The night in the hay loft loomed endlessly. The only sounds were the cuckoos below and the wind in the rafters. Heads cushioned on fresh hay, the girls slept in the deepness of a post-adrenaline slumber. But Zelda could not sleep. Her pulse throbbed in her ears as she listened attentatively to the night, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. Every flutter of cuckoo wings below brought a flutter of fear to her heart. But she was not the only one who fluttered, not the only one who didn't sleep. The baby, the would-be son (she knew it was a son-- had always known-- through her magical wisdom she knew it) was preparing, stretching, repositioning. She, a mother of three, knew what was coming.

When labor started in the late hours of the night, she was not surprised, but concerned. She had no choice, she saw, but to send her oldest princess into danger. Quickly and quietly she woke Leal. Leal looked blurrily at her mother. "Listen," Zelda whispered, "Enoras is coming. You must run and find Malon. Talk to no one else. Hide yourself from others. If you find a cloak or a tarp, cover your clothes with it." She touched her daughter gently on the cheek. "Nayru protect you, daughter." With that, Leal scrambled quickly down the ladder and into the night. Zelda watched her go, watcher her two other children sleep, and cringed in pain as the fourth clamored for attention. Sometime in the meantime, she drifted into sleep.

And in that short, laborous slumber, Zelda dreamt a dream.

She was standing on an island of Lake Hyrule. Link was there, but he was younger. Time seemed frozen. She looked down into the icy blue water, and was shocked by what she saw. It wasn't herself. She was staring into the bright red eyes of a young man, a sheikah man. His face was bound so she couldn't see it. She turned to Link and heard an adolescent boy say, "Who am I?" His crystal blue eyes caught hers...

No, the eyes were not Link's-- well they were, but they were set in Leal's face. "Mama, wake up." She looked worried. Past Leal, Zelda saw Malon. She'd brought some rags and water. --"Have you done this before," Zelda asked. --"Tons of times... just never on a person."

From the contraction, or maybe fear, or probably both combined with exhaustion, Zelda moaned.

Malon retorted triumphantly, "But you have!"