Work Text:
The first hints of daylight are barely detectable, the darkness lifting subtly underneath the thick cloud cover outside the window.
Zelda wakes in the dim light, sensing that it must be almost daybreak; the muted hues and shades of the outside world are different at dawn. The sky outside is dark with just a hint of coming daylight; the white dots are not stars but snowflakes.
She sits up to get a better view out the window. As she does, the thick Rito down comforter falls away from her shoulders, and the mental fog of her hazy dream falls away from her mind. Something that involved watching over vaguely familiar terrain with an odd mix of detachment and devotion, as if she were someplace else, someone else, but nonetheless intimately tied to that land, as if her identity were inseparable from it. It’s a recurring dream.
Cold air seizes her as the covers drop, erasing the velvet warmth of her night’s slumber cocooned with her husband. She shivers, but she doesn’t mind. She wants to feel the cold air. She wants to see the snow. It’s the first snowfall of the season in this part of the country.
On the ground below the top-floor window, the blanket of snow is patchy but steadily growing. Everything is dim and gray, and apart from Link’s breathing, a hollow hush permeates the world. It’s as quiet here on the snowy earth as it is in the sparse air far above, beyond the clouds. Somehow Zelda knows, intimately, the silence of the stratosphere.
She climbs out of bed, careful not to wake Link, and quickly dons her robe and slippers. She grabs a spare blanket from the chest at the foot of the bed and makes her way out to the balcony.
The burgeoning light of dawn seems to grow brighter as soon as Zelda steps outside. From her third-story perch at their house on the hillside, she can see the eastern horizon over the ocean, where the deep indigo of the night sky has faded to an illumined cornflower blue. Somewhere between here and there, the clouds cease. When the sun rises, she will enjoy the rare treat of simultaneous sunshine and snowfall. She smiles through her shivering.
She brushes the snow off an oversized deck chair and lights a fire in the fire pit. Curling up on the chair under her blanket, she lifts her bare feet out of her slippers to tuck her legs against her body as best she can. Frigid winter air bites at her ears and nose.
She still shivers and she still doesn’t mind. Feeling the cold is a triumph; it is a reminder that she is alive, and she is free, and Hyrule is at peace. She is no longer in her hundred-year standoff, when she never got to feel a snowflake melt on her face. She is no longer flying the skies as a dragon for untold millennia that seemed to swallow her up like a molecule of water in an endless sea. During that time she watched countless seasons come and go, but didn’t get to really enjoy them. She had lost her identity – what made her her – when she was draconified. The whole thing feels like a past life – a part of her history that she simultaneously does and does not know.
She still dreams about it sometimes, about looking down on her beloved Hyrule as if from behind a veil in the sky, her mind warped and numbed and mostly somewhere else, somewhere she can’t remember. She wakes from those dreams to Link’s warm, loving embrace, much like she did when she woke from being a dragon.
The snow continues to fall, thickening on the ground. Far away over the ocean, the edge of the cloud bank ignites with luminous rose and gold and violet. Past the clouds, just above the distant horizon, the sky glows a little brighter, almost cyan now. A vivid star shines steadily, not twinkling, a harbinger of the sun’s imminent arrival. Probably Venus, the Goddess of Love.
How the goddesses have smiled upon Zelda! Despite all she’s been through in the past, she could hardly feel anything but blessed in this moment. Alive and whole and loved.
As if to emphasize love’s presence, the balcony door squeaks open behind her. Link steps out, hunched over, arms folded close to his chest. His hair is mussed and his face lined with grogginess.
“Good morning, love,” Zelda says. “Did I wake you?”
“I’m not sure,” Link answers indifferently, his foggy breath hanging in the air. His concern isn’t what woke him. “Are you warm enough?”
She huddles under the blanket, inching closer to the fire. Barely, but yes, she is. She nods.
“Have you had breakfast?” he asks next.
“Not yet,” she says. “I will soon.” Before, she would have just said no or I’m not hungry. But now he nags her to be sure to eat enough.
Link sets a cooking pot over the fire. “You need to eat,” he says, predictably. “How about some warm milk with berries to start?”
He knows her well. One of her favorite cozy comforts on chilly days like today is sipping on warm milk infused with wildberries and courser bee honey.
“And then maybe an omelet?” he suggests, also predictably. Eggs are a good source of choline.
“That sounds lovely, thank you.”
He ducks back into the house to get the ingredients and dishes. He returns to the balcony to cook, even as the snow falls, even though it would be more comfortable in their warm kitchen downstairs, because he’d rather spend these minutes with Zelda.
He’s now wearing his snowquill clothing from Rito Village, pulled hastily over his pajamas. He plucks the headdress off his head and holds it uncertainly; Zelda knows the tension he feels between his worry for her and his desire not to be controlling.
“Are you sure you’re warm enough?” he asks.
Despite the undignified display of her ruddy, runny nose, she feels fine; only her extremities are cold. Deep inside, where it matters, her blood runs hot. But she does not want to cause him concern, so she reaches out to take the headdress and puts it on.
As Link pours the milk into the cooking pot, the first rays of sunlight burst over the horizon, stabbing Zelda’s retinas. She squints and looks away. An expanse of shimmering white explodes across the landscape below the balcony. Every tree is accentuated with a layer of fluffed snow sitting delicately on every branch; icy blue shadows point inland, away from the rising sun. Link drops a handful of wildberries into the steaming milk.
“I’ve been thinking…” Zelda muses, not even sure where this train of thought is headed.
Link waits for her to continue, stirring a dab of honey into the milk, now pink with crushed berries. After a while he finally prods her. “Yeah?”
The pointed tips of his bare ears match the rosy color of the milk, and Zelda idly considers giving the snowquill headdress back to him.
“Hudson says the castle should be finished soon,” she says, inattentively reciting a thought that is on the verge of sinking away from her mind. She is now thinking about Link’s ears.
“Yeah,” he says again. He knows the castle restoration is nearing completion; they were both there when Hudson gave them the update.
Link strains the milk into a mug and offers it to Zelda. She curls cold hands around it, savoring the heat as it suffuses into her numb fingers. The milk’s cloudy vapor carries its aroma to her nose, rife with wildberries and honey, fruity and floral and fragrant. It smells summery, out of place in the surrounding wintry landscape. This, too, is something she never experienced for that century or those millennia, and it lifts her almost to a state of euphoria like a benediction from the Goddess Hylia Herself.
Zelda takes a sip. The milk is soft and sweet and satiny as it blankets her tongue, warms her throat. She closes her eyes and hums in contentment. This is a moment to savor.
After a few more sips she remembers that they were kind of talking about something. Link is now whisking raw eggs in a bowl, patiently waiting for whatever Zelda might say.
“You still want to be king?” she asks.
His lips curve into an amused smirk. She knows that want is not the first word he’d use. He’s so accustomed to serving that he can’t see himself ruling. Zelda thinks his penchant for selfless service is exactly why he should be king.
“If it’s the price I must pay to be with my queen,” he says, “then it’s worth it.” He sprinkles some rock salt into the eggs.
“Hyrule hasn’t had much of a royal family to speak of for over a hundred years now,” Zelda says. “Maybe we don’t need one.”
There are few people alive today who remember the time before the Calamity, when Zelda was royalty, before she became a story that parents told their children: the legend of the princess who took on the forces of evil using divine power granted by the Goddess and awakened by love, throwing her own life into stasis to protect her nation and her people.
A new legend of Zelda has begun to circulate more recently: whispers about the dragon goddess who descended from the sky to join the mortal realm and establish her kingdom. It mirrors the tale of the Zonai; there is no new thing under the sun.
Link’s smile fades. “We need some form of government, and especially a military. We may be at peace now, but it never lasts.” He drops a pat of goat butter into the cooking pot. “It’s like Hyrule is cursed with some sort of endlessly repeating cycle of war. A lust for power that never really goes away. Always rearing its ugly head again.”
“That’s true.” Zelda continues sipping her milk and stares out over the snowy land around them. “Doesn’t mean we need a monarchy, though.”
Link pours the eggs into the pot. He remains silent, waiting for Zelda to continue.
“Either way, it doesn’t mean we have to live in the castle,” she adds, finishing her milk.
Link watches the eggs; they tend to cook quickly. The sun has risen almost as high as the clouds; the long blue shadows have gotten shorter.
“I like it here,” Zelda says.
She missed Hateno Village when they first moved to their new home in Akkala overlooking Tarrey Town. She missed their neighbors and the schoolchildren that she taught and the humble, unimposing house where she and Link first lived together.
But they needed a more spacious home, and they didn’t expect the castle to be rebuilt so quickly.
And this house, which Link built, has become the backdrop Zelda now pictures in her mind’s eye when she thinks about the future, about the life she envisions with her husband, about raising their children.
Maybe they don’t need their home to be as spacious as a castle.
“If you want to stay here, then I want to stay here,” Link says, plating the omelet and handing it to her.
The people of Tarrey Town have been welcoming, and the thriving community has begun to spread from the island in Lake Akkala to the surrounding hillsides. It’s a perfect blend of town and country, with spectacular views of the sea.
Zelda looks out over the snowy slopes below the balcony. This would be a nice place for some recreational shield-surfing. Their children will be able to sled and build snowmen and have snowball fights with other kids from the local community. That might be a preferable childhood to one of constant microscopic attention from endless castle servants who vacillate between gossiping and groveling whenever a princess moves in or out of earshot.
“Maybe I can start a school for the children of Tarrey Town,” Zelda says, taking her first eggy bite.
“Working with kids really seemed to make you happy,” Link observes. “And you being happy? That’s the most important thing in the world.”
Zelda eats quickly, before the omelet gets cold and soggy in the falling snow. Link takes her plate as she finishes and sets it aside. He joins her on the chair, which is just large enough for both of them. They cuddle together under the blanket.
“Maybe we can turn the castle into a school, too,” Zelda says. “Maybe a research university. We can dedicate it to studying ancient technology. And the flora and fauna of Hyrule! We could try to figure out a way to cultivate endangered plants domestically. And there are so many hypotheses I’ve heard about that we could investigate, about unique properties that certain species might have—”
“You’re going to start making me eat frogs again, aren’t you?” Link interrupts, smiling in the amused and adoring way he does when Zelda gets excited about her nerdy interests.
She huffs a small laugh. “Well, you need to eat something. You went to all that effort to make breakfast for me and you didn’t have any yourself!”
“I will,” he says. “For now I just want to hold you.” He places a hand tenderly over her belly.
Zelda knows he wants to go back inside. She knows he’s only staying outside to be with her, to humor her craving to feel and savor all the sensations life has to offer.
If she suggests going back inside, he’ll know it’s her attempt to humor him, and not what she actually wants. Love can be maddening sometimes, when each person wants the other’s preference more than their own.
So she must simply be decisive and not give him a choice.
The sun reinforces her resolve by finally disappearing behind the clouds; the dazzling golden-white landscape disappears, washed over with monotone gray. It seems, suddenly, noticeably colder.
“C’mon, let’s go inside,” she says. “We can cuddle by the hearth downstairs after we get some breakfast in you. How about frog legs?”