Work Text:
Months have passed since the Goddess Statue fell out of the sky. The Surface changes, slowly but surely. It’s largely thanks to Groose – while Zelda expected little of him after his initial disappearance back to Skyloft, he returned to help.
Help with what, she’s not entirely sure. What exactly are they doing here? She wants to live here, on the surface, but she’s heard that the majority of the land on the surface seems to be uninhabitable by humans. She’s seen much of that for herself – vast deserts and volcanoes make up large swathes of the land. At least here in the more temperate Faron Woods they can breathe, make a place for themselves to call home.
Groose has built the three of them houses, in a little village that currently has no name. He tells her all the time of how he’s sure more people from Skyloft will come down to the surface, once they realise how much potential lies down here. The land is rich in resources that they could never have dreamed of having in Skyloft, and Zelda spends most of her time in eager anticipation of sinking her teeth into researching the place as much as she can.
While her father has no interest in living here, he has visited. He stayed the night in her little wooden cabin and commented mostly on how good a job Groose did at constructing the three buildings. He makes no allusion to coming down here himself, nor does he make any mention of the village’s third resident.
There’s a corral for the loftwings too – they had no problem coming down here. And while the Faron Woods are home to the Kikwis, they have no issue with this small commune either – if anything, it’s free protection for them in case they’re attacked. Zelda can’t see there being any attack in the near future, but she humours the native dwellers of the land when they bump into each other.
They’re barely even in the Faron Woods really – more on the outskirts, towards the direction of the Sealed Grounds. It looks so different to when Zelda first came here, she thinks, standing at the foot of the Goddess and staring up at her stony visage. Now this place begins to grow, even just a little – one person up on their original two still counts as growth.
On a particularly quiet day Zelda happens to look up, covering her eyes from the brightness of the sun. Three loftwings fly down – she can barely believe her eyes. Despite the fact that she would so like to see her father on the back of one of them, she can hardly complain of seeing Pipit, Karane, and Fledge. They’re here to stay, Pipit tells her, and she immediately leaves the Goddess behind in pursuit of Groose – the three of them will need somewhere to stay.
It doesn’t take long for more of Skyloft’s young people to leave their home behind – Cawlin and Stritch are next, eager to follow in their great leader’s footsteps. Neither of them have any particular skills that they can bring to their growing community, but both of them are eager to help, and find themselves in Groose’s employ building structures for people to live in and fences to keep the village safe.
Zelda can see where this will lead, and her heart swells with pride. This place is her creation. She instructs Groose on where to build – around the perimeter of the Goddess Statue. It’s safer that way – they can all see each other. The houses they’re building aren’t really meant to last, but it looks increasingly likely that they’ll have to. Zelda makes a list – if a community continues to grow on the surface, as she hopes it does, if they have more than just who came down originally, they’re going to need medics, shops, leadership.
Groose points out very plainly that she will be their leadership, she already is. Who better to lead than the Goddess herself? Zelda shakes him off – her time as the Goddess passed long ago, left in a past that she barely remembers. Despite that, she can lead. Her father led them up on Skyloft, and she shall lead them down here, doing whatever it takes to keep this blooming group of people safe.
When she stands at the window to her cabin, Zelda can see the changingin weather – not like in Skyloft, stoms and rain, but cold, bitter, stinging. The next people that arrive from the sky are perhaps not as useful as she would have hoped – they need a medic for the approaching winter. She’s read about the concept in books, but the concept worries her – none of them are prepared. Nevertheless, Orielle and Parrow are here, and she’s hardly going to complain about having people to look after the loftwings.
Every day, Zelda takes herself up to the top of the Goddess Statue and looks out, over what she’s created in under a year. It’s easier to tell time here, she thinks – there are proper seasons, and she really should start planning the crops for next year. Maybe that’s something else she could do with – a farmer.
The Goddess grants her wishes as the snow begins to fall. A dark loftwing descends from the heavens, and on its back it carries Bertie and Luv. Zelda is almost beside herself – medics! The people she’s been hoping for! And even better, they bring with them news – more people are coming, and soon.
The next person to arrive is Jakamar, ahead of the rest of his family. He and Groose get along instantly, and he sets about strengthening the structures that Groose has made as well as preparing more buildings. The next houses need to be bigger, he tells Zelda. These little cabins are fine for single people, but everyone else planning to leave Skyloft are part of families. Wryne is expecting another baby, he tells her.
When Zelda looks up at the sky as the snow starts to clear, she sees the mass exodus of the Skyloft residents. Wryne and Kukiel arrive – the new baby will be here soon, she tells Luv impatiently. Pumm and Kina set up shop – they can grow pumpkins here on the surface, apparently. With the cold weather, no one complains when they’re offered a warm bowl of soup.
Everyone else from the bazaar appears too, and although there isn’t room to put all of their businesses in one place, Groose and Jakamar set to work finding places for each and every shop. Families indeed are what they need to cater for now – parents and children alike flock from Skyloft down to the surface.
Zelda notices with a pang that despite her hard work, her father still is yet to appear.
The village itself is young, like the majority of its residents. Skyloft is as old as anyone can remember, and those who stubbornly stay up there are old too. Zelda hopes that they’ll see sense, that they’ll come down for spring.
And they do.
Gaepora arrives with everyone else – everyone else – as the trees of the Faron Woods turn green once again. The village thrives now – a slightly bigger Skyloft, now that some of the residents are having babies once again. Karane and Pipit are to get married soon – the first wedding of this new village.
Despite Zelda’s enthusiasm at seeing her father, she can’t help but wonder what they’ll do now. What will they call this place? She’s just been calling it “the village” for the past year, but it needs something more substantial if they’re going to continue living here. She retreats to her little lonely cabin at the end of the day, and wonders what else lies out there, beyond the reach of… the village. What she missed before, trailed around the Surface on the whim of the Goddess.
This isn’t really what she wanted. This is the same as before but in a different place, with housing that isn’t entirely fit for purpose and nowhere to plant crops and a great towering statue that’s a reminder that this was her idea in the first place. She takes herself into the temple often now; now that it’s her only place of peace. And Zelda cries.
Of all people in the village, it is Owlan that takes Zelda under his wing. He is the one that notices that there is something wrong, and brings her on long walks daily, away from the growing hubbub of the village. They study the plants of the surface, recording their findings in a thick journal. Owlan shows her how to press flowers, an activity that brings her back to Skyloft, back to the arms of her mother.
Zelda hasn’t thought about her mother in a long time. It’s strange, when she thinks about it. Her mother is still on Skyloft, buried in the cemetery in a tucked away corner of the island. Is she leaving her behind? Realistically, the woman doesn’t care, and Zelda has her memories of her as well to carry with her for as long as she lives. Gaepora doesn’t comment on it when she casually brings up the topic of making room for a cemetery down here – there has been enough time for them both to move on.
She has to make difficult decisions every day in her new role as leader, though having her father to help her makes her life that bit easier. A party of six sets out to the Lanayru mines, a fair distance from here, with the intention of mining stone. If they’re going to live here for a long time, they need more permanent structures, something more weatherproof. That’s an easy decision – a definite yes.
Groose that comes to her with a more difficult decision, but one that she’s known that she’ll have to make eventually. The old temple takes up a lot of space, standing as a horrible yet permanent reminder of what occurred not to long previously. His plan is to demolish it, and rebuild something better. A castle, he suggests, made out of the stones in the rubble. It’s a good idea, but the thought of destroying such an important place doesn’t quite sit well with Zelda.
Regardless, she puts her own personal feelings aside for the betterment of the village, and lets Groose tear down the temple. She knows that he feels the same way about it that she does – he had a connection to the Impa of this time, just as she had a connection to the Impa of the past. Vaguely, Zelda wonders if there are more Sheikah people down here on the surface.
The Sealed Temple takes up more space than she had originally thought, and Groose promises that when they rebuild it, they’ll make a statue for Impa. He looks a little teary, and Zelda pretends that she does not notice. They can build upwards too, he says, showing her blueprints.
With the return of the miners every few weeks, construction of the buildings seems to be going well. On occasion some of the braver Kikwis will come around to be nosy – they want to know what’s going on so close to their home. They still seem happy with the whole arrangement, and Zelda is glad of the little help that they can offer.
When summer hits at the end of their first year, everyone gathers at the base of the Goddess Statue for the wedding of Pipit and Karane. It’s the first major event in the life of the village, and the excuse of a celebration has smiles on every villager’s face. They have made it this far, some of them a year, some of them a few months. Either way, everyone is here, dancing under the light of the moon until it’s late.
Everyone is here, Zelda notes, except perhaps for the person she would like to see the most.
Zelda turns down dances with most of the village lads, only joining in a lively polka with her father. Despite how busy she’s been, even she feels like she can take a night off tonight, allow herself to celebrate – the village is a work of her own doing. She’s managed to do everything thus far, and her plans for the future of her own land make her excited, despite the exhaustion that creeps into her body every time she stops.
Gaepora notices the absent look in her eyes as she slips away from the party, and follows her back to her own cabin. He knocks the door, smiles as she twitches back the curtain and sighs in relief when she sees that it’s just him. She lets him in and he perches beside her on her bed, an arm around her as she tries desperately not to cry once again. Everyone else in the village is happy, and she’s glad, but she’s also just so lonely.
And then Gaepora asks the question that Zelda has been dreading for months – where is Link? She looks him in the eye as bravely as she can and tells him honestly – she doesn’t know.
It was her that sent him away in the first place, knowing well that he was the only person that could honestly fulfil her mission. From her desk drawer Zelda pulls papers that Gaepora recognises as his own – a ledger of all the people that have gone missing from Skyloft over the years, many of them from before his time. People that had fallen through the clouds, presumed dead.
She had found the document years ago, and hadn’t paid it much attention at the time. It was only on a return trip to the sky after she and Link had moved down her permanently that she got to thinking about the list, and had pilfered it from her father’s study. Presumably, these people had made it to the surface in some shape or form, and Zelda knew – knows – that they have to be out there somewhere.
After Groose had come, Link departed with well wishes from both of them, off on another hero’s mission. He couldn’t sit still, Zelda found. He was always wandering around, disappearing for a few days and returning like nothing was wrong. She often found him staring at the tree in the temple – now pulled up. He seemed glad of the mission, though she has to wonder where he’s really gone to.
Gaepora nods sagely as she recounts her tale – not at all angry that she stole his things. He seems sad, in fact, his face dropping the further she gets along. His grip on her shoulder tightens, and he tells her that he is certain that Link remains safe, and he’s probably on his way back right now. Zelda doesn’t really believe a word of what he says, but she’s thankful for the comfort.
That night, she fell asleep in her father’s arms, like she was a child again, and awoke under the covers with the sun streaming through the window, still in the party dress that Karane had insisted that she wore – where she got it from Zelda will never be sure. She starts the day with a renewed sense of confidence in this long-term project and makes her way to the building site of the grand castle that Groose planned.
It seems to be taking shape, though at the minute only Groose works on it, with Jakamar focussing on the more imminently needed projects. Groose looks surprised when she offers to help, but doesn’t say no, and she spends the day learning how to layer stones to make walls. She has no idea how Groose knows how to do this, but she supposes practice makes perfect.
It takes until the next summer for the castle to be complete, the rest of the town already rebuilt for a more permanent existence. The bazaar gets back up and running, as does the Knight’s Academy, and some of the women took to building their own medical building, taking a leaf out of Groose’s book of wooden cabins.
Zelda’s own wooden cabin has yet to be upgraded. Groose has promised her the whole castle to herself – she is their ruler, after all. But she can’t bear to leave it, to watch it be demolished for firewood for the next winter. More importantly, she can’t bear to watch Link’s cabin go either, barely used, filled with none of his possessions aside from a spare pair of boots.
Gondo builds furniture for the castle, and the residents of the village start to get excited about it. Zelda has been their leader for so long now, and she has remained humble about it too. If anyone deserves to live in such a fancy place it’s her, they all agree. Eventually she agrees to move in, if only so she doesn’t look rude. She offers her father a room on a different floor, and insists that the ground floor become a school for the youngest children of the village – more and more every year, she notes.
For a while, things are good. Everyone settles into routine, and Zelda feels like she can relax. From a window high up in her castle, she can see the little cabins that she and Link used to once inhabit, and she watches with a pang as Groose dismantles them. The wood he used to build them will be of more use elsewhere, she’s well aware, but it still hurts to see them go. It’s a reminder, once again, that Link is no longer here.
When a travelling Goron passes through the village, he stops and smiles at Zelda, sitting outside with some of the children. They’re as interested in him as he is in them – Gorko, he tells them. He asks a lot of questions about the village, and Zelda realises once again that she still hasn’t named the place at all. This is just a village, and so she says the first thing to come into her head – Castle Town.
Gorko notes it on his map – an extensive map, if Zelda has ever seen one. It’s a lot larger than the stone tablet that they have, showing a whole world south of where they are currently. It gets her mind turning – what else is out there? Could that be why Link has taken so long to get back – he’s lost in an area where he doesn’t have a map for?
But Gorko seems to know Link, and that puts Zelda at ease, at least for a while. Gorko saw him not too long ago, in fact, but fails to mention any other details even when pressed. She begins to hope – logically, that means that Link must be nearby, at least somewhat. It shouldn’t be too long until she sees him again.
After the Goron departs the village, Zelda makes it a habit to climb to the top of the Goddess Statue every day, to stand in her hands and look out over the world that she realises she knows very little about. And that is how she spots them, about two weeks later – a great sea of people, led by a man in a green hat.
She’s certain that she nearly breaks every bone in her body clambering down the statue. They’re here, the people that were lost – nearly another whole village of people, at least half their original numbers from Skyloft, people of all ages who carry all of their belongings on their back.
It only takes a matter of moments before Gaepora steps in, delegating to the other villagers where these new people should go, finding who has space to take them in while they build more houses, making notes of everyone’s name. His daughter, who has taken charge the whole time, can only stand and stare.
They’re really here, the people that she had theorised about. The lost people of Skyloft, who had survived the fall to the surface, cultivated their own communities over the years, seeking out each other once they knew that they couldn’t possibly be the only people on the surface. And here they are, overjoyed at reuniting with their people once again, many years on.
Zelda’s feet carry her towards Link without her brain engaging itself, and he opens his arms to her. She falls into his embrace, but she doesn’t cry, just glad that he too is here, present at long last. He looks different now – older, his hair longer. But his smile is the same, and that is the part of him that Zelda loves the most.
He looks admittedly a little befuddled at his surroundings. Zelda can’t blame him for that – when he left, a few years ago now, there were three small cabins – now, a thriving town built from stone, the area changed beyond recognition.
She brings him up to the Goddess Statue, a place that means so much to both of them, a place away from prying eyes. They sit on the edge, legs dangling off below. His smile doesn’t waver, not even for a second, and she can feel the muscles in her own face straining with happiness. She rests her head on his shoulder, and he covers her hand with his own.
He tells her he missed her, so quietly that she’s almost sure she imagined it. But he meant it, and so she tells him the same, and regales him with the tales of Castle Town, filling him in on everything that’s happened in the time he’s been away. And at the end, she tells him that she loves him, and he says, in no uncertain terms, that he feels the same.
It feels so natural – it’s a complete non-event, and they go back to talking about the town right after. Zelda asks him if he knows what this land is called, and he replies that he had been thinking about that too. The mogmas make reference to the Goddess in their name for it, something that Link can barely pronounce. The Kikwis call it Hylandia, and the few Gorons he has met have called the land Hylura.
But it’s the other people from Skyloft that have a name that seems to have become popular in the southern reaches of the country. They talk of Hyrule, call themselves Hylians, knowing much of the legends that surround the people from the sky. They are the Goddess’s people, and the other races in the south of the kingdom seem to be keen to adopt this name for the land that they live in.
Hyrule.
The name feels foreign on Zelda’s tongue, but still, it sounds right. She laughs to herself, earning a strange look from her companion. How odd, for the country to be named after her. Not really her, she insists, but… Hylia. The person that she both is and is not. The whole thing confuses her, and the more she thinks about the less she wants to.
They climb down from the statue together, and Zelda shows him around the town. She shows him the castle, each and every room, including the spare room she left empty for him, hoping that he would come back. She points out the statue to Impa, protecting the Master Sword even in death.
Link stands there for a long time, in front of the memorial, both to Impa and to Fi. Zelda knew this would happen, and so she waits patiently outside the door to this most precious of rooms, and waits for Link to be finished. He could be in there all day for all she knows, but this is important to him, just as it is to her.
When he emerges a while later, his smile is slightly lopsided, and Zelda can’t help but to reach forward and kiss him, her knight, perhaps not in shining armour, but a fetching shade of green that she wouldn’t want to see on anyone else. Link’s hands find her waist without trouble, steadying her as she lays her affections onto him, emotions that have been bottled up for far too long.
From behind them Gaepora clears his throat and Zelda leaps away, embarrassed. Link has the decency to look ashamed as well, but Gaepora just smiles, and makes a comment about there being another wedding soon to look forward to. Link flushes red at the idea, but after Gaepora disappears, he leans into Zelda once more for another kiss.
Someone in the town – Zelda isn’t sure who, and even in the years to come she never figures it out – suggests that they have a royal family, just as many of the other areas of Hyrule do. Some of the newer Castle Town residents tell Zelda of the Zora princess, of the man who rules over the otherwise female Gerudo. They should have that too, and it should be her. Who else to rule over the Goddess’s people but the Goddess herself and her descendants?
On the day of the spring equinox, a crown is placed onto Zelda’s head when the sun shines highest in the sky, and the residents of Castle Town burst into applause. Link stands by her side, in a new set of armour made specially by Gondo. They’re not married, not quite yet, but in the summer they will be, in a ceremony that turns into a party that lasts all week. He’s still her knight – and he always will be, really.
Zelda turns with a smile to address her people, and there is only really one thing she can say earnestly after all this time –
“Thank you.”