Thanks again for the reviews, Birdie! I'm glad you're enjoying how I portray Zelda – you're absolutely right, she should and does kick some serious ass. She must do in the game as well in order to survive all the stuff Link has to go through to get to where she's been, and so it's absolutely tragic and a massive let-down that we never get to see any of it. I hope the memory cascade here also makes sense and goes some way towards explaining what in the game is just left as inexplicable behaviour!

Chapter 16: Recall

The old woman stood outside the temple, leaning on a branch she'd picked up. She'd rounded it twice; even gone out into the pit where the great seal cracked and bled darkness into the air. But the girl was gone, and with little trace. Had she been decades younger, she would have set off into the forest after her without a second thought – because if her suspicions were right, the girl was more important even than her sacred watch.

"Mahra?" The voice that spoke was familiar, only just as loud as it needed to be to reach her ears. "What has happened?"

Mahra Impa turned around, regarding her returned aide worriedly: a tall, athletic Sheikah woman as Mahra Impa herself had once been, one of their finest and most respected. "A young woman fell from the sky, Impa. Did you see the storm disperse?"

Impa shook her head, the long tail of hair hanging down the right side of her face swaying slightly with the motion. "The camp is too far from here."

"It ended in a spray of light. I saw something fall. So I hurried from the seal through the temple to here, where I found a daughter of the sky."

Impa nodded seriously, still listening.

"I thought she might have been saved by the Goddess' barrier. She was one of the blessed ones: she was almost unhurt by her fall, and she woke up quickly." Every now and again, through the Sheikah's long history, people had fallen from their refuge in the skies above. Most of them died before the Sheikah ever found them, but every now and again one would, miraculously, survive the fall. There was no returning them to the sky, and so the Sheikah had always taken them in, protecting them as best they could and teaching them to live amongst them. Mahra Impa herself had a skyfallen ancestor, four generations back. So it was a surprise, but not an utter shock, to find a young woman fallen outside the temple.

"I took her inside and sat her down. She was worried about a dear friend who had been with her, and kept telling me she felt as if she had to do something, but could not recall what it was. I told her that you would return, take her to safety, and look for her friend in case he had fallen as she did."

Again, Impa nodded. She would have – though she could already tell that it was no longer Mahra Impa's priority, and therefore no longer her own.

"She came outside to walk in the clear air, and I cannot find her. I fear she has become lost in the forest, though I warned her against going far. "The older Sheikah took a deep breath, preparing herself to speak the most momentous words of her life. "I do not think she is simply a daughter of the sky, Impa. The light from which she fell, the feeling that she was compelled to act upon, her sensitivity to the great seal even within the sanctity of the temple, my own sense of her, the friend who she lost, even her appearance; the way that she spoke of the storm springing into being before her as if targeted – I believe that she is one of those we have waited for! I believe, truly, she may be the goddess reborn at last as she promised." She sighed. "And I cannot find her. When I realised who she might be I came out at once, but she is gone. Impa… you must seek this young woman. Go to the sacred one and ask for all her knowledge of what the spirit maiden might look like, and what she must do. Ask for her guidance, and then search for this young woman, this Zelda. You must do this."

The only outward sign of Impa's incredulity was a widening of her crimson eyes, which narrowed again in focused thought as she spoke. "I will do this, Mahra." Uncharacteristically, she hesitated; uncharacteristically, she asked a question already answered. "Do you truly believe it is her? The spirit maiden, the goddess reborn – she has come at last?"

"I do," Mahra Impa said simply. "I have thought upon it, and on the old warnings that we may not recognise her, and I feel it in my heart. And…" She sighed, ever so softly, briefly seeming every year of her age. "If she is not, we do not have much longer. The great seal weakens more with every month that passes now, since the demon lord attempted his blood rite. Sometimes, I almost think that I can see its evil grow." She closed her eyes for a silent moment. "If the goddess does not return to us soon, I fear it will be too late."

If Impa had had less self-control, she might have swallowed. Mahra Impa saw the reaction in her anyway; she knew she couldn't hide it from the old lady. Not after the years they'd lived side by side in the almost-empty temple, protecting and protected by the sacred power that maintained the great seal. Mahra Impa had never before voiced the fear aloud, though occasionally Impa had seen an echo of it in her.

"Do you think that her friend is her chosen?"

"I hope he may be even as I fear for it. For if he is, and he is dead…"

Impa nodded, once. Their prophecy would be broken before it had even begun, their sacred duty shattered, generations of life and death robbed of purpose and meaning. Then and there, she determined she would not allow it. "I shall tell the others as I journey to the sacred one. Then I will seek the spirit maiden." She paused for a moment before repeating the unfamiliar name. "I will seek this Zelda."

. . .

Zelda awoke stiff and cold, uncomfortable and resting on something that crackled faintly when she moved. Disoriented, she lay still for several moments, cracking her eyes open to a dull grey light not quite like anything she had seen before.

She was on the surface. On the surface, far from Skyloft, far from her Loftwing, far from friends and family. On the surface… that strange and mythical place beyond the barrier that had forever marked the edge of her world. She had been found by friends, and she had been chased by evil, and there was… something that she had to do.

Zelda sat up, wincing as stiff muscles protested. She had been sleeping on a nest of dead vegetation inside a hollow tree, not far from what she'd thought was a hill and had turned out to be a single tree bigger than some islands. As the night had drawn in, Machi had taken her to another of his kind called Bucha, who seemed to be their leader and who had gathered a few others in the area to help fill this empty trunk with softish bedding while Machi returned to his own place in the woods. Zelda listened to the musical cacophony of sounds coming from outside, and when she could hear no discordant, angry squealing, she squirmed out of the awkward hole in the base of the tree and into what seemed like a cloudy dawn.

"Elder Bucha?" she ventured uncertainly, looking around. The old kikwi had seen her settled and said he wouldn't go far, but from inside her own hollow trunk, she had no idea where he might have been. "Elder Bucha?"

"Kwooo?" It sounded for all the world as if the elder kikwi was yawning. Zelda looked around, but couldn't see him – up in the branches, somewhere? "What is it, kwee-koo? It's barely sunrise."

"I'm sorry if I woke you, Elder Bucha," she said politely. "I just… didn't know where you were."

A chubby brown-and-cream head popped over the edge of a branch, peering down at her. "Ah! The young human girl! What was your name, Zelda? Yes, Zelda." The matter remembered to his satisfaction, Elder Bucha clambered along the branch and down the trunk of the tree. He wasn't as fast and fluid as Machi and the others had been, but he still moved as easily vertically as if he were walking on flat ground. He bounded up to Zelda and stood up, drawing himself up to his full height of slightly above her waist. "And you were lost, kwoop."

"That's right, Elder Bucha. I was wondering if you would kindly tell me about the forest?"

"Of course, kweee!" the rotund old kikwi declared proudly. "I won't say I know everything about the forest, but I don't know anyone who would know more, hoho! You can run in the branches all day and not get from one end to the other, so you can."

Zelda listened as he continued, describing more kinds of tree than she'd ever seen before just yesterday; talking about strange animals – deer and boar and foxes and far, far more – and birds and even the horrible mobile plants that had attacked her: "harmless to something your size mostly, unless you walk into it, kweee, but when the bokoblins have been nearby they get horribly aggressive, kwee-koo. Nasty creatures, bokoblins. Horrible evil things."

After her encounter with them, Zelda agreed with that instinctively and absolutely.

"Sometimes they hang around the ruins, kwoop, so I would stay away from those. There are quite a lot of ruins here, and they're so crumbly they aren't always very obvious, but you can tell by the regular patterns between the hillocks." Bucha nodded sagely. "The biggest ones are the ones around the temples-"

"Temples?" Zelda cut him off reflexively. "I'm sorry for interrupting, Elder Bucha, but I need to find a temple… that's where I got lost from."

"A temple, koo-kwee… Oho, as I was saying, there are several old temples in the forest, but they're all dangerous. A young human like you should be careful near them. Let me see… There's the one where the humans with the eye like to hide, but that has a nasty, nasty feel to it; we don't go there, kweee. The deku babas are always vicious there. And there's the crumbly one in the north-west, kweek, it has a pretty-looking spring in the middle, but you can't get to it, and it's very dangerous. All sorts of nasty predators live there."

Zelda said nothing. Something about the word 'spring' had scattered her thoughts, and for a moment, she thought she could hear a voice calling her. Two voices? One voice? It wasn't her own, or was it? How could it be calling her if it was?

Zelda… You must come to the spring. Please.

It's your duty, Zelda. You promised.

Duty? But the words were already fading, already lost, only the sense of something she had to do renewed tenfold. Elder Bucha had fallen silent, peering up at her concernedly.

"Are you all right, kweee?"

Zelda nodded. "I'm fine, Elder Bucha. I just… thought I heard something calling me. But I didn't," she added hastily, as the kikwi stretched himself slightly taller, his little rounded ears pricked and head turning this way and that to catch the forest sounds. "I just thought I did, for a moment. Will you tell me more about the temple with the spring, please?"

"Of course!" Bucha set his concerns aside instantly, too pleased to find her still so interested in his knowledge. "Well, the spring is in the middle, behind the temple building itself, you see. It's in a big hole, so you can only see it from the tops of the trees. A human like you wouldn't be able to climb so close, oh no, so you would have to go into the buildings." He shuddered dramatically, the bud on his back uncurling slightly and rustling with the motion. "Nasty crumbly dark places, they are. The old elder before me said her elder had been in there once, kwoop, and it was nothing but danger on the inside, just like the outside. I looked in once myself, I did, through a hole in an old ceiling I suppose it was, and there were hideous green bokoblins in there, eating one of those nasty gigantic skulltulas! They don't come outside except at night, though, kweee. I don't think they can stand the sun any more. It's probably why they're such a horrible rotten shade, kwee-koo. There's a big old statue in the spring, that one looks like a winged human if I remember it right, and some of the little bird ones around it too. I suppose it was a sacred place once, but I don't know if you could call it one now."

Zelda gazed at him unseeingly. She could almost picture the spring, even though he'd barely described it: a sheer-sided hole in the ground with a pool at the bottom, fed by and flowing away through underground channels, a statue to the goddess set towards its back, reached by a door at the back of the temple. A sacred place, once.

"I have to go there, Elder Bucha," she said slowly. "It's… it's like it's calling me. I have to find that spring."

Bucha shook his chubby head firmly. "It's very dangerous there, kwoo. Far too dangerous for a young human, even if you do fight bokoblins! And you don't even know how to find your way in the forest, kweee… You should stay here and I will teach you. You will get lost again if you try to go there on your own." He sounded definite, and common sense said he was probably right.

On the other hand, he'd never learnt to navigate in the sky. Zelda glanced up through the canopy at the gigantic tree towering unbelievably far above. It was so huge, the clearing beneath its enormous branches could fit a small island village. She'd been able to see it from miles and miles away, thinking it was a hill. "Well…" She made a show of looking around the trackless forest. "Maybe you're right." He was right, all common sense said he was absolutely right, and yet – "I don't even know which way it would be." North-west. And the shadows might be faint, but the sun is still over there. Which means… She lifted her arm and pointed, along the line of the stubborn, insistent, nonsensical tugging at her heart. "It could be that way, or that way, or that way…" She turned as she spoke, but kept watching Bucha's reactions. Completely inhuman he might have been, but his shock as she pointed in the right direction the first time and relief as she pointed in other random ones told her everything she needed to know. Poor old Elder Bucha, he was worse at keeping a secret than her own father.

"Exactly, young Zelda!"

Her own father…

If she stayed in one place, she would never see him again. The old lady, Mahra Impa, had said that there was no way back to the sky. But if she followed this strange call, the voice that she'd been hearing, feeling since before she fell… Even if there wasn't a chance, she'd be doing something. And she had to know what was calling her, driving her.

"Thank you, Elder Bucha!" she said quickly. "I'm sorry, but I can't stay – but thank you for everything!"

Before the old kikwi could react, she turned and ran in the direction of the temple with the spring, leaving only a startled "Kwoop!" behind her.

. . .

Zelda stopped, looking around cautiously, lifting her off hand to her heart. Had something… just happened? She felt as if it had. Something, somehow, somewhere, some shock of distant recognition and a closed door opening, a curtain parting just enough. Cued by an instinct she could not name, she turned slowly, gazing at the southern sky. The trees blocked her view, but… had something happened?

Or was she just going mad? Hearing voices, feeling calls – short of a great spirit's intervention, it didn't exactly seem very sane.

She clenched her teeth, willing the fear into submission. If she was, there was nothing she could do about it. She was still lost and alone: that was true however rational or irrational she was, and something beyond the ordinary definitely was happening. Something had happened to her, something strange: the black storm had been unnatural. Mahra Impa had spoken of a sealed evil, and she'd felt it. The bokoblins were another evil, unnatural and wrong. And Link…

She couldn't have said why she only now felt certain that he was still alive, somewhere out there. But she did, and she clung to it.

Something called to her, stronger than her fear, calling to her hope. Somehow, she felt that if she could only find the spring, she would find answers.

Turning back, she continued on.

. . .

The temple was every bit as dangerous as Elder Bucha had said it would be. Dark and dank, infested with dangers from gigantic spiders down to flocks of evid keese, and Zelda had made her way through it all, avoiding them where she could and fighting where she had to. Some doors oozed slow rivulets of grimy water over her cautious hand as she touched it lightly to them; some rooms were half-flooded; but she had made her way through. Twice she'd thought about turning back, but a sense of looming ominousness behind her and the ever-stronger call from ahead pulled her on.

At last, she'd reached a room with a gloomy rotting shape at its back that she guessed had once been an ornate screen, and slipped behind it to find, as she'd somehow almost known she would, a large door. She was close, so close to something it almost frightened her, and yet she had to keep going, drawn inexorably towards it.

Gathering her resolve, Zelda pushed open the door.

It led into a circular antechamber, empty of whatever it might once have held, watery sunlight shining down through a hole in the ceiling, and on the opposite side a pristine, patterned golden door. It wasn't glowing, and yet to her eyes… no, to her magical senses, it almost seemed to shine. It was rare she perceived magic quite that directly; just how strong was it? And why, when it was like nothing she'd ever felt before, did it almost feel familiar?

Slowly, still looking where she put her feet and occasionally glancing up to the high ceiling above, Zelda crossed the circular room and approached the golden door. It shone brighter as she approached, until it was glowing visibly, patterns of light added to and somehow complementing patterns of relief. There was no visible handle, no hinges, no bolt or bar, and yet… Uncertain, she lifted her hand, placing it cautiously in the centre of the door.

She could feel it beneath her fingers, not a door but a shield, one that ran all the way around something outside in an intricate and complex dome. Something in it seemed to react to her, respond to her, in the same moment that she recognised it, as if…

Open, Zelda thought – and to her surprise, the barrier dissolved into light.

Not quite believing that had just worked, not quite believing her own acceptance of it, she looked through for a moment. Wide stone stairs led upwards ahead of her, blocking her view of what lay beyond, but somehow she was certain that it was the spring. That it was safe.

She stepped forward, through the open doorway, vaguely aware that it would close again behind her. Fresh outside air brushed against her face, a welcome change from the foetid air of the once-grand, half-swamped temple. The feel of the spring ahead drew her on, one unconscious step after another, until she had crested the stairs and was standing at the open end of the hall, a paved area gently dappled in moss and grass and beyond it a shallow pool that filled the bottom of a near-circular rock-walled hollow. Small waterfalls cascaded down the sides, the slow current eddying silently away beneath an overhang to her right, and in the middle of it all, beyond a series of low, wide stepping stones, a statue of the goddess watched over the scene with her blind stone eyes. The waters almost seemed to shine, an invisible radiance spilling from them.

As if in a dream, Zelda walked slowly to the stepping stones; leapt lightly from one to the next until she was a single expanse of water between her and the old statue. As if in a dream, she knelt, bowing her head. Her own reflection looked back at her, faintly rippled by the water, blonde hair loose and hanging about her face. The shimmering ripples altered it slightly, making her look older one moment, younger the next; lightening her hair still further for an instant with the reflection of the sun, the next scattering its rays out winglike to either side of her instead.

Zelda dipped her hand in the water. It was cool, refreshing, pure, and somehow inviting. Dirt and grime swirled gently away from her fingers and were swept away, and the tension in her hand began to ease. Without fully thinking about it, she sat on the edge of the stone, and slid herself in.

The water came up to somewhat above her waist, and Zelda leant back in it, luxuriating in its cool embrace. Refreshing and invigorating, filled with light, it tangled around her limbs without binding her, washing the dirt and weariness of her travels away, washing her cares away. Despite everything, her mind fell still, still as a clear pool.

For a moment, she felt as if she gazed down from above herself, to where a young woman just barely of age lay floating on the surface of the water, her eyes closed. But the water had an ancient, timeless depth, and a light shone from below, through her, suffusing her. She could feel it glowing from within, and in the next moment she recognised it as her own light. Her light, and she was shining…

A door of spirit never meant to be opened eased gently ajar. She was the light, she was the radiance, riding upon the joyful winds around a sacred duty that was her purpose and her soul. She was the radiance who looked upon her strange, ridiculous, funny, never-quite-worthy-but-always-trying people and loved them all the more for their imperfections. Loved them more, even, than the duty it was her sole purpose to uphold, and then the shadow came, the cousin-being twisted out of true, gone beyond his duty and seeking to consume it all. Caught in an agonisingly impossible choice, she struggled, unable to act lest she fall, unable to bear what would happen if she did not, desperate to somehow escape the bonds of her duty without everyone around her paying the terrible price.

Hers was the curiosity, hers was the drive. Hers was the path laid out before her, a duty and a destiny carefully yet savagely wrenched aside. Hers was the knowledge that there would always be, somewhere, somehow, another way, if only a sharp mind could find it.

Hers was the duty that she set herself, and could not rebel against.

She was Hylia. She was…

She was cold, suddenly jolting upright and gasping in the cool clear waters, her eyes wide, her mind a muddle, the daylight above slowly fading. She was Zelda, she was – she was Hylia, they had a plan – she was old and she was young, her own power flooding through her like something strange and alien, scattered knowledge coming to her as if it was all something she had just forgotten. Impossible, Zelda's mind protested, even as her own memories cascaded through her to make it inexorably true

Shivering, Zelda waded back to the stepping stone and pulled herself out, sitting with her knees drawn up and only then noticing that something – the light? – had leached every last bit of colour from her dress, from her belt, from her shoes – everything she wore had bleached to the white of a pure cloud on a blue day, right down to the wrapping on the hilt of her borrowed sword. Only her skin and sodden hair seemed to have kept their colour. Somehow it wasn't surprising.

Something battered against the sacred spring's shield. She recognised it numbly, her mind still reeling: Ghirahim, Demise's lieutenant and sword, a twisted demon lord far beyond the bounds of anything he'd ever been meant to be. Powerful, even more so than she remembered, and she remembered his power, grown rich on Demise's gifts and on all the gods he'd slain.

She shuddered again, hands tightening convulsively on her arms. The barrier held, for now, but given long enough Ghirahim might break it. The longer she waited, the more Zelda she would become, the clarity of her awakened memories fading, and the less able she would be to face him. She would have – had – left herself some sort of message, instructions because she didn't know what, if anything, her reborn self would know; she should-

Her head snapped up, and she froze.

Ghirahim was no longer the only sword beyond the ancient barrier she'd erected so long ago. There was another – there was hers. The sword she had created, to be forged in fire and pain and-

-and it was Link, Link on the other side of that barrier with his spirit-bound blade, facing down the demon lord with nothing but his courage and the training of the peaceful Knight Academy. Link, coming to find her despite everything, and she wanted nothing more than to go to him, to thank him, just to see him again.

But she couldn't. A single, involuntary sob escaped her as she recognised what was happening beyond the impervious barrier. The darkness that was Ghirahim, most of his power leashed, her sense of him mocking and cruel and filled with a twisted, malicious amusement. He didn't know what Link was, what he might yet become – had been meant to become, and it almost broke her heart – and he was toying with him.

And as long as she left, as long as there was no more goddess reborn on the other side of that golden door, that was all he would do. He would leave to chase her, and Link would be spared. But if she stayed, Ghirahim would cut through anything and everything to get to her, even a half-forged and unready blade.

Trembling, she forced herself up on legs that felt as though they would barely support her weight. There was a message left here, just as she'd known, drawn in faded loops and arcs of joyous spirit the way Hylia had always thought of such things. She read it without trying, without thinking: "You who are chosen to carry out the goddess' great mission have reached this first of two sacred springs. Here at this sacred Skyview Spring, the spirit maiden must purify herself before travelling to the second, the Earth Spring, hidden away amidst the scorched rocks of Eldin. Remain always mindful of the heavy task entrusted unto you, and continue towards your fate."

The statue shone, her reading of the message triggering some ancient lock, and a broken stone tablet appeared from its centuries-old resting place in a little pocket of space, lying before the statue's stone feet. She remembered it, remembered setting the keys into the stone and shattering the map. Why hadn't things gone as she'd expected?

She could find the Earth Spring without the map. She'd leave it for Link, who needed it and the safe passage it would give him more than she ever could. If only she could just – even just tell him that she was unhurt, if only she could even just say thank you, inadequate words for the depth of all she'd felt when she sensed him beyond the door. If only she could leave him a message…

She fished in the pockets of her bleached dress for her crumpled handkerchief, its carefully-stitched monogram now as white as the rest of it but still visible by its threads. She walked across the water that still shimmered with her own – with Hylia's – power, and only afterwards realised that she had done it, looking at the rippled surface in sudden shock. But there was no time for that, pain and fear edging her friend's determination and resolve, and she lifted the tablet just enough to trap her handkerchief under its corner. He would know it was her. He would know that she knew, and that she was still alive.

It was all she could do.

As the overwhelming memories continued to slowly fade, the young woman who called herself Zelda laid both hands over her heart, closed her eyes, and vanished in a shimmer of golden light.

Well! We've made it this far! With Zelda beginning to awaken her powers and past-life memories, we are finally at the point where, according to the ORO, you should begin reading from Chapter 1 of Out of Time (story ID: 13922013)…! I'll be updating that for a while next for this very reason, but if you haven't read that so far, you're in luck: quite a few chapters exist already, so you can get a solid chunk of reading in.

Patch Notes
- Impa given sensible reason for only catching up with Zelda later.
- Reasons given for Zelda's behaviour.
- Memory cascade stage set for explanation for Zelda's later behaviour.
- Implausible "change of clothes" given plausible reason.

I do not in any way buy that the Sheikah just happen to have a white dress in Zelda's exact size lying around. But I do absolutely buy that being worn by the source of all that blazing golden divine light would bleach anyone's clothes!

As for poor Impa, she actually arrived at Skyview Spring (or at least on the edge of it, since she can't get in) too early, and started backtracking, but missed Zelda on her way here. So she'll just have to trek onward to Eldin once the Sheikah who Link will shortly meet can get a message to her. She's trying!