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In the bare, sinking instant before the crystal had put you to sleep, you had seen his face. It had been so close.
You had looked into his eyes and seen a clamoring swell of anguish and sorrow, too much for his young and sun-worn features, and it had made you feel like the villain of this story, and that had been the last thing you would go to sleep with. It had seemed only fair.
You would remember the tears streaking his dirty face and the sound his desperate fists had made against the crystal for a thousand years, you were sure. Maybe, in that crystal, you had dreamed about him. Maybe he had been a warrior, an adventurer, a simple village boy. Maybe you had tasted the sea together and he had not known who you were. Maybe you had been a painting, and his callused fingers had grazed you in passing; maybe you had saved a strange kingdom called Lorule together, and made a wish. Maybe you had been a quiet Sheikah boy and had taught him song after ancient song, lingering watchfully in his wake.
Maybe he had held your hand after your father had given his life for the hope of a better future (maybe your father had been a king, of all things—you don't like this dream). Maybe you had been a ghost and you had wanted to push him around like an old friend, but your hand had always gone through him, and he had given you a funny look, but had not said anything. Maybe you had made a troublesome habit of slipping out of your castle at night to visit him, and maybe your elbows had brushed against each other's and felt warm, and maybe that had been the closest you would ever feel to the way you feel now. Maybe he had been a gangly Kokiri child (a Hylian), and he had sneaked into your garden, and you had trusted him, though you had not known why. Maybe a dark and terrible vision had crept to you then: of his body at Ganondorf's feet, of your hands shaking until you had not remembered how to hold things; you do not like that dream, either.
Maybe he had been a good and noble boy—a man—and had always been chivalrous, driven by the roaring courage in his heart that was his wont in every life and every try, guided by the predestined twinge and pull in his bones to you, you, always you, not because he had wanted to save you, but because he'd been told to, because he had to. Because there is no Triforce of Love.
You feel your heart sink with each breath a different Link takes, because you do not know him, you think; you do not see any parts of the sleepy Skyloft boy in their eyes, but maybe that is just bitterness; maybe you just miss him. Maybe you just want this to last forever.
In one life, he will be brave; in another, angry. In another, shy. In another, serious. In another, clever. You see him become so many things, have so many wild dreams, cross oceans and deserts and mountains to reach you. You watch his hair grow longer or shorter and his eyes become bluer or sometimes brown, and you watch him stumble and trip, and you watch him stare down the moon itself, and that dream frightens you, but you can't wake up. You can only dangle there like a vanishing star and pray to the goddesses that he will succeed, that good will always win in the end, and wish, wish with all your frail human might, that he would come to wake you up in a thousand years or more and be the same as you remembered him, impulsive and brash and bright, carving wood figurines for you and always listening to your troubles.
You see countless Links forge their way through time, swords in their hands and Farore's flame in their eyes, and all you want is for him to come home to you, here, now, in the teetering moment when this cycle began, when you both still had a chance to know who you were. You just wish that he was here.
It's when you feel the sun on your weary eyelids and a pair of warm, callused hands on your cheeks, gently brushing the hair from your face, that you realize he never really left, and maybe he never really will, not this part of him that will always press his forehead to yours the same way. There is still time, and there is still the span of a beautiful mortal life, and there is the whole terrifying and enchanting surface world, and after he has fought back darkness itself, after he has become the hero Hylia (you, or a part of you) had always planned for him to be—after all of this, and a multitude of trials more, he chooses to stay with you.
A cavalcade of Links had passed before your sleeping eyes in that crystal, so many that you are a bit afraid of the future, of being such strangers. But this Link—your Link, grass in his hair and dirt on his nose and pink scars scattered all over his torso—he's the only one who matters. You are an ancient and powerful goddess made manifest and you can grow forests with your fingertips, but all you want to do is watch the clouds with him, build a house with him (which you do, with help from chittering Kikwis who bashfully braid flowers into your hair and his), catch a privileged glimpse of the free and easy smiles you remember from your days in that village in the sky.
You will love him a thousand times, you think, but you will never say so. Out of obligation, or out of pride, or out of the clutter and din of royal honor and conventions. So perhaps this is your chance.
He comes home one night with food for the week, sweat on his brow and smudges of dirt on his cheeks and biceps, and you press your lips softly, softly to his before he can shut the door behind him. Your heart flutters in your chest like a fairy and his rough mouth tastes like salt and laughter, and when you duck your head away, you have to try not to shiver.
He watches you, uncertainty and hope, wide-eyed. You can see all the world in his eyes sometimes, and it's all blue and quiet. You don't expect him to say anything; he never has, not since you were children, but you have grown to understand the language of the way his gaze will flicker, or his fingers will curl, or his throat will bob with a gulp. You do not say anything, either. You keep your hands fisted loosely into the fabric of his tunic and stare up at him, without breathing.
A moment passes before he does as you had done, tilting your chin up with his finger, the presence of his mouth a shy, ungainly question. You close your eyes and you don't care, you don't care that this is the only lifetime that he will hold you like this, you don't care that it will be a different story every time; there is some fundamental part of it, in that moment, that you feel sure will ring eternal through every chance you get, and maybe you will remember someday, this wild and wind-hearted boy who defied the dark forces, who left his home, who took step after step across land after land just to see you again.
Maybe he will always be here. Maybe you will, too. Maybe you are both the simple beginning of a grand legend.
Maybe this is your favorite story of them all.