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It’s raining in Zora’s Domain.
Zelda pulls at the hood of her cloak to shield her face from the water dripping into her eyes. According to Link, it hasn’t rained this hard in Lanayru since Vah Ruta had been taken over by Waterblight Ganon. He’s recalled to her before the torrential downpour that threatened to sweep him and the domain away in a great flood and the way the overcast skies matched the sour, melancholy moods of the grieving Zora fittingly. Yet he saved them—something Zelda couldn’t do—and the rain stopped.
But the rain has returned, and now has Link, this time dragging along the blessed Princess herself in the hopes to finally pay proper respects and grieve alongside them.
It’s almost poetic , Zelda thinks ruefully, tamping down any further sardonicism lest it show on her carefully constructed neutral expression; her eyes are focused on the step each of her feet takes as the pair make their way across the crystal bridge that leads to the domain.
Since waking up to finally rid Hyrule of the Calamity, this trip will mark the first time Zelda has seen Zora’s Domain in a post-Ganon world, and it’s only karmic retribution that the occasion be marred by the same weather a facet of Ganon brought on.
The same facet of Ganon unstopped by her failure.
As they walk past the threshold of the bridge, Link dutifully at her side (though he has no obligation to be anymore), a hush falls over the domain. Zelda does not halt in her steps but continues to stare at the ground, hoping it will swallow her whole like the Blights swallowed the world whole. Zelda does not falter even as the stares of the Zora bore into her skin like Guardian laser fire—she’s a corpse come back to life, she’s a divine ghost come home to haunt the graveyards of her fallen companions. Zelda is sure her presence in front of them must be akin to a spear through the ribs and a spit in the face of those who’ve lost so much.
She understands their hesitation. After waking from the final battle, in all her honesty, she isn’t happy to see herself, either.
So, she doesn’t make eye contact. It’s for the best. Every face looks just like hers .
Link pauses beside Zelda. Looking his way, her furrowed brow flatlines at his grim expression. Even as stone-faced as he is, Zelda will never not mistake the way his lips press in on each other, like even the thought of speaking is a sin, and the way his blue eyes look too much like the way a sky darkens before a storm.
He puts his hand on her arm to steady her and then points ahead.
Zelda’s own footsteps echoed in her mind, ringing hollow as her heels clicked on the luminous stone floors. At the sound, Mipha turned.
“Princess Zelda of Hyrule.”
Her smile was still soft and never failed to reach the jewelry adorning her head fins, her voice still held words and tones like a honey candy melting on her tongue, and her golden eyes still shone with a ferocity that rivalled the sun. The Champion of the Zoras looked all too perfect, Zelda couldn’t have helped but flush scarlet at the sight of her.
“What a lovely gift to have you here at Zora’s Domain. To what do I owe the pleasure of Her Highness’ company?”
Mipha stepped forward, a hand outstretched to take Zelda’s. She went to accept it.
Zelda stumbles.
She wants to throw up. She wants to scream. She wants to dive off the nearest waterfall that surrounds this Hylia-forsaken kingdom and die along with her.
The grip on her arm tightens ever-so-slightly; calloused, swordsman hands who did more for Mipha than she ever could.
A small crowd of Zora have stopped in their daily business and have begun to watch as the Princess of Hyrule — soon to be Queen — unravels like a coil of rope dropped from a ledge.
Zelda doesn’t notice.
If anything, she’s only faintly cognizant of the concerned looks being cast her way, the dubious stares, the here-and-there glares. Around her, she can hear the whispers and gossip floating around her head like flies on a corpse, rustling the short length of her freshly-cut hair.
Mipha sighed, drifting a hand through Zelda’s blonde hair as if it were golden silk, weaving one strand of it over the other in an intricate braid. She was sitting on Zelda’s bed as Zelda sat on the floor at her feet, legs tucked neatly beneath her, relishing in the cool, soft touch of Mipha’s hands in her hair. Beside Mipha, a pile of small beads made of luminous stone sat waiting; she gently slid one into place on one of the strands, admiring how it caught in the sunlight streaming from an open window..
“I know how it can pain you, Zelda, your long hair — it’s a representation of all your burdens. It’s gorgeous, but it’s heavy, and it sits on your shoulders as the rest of the world does. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, they do say.”
Zelda didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Mipha already knew what she was going to say, and she understands. A crown will soon rest upon her head, after all. They were nothing but empty vessels of power, each upholding an image of their respective kingdoms that threatened to swallow them whole.
It was an unspoken truth of their relationship, but a truth nonetheless. Their time together was short, so often the two would forego such conversations, enjoying the silent understanding.
So, instead of dwelling on an uncertain, unshakable future, Zelda continued to think that Mipha’s hands in her hair was part of the natural order of things.
Mipha continued her braiding, and said, “I know your father would never allow it, but I personally believe that you would look wonderfully beautiful with short hair. I just know it.”
Zelda reaches up a hand to toy with the blunt, jagged ends of her chopped-off hair where it skims the bottom of her chin; massacred with a pair of shears during one of her midnight frenzies, the hair that once seemed to hold the weight of her problems collapsed underneath the absence of them.
She removes herself from Link’s grasp and steps forward. Her knees bump against the edge of the pedestal upon which the Zora stands, and Zelda takes as much time as she needs to remember.
The statue of Mipha is looking serenely down at her former subjects. Her lips are parted in a silent prayer she’ll never speak again, and her eyes are carved into a soulless stone that will no longer shine radiant like the sun. The replica Lightscale Trident she holds appears too realistic, too familiar to the one she used to wield—the one that now haunts Zelda’s nightmares anytime she gets up in the middle of the night at Link’s home in Hateno and sees it hanging on the wall.
It no longer shines with the promise of life, but the certainty of death.
Then again, so does Mipha.
Zelda reached the banks of the East Reservoir Lake, the skies as vibrantly blue as the water before her, just as Mipha was swimming up to meet her, Lightscale Trident glittering with water droplets and her eyes glittering with sunshine. She was grinning, head jewelry endearingly askew.
“Zelda! Oh, how I’m so glad you could make it! Here, I would love to show you this new trident move I’ve been working on. It took me the better half of a week and countless dives to the bottom of this lake, but I think I’ve perfected it.” Mipha beckoned Zelda over — the Zora rivaled the radiance of diamonds. Zelda couldn’t help but smile when she was around Mipha.
“Join me!”
A sickening, nostalgic smile tries to force itself onto Zelda’s face but it’s won out by the constriction growing in her throat, choking her from the inside out. Her insides freeze up and she’s startled by the realization that this must have been how Mipha felt before she died.
Frozen. Heartbroken. Useless to save the ones she loved.
Except she was never useless — Zelda was.
Zelda’s eyes fall on the statue’s face once more, wanting so much to just drink in the loving, varied expressions the Champion of the Zora used to direct her way that Zelda feels, even with the rain storming and the lump in her throat growing, that her mouth will always be dry and her limbs always yearning at the reluctance for things never said, actions never taken.
They were at Hyrule Castle, standing on one of the parapets that overlooked the central courtyard. Mipha was standing close to Zelda, her hand drifting ever-so-slightly closer to hers. Zelda wanted to reach out and take it, to feel the cool softness of her scales, but she couldn’t. It was too exposed, and two princesses with obligations and duties to keep should never take the risk.
But the air between them was tense, and Zelda knew Mipha was nearing her end just as Zelda herself was.
“Zelda,” Mipha started, voice thick with uncertain emotion. “As of recent, something has been weighing on my mind. My father is expecting me to make Zora armor for someone I love, and of course, he suspects Link to be the one who receives it.”
She pauses. Looks over to gauge Zelda’s reaction. Sees nothing. Continues. “However, I’ve been thinking—what if I made something for you, instead? Not necessarily armor, but a gift nonetheless? Something just as meaningful.”
Zelda’s breath arrested in her throat. She wanted it so badly. The tension between them pulled taut like one of the royal guards’ bowstrings.
“I know of this armor the Zora create for their betrothed, and I must say it is a wonderful tradition. Yet—” Zelda fiddled with the triforce bracelet on her right arm, and suddenly her Hyrulean royal blue dress was more restrictive than ever. “Mipha, we can’t. We have our roles to play, we cannot deviate from them—I can’t deviate from them. My father would never allow it.”
“Zelda…” Mipha took Zelda’s hands, forcing her to look the Zora in her pleading, golden eyes; her face was so open and raw, it grabbed Zelda’s heart in her chest and squeezed like a vice. Pain pricked in the back of Zelda’s throat, warning her of the tears to follow.
But there were Sheikah researchers in the courtyard down below and so Zelda stepped back, taking her hands away and folding them behind her back. Even then, she thought she was a coward.
“We can’t. It’s just not possible at this moment. Please, either make the armor for Link to satisfy King Dorephan or don’t, but for my sake, wait to do anything rash concerning me. We can talk about it with my father and yours after the Calamity is gone and after everyone is safe — it will be easier.”
Mipha hesitated, her hurt expression as clear as the crystal white robes Zelda wore to plead her case to the Goddess. Zelda chewed at the inside of her cheek, wanting to take the words she’d just said and bury them in the dunes of Gerudo Desert to be lost to the sand forever.
It was the most reasonable course of action, but why didn’t it feel right?
“I understand.” Mipha looked away. Her chest sank, her shoulders slumping with an unfathomable depth of pain. Zelda wanted to cry out, her throat burning. “For you, my princess, I will.”
It’s all too much. It’s simply all too much, and Zelda never should’ve come here.
Mipha’s face is too high up, her statue is too tall, and it feels a gargantuan loss to Zelda to not be able to reach forward and envelope the Zora Princess in her arms. She longs to breathe in the scent of her, river-soaked and sweet. She begs to hold her, to soothe her, to cry with her, and to love her. She begs to the past that it be her who dies instead of Mipha—the one who deserves the world but whose world does not deserve her.
It’s not fair, and it never will be, and Zelda’s heart is now cleaved in two, ripped from her chest and frozen, lying in the prison of Vah Ruta’s inner mechanisms with the shadow of a ghost.
Why in Hylia’s name did Zelda ever ask her to pilot that damned Divine Beast? Why were they ever even found?
Mipha looked at Zelda. A nondescript pain was in the forefront of her eyes, her mouth drawn in a line.
“After the Calamity… what do you suppose happens?”
Zelda turned to her. It was evening, and they were laying down somewhere on the banks of a lake in Lanayru. There was a waterfall nearby, but it wasn’t too loud. In fact, everything was all too silent. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Hesitantly, Mipha reached for Zelda’s hand. She intertwined their fingers in a way that felt they should’ve never been parted. “...what happens for us?”
A tear slips out, and then another. She can’t remember beginning to cry but she can’t bring herself to stop. Her cries mingle with the rain that sends a taste of salt to her mouth, reminiscent of the sea, reminiscent of Mipha.
“ I suppose we’ll just have to find out,” Zelda said. “When I go to the Spring of Wisdom tomorrow, I believe everything will be in place—I have great hope for it. I’ll have unlocked my cursed sealing power, and the Calamity will be no more.”
Mipha looked at Zelda in trepidation, but she was also hopeful. Her optimism never failed her; Zelda wonders now if in those final moments, within the prison of Vah Ruta, it did.
“And then?”
Zelda can feel her knees buckle beneath her.
It was too soon to come here; the wounds are still too raw and red without her here to make them better and each gaze upon her face carved into crystal gouged at the scars crisscrossing Zelda’s heart. She doesn’t register Link coming up beside her, having noticed her body shaking and starting to sway, and he stands in preparation for the fall. Around her, the Zora have taken note of the stoic, ghostly princess becoming more and more human, more and more palpable.
From up on the stairs above, Prince Sidon watches, momentarily wiped of his charismatic smile, his body as stiff as it was the day his father told him his dearest older sister had left this world protecting him.
Leaning forward, Zelda pressed her lips to Mipha’s on the banks of a lake in Lanayru on the night before her seventeenth birthday. She smiled against the contact, praying to Hylia and the Three Goddesses and the Triforce and to anyone who would listen that she would be able to experience this for the rest of her life.
Little did she know how foolish it would be to smile.
Little did she know how useless her prayers would be.
“And then we win.”
It was in the pouring rain when Link freed Mipha’s spirit from the Divine Beast, and it was in the pouring rain when Mipha met her end with Waterblight Ganon, and it was in the pouring rain when Zelda ran through the forests near Fort Hateno, realizing everyone she promised to protect rested six-down beneath her feet.
Now, it is in the pouring rain when Zelda sobs at the feet of the Champion of Zora’s Domain, her cries echoing the souls of the damned. Even with her gloves on, the stone wetted by the rain is cold to the touch. Every part of her body is shivering as if she’s been hit by one of Link’s ice arrows.
She thinks of Mipha then, dead and cold in Vah Ruta in the aftermath of her battle with Waterblight, and she thinks of Mipha now, dead and cold as a spirit in this world, her only reminder of her being the faint green shimmering on Link that makes him nearly glow in total darkness.
Link is beside her, bent on one knee and steadying her back. He’s a welcome presence, one that makes her feel rooted to this world, even if she didn’t want to be. Zelda chances a glance over at him through tear-stained eyes, his blurry face coming into focus as she swipes at her own face; she’s taken aback at the tears that carve a new path through his already rain-soaked face.
She almost forgot how much Mipha meant to him, as well.
Carefully, she turned and hugged his shoulders, pulling him close. He tensed up for a moment, unused to the physical contact, then slowly acquiesced until the two of them were supporting each other, each on the precipice of falling off the deep end.
Zelda didn’t say anything — she didn’t need to. They were the last ones standing. The lone survivors.
Above them, the statue of Mipha glowed imperceptibly, the carefully carved face more forlorn than serene, and it was as if she was saying goodbye one last time.