Chapter 18 The Present

After I finished my song, the party started. The partygoers erupted into thunderous applause with the finale of my song. I had done my duty, I thought, searching for my mother's face in the crowd. I spotted her smiling at me, though worry lines were still etched into her face. I smiled back as I tried to leave the stage, but I was suddenly swarmed by the leaders and nobles, their voices overlapping and ringing in my head.

"Princess, that was simply magnificent!" Chief Ovi's voice rang clear, high above the rest of the chattering voices. "You simply must play again when you come to Rito Village! Us Rito are music connoisseurs, you know. I'm sure there will be countless talented young Rito who would love to sing counterpoint to your music." He flattered, looking between my mother and I.

I smiled, small and polite, but honest. "Thank you Chief Ovi, I'm glad you enjoyed it."

He smiled at me again, before turning his attention to my mother. "Your Majesty, I must ask where did you find such a skilled teacher to instruct our talented princess? My little Revali has shown almost no interest in singing, but I'm sure I could convince him to learn to play after your daughter's masterful performance. I need to get him into some lessons as soon as possible, before he loses focus again." The chief smiled wryly, glancing at where Revali was practically vibrating a few feet away, waiting to butt in with an eager smile.

My smile grew just that little bit more fixed, and I could feel my father twitch. "Well it certainly wasn't easy," My mother laughed, sounding a little bit forced. "I recommend screening your possible instructors very thoroughly, we've come to learn that artists can be… very dramatic, in our time looking for a proper instructor for Zelda." Mother's hand squeezed my shoulder lightly.

Father's gruff voice added in his two rupees, a small smile hidden under his beard. "I can give you a list of musicians who aren't fit to be instructors after the party if you're interested, I wouldn't want you to make the mistake of attempting to hire them like we did."

Now Ovi looked slightly worried, "Is it really that difficult to find an instructor? I had planned to simply ask one of our musicians to teach Revali, but you're making me think it's not quite that simple."

My mother's laugh this time was genuine, albeit slightly hysterical. "Why don't we let the children go play, then I can tell you all about it. I'm sure Urbosa would love to hear this story again." She gestured to Urbosa, who's attention she caught, despite the Hylian nobles she was talking up.

"That seems like an excellent idea. Revali, remember to be on your best behavior."

"Yes Daddy," he replied, bouncing over to me. "I usually don't like music, but that was really pretty. It reminded me of pulling the string on a bow and arrow, kinda!"

"Thanks! You want to meet some of my friends?" I grinned, and before he could even respond, I grabbed him by a downy wing-hand to drag toward the delicately arrayed buffet table, where Robbie, Purah, and Impa were.

"Sure!" He gave me a beaky little grin that I returned, and I could feel myself smile in earnest, ears perking up in joy and a happy warmth filling my bones.

Purah spotted me and enthusiastically waved me over, yelling, "Zelda, over here! Look! There's cake!"

The party ended far too late, in my opinion. I was starting to rethink my position on "enforced bedtime for little princesses". I was exhausted, but I was still expected to get up far too early. I'm certain it was some sort of advanced torture, or training meant to teach me how to resist giving up information to the enemy, or something.

"Up Zelda, up! It's nearly past noon, we let you sleep past breakfast because we kept you up so late yesterday but it's nearly time for lunch!" Dottie called, sweeping around the room after she rudely ripped open the curtains around my bed.

"Miuh bluurg.'' I responded intelligently burying my head back under the blankets.

"Now don't be like that!" She laughed and moved somewhere to my left, probably pulling out my clothes for the day. I couldn't be bothered, I was too busy trying to recapture elusive dreams of myself playing with Revali, Impa, Purah, and Robbie. The little girls I used to babysit were there too, all the while we were being chased by a giant version of my cat, who had wanted to eat my new fluffy bird brother, despite us trying to distract him.

"Don't you want to open up your presents? You didn't get a chance last night." Dottie cajoled, her smile audible in her voice.

"Ughhhhhh." I made another barely human sound before I sighed and sat up. "Fiiiiiiinnnnnnneeeeeee." I whined reluctantly, shuffling my flesh prison toward the clothes that Dottie had indeed set out for me. "Is lunch gonna be a diplomatic whats-it with the guests or is it going to be just us?" I asked, struggling to put on my too complicated dress. God did I miss tee-shirts and jeans.

"Its going to just be you and your parents princess, although dinner is going to be with the guests." Here's another fun thing about being royalty: the 'help' aren't allowed to sit around you, let alone eat with you, so when Dottie says i'm going to have lunch with my parents, she means that my parents and I are going to eat together, while she and several other servants and guards hover in the background waiting to refill our drinks, or replace any silverware we drop. Even the silverware is important, apparently it's used to find poison in meals."Do you know if Ila feels like eating with us today?"

Dottie bites her lip, one of her ears twitching up and down in indecision "I'm not quite sure, but she did seem rather stressed earlier, so probably not." Granny fills a weird role where she's sort of considered a servant and sort of not. Technically, her role is Mother's secretary/bodyguard/handmaid, but she's also the diplomatic representative of the Sheikah, and a high priestess of the reigning religion. So it really depends on the day and her mood if she deigns to eat with us or to just hover behind mom, giving me the occasional glare of doom when my manners slip.

I give a resigned sigh and finally give up, allowing Dottie to help me get dressed. I really should be able to do it by myself by now, and I could, if not for all these complicated buttons and ties.

Why is being a princess so complicated?

"Happy birthday Zelda! Are you excited to open your presents?" Mother gushed, fussing over me and rubbing imaginary dirt off my face.

"Yes Mother," I sighed and resigned myself to her affection, despite the fact that I know I didn't get any food on my face.

"Oh I'm so excited! I just know you're going to love what we found you, little songbird!" She practically squealed, ushering me over to an impressive pile of presents. "Open this one last! I want to save the best for last!" she enthused, gesturing to a present practically taller than me. While this would be ridiculous if I was an adult, keep in mind I'm only 5 so it's only about 3 and a half feet tall. Still impressive, but at best not ridiculously extravagant. (looking at you, solid gold and diamond encrusted lyre.)

"Got it." I nodded, trying to restrain Hurricane Mom. Reaching for a chest with a bow on top, which was also annoyingly, bigger than I was. Which was an unfortunate trend I was starting to become resigned too. Goddesses I miss being tall.

Opening up the chest I found the expected gift of a ton of soft looking blankets and coats from the Rito. The blankets and cloaks were made from the fine down of Rito chick feathers, symbolic of the milestone I had reached upon becoming five.

A little background here, turning five is an important milestone in the Ritos life as mentioned before because this is when they start to lose their baby chick fluff and start to grow in their first flight feathers. This has a lot of cultural implications as the loss of baby fluff means in rito culture that is when there considered to be old enough to actually start comprehend the world around them, and they are allowed to join the older kids in things like lesions and to be responsible enough to start doing things like chores ect ect. This had a ripple effect through cultural diffusion and five is now considered a similar important milestone in hylian culter it's the reason kids don't really start lessons till their five. Turning five has less significance in goron, zora, gerudo, or sheika culture for various reasons like ageing differently, having event instead of age based milestones, or just being trained literally from birth respectively.

But more practically turning five to a rito means that soon the little baby in question is going to end up somewhat naked with only patchy spots of feathers so its traditional to get a bunch of blankets and special cloaks when you turned five all stuffed and lined with the downie fluff saved from the last rito to lose their feathers.

Cultural significance aside, this means I just got a chest of the softest, warmest, plushest, most comfortable, most culturally significant blankets and cloaks. "Yesssssss!" I hiss, immediately pulling out a soft pretty periwinkle blanket and wrapping it around me. "Okay everyone else can go home, the Rito delegation is now my favorite." I joke, snuggling into my soft warm blanket.

Granny rolled her eyes from where she stood, commenting wryly. "You are so easy to please princess, most little girls wouldn't be quite as excited about getting blankets and coats."

"Well, I'm not most girls am I?" I sassed before freezing, did i-

I am a reincarnated magical elf princess, who in the original game is a kinda sorta maybe incarnation of a goddess of light and all that is good, with angel wings who is a sort of soulmate to both the main villain and hero through reincarnation, triforce connected through all time, who just said i wasn't like other girls. Oh my god, I'm Mary Sue, aren't I? Can I be a Mary Sue? I don't have anything against Mary Sue's, they can be fun to read about sometimes, but I'm a real person, I think. (Oh god, wait, I can't have two existential crises at once.) I don't think I'm actually THE Zelda reincarnation soulmate goddess, since my current theory is that I SOMEHOW screwed up dying (I don't remember how it happened beyond pain and noise, so it's possible) and somehow ended up as Zelda instead of the actual Zelda, if that makes any sense. I KNOW I have flaws, I KNOW that I'm not perfect, I'm a bossy know-it-all who, yeah, tries to be nice and compassionate, but definitely is not perfect. I'm liable to slip into depressive fudges where I'm a horrible friend and don't really keep up with and be there for my friends. I'm a horrible mix of actually very oblivious and pretend oblivious so I don't have to deal with things. I'm just smart enough to know that I sometimes do really dumb stuff and I was/am depressed mess who can barely muster up the effort to get up in the morning some days and-

"Zelda? You zoned out honey." My mom shook my shoulder with a worried look on her face. I shook my head and focused on the present. I'm a human- wait no- I'm a Hylian person. I'm allowed to have flaws, I don't need to be perfect. What I do need to do is focus on the present and the world around me. Save your existential crises for later- which, scratch that, that was a dumb exstistentual. crisis you can't be a Mary Sue, you're real. I could be a pick me girl, though- stop it Zelda, you are literally not like other girls because you are about seventeen years more mature than them. you can consider your own inherent personality flaws and hyperventilate later. Focus.

I mustered a smile. "I'm fine! I just had a bad thought for a second, What's next?" The Zora and Gorons had both sent gifts of resplendent jewellery. Expected, appreciated, and oohed and ahed over. I asked Granny to help me write thank you letters later and moved on.

The next gifts were a beautifully carved handmade set of flower hair sticks from Jiro, a lovely pair of embroidered bookmarks from Dottie, and a book on how to speak Gerudo from granny. All three were given their due thanks and a hug for the thoughtful gifts I truly did appreciate. Aunty Urbosa, as she told me to call her, gave me an extensive book on Gerudo mythology that my father had to tear me away from so I could open my other gifts. Is that the right word if it's still in practice in some regions? Should I even call it a myth, when there is already one verified religion in this world? Who's to say that this stuff isn't real? I mentally set aside another notebook for the world's religions/myths. I also received various bits and bobs from the Hylian nobles and a book on etiquette from the first cousin once removed I apparently had. At this point it was getting rather late and I was getting rather hungry but it was finally time to open the present from Mother and Father.

"Open it! Open it! Oh Rhoam, aren't you excited!" My mother clapped, nudging Father, who had been looking over the gifts I had gotten with a keen eye, no doubt considering the politics of each one. He shook himself out of it and gave me a slightly awkward smile.

"Go on, you can open it now." Mother encouraged once again. With a little help from Dottie, I managed to pry the box open and gaped at what was inside. "We know that you're really interested in history right now, so we decided to get you a piece of it!" Mother raved, barely heard over the ringing in my ears.

Sitting deactivated in the box, was a small, egg shaped guardian.

Immmmm baaaccccckkkkkk! Finals are finally over for both me and my wonderful beta changeling-myth! I'm done for the semester! Ive been sitting on this chapter for a while now and have finally managed to get it done and edited! Now for notes on the chapter, the zelda im writing is based off a mix of me when i was 17 and her own character and development. Alot of this story is and is going to be unpacking a lot of the issues i had then, since then i have gotten better grown as a person yadda yadda, but this zelda hasn't gotten that so i am writing her like me at seventeen who was a MESS (i still am just a slightly smaller mess). So zelda while getting better because she has had time to heal and her brain chemistry is very different now is still dealing with a lot™. On our friendly neighborhood eggo! Yes this still is a breath of the wild fic not an age of calamity one (spoilers? I guess?) but remember how i mentioned i have like 4 books planned in this series (we will see if i actually write all of them) one of said planed books is based off age of calamity, but for that to exist in cannon the breath of the wild timeline needs to exist. Now how our little time traveling friend is activated in TAI is for me to know and you to find out!

On to reviews!

Ur Mom- i swear to god that i did not know about ukraine when i wrote that chapter i published chapter two for the first time in 2020, TWO whole years before this debaucal started i literally googled scandinavian countries that had recently been at war and ukraine was the first to pop up T-T apollo hit me in the face with the dodge ball of prophecy

ThatBlueStrawberry- thanks!

Floating Ash- thank you so much! I dont know if ive watched the one your talking about but i have watched one that was an analysis of the battle music for the the wind blight song that i think you would like i can remember the name but it touched on how his song was the last to have the sos morse code

Dragonmaster150- shhhhhh! Your going to spill all my secrets! I'm just kidding but almost all of your theories hit the mark! Thanks for letting me know about the formatting error i'll get right on that! And there are no zora or gorons in attendance because the zora don't really do birthdays because they live so long and the gorons are dealing with an issue in the mines. What issue do you ask? A plot convenient lazy author one! If i had the gorons come then the zora would have because of politics and i just wanted to focus on the rito and the gerudo for this section.

Bellz_Haven1914- thanks for commenting! I have plans for daruke to come in soon don't you worry! You will get rock dad content!

Winterwonderland- thanks for reviewing! I cant tell you too much without spoiling things but im going to say that you are very aware of literary themes and tropes and that can only be a good thing when theorizing (very exaggerated winking face) also everyone needs fluffy ravali in there life

NeutralVoice04102016- MWAHAHAHA MY EVIL PLOT IS WORKING!1!1 (and i mean evil plot in both senses of the word ;) )