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“Careful,” Grandpa warned Link. “You’ll want to be sure you get it just right. Can’t hit it too hard, otherwise it’ll go askew. It never hurts to take your time if you need it.”
Link gritted his teeth, trying to control his breathing. Don’t hit it too hard, Grandpa said, and that made sense for engraving metal. But that was more easily said than done when he was more used to the heavy strikes necessary to form metal into the right shape than the small ones to carve it away just so.
He waited long enough for just one more deep breath, because he couldn’t wait forever before he struck—
It went askew. Link winced.
He huffed and pulled away from it. “It’s hard to get this right.”
At least it was still the same small, flat metal sheet he had been practicing on. It wasn’t ruining anything important.
If it weren’t for the fact that Grandpa’s eyesight was getting worse and his hands now had a tremor…
Grandpa patted his shoulder consolingly. “You’ll learn. Just as learned to forge.”
That, by his accounting at the time, had seemed to take ages. Perhaps now that he was twenty, the time wouldn’t seem to drag on quite so slowly as when he was a kid, but Link still didn’t like all the slow steps to learning. Especially for frivolous details that customers never really needed, but the extra they paid for them was often necessary if they wanted to do more than merely make ends meet.
“I see I’m not going to get much out of you today. Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon to go see Zelda?”
Link immediately brightened up at that prospect.
Link had been best friends with Zelda for well over a decade now. Ever since Grandpa brought him along on a visit to his friend two weeks after Link started to live with him, and discovered that friend had a granddaughter his same age. And she was as eager to drag another kid around into every game she wanted to play as he was to have a friend in a new place.
He’d been in love with her since about a week after that.
Of course, he didn’t realize that until much later. That had happened when they were eleven, since apparently his willingness to go and fight monsters all across the kingdom for her sake the year prior hadn’t been enough of a clue.
He knocked on the door to Zelda’s room and opened it after hearing a muffled “Come in!”
Link raised an eyebrow as he was greeted by the sight of Zelda, sprawled on her bed, a book covering her face. “Is this how you greet all your guests, or am I just special?”
She sat up in a hurry, book clumsily falling to her lap. Not that he was paying much attention to it when it had to compete with her smile as she saw him.
“Link!” Zelda barely took the time to properly set the book closed on her pillow before she scrambled across her bed to meet him at the foot of it. She pulled him down to sit next to her on it. “You’re just special.”
And then she kissed him on the cheek to complete her greeting.
Link blushed. Even though they had been courting and this had been common for a couple of years now, he still felt flustered by things like this.
Enough that sometimes he questioned his desire to bring their relationship to the next step.
Not that it would stop him from asking her. He was surer of her response this time than all those years he’d spent trying to sort out his own feelings and whether she might possibly reciprocate them. Still, trying to find a good opportunity to bring it up was… difficult.
“I’m glad you’re here today,” Zelda told him, drawing his mind back to the here and now instead of his concerns for the future. “Grandpapa went out hunting in the Trilby Highlands today.”
“I thought you liked hunting almost more than you liked me,” Link teased.
She puffed out her cheeks. Cute. “I do. But my knife broke.”
The knife in question was one Link made for her when they were twelve. It was the first one he ever made, and he was honestly surprised it had held together so long despite everything she had done with it over the years. The blade itself was fine (if there was any criticism he had about that, it was that Zelda didn’t sharpen it enough), but the handle had been some cheap strips of leather a kid was able to afford barely wrapped around the tang of the knife.
“You do know that usually you use arrows for the actual hunting part, right?” He’d only been able to come along a few times, but that much was clear. “And I’m certain you could’ve borrowed someone else’s knife to skin your catch later.”
She turned her head away. “It isn’t the same. Besides, you’re here now, so that’s better than a less enjoyable hunting experience than usual.”
“You didn’t know that I was going to have the afternoon off when even I didn’t until an hour ago.” Link poked her cheek and she wrinkled her nose. “I think you were planning to just wallow about it all afternoon.”
Zelda huffed. “The problem with you is that you know me too well.”
“We have been best friends for over a decade, love.”
She didn’t get flustered as often as he did, but he loved it these few times he was able to coax a faint blush and a pleased smile out of her. Not that she looked any less beautiful without, but she certainly looked all the more captivating with it.
“Well, still, the point was,” she said while still wearing the flush and the smile, “that even as much as I like to wallow, getting to spend time with you decidedly beats that.”
As lovely and true as that sounded, he suspected there was a reason she was pointing it out instead of being content to simply let it be true. “And…?”
She sighed. Again, being best friends for too long. “Would you possibly be willing to fix my knife for me?”
There it was.
“If you give it back to me,” Link warned her, “I’m going to reforge the blade into something else.”
Her mouth fell open. “You wouldn’t!”
“I would, too. You deserve a better knife than I was capable of forging at twelve.” Ah, he should make his intention clearer. “So I’m saying I’d make you a better one.”
“Oh.” Zelda studied his face carefully. “Well, even if it has plenty of memories, fine. The fact that it came from you is most important, after all. I’ll give it to you when you leave.”
That made him raise an eyebrow. “You don’t have to give it to me. You can keep it, since you clearly cherish the memories it holds.”
“I do… but I want to see what you make from it, too.”
Oh, dear. That was a lot of expectation. It wouldn’t be able to simply be thrown in the pile of scrap metal, then.
“Anyhow, enough talk!” She let go of his arm so that she could stand up, extending her hand to him with a devious grin on her face. “I’ve been thinking all week about something I wanted to do with you the next time you visited the castle!”
Oh, dear.
Link studied the blade on his walk back home that evening.
Zelda hadn’t specifically said it had to be something special, but… the first knife he had ever made. One he had given to her, and had in mind for her with every stroke of the hammer. One she had carried around and cherished for years because he had made it for her especially. And it had the worn edges and chips on the sides to prove it. How was he not supposed to make it something special?
Well, as soon as he’d had that thought, his mind immediately went to what he wanted for special with her lately.
He didn’t need to have a betrothal gift prepared before he asked Zelda for her hand. It was common enough for those to be exchanged after the betrothal unless it was arranged by their families in advance.
But they were always exchanged before the wedding, and most tried to find something that was special but easy enough to keep with them constantly until they wore wedding rings that held even greater importance. That made other types of jewelry popular, though he also knew Zelda couldn’t stop talking about the hair ornament Romio got Julietta after they finally made their engagement official.
Those two had actually been married for over a year now, but it would still feel too much like copying to do a hair ornament for the same purpose. Granted, his skill in forging anything so delicate was definitely debatable. There was more than one reason jewelry was typically left in the hands of silver and gold smiths. But perhaps he could at least make a charm for a necklace, or a simple bracelet.
Or he could just use it to make the knife he promised her. She’d probably like that best, even as much as she liked accessories.
And that would give him more time to think of how exactly he wanted to ask the question.
There had been a good opportunity earlier, on the roof just when the sun was getting low enough in the sky the light was starting to look golden. It had been a lovely moment, despite it being one of the days Zelda had dragged him back into goofing off like they had as kids (such days were admittedly probably less rare than they ought to be considering their age).
But Link had hesitated, wondering if he really should go for it when an opportunity came or if he should plan it out more in advance. And then Zelda nearly slipped because she was walking too carelessly on the slant of the roof and ensuring her safety was more imminent, and then the moment was gone.
Link sighed. This was annoyingly difficult to figure out, but… a little more time to figure out what he was doing sounded lovely.
“So, how’s my new-and-improved knife coming along?” Zelda asked him when she visited a couple of weeks later.
It wasn’t the first time she’d visited, of course. She’d made a habit of visiting at least once or twice a week without fail since she was six—usually to the dismay of Minister Potho. Most likely she just waited to give him a chance to get to it aside from all his other forge work.
And it should have been enough time. Except for one little thing.
“Uh.” Link leaned against the table, resting his forehead on his hand. “Sorry. I… completely forgot about it.”
She leaned over so that he could see her despite his limited vision at the moment. “Forgot about it!? How could you forget about me?”
“I could never forget about you, Zelda. You wouldn’t let me.” He straightened in his seat at the kitchen table and sighed before giving his excuses, thinking of the blade sitting on his dresser upstairs. “We got a big order of horseshoes from a travelling troupe that wouldn’t be staying in the area long the day after you asked me, and even when I had time to work on personal projects after that, Grandpa was helping me learn how to engrave things.”
“Engraving? Do you need to do that?”
“No… but there are people who don’t want all their swords to be plain and boring.”
“Oh, now I know what you’re talking about.” Zelda hummed. “I don’t particularly care about swords, but I am a proponent of prettier things in general. Are you any good at it?”
Link sighed. “I said I’m learning.”
“So, no.”
He pouted. “Must you tease me?”
“Only because you’re so cute when I do.”
She leaned back in her chair to glance through the door to the forge where Grandpa was still working. Then, with a grin, she stood up, placed her hands on his cheeks, and kissed his pout away.
He spluttered, and hissed, “Zelda! Grandpa’s right there!”
Zelda smiled beatifically. “He’s occupied. He didn’t see.”
At least she kept her voice low. As much as she seemed to love to tease him like this, he didn’t think she actually wanted to get caught kissing in front of others any more than he did.
He huffed and looked away, hoping that would stop a blush from rising on his face any more than it already was. “I hope he didn’t. I’m still impressed you could do that so easily, especially around anyone else.”
“I also like the kisses you initiate. Big romantic moments you set up without anyone else around. I don’t think I could make that happen half as easily.” She stood up and cupped his cheek so that he met her eyes again. “But I still like the simple ones I steal from you whenever. Just enjoying every moment with you… I could keep doing that for the rest of my life.”
Link could, too. He’d love to, in fact.
It would be so simple to open his mouth and tell her that he wanted the same thing, and then lead into asking her if she would marry him so that could happen.
But the same thing happened as every time the opportunity came up. He hesitated. He hesitated and, perhaps he didn’t think Zelda wouldn’t be interested, but even the slightest chance of a negative answer felt too much to risk. If he were going to ask, would it be alright for it to be this casual? He liked the idea of preparing a betrothal gift in advance, but he hadn’t had any more opportunity to start working on that than the kni—
“Oh, you’re still here, Zelda?”
Zelda fell back into her seat at the sound of Grandpa’s voice. Hopefully he hadn’t seen her standing above Link, their faces inches apart like they were about to kiss.
At least, Grandpa didn’t say anything if he did. “I was going to get Link to come back to help me in the forge.”
Well, with that interruption, he was glad for once of his hesitation before asking the question. He would’ve lost all his confidence if he got stopped because he hadn’t properly considered where he was asking.
She stood up, keeping an impressively calm look on her face despite still-red cheeks to match Link’s. “Then, I’ll take my leave, Master Smith. I want him to work on my knife.”
He rolled his eyes as he stood, too. “Grandpa didn’t come to get me so I could start a new project tonight.”
Zelda pegged him with a stare. “But soon?”
“Soon,” he promised.
Link had been getting better at engraving as he’d practiced lately.
Grandpa was still drawing the designs in the chalk dust, because that was proving especially difficult for Link, but as for following them…
Grandpa studied his latest attempt on the latest spare sheet of metal. “Well… it almost matches. You need to remember not to be so rushed about it.”
He sighed. “So, more practice?”
“Eventually, yes, but… we do have a few simple orders that need to be engraved. The plates that will be collected by the end of next month.”
Meaning there would be plenty of time to restart it if he messed up. So not full trust, but still… it was a small step forward. Link thought he could live with that.
After talking about it with Grandpa, they decided to wrap up the few things they had been working on first so that by afternoon of the second day following Zelda’s latest visit, he’d be able to focus solely on his personal project until it was finished.
“Though a commission from the royal family really could quite reasonably be the priority, rather than it being a personal project,” Grandpa pointed out.
Link rolled his eyes. “It only counts as a commission if you actually get paid for it.”
“Not in rupees, perhaps, but I’m sure you get paid in kisses.”
His ears heated up.
“Kisses for a lifetime in exchange for forging her anything whenever she wants,” Grandpa mused. “Doesn’t sound like a half bad deal to me.”
Ah, right. Link had told Grandpa of his intentions, as soon as he had decided it was time to take the next step. And then the king. Both of them had known for weeks, he just had yet to ask the most important person her opinion on the matter.
“It, uh. Actually isn’t for a lifetime. At least, that’s not guaranteed yet.”
He raised one bushy eyebrow. “You haven’t actually asked her yet?”
“I’m working on it,” Link grumbled.
Once he started working on it, the blade itself was simple. He’d forged plenty of knives over the years, after all. Form the basic shape, bring the end to a point, hammer it flat and even on the anvil, and then repeat several times to strengthen the blade before sharpening the edge. He’d added a little more iron to cover for what had worn away from the original blade over the years, but was rather proud of the way it was turning out so far.
But he had gotten more focused than he realized, because it wasn’t until Grandpa commented that he realized he’d done anything more than that.
“Oh? Engraving, even on your personal project? I suppose you’ve enjoyed that more than you’ve let on.”
Link paused. He had been engraving a floral design that Zelda would like, opposite the edge, and making the pattern recognizable and he had yet to mess it up. Perhaps because he’d been doing it so much with the plates the past day or so, he’d started this without even thinking about it.
It wasn’t finished if he was adding this to it. But… it was starting to take the look of something special, beyond the metal it was forged from.
Perhaps he could use this for the original purpose he had thought of for it.
Determined to get it right this time, Link adjusted the grip of the graver in his hand and continued working on the knife with renewed conviction.
Once he made the decision to make this knife special, Link went above and beyond on everything for it.
He asked Bremor, the carpenter typically in charge of carving elaborate details when they were necessary, to teach him so that he could include them on the sides of the handle. Perhaps they would have looked nicer had Bremor been the one to carve them, but Link was satisfied with them being recognizable joy butterflies by his fourth attempt, and all the gladder that he had been the one to do it himself. Though his practice engraving metal lately likely helped it take only four attempts, even if he had to learn to adjust his strength again for carving into a different material.
He knew he couldn’t afford enough high-quality leather to make enough failures to imprint a new sheathe for the knife with clover designs himself, so he commissioned someone else to make one.
Then finally attaching the handle. He was better at this now than when he was twelve, but he still took his time to do the best job he could with it.
He wanted this knife to last.
“Can I go to the castle?” Link asked Grandpa once it was all assembled. “To… make a special delivery?”
Grandpa looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. He hadn’t specifically told him of his plans for this knife, but considering just how much care he’d put in it, Grandpa probably suspected. “I hope to hear good news when you return.”
He hoped this blush would fade by the time he arrived at the castle.
Arriving at the door to Zelda’s rooms, Link knocked.
Specifically, using the secret knock that they’d come up with when they were nine. He’d used it religiously until they were fifteen and he properly realized what a childish thing a secret knock was, but even after he’d started trying to knock normally, he defaulted to it about half the time he visited her anyway.
And it still got the typical response he received back then. Specifically, bare feet pattering against stone floor before yanking the door open with such force it slammed against the wall, and a princess grinning at him and shouting “LINK!” as she tackled him in a hug that forced him to stumble a couple steps back.
Link hadn’t meant to do the knock today, but honestly… it felt appropriate. He chuckled as he brought his arms up to reciprocate the embrace.
“You’re rarely here this early! I’m barely done with my tutors!” She smirked knowingly. “Is there any special reason for that?”
Well, even if she could guess about the knife, at least there was nothing to ruin the real surprise for her today.
“Yeah.” He let go of her and took a step away from her, reaching behind him to grab where the knife tucked away in his pouch for safekeeping while he travelled to the castle. “For my favorite princess.”
“You don’t know any other princesses.”
“Do you want this knife or not?”
“I do! I do!”
He brought it out from behind his back.
Zelda’s eyes widened and her mouth gaped into a open-mouthed smile. “A fancy sheathe? With clovers on it? I love this! It’s so much better than my previous one, and—are those joy butterflies on the handle!?”
Link grinned. He was a little nervous about what he wanted to say, but he’d planned to just let her appreciate it at first. And it was gratifying to see how much she was enjoying it for now.
“You haven’t even looked at the blade yet,” he told her.
“Right! The most important part!” She unsheathed it, and paused as she looked at it. “Flowers… zinnia, camellia, clematis… all my favorites! Engraved so beautifully into it! Is that why it took you a month to make this?”
Well, she didn’t know what he was trying to do. Leave it to her to tease him like normal. “I just wanted to make you something really nice. Of course it took time. But honestly the joy butterflies took longer.”
Her attention diverted to the handle, and then she looked back up at him. “You made all of this?”
“Everything except the sheathe.”
Zelda replaced the sheathe, and then lowered it so that she could smile with her full attention on him. “That settles it. If this knife ever breaks, even if it’s three or four decades from now, I’m forcing you to repair it. Not replace it.”
That seemed as good an opening as any for what he wanted to tell her next. Link gulped.
“I. Uh. Tried to make it so it would last.” True, he had definitely wanted to say that, but it didn’t really capture what he was thinking, of really liking the sound of sticking around for the three of four decades she’d mentioned or longer. “Not to say that I wouldn’t fix it! I’d gladly do that, but I want it to last because…”
Because he put his heart and soul into it to be special. Because he wanted it to remain intact as long as he wanted to remain by her side. What was the best way to tell her?
Zelda just kept staring at him. Perhaps she could sense that he was trying to have a bit of a moment, but whatever the reason, he was glad that she at least didn’t interject with a ridiculous comment.
He took a deep breath, remembering something he forgot to mention earlier. “I… used your old blade to forge that one.”
She smiled widely, eyes looking down, but only for a moment. Her hands holding the knife remained planted firmly at her waist and her gaze returned to him. “That just makes it that much more special.”
“It is special,” Link agreed. Finally, the sentiment he was looking for, at least in part. “But… it wasn’t enough on its own to become the amazing blade you saw there.”
Her eyes widened slightly, and her cheeks began to flush.
Oh, he was really doing this, wasn’t he? He was about to propose, in front of the open door to her room where any servant could walk by. At least there wasn’t anyone around right now, but there could be.
He nervously rubbed the back of his very red neck. “So to become an amazing blade myself I—no, that’s not what it sounded like in my head.” He took one last deep breath, forcing both hands to his side. “What I’m trying to say, is… I love courting you. Of course I do I love you and have loved you for ages! But what I’d really like to do is, uhm. Well, I’d like to marry you. If you’re as interested in it as I am.”
Link forced himself to keep his eyes on Zelda’s as he said the whole thing, because he knew how much he wanted to look away and wait for her response. But he was glad he did, since it meant he got to see her face flush more deeply than he had ever seen it before and wear a smile brighter than anything he had ever seen seconds after he had asked.
“YES!” she shouted, throwing her arms around his neck before giving him a slew of kisses all over his face. “Yes yes yes yes yes!”
He could barely stop smiling himself, wrapping his arms around her and struggling to return her kisses because his lips were stretched too thin with a smile.
Link lost track of how many minutes had passed by the time the kissing frenzy ended in favor of pulling him in for a closer hug.
He smiled into her shoulder. “I was so nervous about asking you. It took me weeks to figure out how I wanted to do it.”
Zelda laughed. What a beautiful sound. “I’m not surprised. But I’m glad you did.”
“I am, too. I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life married to you.”
“That will be nice. But there is one other trial you’ll have to go through first to reach that.”
“What?” he asked, blood rising. He’d already talked to her grandfather, was there something else he was meant to have done?
She pulled back enough that he could see the evil grin on her lips. “The royal wedding.”