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Saria does not have any stories about the dragon in the sky.
Every night, she climbs up the ladder into his room and perches on the edge of his bed as he prepares to go to sleep. Once he is settled, she coughs, and Link goes silent with wide eyes as he awaits one of her stories. They cover many worlds, people, creatures big and small, and he will listen to each one with unwavering attention.
Saria seems to know everything: how plants are born, why rocks are heavy, why the Lost Woods are lost, and even how old the Deku Tree is. He wonders where she stores all of that information. Her head is only small, so her brain cannot be that big either.
“Do you know everything?” Link asks, tilting his head and flaring out his ears. They stretch across the soft pillow beneath his head, trying not to miss a single word coming out of her mouth. The covers on his bed are slightly rumpled where Saria has made herself at home, legs crossed and leaning back on her hands.
She pushes a lock of emerald hair behind her pointed ears. “Of course!” She exclaims. “The Deku Tree told me lots, so I know lots as well!”
Link gasps in amazement. Saria is so cool. If she knows lots, then he thinks she must know something about the dragon that flies above Kokiri forest every day. It curls through the bright blue sky, silhouetted by the sun as it dissipates clouds in its path. It is far too high in the sky for him to make out much detail. He asked the Know-It-All brothers if they knew what the dragon really looked like, but they had fallen silent and given each other confused glances. Instead of answering his question, they directed him towards the map of Kokiri Forest once again.
If the Know-It-All brothers are confused, then Saria is the next best bet.
“Can you tell me a story about the dragon in the sky?”
At his question, she falls silent. It allows the quiet of the night air to seep in through his window, as bugs buzz in the trees and wind sweeps across whistling grass. The moon shines bright into his open window. It illuminates the frown suddenly etched into Saria’s face.
“…The dragon does not have any stories,” she answers eventually. If Link had been paying closer attention, he might have seen the pinch at her eyes and how her ears droop slightly. As it is, he is more distracted with the knowledge that Saria does not know something. “The Deku Tree does not talk about the dragon.”
“But do you have any stories about the dragon?” Link presses, persistent. He has never met the Deku Tree, and trusts Saria’s word far more than anything he could say. “It’s been there for forever. As long as you have!”
She stays silent a moment longer. Link wonders if he should say something, maybe that he does not mind, and he didn’t really want a story about the dragon anyway, but she speaks up. A smile spreads across her face as she says, “What, are you calling me old?”
Without waiting another second, Saria raises her hands and dives towards him, wriggling her fingers and dancing them across his skin. His queries break into peals of laughter, pushing at her arms and choking out protestations in between choking giggles. A few minutes later she relents, and he takes the reprieve with welcome arms and gasping breaths. Not long after, she ducks out of his room with a smile and a warm goodnight.
It is only when his mind starts to slow, susceptible to the tugging of sleep, that he realises she said nothing at all.
Even though none of the other Kokiri have answers about the dragon, he keeps thinking about it. It is hard not to when it is there all the time. Alone in his room, once everyone else has given into sleep like he should be doing, he sticks his head out of his window and traces the dragon’s pattern in the sky with eager eyes. Without the sun blotting out its image, he can make out more of its features. A glow encases it, a light blue across the length of its body that morphs into a golden yellow around its head. It is the brightest thing he has ever seen.
The dragon is the only thing he knows that lives outside of the Kokiri Forest. The Deku Tree is also a contender, but it still technically lives in the forest, even if Link has never met him. Mido stops him from crossing the pathway to meet with the Deku Tree, but he cannot do the same with the dragon. He can see the dragon whenever he wants, even talk to the dragon without stupid Mido getting in his way. The dragon does not care. The dragon probably cannot even see him. Link thinks he prefers it that way.
Eventually, armed with a sword and shield and a little blue fairy called Navi who he loves with his heart and soul, he breaks Mido’s barrier and speaks to the Deku Tree in person for the first time. The other Kokiri meet the Deku Tree whenever they want. Saria in particular comes and goes like the wind, spending hours with him doing whatever it is she does. He is excited to meet him.
That excitement quickly morphs into horror. The Deku Tree dies in front of his eyes. His protector, the leader of the Kokiri, says his final words before giving into an eternal sleep. Those words put a responsibility on Link’s small shoulders, of destiny and fate and saving the world. The new Deku Sprout reinforces that information and sends Link off with encouragement.
He wonders if he might be cursed.
He bumps into Saria on his way out, who holds onto one of the ropes of the bridge and spins around it idly. His eyes water with unshed tears, and when she takes note of his face, she nods and sighs with finality. Like she knew it was coming. Like she knew he would have to go.
She gives him an ocarina as a parting gift. When he blows on it, it kind of sounds like Navi. Saria tells him all about the different notes, which opening leads to which noise, and how to use his breath to sound like a fairy himself. She teaches him her own song. He thinks it is fitting that Saria has a song of her own.
As he leaves her behind, stepping towards the massive hollowed out tree to begin his quest, the dragon glides in the same direction above him. A silent guide. It gives him the confidence to break into the new world.
The world outside the Kokiri Forest is strange and vast. There are more people across the kingdom of Hyrule than in the forest, which is bizarre because there are a lot of Kokiri in the forest. He thinks the total number of people in the kingdom is higher than he can count to.
He breaks into the Royal Castle, meets a princess, and sets out to recover the three Spiritual Stones. They are housed in the far corners of the land, given to people who are demanding and act strangely. He thinks he accidentally gets married to the Zora princess at the same time. He ends up running away before she can elaborate further.
The dragon continues to spin overhead, circling endlessly on a path only known to itself. Link wonders if it is on an adventure just like he is.
With three Spiritual Stones recovered, he goes to the Temple of Time, ready to take up what is needed to defeat the evil man who chased Zelda and attacked him. The Doors of Time open once the Stones are placed in their respective containers, and they reveal a glowing blue sword embedded into a raised platform. It is so bright, so magical, he thinks the dragon is no longer the brightest thing he has ever seen.
The sword calls him, beckons him forward, and he is all but helpless to resist. Navi rings around his head, words lost to his ears as his focus remains entirely on the sword in front of him.
When Link grabs the Master Sword, he is ten. When he lets go, he is seventeen.
After being told of time that has passed him by, he struggles to get his balance. Everything is smaller than it was before. His limbs are bigger, his hair longer, his feet wider. Each step he takes travels further than he is used to. It takes a while for him to stop bumping into walls.
Sheik is there, waiting on him, when he finally steps off the pedestal of the Master Sword. White wrappings encase the lower and upper halves of his face, preventing Link from seeing more than his eyes and a golden fringe. His eyes are oddly familiar.
Link is told to find the five temples to find the five sages, and then Sheik disappears. He is left alone in a world he does not recognise. When he steps out of the doors of the Temple of Time, the air is murky and heavy, the landscape desolate and brown. He looks to the sky, desperately, and finds reprieve in the dragon.
Despite everything else changing, the dragon is constant. It is exactly the same as when he last saw it, winding through the air and chasing clouds.
He begins his quest to awaken the five sages, starting with Saria. It is strange seeing her again, after it has been a few months since he saw her and a few years since she saw him. All of a sudden, she seems much older and more worn out that she used to be. It hurts his heart to see her single-minded focus on her own journey. He misses when she used to hold his hand and tell him stories and promise to always be there.
He does not think she can do that now.
After she has awakened as a Sage, he sits with Sheik. The man appears intermittently on his journey, staying with him for various amounts of time before leaving to achieve his own goals. Selfishly, Link wishes he could stay by his side. It would be nice to have a constant presence he can interact with, unlike the dragon.
The night is long and hard, the campfire crackling venomously between the two of them, and Link sits with his head between his legs and tries to stop the world from crashing down around them. Sheik hums a mindless tune as he tends to the fire, blowing on any failing embers and sweeping falling ash into the centre of the flames. His voice is higher than Link thought it would be. It is nice.
Above them, the dragon continues forward on its endless path. It does not see the two of them, hidden in a world forsaken by the goddesses. It does not care that Hyrule is falling to ruin about them. The dragon moves onward, unbothered by it all.
That is starting to annoy him.
“Why don’t you go to sleep?” Sheik asks after a while. His tone is quiet and considering, blending into the silence of the night like he had said nothing at all. He pokes at the campfire with a stick, watching dispassionately as it bursts into small gusts of flame. “I can keep watch.”
“I’m not tired,” Link grumbles, pushing his head further into his knees. If he hides enough, then none of it is real. His limbs will be the size of a Kokiri’s, and his shoulders will be light without the weight of a kingdom’s legacy shoving down on them. If he stays awake, tomorrow will not arrive. If he stays awake, Sheik will not leave him.
“I could tell you a story?” The words are hesitant, unsure, and they make his head shoot up in surprise.
He has not had a story in so long. Most of his nights are spent alone, only Navi with him for company. She spends most of her time as they travel hiding in his clothes like a shield from the world around them. She is too small for the troubles they face.
He is too small for the troubles they face. He is too big for his old life. It might be funny, if it did not hurt so much.
These days, Navi is not a great conversation partner anyway. She does not know very many stories. Before he was shoved out of time, Malon could never stay up late enough to share any tales, on the off chance he passed through the ranch. The Kokiri, the source of many stories throughout his life, are rarely seen enough to share anything. When he does visit them, they tend to leave him to his own devices. He hates them for it, even though he fully understands. He is not one of them, and never has been. He would not want to be with him either.
When he is offered a story, Link turns with wide eyes. Even under the cover of darkness, the wrappings have stayed firm around Sheik’s face, revealing only squinted eyes and locks of golden hair.
“…What about?” Link asks eventually. He does his best to be dismissive, to act like the grown-up everyone thinks he is. Grown-ups do not need stories in the night. He doesn’t either. Judging by the tilt to Sheik’s head, he must have failed.
“About…” Sheik starts, before trailing off. He glances around the two of them, inspecting the scenery as if he could force inspiration out of nature itself. The harp fixed to his hip drags across the ground as he twists. As he determines, Link chances a look up at the sky. Breaking apart the blackened night, the glowing dragon sweeps across the expanse. Its head begins to pierce the seal of the moon. It looks lonely up there.
He looks back down at Sheik, and blushes when he sees the intense stare being levelled at his face. It is more knowing than he would like.
“I know a story about the dragon,” Sheik offers after a beat of thoughtful silence. He turns away from the campfire to face Link more fully, placing the stick at his side.
Unbidden, Link’s mouth drops open slightly and he straightens up, crossing his legs. “Really?” The surprise cannot be kept out of his tone. Even Saria did not know a story about the dragon, and Saria knows everything.
Well.
Maybe not everything.
“Once, there was a beautiful princess,” Sheik says, crossing his own legs to mirror him. “She had a happy and prosperous kingdom, never touched by sickness or gloom. People were happy. They danced in the street, sang to the stars and loved so much.” Link cannot see if there is a change in his companion’s expression, but he does not think he is imagining the sadness tinting his voice.
“What happened?” Stories always have something go wrong. Well, Saria’s did at least. Something bad had to happen so something good could follow. Saria had called it the rule of life for everyone but the Kokiri. It had been said to comfort him, but now that he is not a Kokiri, it makes his head hurt. He wonders if there is something good waiting for him.
“One day, an evil witch visited the kingdom. She cursed the land and said that the kingdom would fall to ruin and the people to illness. Understandably, this brought great trouble to the princess’ heart.”
Link leans forward, completely absorbed in the story. “What did she do? Did the kingdom fall? When is the dragon going to show up?”
“I’m getting there,” Sheik murmurs, but it sounds lighter than normal. Less weighed down by the burden of his mysterious quest. “You have no patience.”
“I wouldn’t have to be patient if you said the story already!”
Probably wisely, Link’s words get completely ignored as Sheik continues to talk. “Well, the princess had been born with a powerful magic, not unlike that of your little fairy.” At the mention, Navi wriggles her way out from under Link’s hat. She chimes tiredly as she comes to rest on his shoulder. Her blue glow has deepened since he became big. Idly, he wonders what she did for the seven years he was gone.
“With this magic, the princess vowed to save her land. She gathered all of her energy together, and in one blow, transformed herself. Flesh was replaced with scales, hair with fur, eyes with diamonds. She grew a hundred times the size of herself, with new arms and legs sprouting from her body. The princess had…”
A moment of silence. Link frowns, opens his mouth to tell him to hurry up, but Sheik cuts in before he can.
“…become a dragon.”
“Woah,” Link breathes as he leans back on his hands, previous irritation evaporated. He looks up at the sky once more. The dragon princess has become fully encircled by the silvery moon. She has not realised the revelation beneath her feet. “How did that help the kingdom?”
“It allowed her to watch over it from afar,” is the answer. “With the newfound strength in her limbs, she could protect it from any threat.”
“But doesn’t that mean the kingdom had to fend for itself?”
“Yes.”
“What if they couldn’t do it?”
“That was a risk she had to take.”
Link sits up, crossing his arms with a huff. “That doesn’t seem very smart. Couldn’t she have used her magic for something else?”
“Maybe she could have,” Sheik grits out. The freedom in his tone has left once more. He sounds just as angry as he did when Link first met him. “But she didn’t.”
They fall into silence for a minute, and Link considers the dragon princess in the sky. He thinks he is like her. He also had to grow a hundred times his size to save the kingdom. He also has to use the newfound strength in his limbs to protect the people.
The difference is that she is a dragon where he is not. She had a choice where he did not. She wanted to save the kingdom, and he wanted to stay at home with the other Kokiri.
The dragon princess had tried to save the kingdom, and Link had been called in where she failed. The world around him is ruined, reeking of death and fear around every corner, and bitterness fills his heart.
She failed, and he has to pick up the pieces.
“She hasn’t done a great job of protecting this kingdom,” Link mutters, uncrossing his legs and tipping to the side. Navi, who had fallen into a doze, jumps off his shoulder with a panicked chime and shoots him a glare. Once he has brought his knees up to his chest and firmly placed his back to Sheik, she makes a new bed resting on the side of his leg.
It is all so unfair.
There is no response to his muttered complaint. Just the sound of crickets, and the crackling campfire, and a soft breeze rustling the trees. As Link is beginning to think that Sheik has finally left, he says, “What do you mean?” The icy note to his voice makes Link shiver slightly.
“Everything is ruined!” He cries, despite the voice in his head telling him to maybe stay silent. Navi does not move even as he shakes. “People are dead and trees are failing and life is scary now. If she wanted to protect us, then maybe she should not have left.”
“…I think she is trying her best,” Sheik answers eventually, sounding choked. Like Sheik is trying his best too. He does not think his companion is talking about the dragon princess anymore.
“Her best is not enough,” Link hisses still, closing his eyes and shutting out the world around him.
Sheik has nothing to say to that, or maybe he leaves entirely. Either way, the rest of the night passes in silence, and he wakes up to smouldering embers scattered across dead ground.
He rarely sees Sheik after that. He continues on his quest, awakening the other sages and doing his best to write the wrongs that occurred when he left. Throughout it all, the dragon princess floats absentmindedly on the wind, oblivious to the blood he pours out in the name of her mistakes. The stack of medallions in his pouch grows taller, and once it is complete he grasps them in a tight hand and walks into the Temple of Time. He passes the battered doors, reaches the raised platform, and sees Sheik for the final time.
Sheik becomes Zelda. Sheik was always Zelda.
He thinks he knows why he was left alone that night, so very long ago.
Then Zelda is gone, and Ganondorf has taken her, and Zelda has transformed her essence into arrows of pure light to end this evil man. He follows him to the castle, attacks him with everything he has, finally sends him to his death bed.
However, it would be too easy for that to be the end.
Ganondorf changes. He mutates, grows larger, carelessly bats the sword out of Link’s hands and announces himself as Ganon. In that moment, eyes stretched as far as they could go and heaving breaths rattling his lungs, Link thinks he truly understands what fear is.
He wants Saria, with her fun stories and comforting words. He wants Sheik, with his dismissive attitude concealing a deep care. He wants Malon, with her toothy smile and rough hands. He wants the dragon princess, with all of the power of the world hidden in her claws, to save the kingdom like she so desperately wanted to.
He has Zelda, with her warm magic and stealth that speaks to years of training, and he thinks that might be all he really needs to save the kingdom, in the end. She is enough.
Link defeats Ganon, and Zelda seals him away, and the world is saved.
The world does not feel saved.
When Zelda apologises to him, pries the Ocarina of Time from his fingers, breathes a fluttering tune into the opening, he does not understand what is going on. A blinding flash makes him squeeze his eyes shut, and when he opens them his limbs have shrunk, his hair is shorter, and his voice is much higher.
He is back to who he was, just like he wanted all along.
It does not feel like him anymore.
Link returns the Master Sword to the pedestal, and the second it leaves his hands he feels lighter than he thought he could. The sword had been his destiny, and a heavy weight, and getting rid of it means his journey is over.
Then Navi leaves. It is an aching separation in his chest to watch as she flutters away, chiming away and twirling upwards. He traces her movement with tired eyes, and even as he feels tears welling up all he can think is of course she left as well. She reaches the sky, joins the dragon princess in distance, and he cries.
Stranded in time, where no one knows of terror and destruction, he does the only thing he can. He goes home.
He sees the Kokiri, careless and free, and he feels so out of place that his heart tries to burst inside of his ribcage. Saria is there, with her emerald locks and open arms, but Link does not fit there. Not when he knows of the tiredness that entered her eyes and dried up her words, forcing her to grow up like he did. Navi’s loss only worsens it. Even after his entire adventure, he has not really changed. He is still the boy without a fairy. He is still not a Kokiri.
He gives it a month, just to be sure. Then he decides.
He leaves.
Even though he has just finished one adventure, he gives himself another. Navi is so small. She cannot have flown far. Maybe she does not want to see him, maybe she did not want to leave, but either way he has to find her. He has to know.
As he travels, he thinks he would go to the ends of the earth for her. On his hardest days, when he felt lost and too small for the task he had been given, Navi was there. She did not care if he was big or small. She had never left his side, until she did.
He cannot let her go so easily.
The dragon princess glides overhead with him. She is unbothered by his pain, untethered to the world, and feels no remorse for leaving it up to him to save the kingdom that was her responsibility. She merely continues onwards on her unerring path, tracing his movements in the sky. The dragon princess is the only remainder of the life he led that no one else knows. He hates her for it.
Then, he falls. Then his body is changed once more, skin turning to gnarled bark, against his will. Then he finds Termina, where he makes friends and loses them within the same week as the moon crushes down on them all.
Link is tired of his actions being inconsequential.
He runs through Termina, searching far and wide for the giants he knows are the only way to stop the moon from killing everyone. He lives the same three days on repeat, and even though his body does not grow older his mind ages with the constant fear and desperation. It is the exact opposite to before. Now, his body is too small to house the age he knows resides in there.
He is always out of time, out of body and out of place. He never fits.
The dragon princess does not fit either. He asks Cremia, once, if she has any stories about the dragon in the sky. She is Romani’s older sister, and he thinks older siblings have stories that they share freely. Exactly like Saria did. He asks this when he has officially lost count of how many times he has repeated this cycle, when he is desperate to be the boy he used to be, when he just wants someone to be there for him instead of him being there for others.
After the question, Cremia takes a blank look upon her face. She smiles sadly as she tells him that there is no dragon in the sky. There is only the moon, all-encompassing and fearful – she does not say that part out loud, but he can track the scared glance of her eyes. She offers to tell him a different story instead, one about heroes and monsters, something more appealing to Romani’s tastes than his own, but he declines.
When the moon crashes down that time, it is only at the last second he saves himself and rewinds time. He had trouble playing the dainty notes of the Song of Time with waterlogged breath in his lungs and a wobble to his lips. As the world burns red hot, and the manic grin carved into grey rock descends closer and closer, the serpentine form of the dragon princess flies out of reach. She winds through the air, directed away from the tragedy befalling the land. Watching her take her uncaring leave sparks a fire in his heart. He had dampened it at the start, when he first realised that the dragon princess did not care about saving her people. He does not try to stop it this time.
His eyes dry, and the sympathy in his heart shrivels and dies. Link has given so much of himself to everyone around him that he has run out of things to give. He is not an endless supply. If the dragon princess cannot be bothered to care about her people, if she only watches over them in a detached way, then why can he not do the same? He is only ten, and seventeen, and however old he is now. He is doing the best he can.
He has run out of tears for these people.
Once he saves Termina, the hate in his spirit grows. He saved all of those people with nothing but the masks in his bag and the sword in his hand. He stopped the moon, a soulless celestial body, from crashing straight into the ground. He did all of that, all by himself.
The dragon princess’ sacrifice was in vain. He never needed her help anyway.
Despite everything he did, Navi stays hidden. Wherever she is, he hopes she is happy and free and not carrying the weight of a million lifetimes like he is. He does not know if he can bring himself to keep looking for her.
Maybe she left because she knew what he would become. Maybe in the time she spent with him she saw what he is only now realising – that he is strong, and capable, and so, so alone, and he constantly saves a world he cannot care for anymore. Maybe Navi wanted to be a fairy for someone who was happier, and nicer, and softer. Someone who is not him.
When Link returns to Hyrule Field, to where his adventure began, he keeps his distance from Kokiri Forest. He cannot go back. Saria is burned into his memory with her warm smile and the lilting notes of her song, but that is all she is. A memory. He does not know if she would want to see him, as he is now. He is not the boy she looked after.
He lives with Malon instead. She catches him in the forest one day, hidden under a den of sticks that are decorated with wide leaves and twirling ferns. He had been curled underneath, trying desperately to keep warm whilst the ground beneath him seeped cold through his skin, straight into his bones. No one knows he is back. Not even Zelda.
As his eyes pull closed, and he starts to consider sleeping through the day, the sticks above him are ripped away. Dawn creeps into his makeshift home, unwanted and unwelcome. Link hisses, ripping the sword out of its sheath as he jumps up to brandish it in front of his foe. The tip comes face-to-face with a familiar face, wide blue eyes framed by a vibrant red fringe. He almost drops his sword in fright.
“Romani?” He breathes, eyes wide. She should not be here. He left Termina and all those people behind him. They were meant to stay gone.
“Who’s Romani?” The voice answers, high-pitched and sharp with accusation. “And what business d’ya have waving that sword around anyway, fairy boy? I haven’t seen you in two whole weeks! That’s forever.”
Malon stares back at him, arms crossed and ears flared. It takes all of his willpower not to burst into tears then and there. He must fail, because she gasps and reaches her hands out to him.
“What’re you crying for?” She asks, helping pull him out of the den. The shock of seeing her makes his legs weak, and it is only the strength of her arms that keeps him standing. Her hand clumsily squashes his cheek as she tries to wipe an errant tear away. “Come on, let’s go back to the ranch. You can tell me why you’re hiding in my woods later. Wait, did you run away? That’s so cool!”
Dragging him behind her, Malon chatters a mile a minute and leaves no space for him to interject. She takes him back to the ranch, and he starts crying all over again at the familiar structures. And at the horses. And at Epona, who has somehow found her way back home. He hadn’t meant to leave her behind, so caught up in the mindless trudge back to the beginning, but halfway through he realised she was not at his side. He had sat on a rock silently for a day before moving again.
He chokes under the weight of his cries. Malon panics when he drops to his knees, hysterical sobs rising in her own throat as she grabs his shoulders and sinks to the floor with him. The noise alerts Talon, who rushes outside and flits around the two of them, unknowing but concerned all the same.
It is the closest he has felt to people in a long time.
After that, he moves into the ranch. Talon is unsure about him, walking around his presence on tip toes which would be funny if Link did not think he needed the caution. Malon set up a bed in her room for him when he tried to hide in the corner of the stables, desperately not wanting to overstay his welcome for some of the only people who want him around because of who he is, not what he can provide.
He is standoffish and awkward at the best of times. It frustrates Talon and confuses Malon to no end, but adapting to the quiet life they have established for themselves is a struggle. They are untouched by catastrophe in a way he never has been. It brings them into conflict, sometimes, but what bewilders him is that they let him stay. Even when he is moody, or tearful, or raging, they do not send him away.
Malon buys windchimes at the market in Castle Town, proudly displaying them near the stables, but every time he walks past the door it makes his ears flatten and he flinches away. A few days later, they are gone completely, and it is never brought up.
Talon invites the owner of the Happy Mask Shop over, and Link spends the day in the stables, grooming Epona within an inch of her life until he is gone. He does not come over again.
On the night of the full moon, Link stands outside in the paddock, sword clenched in a whitened fist and the Fierce Deity mask clipped to his belt. Malon comes stumbling in to join him, wiping the sleep from her eyes and yawning loudly as she sits on the grass next to him. She stays the entire night.
As he gets older, and wiser – though Malon likes to jokingly protest that one – his ire towards the dragon princess lessens. He is physically the same age as Sheik was when Link had been given the story about the girl who sacrificed her flesh for scales, and it likely is not true. It had been a tale created on the spot, heavily influenced by Sheik’s own life, and did the job of making him go to sleep. The dragon in the sky might just be a dragon, and nothing more.
He is still bitter. Someone needs to take the blame for what happened to him. At least the dragon cannot make him feel guilty about blaming it for his troubles.
It takes many years of living on the ranch, but he starts to care again. The sympathy he had tossed aside in Termina rises in earnest, and it scares him, but Malon says it is a good thing. He cares when Talon falls asleep on the floor of the ranch, protesting loudly when Link wakes him up to move him somewhere more comfortable. He cares when Malon is bucked off a rescued horse and bruises her back, and he gives her an arm whilst she hobbles for a few weeks. He cares when he gets a letter of invitation to the Royal Castle from Zelda, who does not fully remember who he is beyond being important to her, and he hugs her when she breaks into tears.
When Malon asks if he would like to stay on the ranch forever, with her forever, it does not take long for him to agree. His heart feels full to burst, a wide smile spreading across his face to match hers as her red hair shimmers in the low sunlight and blinds him, and he wonders how he ever thought it was okay to lose this feeling. To lose love.
The dragon does not leave throughout it all. It stays, serpentine and graceful, utterly detached from the world he lives in, and he does not feel angry anymore. It is exhausting to carry hate in his chest. Zelda said that he should learn to be more considerate of others’ perspectives, to stop thinking that the world was always out to get him alone. He carefully did not say that the world is out to get him and tries to follow her advice.
He entertains the idea that the dragon is a princess, and that Sheik was correct. She gave herself up for her kingdom, doing the only thing she knew how to do to save it. Her form became that of a dragon irreversibly. When he was younger, he identified with the changes she underwent, and that scared him.
Now that he is older, more secure in mind and body as he looks how he feels, he can feel no jealousy or hatred towards her. Link pities her.
He has been given the opportunity to love personally and fiercely, but the dragon princess is too removed to do so. Maybe she cares, maybe she does not, but either way she is up there and he is down here. She is the dispassionate eye in the sky that prevents total ruin of the world, and he is the sword and shield on the ground protecting the people. He is older, more tired, has traded his adventuring for a quiet life, but time cannot erode the protective nature in his soul. If trouble happens once more, he will sigh, but will pick up his armour without regret. He will walk onto the battlefield with the dragon princess overhead, glossing over his fight, the only proof that his travels were real and that time is not passing him by.
He moves on with his life. The ranch expands to hold other animals. Epona has a foal that he was not allowed to name Anope. Talon teaches him how to churn butter. Malon attempts to knit him a scarf but gets so frustrated she nearly throws it in the fire. She doesn’t, because wool is expensive, and that winter he proudly parades a scarf the length of his forearm and of unknown shape.
Link officially falls into the category of middle-aged, and that throws him for a loop because it came out of nowhere. Of course, that is when destiny knocks at his door once more.
An eclectic group of eight boys, swords larger than their arms and spirits greater than their bodies, come crashing into his life in a tangle of expletives and limbs. They tell him of their journeys, fighting across time and space against a dark entity, and ask him to join. They call him the Hero of Time. They ask to call him Time. He cannot think of anything more fitting.
It pains him to leave Malon, but he is an adventurer at heart, and she does not begrudge him. She sends him off with a kiss to the cheek and an instruction to return soon, and he joins the group with no regrets.
They truly make a motley crew, coming from different time periods and different customs, connected only through their shared spirit and the dragon princess. They all know her too, have different stories and theories about her existence, and it makes him wonder just how long she has been confined to the skies. It is a small comfort that she is with him on this quest as well.
A while into their journey, his descendant’s descendant vanishes without a trace. Every step without him tears a whole into Time’s side, but his weakness is concealed in favour of looking after his boys. They seem lost with the knowledge that in the blink of an eye, they can be dropped, forgotten about. It hurts him to see their grief. He sees himself reflected in each teary eye.
At least, he thinks, he hopes, the dragon princess can guide the missing Link where Time fails.
When he returns, with a new arm and adventures beyond that of Time’s imagination, he shares a story. A story of a princess who saw a great evil manifesting in her kingdom and did the only thing she knew to. A princess who shed flesh for scales, and her mind for victory. A princess at the beginning of time, moving forwards on a relentless path to reach her kingdom once more.
Sheik had not been so inaccurate after all.
Not long afterwards, he has to say goodbye to his boys, wrapping each one tight in his arms and letting them go home. They went back to where they were meant to be, wobbly grins plastered across their faces and promises to meet again ripping out of their throats. Link may not believe he will see them again – with the exception of one, long after his time to pass on arrives – but with the dragon princess in the air, with Zelda in the air, they are still connected.
He stands on the ranch porch, Zelda floating above him on her timeless quest, and his heart feels full once more.