No one else knew her. Not like I did. To everyone else, Zelda was the sweet, happy-go-lucky tomboy that had never once felt anger, or hatred, or overwhelming fear. To everyone else, she was a girl that would never age. She was a girl with an eternally youthful soul, innocent to the darkest secrets of our world.
I knew differently. Zelda was still sweet, still did her best to be the devil may care girl that she had always been, but something had changed. We had both changed. We had seen so many things. So many unspeakable, horrible things. Those things had irrevocably altered the both of us, but nobody could see the changes in Zelda. Not even her father. They all realized that I was a different person, but that was because there was no way to hide the evidence of what had changed me.
My skin had darkened with all the time I had spent out of doors. It was laced with silvery white scars, crisscrossing over my arms, legs, chest. One cut my eyebrow in half and slid to my ear, just barely missing my eye. I was thicker as well. Corded muscle wrapped around my body, the result of workouts that had been life or death.
Zelda's changes were all mental. Emotional. Nothing physical. She had been thrown from her home, to a world infested with evil creatures, and told that she was the Goddess Hylia incarnate. A person of the Sheikah—a race of beings known as the Shadow People, or the Goddess's Shadows, because they were known as the guards of the Goddess—had led her through land after land of horrible creatures. Her name was Impa, and from the moment I met her, I knew we had something in common. She didn't like me, and I didn't like her. She had kept me from reuniting with Zelda, and called me a failure. Impa had blamed me for everything that had happened to Zelda, and maybe she was right. But at least she protected my best friend on her journey.
That journey had made Zelda grow up too much, too fast. Memories from the Goddess she hosted surfaced along the way, telling her of the horrible times that she had had to battle. She had seen Impa kill demons. She had seen her best friend turn into a warrior, a killer, in his quest to save her. Now she saw the world differently. Every shadow might hold a secret, a monster. Every whisper of wind might be the sounds of a creature waiting to jump out.
But I was the only one that could tell. Her blue eyes didn't sparkle quite like they once did, but they were still beautiful. Her laughter had changed ever so slightly, become softer and shorter, but it was still a happy sound. No one would have ever guessed that she wasn't the same girl she was on the day of the Wing Ceremony, before she was torn away from her normal life.
Demise was gone. Ghirahim had disappeared, possibly died with his master. Other demons still infested the Surface, but as long as I went with Zelda, they didn't come near. I don't really know why. Maybe they could sense the essence of the being that had destroyed their king. I didn't know.
But despite our battle being over, nightmares still plagued both of us. Every night, memories of the monstrous creature called the Imprisoned, a demon that had been Demise stripped of his true form, haunt me. I still see Ghirahim tearing Zelda away from me in the Sealed Temple, while I was too weak to do anything but watch. I see every horrid creature that I ever had to fight in the whispers of the night.
Zelda won't tell me what she sees. I know she has nightmares, and I know they frighten and torture her every bit as much as mine threaten to overwhelm me. But she won't tell me what it is that chases her as she sleeps. In the dead of night, when we both sit bolt upright, gasping and sweating and looking around for our nightmares to continue, we'll find each other, and spend the rest of the darkness in each other's arms until the sun rises. But the sunrise doesn't take away our past. Our memories. Our pain.
No, that all remains, and it will for as long as we live.
But, when we're together, we can pretend that nothing happened. We can pretend, for a short while, that we are still the children we were before that blasted tornado. The children that played in the lake without a care in the world, who dreamed of what might lie beneath the clouds, or what was inside that brewing Thunderhead. But when we fly our Loftwings, and hers charges while mine does a spiral charge, it reminds us. When we see those pillars of light that pierce the cloud barrier, we remember. When we see that emptiness where once there was a statue of our Goddess, it's impossible to forget.
Still, we do our best. We visit the Surface often; the Goddess in Zelda insists. Impa is gone from the Sealed Temple, so now it's our job to watch over the dilapidated building. I'm not complaining. I honestly like Faron Woods; it's a beautiful place, and I love the chance to visit the Kikwis.
I don't enter the Temple, if I can help it. Seeing the place where Zelda was trapped for thousands of years in an amber crystal, deep asleep, plays hell on my mind. Seeing the Gate of Time, remembering what we had to go through because of that thing…Goddess, I can't stand it. So I'll wait just outside for Zelda, while she does…whatever it is she does. Sometimes we'll go down to the Goddess Statue that was once part of Skyloft, and we'll go inside. That was where I first drew the Goddess Sword. Where I first met Fi, the spirit inside the sword.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I miss Fi, even with her incredible knack for stating the painfully obvious. She was someone to talk to. She kept me company on that lonely trek, while I searched for my best friend. Zelda knows that, but she never makes me talk about it. It's like she can read my mind. And who knows? Maybe she can. Maybe one of those freaky Goddess powers is that she can hear my every thought. I hope not. I might not survive the embarrassment.
Yes. We've both changed. A lot. But I think that we're the only ones that can see the full extent of these changes.