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When the king is young and rides across the desert, the golden sun strikes the land like a forge hammer and the sands are dyed red. Where they are kicked up by the hooves of his steed, they scatter in the air.
“I have been here long before you,” they say, in warm murmurs. “But I have so rarely been touched. Not as I meant to be. Not as I hoped.”
When night falls, and he camps, in the shadow of a broken giant, shielded from the wind by its curling fingers, squatting in a ground that his people had once called holy but not for many centuries, the tongues of the fire flick hungrily from their meal of wood.
“An admirer of mine once raged all across these lands, furrowed it with his claws, howled and burned. He saw me in every flame, in every light, in every glimmer of gold his retainers presented to him. But still, he did not come close enough,” they crackle as they burn.
By the waters of an oasis his reflection is broken by the hands he cups to drink, and golden eyes and red hair curl across the surface of the ripples.
“He did not quite have your imagination,” the reflection says, in a mouth nearly his, as he prepares his horse to leave. “Not the same dreams. And that is an important part.”
At the border of Hyrule the land is all at once golden with fields of wheat and deep, deep blue with the endless sky, and he loses Her, but finds, again, when he stands on the shores of a volcano, louder than ever before, the rumbling in the great earth.
Pyroclast and magma flows sing, “what drives you this far? What do you want from the world? Speak my name, and we shall take it.”
The Castle of Hyrule is gleaming white and cold, but the tapestries are red. The carpets shush-shush under his feet, muffle the gravity and weight of his footfalls.
“I have always wanted,” whispers each trough pressed by his stride. “More than what I am. Listen, listen, the veins of the earth sing a war song of hunger,”
In the temple, the image of her in cold marble suits nothing. It is in the braziers instead that she whoops and cackles, gambols and sings.
“There is so much more. To make, to seize, to shape, to change, to destroy.”
The sacred ruby of the gorons glows a crimson exquisite; he stands close enough to see it, and reflected in the coal-colored eyes of its guardians it is clear that they will never permit him closer than that.
It whispers to him, “what is a key, the king of a lock? Merely a path. There are others.”
The gate of time yawns open, and it is sunset in the sacred realm, and all is washed in scarlet, except for its brightest point- purest, brightest gold. He surges forth, with hurricane force.
The shattered fragment in his hands is red at its edges, and pure gold in its heart. “You know how these things are,” it chides his shaking fingers. “We do not win, and sate ourselves, so easily. There is always more. Hunger onward, little thief. Take your prize and your throne. Run with the dying of the sun, and let nothing cut you down.”
The sun sets on the ruins of the castle, and the blood that runs from him fades to red as the arts of sorcery weep from it.
“We do not sate ourselves so easily,” it whispers, nearly a lullaby, nearly begging. “But there is always more.”
The sea can almost be dyed red at sunset, but the sun is not here, at the top of his tower, and what falls to enclose him instead is gray stone and blue waters. Shattered topaz refracts its fire into his eyes.
“There is so much more.”
His stomach aches, the sword torn free, accursed thing tamed by his hand, but he stands, at length, on his own two feet, staring over Hyrule as twilight colors all. He dies, this time at least, under that sky.
“I have always wanted more than I am,” the clouds that pass across sing to him.
He is ripped apart at every seam, and the blood that stains becomes his fury, becomes the mark by which he colors Hyrule. Its verdant fields yield crops of him, now, untamed and ferocious, ribs and teeth, flesh and eyes, if he cannot have the land, if he is killed above it, he will fallow it with himself, of himself, he will hunger and the world will know his hunger. Above himself, he crawls into metal bodies and sets them rampage; fires burn across the lands.
They roar with him, the shape of him he casts onto the clouds and heavens. “The veins of the earth sing a war song of hunger.”
His prison is dark, and quiet, and cold, and lies so for so long, too long, lit by cold light that does not even sing of hatred, or emotions that he recognizes.
But the time comes, that incautious hands bring red fire into his tomb.
“Hunger onwards, little thief,” it greets him in quiet tongues. “Somewhere, the sun rises, and the world is red.”
-
When he is child and not warrior, and lies on his back in the meadow, the wind in the trees sighs, “This will pass, ultimately.”
He turns his head.
“Yes, wanderer, it may seem unfortunate, but it is true.” The sunlight dapples gold through the leaves. “But it is how things are. We move forwards. To stay here may be kind, but you are hungry, and this little island will not feed you forever.”
His loftwing is red, but the islands it takes him to are green, and the breezes that blow off them are fresh and wild in his hair. He picks flowers, sets them on the crumbling buildings.
The stems of them shift, and have the smell of sap. “Do you enjoy this world, wanderer? It is good practice, but there is more beyond. There are nice things to see here.”
In school books, he learns of the world below the clouds, that existed once, but was destroyed. The headmaster tells him, in kindly words, that Hylia preserved all that is good, the pumpkin-patches and farm fields, the water and stones, things that feed them, shelter them, and there is no more to want, and nothing to grieve of that ancient world.
He brings his heavy training sword to bear against the leafless old tree in the yard, again, until the thrum in his body drowns out other sounds.
“The anger you are feeling is real,” say the cuts in the wood, weeping their green blood. “What will you do with it? Will you throw it away? Or will you keep it?”
When Zelda is gone, and does not come back, the knights go out. He is told to stay behind. The walls of his room, dark green, seem to close in on him.
“What path,” they groan with the settling of the knights’ hall. “What path? Found or given, bought or sold, or turned away from altogether?”
When he stands at the bottom of the world, Faron Woods smell rich and old, the boughs stretched overhead further than any tree he has seen, for miles; he walks over the springy loam and there is only more of it.
“You see,” the leaf litter sighs, “there is so much more.”
He has duties; he has tasks. He has enemies that he hunts. There is a purpose, a meaning, a calling. The land is vast, and many-colored, and he is called across it.
He still picks flowers. They carry, new smells and familiar ones, and the same voice in their green hearts. “Are you happy, wanderer?”
The heart of his island is gleaming and cold. There is no green here. He has come seeking meaning; he has come seeking what he needs.
The golden thing he touches there shines like the sun through tree leaves. “I won’t begrudge you, as long as it is what you want,” it murmurs, rustling like his childhood.
When the war is over, and it is quiet, he lays his sword to rest in a wild grove, where the trees wind together like cathedral pillars. It seems a good place, for an old friend. And then, because he is tired himself, he stretches out at the base of one of the trees, and lets the aches in his body wink out like stars.
“Sleep well, wanderer,” the moss hums beneath him, “we will see each other again.”
He wonders what she means by that.
A child who has become a warrior walks into a temple, across cold stones, towards the pedestal of a holy sword, and for a moment, he thinks that there should be trees here, and moss, with such certainty as if he left them here himself and expects to find them again.
The sunlight glints through the stained glass windows, and casts emerald shadows on the floor. “Hello, wanderer,” she sings to him. “Shall we have another adventure?”
-
She staggers from a lost companion to the shores of a lake, and breathes in the cooling air a purity of blue that she has never seen before. She has thought that she knew it, defined it, limited it, when she was a child and splashed in the pond.
What lies before her now sings the long, slow, sweet song of crashing waves and distant waterfall. “Do not begrudge yourself too much. To make mistakes is an important part of the learning process.”
She dies in amber, and lives again. Village becomes city. She dies adrift in her bedsheets, and lives again, when city becomes empire. The walls of her childhood room are blue. They twinkle in her mirror as a maid brushes her hair.
“What are you looking for? What would you like to find, beyond the walls?”
She grows tall enough to look over the ramparts, and see the lake, jewel bright on the horizon, and she is filled with hunger. In the courtyard a bright blue bird perches on a tree.
“If we are very clever, we like to believe what we build will bring us freedom,” it warbles, “but often, these things can trap us as well. The dance of the sea and the shore is a movement of tides. We make concessions to that which destroys us, which we destroy in turn.”
Time shatters, and kingdoms with it; the royal white horse flees from the castle, gleaming, and it is so dark she cannot see the color of anything. Her back is pressed to Impa, and the rain lashes them both, but there is a color, shining and ideal, held close to her chest, and it marks behind her eyelids like a lightning flash.
“This, too, is a step in the dance,” the shining thing whispers. “It does not mean you have to accept it. Your body is yet your own, and you decide how it moves. The important thing is that you do decide.”
By the shores of the great lake, he cuts his hair under his mentor’s watchful eye, and throws a princess’s clothes in the water and watches them float away. His hand is bound tight, ready to be forged into a weapon.
Pink fabric fades to violet, then to blue, as it sinks. “The important thing is that you decide.”
Hyrule forgets its gods. Its royal daughter lives, and dies, and lives again. She stares at her reflections, in mirrors and water, and they feel, increasingly, like stranger’s faces. She travels to crumbling and ancient grounds, when it is permitted, or the call is too strong to resist- little of the former, and much of the latter- and finds serenity in the cobalt light of the sheikah shrines.
“You always have a choice,” the lights buzz. “Always.”
The light is not snuffed out, when darkness moves the guardians, when they strike down everything in their path. She sees herself, reflected, in a leering blue eye, a spark of scarlet, of hatred, in its heart.
“The structures that we build can trap us. The weight of breaking them can crush us.”
She lives, and dies, plunged into the heart of hatred, and lives again, choking and gasping under a blue sky.
“What do you regret?” the sky asks her. “What have you chosen? Do you remember?”