Silly goose

Nightshades glow a pretty shade of ethereal blue at night. It shatters the darkness moonless skies cast upon the land, becoming speckles of stars scattered on the grass and mountains to guide weary travelers to shelters. They only grow on the West of Hyrule, those gentle-looking guards of forests, as if the Zora's use of Luminous stones spread to even the vegetation, inspired by the reflections on the cliffs and polished surfaces.

Link likes to believe they were normal flowers, once, bewitched by the beauty cradled in ancient Zora's palms, and that by spreading they bring with them a little bit of the Domain's serene atmosphere. Blue Nightshades are bowed, too, humbled by the knowledge their radiance is an imitation; of the stars, of Luminous stones, of the Zora. Once, he showed them to the Hateno children, and was roped into holding a whole bouquet of them while they ran in circles around him, small hands reaching to flick the petals reminiscent of bells. Narah claimed with overwhelming confidence they must be the clock of flowers, that others must hear a special kind of music unheard by Hylians that whispers the time to every plant of the kingdom. Adults gaze at them amusedly whenever the lone knight is caught by the children, surely thinking he is only playing along.

They don't know that Link is as much a child as the young ones running between houses, that his memory is butchered, glued together in mismatched parts, one side hazy and blurry flashes of knighthood and duty, the other an explosion of colours and smells and feelings all perceived under the prism of a newborn discovering the whole wide world in its vastness and glory. His soul is bare and raw like the purest of beings, enjoying the sensation of threads of grass dancing against his toes, young foxes yipping as he passes by, wishing him luck in his hunt, steps one with the crack of barks, the wilderness tenderly kissing him like one of its own, welcoming the breeze - of Hebra, Gerudo Desert, Eldin Mountain, Hyrule Field, everywhere. Everywhere - that reddens his cheeks. Link is one who stares straight into the eyes of deer and horses, and finds himself accepted with a common understanding borne of those whose existence stems from the wild.

Those who punch the air out of his chest, rainstorm coloured, are rarest, vivid, near violent in the strength they use to force their way into the tapestry of his soul. He'll never admit it, but the majority of the major memories left behind by Zelda burn the same, thunder scented. Those memories, he has a hard time to know what to make of them. They remind him of a boy long dead ( cackling loudly on his father's shoulders, curiosity a second name, eyeing other soldiers with bright awe, tilting his head at the chiming noise in the fog, linking hands with forest children barely shorter than he, finding — ) and of a knight who failed ( silent as his sword, vow bitterly stuck in a throat that never wanted to stop talking, ducking his head under Mipha’s worry, painting armour upon armour on his back to shield him from the soldiers’ gazes and the King’s molten judgement and the princess’ desperate frustration and tasting a frog, once, tentatively opening to her, shedding armour upon armour in blood and grime and flesh as Guardians sing in symphony — ) and of people he'll never know the way he knows the ones walking the earth. The stranger in a worn body ponders, sometimes, sitting by a pond, if he isn't closer to blue nightshades than to Hylians. An imitation through and through. He recalls duty, failure, death, pain, grief. He knows them as his own, and above all he tastes shame on the tip of his tongue.

They have the same origin, Link and the nature ruling Hyrule, yet still in his growing experiences and stretch of his new life, the Last Champion feels less and less like he belongs. Memories, he finds, happen very much the same way rainstorms do in the Faron Region. Lacking warning, sudden, waltzing in between the leaves with the scent of sulfur at their feet. Crashing on anything remotely glinting to allow lightning to run free, coming down with a loud rumble, a giant’s echoing laughter. Some memories are kinder in their recovery process; they come in the shape of familiarity, a song he starts humming without recalling where he learnt it, knowledge that seeps back through the cracks of his blank mind, until he can expertly teach a farmer various ways to wield a sword and only realize later where does the ability come from. Most are triggered by both everything and nothing at once, it's a dance he stopped learning the steps of a long time ago, simply learning close to his heart the few telling signs of something bubbling to the surface.

It comes in an odd dissonance in the musical balance of his life, patches of verdant green and sparkling gold, cherry red and warm maroon, lingering flavour of swords pulsing, a beating heart, and calling of arrows in rainbow, disrupted by the stumbling whispers of the past, saying Link, wielder of the Sword that Seals the Darkness, you must train harder and harder, Link, whether skyward bound, adrift in time, or steeped in the glowing embers of twilight, I've left them all to die, take Link to the shrine of Resurrection, Link, says Sidon with a peculiar glint in his eyes, this is not a Guardian taking aim, Link, begs a nameless voice, Wake up, wake up, you are the light, our light, wake up. Sometimes, Link thinks he never truly awakened from the womb of the shrine, that in order to bring the Hero back the hidden Beast took something, a trade, and he wonders if the price isn't the discrepancy between the memories of his own haunting ghost, the second lens under which Zelda perceived him, and the Wild Thing with remaining scars weaved too close to his soul to be healed, crawling up the side of his body in the way of vines. He learns to exist as a bubbling mess of too many things, refugees found resting on a rock as Satori watches over and jumping in unrestrained glee alongside Koroks under the roots of the Great Deku Tree.

But Link knows shame, his own freezing shadow, it makes the scars on his cheek burn anew every time his bright eyes drift too close to the Castle and the red smiling pillars and the ashen ruins at their feet. ( Perhaps this is something his grave took, as well as his mind, the practiced dullness of his gaze, meant to wash over dangers and direct the weapons were to go, only allowing released shoulders here and there, and perhaps the shrine, as emotionless as Sheikah machinery goes, built up tenderness for the child and the knight laying there in its stomach, decades passing by, that it became used to every shape of his being, and beyond its programmed mission, as a parting gift from a mother, his cradle gifted him eyes as electrifying as its hue, unable to hide the childishly free soul remade anew )

The wandering swordsman hides the silent sword in the slate at every person met, listens to the distant tone of voice those at the stables use to speak of monsters on the road, which shelter finally crumbled down, witnesses the furious stubbornness of the life that blazes stronger than Dinraal's horns and the underlying exhaustion of lacking safety, never known one, and the dissonance wavers as both Ghost and Living Link come together as one throat closing up under the pressure no one else but him understands. Some part of his soul grieves that the people of Hyrule do not grasp the wilderness the way he does, but he guesses this is merely another anomaly that puts him a tiny bit apart from the rest. Another written event in his existence, he supposes, no matter the time. And so Link seeks the company of watchful wolves and twinkling fairies, adorning a tunic lit up in ghostly glow by the blue of Nightshade fields. Much like shame, the flowers refuse to look up, and much like shame, their petals make it hard to be plucked. You would need to disfigure them for their hearts to be seen, twisting their necks around; Link hears they could be used to improve stealth in dishes and potions, but he believes that they are much more suited to be put on graves in remembrance, showing the way to lost ghosts unable to find a path home, so deeply focused on conveying gentle security as far as the eye can see.

And maybe this explains why Link finds himself crossing Boneyard Bridge, dozens of Nightshades in the slate, as he walks closer and closer to the deathly Guardians patrolling amongst Castle Town's ruins and the pools of Malice rotting on the ground. The silent sword wakes up at the stench, glowing just like the flowers of the dead, blade shining with righteous rage, remembering, remembering, praying for their fall, humming caution for her hero. Gigantic husks of metal shake the ground as they walk. Eyes lock in, blue against blue against blue, the Sword howls, divine light thrashing in his grasp. Red simmers in lines on the ancient Guardians like poisoned blood. High-pitched beeping. Red lasers falling on every part of his body. Link faintly senses the scars weep; shrugs it off. The Sword that Seals the Darkness is raised, at once, skyward, and what follows is nothing more than another dance in the eternal ballet of survival.

When the deed is done, ( — running away forest to forest to crumbling burning houses and villages and hylian kind silent in their unexpected demise so loud it rings echoes screams still in some rocks a hundred years later, running from the end of the world to another end of the world, stumbling at last in a field, Fort Hateno close so close and what is an army of Guardians but another horde of creatures that can be killed too don't think of the bodies or the Champions about Vah Ruta’s blue light flickering red in an agonising cry from the Divine Beast — ) he is left pensive, shoulders tensed, no more scared of the Guardians than of other monsters. They killed him once, sent him pummeling into Death’s ready arms, but the more he fights, the easier it is to pretend they are just another horde of monsters. Killing them is routine, now, one he must accomplish at the dawn of every Blood Moon. The young swordsman wonders if they're the monsters’ own Shrine of Resurrection, and if the Calamity too, is both a cradle and a grave. No, as twilight languidly shows its face from afar and Malice oozes still from the pores of ruins, what scares Link the most is the gaping hall in the tall stone walls that claim the entrance of Castle Town.

Ever since waking up, Link has never stepped foot in the city’s ruins. It can be argued he traveled everywhere in Hyrule, from the depths of odd caves to far away islands to the highest peak of Hebra mountains to the top of the Eldin Volcano to the cold labyrinth unknown even to the madness of Purah and Robbie. He has seen every corner of the land that makes him him, all except the one he is meant to save. Across the city's ruins stands the Castle’s gates, and the Hero’s Spirit shakes a little in its flesh.

( Link doesn't know if he will ever be ready, if it's a matter of being ready or simply overwhelming shame and grief and rage, but he owes Zelda and the world the peace and freedom given to him by the wilderness, and so he knows that not today, but soon, very soon, he will walk past a door where guards would straighten, a salute on the ready, Sword incandescent in its mission to pierce Evil on his back, will enter a hell not too dissimilar to the one he died to, shiver in the empty, collapsed halls of the Castle, grieve the unfinished stories that linger in the Knight’s training rooms, and kill more Guardians than humanely comprehensible in such little time. The Champions’ Gifts will be a sufficient shield of sanity to bring him up to the Sanctum, an orchestra of righteous revenge and strength and courage at his back, in his soul, a cape of life. It will soon happen, so very soon, little boy in blue will not fail twice. )

Heart in his throat and Nightshade in his hands, Link enters Castle Town for the first time in a hundred years. Empty of life, lacking the familiarity of buzzing insects, of birds flying past, no the sky is a perpetual grey and red, twisted clouds and heavens yearning to spread. He destroys as much Malice as he can, stabbing the Sword in its guts in despair fueled actions. And as twilight comes to greet the plains around, Link marches down the stones and houses, a ghost of ethereal blue, crowning the charred grass and quiet temple of misery with flowers just as ethereal. The cathedral may have collapsed, a sacrilege, but he needs not a building to wish for the dead’s rest. He heads to the center, where every soul will hear, and sits on top of the fountain’s rumble.

Link’s faith, as everything with him, is different enough to set him apart. He believes in the Goddess. Hears her, at her statue, shivers under the sting of her divinity, crumbles under the soft echoes of my hero, go forth, my hero, what do you need, my hero, my child, my bird, my wildborn. He knows Her as no one does, surely. He hopes Hylia in her motherly mercy will hear him here, too, even with no statue to bow to.

And alone, Link prays.

( The Sword chirps in a breath, ghostfires taking form near her new master, and she remembers another child, a long time ago, who clumsily prayed too. )

The knight murmurs the longest prayer he knows.

“I’m sorry.” he adds at the end, a reminder.

“It’s alright, kid.”

Link startles at the voice at his side. He surges on his feet, scrambling for the Sword, and stills. There is a boy sitting on the fountain’s remnants, a teenager not much older than him, with bright blond hair falling messily over his shoulders. He swings his legs, dressed in green, but all the knight can see is the hollow glow of the dead on his figure, and the darkness of the destroyed city seen through him. There is a boy just like Link, but the moment their gaze meet, he flinches, eyes so old staring at his worthless youth. Adverts his stare away in shame.

They watch the castle covered in malice, the flitting shadows of Ganon dancing around the towers, unable to be freed from the leash of light the princess holds still on to them.

“I failed them.” Link whispers.

“Well,” the spirit snorts, “Not necessarily.”

He turns to shoot him a flat glare, gesturing to their surroundings with a tilt of the head. A sparkle of amusement lights the ghost’s eyes for a breath, before fading back to their midnight blue.

“But that is when the nuance comes, though, isn’t it ?” he muses, “The destruction doesn’t stem from your hands. It happened suddenly, with no more warning than a dirty smell and shriveling trees, while no one was ready. No army, no man, no god can fight against this sort of power when it strikes them in the spine and poisons their very being.”

Link frowns, clenching his knees tightly.

“Neither the living nor the dead can blame you for standing up against the Calamity,” the old ghost continues, softer, “Sometimes trying is more than can be done.”

“It doesn’t matter when everyone died,” Link spits, “Because I wasn’t strong enough to kill it when it rose.”

The ghost exhales slowly.

“I failed too.” he says, like a confession.

Link flinches, wiping wide eyes at the other.

“What ?” he chokes.

“I was dubbed a hero, once upon a time,” he tells him, like a secret. “Your era knows me as a fairytale, surely, told to children and knights. Records have been lost, I should know, and thus they don’t share the other side of the story. In one realm, the Hero of Time wins; in the other, he loses. This is what happens when you mess with the power of gods.”

“Wait, you’re a…” his breath itches.

“An ancient hero, lost to history,” he muses, drawing his hand in a mock salute, “Nice to meet you, successor.”

“I’m not – “ he starts, curling up upon himself, “I’m not worthy of the title. Look around you, does it seem like I’ve done a decent job ?”

“I’ve seen worse,” he rumbles, “And despite your odds, I’d say you’ve been a nice help around.”

The teen holds back a sneer, Sword grasped in his hand. A shield.

“Failing them would mean you have given up,” the ghost retorts, crossing his arms, “Which you clearly haven’t. So in my opinion, you didn’t fail anyone.”

“The dead can’t exactly line up and share their grievances with me,” he mumbles.

“Yet here I am, brat,” the ghost – ancient hero, too young as well, eyes carved in millennia long acquired wisdom– tuts.

Link refuses to respond. The Nightshades glow all around, and if he focuses, he could pretend he sits near the Domain. Force imagination to paint him critters and rivers. But the night is stale, and Link has never been good at living in fiction. He inhales, deeply, nose twitching at the acrid scent of malice. Still, beneath it all, fresh grass blooms.

The hero’s ghost – the hero’s ghost – tenses at his side, a low hum a warning. Link snaps his eyes open, wrist ready to dance, and comes face to face with a lone stalhorse. No rider, no monster. There are only supposed to be Guardians here, after all. The creature kicks at the dirt with its hoof in annoyance, striding to him, fragile skull lowered.

Link blinks once, in genuine confusion, and twice, in warm recognition. The stalhorse lets out a wheezing noise, hitching, and lowers its head under his rough palm.

The ghost watches, head tilting, still as a statue. Midnight blue eyes shining.

“A friend ?” he ventures.

The knight shrugs delicately, right hand tapping instinctively on the smooth surface of the Sheikah slate.

“I guess,” he mumbles, presenting a ripe apple for the skeleton. It snorts loudly at the fruit. “I thought I was getting mad, at first, when I saw one approach me many times at night. It’s usually up to me to be stealthy and tame horses. Dead or alive.”

A high pitched snicker escapes the other, who grins openly, now.

“How’d you realize it was the same stalh, then ?”

“Mannerisms,” Link hums, allowing the dead creature to entertain the dream of sustenance, letting the apple roll between his sharp teeth. “He always came with soft steps, head lowered but eyes locked on me. I’m good at learning patterns, actually, and I figured his quickly.”

He pauses.

“Well. It's not as if other stalhorses come begging me for treats anyway.”

The ghost throws his head back, barking out a wild laugh. Shoulders shaking, he wipes an invisible tear at the corner of his eye. Link cannot help but to crack a small smile of his own.

“What a tale it makes,” he mocks playfully, blond hair curling around his chin, “The hero from the wild, and his loyal companion the stalhorse.”

“I am almost certain,” Link muses, watching the apple fall flat on the floor, passing through the bones of the beast’s ribs, “That he knows me.”

“What do you mean ?”

Link merely hums again, low in his throat. He lets the dark, purple glow wash over his tan hands, but never the Sword. The weight of memories hanging on the tablet at his hip is heavy.

“Most of this world has forgotten me,” he starts, hesitantly, a child unknowing if he is making a mistake by speaking, “I’ve seen it everyday. People cast me doubtful glances at first, a stranger, and accept me as the cryptid wandering swordsman who’s quite helpful with monsters. The land doesn’t count, I think, because it couldn’t possibly forget, but it also holds no true attachment to whoever I used to be. The only traces, as permanent as ink, that are proof of my existence, are legends and people. Impa, the Zora, and the tragedy of the hero who fell a hundred years ago.”

He swallows. Bites his lip. The ghost’s eyes are kind. Perhaps that is why he continues, why his throat doesn’t clam shut.

“I’m used… to roam amidst expectations and reminiscences. I know I will never be the same, and that there will always be a gap between what others see when they look at me and what I understand when I catch sight of my reflection. But I know the feeling.”

“Patterns.” the dead hylian answers, nodding.

“Yeah,” he nods, “Patterns. When I look at this stalhorse, when I see it come to me and spend the night at my side, stubbornly staying until dawn curses his bones to dust, only to seek me on some other night, I can’t help but have this sinking feeling that he knows me. Knew.”

“Horses,” comments the ghost, “Are dreadfully sensitive partners, in my experience. If they find you a worthy friend, they will stay until the very end. Maybe I’m stretching it too far, but this might have been your horse a hundred years back.”

Link stays quiet, gaze drifting on the skeleton.

“Maybe,” he murmurs, “I’m not sure what to think of such loyalty. He probably died because of me, too. I wish he would go.”

“Guilt is often fed by oneself’s belief of failure,” the ghost observes, “There is no telling what this is seen as by others. Your horse didn’t know about the Calamity, or the duty of a hero. He knew you in shapes you surely didn’t show to other Hylians, Rito, Zora, Gerudo and Goron. This is the beauty in life, I suppose, all the different layers we have to offer to various beings.”

“How would you even know what a horse feels,” Link hisses, because he is a wild beast at its core, shaped by rocks, molded by thorns, and the mundanity of discussion can only last so long until he craves to bite.

The ghost raises a slow, long eyebrow, so high it disappears into his hair.

“I had a horse, too.” he says like an evidence.

“You did ?” he perks up, ears tilting.

Something odd and lost wanders on the translucent face, for a beat. The teen’s eyes focus on the Sword’s angry light for a second too long.

“Her name was Epona,” he states, “She was wild. Always angry, trying to bite my fingers off more often than not. A ranch girl allowed me to mount her because I was the only one that damned mare let on her back.”

“You tamed her ?” Link asks skeptically.

“Nah, I just – “ he snorts, shaking his head. “She never lost those nasty ways. She just grew up.”

The ghost speaks those words with a nostalgic air, as if they mean more than what they spell. Link frowns, slightly, and his finger itches on the Sword’s handle. Eerily silent.

“What happened to her ?” he whispers.

A wry smile stretches the ghost’s face in a grimace.

“I was too slow, and too weak. Too unprepared to face the evil of my land. Despite everything – every tool, every blessing, every command and ability etched in my body and my soul, it wasn’t enough in the end. I came face to face with the devil and found my mortal end. Epona…” His voice catches. He sighs loudly. “Epona, foolish, stubborn girl, tried to protect me. I sent her away to her original mistress, but… Well. What can a horse do against an army of bokoblins, right ?”

There’s a knot in Link’s throat. His grip on his knees is painful. The ghost’s tale portrays a perfect mirror of his. Unprepared, unprepared, little child in armor too wide, what to do when evil strikes, and strikes, and strikes, when no bones are left behind ?

But the ghost’s eyes are kind.

“I failed, too.” he repeats simply, softly. World shattering.

For a moment, Link wants to scream. Shout at the top of his lungs, like the time he howled above the canyon after remembering. Instead, he stares at the castle, at the swirling gloom, the weary, collapsed walls, the minuscule hint of light.

“How do you move on ?” he croaks, small.

“You never stop fighting,” he chuckles, dry, “Until freedom is in your grasp. And when it is, you fight even stronger, biting and clawing. You don’t let go of it even if your hand breaks. A hero’s life isn’t a long one, I figure, but it has the merit of being eventful.”

“That doesn’t sound like a hylian’s saying.” Link voices, tilting his head the other side.

The ghost snickers, and a manic light glints in his eyes, coupled with an eerily stretched, feral smirk.

“Great, because I wasn’t raised by them.”

The knight startles, gaping, before a breathless laugh escapes him. He is unable to repress the bright smile on his face. Yes, yes, of course. He didn’t recognise it at first, but he knows patterns, always, always patterns, and details, and this ghost may be bathed in the same glow as all the other ghosts of Hyrule, but he is the only one with the fog of the Lost Woods clinging with the flames of the dead.

“Korok child,” he snickers.

“Wild boy,” the ghost immediately retorts.

They share a chuckle, falling back in the easy camaraderie of the quiet peace surrounding the fountain. The stalhorse huffs, shoving its skull on his forearm. He wants to run, Link thinks.

“Why do you linger ?” he asks, curious, twirling a Nightshade in his hand.

“Regret,” the ghost hums, thoughtful, “Guilt, for a while. Centuries. I didn’t want to rest when I had cursed Hyrule to such a state. When I had cursed other boys to fight in my stead what should have been the only evil for a long time. Then, I think, came love.”

“Crazy switch,” Link mutters, and is swatted by a ghost hand.

“Love for the land,” the other resumes with barely a narrowing of his gaze, “Because I truly adore Hyrule, with its secret nooks and crannies, it’s a wonder of a place.”

“And you missed home,” Link adds.

The ghost stills, turning to face him with a strange twitch on his face.

“You sound like Ena,” he explains, “She’s a kid working at Tabantha Bridge’s Stable. Her father and her come from Lurelin, but they left to find work, and to avoid the monsters. Whenever I come by, she tells me a story of her time near the beach, and we look at pictures together. You share the same tone of voice that tells there is somewhere you miss despite praising your current residence.”

“Huh,” and then “You truly have the keen eyes of a wolf, don’t you, cub ?”

Link bares his teeth on instinct, bristling, and lowers a flat glare at the ghost, who promptly bursts in another series of ugly cackles.

“My bad, my bad ! It’s a bit funny to tease you, y’know. You’re easy to read.”

“I’m not,” he scoffs.

“Are so.”

Link sticks his tongue at him, and feels a delighted thrill when the ghost copies him with an even more expressive grimace.

“You stay because you love and you regret,” Link suddenly says, blinking back into awareness, “What if you never move on ?”

“I’ll do, one day,” he sniffs, resuming his leg kicking, “But not right now. There is too much still left to discover for me to leave.”

“And…” he pauses. “How do you deal with grief ? The regrets you spoke of ?”

The ghost lets out a deep sigh. When their eyes meet, sheikah blue against midnight blue, the clash of eras is such an evidence it is a wonder to the knight how this ancient being was never found before. His presence is so, so very powerful. Memorable.

“You don’t,” he smiles, “And it’s okay not to know how. It’s a terrible weight, grief. I haven’t learned how to be rid of it. Instead, I grew to accept its companionship. I failed, and that led to horrors, and I’ll never forgive myself for that, but it can’t devour me. I tried. Sometimes, trying is more than the world can ask for. I live alongside it, and I’ve been here for a long time, kid. I’ve seen the world change. Even if I failed, even if death reaped thousands upon thousands, the world turned out beautiful. Heroes come and go, shaping peace, and failure is no stranger to their tapestry. No boy or man wearing the title of Hero in Hyrule will have won without scarring mistakes, Link. Everyone of us, at one point or another, failed.”

A ghostly hand firmly rested on his, wrapped on the Sword’s hilt.

“And yet, the world still became beautiful.”

“Even if the world was destroyed and night came in place of the sun ?” he asks, voice trembling. A child, too.

“Even for us,” the old Hero says, “The sun rises for us too, always.”

Link thinks back to his first sunrise. It took him a little bit of time to get out of the shrine of Resurrection, stumbling like a newborn fawn, spending hours poking at a hole in the wall. When his feet first got a feel for the grass, at the entrance of the cave, it was as if a switch had flipped in his mind, and he had run for the light. ( – Our light, our light – )

A stunning, bright sun had greeted him. Halfway through its awakening, shimmering and gargantuan. It brought him the kind of awe gods bring to worshipers. Before the king’s ghost, before the first bird, before the first tree, what had shown itself to Link as a gift of life had been the sun.

Staring at the castle covered in darkness, the wild child can almost imagine it peeking. The light never gives up.

The ghost of time grins warmly at him.

“Go,” he urges, “Your horse is about to bite your head off.”

Link jumps on his feet, slinging the Sword back in its sheath. He shoots him a questioning look.

“Where will you go, now ?”

“Here and there,” he shrugs with a carefree gesture, “But if you need me, you know where to find me.”

“Here ?” he drawls, eyebrows raised.

“No, you fool,” he snorts without heat, “I was the Hero of Time, fallen in the temple of my namesake. My spirit may be able to travel anywhere in the land, but I am bound to where I died.”

“At least you’re not stuck on a Divine Beast,” he mutters pettily, a particular Rito’s angry ramblings coming to mind.

The ghost rolls his eyes and bumps his shoulder with his.

“Marvelous fate, isn’t it. Now get moving, wild cub. The night is almost over.”

Link gives him one last, long searching look. There is a stray Nightshade in his hands, the one he has been fiddling with for a bit now. Wordlessly, he puts it on top of the rumble, the glowing petals giving an otherworldly glow to the fountain.

“For you,” he says, “Korok child, a flower still to be mourned.”

Then, as swift as the wind, Link glides to the stalhorse and jumps on his back. The creature makes a loud, happy noise, reverberating through the empty plaza. One whistle, and they are gone, galloping through the path, rushing past the malice ridden remains. The ghost is left with his jaw slacking, eyes darting from the flower to the furthering boy, and wheezes a laugh.

One would say Link is escaping Castle Town and its invisible corpses, but the wild boy feels a fragile sense of freedom in his chest, words from an ancient ghost, ancient past, ancient him bubbling to the surface. He feels ready for a fight, ready for the rain, something to alleviate the dried up prairies of Hyrule field the way his own heart was soothed. For now, though, Link allows the wind to whip his face, laughing, his horse neighing under him, leaving behind souls satiated with blue flowers. And if a sudden storm falls on the fields, almost like a song, drenching the world in gleeful rain, and if he laughs louder, soul singing in response, baring his throat to the sky, it is for the world to witness and the dawn to love.