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The Depths were fascinating. True, Zelda had seen the underground mines in their full Zonai glory ten thousand years ago. But she had only had a glimpse, really. During her early days in the past when she had whittled herself down into bleary eyed exhaustion trying to use her recall power to get home, Mineru had suggested an excursion to the Construct Factory, which had a similar structure to the Great Abandoned Mine Link had taken them to. Link had awakened the lightroots near the mine, so the underground was still resplendent as it was back then with wavering ribbons of gold dusting the Depth's ceiling. But there was something awe-inspiring and deeply mournful about the current state of the abandoned mine. Zelda could feel the presence of the Zonai but also felt the full ten thousand years since their feet had also walked these steps. Time travel had a way of compressing history flat.
The main building of the mine had been smoothed over by time like a well-used candle, the decorative details of its façade faded.
Purah, Josha, and Tauro were delighted at Link’s discovered site. Purah and Josha were balls of excited energy, and even Tauro seemed giddy in his own measured manner. As Zelda stood in the center room of the Great Abandoned Central Mine, she watched Josha take a picture of Purah posing next to the schema stone construct with a Purah Pad. Purah braced an elbow against the construct’s bowed neck and raised rabbit-ear fingers next to her cheek.
“Check it!”
Link’s presence was a comforting warmth behind Zelda’s left shoulder. If she had ever thought his hovering was bad before during their time together, well, that was before she had disappeared into time. She didn’t mind. Not yet. She would mind, someday maybe, hopefully soon, when Link no longer had panic in his eyes after losing track of where she was.
“Incredible!” Tauro called over to them as he examined the construct and the forge that refined zonaite into charges and crystals. The construct inclined its head toward Tauro and chimed in acknowledgment. The refining smoke glittered high above their heads and the air smelled acrid-sweet. “You really lived among the ancients who created these… constructs? Ah, Princess Zelda.” Tauro caught himself from missing the royal title. The researchers, the town folk, and other races she met on the road addressed her formally but differently than the nobles and servants had in the castle growing up. As a child, her title of princess had been rote, thoughtless. Since the Calamity, she was addressed with care. The reverence was still jarring sometimes, especially among friends.
“Indeed,” Zelda said. “There were many constructs back then. The Zonai didn’t believe in forcing other living beings to wait on them, and even the constructs lived a balanced life between work and rest according to their beliefs. King Rauru—” she cut herself off.
Rauru had made an exception when displaying a show of strength. Hylian soldiers. At first only as guards when possible enemies came to court. Then, later, he asked his army to serve with their lives. Of course, he only asked what he would also do for his kingdom. Grief churned in Zelda’s chest. She blinked but thankfully her eyes were dry.
Link shifted his weight behind her. Zelda held up her left hand slightly, only enough so he would notice and know she was fine.
“Well, yeah, if we had mechanical beings and unlimited power, we’d do the same, I’m sure,” Purah said. Purah lifted her arm to affectionately tap the schema construct in the middle of its head with her knuckles. “We’re going to learn so much from each other, you cutie.”
The construct chimed and said in perfect but mechanically distorted Hylian, “stop that!” Josha squealed in a way that was uncharacteristically her age.
Zelda felt a light touch on her shoulder. She turned. Link had drawn closer and brushed his fingers against her. Warmth swept through her body, intensifying as Link took her hand. She allowed herself to be led away through the West side of the building easily.
“Where are you going? Can we come?” Josha called to their retreating backs.
“Leave them be,” Zelda could hear the echo of Purah’s light-hearted-yet-loud whisper bounce off the smoothed walls of the refinery.
Link kept hold of her hand as he led her away from the mining facility around one of cliffs that created the Depth’s walls. He moved slowly enough that she could keep pace with him. She mostly was able to move about with ease after her transformation, but she was somewhat slow and awkward. She saw almost immediately that he was leading her to the spring by the mine. They had passed by it earlier today during their investigation of the grove of trees by the mine (she couldn’t resist examining the underground flora).
“The spring?”
He turned to face her. His lips quirked up into a small smile.
“Secret Spring of Revival,” he said. The capitalized letters in the title he had given it were audible.
Zelda remembered that they were directly below the Great Plateau.
“The Room of Resurrection?” Zelda gasped. “Does the healing spring water travel down here? Oh, it doesn’t originate from the Depths, does it? I wonder if we could find any Sheikah technology alongside the Zonai ruins!”
Then she was the one pulling Link. When they reached the Zonai building that crowned the spring, Zelda released Link’s hand so she could search while Link stood guard. She noticed but didn’t draw attention to the fact that he was smiling as she made him hold their Purah Pad for her when she wanted to get down on the floor to examine carvings. She found nothing, of course. The Sheikah shrines had vanished after the Calamity. After Purah, Robbie, and the other Sheikah researchers dismantled the Divine Beasts, the Sheikah tribe scattered their ancient technology so it couldn’t be found and corrupted again. There was little trace left of the ancient Sheikah. There was possibly some crossover in the Zonai ruins, with the ancient Zonai technology predating and leading to the Sheikah’s advancements, but discerning the timeline was still underway. Zelda’s experience in the past hadn’t provided any answers in this vein.
Sometime later, Link pulled her back to the spring. Taking off his boots and socks, Link sat on the steps leading into the water. He rested his bare feet in the misty, gently glowing water and took an apple from his pack to munch on. He offered her one. Zelda followed him in taking off her boots and socks and took the apple. She did not eat it, however. She held the apple in her hands. The water was warm as it lapped around her feet, ankles, and her calves. Her legs felt stronger and more like human legs, a seamless part of her body.
“Water’s great,” Link said. “Doesn’t heal gloom, though. Found that out the hard way. Good thing there’s no more gloom around.”
Zelda’s stomach twisted and soured. She thought she might be sick. She set the apple quickly aside.
He was so dear to her. The slope of his shoulders and nose, the scrunched-up skin between his brows as he looked at her with apologetic concern. He could have died so many times and she would never have known. Her body felt disconnected from her head, her hands were no longer hers as they rested on her lap.
She breathed shakily. Slow. In and out. Holding her breath in between each careful draw of air until her body started to feel more like her body. Yona had showed her ways to steady herself when the Zora queen had insisted on checking her health as a gesture of fealty soon after her return. This breathing technique was a milder way of centering oneself. She was fine, or she was determined to be. Link looked away, allowing her to gather herself, for which she was grateful. She had asked him to allow her to do this before.
The intensity of her feelings still caught her by surprise.
She was not used to being human again. She was not used to living in short, quick moments with mercurial emotions to match. She seemed to feel things more strongly, too, now that she was “back.” Earlier that day, she had sat with Link in a grove of the Depth’s strange trees (so intriguing how they grew without sunlight. Did they rely on the lightroots or use another source to draw energy? She was going to investigate this when other matters weren’t so pressing). Link’s quiet presence had been a soothing balm to her, as it always was, and the lightroots’ glow on the soft, peaceful lines of his face caused something deep within her to unwind. A deep firefly had landed on her shoulder. That insect had seemed like one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen, with its iridescent wings and segmented body. Tears had streamed down her cheeks at the gentle touch of the insect and the gratitude she felt for the fleeting moment. It had been painful.
Zelda felt sometimes like two beings in one. A human contained in a body that itches and sweats. Something ancient, expansive. She didn’t always feel neatly divided between these two selves. Most of the time, she was a mixture, a shifting mess she tried her best to keep hidden under a veneer of royal training. She used to live inside her own head with no true thought for her body. As a young girl, she would prepare herself for ritual after ritual, trying desperately to draw out her divine powers, even going so far as almost freezing to death in sacred water. But she had still been simple, then. She was still a girl in many ways now but she had lived a hundred years in a sudden burst of divine power and desperation. She had ripped herself back through time. She had remade her body and become a being of sacred power. She had watched over Hyrule’s lifespan through a haze of light and sky with only the faintest threads of memory tying her to her home, her mission.
A tremor ran through her as her body remembered the strange experience of being large and weightless and timeless. The memory was strange inside her small, human frame. Like a garment being turned inside out or dreaming of yourself from an outsider’s gaze. Goosebumps trickled down her arms and she rubbed her hands over them.
When she had finished the motion, Link reached over and caught one of her hands. Zelda felt her breath stutter. His hands were warm and callused. She remembered a time when coaxing him to touch her felt impossible. In the wake of the Calamity and a strange new Hyrule, their affection for each other had been delicate and wobbly, like a newborn foal. Each touch or gesture, a hand on the shoulder or legs bumping against each other when sitting side by side, had been carefully offered and always welcomed. Today, out of view of others, Link had no shyness in gently rubbing warmth into her hand before holding it against his chest with the arm opposite her. The arm closest to her reeled her in gently and she folded into him easily. She was taller than him but sitting like this, his torso was longer, so it was easy to rest her cheek in the crook of his neck. He was clean and smelled indescribably, comfortingly like himself.
She let herself be anchored by him. She knew that was what he was doing. It was frustrating that it worked so well. That she could feel so unmoored and inhuman one moment and then knocked over breathless by her affection for him the next. That he was still so quiet. She knew that Rauru had given Link one of his arms in the time they were apart. The memory of Link’s arm being corrupted by gloom, of them falling into the pit, of Link vanishing from sight still woke her up in a cold sweat, even though he was usually right there asleep beside her if his own nightmares hadn’t kept him awake. Unlike when Link awoke from the Spring of Resurrection, she had not been able to watch over him during their latest time apart. She hadn’t been aware of him. She hadn’t seen his struggles. He told her stories of his journey to find her but did so sparingly. He had apologized for being so unused to talking for longer stretches.
Zelda drew back to wiggle her free arm from Link’s gentle grasp and wound it around his neck so she could fully embrace him, placing her cheek back by his neck. Their held hands were still between them. Link returned the hug instantly, which was gratifying. His hair was wild and long and brushed against the side of her face. She would pin him down and tame his hair again with a comb soon. She suspected he didn’t wear his hairband for this reason.
Link chuckled.
“What?” Zelda prompted, squeezing him gently as if in reprimand. She wondered if he had somehow heard her thoughts.
“I was remembering,” Link said.
“Remembering what?”
“Mineru.”
Zelda blinked into the air of the Depths behind Link’s back as if the underground faded blue-white grass and wildflowers (so fascinating how it grows here) would give her an explanation. What Mineru possibly had to do with what she thought was a tender moment was beyond her.
Zelda felt Link chuckle again more than she heard it, which made her chest feel like it was glowing.
“Mineru said I was your chosen protector. Zelda’s chosen protector.”
Zelda’s cheeks flamed.
Once, she would have huffed, pulled away, and stormed off in embarrassment. She wasn’t seventeen anymore, though. Still, her bald favoritism for Link when she talked about him to her ancient Zonai ancestors was somewhat mortifying. In retrospect. At the time, she had simply missed him.
She still pulled away so she could see his face. Link was grinning. Ear to ear. A rare sight. Some mortification was worth it after all. As she looked at him, she couldn’t help but think that—despite destiny and duty and desperation—that Link had chosen her, instead. She felt chosen. Somehow, impossibly and unerringly, Link had followed the breadcrumbs she had left for him ten thousand years ago. He had found her.
She had the sensation of compressed time, again. But right now she felt timeless in a good way. She wasn’t whole or at peace with herself yet. There was so much to do to help Hyrule, still, and the worry that somehow Ganon would find a way to come back even after all their effort. But she was where she was meant to be. She and this boy, who wasn’t really a boy anymore, would protect each other as they always have.
“You sound very pleased with yourself,” Zelda said, sniffing as if she was annoyed. “Let’s head back to the others. I hope you can manage to protect me from tripping on some dangerous rocks or catching a cold on the way.”