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It was cold, up there. Always was. Not cold enough to be unbearable, mind you, but cold enough to where you could see your breath if you let it out with a wide enough mouth. Cold enough that your extremities went pink then red and numb as your blood fled towards the warmer pastures of your torso.
She held no heat. (Link lied to himself about this often) Even her mane was at best cool. Link would often go up to see her and lay in it for hours, pretending he was swaddled and warm and home and at peace. Every entrance was grand in its own way, hurling himself into the stratosphere by any means he had at the time. She paid him hardly any heed, as usual. Even after something switched on when he pulled the master sword (jammed into her forehead like an ice pick) she remained so very hauntingly placid, like an old cow. Her route changed, and she seemed to track him with her eyes a bit whenever he approached now, but that was about the extent of her apparent awareness.
He would bunch up her hair in both fists and cry her name into it over and over. He prayed that they would carry something, anything to her. Neurons in his palms. It didn’t feel like hers, it was wiry and matted. Impossibly thick and further impossible to detangle. He would piece through it though, patiently, as a lover does. Little sections at a time, carefully ensuring each strand was separate and smooth. Of course, minimal progress was made every time, and the wind would whip it back into whatever shape it was before he tried by the time he returned next.
He brought her gifts, things he knew would be swept away in hours time by the ever-changing zephyrs she barreled through every second of every minute of the day. Flowers, knick-knacks, baubles, decorations, stories. He would tell her about the children in Hateno, about the progress the researchers in Kakariko had made, about Impa and Purah and Robbie and Paya and Grante (Granteson, Link always forgot the Son at the end) because she kept up with them all like they were her blood relatives. He wanted to think it put her at peace. (Even if she appeared more zen-like than the countless Sheikah monks he briefly had invade his mind with commands and commendations a few years back.)
He fell asleep more times than he could count up there, listening to her breathe and occasionally let out a sigh that rumbled him awake every time. (it always made a sound similar to the other dragons, a low, thundering, roaring moan) Her lungs were so enormous that she could inhale for forty seconds and exhale for three times as long. Her turns were never abrupt, Link told himself that she must've retained her polite household behavior. (it was nearly impossible to hear her going down the stairs when she inevitably woke up earlier than him, despite the creak in the 2nd and 5th step, not to mention her miraculous ability to slip out of bed completely unnoticed.)
Aside from the whistling wind and occasional storm, it was always quiet and somber with her. He tried his best to fill the silence, but never did the best job. He would hum mindlessly on occasion, when words truly failed him. Familiar, meandering tunes he half-remembered, half-made-up. Many of them made his heart ache, for one reason or another. Some were faintly recalled hymns the fuzzy apparition of his mother sang to him in his past life, others were tunes he picked up along his travels. He had grown accustomed to listening to her talk about everything and nothing over the five years they spent inseparably after Calamity Ganon was swallowed whole by her giant light nuke.
Strong. Resilient. Impenetrable and impossible. A miracle and an agonizing, endless cycle. She was there when he was born, before he was born. She watched Hyrule fall three times. (Many more than that, but Link never paid much heed to history lessons when he was young, and no one bothered mentioning eras out of memory nowadays.) Her mind and body frayed and decayed and changed beyond recognition but she was still here . She was still waiting .
He stared at the downy white hair on her forehead, kneeling down at first, then fell onto his side on top of it with an unceremonious thud , resting on the inside of her brow. He grabbed a fistful of it with his left hand and squeezed hard, as if grasping at her hand. His face was hot with agony and frustration and love and loss and a sorrow so deep he couldn’t really pin it down in one place to observe it in its entirety. To yell at it or beg it to end. She had waited an unfathomably long time. Ten thousand years and fifty thousand more, maybe longer. Link of course knew it wasn’t her experiencing this, (Mineru’s voice repeated in his head for the hundred and seventeenth time, “To become a dragon is to lose oneself.”) but she was there . Right in between his fingers, her cool flesh biting against his warm shoulder and chest. He wanted to reach his hand in where the master sword once rested and dig out the stupid stone she swallowed five hundred lifetimes ago. To peel apart the layers of beast that surrounded his Zelda, to rip open her belly and pull her out and plummet to both of their deaths embracing as tightly as they possibly fucking could, their last conscious moments together smiling and laughing and kissing and promising things for the future the whole way down.
He stood atop her head, and ran his hand (his hand, not Rauru’s. The king’s hand must’ve not connected properly, sensations were dull, delayed, and alien.) along one of her shimmering horns. It was cold and smooth and left a glittery impression on his palm like fairy dust which closed his more recent cuts from starting fires or being too hasty with his knives. He went up and down a few times, as if he was searching for something his eyes couldn’t see. A clue, a fragment, a hint that she was there, screaming his name like he did hers. I’m here, for gods’ sake. I’m here! Can you hear me? I love you enough for you to hear me. I miss you so much it makes me want to die. Sometimes I wonder if I jumped off would you bother trying to catch me. Do you think of me often? Can you hear me? I’m sorry I took so long. Please, I’m begging you, just say something to me once more. I need to hear you again or I might go mad. Wake up, wake up Zelda!
He kissed her cool skin a hundred times, and a thousand times more. Each one desperate and laced with words he forgot to tell her ages ago. Every time he wished beyond hope that some sort of spell would be woven into it, a silent prayer, like so many she made to the deaf goddesses. An awakening, sleeping beauty rising into consciousness as he once did. She was, as always, unresponsive as stone. Link cursed at himself over his lack of fairy-tale magic every night he spent away from her, nights where he couldn’t try to bring about some innate, miraculous, nebulous power from within him like Zelda did a hundred and six years ago. The power of love was a fickle little bitch, it seemed.
Yet still, his life continued onwards, his goal always in-sight, the sages always at the ready.
And Zelda continued to circle all of Hyrule, awaiting some nebulous innate power to be awoken, for her call to action so that she may spring forth and do what she set out to do eons ago.
It was cold out, as usual. Stars were draped across the night sky and Link felt a little lightheaded from the low air-pressure. He fell asleep on the Light Dragon’s mane for the hundredth time, and, softly, sadly, between sobs and hitched breaths, started saying her name again and again, like it would wake her up the same way she woke him, after waiting one hundred years for the first time. Wake up, wake up, Link.
It was dreadfully, unbearably, agonizingly cold up there. Link dozed lightly atop Zelda’s head, and dreamed of her the entire time, tangled right between his fingers.