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The sun was already high when Zelda tugged Link down the winding trail toward the coast. As he had always done, he followed her without complaint, though his steps were unhurried and a little uncertain. He hadn’t yet worked out why in Hylia's name they’d left their home in Hateno before lunch.
Zelda’s skirt fluttered in the warm summer breeze, her laughter spilling freely as she crested the last dune and reached the sands of Hateno Beach.
“Here,” she said, breathless with excitement. “Look.”
Beyond them stretched the glimmering sea, the waves endless and shining. The water caught the sunlight like glass, the waves curling in silver-edged swells before spilling against the pale sand.
Zelda’s eyes widened, and for a moment she looked like the girl Link remembered from long ago, before he became her sworn knight and when they were childhood friends. Back then, before the Calamity and long before the Upheaval, she had been curious, unburdened, and unafraid.
He could see that girl inside was slowly coming back to him.
Zelda slipped off her shoes and let the warm sand surround her bare feet.
“It feels so strange,” she murmured, flexing her toes. "Now that the Demon King is truly gone and Hyrule is at peace, I feel as if I can finally enjoy the little things again..." She trailed off, shaking her head as though her words couldn’t fully describe it.
Link watched her, the way her short golden hair danced in the breeze, how the bright sunlight traced its golden rays over her skin. He hadn’t seen her this lighthearted in years, and his own heart swelled at seeing the secret love of his life so genuinely happy. The sight warmed something deep inside his chest.
A group of children raced by, shrieking with delight as they chased each other into the surf. Zelda laughed softly at their antics, then turned, catching Link’s gaze.
“We should join them," she said with a smile.
He blinked, looking down at his freshly laundered tunic.
“Not running into the waves,” she clarified with a laugh that sent Summerwing butterflies fluttering wildly in his stomach. "Look at what they’re doing.”
She pointed farther down the beach, where a pair of children crouched together, patting wet sand into lopsided towers. They were attempting to craft a miniature fortress that was crumbling under its own weight, but the children proudly fortified it with more wet sand all the same.
Zelda’s eyes shone and flickered back to his. “Have you ever built a sand castle, Link?”
He shook his head slowly. The question itself seemed almost absurd.
Her grin widened, mischievous now. “Then today, Hero of Hyrule, you’re going to learn.”
Zelda was already crouching in the sand, skirts gathered at her knees, her hands scooping up a mound of wet grit. She pressed it together with brisk precision, as though drafting the foundations of a real keep.
Link stood over her, arms folded. “You’re serious?"
She looked up, a faint smile playing at her lips. “Completely. You can’t say you’ve truly lived until you’ve built one.”
“I’ve fought Lynels, jumped off Sky Islands, ridden on the backs of dragons, including you, and I've defeated Ganondorf himself..." He tilted his head at the half-formed clump between her palms. “...But I can't say I've ever done anything like this.”
She looked into his uncertain eyes. “That’s exactly why you should.” Zelda smoothed one side of the mound of sand with her palm, nodding in satisfaction. “Besides, I thought you liked challenges. I've never known you to back down from one."
Link sighed, kneeling down beside her. The sand stuck unpleasantly between his fingers, gritty and damp. “It’s not much of a challenge if I don’t know the rules.”
“The rules are simple,” Zelda said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “We each build our own castle. When the tide comes in, we’ll see whose stands the longest.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So you want me to compete against you?”
Zelda’s grin turned sly. “Unless you’re afraid of losing to a former princess with much smaller hands than yours.”
That drew the smallest huff of laughter from him. He dug his hands into the sand, scooping out a small pile. “All right, but don’t expect mercy from me, just because I happen to be your former sworn knight."
Zelda’s eyes sparkled as she attempted to hide her smile. “Good. I wouldn’t want it anyway.”
For a few minutes, each of them worked in silence, with the sounds of the sea and children playing nearby, and seabirds calling overhead.
Zelda glanced sideways at him. He seemed very much out of his comfort zone, with his shoulders tense and brow furrowed.
“You know,” she said softly, “you don’t have to be a hero anymore. You can just... play. You know, for fun."
Link’s hands stilled, the sand between them spilling back to the ground. He looked at her, unsure how to answer. Finally, he said quietly, “I find that to be more difficult than fighting.”
Her expression softened, but she didn’t press him. Instead, she gave her tower a firm pat and let out a triumphant, "Ha! My first wall stands!"
Link shook his head, a crooked smile tugging at his lips. Determined, he set back to work, wishing not to let her win so easily.
It wasn't long before their structures began to reveal their builders’ personalities.
Zelda’s took shape methodically, each wall packed tight, smoothed flat, and measured by eye as though she were drawing plans for a real citadel.
Ever the perfectionist scholar, she tucked seashells into the walls as ornaments, set bits of driftwood upright like banners, and carefully shaped clumps of sand so the turrets sharpened into perfect cones.
Link’s, by contrast, was nothing short of chaotic. He dug trenches like moats, piled towers high without much symmetry, and stacked wet sand into jagged turrets. When a wall slumped sideways, he merely pressed his palm against it and muttered, “Stay.”
Miraculously, it did... mostly.
Zelda glanced at his structure, a wrinkle of amusement pulling at her lips. “That looks less like a castle and more like a monster's lair.”
“Monsters need homes too," he said defensively, before pinching a flat shell and pressing it into his tallest spire. He tilted it until it resembled a crude Hylian shield. “Besides, fortresses should look intimidating.”
“Intimidating?” Zelda scoffed. “This is supposed to be an elegant seat of power, not some mud heap that looks like it has a mind of its own and growls at intruders.”
Link sat back on his heels, eyes narrowing playfully. “Mud heap? Is that what you think of my masterpiece?" he said incredulously, trying not to smile.
“Precisely,” she said, voice prim as a lecture she'd give her students at the Hateno school, though the curl of her lips betrayed her smile.
He answered not in words, but with action. Reaching into his pouch, he plucked a Zonai device from it and into his palm, a stabilizer from his explorations. He pressed it into the sand at the base of one wall. The structure shuddered and straightened, standing tall where it should have collapsed.
“Cheating!” Zelda cried, half rising to her feet. “Absolutely unfair!”
“Resourceful,” Link corrected, deadpan. “Heroes use what they have. We tend to get creative."
Their commotion had drawn an audience. A few children from earlier gathered nearby, pointing and whispering as the castles gradually grew stranger and grander.
One little boy clapped his hands as Zelda arranged tiny shells to resemble lanterns. A young girl squealed with delight when Link dug a trench and filled it with water, a proper moat swirling with a few Ironshell crabs.
Soon the children began cheering, some for Zelda’s shining palace, others for Link’s looming fortress. Zelda placed her hands on her hips, cheeks pink but eyes bright. “Well, it seems you’ve started a war.”
Link smirked. “I'm good at that.”
Zelda tossed a handful of sand at him, laughing when he flinched and nearly toppled one of his towers. For the first time since they were children, their shared laughter mingled with the sound of the sea, their harmony carried together on the gentle ocean breeze.
By the time the sun had dipped lower, their castles stood side by side on the damp shore, Zelda’s gleaming palace of shells and perfect symmetry, and Link’s jagged fortress bristling with crooked towers and a flooded moat that smelled faintly of seaweed.
The children had long since scattered back to their families, leaving only the two of them and the whispers of the waves on the beach.
Zelda dusted her sandy palms on her skirt and lowered herself to sit, knees drawn up. Her castle shimmered faintly in the sunlight where she had pressed tiny shells into its walls to resemble windows.
Link dropped beside her cross-legged, his hands gritty and his hair flecked with sand from when she’d pelted him earlier. For a long time, they just breathed, listening to the water lap against the shore.
Zelda tilted her head toward him, a small smile tugging at her lips. “You laugh more than you realize, you know.”
He blinked at her, puzzled.
“You don’t always hear it,” she said softly, “but I do. It’s precious, like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.”
He shifted, looking away toward the horizon, where the sea reflected gold beneath the late afternoon sun. His cheeks warmed at her words, and his fingers curled into the sand, as though grounding himself. “It’s easier for me to laugh when you’re here.”
The words were quiet, almost carried off by the breeze, but they landed warmly in Zelda’s chest. She turned her gaze back to her castle, tracing one of its turrets lightly with her fingertips.
“I think,” she said after a pause, “that’s what I’ve missed most... not duty, not even the castle itself, just this. I live for these moments where the world doesn’t demand anything of us, where we can simply live and be together."
Link didn’t answer her right away. He studied her profile, the way the wind caught her hair, the concentration in her green eyes as she carefully and patiently smoothed a wall of sand. His lips worked as though the words he wanted to say were there waiting, but were caught in his throat.
Finally, he murmured, “I want that too.”
Zelda froze. She looked at him, her heart swelling, but before she could answer, the waves lapped closer, their cool sea-green foam licking at the edges of their castles. The tide was coming.
She exhaled, a shaky laugh escaping her. “Well… I suppose now we’ll see which one of us built the better foundation.”
The first wave reached Zelda’s moat, rushing through the carved out channel with a hiss. She gasped and scrambled forward on her knees, pressing her hands to the wall of sand to shore it up.
“No, no, not yet!” she muttered, smoothing the sand furiously. “Just a little longer!"
Link stayed where he was, arms resting loosely on his knees. He calmly watched as the water receded, only to surge back stronger. His own fortress lost half a tower in the second wave, a jagged spire slumping into the moat with a wet, unceremonious thud. He didn’t flinch.
“Link!” Zelda turned, strands of hair sticking to her face. “Aren’t you going to try saving yours?”
He shook his head, a faint smile forming at the corners of his mouth. “It’s already the sea’s. We only borrowed it.”
She stared at him, exasperated. “That seems pretty defeatist.”
“It’s true,” he said simply. “Castles fall. Walls crumble. It doesn't mean they weren’t worth building.”
Zelda froze, her hands still pressed into the wet sand. She could feel the tide lapping against her fingers, relentless and cold. Slowly, she sat back on her heels.
“This isn't just about the sand castles, is it?” she asked softly.
His gaze drifted toward her, then away. He dug his fingers absently into the shore, leaving trails that filled with seawater.
“Hyrule’s been torn down again and again, and so have we.” His voice dropped. “But every time, we begin again and start over.”
Zelda’s throat tightened. The truth in his words struck her harder than the waves. She thought of the kingdom’s shattered walls, the lives lost, of the century she had spent holding back the Calamity, only to go back in time and soar the skies of Hyrule as the Light Dragon for thousands of years.
Finally, her thoughts settled on Link. He was always fighting, always returning, always carrying the weight of the world without complaint, to protect her and to rescue her... out of duty, or was there more to it?
She looked down at her little sand palace, its turrets already sagging under the sea’s relentless advances, and whispered, “I just wish we could build something that lasts.”
Another wave swept in, and this time half of the walls she so meticulously built collapsed. She didn’t move to stop it. She only stared, heart aching with something she hadn’t quite dared to name.
Link reached out, brushing sand from her wrist with a calloused thumb. “Maybe it’s not about how long it lasts.”
His eyes, steady and sure, finally met hers, and he fully took her hand carefully in his. “Maybe it’s about who you build it with.”
The tide rolled in again, swallowing both castles in a single, destructive rush. The surf eased back, leaving only toppled mounds, bits of driftwood, and scattered seashells where their castles had stood. The beach was nearly empty again, a blank slate, as though their work had almost never been there at all.
Zelda stared at the ruins, wet sand clinging to her fingers. For a long moment she said nothing. Then, in a voice barely above the crash of the waves, she whispered, “That’s what frightens me.”
Link turned toward her, brow furrowing.
She hugged her knees close, pressing her chin against them. “Hyrule has been torn down so many times. Every time, we try to rebuild... walls, temples, even ourselves. But it always falls again. I keep wondering if we're only building temporary castles in the sand.”
Her words trembled, pulled loose from the careful composure she always carried. “And what if you... what if we...” She stopped, her throat tightening, reducing her voice to barely above a whisper. “What if I lose you again, Link?”
The question hung between them, sharper than any blade Link ever wielded.
His chest ached. He had no speeches prepared, no grand vows. Words were always the hardest part for him, but he couldn’t leave her hanging in silence, not when her eyes shimmered with that complicated mixture of hope, fear, and vulnerability.
Slowly, he reached out and laid his hand over hers, still damp with seawater. “You won’t.”
Zelda’s breath caught. She searched his face, as if looking for something deeper than the two words he’d given her.
He swallowed, then forced the rest out, quiet but certain. “I don’t care about kingdoms or titles. I just… want you. If everything else falls, that’s enough for me.”
Her eyes widened. For a moment she looked as though she might break all over again, but instead her lips curved, trembling, into the smallest smile.
“I don’t want castles either,” she admitted. “Not unless they’re ours... not unless you’re in them with me.”
A wave crashed closer, spraying them both with cold seawater. Zelda laughed through her tears, brushing a clump of wet hair from her eyes.
Link squeezed her hand he was still holding, a silent promise more binding than any oath. They sat like that as the waves pulled at the sand around them.
The next wave surged higher, reaching past the ruins of their castles and soaking their legs. Zelda squealed, half in alarm and half in delight, as the water splashed up around them.
Link grinned, shaking out his hair, then lunged forward, flicking a stream of water toward her. Zelda shrieked and retaliated, sending a spray of sand, seawater, and foam flying in his direction.
Soon they were splashing and laughing, chasing each other along the shore. They were soaked to the waist, with their footprints washing away behind them with every retreating wave.
“I can’t believe we’re acting like children!” Zelda gasped, clutching her sides as she dodged another oncoming surge.
“Better than worrying about crowns and kingdoms for once,” Link called back, crouching to scoop up a handful of sand. He flung it gently at her, and she retaliated with a handful of her own.
Amid the chaos, their laughter mingled with the sea’s unrestrained crests. Every worry, every memory of battles and losses, felt momentarily distant. Here, on the beach, they were simply Link and Zelda, two people who had survived everything and could still find joy in each other.
Eventually, they collapsed onto the damp shore, breathless with sand clinging to their wet skin and their hearts still racing. Zelda leaned against him, smiling up at the approaching sunset.
He rested his head near hers, the warmth between them stronger than any castle or wall they could ever build.
Even though the ocean reclaimed the beach, sweeping away every trace of their efforts, they didn’t care. What mattered wasn’t permanence. It was their shared laughter, their experiences, and the unspoken certainty that they would always face what the world brought them together.
Link’s hand found hers again, squeezing gently. Zelda smiled, squeezing back. The waves lapped at their feet, endless and steady, a reminder that life would go on, and they would go on with it, side by side.
Before long, the sun had slipped low beyond the horizon, painting the sky in streaks of gold, purple, and rose. The beach was empty now, save for the faint traces of their footprints and the scattered remnants of what had once been their castles.
Link rose slowly, brushing sand from his tunic, and he reached down into a small pocket at his belt. He pulled out two smooth seashells, tiny treasures he had scooped from the tide earlier in the day.
Zelda looked at him curiously, her hair damp and sticking to her cheeks.
He pressed the shells into her palms without a word, letting her feel their cool, polished surfaces. One was speckled, the other gleamed white like moonlight on still water.
“For you,” he said softly, "as a reminder of today, of this moment... of us.”
Zelda’s fingers closed gently over his gift, warmth spreading through her chest. She looked up at him, her eyes glimmering with both gratitude and something still unspoken.
Before either of them could speak again, the quiet between them stretched and shifted. The ocean’s rhythm seemed to slow, and the world beyond them narrowed until it was just the two of them standing on the shore.
Link stepped closer, and without a word, he gently lifted her chin. Zelda’s breath caught. Then, finally, their lips met. It was soft at first, tentative, tasting of salt and sun and all the unconfessed feelings that had carried them through every battle and trial they faced.
Their kiss deepened, a promise as fragile and precious as the sandcastles they had built and lost, yet as enduring as the sea before them. When they finally pulled away, they rested their foreheads together, smiles on their lips curving through the haze of twilight.
They stood side by side, hand in hand, watching the waves glide onto the shore. The castles were gone, washed away by the tide, but the shells, the laughter, their words, and the core memory of their first of many kisses remained.
Link gave a small laugh and nudged Zelda gently. “I’m starting to think all this lovey-dovey stuff is making me hungry. How about we head home before I eat half the supplies in the kitchen?”
Zelda smiled, shaking her head. “Always practical, even after all that romance, huh?”
He grinned and tightened his grip on her hand, and she pressed her fingers into his in return, savoring the certainty of their love that no tide, no storm, and no enemy could ever wash away.
With their footprints fading behind them, they turned from the sea, carrying the assurance of their bond into the coming years.
Link and Zelda walked hand in hand back toward the place they called home beneath rising stars and a darkening sky. Each step felt lighter than the last, echoing the rhythm of the waves. In their minds was the unspoken reminder that their love, like the sea, would forever endure.
Through it all, come what may, they would always find peace, hope, and love in each other.