Link | Wendsite

Link

The Legend of Zelda

[Multiple canons]

in canon

Link is the protagonist of The Legend of Zelda series. He has appeared across many incarnations throughout the series, usually depicted as an ordinary boy or young man who becomes a legendary hero by saving the world through feats of courage. He is often the holder of the Triforce of Courage, a sign of his being chosen by the gods. He is typically seen wielding a sword and shield, most often the Master Sword and Hylian Shield. Specific incarnations of Link may be distinguished by titles such as the Hero of Time in Ocarina of Time and the Hero of Winds in The Wind Waker. All incarnations of Link possess the spirit of the hero and are thereby destined to fight evil.

While each individual incarnation of the hero's spirit have their own distinct lives and personalities, there are a few common throughlines that persist in nearly every version of Link--tenacity, bravery, and an unbreakable spirit even in death and calamity. On a more superficial level, a connectedness with nature and the world around them, a desire to meet and bond with many different kinds of people, a tendency to oversleep (almost as if making up for what will eventually be a long, sleepless journey), a silent way of carrying himself, and a fiercely protective, often reckless existence. Not every Link is a proper knight, but within every Link lingers the spirit of one.

wendy lore

I don't remember the first time I played a Zelda game, but I know it was Ocarina of Time on a rented blockbuster console when I was 4 or 5. There are flashes of memories here and there--seeing my dad playing and asking what it was, having a crush on Princess Zelda, knowing with clarity my favourite colour was green because it reminded me of Link. Despite all that, though, I don't have the nostalgia that most people do for Ocarina of Time, it never felt like my Zelda. No, my Zelda would come much later--in 2003, when I was about 9 years old.

Zelda, for as long as I remembered it, was an activity. I waited for my dad to come home, and then I watched him play. Wind Waker, the game I bought him for father's day, was the first time I ever felt the urge to play it on my own--long after we beat it together, I would come back to it, time and time again. Specifically, whenever the autumn months rolled around, I would get the sudden urge to find all the scattered pieces of my game cube and run through the whole thing again. This urge persists, to this day, and while I enjoyed other Zeldas, I never really went out of my way to play any of them. I just loved Wind Waker, lived in Wind Waker, and that was all I needed. I loved it, but I wasn't insane about Zelda as a series... not until 2011.

In 2011, at age 16, here is what I wrote on tumblr:

"I’m Link.
And it’s like, no [Wendy], stop, everyone wants to be Link. Everyone is Link, I mean, he’s your player avatar, you crazay. He was made so you can project yourself onto him.
And that’s all fine and dandy, but I mean, later on in the franchise he starts gaining character. Character beyond some mute little elf kid who’s always forced into these adventures. He gets a personality, and emotions, and just recently, a love interest.
And up until that point I really saw no relation to him at all. There was no characters in the entire series that really struck that magic with me and made me say ‘yeah, they’re me.’ Which is… WEIRD for me, because I always find someone to obsess over and relate to. But there was no one, until the time Wind Waker came out and suddenly I started thinking all these things about what Link’s inner monologue must be like and all the stuff he doesn’t say and probably all the time he has to think about shit that a kid his age really shouldn’t be forced to think about.
And Skyward Sword really totally just sealed the deal for me. I empathize so much with that kid, it’s almost impossible to put into words.
But unlike when I relate to a character in other series, I neglected to really talk about how much I felt he and I were alike. Because I feel like if you compare yourself to Link, you’re giving yourself way too much credit. Me personally, at least. To me he’s like, this amazing hero who always gives up every fucking thing he’s ever known just to make people happy. In the early games he didn’t even know Zelda personally, half the time. He just went spelunking and fighting monsters and kicking ass on a daily basis because it was a thing to do. He’s so admirable, he’s got all the qualities that really do make a hero.
But then other people started comparing me to him. The first was one of my (now ex) [boy]friends, who was crazy into Phantom Hourglass and likened us to Link and Linebeck. [He] would sit there and tell me every little thing about me that reminded [him] of himself, and it secretly made me really happy because, again, that kid was like this rolemodel to me. And it wasn’t like [he] knew that, because, again, in a very in-character fashion, I didn’t say a word about it.
I even had a little plushie of toon Link that I ended up giving [him.] I told [him,] jokingly but in kind of a sappy way, it was so I could always be with [him.] We obviously don’t talk anymore, but I like to think [he] keeps it somewhere special to this day.
And then there was my old best friend. [She’d] always say 'Dude, you’re like a female Link.'
And to this day, it continues.
It’s just like, no matter what happens in life I always end up putting the happiness of others before my own. There are surely people who would object to this and say that in reality I’m this horrible selfish menace but I know it’s not true. Oftentimes, I can’t be happy on my own without people around me to do favours for, and it’s even easier when I have one person in particular to dedicate myself to. When there’s a person in my life I cherish enough to throw myself headfirst into danger for–it may seem silly–but that’s when I’m at my most content.
And that’s why when I played Skyward Sword, I really kind of felt like Link and I had more in common than I would ever acknowledge out loud. There was no silly beating-around-the-bush-will-they-wont-they bs. He was straight up in love with Zelda and she felt the same. It’s right there in the way they look at each other. There is no denying how strong their bond is. Even if it was platonic, in some way, shape, or form, they are soul mates. They’re destined to play out this cycle time and time again.
It’s his dedication to bring her home safe that makes me relate to him.
I can’t be this awesome hero who fights evil and explores dungeons and travels the world in this day and age. The adventure I know is only what extends past my backyard, and the danger I face never really gets above the “incredible teenage angst”
But in my own way, I can find my princess some day, and I can brave whatever it takes to keep her safe from harm.
And it will be no burden to me. That mere fact alone will be when I am finally at my best."

What I was describing here was how heavily I identify with knighthood, and how it would eventually tie into my identity as a butch lesbian. While I am no longer a doormat or a people pleaser, acts of service and love through servitude to whatever charge I may find and love remain the most fulfilling way for me to show I care. As a child, when I would have crushes on girls I would dream myself into armour saving them from great danger, I would fantasize about pulling them out of burning buildings or bloodying my fists in their name. There is a fire in me that screams for me to fight and defend, to rise to a great challenge, to prove my dedication through blood and sweat--and it feels lost in this mundane reality, unsure of how to kill and die for that which I hold dear. This, I believe, is what's left of the hero's spirit--unused to peace and rest, which it so often longed for, learning how to replace a sword in hand with the concept of "I will do chores for you."

I first kinsidered Link when I was 16 and had a dream that I was at a massive, sprawling, green-dappled Hylian gorge, playing the Song of Storms on the ocarina. I intuitively knew I was Link, and the strangest part of it was that I did not remember that song at all before the dream. I would wake up, feeling strangely at home in my own body, and listen to it on loop for days.

Skyward Sword would remain the most significant step on my journey as Link & the canon that felt the most like home, though as I fell into my fictionkin journey I would learn that I am kin with Link's soul, rather than him as a man. I have stronger ties to certain iterations of him, but I am (almost) all of them. For a while, Skyward Sword was the definitive Link for me, and when my best friend and platonic soulmate later came to the realization that he was Zelda, my only response was shouting "GOD, FUCK YOU, OF COURSE YOU ARE! I'M A FUCKING IDIOT! I DIDN'T GUESS THAT?!"

In 2016, Zelda and I would go through a severe interpersonal upheaval where we lost all our closest friends and were only left with one another. The trauma I suffered during the events of the last few months of 2016 were so severe that I would effectively die within my system. A headmate worked tirelessly to revive me for 48 hours straight and was only able to do so by ripping out parts of herself and sticking them into me like mystical, gory, hot pink transplanted organs. I would awaken with no memory of who I was and eventually have to slowly trigger that sense of self back though persistent perusal of tumblr posts, old diary entries, and whatever other memories I had on hand. Three months later, Breath of the Wild would come out.

I was normal about this.

on god i will figure out a music player

Ocarina of Time

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Majora's Mask

Silly, Simple, One-Off Stuff

me and skull kid were best pals after the events of the game

my memories get kinda blurry at the end before i ‘woke up’ as the hero’s shade, but i lived out most of my days after the events of the game with skull kid and tatl and tael. skull kid and i went around apologizing to all the people he hurt and we tried our best to put a lot of good into the world in order to atone for the suffering he caused. the universe was forgiving. he was just a child, after all.

i frequently went to the happy mask salesman for advice

guru guru and i would sit in the laundry pool for hours and i’d just listen to his music. sometimes i noticed kafei would poke his head out of the door and watch us.

ikana canyon was my favourite place to be

Wind Waker

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Skyward Sword

The Crimson Loftwing

i met him when i was 10 and he was the last bird of everyone my age to come. i had always been the weird kid and my only friend was zelda and my self-worth was kind of abysmal because of it. i only really remember flashes of that day, i slept in and she pulled me out of my house with my unbrushed bedhead, yelling all the way about me sleeping in on the day i was supposed to get my wings. its a big milestone obviously so she was pretty mad lol.

me being last was like being picked last for kickball but in a kickball game that decides the course of ur entire life. i was pretty dissociated in all the pain i was feeling but zelda was a hair away from angry crying and cursing the goddess’s name in my stead. when my loftwing came he eclipsed the sun, though, looking black until he touched down, and i still remember every adult on the isle in complete uproar about the colour of his feathers. everything was white noise outside where our eyes met.

loftwings talk to you, in a headspace you share, but there’s a language barrier. from what i have heard, it’s all just feelings and impulses and body language in the beginning, but after time you start to hear their voice. it transitions into broken sentences, ‘feeling’ words your bird might send you like hungry or danger, before eventually you hear them as they are, crystal clear. the thing is, he spoke in complete sentences to me from day one. the first thing i heard when i looked at him was a voice that said i’ve waited so long to meet you.

the other thing is……… you’re not supposed to fly right away. it is normalized but it is still an incredibly dangerous activity, even with the knights patrolling. it takes months of dedicated, supervised flying before you’re allowed to fly on your own. but when i saw my bird, it was like nothing existed but him and i. my life, my memories, my friends, my family, my identity, it all just melted away and all that mattered in that moment was the oneness with him i felt in my heart. like i existed to do nothing else but be a single entity with him, like the idea of not being one this long was absurd.

so i leapt on his back and we tore off into the skies. and i was terrified and alive. he took me far above skyloft, so far i was sure we were going to the sun itself. it felt like i was put on earth for that moment and that moment alone, to leave everything behind and run away with him.

and then we landed after about 5 minutes and zelda was crying and threatened me w violence. i think groose was probably gonna pass out from rage, jealousy, disbelief, maybe a combo of all. it earned me a reputation as a wildcard for the rest of my life, no one could really pin me down after that so they all stopped trying, except groose who was still very convinced i was just a ditzy weirdo who got lucky.

my dad grounded me for a week. literally grounded me. grounded. cause, cause i wasn’t–anyways.

general memories, i have some here and there. he was rowdy and reckless, brave to a fault. he loved the rare thunderstorm, always begged me to fly with him in them, which was a very tempting offer (until i had a Bad Experience, and it become significantly less funny to entertain)

we liked to find an empty island in the sun and curl up there for naps. not one in particular just, whatever we saw first. i don’t remember having a favourite colour before i met him but afterwards it was easily red.

The First Cut is the Deepest

i’ve been link a LOT–-i’m kin with the hero’s spirit itself so i’m every link, i just. only get more vivid memories from some, others less so. i don’t know if its because i have more vivid memories of being Sky than anyone else, but that lifetime was the hardest one of all in terms of just… the raw emotions i felt at any given time. I theorize it’s because my spirit was so new, it hadn’t yet been tempered by all those lifetimes. i was a very emotional creature then, my heart in everything i did and always working before my head, and even though my will couldn’t be broken i just… ached all the time. moving was the only thing that helped it so i moved and i rarely stopped, which was kind of a strange thing for me because before i set out all i did was sleep and fly around aimlessly lmao. i think hylia made me a sleepyhead cause she knew once i started going i wasn’t gonna stop. catching up before it happens xD

that’s just one layer of it but it was physically straining too, my body wasn’t really built to just crash down to the surface one day and immediately start doing advanced sword techniques against monsters. i never got used to ‘surface air,’ not entirely. the air in skyloft is easier to breathe despite the altitude, i guess just because of how we adapted/evolved as people, and the air on the surface was heavy and hard to take in. I always felt kinda sick and some days were better than others. and then the culture shock, too. i tried to just take it in but everything was. really overwhelming beneath the clouds, and i had a problem where instead of being like, ‘okay link! thats enough learning shit that blows your mind for today!’ i would say ‘hey fi. tell me… more…’ (because I liked listening to fi, and because zelda always talked about legends of the surface when she was little, and learning about it reminded me of her…)

i was physically, mentally, and emotionally spent all the time, yes. the world was so overwhelming and especially toward the end of things, when the pressure of demise constantly breaking through his seal was at its highest, I didn’t do much of anything to take care of myself. It usually took the combined effort of Fi and later on Groose to get me to eat and sleep like a normal person.

despite all that it wasn’t hard for me, even at my lowest moments, to just get up and keep going. the hero’s spirit is this tangible sort of aura I can feel over my heart when I think about it in comparison to other ways I’ve existed. It feels like protective fire, crackling and spitting and warm. Like a hearth that turns to a wildfire at the drop of a hat, tunnel vision and instinct and drive. All forms of despair, it responds to with more action, and it feels like a battle cry but in my heart. I don’t know how I know that’s the spirit and not me, I just know it like I know the sky is blue. Every collapse of my body and every shattering of my heart was met with the dream of holding zelda close to myself and telling her everything was okay now, and every time the idea of it grew sharper and more feasible in my head.

I want to believe I’d do it for anyone in need, that if it truly just was the worlds balance at stake, I would take up the sword and fight as I did. But in the end it was her that kept me as steady as I was, something she told me Hylia knew and planned for. I probably would have still kept on without Zelda, but Zelda is the reason I’d respond with zero hesitation when someone asks me if I’d do it again.

It was exhausting, and traumatic, and heartbreaking, and the hardest thing I ever went through in that life. I was terrified. But there were more important things at stake than any of that, and so I wept and shook and screamed I can’t do this and then got up and kept trying.

Oh, and pumpkin soup helps. Comfort food is the key to coping in any arduous journey. Next time you’re going through it make urself something hot and watch it cure your anxiety.

Kid, Where are Your Parents?

my mom was a knight and my dad mostly stayed at home gardening & housekeeping but found work selling art & pumpkins around the bazaar. what i remember of them is mostly hazey but everyone always told me i had my mom’s stormy eyes haha. her bird was the colour of a sunset, obviously not red like mine but this golden colour i find it hard to describe. my dad’s bird was purple! dad taught me how to whittle when i was young and made the best pumpkin soup in the whole sky, better than anything pumm could even dream of lmao. my mom was my hero, valiant and bold, i always thought she looked so cool with a sword in her hand. she taught me how to fight and what it meant to be a knight of skyloft.

i obviously wasn’t There for this but i’m constantly thinking about their wing ceremony, because it was my mom’s obviously, but she was the only girl in her graduating class, which meant my dad stood in place of the goddess. i had to piece this together from context clues and i’m hollering over it to this day. that was apparently the day they got together. in my head i picture her grabbing him and kissing him and diving off the statue without a care in the world, but that’s just my headcanon lmao.

wing ceremonies marked their anniversary, so every year around that time they’d pick a day and go flying to celebrate. i was really looking forward to their flight together the day of mine, but it wasn’t meant to be.

[the memories stop being happy here!]

my parents died the night of pipit’s wing ceremony, a year before my own. thunderclouds rolled in faster than they could make it back to skyloft, i still don’t know what happened. my dad’s bird came back injured but my mom’s never did. when a loftwing loses their person, they sing and sing and sing until they eventually die of a broken heart. i stayed with my dad’s bird while she crooned and then she flew away one day and i never saw her again.

what kills me most is i haven’t yet remembered what it was like the last time i saw my parents. so i just keep inventing this memory in my head where they’re smiling and we hug and i tell them i love them instead of being the pent up teenage idiot i probably was.

School, Ceremonies, & Zelda

how were the classes? well. i was asleep. i don’t remember a lot. they were basic stuff you’d expect, language and math and sciences and all the Typical Shit. but then also flying and swordsmanship, which i was Good At. i took an archery class one year but zelda was always better than me lol. skyloftian sign language was required because it was the best way to communicate on birdback but i was mostly mute so my mom taught me it when i was like, 7 and i showed up there and owlan was like “Link what are you doing here” and i just shrugged and signed “easy a” and fell asleep. i am… a good student.

my relationship with my classmates was that i was just… kind of there? i was well-liked because i have always had this weird charisma, but it was like this. quiet charisma. i didn’t have a lot of close friends, but everyone definitely would respond to my name with some variation of ‘ohhh, LINK! that guy’s cool haha’ my reputation was mostly being zelda’s arm decoration but not her actual boyfriend. i don’t think anyone could actually tell you anything about me besides that i was link with the red bird, and i was quiet and tired and zelda liked me way too much.

my junior year is when i really became close with all of them, when zelda and i started doing that thing where we tried dating a bunch of people just to date but it didn’t work out because we were in love with each other lol. her mingling with the others meant i mingled too because i couldn’t spend 5 mins away from her. fledge and pipit and i got pretty close, zelda and karane were basically sisters. the thing i always joke abt is the fact that i dated kina, which is hysterical to me to this day. peatrice was always There but acting like she didn’t want to be there. i need you to picture peatrice while we’re all swimming but she’s just, like, on the shore tanning while the remlits bother her.

that was this summer of just, like, doing idiot teenage boy stuff. getting way too drunk in our rooms at night over break. sneaking onto the roof of the academy to stargaze. getting caught cause cawlin drunkenly tried to fight a chuchu w his fists. you know. normal kid stuff. i also think the others were maybe trying to include me more cause it was the year i lost my parents but i mean it worked, i was a lot happier with people around even if i didnt mind all those years it was just me and zelda.

most of mine and zelda’s friendship was just doing what we’d do alone but together. when we were younger we would explore the more adventurous areas of skyloft and play pretend, a lot of days we’d stay in and read shoulder-to-shoulder. i didn’t like talking but i loved reading, if that makes any sense. we’d take turns reading to each other. as the years progressed we’d go flying together, we’d study together, we’d fall asleep in each other’s rooms and sneak into them when we were frustrated or lonely or just needed to not be alone. i don’t really know, what DIDN’T we do together?? we shared everything.

my earliest memories of groose where i wasn’t like “what is this guys deal. why is he so mad.” were. ok so. groose and i should have been friends sooner because he’s super into woodworking and i whittle stupid little sculptures right. ok. except, we live in the sky, and i don’t know if you noticed this, but trees…… well. there are not a lot in the sky. wood is a very scarce resource, and we need it, for like. houses and things. so jakamar gets all of the wood in skyloft because it’s his birthright or whatever, except groose and i find out about this, and we show up at his house twice a week begging for woodscraps, and he slips us some Illegal Fir™ beneath the table and as soon as we leave the premises groose tries to kick my ass and take my share. and this happens forever.

i think groose saw me as like, this sworn enemy of his but i was mostly very confused just kind of sitting there like huh. where am i. wait whats he talking about? and then i’d walk away. when i was a kid he was scarier but once we got older he kinda stopped throwing punches, all bark no bite.

and then we went to the surface and he moved into my house. not even in a polyam way and like at one point he had a wife and was still living with us. i forgot to mention he built the house also. he built our house and would just like, wake us up every morning with the best fucking eggs i’ve ever eaten in my life. groose was just in mine and zelda’s marriage. everyone was fine with this.

i dont actually remember a lot of what we did after getting to the surface. just that his cooking was amazing and he gave the best hugs and he could pick zelda and i both up and ferry us around on his arms like we were little songbirds. oh and he was always the one who picked me up and carried me to bed when i’d fall asleep at fi’s dais talking to her. i fell asleep there a lot.

my wing ceremony is probably my fondest memory ever? probably. the race itself felt like aepon was literally just DRAGGING me thru the clouds its such a blur. groose kept trying to body me but he’s lowkey scared shitless of my bird it did not work. i just remember being like. no time to think time to go time to go time to go OH i won

the ceremony itself felt… like… dreamy? like something from a fairytale, i don’t know. i don’t know how much of it is coloured by the retrospective of what it called to action and foreshadowed. zelda and i had been growing so much closer in the weeks leading up to it, and i don’t know, like, when i fell for her if it was sometime then or the day i met her when i was 6. but at some point everything just kinda got tilted on its side around her and every second i spent with her made me feel like my head was stuffed full of cotton candy. in a fun way.

on skyloft, wing ceremonies have a pretty romantic connotation. not always, but a lot of the girls dream about performing it with the “strongest” knight in their class, and a lot of the knights feel the same. there’s a lot in the history books about hylia’s feelings for her chosen, a lot of speculation about how she stayed close to humanity because she learned to love from him. so to stand in place of the two of them, to a lot of people, carries the same note as standing in the place of two starcrossed lovers, breaching the gap.

zelda was a hopeless romantic, and she told me later she had this whole plan–to wake me up early, to run drills with me until i was a puddle, to perform the ceremony with me, and to use her 5 minutes alone with me to solidify us as something more than best friends. she had this whole fucking move planned where she was going to drape the sailcloth around my shoulders and pull me in for a kiss, and instead she got wicked nervous and screamed half her sentences and pushed me off the statue. this, predictably, only made me more in love with her. i had exactly 0 plans to ever tell her how i felt, because something something childhood friends to lovers, something something mutual pining, something something what if it ruins a good thing something something, valiant hero of courage who.

when we were flying after it, she said she’d remember that day for the rest of her life, and i remember thinking, yeah, that’s what i’m feeling. i’m living, right now, through a precious memory, something i’ll never forget. and everything that happened after that was, uh, the worst time of my life, but somehow it doesn’t. colour the memory a different shade. i still just think, like, this is this last beautiful moment i am having with this girl i love more than anything in the world before we stop just being kids living our normal lives. she is the goddess reborn and i am her chosen hero who’s heart has defied death itself, but right now we are teenagers who don’t know that and are playing pretend as them, as we always have. the joy of that–of pretending to be who we are, the bliss in that ignorance, our beautiful last hurrah. something about it sticks with me.

Silly, Simple, One-Off Stuff

i was the one who wrote zeldas lullaby. i knew lots of songs but the ballad of the goddess was the one i learned first so its the one i kind of always came back to to the point where playing it was like second nature to me, and one day i was like… what if i played this backwards, and it sounded AMAZING so i wrote sappy lyrics to it and named it after me wifey cause im gay

Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom

My guiding star, The Master Sword

consistently, in every life time, seeing the master sword, i Feel her. i can’t explain how i feel her, just that i do. sometimes i get teary, i usually try not to. but when i see it, it’s like my hand itches to hold it, and when i have a hold of it i never want to let go. i always feel the need to touch my head to the blade because it’s… i mean, i want to hug the sword, but it’s the closest way i can think to hug a sword. to bow to it. to let the sword know that it’s not my weapon, but my partner in battle, and that we’re equals.

i can’t describe the Stirrings™ other than i know now it’s Fi. sometimes i WOULD feel her hugging me. pulling the master sword always feels difficult as it’s happening but after it’s done there’s a glow that washes over you. like the holy light of it goes from searing cold to lowlit warm. and in some lives i literally felt the sensation of featherlight fabric being draped across my shoulders–-at the time it wasn’t a feeling i gave thought to, but like obviously now i know it was her ‘arms’ embracing me.

botw’s timeline is the only one where she was anything more than a dream of a memory, though. her voice was the last thing i heard before i went unconscious, bleeding out, and i saw her there in my dreams afterwards. the second everything went hazy and black, i faded to the sound of her telling zelda to take me to the shrine. i could HEAR her words, which was something that i don’t remember happening before. and then she appeared to me–-looking tattered and charred and with long, wild hair–-and spoke one thing to me: “Persist, Master. You must refuse this end with all your spirit.”

i tried to ask her who she was but my words don’t work a lot. and then after that i remember a lot of flashes of her as i dreamed those 100 years. she never stayed for long, but she looked better every time–her clothes would be less ripped and burnt, her wounds would scar over. we both healed together, i know now–-i came back from the dead, she shed her rust and wear and regained herself alongside me. she sang to me, sometimes.

the last thing she said before i woke up was ‘It is time for you to rise once more.’ I asked her, finally, who she was, truly, and she smiled!!!!!! and said ‘We will meet again, Master. I eagerly await your arrival.’

she looked good as new in that last dream!!! the same fi as ever, but with her hair all grown out and pretty. i slowly started getting my memories back, and a lot of people in them talked about the sword. they called it a million names–-the master sword, the holy sword, the sword of the goddess, the sword that sealed the darkness, the blade of evil’s bane. every time i heard one i felt itchy again. the sword has another name, i wanted to scream, but i couldn’t have told anyone what it was.

i didn’t connect that feeling to seeing Fi in my dreams at all-–i didn’t know she was inside the sword. as an amnesiac i was constantly feeling these residual emotions and feelings i couldn’t explain, it was hard to parse what was pre-death stirrings and what was past-life stirrings. but when i finally pulled the sword i knew, because all the hurt and pain and emotions of a million past lives poured into me and pulled me to the brink of death. that’s what’s happening when you’re playing that part and you lose 12 & ¾ths of your hearts. it’s the extreme pouring of emotion into a single soul, testing its ability to bend and break. only when you carry the weight of it all are you worthy of the sword.

it wasn’t the memories of those lives, just the feelings themselves. and when the searing finally stopped and the glow began, my heart settled into place. when i was holding the sword, what i wanted to say but couldn’t was a teary-eyed i missed you.

but i didn’t have to say it, because her spirit knew my heart. and that’s when i heard her voice again–-“I as well, my master. I’m happy to see your safe return.”

i saw her in my dreams one last time, that night. i asked her what her name was, and she told me with a smile. she never smiled back in the day. she smiled so freely now.

though i never saw her again or heard her voice after that (i theorize that her reawakening was a failsafe programmed by Hylia in the event of the hero’s death, one last measure to keep him alive) i never felt like she left, truly. zelda would talk about hearing the sword’s voice as though it were a dream, and i’d get to say it wasn’t a dream. she does have a voice, her name is Fi.

thinking back on it, it was a very special thing zelda and i shared as we rebuilt the world. this third, mysterious force in our lives, the one that saved us both. fi saved me, and zelda saved me, and i saved zelda, and we all did our best to save what was left of the world.

Silly, Simple, One-Off Stuff

on beedle: he was always moving across hyrule so i only ever caught him occasionally but i have one very special memory, i think of being injured or ill or SOMETHING but i passed out on the road and woke up at a stable, someone must have found me and carried me out of harm’s way. beedle wandered in at some point and as i hazily drifted in and out of sleep the next few days he was ever-present at my bedside and would make conversation with me. he was always in such a hurry to get to his next destination so something about him staying until he knew i was fit again was very special in what it said to me. i think i probably appreciated him a lot more in that life just because he was such a cheery optimist despite the state of things and to me that exemplified just, like, the spirit of hyrule. beedle smiles with his whole face. i like him.

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