Link's eyes opened to muted sunlight sifting through white shades drawn over small windows. They were the only interruptions of the wooden walls forming the clean and orderly hut in which he lay. A table laden with food stood up against the wall opposite the door, into which was etched the symbol of an eye with three triangular lashes and a single teardrop. Against the wall opposite of Link's pallet, cross-legged atop a single pillow, sat Impa.

Link bolted upright, memory's sharp return shattering his calm surroundings.

"Where are Brigo and Dorian?" he shouted. He tried to stand up, but immediately fell on the first attempt. He was as weak now as he had been after the Spring of Wisdom.

A single eyebrow arched upwards beneath Impa's large straw hat, from which dangled small metal chains and half-moon hooks.

"They have not arrived," the Sheikah elder said quietly. "Were they with you when you used the slate to travel here?"

Link succeeded in standing up on his second try, only to realize he had been completely naked beneath his pallet. Impa nodded toward a chair in the corner of the hut.

"Your clothes are there, if you wish to have them," she said calmly, "but I think it would be wise to tell me what has happened."

"There's no time!" Link shouted angrily while stumbling to the small pile of clothes on the seat of the chair. Somehow, his urgently working mind found time to wonder at the old woman's complete apathy toward his nakedness. "That thing was attacking them! I must help them!"

"What thing?" Impa asked sharply, so sharply in fact that Link looked up from clumsily pulling his trousers over his undergarments.

"Dorian said it was a lynel," Link answered hurriedly. "If they managed to get away, they might still be on their way here."

"A lynel," Impa breathed, her normally calculating eyes widening ever so slightly.

"Yes!" Link confirmed in a loud, albeit muffled voice as he pulled his tunic over his head. "Where's Cado? Tell him to bring as many as will come! I know where we were. If we set out quickly enough, we may even —"

"You arrived yesterday, Link," Impa interrupted quietly. "You are awake for the first time in over a day."

Link stopped buckling the leather greaves onto his wrists. A day. An entire day.

"They…," he swallowed hard. "They have not returned?"

Impa shook her head slowly. "No. And if it was truly a lynel that attacked you, I doubt they will. I assume, then, you did not leave them of your own volition?"

Link was numb, the words coming out of him flat and lifeless. "Dorian made me use the slate. I couldn't move. The lynel...a shock arrow… I couldn't…"

"Yes, we surmised you had been hit by a shock arrow," Impa interceded smoothly. "Your symptoms indicated as much. I am sorry for the loss of Dorian. He was a good young man. May Hylia's embrace welcome him home."

Link looked up, anger burning away the tears that had threatened to overtake him.

"You assume he is dead, then?" he demanded. "You would move on from one of your own as quickly as that?"

"Have a care, boy. Your heroics at Hateno do not grant you license to address Lady Impa so."

Link had not seen Cado leaning against the darkest corner of the hut. He had revealed himself now, and the expression below his white top knot was one of stern disapproval. Link saw, however, that he was not armed.

"Enough," Impa interrupted, though her wrinkled eyes remained on Link. "His ways are not ours, Cado, and that includes how he grieves. But yes, Link, I do believe both Dorian and Brigo met their doom at the hands of a lynel. None have been seen since the Calamity, and few survived encounters with them even then. Could you remember for yourself, you would know I speak the truth."

Link did not know what to say. Fury at her acceptance of his friends' death choked his words away, made bile rise in his throat. It felt like mere minutes since they had laughed together on the mountain. He sat down on the chair, unspoken emotion rendering him silent.

"Was the lynel carrying much metal?" Impa asked suddenly.

Link frowned at unusual nature of the question, then thought back to what he had seen. "Yes," he said slowly. "A club. A shield. Even its bow. Why?"

The elderly woman nodded in satisfaction. "Left to its own devices, a lynel will rampage with only its crude magic and brute force. Its services can be bribed, however, with gifts of fantastic weapons forged by men. It seems this one was bought specifically to kill you. Or perhaps capture, if it was using shock arrows. Those would have left you helpless, an easy prize to deliver to whatever hired it."

"Ganon," Link said numbly. "It's always him. Everything goes back to him."

"The Demon King is indeed to source of this evil, but he remains contained within Hyrule Castle," Impa corrected him. "It behooves us to know who or what recruited a lynel on Ganon's behalf. It would seem they knew where you would be, which is interesting in and of itself."

Then Link remembered their journey up the mountain. "Someone did," he said slowly. "Two men we met at the village. They followed us halfway up the mountain. Dorian thought they were Yiga—"

"Yiga?" Cado cut in sharply. "Are you sure? Why did he think that? What did they look like?"

Link told them, recalling everything he could of his encounters with Garill and Joute at Hateno down to their oddly shaped eyes. When he finished, Cado looked furious, while Impa appeared merely pensive.

"You should have returned on the main road," Cado began with tightly contained anger. "If Dorian suspected, he should have known—"

"Dorian knew a more important task needed to be done," Impa said with no small amount of reprimand in her voice. Recalling the Sheikah's propensity for propriety, Link thought he could understand why. "It is enough that we know the Yiga are actively serving Ganon's ends once again, though it cost us two lives to learn as much. We must be cautious. Now then…"

Impa was looking hard at Link, he brown eyes narrowed to slits.

"You said you journeyed to Mount Lanayru," she said intently. "What did you see at the spring?"

For an instant, Link considered not answering. Impa's callous mention of his friends reignited his rage at what had happened and at her. Her question, however, reminded him of the promised answers that were now sitting in front of him.

Haltingly, Link once again related what he had seen at the Spring of Wisdom. As he had with his friends, he left out the emotional details, telling only what he saw rather than felt. Impa's wise gaze seemed to know he was holding back, but he did not care. The time had come for her to lay her own secrets bare for a change.

Link thought the object of her interest was his recovered memory, but she appeared far more intrigued with his encounter at the spring itself.

"So, Naydra allowed itself to be seen," Impa said thoughtfully while tapping a robe-covered knee with a bony finger. "That has not happened in over ten thousand years. A good sign. And you say Zelda herself spoke to you? Some time still remains on our ledger, then."

The Sheikah elder stirred herself from her reverie and brought her attention back to Link, who was still seated, torn between grief and anger.

"I promised you answers upon your return, Link, and I will hold myself to that promise," Impa said gently. "Your grief - and that of the village - must be addressed first, however."

Link looked up, startled at Impa's unusual note of understanding. She smiled encouragingly in response.

"We are not so callous that we do not feel the loss of one of our own, however noble or necessary their passing," Impa continued while slowly rising from her cushion and getting to her feet. "We will hold a Watching for Dorian - and Brigo - at sunset. That will give me enough time to notify his parents. No doubt they will want to hear for themselves how he died. If you wish it, I will tell them myself so as to leave you with your thoughts."

Link's breath caught. Though Dorian's youth had been obvious, Link had never thought of him having parents who still lived in Kakariko, parents who no doubt worried for him the moment he set out with their legendary "hero." Link had mourned the passing of the fallen at Hateno, but this was a hot razor's knife compared to the dull ache felt for those he had hardly known.

"If… if they wish to speak to me, I will not turn them away," Link forced himself to say. Answering to the grieving parents of a friend would be worse - far worse - than facing any number of Ganonspawn. It was also the very least he owed them for a debt he could never fully repay.

To his relief, Impa treated his reply as nothing more than usual discourse.

"Very well," she said briskly. "I have asked Paya to attend you in the meantime. I am sure you are hungry. Eat and be well, Link."

Link did not look up as Impa and Cado exited through the sliding Sheikah door. He did not want them to see the hot tears now silently coursing down his face.

Paya tried to keep her hands from trembling as she carried the pitcher of fresh springwater. The late afternoon sun glinted off its unusually turbulent surface, betraying her nervousness as she approached the hut on the outskirts of Kakariko.

At first glance, the young woman was merely one of several Sheikah out and about during the last significant portion of daylight. Like all other women of her people, Paya wore close-fitting pants and boots of cream. Her coat was of the same color, broken up by borders of red down its edges and along the sleeves that billowed over her arms before being cinched with red ribbons just below her elbows. The covering of the arms was necessary, as her dark blue Sheikah shirt was sleeveless. Its high neck, however, completed her standard appearance of serene modesty.

The one difference between Paya and other Sheikah women was her people's most significant trait. Nearly all Sheikah, male and female, wore their hair in an efficient bun at the top of their head, its placement secured by a pair of sticks cleverly placed just so.

Though Paya also sported a bun, she also left a large amount of her hair free to fall below her shoulders. She had always done so. The effect left her feeling more… like herself, never mind that the Sheikah's unspoken norms dictated otherwise. Grandmother's opinions, of course, hardly ever went unspoken.

"Perhaps your stubbornness will be rewarded," Impa had dryly noted more than once. "A trout among a school of bass is easily seen - and snared - by the fisherman."

Maybe Grandmother was right. She was already twenty-two years old, after all - half a decade older than most Sheikah women who married. She felt her age marked her as much as - perhaps more than - the red eye sigil painted on her forehead.

Paya had spent the afternoon hours alternating between brushing her hair and pacing the tiny bedroom loft in her grandmother's hut. She had lived there as long as she could remember, her parents having died when she was but a small child. That loft often became Paya's sanctuary when she fretted about something, and she had not left it since Grandmother had made a rare departure earlier that morning.

Part of her had been incredibly impatient for this moment to arrive. The sun had clearly decided to prolong its track across the sky, a course hemmed in on all sides of the village by the monolithic hills known as the Pillars of Levia, which cradled Kakariko in peaceful seclusion from the rest of Hyrule.

Another part of Paya, however, was now more frightened than at any other time in her young life. She had daydreamed of this moment for a fortnight. Now that it was here, the harsh reality of its arrival spawned pessimistic butterflies in the very pit of her stomach, each one bearing a nightmarish scenario of how the forthcoming encounter would unfold.

All too soon, only one curved roof remained ahead of her. A telltale wavering of light through the front door's small, opaque window sent Paya's heart leaping. He was there.

She had no right to think of Sir Link this way. He was the hero of legend reborn, destined to wage a terrible battle against an eternal foe. There was next to no hope of such a man making room in his heart for her.

That was what Paya's head insisted, anyway. Her heart kept stubbornly interrupting with the very vivid memory of their first meeting. When his beautiful eyes – bluer than the waters of Lake Siela, she thought to herself – had met hers, time itself seemed to stand still. There were few stories of romance among the Sheikah, but that moment strongly reminded her of them, right down to her weak knees and shortness of breath.

For an instant, Paya was sure some version of her own feelings had been mirrored in those gorgeous eyes. In the days since, her mind and heart had argued vehemently as to whether she had imagined it, and that debate had kept her awake into the dead of night more than once. One morning, the resulting fatigue had made Paya late delivering Grandmother's morning tea – an infraction hardly worth the withering scowl and two-hour lecture on punctuality it had earned her.

Paya hastily banished the unsightly frown from her face as she approached the sliding door. Hylia knew what Sir Link would think if her first impression was one of irritation, even if it was directed at Grandmother. Expression serene and water pitcher still, she gently knocked on the wooden frame of the door.

A slight delay. Then a voice – his voice – called from within.

"Who is it?"

"It… It is Paya, Sir Link," she stammered. Hylia help her, how could one man's voice wring her heart and scatter her brain so? "I bring fresh water, but I can return later if it pleases you." Just the thought of being turned away made Paya shrivel up inside.

"Paya…," she heard Link mutter softly, as though remembering the face behind the name. Then his voice carried a sudden ring of – could it be warmth? Surely not. "Please come in."

The invitation, which at the very least did not sound cold or forced, sent Paya's heart pounding at a pace surely all the world must hear. After a pause to ascertain she was at least outwardly composed, the young Sheikah woman regripped the pitcher in her right hand and slid the door open with her left.

Though she had anticipated and even daydreamed about this moment, Paya somehow managed to maintain the perfect decorum upon entering. She kept her eyes downcast, the only purpose of her visit being brief in nature. Knowing beforehand where the food-laden table would be, Paya quietly and efficiently crossed the room, deposited the pitcher and returned to the door before turning and - eyes still toward the floor - addressing the guest of her people.

"Is there anything else you require, Sir Link?" There. Her voice had been perfectly level. She could observe the proper protocols. She could.

A brief moment of silence followed.

"Am I dishonored among your people, then?"

Horrified at the words issued by that quietly strong voice, Paya finally looked up. Sir Link was seated upon the only wooden chair in the hut, his upper body bowed forward but face looking up at her. The blue eyes she remembered so well were tinged with red, his youthful visage smudged. He had been weeping.

As she had been since first seeing him, Paya was torn. Part of her wanted to rush to him in comfort, to encircle the shoulders that legend said had bourne burdens only he could bear. Part of her was aghast at even acknowledging that desire. Besides, there was no proof Sir Link even wanted such bold advances from a stranger or - and she nearly teared up at the thought - a mere Sheikah servant.

"Of… of course not, Sir Link," Paya stammered. She did not, however, return her eyes to the floor. He had asked her a question. Propriety would remain intact if she maintained direct eye contact.

Link looked at her a moment longer, a study she felt as much as saw. Field work under the midday sun felt lighter than his stare.

"Did you know him? Dorian?" he finally asked.

And suddenly, Paya understood. Though she had no friends among the Hylian stablemen or nearby villages, she knew enough about her own people to realize Link was not one of them. Even in the short interval between Sir Link's arrival and now, word of Dorian's death had passed quickly and matter-of-factly. The Sheikah did - and would - grieve, but it would be like everything else they did: measured and reserved.

Not like this. Not with emotions raw and heart exposed, openly seeking refuge from death's storm.

Paya did not remember crossing the room. Only now did she register that she was kneeling in front of Sir Link - Link, she said forcefully to herself - her soft, white hands gently taking his tanned and calloused ones.

"Dorian was a good man and a good friend," Paya said gently. "He would not regret giving his life alongside you. Neither would… neither would we."

She had almost said "neither would I." She might as well have. The unspoken words hummed through the silent cabin, encircling the pair in the emotion behind them. Link's eyes were no longer filled with grief. Would I know if it was love? Paya wondered.

The rays of twilight filtering through the drawn window shades played off Link's face, which was much closer to Paya's now. He was going to kiss her. A thousand thoughts and emotions raced through her, each more brief and frantic than the last. Did she dare allow it? Would Grandmother find out - and what would she say or do if she did? Was this really happening?

A horn, low but clear, pierced the still dusk air outside the hut - and the intimate moment within.

Paya half-stumbled from her knees, then quickly scrambled to her feet. Link also rose, but his eyes remained fixed on her, searching to confirm what had nearly transpired. Paya felt as though she had been startled awake from a dream, one that could not - should not - be real.

"The Watching is about to begin, Sir Link," Paya murmured while backing her way toward the door, her eyes once again downcast and tone respectful. "You will no doubt wish to attend."

His gaze remained fixed on her a moment longer. Paya could not decide if she wanted those eyes turned away or locked on her forever. Then he bowed, a perpendicular formality every bit as exact as a Sheikah.

"I thank you, Lady Paya," Link said formally, and the lack of warmth behind the words broke her heart. "May Hylia keep you until our next meeting."

Stifling a sob, Paya turned and dashed through the door.

Link remained standing, staring at the still-open Sheikah door through which Paya had fled. Even knowing as little as he did, he understood that door was a sign of how truly upset she was. There was a part of Link that wanted to race after her, to explain his abrupt farewell, to vow that things would be different when it was all over.

That part of him was shrinking rapidly beneath the reality that had stung him the instant the Sheikah horn had sounded. In the brief moment before that, Link had allowed himself to live in a world where only deep brown eyes, soft skin and the unspoken promise of love dwelled.

The horn had pricked that bubble and reminded Link such a world did not - could not - exist. Hyrule was still a land of death and mourning as long as Ganon remained unvanquished — a fact that would be driven home in just moments. How could he allow his own selfish love to bloom on the same night the flower of Dorian's life would officially close? That he had almost done so disgusted him. Knowing he had hurt Paya only increased Link's feeling of self-loathing.

No. Better that he dowse these feelings now. He could hardly afford to harbor hope for a normal life for himself, let alone share one with someone else. Dorian had died believing in him. Link would not let the same happen to Paya, even if it meant shutting her out completely.

Link found the resulting ache and confusion vaguely and oddly familiar, then dismissed the notion. He had already wasted too much time. Not knowing for certain but feeling it was the right thing to do, he donned his Hyrulean cloak and stowed Dorian's sheathed sword at his waist. The slightly curved blade was no longer just a weapon; it was a reminder of its former master - and the trust Dorian had placed in him. Feeling as though the sword was an anchor on his waist and his heart, Link quickly exited the hut and entered the depths of the village.

The last tendrils of dusk were long gone, courtesy of the surrounding hills cutting off the sun's retreat. The night's first stars were only just appearing, but even their full number would be diminished by the unusual number of torches now dotting Kakariko. Link realized he was one of the last among a scattered stream of people trickling toward the village center, which boasted the most concentrated pool of torchlight. Dozens of Sheikah were already waiting silently, their attention pointed toward the small rivulet opposite the raised hut where Impa dwelt.

Before arriving, Link had drawn up the hood of his cloak, assuming his presence would create some kind of stir. He was wrong. Unlike his brief time in Hateno, no one glanced at him sideways or, worse, pointed him out to a friend or family member. Then he realized that not one Sheikah was wearing the balaclava many - especially warriors - favored. With all their faces uncovered, Link recognized several men and women that had fought alongside the Hatenoans just days ago.

He maneuvered along the outer ring of those gathered, taking care not to disturb the relative anonymity with which he had arrived. Finally, Link found himself able to peer over the white-haired heads of two shorter Sheikah, allowing him an easy view of the proceedings.

Impa stood apart from her people, the only reason Link could pick out her diminutive figure. The Sheikah Elder was dressed as Link had always seen her, right down to the red-rimmed, chain-and-hook-adorned straw hat. Behind her rested a statue that Link immediately recognized, though on a much smaller scale than those he had seen on the Great Plateau or Mount Lanayru. This likeness of the Goddess Hylia, her peacefully smiling face framed by the shoulders of wings folded behind her robed body, was no taller than Impa herself.

To this statue Impa knelt. As one, the rest of the Sheikah also fell to their knees. Link did likewise, not out of blind faith as much as the desire to remain unnoticed.

Wondering what was to happen next, he was startled to hear Impa's voice carry more than well enough for all to hear.

"Great Hylia," the woman intoned, "blessed Goddess of our ancestors, creator of this world and defender of all that is good and right, we come to you this night in an hour of sorrow and need. We ask thee to take unto thyself the soul of Dorian, one of the Sheikah, a servant of the light of Hyrule."

Link heard the smallest sniff from one of the Sheikah standing in front of him. The other put a hand consolingly on the upset one's shoulder. From the back, it was impossible to tell whether either one of them was a man or woman.

"Dorian was a devoted servant," Impa continued, her quavery voice firm in volume and full in sincerity. "He fell alongside thy chosen hero in battle, laying down his life so Hyrule might rise from the shadow in which it slumbers. So, too, did Brigo of the Wetlands Stable, one who served your people well in life."

Both Sheikah in front of Link now held each other tightly in grief's embrace, but he did not notice. Tears, hot and fresh, had sprung from his own eyes, turning the surrounding torches into blurry orbs of wavering light.

"We are few, Hylia, but we remain dedicated to the work appointed us," Impa declared. "Even as we commission these men to thee, we renew our commitment to protect thy peoples and free this land. As Dorian died to make it so, so shall we live to do so. This night, we watch in honor of the fallen. On the morrow, we do in honor of the living."

Link's right hand gripped the hilt of Dorian's sword as tightly as possible, the white of his knuckles showing clearly through taut skin. Impa's words resonated inside his head and seared within his soul, a firebrand leaving behind a promise etched into his heart. He would mourn Dorian and Brigo tonight. Tomorrow, he would set out to avenge them.

A moment of complete silence followed Impa's words. The Sheikah elder then stood, briefly touched her heart, then the statue's head. After that personal exchange, she turned and walked slowly across the village clearing toward the stairs leading up to her hut. She did not stop to exchange pleasantries or even acknowledge her fellow Sheikah, all of whom respectfully gave way to her measured gait.

One by one, every Sheikah approached the statue and mimicked Impa's actions. Then, like their elder, they silently filed away into the night. The pair in front of Link were last. He was not sure why he was waiting. He did not know (nor was he sure he believed in) the ceremony. He only knew it would not be right to leave just yet.

Link was just beginning to wonder how he planned to offer his respects when the last two Sheikah, rather than continuing on toward their home like the others, stopped and faced him for the first time. He saw that they were a man and a woman, and an obvious couple at that.

Link did not recognize the man. It was the woman's face, now clearly visible in the torchlight, that sent his heart plummeting into the pit of his stomach. Feminine softness and very recent tears in her round, brown eyes were the only differences between Dorian's mother and the young man himself. When she spoke, it was with the mustered strength of bravely fighting back tears.

"Sir Link," the woman said tremulously, "I am Lasli, Dorian's mother. This is my husband and his father, Olkin. You are welcome here."

Link doubted any of the wounds he had suffered one hundred years ago - wounds that required him to sleep and heal for over a century - had cut quite like this. As it had with Lasli's son just days before, however, unthinking instinct came to his aid. Link removed his hood and bent to one knee, his hand gently holding hers to his forehead.

"May Hylia bless you, Lady Lasli. I thank you for welcoming me here."

The Sheikah woman gasped at the respect she had received, one usually reserved for her elder or from the suitor of her child. Half-forgotten memory, however, whispered to Link that the greeting's importance lay in its implied sense of assumed debt, a debt that could never be repaid, only gratefully accepted.

"You… you have no need to honor me so, Sir Link," Lasli stammered while her husband tried to subtly but hastily help Link to his feet. He seemed to be as shocked at Link's words as his wife. "If anything, I have shamed my son and my people with my show of emotion this day. I should honor Dorian's life rather than be ungrateful that he fought and - and died alongside you."

Olkin appeared as if he were about to speak - likely to assure his wife he had been just as guilty in grieving. Link, however, cut them both off with a kind but firm shake of his head. He spoke to both of them, but it was his friend's eyes in the mother's face that drew his full attention.

"If what you say is true, I have shamed you, your son and your people this day," Link insisted. "Dorian was a great warrior. It is because of him that Hateno still stands. It is because of him that I stand before you now. More importantly, he was a good man and friend and - and there is no shame in mourning his loss."

Link's voice had broken toward the end. He had not truly verbalized his grief until now. Impa had been too matter-of-fact. He might have done so to Paya were it not for their timely and ultimately necessary interruption. Only now could he truly give voice to the hurt within.

Then the tears came. Not the silent ones Link had wept during the Watching, but a flood of unrestrained emotion that wrenched his face. He fell to his knees as sobs racked his body, spasms of pain and loss and guilt that all at once seemed too much and not enough.

The noise would have no doubt drawn the attention of those within nearby huts had Lasli not immediately knelt and taken Link into her arms. There he buried his face, pouring his grief into the Sheikah mother's fierce embrace. Olkin joined her, both of them hugging him as tightly as humanly possible, each of them seeking and receiving strength from one another.

Link could not remember being held by anyone, let alone like this - like a child being comforted by his parents. Had his own father or mother ever comforted him this way? Would he ever remember if they had? The thought produced a fresh wave of sobs from the kneeling Hylian Champion.

The part of Link that wanted to do and think and be the right thing whispered he did not deserve this, that he had no right to accept solace from the mother of the friend who had died for him. The warmth of Lasli's arms and whispered words, combined with Olkin's strong grip on Link's shoulders, staved off that dark voice. It disappeared, unheard in the Kakariko night that enveloped three mourners grieving as one.

Through the window of her elevated hut, Impa watched the huddled mass of Link, Lasli and Olkin until they finally broke their joint embrace and went their separate ways. She thoughtfully tapped her wrinkled index finger on her prune-like mouth before hobbling slowly toward the back stairs leading up to the loft and her bed within.

Change did not frighten Impa. The histories said that once the Sheikah had been a tall race and wore their hair in tails that hung down their backs. The Gerudo were once thieves and plunderers before becoming the noble - if eccentric - people they were now.

It was one thing, however, to read about change as a dry history. It was quite another to witness it happening with her own eyes and among her own people. The boy was changing so much already. His return was a boulder thrown into the peacefully subdued pond Hyrule had become in his absence. How far and how high would the waves spread? And how many would be scattered about like rootless sand before them?

That rhetorical question coincided with the sight of her granddaughter asleep on the bed opposite her own. Impa had glimpsed Paya at the Watching, but she had remained well on the outskirts of her people - exactly opposite of where Link had arrived.

Impa frowned as she placed a small candle upon her bedside table. She knew Paya had attended to Link just before the Watching. Clearly their second meeting had not been as doe-eyed as the first. Impa knew that should be a relief, but for some reason it was not. More change. What had happened?

As for what Impa had just witnessed, Purah would have applauded it. Her sister had always been the emotional sort. The boys had seemed to like that when they were young, for some reason. Purah would say that Link's willingness to show weakness was a sign of strength.

Impa agreed - to an extent. The boy could not seal himself from the world as he had tried to do a century ago. He needed to feel. To touch. To live. Perhaps it was time for her own people to stray from the shadows of secrecy and do the same.

Link could not, however, allow the loss of one - or hundreds, when it comes to that, Impa grimly thought - to overshadow the needs of all. Thinking of that, she was both eager for and terrified of what would begin tomorrow. Link would finally set out on the quest to reclaim Hyrule - and himself.

"Blessed Hylia, let the former not be consumed by the latter," Impa whispered in the dark.

AUTHOR NOTES:

It feels cruel to rip away the friends Link had only just obtained, but loss is one of the ways I most identify with and feel for my favorite characters in literature. There's a rawness there that makes him/her and the story feel real, something I desperately wanted to establish to make this feel as little like a video game as possible.

Such open humanity made for a pleasant contrast with the Sheikah, who I pictured as a formal people right from the start. Though it's a different Zelda game, I kept coming back to Impa's cutscenes in Skyward Sword. There was a distance with her that, to me, emphasized the gravity of her (and her people's) mission in guiding Hyrule's destiny. Yet even a distant people can feel, and Link's presence (and Dorian's departure) helped shed light on that. I didn't think of the scene with Link and Dorian's parents until very late, and I was pleased with 1) how it turned out and 2) how it captured the inevitable effect Link would have upon returning to Hyrule.

I labored over striking the right balance in Paya and Link's first drawn-out interaction. Each of them clearly hungers for the love their unique lives have denied them thus far. Will they find it in each other? Time will tell, but I'm encouraged by the emotions I felt while writing that scene. For what it's worth, my wife really liked this and demanded when we'd see more of Paya. I won't give the "when" away, but 1) you will and 2) she won't always be as a lovesick doe.

Stay with me over the next couple chapters. Wrinkles are coming, and a few of them won't have obvious answers even if you've completed the entire game. Part of the fun is adding my own unique twists to make the story much more than a linear gaming arc. In the meantime, feel free to drop a review, shoot me a private message and (if you like what you're reading so far) give that "follow" button a click. Hope life is treating you well! - mattwrites