Chapter Text
She is unmoving.
“What name do you give this child?”
He shuffles.
“We gather here, at the baptism of Prince Blah Blah…”
The sky darkens and hangs heavy over the lowlands. Link rubs his chin and stares out at the water of Lake Hylia, rippling and diamond-clear. He has lived through the Lake’s summer storms for six years now, perched in a pile-dwelling next to the center islands, his cup always full of Malon’s homebrewed mead. He’d tried to get her to stay a few times, but she had a ranch to run and not a lot of patience for his pining, and so his bed mostly remained empty, nothing but the sound of water to keep him company.
It usually distracts him. It isn’t working. Because on his cluttered table lay an open letter, embossed with the royal crest. An invitation--or, more specifically, a demand, dressed up in perfect cursive and shimmering purple ink.
The baby would surely be as sweet as the last three.
His lone eye flicks to the center island. A sacred dais once lay there, spread out like a stone blanket--he’d stood and watched the Lake fill and clear from the very spot with another by his side. A taped finger had brushed against his palm but was gone before he could grasp it. And there’s no stone now, only tangled wildflowers and grass that grows lush and green-- it is, he supposes, what he fought for.
Last time he saw her was about two years back, the summer wet and brooding, Lake Hylia swollen with rain. She’d flung open his door, mud splattered on her boots and clothes and caked to the tips of her hair. She pulled herself across the foyer like a fish at the end of a hook, clothes dropping on the floor as she maneuvered him to his bed. He said nothing, only sucked on her puckered pink skin and pressed his hands to the small of her back, clinging to her when she whispered that she should go. She’d stayed awhile, though, curled up against him and heartbeat thrumming against his hands, leaving only once he fell asleep.
The sky cracks apart like an eggshell, curtains of velvet rain opening and spreading over the earth, gray and intense and granting no mercy to those sitting beneath them. His hair and clothes are soaked within a minute. He should, if he were honest with himself, start packing for the trip.
It’s just so clean here.
The baptismal font is dusty, and Link swipes a stripe into the side of it. At Zelda’s sharp inhale, he smiles in satisfaction. The priest is glaring daggers, but Link has dealt with far more dangerous knives, and water gushes over the crying infant’s head as a thousand white candles flicker throughout the temple.
At Zelda’s right stands the prince consort, a handsome, brown-haired man from Holodrum. He’d summered at the castle as a child, Link vaguely recalled, and spent the long days walking the then-Princess through the castle gardens. When it came time for her to marry, the kingdom still in tatters from Ganondorf’s rule, he offered a magnanimous hand.
Link stands to her left. He wants to stand nowhere near her at all, but she’d ordered his presence -- they might be on the fritz, but the kingdom needed to see its hero bless the new prince.
“May Farore’s courage bless him and guide him in all of life’s trials.” Link had the line memorized; he’d said it enough times before. His hand warms sweetly, a sign of the goddess’s happiness and well-wishing.
Light catches on the rubies of Zelda’s crown, brilliant and blood-red.
“I’m sure he’ll do just great.”
Her cheeks, too.