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I am just a body bleeding in bad light.
Because denial is often the first understanding you have; the first glimpse at what you thought couldn’t be, and you’re feeding this soup you made to her, and she’s sighing in joy, and you want to make her soup for the rest of your life. And when you tell yourself not to think it, that’s when you understand. That’s when you know.
You pull your wrist back too quick and a little bit of food gets on her chin. She’s wiping it off and you’re still trying not to think about how that could be you (your finger, your lips)— because for everything you could be to her you are only her aide, and there is no room for denial when you already have to prepare for war.
“Link,” she says, and it feels familiar, like a handprint in the snow that fades as it melts— and you’re grasping at it, and it takes you back. You recognise her voice. You’re fighting for your life.
“Wake up,” she says, but she’s sitting in front of you, and that’s not right at all. God, what was her name? She’s fading, you realise, and so you’re reaching out again. Her hand doesn’t have grip, she’s only a shadow, dark and mangled and inside of something that’s not you, next to its ribcage, that you can’t protect her from. She’s still fading and you’re under medicinal waters, unable to move your arms, she’s calling for you. She’s calling for you.
Link. Link. Wake up. I need you.
Link
⁖
On the third call, you answer.
“Open your eyes,” There’s her voice again, this dream phantom, her face still beyond you. You must’ve made her up. A trick of the eye, trick of the mind. “Wake up, Link.”
You sit up on your ass when the water’s done draining, crude, your body still weak and afraid, and scoot out of the pool. I have no scars left, comes flying out of left field, as you watch your forearms move hurriedly, a funny thought. Did you ever have scars? You have no memory. You can only feel your circulation run when you listen.
She keeps speaking as you collect cold scraps of fabric from this cavern, some stone slate that makes noises at you when you pull. You’re our light, Link, so on and so forth, and you can’t say a word back. Can you hear me? You beg at her, please tell me who you are.
An old man calls out to you as you exit from the side of the road, with a voice years older than his hood-clad face. He sounds like someone you know, some buried ancestral memories of a youth you didn’t have, and you don’t remember a thing. Something like forgotten bitterness seeps between your ears, and the voice speaks to you again. Remember.
You turn towards a blazing red tower in the distance. Ribcage, you think, and the dreams are filing back. They're not memories, but they are familiar, and you have to get her out. Try, try to remember. You don’t even know who she is.
Everything around you is a weapon or a meal. The old man offers them up as such. You make him his food. You accept his kindness. You visit his shrines, climb his towers. He throws off his hood, and he has always been dead.
And then you remember, such a slight little thing, breaking forth from the depths of you when you see his furrowed brow, cut scenes that had to have been reality. This contempt for him comes from someplace of respect and hate— you’ve been saved and now are asked to save.
You had promised long before this time. You think you always knew.
⁖
You would never let her go anywhere alone, you know that much, all against her wishes. Not only to obey her father or keep your promise but because you think a moment apart would've killed you. She’s still a shadow and it might be killing you now. So wait for me, you tell the blazing building in the distance as you reach the top of your next tower. Wait for me.
⁖
She’d been given a voice and yours had been taken by your own will, but there was no resentment, only need in place. You suppose in retrospect you had been given a body the same as hers was trapped, so it was an equal opportunity. You both had something stolen. Freedom, voice.
Hey. Who am I? You want to ask as you fight tooth and nail to save yourself, to practice. But the creatures only grunt and gargle and spit at you, ram hammers into your sides and draw gashes over your face. You bleed red like any other. You're raw just like them.
When you find kind people who take you in, treat you as something worth a token of life, you soon realise most don’t know who you are either. They let you buy things from them, they let you heal. You're but a person amongst a people, a lone Hylian, clearly special with that shiekah slate at your hip, which you suppose doesn’t matter much at the end of the day. Traveller, warrior, friend, you much prefer instead. The way most address you.
Somehow you can tell she’s been uttering your name since the first light you saw, the one someone gave you from a time you can’t recall, and you don’t mind it. Link, she finds you, and her voice is always tender. You know that if it had been any other word you still would’ve understood.
⁖
Remember, she says, and you want to please her, so you do. You bite bits and pieces off of these structures and footprint-laden roads, and she loves you and hates you and you want it again.
Memories fit puzzle pieces of what she has been saying this whole time— these 100 years that have passed beyond you— where she fills you with blue blood, her own, from the vascular system she grew herself. She was born and chose to share it with you. She chose to share herself with you.
You keep remembering, as she asked you to, and you don’t find her father’s priesthood in your memories worthy or gentle or soft. He’ll tear her tissue wiring and you’ll want to kill him. You kneel instead and try to dig your bone into the ground. You’ll bleed blue.
You had friends, once, of many shapes and sizes and walks of life, and so did she. They died to protect you. You cannot help but grieve at the loss of them, and the loss of your ideas of them. But they test your blood colour, let you know. You treasured them as someone else before, and their spirits remember where you don’t.
Did I create her? You’ll wonder, still afraid despite your growing understanding, Did I create them?
You recognize her voice, her smile, her driven anger, and that’s enough for you. Sometimes it precedes you, even though you remember, and you do not know from where. You don’t know from what.
How long have I known you? You can’t ask. How long have I loved you?
⁖
If time can exist without us, You note, as you clear another shrine that, in some distant way, is a gift to you, has lived before us both, it must be this story of ours. It must tell our tale.
“It will be kind to you.” The monk says aloud, and you jump. He prays to a goddess whose name you can’t find but once knew. You hope she can hear him. “It will be kind to us.”
⁖
Everything is pretty when it’s out of time, You imagine this horrific creature saying to you, running around on your horse, keeping an eye on his ribs for good measure. With all his might and grandiose, the stench of must and death. He spits fire like you knew he would. Your eyes still train his torso. You’re jealous, though you shouldn’t be. How close is too close?
You shoot at him for the thousandth time over, feeling the fault lines in your legs. Something weeps inside of you, and you wish you had both been more honest.
She descends.
Everything is pretty when it’s out of time, this dead thing doesn’t say, no matter if it’s true.
Everything is pretty when it begins, you think, because it is.
⁖
You let her touch you, just a little, a hand on a cheek and a finger across your collarbone because it’s real again, it’s new. But you’re not yourself and she’s not herself and you’re hurtling towards something familiar yet ancient like the sun. You've got a grip on your sword still, white-knuckled. You want to punch rock until your fingers bleed, red or blue or black with rust.
You drop it and think about making her a meal. She’s been digging fingers into you this whole time. You jumped off a cliff, across the world. You have all of your life.
“Hello. Who are you?” You ask now, when she pulls her hand away, even though you remember. Even though you did this all twenty minutes ago. She’s staring down at you with something like awe.
“I’m Zelda.” She repeats as everyone has before, like the common people and your friends and your own memories that fit back into you like skin-tight fabric around your brain. Her smile is the same as it ever was, and you remember it. “Hi.”
You let a little denial in. Link, you imagine her saying, no longer subject to the call from afar. You watch her mouth form the syllables (your finger, your lips).
You smile back, light. The habit is heavy.
You know you’ve been seventeen and thirty-five and one hundred and two and there is nothing in the world that could’ve stopped you. Not a monster born of hardship or her father or a cliff double sea level. No distance far or short, no broken nose or shattered jaw, no language that could sever. Because you’ve been seventeen and thirty-five and one hundred and two and she was always there, always young, always ready. She was always for you.
“It’s been a long time.” I’d do it all again, you still don’t say. “Where do you want to begin?”