Chapter Text
[The entry takes up two pages despite how few words there are. The writing is shaky—some letters too big, others too small—with big spaces inbetween. There are dried splotches all over the page, maybe rain? Definitely some sort of water.]
Li n k
H Y ru L e
1 0 0 10 0 1 00
z e L da
ca L m it Y
Within the castle, holding off the Calamity, there was nothing. There was everything. The power I hold as Hyrule’s princess, after years of praying and hoping and begging the Goddess for guidance, is beyond what anyone had imagined. Beyond what anyone could even dream of.
I existed outside of existence, inside a void of time and space and limits. I couldn’t see the world, but I could feel it. Like the beat of my own heart, the strain of my own muscles, every change—no matter how big or small—was deeply entwined into my being.
When I had returned to myself that day, I was set ablaze with experience. My kingdom stretched out as far as the eye could see, green and golden in the light. The acrid smell of recent battle, the heat of the setting sun, the tattered edges of my dress fluttering around me.
What shocked me most was the wind. I had forgotten what wind felt like. It encompassed every sense, senses that up until that moment, I forgot I had. Cool air sweeping across my skin, carrying the scents of flowers and earth, whistling through the grass and making their soft, green blades dance. It was an invisible force that could bend physical matter to its will, similar to the power granted to me by the Goddess.
Feeling the wind instead of being the wind struck me like a blow to the face.
To have my existence extricated from that of the whole, once again being reduced to only a part of the sum, is painful. So, so painful. For how does one return to oneself when they know what it’s like to be more?
***
As the remnants of Ganon’s calamitous form dissipated into the light, I stood frozen in Hyrule Field. It felt like waking up from one dream only to wake within another. It felt like being reborn. The weight of the world on my shoulders was replaced by the weight of a familiar gaze at my back.
I don’t really remember everything I said. The words just fell from my mouth like stones into water. Acknowledgement of his journey and praise for his skill, it was a speech I had practiced throughout the years, yet I was fumbling the words. My mind was swimming in a sea of roiling thoughts and I clung to these half-formed phrases like pieces of driftwood to keep me afloat.
I was thinking too much. I could not think at all.
I remember thanking him when I finally faced him and he did not smile, he did not blink. It was like he was waiting for me to reveal myself as a trick of the light, just another memory for him to study and behold.
He wore his Champion’s Tunic, now soiled and mangled from battle, and the Master Sword in his hand shimmered in the light. His gaze was familiar, but his eyes betrayed not a hint of recognition.
“ May I ask, do you really remember me? ”
I had asked out of fear, but I smiled at him in hopes that he would smile back.
He opened his mouth to speak before he fell to his knees and wept.
As I knelt beside him to offer what little comfort I could, he whispered over and over, “ You’re alive. ”