him and shifts toward the tack wall outside her stall. She’s assuming he’s going to take her for a ride today. Epona is the opposite of barn sour, and he supposes he’s the same. Or used to be.

She senses the ‘no.’ The walk down here has exhausted him. He can’t imagine tacking her up, much less going somewhere. She huffs and, head low, plunks over to him. She rubs her face against his and lays her head on his shoulder. He strokes her cheek. Here, his head’s a different kind of quiet. Good quiet.

Cat departs, and with it, the last of summer warmth. Hen encroaches.

I should’ve told you about…

“Yeah, you probably should have,” they say. “We could’ve helped you. We know you like we know ourselves.”

I didn’t want to burden you with it.

“Burden? When are you ever a burden, rancher? You use that word a lot. Love isn’t a burden.”

You loved me.

“Always.”

What do you mean, always?

“Even if we didn’t know it yet, we loved you. We loved each other, all of us. One soul. One heart. Across time. Isn’t that something? A thousand years in the future, there’s someone that remembers you when they dig their hands in the earth and hum while they do it. A thousand years in the past, there’s someone that does a double-take in a market because they thought they heard your voice. It’s just a bunch of little souvenir forevers, isn’t it.”

What is?

“Come on, cowboy, keep up.”

He sits at the base of his window and looks out at the castle grounds. His window faces the great forest and mountain range to the north, not Castletown to the south. He prefers this view. He cradles a teacup in his hand, once filled with an expensive black tea loaded with sugar and cream. It didn’t taste that expensive. It was just okay.

The castle’s north grounds are mostly made of hedge mazes, flower gardens, and smooth green pastures for nobles to take their show ponies out for plodding rides around the fence line. Past the pastures is the realm of hunting parties, going after the tall, red deer that live in the pine forests to the north. Nestled close to the castle, close enough that his nose almost touches the window while trying to see them, are a few statue gardens. He puts his tea down.

Hĕraia ash Maddann. He’d forgotten.

He yanks a shirt over his head and tugs his low boots on. He makes it to the ground floor through his usual route through the servant’s stairways, startling a few laundry maids tending to their afternoon duties along the way. He exits through the ballroom antechamber and it deposits him on the back veranda. Hĕraia ash Maddann isn’t the honored centerpiece of Hyrule Castle’s back gardens. That goes to Her Majesty’s painstakingly maintained flower menagerie. Nor is it the next garden, the garden of Goddess statues. It’s the thirdmost to the west, smaller than the rest, tucked behind hedgerows right up to the castle walls. Moss grows on the cobblestones. Wildflowers sprout from the flowerbeds.

The garden is maintained out of duty, not pride. There aren’t many statues here. He is beyond relieved that his own isn’t in this garden and is instead placed in a garden more frequented by the castle’s fancy visitors. He hates that stupid statue. Partially for humility reasons and partially because they made his ears too big.

A few of these, he doesn’t know who they’re supposed to be. He either never met them or they’re entirely the constructions of fairy tales and fables. There’s one he knows is supposed to be the progenitor hero, but it looks nothing like Sky and is more an idea than a representation. He studies it anyway, hands curled into his shirt, crooking his head to the side to see the face hidden by hands clasped on the hilt of the Master Sword.

Every one of them looks peaceful. Noble. Heroic. It’s the Garden of Heroes, after all. The pebbles crunch under his boots. He draws his arms around this middle to fight off the chill. He rounds a maple tree and stops dead.

Well, if that isn’t the spitting image.

He steps off the path to an effigy tucked away in a corner. It’s not scaled up twice as big to give a more heroic impression on the audience like the others. It's taller, a little too put-together, but it looks just like him. He’s got a determined look on his face, brandishing his sword at an unknown enemy, long ponytail blowing in a perpetual wind, fabric wrinkling where his arms and waist bend.

They got the nose right. And the curve of the cheekbone. The heavy pull of the brow. The exact squared angle of his jaw. It’s a twin, twenty years younger. He laughs, incredulous, at the skill of whoever carved it. 

He tucks his hand in the crook of the statue’s other arm and hikes himself up on the plinth. He studies the little crease between the statue’s brows. It’s got both eyes and no sign of god markings. He reaches up to run the back of his hand over the swell of the statue’s cheek. He’s surprised for half an embarrassing moment. He’d expected it to give like skin, and hopes that speaks to the artist’s skill, not his own gullibility. 

The statue looks like it could breathe. It could turn to him and smile. He could press his ear to its chest and hear the steady drum of its heart. It could drop the sword and hug him like he always did, rocking back and forth, rasping laughter in his ear. 

But it won’t. Because it’s a fucking rock. And in his era, this man is long dead.

He can’t tear his gaze away. He starves for a glance at any of their faces, like a rabid thing. Heat stings in his nose. He laces his arms around the Hero of Time’s neck and hangs there, desperately, unblinking until his eyes burn and the tears come.

The rain starts. It’s cool on his hot, red cheeks. He buries his face in a stone jerkin and hides from the thunder. Pebbles crack under soft slippers. He hears it through the rain, easier than any normal man.

“The Hero of Time?” Zelda’s voice comes. He peeks at her over his arm through the space Time’s sword arm makes. She draws her dark oilcloth cloak over her hair. The rain pebbles and slides off her shoulders.

“Yeah,” he says. It’s more of a breath than a word.

“Is this about what you told me?”

“No,” he says. He slides his hands off around Time’s neck. “Not this time.”

She hums. She places a hand on the small of his back and helps him down from the plinth. He ducks under the length of the cloak she lifts with her arm.

“It’s nearly teatime,” she says. “Would you like to join me?”

He frowns at the ground. “I’m all wet,” he says.

She gives him a hoarse laugh. “Whose fault is that!”

He looks up at her. She smiles. She doesn’t show teeth, but she’s trying. Her dark hair hangs around her, limp with humidity, and her hood comes around to shadow them both from the rain. Simple earrings dangle from her ears and she’s foregone her usual regalia. Lacy sleeves poke out from her blue kirtle. She’s got the long nose, elegance, and height of a statue, but the way she chews her cheek in worry and awkwardness is more than human.

“Can we take it in my room?”

She tilts her head at him, considering. “If I recall correctly, there aren’t any chairs in your chambers.”

“You too fancy to sit on the ground?”

The cloak rustles as her shoulders shake from laughter. “Certainly not. Let’s go.”

They leave the Garden of Heroes in their wake. The rain picks up until it’s almost horizontal.

Zelda strides into his chambers and tears the curtains asunder. Heaven’s light blares into the room and right into his face. He hisses and tugs the covers over his face. Zelda has shaken her permanent entourage of fancy ladies and maidservants, and, alone, wreaks havoc in his bedchambers. She nudges empty cups and abandoned silverware, muttering the whole way about how messy he is.

He groans under the blankets about her intrusion and his abrupt waking. She gives an all-suffering sigh and yanks the covers down to expose him to the cold air.

“Up!” she says. “We’ve things to do!”

“Whaugh,” he grumbles, not quite awake yet.

“You have a visitor, and, if you know what’s good for you, you will not keep them waiting,” Zelda says. She crosses her arms and looms over him, blinking up at her blearily.

Once the words register, he sits up. “I don do blessins anymore. I can’t—”

She sighs. “Not that kind of visitor. You’ll like this one.”

He affixes her with a suspicious glare. She glares right back at him, all noble elegance in her flawless posture and the tumble of dark hair down her back, but her irritated tapping foot betrays the picture of regality she would otherwise be. Smooth little braids trail down the front of her scarlet, fur-bordered surcote. Silver and gold ribbons thread through her braids and tie off in her metal braid caps. Her ears glitter with precious gems. Diamonds and pearls drip down her neck and the pale skin of her collarbone and chest. Her lips purse. Her glare is infinitely more powerful than his and he loses the battle of wills.

He sighs and rises to get dressed. After ripping a comb through his hair and tying it off in a sloppy braid, he yanks his woolen jerkin over his chemise and follows Zelda into the castle corridors. 

To his surprise, she bypasses the guest parlors and informal dining rooms and makes a beeline for the castle library. Ornate oak doors stand open, towering over them, bright glow from the library’s titanic eastern windows spilling into the corridor. The smell of parchment and old books and cedar shelving fills the air. The castle library is a monument to the wealth and power of the Queen of Hyrule — his house could fit in this room twenty times over with room to spare. There are two floors of bookshelves, tall enough that the librarians need thirty-foot ladders to reach the top shelves, seven reading rooms, and an uncountable number of hidden, dusty nooks. On the main floor and between the gaps in subject shelves, lacquered wooden desks are stacked high with precarious heaps of books. Professors, students, and librarians alike hunch over their work, feather quills dancing over their shoulders.

People are whispering and leaning out of their chairs to watch him and Zelda pass by. His shoulders hike up to his ears. Zelda commands attention wherever she goes — she’s the Queen, after all, but she’s also a statuesque, striking dark-haired woman decked out in ostentatious finery. Any anonymity he would have had on his own as a scruffy stranger is shot dead in the water by being her trailing duckling. 

“Mister Clemens,” Zelda says, lifting her chin and stopping dead in her tracks with zero warning. He almost bowls into her. She looks down her nose at the occupant in the desk they’ve arrived at. The occupant gasps and objects clatter as they scramble to stand. Someone less familiar with the Queen would miss the minute twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“Your Majesty!” Shad splutters. He shoves his glasses up his nose. They’re big and round, reflecting white in the sunlight. This combined with his spindly limbs and spidery piano fingers makes him almost insectoid. He laughs a little at the image of Shad as a bug. A housefly? A dragonfly maybe? “To what do I owe the —”

Shad spots him hiding tucked behind Zelda like a shy child around a new adult. Reality crashes down. It’s been even longer since he’s last seen Shad than Telma. The first look Shad gets of him in over two years is skinny, pale, bedraggled, and tired. He gives Shad a sheepish wave.

“Link!” Shad’s forgotten the Queen of Hyrule in front of him. A smile breaks across his face like the rising sun. Zelda steps aside and Shad seizes him by the arms, eyes raking up and down, taking in every little change he’s missed. “Her Majesty told me you’ve been ill, come, come sit, I have a chair —”

Link lets himself be guided into a plush armchair tucked next to Shad’s desk. He sinks into the velvet cushions. Zelda has disappeared in a wisp of perfume. She can be sneaky when she tries. He’s tried to get her to teach him.

Shad has no less than two dozen books heaped on his desk around his notebook. An inkwell is dangerously close to tipping over. A dip pen and a pencil rest in the crease of his notebook.

“Well, I don’t mean to impose, but Her Majesty told me you’d been indisposed and I know it’s been quite a while since we’ve spoken last but I wanted give you my well wishes for your health — though I’m not sure it’ll be necessary, seeing as you’re up and around fit as a fiddle!” Shad chatters. Shad is a talker, but not like this. He’s nervous. “I’m here studying all day with the university so don’t feel as though you have to entertain a guest while you’re recovering from your illness, as I’m sure it takes a toll and I wouldn’t want to be the one to exhaust you to be bedridden, and —”

“Shad,” Link interrupts softly. “Not sick like that.”

That gets Shad to take a pause. He frowns and glances at his notebook, at Link’s eyebags, then lower. “Ah. If I’m intruding—”

Link flaps his hands and shakes his head. “I’m just happy to see you. It’s been a minute, huh?”

Shad’s shoulders relax and he laughs a little. “I as well. Firstly, though, what’s this?”

Shad parrots the same flapping gesture Link did, like he’s flicking invisible water off his hands. It clicks — that’s all Sky. Sky does that when he’s saying something doesn’t matter or he’s telling someone not to worry about something. There’s an unwelcome lump in Link’s throat.

Link is taking too long to answer. Shad is looking at him.

“I…uh, it means, like, ‘don worry about it.’”

“Is it an Ordon thing?”

“Uh,” Link begins.

If he explains this, he’s going to sound like a raving lunatic. Well, Shad obsessed over godsdamned owl statues for three months straight, so maybe not.

“Well, these past few months I been away traveling,” Link says. “I was travelin with eight others. One a them… he did that a lot. Guess I picked it up.”

“And they’ve all…passed on?”

Link’s head jerks up. Shad is fidgeting with the pencil in his fingers, staring at Link’s hands, frowning.

“Naw, no,” Link says. “They’re alive.”

The crease between Shad’s brows smooths and he relaxes. “Well, tell me about them. Where are they now?”

Link sighs through his nose. The clouds outside the windows drift across the sky. The sun catches dust motes and casts sparks in the air. He doesn’t know where to begin. There are so many words that cannot sum up the everything that is one person, much less eight. These people were more than friends, more than brothers — some soul connection he can’t comprehend with the limited scope of a quarter of a human lifetime. Link doesn’t understand the kind of marrow-deep belonging and adoration that had been between them, and he can’t expect Shad too, either. Something simple, then.

“They’re all back in their own times, now. They was all Heroes, past and future. Don ask me how it works cause I dunno. Some weird portal magic. The one that did that all the time — he was the first. The Hatirmadda. We called him Sky-Knight, cause, well, he was a knight and his home was in the sky. Some crazy, floatin island. He, uh, had kinda wavy, sandy hair, and really sleepy eyes,” Link says.

Shad is listening, rapt. Once Link gets going, he doesn’t stop. Shad chimes in with his own questions from time to  time. He tells Shad about the Hero of Time and stories he had, how Four’s canine teeth were crooked, the stupid scarf Captain never took off, the way Wild’s eyes glowed — everything that made them, them. Battles and adventures and homelands, blood and tears and stories over campfires. The way Rulie flits around when he’s excited, Legend’s dry sense of humor, Wind’s adorable snort-hiccup laugh. He looks over at Shad and his heart skips a beat.

Nine pieces of paper replace the books that had surrounded him. Looking up at him with expressions ranging from laughter to annoyance, rendered delicately in sketchy graphite strokes, are eight faces he thought he’d never see again. Shad is finishing the shading below Wind’s button nose when he notices Link has stopped talking. He looks up.

They aren’t perfect. Time’s nose was bigger than that, Sky’s hair isn’t quite that curly, and the pattern of Wild’s scars was different, but Link’s eyes rake over them hungrily. Link slips the drawing of Wild from under Shad’s hand and holds it up to the light.

Shad got the eyes right. Big and shiny and break-your-heart sad. Link swallows against the lump in his throat.

“Can I keep these?” Twilight asks softly. Any louder and he’s afraid his voice would shake.

“If you’ll let me make a copy of them first, then sure,” Shad says. Twilight frowns at this and glances at Shad’s notebook. It’s covered edge to edge with shorthand.

“You writin this down?” Twilight asks, laughing, the sting in his eyes dissipating. Shad gives him an unimpressed look over the gold border of his glasses.

“I’m a historian and you’re the Hero of Light. Of course I’m writing this down,” Shad deadpans.

Twilight thumbs the edge of the drawing. “D’you want me to tell you how it started?”

Shad flips to a new page and readies his pencil.

Ashei hefts a crate of beer onto another and grunts with the effort. She wipes sweat off her brow and says, as she’s lifting another, “Are you having a rebellious phase?”

“Huh?” Twilight asks intelligently, bottles cradled in his arms clinking together. The liquid inside sloshes around. He kicks aside an empty crate and discovers something so large that it’s more of a dust hare than a dust bunny. Telma’s storeroom needs a deep clean, but she’s not even paying them to organize it, so that’s not happening anytime soon. He lets the bottles tumble into the crate.

“The hair,” Ashei says. “What’s with the hair.”

Twilight shrugs. “Just haven’t cut it.”

“So it’s apathy,” Ashei says. She braces her hands against a crate and slides it back to the wall. The wood screeches against the cobbles.

“Why d’you give a shit?” Twilight says. Ashei shrugs.

“I don’t,” Ashei says.

“I like it long,” Twilight says. He does. 

“That long?” Ashei asks. No, not this long.

“Maybe not,” Twilight says.

“Are you gonna let me cut it or what?” Ashei says. She slips her skinning knife out of her boot and brandishes it at him. It glints in the lantern light. He cocks a brow at her. “It isn’t gonna be pretty but you’re not gonna be eating it anymore.”

“Fine, whatever,” Twilight says. He flips a milk crate over and drops down. It creaks under his weight. Ashei huffs but takes her place behind him. She grabs his ponytail in one fist and starts hacking away. He grimaces at the rough sawing noises, but he’ll just have someone go at it with proper scissors later. Chunks of brown hair rain down around them and dust his shoulders like snow. 

The door opens, and Telma’s there with an inventory ledger tucked under her arm. She glances between him, Ashei, and the wicked, hooked blade buried in his hair.

“This is a bar, not a salon,” Telma says.

“If you’re worried about your floors, it isn’t gonna make a difference,” Ashei says. She starts sawing again. The blade cuts through the last of his ponytail and she tosses it to the side for them to sweep up later. Twilight’s hand comes up to scrub through the shorter hair at the back of his head. He can already tell it’s choppy. His head feels lighter. “You’ve dust bunnies so big I think you should name ‘em.”

Telma rolls her eyes, grabs something from beyond the doorway, and tosses a broom at them. Twilight catches it.

Twilight wakes up with an itch in his bones. He can’t sit still. He’s fidgety all day, staring out the windows. At noon, he realizes what he needs. 

He unearths his riding boots from their hiding place under his bed. He gets dressed for real — real riding pants, a tunic, and an emerald-green cotehardie he found in the back of the wardrobe — and almost sprints down the castle corridors and grand staircases all the way to the stables. The stablehands tending to horses and nobles coming back from morning rides give him weird looks as he passes by. He doesn’t bother to puzzle them out.

Epona knows he’s coming. He can hear her huffing and whinnying down the way in her stable. He rounds the corner and comes up to her, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt, and hugs her around her neck.

“Howdy, pretty lady,” he says to her. He smacks her neck. “You wanna get out there?”

She nips his ear and he squawks at her. A stablehand comes up to him, carrying a split-bit bridle with white leather and gold fastenings. The bridle is so new it the leather creaks. The stablehand is fidgeting. 

“Sir Link,” they say, lifting the bridle. “We could saddle her up for you if you’d like.”

Twilight shakes his head. He combs his fingers through her mane, still wavy from when the stablehands had braided it last. “That won’t be necessary, thank you. And I don need any a that froufrou stuff. Where’s the tack she came in with?”

The stablehand blinks at him and stabs a finger at the tackroom. He spots his tack as soon as he walks in, a dark smudge on the wall of feathery, shiny, light saddles. 

He settles into the familiar motions of it, tightening the girth, adjusting stirrups, pulling at her mouth so she’ll take the bit. Her ears swivel around as he moves around her. She swats him with her tail. He guides her by the reins out of the barn, past show ponies and nobles in decadent riding outfits, and into the sun.

He plants a foot in a stirrup and heaves himself up on her back. She shifts under him. He feels her breaths between his knees. It’s good. It’s familiar. He leans down and runs his hand up the powerful corded muscle in her neck. Not everything is the same — he hasn’t ridden in a while and his knees will cramp soon, and he can already tell that he doesn’t have much of a saddle cushion anymore, so his ass will be sore come morning, but he still knows Epona like an extension of his legs. She cranes her head back and licks the dust off his boots. He pauses at the sight of the flawless, rolling green castle grounds. A group of women on willowy palominos and perlinos trot through the silky grass. He turns to a stablehand with a pail full of hoof picks heading inside the stables.

“Which way to Hyrule Field?” he asks. She points at the far south end, where a small gate opens onto the walls of the east end of Castletown. He nods at her and nudges Epona toward the south.

The vast green expanse of Hyrule Field stretches in front of him. Its hills billow like waves in a storm. The wind cuts through his cotehardie. The sky is steely blue and cloudless and the green trees are dusted with hues of red and yellow. Epona shifts forward. She’s raring to go.

He takes a deep breath. He digs his spurs into Epona’s sides and whoops. Epona bolts. 

The grass blurs under them. Epona’s sides heave. Her hoofbeats thunder against the earth. Castletown shrinks behind them.

 Twilight flies.

The wind slices his face. The trees and sky and ground are one green-blue smear. Epona’s powerful legs churn. Twilight laughs and fists his hands in Epona’s mane. He buries his face in her neck and laughs some more. He laughs and laughs, wind roaring in his ears, until the laughter turns into joyful tears, drying on his face just as soon as they come. He cranes his head back at the cloudless sky and whoops and hollers, something bubbly and bright scorching inside him. It burns up the empty, empty, empty. The sun is bright.

He strides into the Queen’s chambers later, windburnt, hair sticking in all different directions, reeking of sweat, horse, and outside. Aides stare at him like he’s grown a second head. He’s entering the Queen’s chambers covered in dirt and grass, without knocking and with no invitation. Zelda looks up at him from the novel in her lap. A cup of tea sits at her elbow on the dainty sidetable next to her velveteen sofa. She raises an eyebrow at the state of him but doesn’t remark on it.

“I cain’t be here no more,” Twilight says. Zelda goes white as a sheet, and Twilight realizes what that sounds like coming from his mouth, specifically. He backtracks in a panic. “The castle. I cain’t be in the castle no more. It suffocates me.”

Zelda smirks at him and takes in the dirt and horse shit in his boots. “I wouldn’t want you to be far, just in case. Somewhere in Castletown, maybe?”

Twilight shrugs.

“I know someone with rooms to rent,” Zelda says. She sinks back behind her novel. “Now, get out. You’re tracking manure everywhere.”

A housekeeper with a mop and a bucket glares at him from the corridor. Twilight bows his head at them and grins sheepishly.

“I didn’t take any pieces of you with me.”

Yes, you did. Haven’t you been paying attention?

“Home, sweet home,” Telma says, pulling the key from the lock and shoving the door. It opens onto a small, bright apartment, with blond wood floors and windows that look out on the South Transept of Castletown. Shingled roofs tumble down the hill to the meet the outer walls. The sun glints off the grasses of Hyrule Field. At the back, there’s a loft with a ladder leaned against it. Twilight’s bed could go there. Under the loft, a copper sink and a hearth. There’s a door to, assumedly, the bathroom. The light from the windows drips and pools across the blond wood floors. Twilight can see a future cat or two napping in those sunbeams.

“How much is rent?” Twilight asks, turning to Telma where she’s still in the doorway. Telma rolls her eyes at him and tosses the key. Twilight fumbles with it for a second before clapping it between his hands. “I’m not takin your maisonette and then givin you nothin in return.”

She points a finger at him, brandishing it like a weapon. “You’ll shut up about rent if you know what’s good for you. If I’m around in twenty years, ask me again.”

She shuts the door behind her and her footsteps thump downstairs, back to the bar. Twilight opens his hands. A small brass skeleton key rests in his palm. He smiles at it.

Later that night, there’s a ruckus happening downstairs. Laughter and voices and yelling leaks upstairs. Twilight lays on a quilt next to a crate of hand-me-down dishware in his empty, dark apartment. He hears a few voices he recognizes through the din; there’s Shad’s melodic rise-and-fall, Telma’s laugh, Ashei’s hoarse deadpan. They’re almost lost through the riot of other voices.

Twilight debates with himself. It’s quiet and peaceful up here. And he’s alone.

He forces himself to his feet and out the door. He trudges down the stairs until he gets to the first-floor foyer, where light and voices leak under the door to the bar. His hand hovers over the doorknob.

He seizes the doorknob and yanks the door open before he talks himself out of it. The crowd of people in the bar — Nimue included, oddly enough — turn to look at who enters. There’s a beat, and then they erupt in cacophonous cheers of ‘Link!’ and ‘There you are!’ He’s pulled by multiple pairs of hands into the revelry. The door to the dark quiet shuts behind him.

Twilight takes a slow, shaky breath. His fingers tighten around the soft leather of Epona’s reins. His boots crunch the leaves on the forest floor. Epona snorts in his ear and nudges him with her nose, but he doesn’t move. There’s a flutter in the cage of his ribs.

He’s at the threshold of a beginning and an end. The gates to Ordon Village stand tall, but they aren’t stately like Castletown’s. Honeysuckle and ivy creep up its wooden slats. The gates are held together with hemp rope and whittled slots. Birds sing and the sun shines through the trees, fir, pine, cedar, oak, the air perfumed with wood and earth and rain. There’s the smell of leather tack and the creek in the town center.

There are equal forces tugging him both directions, back to Castletown and through the gates. Castletown is safe. There, he knows he won’t be turned away from the gates for his mistakes. The last time he crossed this threshold, he was twenty-two and floating through life facedown. He hasn’t seen his siblings or Ilia or Rusl or Uli for years — will they even recognize him? Will he recognize them? He doesn’t know what has irrevocably changed in his absence. Perhaps they’re furious with him. Maybe they think he’s forgotten them for a cushy, powerful life at the Queen’s right hand. Maybe they’ve given up on his return. Maybe they’ve given up on him, him and all his bullshit. The beast of destiny has destroyed this village, commanded in some part by his own hand, at least once, and he has done nothing to thank them for their kindness. No, scratch that, he has done something to thank them for their kindness — he abandoned them in the dirt with little fanfare for four years and hasn’t written since.

Twilight gulps. He shouldn’t be here. This stopped being his home when the gates shut behind him and he left Ilia’s questions unanswered. 

But — there’s the operative ‘but’ of this situation — he wants. He wants like a man in the desert wants for water. He has starved for Ordon pumpkin cream soup and roasted pheasant. He has woken up from dreams where he was cuddled in Uli’s arms to a cold bed too large for one person. He has heard jokes he knew would make Rusl belly laugh. He wants someone to tease him for the way he says ‘shit’ and the way he dresses. He wants to braid Beth’s hair again. He wants to help Colin tie his waist sash. He wants a hug. He wants to be somewhere that knows him better than he knows himself. Here, they know he broke his arm when he was eleven and he wasn’t brave about it at all. They know his favorite food and that he’ll sleep in if they let him, no matter what time he goes to bed. They raised Epona from a foal here. He wants. He wants so terribly. He wants to go home.

The void of want and loss yawns wide within him. He buries his face in Epona’s neck and listens to her. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if they’re angry with him.

A door creaks open and Ilia comes out of a house with a basket of laundry on her hip. She’s laughing like the house’s occupant had told her a joke just before she stepped outside. She doesn’t notice him. A little orange cat trails behind her.

It’s up to Twilight. He can turn around and they wouldn’t know he was even here. The light makes Ilia’s hair gold. It’s so much longer than it had been when he was here last. She looks like a real, grown-up woman now.

Twilight steels himself and tugs the reins for Epona to follow him through the gates. At the sound of hooves, Ilia looks up.

Twilight gets old. Real old. The kind of old that he’s pissed off about how old he’s gotten. Years and years of a long, bittersweet, tragic, wonderful life draw deep furrows and lines and spots on his face. His hair turns brittle and iron-grey. He gets slow and cantankerous.

There’s friends and scars, broken hearts and children’s weddings, loss and love, joy and sorrow. A few lovers inbetween. The first family death at thirty. A scary fall at seventy. A wedding at twenty-eight, at thirty-five, at thirty-seven, at forty, then sixty, sixty-five, seventy, eighty. An infinite number of dinners at a crowded table. A new Princess. Multiple Eponas, until he can’t ride anymore. Nothing ever really stays the same, and he lets himself grumble about it. He lets himself cry about it. He lets himself laugh about it.

There are still the quiet, lonely days, now and again. They are far outnumbered. He sees himself in the mirror and never really gets used to seeing an old man where a twenty-six-year-old should be looking back at him — at least, that’s how it feels inside. There’s an impossible victory in his wrinkles.

It’s a cool autumn evening when he crawls into bed under quilts older than most of the people he knows. His grown-up grandchildren (whether by blood or by bond, it doesn’t really matter, does it?) talk and laugh in the loft he stopped being able to climb ten years ago. They’re having a pillow fight and trying and failing to stay quiet. He can’t bring himself to scold them. 

He closes his eyes to the sound of laughter. He sleeps.

He’s dead when he wakes up in a century and stumbles into the sunlight on new-fawn legs. An old, greying wolf-dog runs up to meet him.

Hund-ĕr protects him from the things-that-claw and the things-that-bite. The Old Man grimaces at the name — Doggy, really? He’s not even a dog, but whatever makes you happy — and Hund-ĕr sticks at his side through rain and thunder and snow and blood and the things-that-kill. He keeps him warm at night and sleeps at the foot of his bed in the stables. Adults are scared of him. Children less so. They can tell he is gentle and kind and something of a grandfather, if animals can be grandfathers. 

Rhoam sees Hund-ĕr for what he is, but he doesn’t tell The Undead. Hund-ĕr is just like him, old, tired, but here to protect what he must — preternatural eyes, hair like wheat, a sweet naivete. Rhoam isn’t sure that Hund-ĕr remembers who he is, and wolves can’t talk, so he doesn’t bother asking. There’s a flicker of it, here and there, but Hund-ĕr is an old, old wolf and he sleeps when he isn’t accompanying The Undead to all corners of the earth.

The Undead knows him like an old friend but not how. Hund-ĕr licks his wounds and whines when he refuses to rest. He’s more human than some humans he’s met, The Undead included. 

When Link is alone, terrified out of his mind, patching cuts, shivering from nightmares, Hund-ĕr is there. He is steadfast. He’s more than a wolf, Link can tell, but he just doesn’t know what. Hund-ĕr does not accompany him to his last stand. Link doesn’t find him for a long time.

He meets a man that smells like horse and leather, with fangs like a dog’s and dark markings on his face. He’s got eyes like dusk and a voice like thunder. He makes Link feel safe. They share something deeper than a friendship. Something wild. Something ancient.

Zelda walks at his side. The meadow grass crushes under their feet and wind makes the hills sing like a prayer. Zelda allows him this sacred quiet. She is a ghost behind him. He doesn’t turn to make sure she follows — he trusts.

He guides Ĕha deeper into Blatchery Plain. Zelda stiffens when she realizes where they’re going and takes his hand. The swamp is pockmarked with old blast craters and grass grows thick and soft. In a cradle, a garden, a grave the size of a boy, Silent Princesses burgeon under the arched leg of a rusted Guardian. A bird tends to its babies in the hole where an eye used to be.

The flowers glow. They ring with magic. Zelda lets his hand go and hangs back. The furrows that his brother’s hands had dug have long since been erased by rain and wind and months. He sinks his hands into the plush grass and plucks a Silent Princess.

It’s been so long since he and his brother planted these flowers. And still, his cradle blossoms.