Thank you once again for all your lovely reviews! Very glad it's been worth the wait all these many times I've been held up.

I have to admit, I did smile writing Para in the last chapter! But yeah... messing with time and destiny and so on has had major, major consequences.

Chapter 54: Impa

Impa watched respectfully as her charge, her goddess, her sworn liege, stood before the Gate of Time in the soft midday sun, playing a slow and stately melody that seemed more powerful and resonant than the small instrument she held could possibly produce. Sacred Parasova sat in front of her, the age-flecked screen on the back of her head folded open, showing images and numbers Impa did not have the knowledge to understand. Such was the domain of the goddess, who had given her all, even her very divinity, for the people she loved and who had sworn their fates to her: though a part of Impa was curious, it would have felt almost like sacrilege to be able to understand and read the symbols the sacred one had produced for her mistress' guidance.

She turned, slowly, surveying the area. As Her Radiance had stated the day before, the mechanical people who had once lived here seemed to be dead. No-one had come to worship at the temple, nor to investigate the strange happenings at it – and Impa did not believe that the robots could hide themselves from the all-seeing eyes of the Sheikah. That meant they were not there, and that in turn confirmed the goddess' words. They were dead.

Her sharp eyes scanned across clean-swept white flagstones, and beyond them to the rushing river, shimmering blue beneath the bright blue sky above. Its banks, too, were carven stone, and the bridge across it ornate in its simplicity. The square archway at its far end was intact, not crumbled as it had been in the time from which they had come, and beyond it she could see an intricate mixture of lush, flower-flecked grass, low and elegantly trimmed bushes, stone-flagged paths, and rails like those upon which she and the goddess had travelled to reach this place. Impa had never before seen such a sculpted, tamed landscape: the Sheikah lived on the move, knowing the vast forests, the rivers and mountains, intimately, but leaving no impression upon them. They could not afford to: Ghirahim and his monstrous forces hunted them, and any obvious sign of habitation would draw a slavering horde the moment it was discovered. Had the old city looked like this, before it was destroyed and the forest drew its remains into its concealing embrace? Had a strange, tame landscape like this one been another gift of the goddess to her beloved people, before the demons had fallen upon them all?

Turning and looking at the goddess reborn before her, hearing the magic in her music resonate with time itself, Impa could believe it. It seemed like something she might wish for, her youthful face kind and caring without the faintest sign she had ever known want, her manner and her reactions subtly telling Impa over and over that the world Impa had grown up knowing, hard and harsh and deadly, was not the world as it should have been.

Impa could not imagine a kinder world. She had seen death, and had risked it herself time and again. She had killed in battle and she had killed in silence and in stealth, pre-emptively. She had granted her own kin the last mercy, denying the demon lord the sacrifice he would have made of them. Midway through the third decade of her life, Impa knew how to be efficient, ruthless, and deadly, and to keep all love and care for the shadows and the silence, for only there could such softer things ever be safe. She could imagine flying more easily than she could imagine a world in which the next day of her life was not bought with bloody blade.

And yet, when she looked at Zelda, at the goddess who had sacrificed her all and been reborn a mortal to save those she loved, she could almost feel it, a whisper of a wish, a promise of a future fainter than a dream. Only someone like this could bring forth such a world, and once again Impa silently repeated her vows, strengthened rather than weakened by the mortal goddess with all her fears and tears, all her love and all her care. She had always been sworn to serve the goddess, a distant abstract, a shared memory, an idea and an ideal – but now that the young woman was there before her, all that Impa had once thought of as devotion paled into insignificance against the fierceness of her new feelings. She would fight for her, and die for her – and gladly, even joyously, if her very death bought just one more breath for her goddess, her Zelda.

Impa turned again, her quick glance flitting across the landscape. Nothing had changed, save the occasional bird flying overhead, or insects darting across the rippling water of the river. The steps from which Link had come remained empty, descending into shadow.

Soft-shod feet silent on the stone, Impa began to walk a quiet patrol, guided and reassured by the melody playing behind her and the power she could feel in it, by the presence of her goddess and her promise of a future.

. . .

Impa sensed it moments before she heard it: the hours-long melody finally drawing to a close. Casting one last glance across the still, peaceful landscape, she leapt down from the wall, landing in an easy crouch to soften the impact, and jogged back across the bridge to where her goddess stood. Zelda was only just turning to look for her when she arrived, and seemed surprised to see her already only a few paces away.

"Impa?"

"Yes, Your Radiance?"

"I've finished attuning the Gate. We… we can go through now." Her sky-blue eyes flicked up and down, troubled and sad, halting for several moments on the bandage wrapped neatly around Impa's upper arm. "But, first, I… think I can heal your arm. Will you let me try?"

Impa blinked, surprised. "...Of course, Your Radiance." Two impulses warred within her: the first and strongest to accept, for every moment she spent in less than perfect condition was another moment in which the risk of her death, and worse, her charge's death, was higher than it might be; the second to demur, to not ask kind, radiant Zelda to expend more effort on healing one of her servants when she had a far greater task before her.

Zelda smiled, sadly and almost gratefully, and stepped to the side to undo the bandage, her fingers deft and quick. Impa watched her, betraying no pain in expression nor motion, but the look on Zelda's face as she studied the wound beneath almost made her wish she hadn't let her see, wish that she could wrap a protective shroud around the goddess so that she might never again be saddened by hardship and pain.

"I'm so sorry… I should have been faster to protect us."

"You need never apologise to me, Your Radiance," Impa replied, her low, quiet voice utterly firm: half a statement, half a promise. "It is the greatest honour of my life to be one who serves you now. I would do the same again a thousand times, and gladly; if I must give my life for you, I would do so happily."

"Let us both hope that you do not have to," Zelda murmured, her expression still sad, weighted down with all a goddess' cares. As Impa nodded, she lifted the little blue instrument back to her lips and began to play once more. Less stately, more vital than the previous melody, at once soft and soothing yet with an undercurrent of strength, Impa felt it brush against her like the faintest kiss of a cool breeze; felt it slowly strengthen in her like the warmth of the sun. Pain she had been keeping firmly banished to a corner of her mind began to slowly fade, her skin crawling slightly as flesh knitted back together under the unseen command of the goddess' music, and the feeling of her goddess' divine power employed merely to aid her almost brought tears to her eyes.

Zelda looked hopeful and anxious as she let the music fade, and Impa slowly raised her left hand, flexing it, clenching it into a fist; moved on to her elbow and shoulder, testing her range of motion: painlessly normal, feeling as strong as she ever had. The smile of relief and happiness that crossed Zelda's face was, despite the sorrow that overshadowed it, something that Impa would have killed to see if that was what it took. Overcome, she bowed deeply to her.

"Thank you, Your Radiance."

Time for a little time with Impa! Another short chapter, perhaps, but, as long promised, work is finally quiet again and you will be seeing a lot more of me.

No patch notes this time, unless something about Impa's devotion to her incarnated deity counts, and I don't think we really see enough of that to know if I would have needed to patch anything or not.