Chapter Text
He finds her in the meadow behind their house, her knees folded beneath her and a dark clump of earth sitting in her hands as heavily as the shadows stretched out across the grass. An inflorescence: buttercup and wintry jade weaved into the warm hues of an early Hateno spring. From where he stands, he thinks she might be humming something to herself—a minor third up, a perfect fourth down.
Something carries her glance up, serenity soon giving way to the quiet joy reserved just for him.
“Welcome home, Link,” her voice glints beneath the sun’s idling kiss, her tone every bit as radiant as the gentle brush of solar lips against golden hair—almost as luminous as the golden band around her fourth finger.
The sight of his wife never fails to catch his breath, particularly not after all they’ve weathered—after everything, no superlative frames her in the precise way he’d like to; no fine ink or musical cue can truly capture the way his heart twists and his pulse quickens at the thought of her or the all-encompassing grief that floods him when he’s torn from her side by daily errands.
And Link knows, as he comes upon her with hints of Hyrule stuck beneath her nails and flaxen locks tugged up high above her shoulders, that he doesn’t need to find the words. She sits up a little taller, and her magic strikes him in the same way it always does when she cranes her head up in soft salutation and welcomes the chaste kiss he grants her with gently closed eyes.
It’s a wonderful little life.
“What are you doing out here?” Link asks, wiping a bit of rogue soil from her cheek.
Zelda hums. “Gardening.” The bright smile at her lips softens, and she closes her eyes and savors the sensation at the summit of her when he places another kiss atop sun-drenched hair.
“And since when do you garden?”
When she looks up at him, ears pink at the tips and the hint of a thought prising at her lips, Link feels something cry out in his chest.
“Will you sit with me?”
Link obliges and brings his satchel to rest on the ground as he kneels beside her.
“Thankfully, the soil isn’t compacted,” Zelda explains, velvety eyes carrying the ghost of an ember while she watches her hands. “And luckily, they aren’t too discriminating.”
“Who isn’t?”
“Them.” Zelda smiles, small and intimate, and even the slightest hint of it is enough to curl him around her finger. She collects the soil in one hand and seeks out one, single seed, reaches into the hole she’s carved out and tucks it into the soil—and when she’s laid it to rest beneath the dark quilt of restored earth, she reaches for a small watering tin and sends a small shower drizzling around the periphery. “And, with a bit of nurturing….” she glances over at him, cheeks polished pink, “we shall have a sunflower in a few months.”
Zelda waits, expectant; and beneath her bright eyes, a swallow wedges its way down her throat. Waits for something to snap to life in his own eyes.
And suddenly, Link finds himself in a Hateno over a hundred years old; he sees his mother, her fingers stained with berries and cream— his father enjoying the fruit of her labor at the kitchen table, teasing about something a little boy would never comprehend. His mother falling silent in a way Link has never seen, her lips curled in and her eyes gleaming in the same precise way that Zelda’s gleam now. And Link feels that silence, a long stretch of uncertain quiet soon assuaged by the sight of his parents embracing, hugging, kissing— crying out with joy. And on a bright spring afternoon that follows, the frost melted and the ever resilient sun spilling its light across the valley, they plant a single sunflower for the baby girl who would arrive with the first sight of autumn.
One sunflower planted for each soul to be welcomed. A longstanding Hateno tradition.
Link doesn't quite notice the way his mouth fumbles until Zelda breaks into blithe laughter, and soon, thoughts of this and that are crashing atop each other at his lips. His heart lodges thickly in his throat, its beat percussive and battering, tempo growing faster and faster as he turns everything over in his mind.
“I— you— you’re—?”
“Yes, Link. Yes. ”
Though he’d been there when her divine powers had burst free of their corporeal cell, watched as her birthright had finally, finally, made itself known in that wicked sea of machine and flame and despair—and though he’d watched as time and light conducted through him to bring her back from a fate worse than death, still: the look her in eyes is something far more sacred, something that he swears could bring the cosmos to its knees if it could only glance at her sweet smile—the one that glows as she places a hand against her belly.
Link leans forward and kisses her, softening when he tastes the hint of their tears mingling at his lips. And when he pulls away and presses his forehead to hers, spoken word evades him still:
“We’re…you’re…”
“We’re expecting, Link.”
There is little he can do but throw his head back to the heavens and shout, his laughter ringing loud enough to startle the cattle up the road, and below misty eyes, Zelda places her hands across her mouth and giggles into her fingers. And when Link floats back down, he swells against his wife again— kisses her gently and lowers her down to the earth, the meadow around them like a cradle itself.
“A child—our child, Zelda!”
She takes his hand in hers and sets them both upon her belly, fingers twining across the promise of life she carries within her. One into two, two into three; and when she smiles up at him, rosy and beaming, he sees a lifetime.
"Ours,” she whispers.