"Am I dead?"

In his ringing ears the words seemed hollow and metallic. They flitted from his mouth without the guidance of his tongue or teeth.

"Yes," a voice answered. Unlike the words that escaped him, the stranger's words were melodious and deep. The sound barely resonated in his ears yet the vibrations shook him to his core. "But then, you've been dead for some time, haven't you?"

His thoughts echoed with the same hollow and metallic sound as his voice. "I have. But I thought I was done now."

Wherever he was, he remained blind to it. Not with a blindness void of light, but a perpetual paleness hung in front of his eyes. He couldn't tell if he was turning his gaze from any direction to another; the same pale blindness met him everywhere. It was faultless, with no deviations in it's endless, smooth, illumination.

The stranger's voice hummed, filling him with the same gentle quiver as before. "You are done, courageous soul. But I wanted to show you something before you slept."

"I'm so very tired."

"I know you are."

He could feel the stranger's empathy wash over him like a wave of warm water, caressing him in a way he'd never experienced. He never had a mother or father, or even a successful lover. If he had though, this is how he imagined it would have felt.

"What did you want to show me?"

The warmth suddenly left him naked and alone.

"Not yet," the stranger said. "This place is not easy to understand. I will have to leave you for a moment so you can recreate yourself."

"What do you mean?" He waited for the stranger to speak again but his ears rang emptily. "Are you there?"

The ringing grew louder as his mind frantically tried to fill the vacuum with noise. He'd felt this before. In horror, he realized he was condemned to the same hell he'd just endured for a millennium. But this was worse. This was so much worse.

"Please!" he cried. The plea for mercy didn't travel through his throat or mouth. It erupted from him at the same speed as his thoughts. "I can't do this again!"

Last time he had a body to command. Stiff, rigid, and decomposing but limbs to move all the same. Not here. Not this time.

The ringing grew louder, penetrating his mind with a sharpened point. If his brain couldn't find a way to fill the vacuum with sound, it would do it with pain. Streaks of burning sensation sliced through him with a freezing edge. Layers of himself were being shorn off while he was powerless to even reflexively clench up. He wanted to cry out, to lash out, to escape the torment, but his mind was already committed to destroying itself. There were only two existences he experienced: the awesome pain, and the infinite pale.

But as one sensation increased, the other began to diminish. The pain increased exponentially, sundering what little of himself remained. At the same time, the paleness flickered. It was almost as though he'd blinked. As if his eyelids were the last things left to offer the damned soul a reprieve from his torment.

There it was again, a blink. The paleness, for a fleeting moment, gave way to darkness. When the darkness left, the paleness returned brighter than before, somehow less pale.

With what little of him remained, he focused on that difference; that brightness, that was only a single shade more than it had been before.

He blinked again, this time slower. The darkness lasted longer and the paleness radiated brighter.

It was his only function, the only intrinsic command he could muster. He batted his eyelids furiously, shifting his world from dark to light again and again.

There was more than just luminosity. Faults were appearing in his monochromatic slate. Patches that were slightly darker were beginning to take form every time he ascended from darkness. He shifted his focus to these blemishes.

With every blink, the brightness became more and more unbearable but he didn't relent. Those blemishes continued to take shape, to darken and form.

If I could just reach out and touch it, he thought.

To his surprise, just as words echoed his thoughts, the blemishes echoed his desire. They moved.

Hope, welled inside him. He focused on another blemish.

"Move!" he commanded.

The blemish obliged him and shifted in a hapless direction.

He wanted to laugh and cry and the same time. He was escaping! He didn't know why or how but he knew these dark spots were his way out of this hell. The pain lessened until it was no more than the ringing he had originally known.

He hardly noticed the improvement. He was consumed by the shaded parts before him. He realized he couldn't move single blemishes, those drifting alone. He could only move two or more parts at a time, and almost always in opposite directions. It seemed like a puzzle to him. One last Goddess forsaken puzzle for him to solve.

He had no sense of time. The only senses he had were the ringing, his sight, and moving the puzzle pieces.

The puzzle was proving frustrating but it was staving off the pain. He could only move the pieces in relation to one another. Once he realized that, he decided that the only thing to do was bring all of them together. Some were easy to bring together. They were already sitting in the same field of view. But once he shifted to a different plane, he sometimes had trouble finding his way back. Eventually he realized that if he continued in the same direction for long enough, he would eventually return to the assimilated puzzle pieces he started from. With that new knowledge in mind he made short work of gathering the last pieces. He would choose a direction and travel in that direction, gathering all the pieces he found, and drag them all until he found his original pile.

That was all he considered it, a pile. His analogy of puzzle pieces satisfied him at first but once he had all or most of them assembled, he realized that there was no fitting them together. They could overlap, or meld together, or separate into more pieces than originally. He was stumped.

The pain didn't return while he wondered about his next move but the ringing remained consistent. It only disappeared when the stranger's voice finally returned.

"I guess that's the best you can do."

He turned away from his pile, searching his sphere of empty brightness for the stranger. Until he returned to his pile, he saw only infinite light.

"What do I do with these pieces?" he asked. The words were less hollow and metallic but they still drifted from his mind without his tongue as a vessel.

"Those pieces are you," the voice said. "You are looking down at your own body, commanding it into existence."

With the words, down and body, his world began to shift. He focused on his pile of pieces skeptically, suddenly sensitive to direction. The pile was down, the brightness was above him.

"I'm looking down at my body?"

The stranger hummed happily, filing him with a shock of cheerful vigor. "That's right."

The pieces started shifting on their own, changing shape and direction. Their edges were becoming definite and clear while they simultaneously gained a dimension of depth.

"I'm looking down at my body."

The stranger was right. He was looking down at his chest, and hands. The dark hue that filled the pieces gave way to varying shades of color. Black and gray was replaced by red, yellow, and blue until even those colors shifted into others.

"You also have a mouth, and tongue, and eyes, and nose, and teeth, and facial muscles to move all of it."

With each word, he became acutely aware of the faculty. He did have a mouth, filled with teeth and a tongue. His eyes blinked deliberately and his nose wiggled at the thought.

He looked again at his body. Bony hands and feet stretched out into phalanges that danced at his command.

"If I have feet," he said aloud. "Then I must be standing on something. And I must be somewhere."

"Very good," the stranger said. "You are standing in a white room, with a beautiful young woman in a green dress."

Just as he heard the words, the image was conjured before him.

He gasped in surprise at the sudden clarity of his vision. There were no more blurry fragments or vague outlines with sporadic-off coloring. He was definitely standing in a white room, in the body he'd known for a thousand years, with a beautiful young woman in a green dress.

She was standing ahead of him, relaxed with her fingers interlocked in front of her. She had pale skin, flawless and hairless except for her eyelashes, eyebrows, and long blonde hair. Her dress was the same hue as her eyes, as if an emerald could be sewn like cloth. The gown started above her collar bone and extended down to the floor, hiding her feet. Her sleeves went to her wrists, and the fabric held her loosely.

She raised an eyebrow and looked down at herself, turning her palms in front of her.

"This is an interesting body you've given me," she said in the stranger's voice. She pulled at her collar gently with an amused grin on her face. "A little more modest than I would prefer but I suppose I've your chivalry to blame for that."

He shook his head. "Who are you? And where am I? What. . . what's going on?" The words trickled off his tongue, set on their unsteady voyage through the air by his trembling jaw. All of him was trembling. Now that he had a body again he couldn't seem to keep it from shaking.

The woman held her hand up. "Peace."

He slumped forward, relaxing on command. The ringing in his ears was gone. So was the stinging of his eyes and the trembling of his body.

"You are the most resilient spirit I've ever seen," she said. "You survived time travel, heartbreak, and even a millennium of death."

Time, he thought. Time is significant to me. Why?

"Only a hero such as yourself could sustain himself for so long in this realm."

Hero.

"I'm Link," he said. It wasn't a surprise or shock. If anything, the words grounded him even further. "The Hero of Time."

She nodded. "For almost sixty years, yes. Then you died and became the Shade." She studied Link from head to toe. Her fair eyebrows descended into an angular frown. "I'll spare you the sight of a mirror. You seem to be having trouble remembering what you should look like; man or shade. Close your eyes."

Link did as he was bid.

"You're the Hero of Time," she said. "You are young and healthy and strong. Your body is powerful from your years of combat and your head is kept high and confident. You're a Hylian, a descendant of Hylia. Acquaintances saw you as handsome and courageous. Friends knew you as kind and caring. Enemies feared you as mighty and bold." She paused for a moment. "Now open your eyes, Link."

Link obeyed.

Instead of the skeleton hands he'd known for so long, Link saw his old hands. The fleshy calloused hands of his first life.

"Until your mind adjusts to this realm," the woman said while Link marveled at the body he'd lost more than a thousand years ago. "You have full creative control over everything, including your own body. The only limits are your memory and imagination."

"What happens when my mind adjusts?" Link asked, looking up at her. I created her body too?

A glowing smile spread across her face. "You are accepting all of this well. Once you adjust, I will resume control and show you everything I brought you here for."

Link studied the woman. She looked like Zelda, his Zelda, aside from the dress. Green was not Zelda's preferred color. Often she'd chided Link for never retiring the green tunics he always wore. This woman's eyes didn't match Zelda's cerulean orbs either.

"You're a Goddess," Link said. "And I'm in Heaven."

The woman clapped her hands in delight. Her smile crinkled her face in all the same ways Zelda's did. "Wonderful!" Daintily she took the sides of her dress between her fingers and curtsied. "I am Farore. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

Link dropped to his knees, jarring himself a little as his knee struck the hard surface beneath him. "Forgive me, Goddess," he said lowering his head. "I should have realized sooner."

"Link," she said in a sweet voice. "Please rise."

Slowly Link rose to his feet. "I'm not worthy to be-"

"You are the epitome of valiant," Farore interrupted. "And the most worthy of all."

Link opened his mouth to ask why. Why him? But the gravity of standing in the presence of one of the Goddesses was still crushing.

"Oh," Farore said in surprise. She was staring at her hands, which were beginning to glow before her eyes. "You're not going to turn me into one of those archaic gold statues are you?"

Link focused on Farore, doing his best to shove his disbelief aside. The glowing stopped.

"That's better," she said. "I can handle looking like your Princess, but the gold skin would have been a bit much."

"You're letting me control you?" Link asked, still despairingly perplexed.

With a mischievous grin Farore walked over and tapped Link on the nose. "You're not controlling my actions," she said. She was standing directly in front of Link, eyes glowing with a vibrancy he knew he wasn't responsible for. "Only how I look. Or rather, the manifestation of how you think I should look."

"Then what do you really look like? Surely my imagination is just a shabby comparison."

Farore beamed up at him. It struck Link as odd that a Goddess would act so girly. So human.

"I like to think I'm so beautiful you'd drop dead," Farore teased. "No sense in killing you a third time."

"Does everyone come here when they die?" Link asked. He thought the sensation of his heartrate accelerating in the presence of a beautiful woman was long since lost to him. Farore was proving him wrong.

"No," she said, still standing well within his personal bubble. Assuming such a thing transcended two deaths and whatever place he was in. "You're special."

Link frowned. "I've grown tired of being special." Not including the time travelling, he was one thousand and seventy-eight years old. Every hardship he'd endured was due to him being "the Chosen One".

Farore searched Link's eyes while slowly retreating back a step. "I know," she said sympathetically. "But such things can't be helped.

Zelda told him something similar once. He told the new hero something similar too.

Link sighed. "How do I adjust?

Farore raised an eyebrow.

If I created her body, how is she controlling it?

"That's your only question?" Farore asked. "I possess the sum of the knowledge of all the most brilliant minds you've ever known and more." She tilted her head to the side. "You don't have any other questions?"

"I'm riddled with questions," Link said with a shake of his head. "But I don't know where to start."

Farore nodded. The smiles that danced across her face seemed more at home than any other expression. "We have all the time in the world, Link. You can ask each and every question you'd like." She raised her index finger. "But first, how would you like to be reunited with an old friend?"

A wave of emotion he wasn't expecting slammed into Link with a ferocity he couldn't have anticipated. It was possible in this realm, a reunion with someone he'd known in his first life. He didn't know why he knew it was possible but he was sure of it. He tried to ask Farore a question but his voice caught in his throat. Tears, as real and salty as they'd been in his first life, fell from his eyes. He didn't bother wiping them, even as Farore noticed. He'd long since outgrown shame.

"Who?" he managed in a croaking voice.

Farore's eyes gleamed with sympathy and compassion. "Create a door, Link," she said. "And you'll see."

Link turned to the wall and imagined what a door would look like. He tried to conjure it in front of his eyes but the wall remained bare.

"It's difficult with your eyes open," Farore said from the side. "Your mind will accept what your eyes show it before it ever accepts your own commands. Try closing your eyes and imagining a door behind you."

Link closed his eyes and imagined a white pained portal with a brass knob.

"Once the outline is started, your eyes will see what your mind has told them to see."

There was no magic tingling sensation or a sound indicating a door appeared, but Link turned around and opened his eyes. For a split second, there was only a shaded rectangle on the wall. But in the span of a single eyelid movement, a complete and proper door filled the rectangle.

"I did it!" Link beamed at Farore, who still looked amused at her visitor's excitement. She nodded and gestured toward the door.

Link followed her hand to the door when his breath caught in his lungs. The doorknob was tuning!

Images of people he'd known and lost rushed through his mind at a harrowing speed. Zelda, Impa, Sheikah, Saria, Mido, Darunia, Ruto, Malon, Quentin, Rauru, Nabooru, Skull Kid, Anju, Kato, Tingle, Lili, and the thousand other faces he'd known and missed from his first life assailed him. During his time as the Shade, he worried he'd forget what they looked like. He feared he'd forget the sound of Saria's music, or Zelda's laugh, or Darunia's bellowing. A thousand years was a long time to cling to any memory, no matter the impact it had on his first life.

The door swung open, and for a moment Link worried his fear was well placed. He didn't recognize the woman standing in the doorway.

She was a gracefully aged older woman. She had long silver hair and flowed over her shoulders and light blue eyes. Her skin was wrinkled around her mouth and eyes but only in a way that suggested she smiled often and laughed most of her years away. She was thin all the way around but carried herself with her head high and her shoulders back, undaunted by her age or size. She was wearing a periwinkle gown, similar to the one Link had given Farore. But where Farore's seemed to fit here less and less, this woman's seemed part of her very skin.

She looked at Link, tears of her own brimming in her pale eyes. A sad smile spread across her face as she realized Link did not recognize her.

"To be fair," she said. Link's heart spiked. "You've never seen me like this."

"Navi?"

The pooling tears fell from her eyes. "You remember!"

Link practically leapt forward and wrapped her in his strong arms. Navi buried her head in his chest and squeezed him around his waist.

"I could never forget your voice!"

Farore hummed quietly to herself and stepped backwards away from the reunited friends. No matter how many eons she witnessed, reunions like these always warmed her heart and filled her with joy. She refused to interrupt such a thing. If they desired, she was content to let them embrace for eternity.

"I spent decades looking for you," Link said, still crushing Navi beneath his love.

"I know," Navi said, still squeezing with all her might. "I watched you all those years."

Reluctantly Link separated from her but took her tiny hands in his. "Where were you?"

"I've been here," Navi explained. She looked up at Link with a sad smile on her face. "Unlike other creatures, fairies live to fulfill a singular purpose. Once we saved Hyrule, I thought I was going to die and I didn't want you to be there when it happened."

"Navi, I –"

"I know you would have wanted to stay with me until the end," Navi said. "But you were so young and had already endured so much hardship, I thought I was sparing you from an unnecessary misery."

"You died?" Link asked. It was hard not to feel angry. Link could hear his own voice in his head screaming at Navi for abandoning him. For ending their friendship without even warning him.

"No. I came here." She turned her head and smiled at Farore. "The Goddesses brought me here and told me I could wait for you, if I was willing."

Link glanced at Farore. The Goddess nodded at the two of them.

"You've been waiting here for a thousand years?" Link asked Navi.

Navi squeezed his hands. "I have. And I'd have waited a thousand more if necessary."

Link looked at Navi. In life, he'd never once been able to look into her eyes or hold her hands. She was a ball of light with impossibly fragile looking wings whose only comfort was to glow warmly near his face. He reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers.

"How do you have a body now? Did I create it?"

Navi laughed gently, the same high pitch fairy laugh that accompanied him through his first adventure. "No," she said. "I created it. This is how I've always imagined myself."

"You're beautiful," Link said.

Navi laughed her sweet laugh again and patted Link's cheeks. "Thank you. Now, don't you think you're being rude to your hostess?"

And just like that, the same instructive tone Link had crossed the entire planet to hear again, returned. Link turned to Farore.

"Thank you," he said.

Farore curtsied. "You are most welcome, Link. Now, do you trust me enough to follow me somewhere?"

Link glanced at Navi. His oldest friend seemed quite comfortable in the presence of the Goddess.

"I do."

Author's Note: This is an attempt at something far beyond my meager abilities and yet, I've found the best way to understand my own thoughts is to write them out. I hope you enjoy this story and the questions it asks.