"Hey. Hey, don't cry!"
This is her first memory. Of bright, blue eyes, and straw-blonde hair that glints in the sunlight, and an earnest, kind voice that belongs to a child no older than five. Even as a boy, he beams like the sun, and he is kind and peaceful and she loves him.
She listens to him when he asks her not to cry. She quiets, does her best to calm down, even with her stubborn, thickheaded two-year-old mind.
"See?" Link beams. "See, Aryll? See, it's better now and you're not that hurt!"
She sniffles, barely understanding the words, but her mother wipes her scuffed knee with gentle hands and she listens to her brother speak.
"Link," her mother warns. "You have to be gentle with Aryll, okay? She's not as old as you are." The boy hisses in annoyance, petulantly putting his hands on his hips.
"I didn't do that! I was running and she was running and then she fell but I didn't push her she just fell it's not my fault it's-"
Her mother quiets him with a finger to her lips. "There, there. You don't want to make her cry any more than she already is, do you?"
Link looks away, almost ashamed. "No."
"Why don't you go and play? Aryll will be fine in a little bit."
Her brother brightens, leaps up in a fluid, energized motion. "Can I make her a mud pie? I'll go make her a mud pie!" He does not wait for an answer; he only turns and runs.
The wince her mother lets out does not escape Aryll's sight, but she rocks Aryll gently and does not chase after her son. "Sweet Hylia, hear my prayer," she murmurs, but there is fondness in her smile and a light in her eyes. "That boy will be the death of me."
Aryll does not quite understand, but when her mother lifts her up and again begins the tedious process of teaching her to walk without falling, she forgets the thought and instead focuses on her unsteady, precarious steps.
She has to struggle to read through the letters he sends her. "One… day… one-"
"No, that is an I. Sound it out. See, you can do it."
"I... w..ih...el... Will."
"Yes."
"… Br- bring- you.. to.. m..mee…"
"Meet," corrects her mother.
"Meet," she agrees, "her." It's another letter about Mipha; Link says she's a princess, but Aryll doesn't believe him. Everyone knows the princess is Zelda, and she's only five, a year younger than Link is now. She can't be "tall and magic and really strong" like Link says. That can't be right. But his words are earnest and written in a flowing script that most certainly isn't his.
"When's he coming back from…" Her mother finishes the sentence for her absentmindedly.
"Zora's Domain. It's a little while north of here, near Kakariko. Link should be back..." She fidgets, twirling her fingers as she counts out the days. "In around a week."
"Can't I go with him next time?"
Her mother shakes her head. "Someday, Aryll. But not today." Aryll sits back and sticks her lip out in a pout.
"I don't like it when he leaves."
"Me neither," agrees her mother. "But Link is in good hands."
Good hands- so what? It's boring every time her brother leaves her behind to do his "cadet stuff," as he says. Six months out of every year- and it's already been two years! She missed an entire year of his life and he missed an entire year of hers and it's not fair. She's barely seen her father except on the festival days, and that's only three times a year, and she doesn't want to lose her brother, too. Hateno isn't quite as exciting without him there to climb the trees, or steal eggs, or take her up to the roof and watch the stars. Maybe when she's older she'll become a Royal Guardsman, she decides. She'll be better than he ever was and that'll show him. Aryll slumps back with a sigh and lets her mother read the rest of the letter out loud to her.
She misses her brother.
"Last one to the old lighthouse is a rotten egg!"
"Not fair!" complains Aryll, but she beams, drops her basket (there's nothing in there but apples anyway) and sprints after the flash of blue and gold that chases, laughing, towards the path. She races him past the farms with the old, faithful cows, past the path that leads down to the coast, and finally, she is the first one to slam open the lighthouse door and, giggling, snap it shut before her brother can slip inside.
"Hey!"
"I win!" she calls. "Can't come in until you say I win!"
She hears futile banging for a while, and then, barely audible, "You win."
"I can't hear you!"
"I said you win!"
Aryll cackles like a Gerudo witch (it's one of her favorite tales, the one about the hero and his fight against the darkness with the Princess and the Seven Sages) and finally lets him come inside. As a good sport, she lets him scale the ladder first, and he helps her up until they wait on the roof for the sun to peek out of the clouds.
This is their tradition, every summer. Every summer, she and her brother race here, then wait here and tell each other stories until the stars come out. If any of their other games- pranking Shamere, seeing who can climb the highest, throwing apples to see who has better aim- if any of their other games count as traditions, then this one counts as the longest, ever since they discovered their mother would let them up here.
And this summer is almost over.
"Don't go this time," she begs, and Link sighs and lets his head fall back on the tile.
"I have to, Aryll, you know that."
"But it's fun when you're here. I like being here with you."
He nods. "Me too."
"Why do you have to go, then?"
He hesitates, and Aryll glares. "Don't say I'll figure it out when I'm older."
Link shuts his mouth, then shakes his head. "I don't know."
Aryll groans and swats at the air. "Why won't anyone tell us?"
"Don't be mad. Maybe we'll both find out when we're older."
"Come on!" Link's laughter, she finds, is one of the heartiest sounds, and she follows it without question. "We're almost there!" he calls, and she continues on, breathing heavily with exhaustion until his footsteps cease and she catches up to him in the grass.
Aryll opens her mouth to speak, then coughs. Link notices immediately. "Hey, you alright?" She pitches forward, and steady, thin hands calloused from swordplay catch her before she trips. She nods. Yes, she is alright. She will need a moment to breathe, but she will be alright.
"It's your fault," she accuses. "I'm out of shape because you weren't here to race with."
There's a flicker of guilt in his eyes, and she feels a flash of pain at the sight. It's not his fault. She knows that. She's known it for a long time.
"Why up here?" she asks, changing the subject.
Link grins. "I thought you liked the view up here."
Aryll laughs. "Of course I like it here! I just wanna know why you picked up here instead of by the lake or over in the backyard, that's all."
Link gives her a little shove. "I wanted to show you something." He points. "See Lurelin over there?"
She nods. She's never been to Lurelin, but she and Link have always talked about traveling there one day.
"Well," he says, and winks, "I went there."
"What?!" She leaps up. "You went to Lurelin? Is it warm there? Can you tell me about it? Tell me, tell me, tell me!"
"Calm down!" Link reaches into the pack he brought with him and pulls out a telescope. "I brought you back something. The people down there make them themselves, they use glass to see and some shells for decoration and wood to hold it all together-" Aryll's put her eye up to it and is adjusting the focus before he even finishes his sentence.
"Whoa."
"I know, right? You can see everything now!" Aryll tilts the scope until she can see Eventide Island. and gasps.
"Since when were you so good at gift-giving? That's not fair. I have to beat this now?"
He gives her a half-smile, a smirk, even, but a genuine smile all the same. "Happy seventh birthday, you foul-tempered Moblin."
She giggles. "Thanks a lot, you overgrown Chuchu."
"Hey," he teases, "I like Chuchus. They're cute."
"What?" Aryll makes a face. "With those eyes bugging out? It's like looking at a-"
"Shhhhhh!" She almost falls over laughing at the finger he puts at her mouth to stop her from saying the next word.
"Okay, not Chuchu. Keese, then? You'd make a good Keese. Tiny and angry and flappy."
"I am not tiny!"
"Shhhhhhhh. It's my birthday and you have to listen to me!" she reminds him with a simpering grin as he sputters in indignance.
"That's not- wh- I am not-"
"I win."
"You didn't do anything to win that!"
The letter arrives in the mail at dawn. Aryll, of course, is the first to find it- the mail is her chore now that Link is gone, again. She will never let him live this down.
"Mail's here," she calls to her mother, and she smiles and takes the bundle. while Aryll turns to head outside. But when her eyes drift to the letter on top, she sucks in a breath and goes still.
Aryll glances from the doorway, almost instinctively knowing something is wrong. Her mother never stops moving, never goes quiet-
"Is-"
"This letter," her mother interrupts. "It bears the seal of the Royal Family."
Aryll stops. "Then it's from Link," she says, more to herself than to her mother.
Her mother shakes her head. "No, it's not," she says, carefully peeling the wax from the paper before opening the letter. A second later her face goes white.
Aryll's heart sinks. "What?"
"This letter is from your father," she says, voice gravelly. "Link has found the sword that seals the darkness."
He'll be in Castle Town full-time now, and Aryll isn't going to see him again except for special occasions. And "special occasions" is just going to be festival days, maybe a holiday, and if she's lucky, only if she's lucky, Link will make it back for her birthday. She doesn't think that's going to happen.
"I took the test," he says, and swallows, holding out a shield to her. "They put me in the dungeons and had me fight a Stalnox, and then when I won they gave me the shield. It's the symbol of the Royal Family- the Hylian Shield. Aryll, I'm-"
"You're part of the Royal Guard now," she says softly. She wants to beg him not to go, wants to beg him to stay, but her throat closes up and she can't get out the words. Instead, a ragged sob escapes her throat. "You're only twelve. Why did it pick you?" Not because he isn't capable- he is, of course. Link has fought beasts she can only dream of, and he is so much braver than she ever will be. But because a selfish part of her wants him to stay, to run alongside her like the children that they are.
He shrugs anyhow. "I don't know."
"Is it weird?" Link shakes his head.
"It just seems... It just seems like a regular sword. I know it's supposed to be special, but I can't see anything more about it. I feel like... I feel like if you had been there at the right time and the right place, you could have done it too. I don't feel special."
"But you are special. All of that and it picked you."
A chuckle. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it did." His eyes soften. "I'm going to miss you, you annoying octorok."
She giggles, finally, and throws herself at her brother, wrapping her arms around him like he's the last thing in the world. "I'll miss you too," she murmurs, her voice muffled by his shirt.
The Guard that comes to collect Link is supposed to slip in and out in the night, so as not to bother anyone, but Aryll stays up with a blue flame from Hateno's Great Furnace and stubbornly keeps her eyes open until she sees shadows start to move through the gate, so swiftly she almost misses them.
"Link," she calls after him, and one of them turns to meet her eyes, blonde hair swaying in the moonlight. She holds up the telescope he gave her two years ago, waving it high above her head. She swears that even from this distance she can see a glimmer of recognition light up his face.
"Don't forget us," she begs. "Don't grow up too fast without me!" He nods and crosses his fingers over his heart.
"Of course not," he shouts back, smiling. "Never."
Dear Aryll,
Hello! Greetings from Castle Town!
I'm writing this letter from the barracks- it's kind of crowded here, to be honest. I don't like it, really. How are things with Hateno? That fox hasn't been trying to kill the Cuccos again, has it? I hope you can do fine by yourself chasing them off.
...The Cuccos, I mean. Not the fox.
It's really big here, and I've been able to see Father a lot more than before. He asks me to call him Dad, but I tried to tell him respectfully that I can't imagine calling him anything other than Father. I haven't seen him in so long... It's kind of sad, actually. He really does seem to miss us.
It's hard to talk nowadays. Everything I've ever done is so different from everyone here, and the sword on my back makes everyone stare at me in funny ways. At least I still have you and Mipha to write to. Remember when you thought she was fake? Ha. I win. And the best thing is, you can't even reply to that until next week! Double win!
I have to go now, and if I don't send this letter quickly I won't be able to send one until next week. So, write back? Please? I want to know what you've been doing with that telescope of yours.
Love your ever-loving brother (who is NOT a Keese no matter what you say),
Link
To Aryll,
Thank you for the book! Did you record all this? I recognize your handwriting. Every plant I have ever seen in my life is in here, and your drawings are so lifelike! I didn't even know those weeds out there were edible! How long did it take you? I'll put this to good use, I promise! The food here is abhorrent, and I think some Stamella shrooms would spice it up. Perhaps the energy would help me stay awake during late-night training, anyway.
By the way, will you tell Grandma I say thank you? I know it is supposedly a terrible gift to give someone socks for their fifteenth birthday, especially knitted socks, but they are warm, the winters here are freezing, and everyone in the barracks is jealous.
Love,
Link d'Ordon
To Aryll d'Ordon,
Time is short. I trust you have received the letter detailing my new task- I am to protect the Princess, as her personal bodyguard. As such, I am unable to return to Hateno to celebrate your birthday. For this, I apologize, but you must understand how important this task is. Her safety, while she attempts to unlock the sealing power, is of utmost importance.
I will be unable to receive letters for now. I will make attempts to send you my own, but I will not have a proper mailing address due to our travels. Wish me luck, I suppose.
Stay safe. Happy fourteenth.
Love,
Link d'Ordon
By the time Link turns seventeen, Aryll has stopped reading his letters.
They don't sound like him anymore, anyway. Her brother was never a quiet person, nor did he speak so formally. And never has he ever called her by her full name.
Aryll sighs at his latest letter and puts it away with the other envelopes she couldn't bear to open.
She is up by the lighthouse when she hears the noise. She is up by the lighthouse, legs dangling over the cliffside and telescope trained on the Faron Woods when she hears vague screaming, and a roar of confusion and pain and fury.
Aryll's first thought is Ida must have aggravated the Cuccos again. She has said time and time again that no, the Cuccos aren't eating Ida's crops, they hate those and they prefer Tabantha wheat, which doesn't grow in such a mild climate, but Ida is stubborn, young, and yet still older than Aryll, and she has refused to listen.
Her second thought is I shouldn't be able to hear Ida from all the way up here. The cucco pens are far away from the lighthouse, and Ida's screaming and cursing can only be heard a quarter of the way up the path.
Her third thought is That's not Ida.
Aryll stands up from where she waits by the edge of the cliff, and that is when she hears the pandemonium, sees the phantom rising from a smoking Hyrule Castle, black with ash and orange with fire.
The village moves below her, like ants rushing from water. Her mother is down there. Her letters are down there. Everything she knows and loves is down there.
All except for one important, irreplaceable item.
"Don't cry, Aryll," she commands herself, an echo of a memory long buried in her mind.
"Don't cry," she repeats, methodically gathering her things from the lighthouse and scaling down the ladder.
"Don't cry," she breathes before taking off down the path, racing the ghost of a brother one last time.
And even as she runs, boots barely touching the ground as she flies down the path, even as she must focus on weaving through the crowd and ducking under and over arms and legs and shrieking children, Aryll's one and only thought is
Link.