A little daydreaming

What is it about my work that makes me so… unimportant? Why were the ones before me never remembered? Why must we be forgotten by the time we seek to watch over? I wish I could be remembered, too.

What a horrendous wish it was, in retrospect. Lana laughs bitterly. If this is how the Guardian of Time is to be recorded in history, she’s sure they wouldn’t wish it now. A flawed, guilty immortalisation – all of their faults and follies on show to the world, their selfish crime of wishing to be forgotten no more. 

Or, perhaps they would. Perhaps the part of her that was willing to take what she wants, that strength that lives within Cia, is finally happy with their place in the story, simply because it is one. Is Lana not happy with her place? Knowing the heroes, one of them, herself?

She stares at a doodle of Link. It’s wonky – nobody else would be able to tell it was him, if it wasn’t for the signature scarf around his neck, crudely smudged blue amongst the black ink. Lana knows what she meant to draw, though, and can see each little detail. Her efforts to capture his expression, his stance in battle, and his light. This one in particular used to bring her so much joy. But it isn’t actually Link – it’s the Link that she wanted to know. The real Link is much, much more than this little doodle and a lonely woman’s imagination. 

And that leaves Lana back to where she started – her blank page.  

Lana feels the urge to get up and walk, and so she does. Circles the perimeter of the building, jumping onto the smaller crumbles of wall and balancing along it. She’s been trying to spend more time alone, lately – an effort to stop vying for others' attention in the way that makes her stomach churn. They’re not your toys, she tells herself, you don’t get to just play with them like you belong here. Spending all that time watching from the outside, desperate to be a part of it – it had felt so good, to finally be here. Now, it just makes her upset; the guilt is so hard to shake. It doesn’t help that the wanting is still clawing up her throat like a desperate animal. Yet she simply doesn’t know what to do when she’s alone. If she doesn’t have anyone to talk to, to help, then what is she even doing here? What good is pushing out the scraps of supposed good out of something and forming it into a person if they aren’t going to do anything good with it?

Lana stops, shaded from the sun by the tallest standing wall. Who… what even is she meant to be? 

“Hey, Lana!” A voice calls out from down the hill. When she looks over, Linkle is waving to her.

Oh, Linkle.  

Now there is where the guilt rests the heaviest, on some nights. Lana doesn’t know Linkle at all. They’ve fought together, a couple times, when Linkle has stumbled into battles – she’s a marvel to behold on the field, her speed and command of the very landscape’s attention with her presence captivating to Lana, too – but that’s it. She comes in, does something amazing, then is off again, determined and eager. Not one of their registered soldiers, not someone from across the eras. A hero, completely separate from both the war and history. 

The guardian of time never once took notice.

Lana thought someone escaping the guilty gaze of their loneliness would be a good thing – but, truly, how dare they? How dare they be so caught up in their little story, their fantasy of Link and Zelda and those attached to destiny that they neglected such a beautiful soul? Completely disregarded someone else who shone so bright, just because they weren’t deemed important. How cruel, Lana now knows. How selfish. 

Linkle was forgotten just like she was. And Lana cannot change that, now. All she has is her own regrets and an empty shell. 

The despair must be written all over her face, because when Linkle comes jogging up the hill, she stops to tilt her head in sympathy. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

All of a sudden, Lana is sniffing – she presses a smile to her face. “Yeah, I’m fine!” She pulls her book close to her chest, like a shield. The weight of everything inside of it presses into her chest. “Just got a lot on my mind, I suppose.”

Linkle leans up against the wall beside her. Lana mirrors her, instinctually. The cool stones press into her back, shadows curling over her shoulders. She hunches and pulls the book closer.

Lana doesn’t know Linkle, but she’s heard about her. Zelda mentioned someone had joined Midna in her rescue, when she took a solo mission that went wrong – describing a heroic woman who reminded her of Link. Fi, once, spoke of someone who wasn’t exactly her master, but held similarities. She didn’t speak any statistics – it seemed that she was a little perplexed about who exactly Linkle was. Some soldiers had whispered about a girl going about claiming she's the hero, even though we already have Link. It makes Lana wonder: does Linkle know? Does she know about destiny, about the Triforce, about why the story is the way it is? Why, or even if, there’s a story at all? Linkle says it's her compass that tells her she is the hero of legend, but Lana has never heard of any compass. She can’t tell if it’s even magical. Surely someone has mentioned this all to her. Surely she has to know that she’s wrong? That she isn’t the hero? That she isn’t important? 

“How, um– how has your journey been, so far?” Lana has to ask. She has to know how Linkle does it. How she lives with being unseen, unvalued. Linkle tries so hard despite it all – Lana doesn’t understand how she keeps going. (If Linkle can still be good, why can’t she?)

Linkle’s entire demeanor alights. “It’s been great! I’ve been meeting lots of people, fighting a whole bunch. Haven’t got to the castle yet to formally sign up, but what I have done seems good to the princess, so!”

“You can always travel with the returning platoons back to Hyrule Castle, y’know.” If the castle is her goal, there are plenty of signs and maps to help her get there. She should’ve arrived weeks ago, surely? 

“Oh, I don't need to worry about that! My compass will show me how to get there.”

“Right…” 

Lana bites her lip. Linkle seems so content with what she’s doing, so happy and determined. So… free. This life really was made for her. The blank page in Lana’s book feels glaring, empty, and hollow. They’re supposed to be the same age, thereabouts, if Lana was a real girl and not a rejected fragment of someone else. If Linkle can find her place within this mess of a story, why can’t she?

She has to know.

“What do you think about Link?” 

Linkle sighs, looking out across the valley. Looking down towards where the army has made camp, across the rolling hills. “I heard the soldiers talk about how I'm not really a hero, because of him. Do you think they’re right?”

Lana flounders, feeling a bit sick. “No, not at all!” Linkle is so wonderful, brave and bright, and glowing, of course, she is a hero. But Lana isn’t – she’s done too much wrong, made too many mistakes. She just wants to know how Linkle did it. If there’s any hope. “I was just wondering, is all, because of the Triforce. It’s usually what decides someone is the hero of legend. How do you know, if not that?”

“Well, I don't need anything to tell me what I already know.” 

She says it so simply, so truly, that Lana can only stare. Linkle holds her compass in her hand, pressing it to her chest. 

“I have my compass, and what my grandmother told me – but even if I didn’t, I know I’m a hero. Maybe not the hero, now, maybe not the most important one, but – I know because I’d do it either way, y’know? When I heard of the attack on the castle, I just knew it was my destiny. I knew I had to fight. That if I didn’t, I’d miss my chance to act. So I set out right away!”

“So you… chose it?” There was nothing that made Linkle leave home. She could’ve just hoped for the best at the castle, waited until it reached her, defended her community. Waited for the gods to come down and tell her to do it. But she didn’t – and when she was faced with hard evidence that it wasn’t supposed to be her, she kept going anyway. 

Linkle didn’t need to be part of the story to be happy. She chose to do what would make her happy.

“Thinking of myself as a hero doesn’t mean anything unless I prove it, right? I make myself the person I am.” 

Lana has made mistakes. Lana has made wrong choices. Everything up to this point has been motivated by her own fear of being alone again, grasping and scratching at those around her in desperation. Leaving horrific marks on the story that she just wanted to be a hero in. How does she make herself into something that isn’t just everything wrong she’s ever thought? How does she fill the hole with anything else? That blank page?

“What if… you didn’t know what kind of person you wanted to be? What if you didn’t have your grandmother's stories, or your compass?” Lana feels like she's falling apart. Desperately clinging to her book, and the conversation. How? How does she do it? She doesn’t want to go back to that isolation, go back to being forgotten. But how does she get past everything she and Cia have done? What else could she be, if not this? This shambling mess of rejected kindness and good intentions, twisted into manipulating everyone around her, because what, she was lonely? She was scared? 

Linkle looks at her. Really looks at her; Lana feels exposed under her gaze. What is she looking at? What is she seeing? There’s nothing there. Lana is a hollow shell of a woman. What would be inside for Linkle to perceive?

Linkle holds out a hand towards her with a small smile on her face. Scared, unsure, curious, Lana stares at the appendage outstretched. 

She doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. 

Lana takes it.

Linkle leads her around the cottage, up onto one of the smaller remains of the structure. Together, they step across it, mapping the shell of the building with their feet, climbing onto higher and higher walls until they stand atop the tallest one, the one they were cast in the shadow of a few moments before. When they are still, Linkle takes both of Lana’s hands in hers – Lana has to put her book away to hold them. 

The evening sun is close to setting now, and Lana’s eyes are shielded by Linkle’s body blocking it. The light pours out from behind her, hair glowing gold, wind blowing her plaits across her face like ribbons. Lana’s own hair tugs from it, errant strands tickling her cheeks. She doesn’t remove her hands from Linkle’s grip to push it out of her face – doesn’t take her eyes off of Linkle for even a second. 

“I used to doubt it, when I was younger. Sometimes, I thought that my grandmother was just saying that she believed in me, that she just wanted me to be brave, and used fairytales to get me interested.” Linkle smiles to herself fondly, looking out at the valley again. At the world. “It isn’t destiny that makes me a hero – it’s love. I love Hyrule, and I want to protect it. I don’t mind getting lost, because I get to see more of it, and help more people.” She looks back at Lana. “Being lost is okay. As long as you try to be kind, and try your best – you’ll always find where you need to be in the end.” 

Lana’s breath catches in her throat. There’s nothing she loves more than Hyrule. That’s what all of this is – she loves Hyrule so much, took it as her job to look over it; but she wanted to live in it, too. She wanted to feel the love that she has for it, even if just a little fragment. 

For the first time, held gently by Linkle – Hyrule’s hero, not by destiny, but by choice – Lana thinks she feels it. 

Linkle squeezes her hands, letting go so that Lana can wipe her eyes. She paws at her face desperately, embarrassed, not even realising she had teared up in the first place. It’s all a bit overwhelming. Linkle takes pity on her – she’s offered a moment of privacy with Linkle jumping off the wall, landing on the grass below, back into the shade with a soft thump.

“I originally came over here to ask if you wanted to join me and Ravio in testing out some new weapons of his – it’d be nice to have magical eyes on them! We’ll be over in the training fields if you want to join us.” Linkle looks up at her one last time, hand shading her eyes from the sun now behind Lana, her smile lit up. “I hope you can, it’ll be fun!” 

Without further ado, Linkle is skipping away back down the hill – bounding off for a new adventure just like always. Lana watches her go in a bit of a daze. Then, she takes a deep breath that she lets out slowly. Lets herself take in the moment, feel the wave of her emotions settling, the gentle breeze wrapping around her. The warmth of the setting sun on her back. 

Taking out her book once more, Lana sits down atop the high wall, opening it to that blank page and summoning her quill to finally write.