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“Link, you’ve returned!”
The young hero in question pauses in the doorway, turning about to find not one, but both of his princesses standing there on the path, smiling at him. They’re not very wide smiles, but they’re genuine all the same, and he offers back one of his own as he dips a low bow. He may be the hero, but even so, Mama has at least taught him to know what respect is, and while there are few who know as much as to offer it, he still finds it important to do so. He thinks they appreciate the gesture too, as neither princess scolds him for it like some ladies do, and instead offer back their own curtsies. Zelda’s is very brief, a light dip and touch of the skirts, but Aurora’s is more elegant, a true testament of the time she’d once known.
“How were your travels?” The elder of the two (physically at least) asks him, waiting while he sheds his cloak and folds it over one arm before moving to enter the castle before them. He'd let them go first, but as he’s currently in the doorway already, it makes sense to go ahead and just hold it for them instead, something which earns him two more sweet smiles.
“Good.”
“Did you see much?” Aurora asks, pausing in the way he’s come to learn means she wants him to take her arm as they walk. Zelda, ahead of them, stiffens when he does, but as he’s still not sure what she wants him to do instead , he just goes along.
“Yes.”
A laugh, one gloved hand settling in the crook of his arm as the younger smiles at him. “Are you going to say anything about it, or do you intend to make us keep asking for more?”
And as he’s not sure what she wants to hear, he just says what he can think to. “There were many monsters, but not as much as before. I found a town too.”
That has the attention of both girls, and they’re immediately asking about the state of the place. Were the people in good health? Were their many establishments and houses, or just a few buildings gathered close for safeties sake? How had they treated him? Was there any news from other such locations?
It’s the usual sort of thing they ask when they find a new town out there in the midst of the wasteland that Ganon had left to them, and he’s just as eager as they are to have found it. It also means that they head immediately for the study, a little-used room right now, but which Zelda is attempting to clean up and actually use, although there’s little left in the ways of royal duties right now. There will be though, she assures, so he accepts that.
“This is very exciting,” the elder of the two girls comments, moving for the map they’d spread over one crumbling wall and taking a quill from her desk. “Where would you say it was, Link?”
And it takes a moment. He has to look over the whole of the big parchment they've steadily been marking up, and try and recall how far and in what direction the little town had been from their last discovery. “Here,” he says at last, pointing out a place that’s quickly marked over with dark ink by the princess’s quill. “I’d say there were fifty people at most.”
“So many!” Zelda crows.
Aurora looks disturbed by the words, but bites her tongue. This world she’s woken to is very different from her own, they are learning, and the lack of people, or buildings, or much of anything at all , seems to upset her sometimes. She’s usually quiet about it though, not wanting to upset either of them or shame them for the world left in their hands. It's not their fault, she’s whispered to him before, that things are as they are now. She’s just getting used to it still.
“Yes,” he nods, trying for a smile that’s returned two-fold. “There are.”
Zelda is almost beaming as she wipes inky fingers on her skirts. It’s just an old work dress, nothing elegant or royal like Aurora wears. She says it’s better this way, as there are no servants or the like to do work so she must herself, and fine things only get in the way. Impa has accommodated of course, making the more appropriate work gowns, and he thinks it suits her very much. Aurora doesn’t follow suit of course, but that’s alright, they are each adjusting in their own ways.
“We will of course have to travel out there sometime, and speak with them. If Hyrule is going to rebuild, we need to get people to help us with building roads and homes and walls and everything.”
Those words make the displaced princess smile a bit, but only slightly. She doesn’t add to their conversation though, just standing in the doorway and watching him and Zelda chatter, their eyes dancing with subdued excitement.
“I’ll try and clear the monsters out soon,” he promises, “so you can get there safely.”
Zelda smiles. He smiles back. Their map has seven towns now, and nearly three hundred people have been found scattered across the kingdom. If they can encourage everyone to work together, they can rebuild the remains of Castletown, including the walls! They could create a haven against the monsters outside where their people could at last live without fear! They might even be able to raise a militia!
Zelda’s eyes are sparkling as they take in their map, hands dancing with joy that makes his own so much greater. “This is amazing!”
“It is,” he agrees, not too loud though, because he wants to hear her voice keep wavering like that; like she’s about to start laughing all of a sudden. “It really is.”
She doesn’t turn an eye to him, just keeps looking at her map, but he doesn’t mind. It's good, he’s glad she’s so happy, and he’s glad he could make her happy. Maybe next time, he can come back with even better news and her eyes will smile too, and she’ll forget about worrying about talking to elders and finding materials, just for long enough to be happy again.
His thoughts are interrupted by Aurora though, stepping further into the room with a pinched sort of attempt at a smile, one that’s more real when they both look to her, less pained at their finding joy in something that must be, to her, so very simple, or even sad. “We also found something while you were away.”
“You did?”
“Yes,” violet flicker to meet blue, waiting for permission- he thinks- from the elder girl, who nods, granting it. “Do you want to see?”
And of course he does, so he lets her lead him this time, Zelda following at their backs with steps just the slightest bit lighter, eyes still flickering with joy even despite the arm laced with his own (sometimes he wonders if he should ask if she wants to walk so, for him to offer his arm to her instead).
He’s taken about through empty corridors and down winding steps that he thinks should go down to the dungeons, but somehow don’t, despite going on a very long time indeed. They should be very far down, but somehow aren’t in the castle’s very depths yet, which he only knows by the thin little windows they pass by and the light still filtering in through them. At last though, the come upon another wide, ruined corridor that seems to once have held paintings and artworks, if the shredded canvases and ruined frames scattered about are anything to guess at. Absently, he wonders what they would have shown when they were first hung, mourns the loss of the beauty he’ll never get to behold.
“This way,” Aurora chirps, tugging at his hand as she walks to what remains of an old suit of armor. They'd taken the thing mostly to bits a while back, hoping to use the pieces for him to wear but finding them too big and heavy. They’d never put the suit back together again though, not knowing how, so it sits rather forlornly as a crumbled guard to an equally crumbled hall.
The princess however, does not seem to seek said metal soldier’s company, moving just beside instead and running her fingers along the stone that, once upon a time, would have been covered with a grand picture, but now is only framed in the remains of what might have been sparkling gold before it became so tarnished.
He looks back to Zelda, but she just smiles, urging his eyes forwards with a little nod of her head that he obeys, but not without some confusion.
It takes a bit for Aurora to get at what she’d been trying, pretty face screwed up in an exasperated frown, but both he and Zelda wait patiently, quiet lest they upset the youngest in her attempts. Presently, however, her face lights again and something clicks in the wall, a great groaning of stones sounding and then the very wall itself is shifting.
His first reaction is to catch the princess and pull her back, putting himself between the shifting stones and the two girls, but Aurora only squawks with surprise, rather than fear, and Zelda’s soft chuckle assures him as her hand finds his shoulder. “It’s supposed to do that.”
He glances back and finds warmth in that soft blue gaze, gentle like a guiding fairies’ light. “You’re sure?”
“This is what we wanted you to see,” Aurora sighs, trying to smile still, but failing badly.
He messed up again. This is something normal from before, from back in her time, and they’re treating it with fear. He needs to help her feel at home here in the castle that would have been hers, not treat the place like a trap every time it doesn’t do what he thought it would.
“Shall we enter?” It’s a hopeful thing, a slight dancing of lights in her own dusky stare as it falls on him, pleading him to answer with a ‘yes’.
“Okay.”
He expects the room to be like a dungeon, and in some ways, it is. There's a brief second of stillness, quite darkness, and then, like in a dungeon, light appears around them. He’d never been able to determine how the dungeons are lit, but someone has harnessed it in this room, and when the soft yellow glow fills the space, he finds his jaw dropping.
The place looks entirely untouched by the carnage wreaked on the rest of the castle. The stone is solid still, the room well kept. There are small windows in the one wall, slitted little things that are blocked off now, but must have let in some natural light too, once. Framed beneath them is a desk, not a great splintering thing, but one that looks glossy beneath its coat of dust, although fresh finger trails dust one edge, like maybe the girls had touched it when they found the place, admiring, like he does now, the quality of the thing. There’s a great backed chair behind it, cushioned with green fabric that’s worn in places from long use, but shows no sign of moths or tearing or the damage time ought to have done to it.
Besides the desk and chair, there’s both not much in the room and quite a lot indeed. The walls on either side are positively lined with books, shelves covering either side of the room from floor to ceiling. And where there aren’t books, there are boxes and baskets and scrolls all piled together wherever they will fit. Things that ought to sparkle, but blanket themselves in a grey covering of dust, are pushed here and there on the lower shelves, like someone had left them there absently, once, a very long time ago, and meant to put them away elsewhere but had forgotten.
“Turn around,” Aurora urges him, sneaking around him in the doorway and moving over to the desk.
He does as he’s bidden, and when he does, his breath catches.
The ceiling of the room is high, very high indeed in fact, at least for a small side room as this must have once been before becoming what’s clearly some sort of study. Between the door and the ceiling though, a great piece of the stone has been covered over with what he thinks might be plaster, and that, as well, is covered over with paint. The map in Zelda’s study seems, suddenly, so crude in comparison to the detailed thing inked on the walls, so carefully crafted so that whomever sits at the desk can see it easily, can spot out whatever they like and see not only Hyrule, but all else around it as well . He can see the lines where Hyrule’s boarders kiss Calatia in the west, but also where the old kingdoms of Labrynna and Holodrum, which Aurora speaks of sometimes, would have been, in the east. Above, Hytopia is painted, and below, the great swath of desert they say Ganon comes from frames the doorway.
“ Woah ...”
Zelda’s smiling when his eyes fall back to her. He wants to say something, to whisper something to convey the awe he feels, made greater with each second at the sight of small villages marked out on stone, at great towers and dungeons and fields and- and! There’s so much! There’s so much of what Hyrule once was! So much land, and great twisting roads, and forests that form clumps of green over the stone, mountains that rise high in blue and purple-
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” She asks, eyes shining, real this time, before turning to look back up at it. “I’m going to copy it.”
It will be different, now. There won’t be the villages that are there painted above them, but it’s a fine map of the land all the same. Much better than the one they’ve been making.
“There’s more, too!” Aurora’s voice pitches with eagerness, hands clasped tight as she waits for him to look his fill before dutifully turning back to her. When he does though, she only motions again to the wall, but down this time.
How he’d missed it is easy, the painting of Hyrule so beautiful and eye catching, but framing the door are weapons of so many sorts, but mostly blades. They’re pristine, as though forged yesterday. If he had to guess, whatever magic has preserved this room rests on them too, for they aren’t even slightly covered in dust, glittering on their mounts and arranged to allow for a great many on the wall. It's like a small armory.
But that’s the whole place, he thinks. There’s books and writings all along two walls, the map and the weapons along the front, and at the back, between the windows, curious looking items, even masks, hang between the slits of windows. It’s as though the longer he looks , the more there is to see , and no matter how any times he turns himself about, he still can’t seem to take it all in.
Aurora giggles, Zelda smiles, and he finds himself doing both as he shakes his head in awe. “This is amazing!” He turns to the younger princess, curiosity bubbling up in a thousand questions demanding to be spoken at once. “Where are we?”
Her smile is warm, but distant as it turns from him to the walls and she jumps up, casually, to perch on the desk, as though it isn’t at least a hundred years old (although, she is as well). “My great grand-uncle's study.”
He thinks his heart skips a beat, sadness for her washing away his excitement as he sees the bittersweet shine in violet hues. “Oh.”
Another smile, playful this time as she bats a hand in his direction, dismissive. “Don’t frown so, it doesn’t pain me to see it. If anything,” she continues, feet swinging freely beneath her, “it’s a bit like going home for a while.” There’s a breath where they accept the words, but it’s over in a moment as she speaks again. “He used to take me in here when I was little and tell me about the things inside.”
“He did?” Zelda asks, looking about, hands folded neatly so as to not touch anything.
A nod makes red hair fly freely. “Yes. I was very, very small when he passed, but I can remember a few things. Not enough for a good story, but I know he gathered all this himself.” She nods towards he shelves, “wrote many of these books himself too.”
The elder princess’ hands are twitching, clasped tightly together so much that it makes her younger predecessor giggle.
“You can touch them if you want. The whole place is spelled, so there’s no danger of them falling apart or anything.”
“You’re sure?”
A wide gesture about, smile bright. “What are books for if not reading? He poured a lot of effort into them, so it’d be a shame to leave them sitting on the shelf forever.”
It might be rude to compare his princess to a beast, but like a dog let off the lead, she’s immediately darting for a shelf, fingers trailing nearly reverently over the spines of the books, breath sharp and shaking with excitement that makes the younger giggle again.
He follows suit. Slower, but when he comes to stand beside her, she smiles, another bright one, a real one, one that touches blue eyes and makes them dance when they flash to him a second before turning to the books. Her breath hitches when she draws one out, and he finds himself laughing as well when the second she’s cracked it open, she buries her nose between the pages and breathes .
Aurora isn’t quite cackling, but her laughter is slipping from polite to uncontrolled as her feet kick freely, almost hitting the desk.
“It smells amazing!”
He has no clue what that means, but she shoves it in his face too, eyes still bright and smile brighter with each second as she urges him to take a whiff.
It smells like old paper and strong ink, slightly musty, definitely old, but he nods, trying to smile and finding it real when she takes the tome and hugs it close, arms wrapping tight as she sighs. “I haven’t held a book in ages!”
“Try reading it,” the other princess encourages, leaning closer to them from her perch. “I think that one is a grimoire, but there are lots of different works on those shelves.”
“And you say one person wrote them?” Another book slips from the shelf, flipped about carefully so the elder princess can inspect its title, etched with care over sturdy leather. “How can that be?”
He doesn’t think he’s seen either of them smile so much before, if ever at all, and never around each other. “My great-grand-uncle was a hero, so he traveled all over the place and saw a lot of things. Most of those books on that wall are all the things he found and studied, and I think one shelf is just his travel journals-” Zelda’s eyes immediately flicker up to scan the mentioned shelves, searching, and Aurora’s feet tap back to the floor, crossing silently to reach out and grab a particularly battered volume. “Here,” it’s handed over with an easy smile. “He never let me read them, said I was too small, but I’d know them by sight easily.”
This time, when the book cracks open, even he can smell the difference.
“It‘s salty ,” he finds himself saying, making the younger girl giggle and the older one frown down at the volume in confusion.
“That’s because he used to sail,” the displaced princess explains, reaching for another one. “He used to tell me he only needed to smell one and he’d remember what time he’d written it in.”
“Do they even smell different?”
“Yes!” The first on the shelf is lifted, handed over and dutifully sniffer by both he and Zelda. It smells like apples of all things. Apples and rain. “This was his first adventure. This,” another one held out, and with nervous chuckles, they sniff again; it smells like straw and animals, “the year he spent on his family farm.” She grabs another, it smells crisp, but also like a roaring bonfire. “This one is from his second adventure, and this one-” it bears the strange scent of nuts, but also thick all over with magic, “his third, and-”
They do all smell different, but the longer that Aurora goes on, the more he finds himself in awe as he reaches for a book himself, this one decorated beautifully yet grotesque with pictures of monsters. The words are still strange to him, Hylian still a new language to his mind, but he recognizes the beasts within, or at least some of them. “How many adventures did this hero have?”
“I’m not sure!” Aurora answers, laughing slightly. “I think even he lost count!”
It’s a strange idea, but the longer they look, the more he can understand how it would be. Additionally, the longer they linger, the more Aurora says, and considering she’s usually so quiet, so nervous to speak lest she somehow upset them all, it’s a pleasure to see. It’s good to see them both smile, Zelda with her arms full of books, eyes wider every second as she scans the words and admires the pictures, and the other princess laughing and recounting stories and memories as she offers more volumes or points out odd items to them.
They spend some good hours in the study.
When it does come time to leave though, Link’s stomach sounding and startling both of the girls into trying to drag him to get food, Aurora catches his arm again out in the hall. Not to walk, he finds, but instead, her fingers trail down to tangle with his, eyes dark and bright all at once as they lift to him. “This study was set aside by my great grandmother for the hero’s use. I’m sure we’ll all enjoy the books and everything, but I want it to stay a space for the hero. There's a lot in there he used to use- maybe it could help you as well.”
It takes a second for the words to sink in, but when he attempts to protest that this room belonged to her ancestor, that everything within ought to pass to her , she just laughs it off and reminds him that she has no use for swords or bestiaries or any such thing.
“You’re the hero. He always used to talk about using his knowledge to help those to come after us; I think he’d want you to have it all.”
Despite every protest, both girls insist.
Link accepts, if only to get it over with and head down to dinner.
While the study is, as far as the girls are concerned, his now, Link finds that they all tend to gravitate to the space. It’s warm- not necessarily physically, as they must light a fire on the hearth that, apparently, he’d missed underneath all of the books- but most certainly in the way it makes him feel. Zelda says it’s the books, that any room with books is made more welcome for their existence. Aurora’s own answer is that it feels like it’s last owner.
“His magic is stepped into the walls. He put lots of protections on this room when my great-grandmother gave it to him.” Her smile is bitter sweet as she perches, again, on the desk. The chair is right there for use, but she never touches it. “It feels like he’s still here sometimes.”
Sitting on the floor, book propped against her knees, Zelda nods at the words. “There’s something, I agree. I never knew him, but this room does feel safer than the rest of the castle.”
“Great-Grandmama charmed it every week or so,” comes the soft answer. “She always worried about him.” She giggles again, although it sounds almost like a sob. “I think if all Hyrule Castle fell, this room would still remain; that’s how much she wanted him to stay safe.”
And safe it is. They call it his, but they all gather within the study whenever he’s at the castle, spending what time they’re not repairing and cleaning the other rooms just sitting about with books and tea. There’s ever so much tea too, preserved somehow since last the owner was there. Aurora makes it with great care and serves it in perfect little china cups he thinks he’ll break, but can’t say no too when she looks so happy to use them.
Sitting there, sometimes, he could almost swear, out of the corner of his eye, he’ll see a figure in the desk chair. None of them ever use it, feeling odd to try and slide it out and settle in its seat, but even so, sometimes he could swear there’s a presence there, at the desk as Aurora perches on the one corner that, unlike the rest of the surface, is not entirely covered in old maps and books. Zelda always sits on the floor, by the fire, and he tends to sit with his back to the desk, staring up at the map on the wall.
He thinks he can hear a quill working some days, a warmth in the air behind him. The study smells of magic, but he’ll catch the faint scent of ripe apples sometimes too, mixing with ink and parchment and old, tooled leather. He could swear, sometimes, that if he turns about fast enough, there will be feet beneath the desk and someone sitting in the chair, someone with dark eyes like Aurora’s, working away with a soft humming as they all sit about reading and staring at the life’s work of a man long dead.
He’s never seen Aurora’s great-granduncle, not even a painting. He’s never met him, never asked the princess what he looked like, or anything else, but before he knows it, the smell of apples and heady magic, the draping of old spells and the presence of old books becomes something of a presence they all bask before; it becomes like a home, maybe family. There’s no ghost as far as he can tell, haunting the room, but they all feel, in an odd way, as though they’re being looked after as they sit in there, leaving the presence the use of the desk chair as they gather and enjoy a sample of solace from the desolation left for them.
He thinks, sometimes, that it’s like tasting history, like seeing Aurora’s world for himself, rather than just hearing her speak of it.
It’s nice.
Unlike the girls, he can’t read most of what’s written in the old books, but he is learning, and until he can read it all, he pages through the ones with only pictures. Sketchbooks, Aurora says they are.
They're lovely. They’re all battered and beaten, with marked-up covers nobody bothered to title or etch pretty pictures upon, but they’re full to bursting of life. There are pictures- sketches- of a little cottage on a hill, all surrounded by trees. There’s some of the castle; far grander back then, of villages, of strange statues and creatures carved into the stone of old buildings. Sometimes he’ll find a half-finished piece of an animal of some kind, one the displaced princess will tell him the name of, talking about it in animated speech and wavering hands as she tries to describe it.
Most of the animals are the kind she says belong on farms, or in forests, but sometimes there’s odd ones she laughs at; kangaroos, flying bears, that sort of thing.
The most predominant thing in the books though, is people . There’s a man with a bristling mustache, with a smile that’s worn and fond, but the eyes are always missing; rubbed out and added again until there’s only darkness where they should be, like the face never came out right, or like, maybe, it was forgotten with time.
There’s a beautiful smiling girl, with waving hair that’s drawn with such care, reflecting light that isn’t there save on the page, and freckles that dot shaded skin charmingly. She’s always smiling in the pictures, although she too, is drawn over and over, slightly different here and there, like it wasn’t right the first time, or the second, or the third.
What really has his eyes though, rather than the portraits, are the pieces done in one specific book. The thing smells like fires and savory foods, smells caught between some pages, yet, when they’re turned, blood assails his senses and ichor haunts the hasty sketches. The pictures within though, they’re all charming. They’re all of the same people, although different every time and more practiced the further he pages through the book. They’re all nameless to him, but he learns to recognize the one draped in a heavy looking cape (or perhaps a scarf) paired with shimmering armor, even when both are absent. The same is true of the man in plate armor, and the other with a pelt draped heavy over broad shoulders. A sweeping cape lovingly detailed with the crest he sometimes sees throughout the castle is a feature only sometimes seen with striking eyes, but he knows the man even without the thing.
They have no names, but the love with which their faces are traced out across the pages is clear. The love between them all the more so in images of them laughing, or piled together and asleep. There's sometimes only one or two depicted on the pages, caught like life itself in black and white across the parchment like they’d never known their image was being taken down. They seem unawares of the artist capturing their semblance forevermore between worn leather bindings, and instead live and love naturally, unawares of the audience of three young people, ages in the future, who look and spy upon them through worn and tattered pages.
It’s beautiful.
Aurora has no names to give him, unlike she can to some of the portraits. This man is Ralph and these ladies are the Oracles, but the eight men and boys whose faces fill a book bound in blackened leather and stained with blood? Their names she does not know.
Still, he treasures the pictures. They say much of the men within, but many a time it leaves him wondering. “What do you suppose their relationship with the hero was?”
“I don’t know,” Zelda hums, leaning against his shoulder to look, even as Aurora, again on her perch, leans down on his left to peek as well. “The artist only ever shows them with each other, never with himself.” Because they know, by now, that none of the images shown within are self-portraits, and it seems no art they’ve found yet in all the castle will reveal the face of the hero that they all feel they almost know, after basking in the work of his hands and the sense of his soul.
“I think they would have been friends,” Aurora hums, brushing hair back behind her ears as it attempts to swing over her eyes and block her view. “He had a great many traveling companions in his youth, so perhaps they are some of them,”
“Then why did he not tell you about them?” he finds himself asking, turning from an image of one of them (the one with the striking eyes) dozing and sprawled against the back of the man with the charming face. The next page reveals two smaller figures playing with a great dog, one which Aurora has given up trying to identify as either an actual dog or a small wolf. “If he told you about his other companions, why leave them out?”
“Perhaps they had a falling out?” Zelda suggests, leaning a bit closer, head nearly resting on his shoulder as she tries to look at the page. He holds the book out further for her sake.
Aurora frowns. “Maybe?”
They don’t have a way to find answers though. Not at present at least. On longer nights, when they’re all too restless to rest and too nervous and terrified to sleep, they often will curl up before the fire in this room, worn wool blankets pulled tight around them, and Zelda will read from one of the journals, but they’ve a long way to go, he thinks, before they get past even the first couple of adventures. The first one is good, terrifying at times, worrisome at others, but if he pretends it’s only a story, he can enjoy it alright. Remembering it was a child younger than any of them, only the age of some of the small ones he’s helped back home during his travels, it pains him, but knowing the boy will live to be an old man, a great-grand-uncle, it helps. Still, there’s never any mention of those now easily recognized figures in the sketchbooks.
It’s a very long time indeed before he knows the names to go with the faces of the men he sees, and by then, he thinks it might have been just in time. They’d begun reading, he and the girls, about how the hero had met them when the nine of them were all thrown together, and that is how they learn what their names are. There are some things the writer shares about them, and he’s just beginning to hope he will know what endeared them to their dear hero, but then trouble comes.
Portals spring up in the kingdom, and the people turn to the princesses for answers. The study is abandoned, for the time being, and back again they must don the roles of hero and the rulers of the kingdom as they help their people. Zelda bids him to look into the magic, as he’s the best familiar with such a thing, and one thing leads to another and, well-
When he sees the faces of those well-worn pages now in the very life, things start making a bit of sense.
They’d joked, at times, that the curly haired fellow in some pictures might have been his ancestor- they look so similar- but as he stands among seven well known faces he’s seen gaze so fondly on a reflection of his own, he realizes maybe it was in fact himself.
If he knows them though, he also knows the unfamiliar face in their number as well. It takes a moment, but only a little logic would give the answer, although the faint smell of apples and heady, heavy magic, tells him long before he actually bothers to think about it.
The Hero of Legend does have dark eyes, nearly the same color as Aurora’s, although a wee bit darker and far more burdened with the weight of the world, like Zelda’s. And he is the Hero of Legend, ‘Legend’ now, as they’ve taken to using their hero’s titles as his suggestion (not at all inspired by the journals he’d been reading only days ago), there’s no denying it. It’s not just the magic, or the feeling of his presence, or the scent of apples, although they play a part in painting the picture fully. The sword on his back though, not one from the wall but clearly far better, is the sword of a hero. The way he holds himself is with the same surety and strength that Zelda does, and even the way he speaks holds a similar cadence to Aurora’s own.
That, and, Link (Hyrule now) can see, just by looking at the man, the traces of the child he’d read about, watched grow over long nights pouring through ancient pages, but has long since come to admire. It’s there, there in so many things, and cold at first though the other may be, there’s simply no missing the cause, knowing what he does.
It’ll be slow going, but that first night after meeting them, Hyrule decides, in the privacy of his own mind, he will do his all to get to know, in person, the man he’s come to consider a solace against the chaos of the world. Even if Legend doesn’t seem to have a clue as to why he’d want to.