Sent from @adventuroushero
TO ZELDA: They had been talking (more so Zelda than himself, to be fair--though even her words are sparse and dim and barely-there, like the crackling fire before them that threatens to smolder into ash if someone doesn't supply it with a log soon), their thoughts and whispered ponderings weave through their shared murky past as Link scoops up fragments of memories left in the wake of Zelda's eerie words...
She is mentioning what life was like at the castle and though Link is trying his best focus on her words that fall over them like sprinkling rain among this glimmering night... he's reading in-between her lines instead, as if he doesn't entirely trust the details she is putting between them now. He gets the impression that life at the castle had been cold and sterile, a place of gleaming marble and holy curses and so much pressure it could crack apart bones.
( He's glad he has forgotten. He's so glad. )
But then her musings drift off and glance upon a little warmth--she mentions her mother very briefly (almost as if she hopes the heavenly woman could hide among her explanations if she simply moved on from the subject quickly enough), but Link hears a softer tone in her voice when the syllables form around those particular memories, as if maybe there had been a gurgling flame lit upon the candle of hope, until the King blew it out later...
She's going on, saying something entirely different now he's sure, but her words completely fall away from him and he's fixed on the idea of Zelda's mother... he never really thought about her before. King Rhoam was featured so prominently in Link's few fleeting memories that he didn't think to ask about a queen that must have existed before he ever came to the castle all those years ago.
So he says with more boldness than he can remember claiming before, "That must have been very hard, losing someone you love like that..."
He blinks at the red embers glowing at him amidst the wispy flames--he's suddenly aware that maybe he's speaking about a subject she isn't ready to discuss, prodding at old wounds until they bleed all over again...
And yet, and yet, he doesn't take back the hidden question at all. There he is again asking silent questions that he realizes too late might have answers that will break them both wide open...
[ inspired by the miscellaneous sentence prompts meme ]
The fire flickered, cracks and pops of flame, licking up the glowing charcoal. Orange, gold, molten, all muddled together, to paint the grass and cobblestone warm. Zelda wrung her hands, elbows braced against her knees and hunched forward over her crossed legs. Her hips and back ached from a day of riding, and the heat of the fire left her face feeling too hot, too dry. Flecks of rain, tiny droplets, struck the back of her neck, her exposed arms, not enough to qualify as a rain much less a drizzle. Just enough to fray at her nerves though.
They sat in the shadow of Hyrule Castle, which led to her reminiscence of her childhood. Zelda, who had seen the Castle in the days after the Calamity's rampage, couldn't believe it still stood. The Castle and its town had burned, spewing black smoke into the air that smelled of charred wood, burnt human flesh, and fear. Sometimes, if Zelda breathed in a wood fire smoke too deep, or smelled cooked meat, her throat got clogged-up. A century later though and the fires were out, leaving debris and ash, and the small blades of grass and the flowers that grew-out of the untamed city. With the malice gone, in just a few years, Hyrule Castle would be grown over.
Once upon a time, many, many, many years ago, this was Zelda's home. Despite its violent end. Despite the knowledge that her father's corpse was probably still, somewhere, in the halls. Despite the years and years of childhood she spent there -- Zelda was exceedingly glad she didn't have to live in that castle anymore. Because it had been cold, and lonely, and stifling. All the drudgery and weight of a kingdom past its prime, living off the momentum of tradition, instead of any new innovation. If the Calamity hadn't toppled it, some other inevitable disaster would have anyway.
"I saw her," Zelda admitted.
The fire popped and ejected sparks into the black sky. A part in the clouds revealed the half-moon. Cool wind skated over Zelda's skin, running cold against the heat of the fire. It was the uncomfortable non-commitment of late spring, both too much and not enough, all at once.
"Of course, she died when I was so young, so I barely recognized her," Zelda said. "I hardly remember her, her voice, or her personality, much less what she looked like. Everything I knew about my mother is what people told me: she was kind, she was wise, she was strong. And I knew what she looked like from her portrait. That was it. I simply had to take their word for it. Maybe, in retrospect, that's what plagued me. I only wanted to know her, in her own words. It was like my mother had been silenced by some great hand and I was irate on her behalf. "
She closed her eyes. The words had begun to spill-out, as though she had been just waiting for someone to ask. A lifetime of silence finally broken by a single question. Technically, it all happened a century ago but for her? It was still just a few weeks. So fresh, so new, sometimes Zelda woke-up in the middle of the night and forgot what era she was in. She climbed out of bed and thought she was still in that damn castle.
"It was the night of the Calamity," Zelda whispered, her voice had softened, far away. "You had been injured and, I don't know..."
She had to choose her words carefully. Link's memories were a fragile thing, at least, in her thoughts they were. Sometimes, he was exactly as he was when they met. That stubborn boy, a young Knight, quiet under the burden of his duties. Other times, she could tell that he couldn't remember his part in the stories she shared. She hated to pressure him, to make him feel like he had lost something good. Even more so she hated to remind him of the terrible things. It made the past a burden.
"I don't know if you remember, but somehow, we made it to Fort Hateno," Zelda continued. "The walls were besieged by monsters and guardians; the soldiers were being slaughtered." She could still hear the screams of men being cooked alive by laser beams. "We had found shelter in one of the guardhouses, but our safety was tenuous, I could hear the machines outside. I had but an arrow left, and you were wounded. In my desperation, I prayed to Hylia, and when she didn't answer, I pleaded for my mother."
The voice in her ear had been like a bell even through the din of pained screams, battle, rain, and fire.
“I am Queen Zelda of Hyrule, as was my mother, and her mother, and her mother before her. Do not ask the gods for the power you seek. it is not for them to give."
In the thin light of a dark, stormy night, a dozen women had gathered in the guardhouse. Zelda imagined the congregation of them was like the bedroom at the scene of her birth, midwives, mothers, grandmothers, and aunts, wiping the sweat from her mother's forehead and witnessing in this new life. Rushing in with their hands extended, skirts fluttering about their legs. Their faces all so familiar because this woman had Zelda's nose, and her chin, and her hair, and her hands, and her eyes. They had directed her to take up her bow and nock her final arrow.
The Guardian crested around the guardhouse, gleaming in the fire and the rain. A hundred hands helped Zelda pull the bow. The string past her ear, as golden light erupted from her hand, warm like an embrace or a fire on a cold night. Light, like a kiss on a summer’s day. Arms wrapped around Zelda’s shoulder, cradled her close to the chest, like she had once been held as she took her first breaths as an infant and cried. By a grandmother long dead, by a mother who went too soon, who was still here.
“This is your mother’s blessing.”
Red, crimson, turned shocking blue, and Zelda released the arrow.
A brilliant light erupted from the bow and like a needle it pierced the eye of the guardian. It cracked the sky. The Guardian groaned and its eye faded dull, lifeless. Dark waves of power leaked from it and turned to dust. Zelda was left in the dark, alone, with an empty quiver. Her lips parted, eyes wide, and with the pattering rain, echoed her breath.
"And she came to me," Zelda said. "I don't know if she was a ghost, or, or some kind of hallucination. But I saw her there, in the rain, outside the guardhouse. She looks... I heard this so many times, but I look like her. I have her eyes, and her hair, and her skin, but I guess, my nose is my dad's. She didn't say anything, only smiled, and she was gone. I don't think she needed to say anything, I understood."
Zelda had left Link in the guardhouse. By then his body was ice cold and his breath thin as a whisper. once outside she had pulled her bow with no arrow and yet loosed a projectile of pure, brilliant, light. The Arrow of Light pierced the shells of the Guardians and vanquished them in a single shot. As if drawn to her power, they turned their eyes to her. Zelda almost thought herself dead until her ancestors directed her.
“Reach-out your hand.” The woman beside her was tall, with strong arms, armor over her chest and shoulders. Her own hand extended, showing Zelda what to do. “With this sword, you will protect this land and those you love!”
Bow and sword in hand, Zelda had fought. For an hour, maybe longer, until she had driven the malice out of the Guardians and freed Fort Hateno of its assault. Only a hundred years later would Zelda learn that she had saved all of Hateno Village. Because if that wall had fallen, the Calamity would have demolished the defenseless town. The children of those soldiers, on the wall that day, called her a hero. Talked about how their grandfathers and grandmothers spoke of the Princess, bathed in brilliant light, who turned the tide.
Zelda was ambivalent to the praise.
"Hyrule is an ancient country," Zelda said, "and my bloodline is deep. It wasn't that my mother ghost came to me but her memory. Her memory which lives on inside of me, in my blood, in my features, in my magic. I already know what my mother looks like, and what she's like, because well... I'm like her."
She tucked her arms around her legs, a soft smile pulling on her features.
"I do wish I got to know her, and I miss her... but, she's not so far from me now."
