Ao3 Link

Summary:

Wind has always yearned for the sky, but Sky’s giant soul-bonded bird awakens too many painful memories. Unfortunately, Sky is not the only one with a soul-bonded bird, and Wind’s history with his own is… complicated.

AKA

The Helmaroc King is actually Wind’s Loftwing.

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Before the shell cracked open, there was a dream.

A dream of endless plains of clouds, of the sun beaming down from an azure sky. The air was neither hot nor cold, perfectly crisp with a slight breeze cupping its wings and buoying it up. And in this dream, it was complete. There was someone. Someone it loved with its whole soul, because it was part of that soul. Together, they sailed through the eternal clouds and danced on beams of sunlight. This was what awaited, beyond the shell. This was the dream of living.

The shell broke, and the nightmare began.

Part of @legendoflinkficfight, written for @irenkaferalkitty’s prompt: Skyloftians travel to the Surface after Skyward Sword

Moving to the Surface was a good thing, Link reminded himself. There was only so much space above the clouds, resources even more limited. Link had lost a loved one to famine, everyone had at some point.

But when Link first led his people to the Surface, he couldn’t have known the cost. He didn’t understand the utter heartbreak gnawing on the other end of his soul bond, the emptiness that started clawing its way into his chest.

At first, the Loftwings visited often. People still came and went from Skyloft, taking care of the multitude of logistical issues involved in moving an entire society. The Loftwings were never more than a whistle away, and they’d come of their own accord after too long.

The first sign came the next spring, their first on the Surface. They prepared as usual for the celebration. The children who had come of age were ecstatic to meet their Goddess-gifted partners.

The week came and went, and not a single new Loftwing appeared. The children didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. Link felt it enough for all of them.

After that, the Loftwings started to drift away. They stopped coming unless called. The ones with weaker bonds stopped responding entirely. Link had to stand on the top of the landing platform for hours before Crimson would show.

By the end of their first year on the Surface, Link knew the Loftwings were gone. He knew it in the hole in his chest that his partner’s soul once filled. He knew it in the emptiness of the sky, the passionlessness of the wind. After all, what use was the wind if it didn’t have wings to soar under?

“This is a good thing,” Groose said as he built the foundation for a building as large as the Lumpy Pumkin’s entire island.

“This is a good thing,” Wryna said as she watched her daughter race through the fields, without concern of her slipping over the edge.

“This is a good thing,” Karane said, as she was pregnant with her and Pipit’s third child; the largest family seen in generations.

“This is a good thing,” Zelda said, as she held his hand and they gazed up to the clouds.

No explanations. Just curious! =D Though, I'd love it if this'd be reblogged for wider audience. ^.^

This is an excerpt from a great fanfic on Ao3 called ‘A Thing Of The Past’ by Logomancy. Please check it out, it's great! Anyway, this line made me remember on of my headcanons about the Loftwings and where they went after Skyward Sword/what happened to them.

-NOTE: This is just my personal headcanon, it’s not something I put a lot of stock or belief into, I just think it’s a neat idea to think about and potentially use in fanfics.

If anyone wants to use this HC in their fics please! GO RIGHT AHEAD! My ideas will rot away if I keep them stuck in my head, so by all means use my HCs and any ideas I post, just no AI, GOT IT? 🙃

Also, this is kind of a long post. SO BUCKLE UP! :D

i feel like it’s been fairly well established that the whole “rito evolved from the Zora” thing really raises more questions than it solves. I mean sure, the presence of both in botw can be explained by speciation, in which two groups of the same species becoming so geographically separated they emerge as two different species. but that doesn’t change the fact that the basis of the ritos creation is based on the idea that Zoras (creatures who live in the water) would have to evolve into creatures with wings because…hyrule was flooded? It could be explained by the idea that zoras are like dolphins and needed to breathe air but, that can be done without flying and Sidon is depicted as having gils (pic below).

Because of this, i kinda came up with my own theory for the rito that i feel like is a lot simpler and fits well with the timeline anyway.

thinking back to the end of skyward sword, it’s heavily implied that the people skyloft eventually colonize the surface, starting with Link and Zelda. As we can see in later games (most prominently ocarina of time), Hylians are an entirely land-based people. i would assume that over time, the people of skyloft/the hylians spent more and more time on land, using their loft wings to travel to the sky less and less. While the loftwings can travel to the surface once the cloud barrier has been dispelled (as they do at the end of sksw cutscenes), they are air-borne creatures who need to fly.

It’s my theory that the loftwings, now remaining in the sky while their masters have less and less use for them, have to become a bit more independent and more organized for the purpose of survival with less help from their previous owners. The loftwings are clearly intelligent creatures, able to sense the presence of their skyloftian counterparts in skyward sword, and being able to decide who their rider will be as children (although i understand that has a bit more to do with fate, ik). Eventually, over the thousands, tens of thousands (??) of years during which the minish cap, four swords, and oot take place, the loftwings evolve into the rito, albeit very slowly.

This explains a lot of things imo. The lack of rito up until wind waker is explained by the loftwings/rito still being mostly sky-bound and not evolved enough to act as a civilized race with the other peoples in tloz. It explains the coexistence of both zoras and ritos in botw and totk. the only thing it doesn’t account for is the lack of zoras in wind waker, but with how much water there is in that game, a case can easily be made for them just being somewhere else. Also this theory in its nature negates some of wind waker’s plot.