"Mama, mama! I wanna hear the story again!"
The little girl kneels on her bed, bouncing up and down, the mattress creaking beneath her tiny form. A woman sits nearby her. She laughs, and shakes her head. "All right, calm down. I'll tell it to you again."
Grinning, the girl nods, and plops down onto her side with her head on the fluffy white pillow. "Are you ready?" her mother asks, voice gentle in the stillness of night. The girl only nods again. Humming a sweet tune, the woman pulls a thick blanket over her child's body, and lays it carefully round her thin shoulders. "I forget where it all started, I'm afraid."
"No, mama, stop pretending!" the small girl laughs. "This is like the millionth time you've told me it, you can't be forgetting!"
"You're right, I'm sorry." The mother chuckles. "Well then. It all started in the forest. A young boy -"
She stops short. Amber eyes flick to the window above her child's bed, narrowed and unblinking, studying the dark night beyond. Hills roll beyond the window, glowing silver beneath soft moonlight. Trees scatter across their crowns, branches like dark fingers reaching for crystal stars.
"...Mama?" The girl sits up, and glances out her window.
The woman blinks once, twice, and smiles. "Sorry, it's nothing."
A lamp flickers at the bedside, casting shadows of wariness across the child's features. "Did you see something?" she asks, voice naught more than a whisper in the quiet.
"Just... an animal, I thought, but it looks like it's nothing." The mother grins. "Now, where was I? At the beginning, right?"
"Right!" The girl wiggles excitedly beneath her blanket.
Outside the window, a creature lurks. Ears perk. Single, glowing red eye pierces the night like a cruel knife. Golden fur shines beneath the moon. And the wolf listens.
"The boy lived in the forest, with children who never grew up. Nobody knows how he got there, or why he lived there, but legend tells that he left the forest one day to warn the king of danger!" At the last word, the mother lunges toward her daughter, fingers outstretched.
The little girl shrieks with laughter as the woman tickles her, and thrashes around in her bed, giggling. "Stop! Stop!"
She does, and leans back, chuckling. "So you know all about the Demon King, right?"
"Yeah!" comes the girl's eager response. Nodding her head enthusiastically, she continues. "He's the big, scary bad guy, and he wanted to take over Hyrule!"
"Exactly." The mother gently taps her daughter's nose, earning a quiet giggle from the girl. "You don't even need me to tell the story, you know all of it already!"
"But tell me anyway, please?" the child begs.
Her mother grins. "If you say so." She clears her throat before she goes on - "The boy knew that the Demon King wanted to take over Hyrule, so he warned the king of Hyrule about it - and it turned out, he was right! So the king of Hyrule threw the big, scary bad guy in the dungeon, and everyone was safe."
The child pouts. "Mama, you're forgetting the best part!"
"Oh! Of course, silly me!" Laughing quietly, the woman sits up a little straighter, amber eyes focused on the ceiling as if lost in thought. "The boy was a time-traveler, you know. Some people say he went to the future and saw that the Demon King would be evil, so he went back in time and told the king of Hyrule all about it."
"The princess, mama, the princess!"
"Her! Oh yes." She turns her smiling eyes to her child's excited brown ones. "They say she saw the future too, so she helped the boy from the forest, and together they convinced all of Hyrule that the Demon King was bad and threw him in a dungeon!"
The girl's eyes drift to the side. She peers out the darkened window, to the full glowing moon beyond, and watches the trees dance to the eerie melody of the chill breeze. "But, mama..."
"Hmm?"
Her warm brown eyes flick to her mother's, a question lingering within their depths. "What did they see in the future?"
"Well... nobody really knows. But they say the princess and the boy fell in love there. They grew up together, and loved each other the whole time. And the Demon King stayed in the dungeon the whole time, so he couldn't hurt anyone. Everything was peaceful. The people were happy, the princess and the boy were happy, and they all lived happily ever after."
Happily ever after.
The wolf watches through the window with his only eye, sitting still and silent as a statue. Only watches as the girl laughs, the mother smiles, and they bid each other a good night.
Then the woman stands and blows out the lantern. The room plunges into blackness.
She is right, in a sense, the wolf thinks. He had seen the future, had warned the Hyrulian king of Ganondorf's treachery, had saved the world, had fallen in love with the princess -
He shakes the thoughts away. They are much too painful. They stab at his heart, laugh at him, taunt him with memories of better days.
Or - had they really been better days?
No.
The woman is wrong. Not only her, but everyone, everyone who tells the same story to their children every night to coax them into slumber. Yes, they know the basics of the story - how he had traveled through time to save the land - but nothing more.
They don't know the confusion. Confusion that only a ten-year-old in a man's body can feel. Confusion, wondering why everything seemed so different as an adult. Confusion, always tripping over his own legs because they were much too long. Confusion, at why the world changed so much in just seven years.
They don't know the fear. Fear, that with every strike of the sword he parried, with every enemy he faced, he knew he might just die. Fear, of the skies red like blood and the visage of a grinning Demon King in the distance. Fear, of the shadows around him, whispering to him in the darkness of moonless nights.
They don't know the pain. Pain, that he wasn't even who he thought he was, and that his own people couldn't recognize him, didn't accept him when he returned to them after seven long years. Pain, of a boy forced to grow into a man - and if he didn't, death would claim him. Pain, of the wounds burning his sides, chest heaving with rapid breaths, blood seeping through his fingers, trying to stop the bleeding but he couldn't, he couldn't -
They don't know the nightmares. Nightmares, of a tiny boy standing against the King of Demons, tiny hands clutching a tiny sword and a tiny shield, much too small to battle the great beast before him. Nightmares, of the deaths of his friends, because he was too weak to protect them. Nightmares, of the corpses around him, his hands stained with the blood of his enemies, tears coursing down his cheeks because maybe, just maybe, he was the monster.
And the bitterness. Oh, the bitterness. Bitterness, at the demon calling himself a man, who had started all of it, who had ripped an innocent boy away from his childhood and a world away from its peace. Bitterness, at the blood sky, at the cold wind carrying the stench of rotting flesh, at the scorching sun with its cruel glare and the chill moon with its dark cackle.
But most of all - bitterness, at the princess he had trusted, loved, sending him back in time to "regain his childhood" - something already lost.
She had only made things worse.
Confusion, upon seeing small hands and pudgy face and short legs... a man in a child's body. Fear, that demons would leap from the shadows, claws glinting in the darkness and poised, ready to rip open his tiny, defenseless form. Pain, that the people no longer knew him, that the princess no longer knew him nor her love for him, not even his name, and his friend and companion - the only one who knew, leaving him without a word of explanation. Nightmares, of a world that didn't exist anymore, of a future nobody had seen but him.
Was it all real? If nobody knew it but himself, then had it even happened at all? His regrets, his sorrows, his agonies, fears, anger, bitterness, confusion, insanity...
Naught more than an illusion.
They don't understand, the wolf thinks, heart a stone in his chest. None of them do. The years have passed. Time has not been kind to him. It never has.
Some think that time travel would be a wonderful thing. The ability to undo anything, start over, make things right again. But they know nothing. They are naive, and innocent, just like the princess. The princess he doesn't love, because she isn't the same person, even though she may bear her name and wear her face.
Time has been cruel to him indeed.
Happily ever after. What a mockery.
But perhaps it is for their best - ignorance is bliss, after all, and these people know only ignorance. They must be happier, knowing nothing of their countless dead, their tears of grief and loss, the corpses strewn across streets of ash.
He knows. And he's the only one who ever will. But they're happier this way, he thinks, and tries to convince himself that it was all worth it, something he's tried to convince himself of for decades... and he still isn't quite sure he believes it.
With his single eye narrowed, red as the blood sky only he has seen, he turns tail and strides away into the night, blackness swallowing his golden form. And the trees dance behind him, branches rubbing together, dry wood against dry wood, like bone against bone. The moon does not smile kind upon him. But he doesn't care. It never has.
Happily ever after.
Let them believe.