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Link thought she knew love before she came to Koholint. Marin has taken the paltry idea she had before and broken it over her knee. The wound of it is a geode, sparkling in fractals. Every time Link looks closer, another facet is revealed.
In the blinding island sun, Link had initially mistaken Marin for Zelda. She has never been more wrong in her life. Where Zelda is bound up in the structure of royal life, Marin is free-spirited. Her desire to soak up the entirety of the world is lush and gorgeous.
Link, helplessly orbiting Marin's centre of gravity, regales her with tales of Hyrule.
"What kind of apples did your uncle cultivate?" Marin asks, pillowing her head on her hands. Link cants her head at her and is rewarded with the lavish brown of her skin glowing under the high sun. She's striking on the backdrop of the white sand, where she lays on her front and eyes Link with interest.
Link turns her eyes to the sky; the searing blue swallows her vision. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I couldn't sit still as a kid for long enough to listen to him talk about the orchard." Link lets the wash of regret flow through her. "I wish I had asked."
Marin is quiet. Link feels her hand—impossibly warm, like a brand that hasn't yet begun to sear her—on hers. She says nothing, and Link is deeply grateful.
Marin has decided to tag along with her during the day. Link frets about this for about five minutes, until Marin bashes a boarblin with her newly acquired shield so hard that it flies ten feet before biting the dust. Link inspects it and finds its skull caved with the force of the blow.
"Sweet Maidens," Link curses. Marin laughs, and it's like the chiming of bells. Then Marin meets her over the boarblin's corpse and gasps.
"Was that- was that me?"
Link nods, feeling somewhere between satisfied and gobsmacked.
Marin's grin is vicious. "You have to let me help with the next Nightmare."
Link can't bring herself to deny Marin anything, and that's how she finds herself gaping in horror at the Face shrine's facade, by Marin's side.
Marin has a hand over her mouth, trembling. Link feels her guts churning.
All of this… was a dream?
Link pivots away from Marin and empties her stomach. The smell is as rancid as she feels, and it's all fake.
Behind her back, Marin has begun laughing.
It's not fucking fair. She's more real than anyone I've ever known. How could I leave her?
How could I leave her?
Link falls to her knees. She has never been a crier, but tears fall from her eyes now like rain, wetting the backs of her hands. Link feels barren, stripped of joy and purpose.
Marin touches her shoulder, and her grin is so electrifying that for a moment Link forgets that the world is going to end and take her with it.
"Link," she starts, her eyes creasing with joyful tears, and Link really does not understand, "I can be free!"
The floor drops out from under Link's feet. "What?"
Marin clasps her hands to her heart, and her cheeks become streaked with salt. "If we end the Wind Fish's dream, I can finally explore the world, and you can go home to Hyrule!"
No.
"Why not?" Marin asks, and Link realizes that the filter between her brain and her mouth is completely shot.
The words pour out of her, then. "No! No, no, no. You can't leave me like this! I just found you!"
Marin's face crumples, and she rears back from Link like she's been burned. "How can you say you've found me if you don't even get that I can't be trapped here anymore?"
"You're safe here!"
"I'm nothing here! Why do you get to deny me my own life? You're not my hero, Link. I don't need to be saved."
The weight of that word brings another wave of bile into Link's mouth. How dare she call her a man because she doesn't want Marin to die?!
Link buries her face in her hands and shrieks in despair. Through the cage of her fingers, she watches Marin turn away. She hesitates at the top of the stairs, and Link knows that nothing she can say will change Marin's mind. She vanishes into the artificial light of day.
Link waits on her knees in the shrine for hours, staring between the putrid puddle of her own sick and the mural like either will give her any answers.
When the world goes strange around the edges, dreamlike, Link realizes what Marin has done. She's on her feet, sprinting toward the Wind Fish's Egg, before she can convince herself out of it.
All the while, she curses herself: this will mean nothing. I have no control. She's going to die in front of me. She's going to die. She's going to die.
Her feet become raw and blistered; the sky is closer to black than blue by the time that she makes it to the maw of the massive speckled egg.
Marin is on her knees below an impossibly massive creature. Its belly is the soft blue of a thinly spread wave. Link can barely see the top of the Wind Fish, bedecked in gems three times her height and laden in tapestry. Each segment of fabric is the size of a warship's sail.
Each breath the Wind Fish takes is a roar in its sheer magnitude. Link's knees buckle as she is buffeted with every exhale.
Marin, Link realizes as she adjusts to the cavernous sounds of the room, is singing. It's the lightest, sweetest rendition of the Ballad of the Wind Fish that she has ever heard.
From her pack, Link draws her ocarina. Marin deserves to be accompanied in her final moments, despite Link's clumsy playing.
Marin turns to face her. Her face is lovely and open with song, and her eyes brim with tears as she takes in Link's playing. The instruments Link has collected to free the Wind Fish—not enough, or so she thought—rise from her pack and transform the tune into a lively swell of music.
Link had to fight for the tools to free the Wind Fish. Marin does not, she realizes, because she is the Wind Fish; the massive divine force of it distilled into a girl with a heart that draws Link in like the tides and a song as delicate as seafoam.
Of course Marin had to do this. There was no other answer. Link closes her eyes and plays, and plays, and plays.
The cawing of gulls brings Link out of her slumber. A massive flock of them swirls overhead—she's on her raft, the one that had crashed on Koholint island. The Hyrulean sun begins to bake her; the entire time on the island, Link had never gotten a sunburn.
One bird swoops closer than the others. A splash of cerulean and auburn feathers crown its head. Link reaches up, and it—no, she—lands in her hands.
Link kisses her head. Marin nuzzles her cheek, then takes to the skies, spiralling higher and higher until she is finally free.