Tonight wasn't the first time I noticed the way the golden glow of sunset rimmed his golden hair in a soft aura. I had seen it a hundred times before, if not more. Yet this evening seemed like the most important time of all, because it would be the last evening for a while that I would see him. He was unusually distant tonight, as he had been all day, saying goodbye to friends that had become like his own family. I doubted he noticed the way I watched him as he stared off into space, eyes narrowed slightly as if trying to focus on something beyond his own sight, lost in his world of thought.
We had known this day would come for many years now. I wasn't born yet when his mother left him here in Orrin, but my own mother had told me the story: she was a wild woman, beautiful beyond belief, passing through Orrin by chance, clutching a babe to her chest. Her eyes were wide with fright, mother had remembered, as if she were fleeing some unknown terror, or perhaps desperately seeking something. Whatever the case, she had borne this small child just days before, and a voice had spoken to her, pressing her to name the child Link, as he would some day become Hyrule's chosen hero. Perhaps the daunting task of raising such a boy terrified her; perhaps it was the vision. She didn't stay in Orrin long enough for anyone to find out. Brecca and his wife, Ilia, had taken him in, newlyweds themselves, and owners of Orrin Ranch. The wild woman had dumped her child here and was gone the next morning.
I was born shortly afterwards to the wife of a merchant, the only merchant in our small town, peddling to passers-through on their way West to Hyrule or everyday goods to the townspeople.
Link and I grew up together, as at the time, we were the only infants in Orrin: the other children were already much older. Link's "siblings" were born years later. We shared every spare second of free time together, every secret, every hope and fear. As we grew older, we would sit and fish on the dock for hours, talking endlessly. With my fat, clumsy child-fingers, a needle, coarse thread, and soft scrap fabric from an old dress, and the little knowledge my mother had passed to me in the female trade, I sewed a doll for Link - a fairy with pale blue skin and wings, button eyes, and brown hair, like mine.
My hair had grown long on the day of his sixteenth birthday when they pierced his long, pointed ears as a passage into manhood. I remembered him standing tall that day, but only I could detect the flinch in his face when the needle went through. I could read Link like a book.
I had helped him move his few belongings into his tree-cottage that same day; he was a man, of course he could not still live with his mother. Half of the house was built into a tree, and the lower half on the ground, even burrowing below into a cool cellar.
I taught him how to play the horse-grass that grew by the spring and even helped him train Epona, his horse, to come when the grass called to her. I even cut his hair after his own mother had "butchered it" that summer; I knew he liked the pieces before his ears to frame his face just so, and for his forelock to fall just a certain way. I think that was the first day I knew I felt differently about Link; more than just his closest friend. I'm sure I had touched his straw-like hair before - had I? - but that time I felt the rush in my gut - butterflies - and felt my cheeks flush.
Link had always been brave; braver than I in most respects. From the time he was very young and his foster mother sat him down and explained his fate as chosen Hero of Hyrule, he had accepted his fate proudly. Never boastful, never haughty, always humble. To others, he had always been a boy of few words.
But last week, he changed. His entire world changed.
