there is a timeline out there which ends happily for everyone, or at least, as happily as it can - a timeline where the earth never split open, & demise never launched his attack on the surface in pursuit of the triforce; where he never drove hylia to desperation, & eventually, death, as she did everything in her power to ensure the safety of the mortals she had come to, in her own, odd way, care for; where there is only one legend, & one hero within it.
hylia is a product of her creators. din, nayru & farore were incredibly powerful goddesses, able to create worlds & lifeforms on a whim, & to imbue simple artifacts with power so immense it could bend the very fabric of reality, but just as callous as they were capable. they knew the triforce would be an item desired by those who heard of it, & its abilities to grant the wish of any who were able to lay hands on it. it seems as if it was designed for that very purpose - after all, gods are incapable of using it, & if they truly wished to deprive the mortals of hyrule of its blessings, it would have been nothing for them to craft the triforce so that mortals would be unable to lay eyes upon it, let alone hands. but they didn’t. they created a separate realm for it, one which could be accessed by any who knew the way, & rather than seal it away to remain there in peace, they created hylia instead, to watch over the world they intended to leave, & the sacred relic housed within, & ensure that none - not even ones who, when they came later in time, would have been considered worthy - could lay a hand on it.
hylia was not conceived as a goddess. she wasn’t even conceived as a weapon, although that was how she perceived herself for a period of time unfathomable to mortals. hylia was conceived as a guard dog.
she was imbued with divinity, yes, but only so that it - that she - could be used as against those who would turn greedy eyes upon the goddesses’ golden treasure, & to prevent her from using it herself in turn, although until her final, desperate hours, she never would have dreamed of putting a hand upon it. she finds it hard to verbalize what, exactly, her relationship is to the goddesses. for much of her life, they were merely her creators, as they were the creators of all things. it was only after time spent walking amongst the mortals, observing their relationships & emotions towards them, that she began to think of the goddesses, collectively, as her mothers, but the title never truly fit them. after all, the mothers she saw in her time walking the earth, most of them, at least, stayed close to their children, to watch them grow & help them thrive. hylia has no recollection of the goddesses’ faces. she cannot say if she ever laid eyes upon them at all, before they took to the heavens & left the world behind. there was no emotional connection between them at all, simply a world placed within one hand, & the triforce in the other, & a simple order she couldn’t disobey - protect them.
& so she did. for eons, she stood at the gate between worlds, eldritch & unfathomable, & drove off any who opened the door, burning out their eyes in all her ferocious glory. her life was wings, & light, & flames, luminosity & loneliness, until she thought to look beyond the doorway, & see just what the world she had been ordered to protect looked like - & it was beautiful. skies of crystal blue & gentle winds, rolling fields of green filled with bright settlements of those whose lives seemed so small & insignificant, great bodies of water filled with foam & salt & glittering endlessly under a golden sun, & was it any wonder, then, that the goddesses had charged her with protecting such a place ? she was used to the strange, nameless colours & the gentle hum of power from the triforce, the only sound in the realm of silence she called home. the mortal world was just so different to what she had known until then, she could hardly be blamed for wishing to leave her post & walk in it, just for a while. it was the first time she had ever felt that she longed for something. it was the first time she gave into selfishness. it would not be the last.
the goddesses had turned their back on the world, & trusted it would be safe in hylia’s hands. she was only following their example when she stepped out from the sacred realm, transformed into something which, in a land of giants, would have passed for human. it was the first time she had used her powers for something other than pain. she was a goddess built for violence, & her first attempt to make herself something less - than was not as successful as she had hoped. her second attempt saw her enter the mortal realm in heavy cloaks & veils, wings hidden away until the mortals asked to see them, & it was this likeness of her which would be captured in statues which would find their way into the sky, in smaller carvings which would find a home in settlements across a ruined world; it was from those wings plumes would drop, to be discovered as treasures by a child of the sky. & so it went, the goddess becoming something more human each time she stepped away from her post, until, at last, she found a form she could be comfortable in, wingless & wandering. ( that wasn’t to say it was a form that made others comfortable. she spoke as softly as she could, & took care to be gentle with the little mortals who fascinated her, but a woman with eyes which softly glowed, & hair which flowed like liquid gold would always be looked upon with either awe, or fear. )
there are more myths about hylia than the ones which survived to be told on skyloft, more to the story of her & the one they called the first hero than a goddess coming to love a mortal, & the gifts she gave him to prove it, but some would say they were deliberately forgotten as a form of thanks to the goddess when she used her powers to send the mortals above the clouds. it would be much better for everyone if she was remembered as a kindly goddess, who favoured & cherished them, rather than the goddess she actually was - odd & at times overbearing, her morality misaligned with those she looked over, her intentions pure but her methods, at times, questionable. for all that she had longed to be in their company, it took time for hylia to warm up to those whose world she guarded. their lifespans were so small, & their emotions so intense because of it, & for the longest time, she could not comprehend why, why they felt so strongly & cared so deeply, & why, as the years passed, those emotions began to well up inside of her. there were times when she celebrated with them, wept with them, comforted them, yes, but there were centuries before where she had stood, cold & aloof, simply observing as they reached the highs & lows of their lives. they were incomprehensible to each other in their own ways, but still, they existed together. still, they praised her for saving them, & were careful to tell stories emphasizing her goodness, to sing hymns which thanked her for her benevolence. the stories of hylia as she was were lost to time, eventually, but what was meant as a kindness had unintended consequences when, all those years later, hylia’s mortal form regained her memories, & discovered, to her horror, just what sort of goddess she had been.
the decision to give up her divinity was not an easy one. she had been created with a purpose, to be a weapon, a guardian, a war goddess, a defender, & for the longest time, she had been exactly that. her absences from the sacred realm grew frequent, but she never completely abandoned her post, checking the doorway between worlds often, & defeating all who attempted to fight past her with ease. even when the world cracked wide, & demise’s army poured forth to terrorize the world, hylia had no fear. she had never lost a battle, & assumed that demise would, as all others had, fall easily when she took up arms. that he was capable of fighting her to a standstill shook her to her very core, & it was during that first battle, when it seemed, at times, that demise might triumph over her, hylia felt fear for the first time. she was able to drive demise into a retreat, but she knew it was only temporary, & the panic which rose within her was almost unbearable. it was only then that she understood why the mortals screamed as the horde ravaged their homes & murdered their kin. it was only then she made the effort to save who she could in the short time they had, & even that had ulterior motives; in the event that the unthinkable happened, & the demon king breached the cloud barrier in search of the sacred power, she would need warm bodies to delay his advance.
she never expected things to end as they did. skyloft was meant to remain airborne only for a short time, until she was able to slay demise, & restore peace to the land. had she known how the battle would have ended, she would have worked to save more of those who dwelled on the surface, but although the golden goddesses had made her divine, they had not made her omnipotent, & she was not, in those moments, a paragon of wisdom, despite what some might later say of her. she was a young goddess with a near - broken blade in hand, & wounds inflicted by evil incarnate which she knew would never heal. the battle against demise was won, the demon king trapped by a sealing spike crafted by her own hands, but at what cost ? the mortals were lost to her. the world had been ravaged. for the first time, hylia could taste blood.
she was so scared of what would happen once she died.
it was easier, though, when she was still divine to look at what might happen in the years to come, & decide that yes, the price would be heavy, but it would be worth it. & events as they happened - the kidnapping of her mortal form, the continued clash with the demon lord, the awakening of the only entity which had ever laid her low - were not her intention. she used the last vestiges of her power to leave gifts & messages & trials for the one she knew would become a hero in the future, to light flames, to forge the blade which would become evil’s bane, to compose a holy song which would guide the hero to the sacred power, & allow him to destroy the demon king once & for all. he was, at that point, simply ❛ the hero ❜, a faceless young man she could use in her plans. her mortal form, she considered only a vessel, a means to an end until she could awaken, & ensure demise’s destruction. they were only concepts, abstract at best, the few who would be sacrificed for the needs of the many. that they must live until they were needed never occurred to her. that they would be mortal, with all that entailed, seemed insignificant at the time. it can’t really be that surprising - after all, in their time of desperation, when the people of hyrule called upon their creators for help, the goddesses sent a deluge, & left their world to drown. with only their example to follow, is it any wonder the lesser goddess would be so cold in her considerations ?
perhaps she could have foreseen it, the chance that demise would awaken before her, but in the end, hylia had nothing left to give. her divinity was gone, then, & it was so strange, to bleed red as the mortals did. her last moments were spent in pain, in fear, & by then, even if she had been able to consider the possibility that her plan would be interfered with, there was nothing she could have done. the wheels of fate had been set to spinning, & she no longer had the ability to stop them. she had no way of knowing that demise would curse all those who came after them, & trap them in an endless cycle, & although her mortal reincarnation would regain her memories & much of her power, she would never regain true divinity until after her second death, when her & zelda’s souls would separate into goddess & mortal once more, & by then, she could not break the cycle alone - she was more ghost than goddess by then, capable only of reaching out to those who shared her blood, or those cursed by the demon king, in dreams & premonitions, with no guarantee she would be able to help them, or that they would be able to hear her at all. she didn’t want things to end this way. had her plan gone off as intended, she would have stood by it, fully believing that the means justified the end. of course, if her plan had gone off as intended, there would be no legends at all, & she would be a fallen goddess still able to stand proud, rather than a shade filled with regret.
there’s a timeline out there which ends happily, for everyone, where the threat of destiny is nowhere to be found, & those who want only happiness never find themselves at the centre of a cursed war, but it’s not this one, & until the cycle is broken, it never will be.
