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This is what love is: radiant skirts spread out on the grass, playing a melody while he sits across from her and sings along. Light trailing from her fingers as they intertwine hands, as she reaches for a flower he hands her. Twirling under the starlight, glow dimmed on purpose for the night sky.
This, too, is love: golden light pooling in her hands as she presses them to a gash on his arm, healing him with barely a thought. Invisible steps trailing his own as he walks through the town, an aura of magic and radiance surrounding him. Pulling her hand away from his, because light can be burning and blinding if one is exposed to it for too long.
She loves him. He loves her.
But his love is the love of the earth beneath them. Love given freely with each breath, dancing under the stars together, a bouquet of flowers and adoring looks and smiles. Her love is the love of the sky above them- the love of the sun’s rays upon the trees, the love of the night sky when the clouds part to reveal the shimmering stars. Hers is the love of the stars and the sky and the light, intense and golden and radiant. Incomprehensible by most.
He wields his sword in her name, to bring light to the world. She was not meant to love him the way he loves her, she was meant to love him the way light loves life. Distant, incomprehensible, shining. But she loves him in different ways- the love of a lit candle, chasing away the shadows in the dark. A hearth-flame, gently warming the heart.
She is too divine (in the most literal sense). She has glowing eyes and golden jewellery, and when she moves, trails of light paint her movement behind her. Look at her too long, and it is like looking into the glare of the sun. She does not bleed, or injure- she is crafted of pure light itself. Radiance in the form of a person.
He is too human. She loves him, and his clear eyes, and his blonde hair, and the way he will defend their world and the innocent. But as she is… she cannot love him the way she wants to.
When calamity strikes, she is the one to take up a sword in addition to her harp, stand beside her hero, tall and lovely- bringing down ruin among her enemies. Battlefields are scorched golden, glowing scars on the earth that will fade in time. The curse is laid down upon them, light is leaking from her injuries, and his sword is imbued with a spirit of aid. She leaves gifts, messages, trials,
Why do this, he asks, when a goddess is immortal? When a goddess will always be around to guide heroes?
What point is there, she replies, if you are not the hero I guide?
They have a plan. She will sacrifice her divinity, return it to the sky. They will return again and again, bound by the curse, but they will be together, and not separated by death. That is all that matters. She will not have to live on like this, forced to look upon heroes who do not know her like he does, who do not love her like this.
The things one does for love are boundless. She returns her divinity. Gives herself a form, a being, and smiles at her hero.
“You look too perfect to be a traveller”, he tells her, grinning, “Your eyes are a strange, pale shade, your hair shines in the light like spun gold, and even now I can feel the light surrounding you.”
“Do you not recognise my ensemble?” she asks him, twirling around. She has a plain, long-sleeved white shirt, ankle-length blue skirt and brown boots, but the look is defined by the gold-coloured sash and the cream-coloured capelet with a triangular golden pin.
“I am a travelling priestess of the Goddess,” she tells him, excited shine in her eyes, “I had the good fortune to be blessed by Her Radiance before she retreated from this plane of existence.”
“A travelling priestess… of yourself,” he says, amusement in his voice, “It would explain all the little things that don’t add up.”
Her laugh surrounds them, ringing bells in the air.
The first time she enters a village by his side, she introduces herself as Zelda, and that is all. She makes up a quick story about being blessed by the Goddess, and receiving a directive to join the hero on his journey, and no one asks her any more. It’s something she has to get used to. The act of breathing, eating, drinking. Feeling pain from things like getting too close to a fire, from tripping and falling.
The first time she realises the true extent of mortality is when she’s cornered by a monster before her hero can reach her. Her heart rate- because she has a real, beating heart now, she’s not just an entity formed of pure light- rises, she can feel it pounding in her ears and her chest, and when she throws out her hand, a small pool of light gathers, because she has to build it up now, draw it out of her veins. She hasn’t trained, doesn’t know how a human body works, can’t summon up the light that still resides within her.
When her hero arrives, cutting off the monster’s head, she watches his sword swing, and it hits her that that, too, can kill her. Send her to the darkness beyond. It’s more than a little terrifying, knowing that she can die now. If she dies, it’s not the same as before- she won’t just fade into the world and re-piece herself back together. If she gets injured, blood will come out, not light, and she can’t just reconstruct herself.
But aside from that… there’s a sense of guilt that fills her. Would it not be easier for her hero’s future incarnations to fight, if the one fighting alongside them was immortal and eternal? If the Goddess was at full power, rather than constrained by mortality? And then, there are her own incarnations. The girls with the blood of the Goddess within them, blessed and cursed at the same time. The ones who will have to train and fight and die, all for the light in their veins and the heroes beside them. The ones she is dooming with her decisions.
But mortality is accompanied with some degree of selfishness, and she cannot bring herself to regret her decision. This way, she will not have to gaze upon the heroes with her lover’s face and spirit and determination, but none of whom know her. This way, she will not have to face Demise’s own incarnation over and over again, an eternal goddess with an unfading memory, whose only reason for existence is to fight the same enemy time and again. This way, she can love and live in its entirety.
In the end, she ages. Grows old with her hero, the two revered as the first of many to come. A hero and a girl, and the light of the Goddess with them both, their roles committed to history.
She finds that she likes being mortal. Mortals feel everything so much more intensely, compared to the feelings of a goddess; a goddess feels, but the depth of that feeling seems so shallow, now, when compared to the feelings of a mortal.
Does she regret her decision, though? She made her choice, so no, not really. There are days she gazes up into the night and thinks about a trio of deities, her creators, and wonders if they are proud of her or not. There are days she misses the trailing light from her fingertips, the way she summons golden beams with the simplest thought.
But those days are accompanied by ones where she can link her hand with her hero’s. She can follow him into towns and villages in Hyrule without having to hide herself, because all she gets are passing glances at the travelling priestess ‘blessed by the Goddess’.
In the end… she has made her choice. So when her mortal body finally fails her, she will breathe her last, happy with the life she lived. She will wish her future selves, the girls with the blood of the Goddess and her spun-gold hair, luck and success and happiness. She will wish her future heroes an easy life and an easy fight. And when she does, she will not die like a normal person- she will fade into light, light that blesses her hero, and they will meet again in a place beyond the veil.