“...So when the time has come, you shall drop your
guise and take your true form.”
“I understand,” Zelda answered Rauru. “And the body
of Princess Zelda will be sealed in the Temple of Light with Link?”
The ancient Hylian sage nodded. “The sketches you
have provided shall be useful.”
Zelda half-smiled. “Kovan will be pleased that you
admire them.”
“Your friend has a great gift for drawing. Might
I meet him?” Rauru asked.
Impa shook her head. “Kovan Ravens-child, my cousin’s
son, died last week in single combat with Ganondorf.”
Rauru sighed. “I am sorry.” He changed the subject
in case either of the two women found the topic painful, which they did.
“Shall we proceed to... ‘Sheik’?”
Sheik was the name given to the simulacrum Rauru
had made. It was a young Sheikah man of about sixteen, and it was what
Zelda’s spirit would inhabit for the next four years. The girl had insisted
upon a Sheikah form, in honor of those who had died, and Impa had little
objection. Rauru did not ask.
Zelda stood looking down at the body of the young
man, lying on his back with a thin sheet draped across him. Rauru had lain
him on a pedestal near where the Master Sword had rested. The Princess
suddenly had a pang of longing for Kovan as she looked at her spirit’s
new ‘home’.
He was handsome in the Sheikah way, slim and thin
of face. His dark golden hair was a trifle longish, and soft and fine like
her own. He was tanned, for Rauru had created him to be like one who had
lived in the desert as Traik had. His eyes, of course, would be crimson
rimmed with thick black lashes. The hand that lay on his chest was long-fingered
and capable. Zelda could imagine the boy, if he had been a real person,
to be soft-spoken, musical, and thoughtful. It was perfect for Zelda.
Rauru’s voice startled her out of her thoughts.
“When you are ready, your Highness, just touch the simulacrum.”
“I understand if you don’t want to do this,” Impa
said quietly. “It is no light form to take the shape of another.”
The girl shook her head. “I’m ready.”
“Then proceed.”
She walked up the steps to stand just before the
form of the boy. As if on cue, the sun came out from behind a cloud and
shot through the window, illuminating the Sheikah’s face and Zelda standing
over him.
As Zelda lifted her hand, she thought of little
copper-haired Amly and her home in the forest, and Koyra and Kanji and
how they should have lived. She thought of Ganondorf and Arys, separated
by cruelty, Areyah and Evain kissing behind the windmill. And she thought
of Saria and Ruto and Malon and Impa. She thought of her beloved father
the King. And first in her mind was the young Sheikah who had spoken slowly
and drawn pictures of a Queen and kissed her and sang with her in the dark
and fought and died truly. Kovan Ravens-child.
But even as her friends came to her mind, the light
of the sun washed them away in a pure, dazzling ray of light. And in the
center of that light shone a silver sword, the light playing on its blade...
and on the face of the handsome boy who came to wield it.
“Four years...” Zelda smiled and laid her hand upon
her new form.
New Fan Works