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She was frozen in place, a look of shock plastered over her rough stone face. It was mirrored by the warm, very much alive face of the boy who stood opposite her, although that one was soon to be replaced with steely determination. A face that would soon leave the castle, determined to stop the lilac skinned man who had placed a spell on his friend. A face with large blue eyes that would see so many things on the boy's adventures.
In all this time, the girl would be still stone, because she had been brave. Because she had stood up while everyone else was frozen, and said to the villain, Vaati, no, you can't do this. The young boy in the green tunic stayed as still as everyone else, unable to move as Vaati cast the spell, took the life out of the princess's eyes.
He vowed that he wouldn't stay frozen the next time he faced Vaati. He would take the Four Sword, reforged from a combination of the elements and his hard work, and jam it into Vaati's smug face. No one harmed his friends. Well, his friend . Because no one else had been prepared to understand the strange little boy whose words never made it into the outside. They stuck in his throat and couldn't get out. For them, it had always been so much easier to ignore the mute child than to learn what his rapidly gesturing hands meant. Apart from Zelda. At first, when she had visited the blacksmith's house with her father, she had worn the same expression of mild bemusement that everyone who met him for the first time possessed. Yet to his surprise she returned the next day, carrying a huge volume from the castle. When he let her in, she immediately started talking.
"So I found this book of sign language and I thought it might be useful because I want to be your friend and you don't really seem to have many friends, do you? Can I stay for today so you can teach me? I'll have to go at lunch because I snuck out of the castle and they'll be wondering where I am. What do you think?"
It occurred to Link that Zelda could probably talk enough for both of them.
They became friends, and Zelda snuck out of the castle to learn and play. Sometimes the king even formally let her out to play, rather than pretending to be ignorant of her running off. And Link was happy, because here was someone who didn't care for the drawbacks of befriending him.
But now the joy in her eyes had deadened into the pupils of a frozen, lifeless statue, and if Vaati didn't change her back, he would be forced to throw something at the villain's stupid smug face until lilac faded to violet in a mask of bruises.
Fortunately, he had a hat, sitting snug on his head, who was prepared to help him. They had gotten off to a bad start; a conversation that involved desperately trying to tell a story through charades while the hat guessed cluelessly, one sided arguing, and not being completely honest with each other. But it had smoothed out, and now they were journeying to defeat Vaati and unfreeze Princess Zelda.
After the final battle, Link saw first hand Zelda returning to flesh and blood. He touched her skin to check that it was no longer ice cold. The joy bubbled up inside of him, but all he could do was grin; even the sounds he could usually make, the gasps and the laughs and everything else, were overwhelmed with happiness. Zelda was back. The first person who had ever understood him.
And because she was back, he found he was less sad when he said goodbye to Ezlo, the hat, the second friend he had had who understood him.