Thirty-Five Running
an awesome blossom
There were few things that interfered with productivity more than the memory of a cool gun pressed soundly against the temple. While it never fired - hell, it might not have had any bullets in it - the fear and suggestion of the potential of it was enough to give up and into demands.
She was not, and would not be, ashamed of handing over the Triforce of Wisdom, but it was not on record as one of her proudest moments. What ruler, what divine sovereign, was she to not have utmost faith in Thirds? Two pieces of the Triforce could not exist for long without the Third joining company, and it was one of the basic foundations learned about Hylian lore.
Zelda knew this;
Ganondorf knew this;
Link did not.
Yet the sovereign knew she was alive with the most fearsome crime boss in Hyrule behind barrier because the calling the One, the Catalyst, the Hero felt transcended acute knowledge of scripture and myth. It was a joke immediately thrown into the faces of every last member of the Royal Guard that the kingdom's savior was instead a mere carpenter; their state-of-the-art weaponry and high salaries courtesy of a bloated budget were not enough to take down the mark and rescue the high-profile hostage, but the simple efforts of this boy, barely eighteen and armed only with a hammer and knife at first, were.
The media was in the dark as to why and how this happened: the papers were filled with extraneous tales of heroism by the boy, editorials debating the competence and efficiency of the Guard's administration, numerous sensationalist reports about every aspect of the story imaginable… And yet only a handful of them ever really scratched the truth by suggesting the answers lay within the tales of the Triad and the rule of Three.
These stories were taken as seriously as claims of mythical Zora sightings because divine magic and destiny had no place in the age of guns and television.
Zelda stilled her pen because she needed a break - a very long break.