Link and Zelda rode hard to the east. Eventually, the rising sun came up, blinding them. But they just ducked their heads and soldiered on.

They stopped to eat some cold leftovers from their packs sometime around noon, but they didn't talk more than necessary and were soon on the road again. Like during the Dark Days, they felt driven to hurry. Who knew how long it would take to search the human world to find the prince? And who knew how much time they had been given to do it?

As the sun was beginning to set, they veered off the main highway that led from Castle Town to Via, in Meridor, and headed northeast. The terrain was rough, compared to the road, which slowed their progress, but it was the most direct route to the Lost Woods.

It was twilight before they finally saw the hazy outline of the forest on the horizon. Do you want to keep going? Zelda asked.

"No, even I can't find my way around in there with no light. We'll wait until morning."

He hopped off her back and she transformed. Then she sat on the ground with a heavy sigh. "Phew! That's a lot more tiring than I remember."

"It's been a really long time since you transformed," Link pointed out. "And even longer than that since you did anything like this."

Link and Zelda had rarely taken their animal forms after the Dark Days. Sometimes, back when they were still young, they had snuck out of the castle and transformed just to enjoy a gallop or a flight around the dark sky, but as time had gone on and they had settled into being monarchs, and had the added obligation of children to take care of, they had gone out alone less and less. Eventually, Link's shoulder injury grounded him permanently. Zelda had ridden him around a few times after that, but eventually she too found it too hard on her joints and she had never taken her form again.

"It's easy to remember what it was like when we were at our peak," Zelda said. "It's a lot harder to remember how long it took us to get there."

Link laughed. "True. It took me some time to get strong enough to fly all the time."

"The same was true for me as a horse. You just weren't around to see it. By the time we met, I had been transforming for several years."

Link got to work setting up their camp while Zelda rested. He made a small fire with some charcoal from the bottom of one of the baskets, then set up a small wedge tent. He had to rather admire the way it was made, with short segments of poles that locked into one another. The shorter segments were much easier to carry than the long poles that were normally necessary to set up such a tent.

When he was done, he turned around to see Zelda sitting beside the fire, some leftovers heating up in a little skillet with legs. But it wasn't her cooking that caught his attention. She was cupping her breasts with both hands, looking down at them as if something wasn't quite right.

"Need any help with those?" he offered hopefully.

She didn't immediately respond to him, continuing to study her chest. "Were my breasts really this small when I was a teenager? And this high up? They're . . . perky."

Link laughed, and moved to sit beside her. Then, with a mischievous grin, he reached over and slid his hand under hers. "Let me see . . . Yes," he said, testing the weight and feel with his hand, "yes, I think this is how I remember them."

She smacked his hand away. "Anything to get a feel in," she chided, even as she smiled playfully at him.

"Well, you were feeling them," he said defensively. "Why not met? I'm entitled to feel up my wife any time I want. It's in the marriage contract."

"I do not remember that being part of our vows," Zelda said. "And even if it was, I'm not your wife."

Link, who had leaned forward and started to dish himself some supper, stopped. "What do you mean you're not my wife?" he asked, looking back at her.

"'Until death do we part,'" she quoted. "Our marriage ended when you died and left me a widow. Besides," she said, putting her hands on her chest again, "these are clearly pre-marriage breasts. Pre-fourteen-children breasts. We're back in our bodies from before the Dark Days. We weren't married then."

Zelda was just teasing him, but Link frowned so severely, she could see that she had actually made him unhappy. She hadn't thought the idea would bother him. She figured he'd make some joke about getting to do now what he hadn't been able to do before when she was a princess and he was her knight. It was highly unusual for him to be serious about something when Zelda was not.

Link put his plate of steaming food down next to the fire. "Is that what you think?" he asked quietly.

"Well . . . it's technically true, isn't it?" she said with some hesitancy.

He got onto his knees and turned towards her. Cupping her face in his hands, he looked down at her, his blue eyes burning with intensity. "Do you think death in one lifetime could ever nullify our relationship, My Lady?"

Zelda inhaled sharply, as something seemed to shift between the two of them. Unlike in their previous incarnations, where birth wiped out all former memories, Link and Zelda now, in their hastily-reassembled forms, had all the knowledge they had when they were in the Golden Realm—including the history of who they had been, all the way back to the beginning. That they had fallen back into the habits and personalities of their most-recent incarnations was just because those memories were freshest and belonged to the resurrected bodies they were now inhabiting.

But that didn't mean they couldn't slip into their previous selves, as Link was clearly doing now.

Link leaned down, his lips almost touching hers. "Of all things in creation, am I not the only thing that belongs to you and you alone?" he whispered.

"Yes," she whispered back.

"Is not my very soul yours?"

"Yes."

His cheek brushed across hers as he moved to whisper in her ear, sending cold shivers through her as if she had been doused repeatedly with ice water. "Then how can you suggest that I am not your mate, My Lady?"

"I just meant . . ." Zelda started to whisper. "Relative to our last lifetime . . ."

He took her earlobe into his mouth and she gasped and seemed to melt in his arms like butter on a hot pan.

After a minute, he let go. "It doesn't matter," he whispered in her ear, "because there is never an end. I belong to you for all of time."

As Link kissed her and touched her almost reverently, Zelda remembered a moment of her past life as Hylia so strongly, it was less a memory than a full regression—to the point she was no longer sure what time period she was in.

Not too many centuries after she had begun her assignment of protecting the world, a burly, orange-haired thief by the name of Ganondorf stole the Triforce from her temple. She knew that if he integrated it into his being, he would become a god and nothing short of a holy war would have a chance of defeating him.

She had tried recruiting mortals to help her to defeat evil before, but they struggled to avoid being tempted by it—and more than a few succumbed. She knew that none of them would be up to this greatest of challenges. That was when she created Link. Together, they went to fight Ganondorf, but it was already too late; he had already consumed the Triforce of Power and turned into a monstrous being. Link fought him valiantly, but was unable to defeat him because of how overwhelmingly powerful he had become. In a last act of desperation, Hylia used her scepter to open a portal to the Dark World and Link managed to drive Ganondorf into it. The Triforce of Power was lost with him, but at least he was no longer a threat to the very foundations of the heavens.

It was after this battle that Hylia created the Sword of Evil's Bane for Link, so that if Ganondorf ever managed to get out of the Dark World, he would have the ability to defeat him and take back the Triforce of Power.

But Ganondorf found a way to send minions to do his dirty work for him. Many years after his banishment, Hylia found herself having to take refuge in her temple while three sisters—the first ever to use Dark Magic in the world—tried to get in and kill her and take the remaining two pieces of the Triforce.

Link had protected her, fighting all three witches by himself with only the Master Sword to help protect him from their dark spells. When, at last they were defeated, he had staggered into the temple, bleeding heavily from terrible wounds, and collapsed near the door. Hylia had hurried to heal him, crying all the time in fear that he might die. Although she had made him to be her sword and shield, she found that she could not bear the thought that he might die for sake. He was not someone to be sacrificed for the cause and replaced with another golem, as interchangeable as gears in a machine. At some point in their years of working together, Hylia had come to love him.

Who could tell who kissed whom first, but as if seized by a sudden madness which drove all logical thought from their heads, they consummated their passion on the altar. And in that moment of unification, Hylia had a sudden revelation. It was no failure on her part that she lacked the skills necessary to defeat evil on her own. It was no accident of circumstances that she had been forced to create Link to help her. And it was no act of madness that led them to this moment. It was Fate—a force beyond even the gods' control and something all of them were subject to. She had been fated to be lacking so that she would be fated to create that which made her whole.

She knew that their union would produce children and that, too, was fated. The gods had made the world, but had left no part of themselves in it. They had simply made everything and walked away with only Hylia left to watch over it. But Fate did not approve of anyone—not even the gods—treating creation so casually, without attachment or responsibility to what had been created. Just as Hylia had to become attached to the man she had created, so too the gods had to be attached to their world.

Her children with Link would be partly-divine. They would create great marvels and progress civilization because they would have a tiny spark of the creative power of the gods within them. Creation would not be a one-and-done event, but a continual act, never ceasing. And because of that, the gods could never ignore the world. They would have to watch over it themselves and be involved in its care.

And as Zelda surrendered to Link completely in the present moment—as she had done on the altar of her temple that first time, and as she had done countless times since then—she had another sudden insight: of all the gods, only she had ever done this. There were gods who were married, and some who had lovers, but they were all very conscious of their rank and power, and they did not yield either. Even married couples might sometimes compete against one another to see who had the greater power. They even called the other gods to watch and judge a winner. A list was maintained ranking everyone's importance and skill.

None of them had ever or would ever give up their power just to be with another. None of them would ever have their partner's name written beside theirs on a ranking list, acknowledging that it took another person to fully realize one's own power.

But there was one more realization that Hylia did not make at that time—that no one had ever made—and that was that she alone loved completely. There was a Goddess of Love and another of Marriage and Family, but only Hylia was the true goddess of both because she was the only one who had truly ever had both. Fate had made her the true wielder of Love, the most powerful force in all of existence. She was the only one who had ever surrendered completely to it, and that was the only way that it could ever be mastered.

The next morning, they were up with the dawn—despite having gotten very little in the way of sleep the night before. It had been a very long time since they had had the energy of teenagers—in more ways than one—and they seemed to have plenty to spare.

Zelda made some tea while Link broke camp. They soaked some hardtack biscuits in their tea to make them edible, then rounded off their light breakfast with a fresh apple apiece.

Zelda rode Link up to the edge of the forest, but she had to transform in order to go inside; the trails were too narrow and the trees too low overhead to admit a horse.

As usual, Link knew the way—although this time from memory moreso than just instinct—and soon they were in the large clearing where once Hylia's grand temple had stood. It had worn down over the eons until there was nothing left but some large stones along its perimeter walls and a small dais in the middle wherein the Master Sword rested.

"Something's not right," Link said, as soon as they stepped into the clearing.

Zelda was startled. "What do you mean?"

"Something's not right," he repeated slowly, looking around at the trees that grew up to the edge of what had once been the temple walls.

"What's not right?"

"Something . . ."

Zelda started to sigh and chide him for being ridiculous, but he interrupted her. "Remember when we were here before?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Remember the voices?"

Suddenly Zelda recalled the indistinct whisperings that seemed to come from the treetops the last two times they had come into the clearing.

"Yes."

"Where are they?"

"I . . . don't know." Even with all her newfound knowledge and memories—and even given that this was her temple—Zelda still didn't understand the mystery of the voices that heralded the coming of the Master Sword. Magic was funny that way; sometimes it evolved in unexpected ways—became its own thing.

Link slowly began to walk across the grassy, lawn-like field. "And there should be fog," he said.

"Fog? On a clear summer's day?"

"Yes. When the Master Sword is in residence, there should be fog. It's part of what keeps its location hidden."

Zelda thought back to their previous trips. There had not been fog when they had come to put the sword away for good, but there had been fog when they brought the sword to the clearing for the first time.

"There was fog when we brought the Master Sword here to be repaired, but it wasn't 'in residence' at the time," Zelda pointed out.

"Perhaps it's better to say that there is fog here any time the Master Sword is not active. The activation clears away the fog."

Then, suddenly, Link was running. Unsure what was happening, Zelda grabbed her bow, which was sticking between her back and the pack, nocked an arrow, and held it in the low-ready position as she went dashing after him.

He skidded to a halt next to the stone brick dais and Zelda came up behind him a moment later. Then she gasped.

The stone block in the middle of the dais, where they had put the Master Sword to rest some three thousand years before, was empty.