To Behold Hope
She stared for that is all she could do. She stared out across a place that she barely knew, barely recognized. This was not her home, and these were not her people. They were impostors, pretenders, play actors, and she was not Princess Zelda. She was a foreign wind trapped in a body of stone, unwilling to move, limbs immobile and strict as lead in their range of motion. She was rain and air whirling within herself, seething to escape through the capillaries in her skin, through the delicate lattice work of veins. She was all these things and none.
She closed her eyes for a moment, tasted salt and metal on her tongue. Blood. The air always tasted of blood now. It was soaked into the thread of the wind that blew across from one shore to the next. It wound its way like a ribbon through the leaves of the Lost Woods, siphoned itself into the eddies of the Zora River, and engrained itself into the Gerudo Desert where the wind held no mercy.
The wind was cruel and callous, choosing to bestow its gifts where it felt the whim. For that is all the wind is but a whim. Something so fragile and insubstantial that for a moment the Princess thought she could feel it needling itself into her skin, darting through her like a dragonfly on a pond. The wind brought everything to Hyrule including her troubles and demons.
She stood now awaiting a different wind altogether. A wind that would sweep through Hyrule and cleanse her of her problems, that would scour her clean of the dark stain that she suffered and languished under. The Princess inhaled deeply through her nose, watched him with fathomless blue eyes as he approached her.
She had thought this day would not come. All the dawns she had seen until now had been false. They were miscarried promises of new beginnings. There though clad in a worn green tunic and scuffed boots was her bright, shining new beginning. The infantile promise that might mend her land, her. He might fill it, that yawning ache that divided her, that made her war against herself. To be a queen in exile and a self imposed coward was a very hard role to fulfill. She had done too many hard things in her life.
She felt it, all of it. She felt every injustice, every terror wrought against her country. It was as if she were the bones of the land laid bare for ravens to pick clean. The well of her sorrow was deep and dark and many stones had been dropped into it and settled at the bottom.
He stopped in front of her and bowed. Her old eyes studied him with a wariness that had been instilled in her over the years. This Korkiri, this rough and tumble boy with no training or education was to be the architect of her salvation. She might have smiled at the thought if there was anything left in her that could smile.
"Princess," he whispered. His lips were cracked, his skin tanned by the harsh sun. She could see the roads he had traveled written all over his face. She read him in a moment with perfect clarity. It was like staring through a crystal and seeing the light splayed out into seven different bands.
"Zelda," she corrected him. If he was to be her messiah, her precious deliverance, then he must know her truly. There would be no thin veil of titles or courtesies between them. It must be hard and honest like iron. That was what the world had been reduced to iron and blood and yet there he stood like a tendril of spring's pledge.
He nodded in assent. His calloused hands went to the sword at his back. He unsheathed it. It glowed in the watery sunlight. It was the first time in years she had been happy to see such a thing. He dropped to his knees and held the blade flat across his scarred palms.
"My sword is yours," he stated.
The wind tangled her hair. She did not fix it. Her fingers itched to touch the crack in her crown, but she did not move. The sword was plain and clean, its blade notched from past battles. It was so simple like the man who wielded it. He was such a plain instrument of the goddesses, such an unexpected turn of fate. The innocence of it filled her with an awe she was not familiar with. It was terrifying and beautiful all at once like the first time she'd killed a man or made love to one. Her heart swelled at the scene before her. She felt something strange flutter in its bowels and realized that it was hope.
"Keep it, "she replied. "You have far more use for it than I do."
They stood there for a long while in silence while her eyes and heart silently drank in the sight of this unlikely hero. She did not break it with a word for fear that if she did it might shatter and she'd never regain it. It was too tenuous and too cherished to risk. She wanted to wrap herself in this emotion forever. She wanted to feel this high taking her out of herself and into the air. So this is what it was like to behold hope embodied in flesh and bone and sinew. She had almost forgotten how it felt.
This is a one-shot based off of a lovely Zelda portrait I saw on deviantart. Here is the address: .com/art/Princess-Zelda-2009-124096378 This was also inspired by some music by Apocalyptica, and please comment and leave me some feedback.