This story is my take on Zelda's journey to becoming Sheik, the guide for the Hero of Time when he re-emerges from the Temple of Time.
Thye game glosses over this, and you are led to assume Impa trained her, but that's frankly boring. This is my take on what happened while Link was frozen in time
All characters are 18 or older
Word Count: 5,306
*/F | feet Tickling | Vine Tickling
The water in the porcelain basin was freezing, brought up from the deep cisterns beneath the castle, but to Princess Zelda, it felt tepid.
She stood before her vanity, stripped to her white silk chemise, scrubbing her right hand with a rough linen cloth and harsh lye soap. The smell of it—caustic and clean—did nothing to mask the phantom scent she was trying to erase. She scrubbed until the skin over her knuckles was scraped raw and weeping, the pink flesh burning under the friction, but the sensation wouldn't leave. Her breath hitched in her throat—hh-uh, hh-uh—a rhythm of panic she couldn't suppress, each tiny gasp tasting of lye.
Get it off. Get him off.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but the darkness behind her lids only summoned the memory back with terrifying clarity. The Throne Room. Three hours ago.
The air had been thick with the cloying sweetness of court incense, but he had cut through it. Ganondorf. The Gerudo King was a mountain of muscle and dark desert leather, his sheer mass seeming to lower the air pressure in the room. He towered over her father’s frail, aging frame, a predator introduced to a birdcage.
"A union," her father had beamed, his voice echoing with a hollow, forced heartiness in the cavernous hall. "To unite the sands and the fields. A new Golden Era."
Zelda had stood frozen as Ganondorf stepped forward. Up close, the density of him was suffocating. He didn't smell like a suitor; he smelled of hot iron, dry wind, and something muskier—like a wolf marking territory. He had taken her hand, his palm rough as sandstone and radiating a dry heat that seemed to leech the moisture from her own skin, leaving it feeling tight and papery. His grip was not a gentleman's hold; it was an owner's claim, his calloused thumb rubbing a possessive circle over the delicate blue veins of her wrist.
He hadn't kissed her hand. He had merely held it, his golden eyes boring into hers with a look that wasn't affection. It was hunger. It was the look of a thief appraising a lock he intended to break.
"Your Highness," his voice had rumbled, a bass tone so low it vibrated not just in her chest, but up through the bones of her jaw. "You are... ripe for the throne."
"Ngh!"
The sound was a raw grunt of revulsion, torn from her throat. She plunged her right hand into the basin, driving it deep into the freezing water as if to extinguish a flame. The impact sent a shockwave through the porcelain, sloshing icy water over the rim that splattered onto the stone floor with a series of sharp plinks.
The noise and the biting cold shattered the memory, but not the feeling. She gripped the edges of the vanity with her free hand, knuckles white, her chest heaving. The phantom brand of his dry, rough palm was still fused to her skin. It felt grimy, invasive, a stain that soap couldn't dissolve.
She looked at her reflection. Her blue eyes were wide, rimmed with the red of exhaustion, staring back at a stranger who looked trapped.
"I cannot," she whispered to the empty room, her voice trembling. "I cannot let him..."
She dropped the cloth, letting it sink into the basin. The room suddenly felt too small. The high stone walls, usually a comfort, now felt like the sides of a cage. She paced to the window, then to the door, checking the heavy iron bolt. Ssch-lck. Locked. The sound was small and foolish. A metal bar could hold back the night, but it offered no defense against a predator who had been handed the keys to the kingdom.
She hugged her arms around herself, shivering despite the summer heat. Staying awake meant thinking about tomorrow, and thinking about tomorrow made it hard to breathe.
"Sleep," she commanded herself, though the word tasted like a lie.
She extinguished the oil lamp with a quick puff of air, plunging the room into shadow. Fff-t. The darkness seemed to stretch, the corners of the room looking like grasping fingers. She climbed into her large, canopy bed, pulling the heavy quilt up to her chin not for warmth, but for a shield.
She squeezed her eyes shut, begging for oblivion. Sleep was not a comfort tonight; it was a hiding place. But the moment she drifted off, the darkness didn't fade. It sharpened.
---
The dream was not a dream. It was a drowning.
Zelda found herself suspended in a void of absolute, crushing blue. There was no air, only a heavy, liquid silence that pressed against her eardrums with a low hum, making her teeth ache. Her lungs screamed for air she couldn't find. Then, the heat started.
It began as a prickle on the back of her right hand, directly over her knuckles. Within seconds, the prickle escalated to a brand. A searing, white-hot line of agony traced a triangle into her skin.
"Khh-ahh!"
She tried to scream in the dream, but the blue void swallowed the sound, the pressure forcing it back down her own throat.
A voice, genderless and resonating like a struck bell, vibrated through her bones. THRRRUMMM.
The Golden Land bleeds. The Desert King brings the rot.
An image flashed before her mind’s eye: the lush Hyrule Field turning to gray ash, the Zora's rivers running with black sludge, and her own castle crumbling under a blood-red sky.
The voice did not relent. It grew louder, a resonant frequency that vibrated against her ribcage. THRRRUMMM.
Seek the Silver Spirit. The Thief who denies the King.
The image of the dying fields faded, replaced by a sudden, jarring shift in perspective. Zelda saw a vast expanse of sand under a blistering sun. Standing atop a dune was a woman—tall, skinned in bronze and muscle, hair like a flame. She held a scimitar with effortless grace, her expression one of fierce, defiant pride. She was a Gerudo, but her eyes held none of Ganondorf’s malice. They held a warrior’s honor.
To guide the Hero of Time... you must become the Shadow.
The dizziness spun Zelda around in the dream. The sand dissolved into shadow. A figure stepped out of the darkness. It was a slender warrior clad in blue and white wrappings, their face obscured, a solitary red eye visible beneath a cowl. The figure stood in a fighting stance, protecting a silhouette—a man, clad in green, holding a sword that shone with starlight.
"Who... who is that?" Zelda murmured in the dream, reaching out. The figure in blue felt strangely familiar, like looking into a distorted mirror.
The triforce on her hand flared white-hot, the pain a clean, purifying fire this time.
"AWAKE."
Zelda gasped, shooting up in bed, her hands clutching at her throat. "Hhh-ahh!"
The room was silent. The heavy velvet curtains hung still. The dream receded rapidly, leaving a sharp spike of iron behind her eyes and the phantom smell of ozone in her nostrils. She slumped back against the pillows, rubbing her temples.
"The wine," she rasped, the word a dry scrape in her throat. Her voice sounded alien in the silence.
Father’s spiced vintage... too strong, she thought as she swung her legs out of bed. The stone floor was cold against her bare feet, the chill a welcome, grounding shock. The terror of the dream felt foolish in the waking world. A warrior woman? A shadow in blue? A hero? They were just fairy tales. Hallucinations born of a stressful evening and heavy alcohol.
I need air, she decided, her mind latching onto a simple, physical solution. Just a walk to the library. To clear the fumes. She grabbed a silk robe, cinching it tight around her waist. "Just a walk to the library. To clear the fumes."
She didn't dress for travel. She dressed for a midnight wander, barefoot and in her nightclothes, convincing herself that with a glass of water and a book, the world would make sense again.
She slipped into the corridor. It was darker than usual. The torches were dimmed low, their flames sputtering with a soft, greasy fup... fup... fup.
As she walked the silent, drafty corridor, her mind drifted back against her will to the final image of the nightmare. The silhouette in green.
It hadn't been a knight’s armor. It was a tunic—simple, rough-spun, and dyed the vibrant, verdant green of deep forest moss. A color that didn't belong in the stone and mortar of the castle.
A memory pricked at her, sharp and sudden. The courtyard. Seven years ago.
She saw the face of a boy with messy blonde hair, standing awkwardly in the manicured gardens, wearing that same impossible green. A boy who had looked at her not as a princess, but as a conspirator.
The thought shattered as a sound tore through the quiet hallway—a jagged, wet noise that froze the blood in her veins. It wasn't the wind. It was the sound of a man breaking.
It was her father. And he was weeping.
Zelda froze, pressing herself against the stone wall, the rough-hewn blocks biting into her back through the thin silk of her robe.
---
Zelda held her breath, her hand clamped over her mouth to stifle the tiny, rhythmic hitches of her own breathing. Hhh... hhh...
The King's study door was ajar, a sliver of golden candlelight spilling onto the dark flagstones. Through the crack, she saw her father slumped in his high-backed chair. He looked small. The crown sat on the desk next to a decanter of wine, looking heavy and cold.
Opposite him stood Impa. The Sheikah advisor’s silhouette was razor-sharp against the light, her arms crossed, her presence a coiled spring of tense energy.
"The man is a viper, Your Majesty," Impa’s voice sliced through the quiet, a low, jagged whisper. "The shadows in the desert grow longer. His loyalty is a farce."
"I know!" The King’s voice cracked, a desperate gurgle of sound. He buried his face in his hands. "Chh-hhh... Do you think me blind, Impa? I see the hunger in his eyes. I smell the rot he brings."
"Then send him away," Impa urged. "Fortify the borders."
"And doom us all?" The King looked up, his eyes bloodshot and raw. "His armies are vast, Impa. Hyrule is weak. The famine... the unrest... we cannot fight a war. Not now."
He reached for the wine glass, his hand trembling so violently that the dark liquid sloshed over the rim, staining the papers on his desk.
"A marriage alliance," the King whispered, the words tasting like ash in his own mouth. "It buys us time. It buys us peace."
"And the price?" Impa asked, her voice turning to ice. "Zelda?"
Zelda felt her heart stop. It wasn't a figure of speech. For a long second, it felt as if the muscle had seized in her chest, and the corridor seemed to tilt, the air turning thin and cold.
"She is... she is strong," the King mumbled, trying to convince himself. "She is of Royal blood. She can handle him. She must. It is her duty to the crown."
"She is a child," Impa hissed. "You are feeding her to a wolf to save your own skin."
"I AM SAVING THE KINGDOM!" The King slammed his fist on the desk, the impact echoing through the stone with a deep, resonant BOOM. "If sacrificing one saves thousands... then God forgive me, I will make the trade."
The silence that followed was suffocating, heavy with the smell of spilled wine and despair.
Zelda slowly backed away from the door. Her legs felt numb, as if the blood had turned to ice in her veins. The cold stone seemed to bite into the soles of her feet.
Sacrifice.
The word hung in the air, a physical thing with weight and sharp edges. The revulsion she had felt earlier wasn't just distaste; it was intuition. Her father wasn't blind. He was terrified. And in his terror, he had just sold her.
The safety of the castle walls evaporated. This wasn't home anymore. It was a prison cell, and the executioner was already sitting at the dinner table.
She turned and ran.
She didn't care about the noise now. Her bare feet slapped against the stone as she sprinted back toward her chambers. The earlier hesitation was gone. The dream was right. The prophecy was real.
Run.
She burst into her room and slammed the door, the boom echoing in the sudden confines of her stone sanctuary. She didn't bother with the bolt. Leaning her full weight against the heavy oak, she gasped for air, her lungs burning, each breath a ragged tear in the silence. Haaah... haaah...
Tears burned behind her eyes, hot and useless. She scrubbed them away with the back of her hand, a furious, violent motion. There was no time for grief. Grief was a luxury for those who still had a future. She shoved herself off the door and moved to the cedar chest at the foot of her bed, throwing the lid open with a clatter that scraped her nerves raw.
The familiar, comforting scent of the wood and dried lavender was a cruel reminder of a life that had just ended. She ripped out the contents with frantic, jerky movements: riding leathers, thick woolen socks, sturdy boots. The fine silk of her chemise felt like a shroud. She tore it off, her skin erupting in gooseflesh as the cool night air hit her sweat-slick back.
She dressed with the desperate haste of a cornered animal. The leather breeches were stiff, their rough inner seams chafing her skin. Her fingers, slick and trembling, fumbled over the laces of her tunic, pulling them so tight they bit into her ribs. She grabbed the small dagger from her vanity—an ornamental thing of pearl and silver, meant for slitting the wax seals on letters—and jammed it into her belt. It was a pathetic sliver of steel against a King of Thieves, but its cold weight against her hip was a small, hard point of courage.
She threw the slate-grey cloak over her shoulders, the heavy wool settling on her like a shroud of anonymity. The hood, pulled low, plunged her vision into a narrow tunnel, erasing the gilded cage of her room and leaving only the path forward.
The main gates were impossible. The stables, a death trap. Her mind, sharpened by pure adrenaline, latched onto the only viable path. The Gardens. An old service gate, hidden behind the arboretum, used by groundskeepers to haul mulch and soil. It led to the Castle Town outskirts. It led to freedom.
Zelda didn't hesitate. She scrambled to her window, the stonework cold and rough beneath her palms. She swung her legs out, her stomach lurching as she dropped onto the narrow decorative ledge that skirted the castle wall. The wind whipped at her cloak, threatening to turn it into a sail. Pressing her body flat against the masonry, she shimmied along the ledge until her questing fingers found the thick, gnarled vines of the ancient ivy trellis.
Gripping the living ladder, she began her descent. The thick vines were coarse under her gloves, the leaves slick with evening dew. The air grew heavy as she neared the ground, thick with the cloying, almost suffocating perfume of night-blooming jasmine and wet, black earth. The Royal Gardens were not merely quiet; the silence was expectant, predatory.
Her boots sank into the damp, loamy soil with a soft squelch. Zelda kept low, moving in a crouch through a labyrinth of moon-drenched hedges and topiary beasts whose shadowy forms seemed to twist and watch her pass. The ground itself felt wrong. With each step, the earth didn't just yield; a faint, almost imperceptible tremor vibrated up through the soles of her boots, as if she were walking on the skin of a sleeping leviathan.
She passed a row of hydrangeas, their heavy blue heads nodding in a breeze she couldn't feel. The prickling sensation of being watched crawled over the back of her neck like a spider. She whipped her head around—snap—but saw only the swaying, inky blackness of the leaves.
Then she saw it. A gap in the dense outer hedge. Not a gate, but a breach—a jagged, inviting wound in the greenery, just wide enough to slip through. Panic, a sharp and stupid commander, overrode the scream of her instincts that warned nature rarely carved such convenient doors. She ducked and plunged into the gap.
The foliage pressed in, close and damp, the broad leaves brushing against her cheeks like cool, wet hands. But as she pushed deeper, the branches didn't bend. They stiffened. Resisted.
She was halfway through when the atmosphere shifted from passive to active.
A distinct, sinuous pressure coiled around her left ankle. It lay there for a single, terrifying heartbeat—heavy, warm, and flexible, like a resting python. A faint, musky-sweet smell, like pollen and damp rot, wafted up from it.
"Ngh!" she gasped, the sound swallowed by the leaves. "Let go..."
She tried to wrench her foot free, but the vine didn't snag; it constricted with a smooth, muscular power.
Her hand flew to the dagger. She drew the small blade and slashed downward blindly into the darkness around her leg. The silver edge bit into something thick and fibrous.
A wet, tearing sound. Shhrrrk.
The garden woke up.
The instant the blade broke the vine's skin, the entire hedge exploded into silent, violent motion. It wasn't one vine. It was the whole organism. Thick, fuzzy tendrils, covered in what looked like fine, mossy hair, shot from the leafy walls with the speed of striking vipers.
"N-No! Wait!"
One whipped around her right wrist, snapping tight with a wet, fibrous crunch that sent a jolt of pain up her arm. Her fingers went numb and the dagger dropped from her nerveless grasp, vanishing into the dirt with a soft thump. Another tendril, thick as her arm, looped around her waist, yanking her off her feet with the irresistible, fluid power of a rising tide. There was no sound of mechanics, no ratcheting—only the silent, terrifying swell of pure botanical muscle.
Zelda thrashed, her grunts and cries muffled by the dense leaves. The struggle was a fatal mistake. It triggered a furious, overwhelming response. More vines erupted from the hedge, layering over her, winding around her torso and pinning her arms to her sides. They pulsed against her ribs, swollen and hard with pressurized sap, stronger than any rope and unnervingly warm to the touch.
Within seconds, she was helpless, suspended in a living cocoon of greenery. She couldn't move her arms. She couldn't kick. Only her head was free, her cheek pressed against the damp leaves, her feet dangling a few inches from the soil.
Then, the trap's intent shifted from mere capture to interrogation. Two thick, rough-barked vines snaked around her boots, their ends expertly hooking onto the heels. With a sickening, leathery pop-squeak, the riding boots were peeled off her feet. A moment later, a pair of smaller, more dexterous tendrils coiled around her ankles and stripped away her woolen socks, leaving her bare feet exposed to the cool, damp night.
"Hhh-uh! Stop! Mmph!"
Zelda clamped her jaw shut, her teeth grinding together. She couldn't scream. A real scream would bring the guards. And the guards would mean the tower. The tower would mean the wedding. The wedding would mean him.
The vines didn't stop. The rough, fuzzy texture of the creepers began to move against the arches of her feet.
It wasn't a grab. It was a test. A deliberate, rhythmic flutter. Broad leaves brushed against her arches while thousands of fine, hairy filaments traced the exquisitely sensitive skin between her toes.
"Mmm-mmph!"
The sensation was electric, a jarring shock of unbearable ticklishness that shot straight up her spine like a lightning strike. Her toes curled violently, trying to shield themselves, but the fibrous hairs followed every twitch, digging in deeper.
"Nnn-gh! Khh-hmm!"
She bit her lip until the sharp, metallic taste of copper flooded her mouth. Hot tears pricked the corners of her eyes. The urge to laugh was a physical pressure building in her chest, an expanding balloon of hysterical panic. Don't laugh. Don't make a sound. Do not laugh.
"Mmm-hee-hmmph!" A strangled, high-pitched squeak escaped her nose. She bucked against the cocoon, her body thrashing uselessly against the unbreakable grip. The friction of the fuzz against the smooth, sheltered skin of her soles was an escalating, agonizing torment.
Behind her, heavy boots crunched on the gravel path. Krshh. Krshh. Slow. Calm. Deliberate.
Zelda went rigid, her breath catching in her throat. The vines held her head fast; she could see nothing but the dark, glossy leaves pressing against her nose and a sliver of cold moonlight filtering through the canopy above.
"Well, well," a voice rumbled from the shadows. It was calm, laced with a weary amusement, and terrifyingly close. "Usually, the greedy ones get caught trying to break in. Rare to see a catch pointed the other way."
Zelda’s heart hammered against her ribs as if trying to break free. She knew that voice. It was the cadence of long afternoons spent in the greenhouse, the patient rumble that coaxed life from stubborn seeds.
Brenn.
At the sound of the intruder's voice, the vines redoubled their efforts, as if eager to show their prize. Smaller tendrils coiled around each of her toes, pulling them back and splaying them open, exposing every millimeter of skin. The main fuzzy vines then burrowed into the mercilessly soft curves of her arches and scribbled frantically across her heels.
"Mmm-MMMPH!" Zelda choked, biting down on a scream that clawed its way up her throat. The sensation was no longer just ticklish; it was spikes of pure, white-hot static shooting up her legs, overloading every nerve.
"Ooh, a ticklish one today," Brenn mused. She heard the rustle of coarse fabric and a heavy thud—the sound of a large man sitting down on a nearby stone bench. He sounded bored, utterly unimpressed. "Usually, thieves like you hold out for a good ten minutes before the laughter brings the Royal Guard running. Judging by that squeak..."
He paused, letting the sound of her frantic, muffled whimpers fill the air. "I’ll give you two."
The vines surged, a final, overwhelming assault.
"AHH-haha-Ngh! STOP!" The dam broke. A desperate, breathless laugh tore through her restraint, raw and panicked. "Brenn! It's me! Z-Zelda! The Prin-hahaha-cess!"
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the wet, frantic rustle of the leaves and her own high-pitched, involuntary giggles.
"A shapeshifter could say that," Brenn’s voice came again, the boredom vaporized, replaced by the flat, hard edge of cold steel. "Or a mimic. If you be her Highness... tell me something only she'd know."
"P-please!" Zelda shrieked, her toes cramping from the strain. "Make it—haha-stop!"
"Answer me!" Brenn roared, the sound cutting through the night. "What did I carve for you? Twelve winters ago! When the Queen passed!"
Zelda squeezed her eyes shut, the laughter bubbling in her throat like a toxic spring. The vines were a relentless neural torment, bypassing her rational mind entirely.
"A... A wooden... hahaha!... A wooden horse! You... you painted it blue! You said... you s-said blue was for h-hope! BRENN!"
There was a sharp, sudden intake of breath from the bench. Hiss.
Then, a profound silence. No movement. No rebuttal.
A low hum suddenly reverberated through the soil—Thrummm. It wasn't a sound she heard with her ears, but a deep vibration she felt in her teeth and against the abused soles of her feet. It was a command. Zelda twisted her head just enough to see Brenn's kneeling shadow, one hand pressed flat against the trunk of the massive hedge, his lips moving in a silent communion.
The garden obeyed. The vines went limp, their internal pressure vanishing as if their sap had been instantly drained away.
She collapsed forward, catching herself on her hands and knees in the soft dirt. Her whole body trembled with the adrenaline crash, her lungs burning as she dragged in ragged, wheezing gasps. She clutched her chest, feeling the phantom pressure of the vines still squeezing her ribs. "The vines…" she rasped, pointing a shaking finger at the now-docile hedge. "What… what did you do?"
Brenn slowly lifted his head. His weathered face was a mask of pale concern in the moonlight, but his eyes weren't on Zelda. They were fixed on the hedge, his expression a mixture of paternal pride and stern disappointment, as if scolding a prized hound that had jumped the fence.
"This one can be… possessive," he said, his voice a low rumble, laced with the weary affection of a breeder for his most difficult creation. "She gets over-eager. Forgive her, Highness." He finally met Zelda's gaze. "I just had to remind her of her manners."
He stood, brushing the rich loam from his knees with movements that were suddenly too deliberate, too steady for a simple gardener. He walked to the tangled mess of greenery near the wall and, with a few sharp tugs, pulled her riding boots and woolen socks free from the retreating foliage. He placed them on the grass in front of her.
"Put them on, Highness," he murmured, his eyes already scanning the parapets above, his hearing tuned to the night. "The earth is too cold for royal feet tonight."
Zelda didn't argue. She scrambled to pull the socks on. The rough wool felt like sandpaper against the still-tingling, over-sensitized skin of her soles, sending a final, agonizing shiver up her spine. She jammed her feet back into the boots, her numb fingers fumbling with the buckles just as the night erupted.
THWUMP. THWUMP. THWUMP.
A series of sharp reports echoed from above as torches were struck and flared to life, painting the battlements in strokes of frantic, dancing orange.
"Lights! To the East Wall! I heard a scream!"
The shout was followed by the discordant clang of a dropped polearm and the heavy, panicked thud of armored feet on stone.
"The guards," Brenn grunted. He stepped forward into the edge of the light, raising a hand as if to hail them, to explain.
"Brenn, no!" Zelda hissed, lunging forward and yanking his arm down with all her weight. "Please, don't! They cannot see me!"
He looked down at her—at the raw terror in her eyes—and whatever plan he’d had dissolved. He nodded once, a sharp, decisive dip of his chin. Grabbing her arm, his grip firm but careful not to bruise, he pulled her toward the castle wall. "Come."
He shoved his shoulder against a dense thicket of thorny berry bushes. With a low groan of wood and protesting roots, it swung inward on a hidden hinge, revealing a gaping black maw that smelled of damp soil and decay. "Inside. Now."
They stumbled into the dank tunnel just as a lantern beam swept across the grass they had occupied seconds before. The heavy door swung shut behind them, plunging them into absolute darkness and a silence broken only by the sound of their own harsh breathing and the slow drip… plink… drip… of unseen water. They walked for what felt like an eternity, the clean, living scent of the garden rotting away, replaced by the cloying grease of damp cobblestones, stale ale, and old woodsmoke.
They emerged through a concealed grate behind the Happy Mask Shop, spilling out into a narrow, debris-strewn alley in the Castle Town Market. The city was asleep. The only sounds were the distant, placid murmur of the central fountain and the mournful whine of a stray dog. Over the rooftops to the north, the massive, pale stone spire of the Temple of Time loomed, glowing faintly against the star-dusted sky.
Zelda leaned against the cold brick wall, her legs threatening to give out. "You have to go back," she said, her voice thin and reedy. "If they find you with me… my father…"
Brenn didn't answer. He moved to the edge of the alley, a hulking shadow against the moonlight, peering into the main square. He watched the distant, bobbing torchlights of the guard patrol, his eyes narrowed, calculating angles and gaps in their perimeter. He was no longer a gardener. He was a hunter assessing a trap line.
He pulled back into the darkness, his face a grim sculpture of shadow.
"It's clear. They're heading for the East Gate, sweeping toward Kakariko." He turned, and the hardness in his face softened with concern. "Your Grace. What… what is going on?"
"My father," she began, the words catching in her throat before she forced them out, looking up at him with blue eyes that had turned to chips of ice. "He intends to marry me to the Gerudo King. To Ganondorf. To buy peace."
Brenn went perfectly still. His jaw tightened, the muscles bunching violently beneath his beard, and a low growl rumbled in his chest—the sound of a loyal dog seeing a wolf at the gate. "The Desert King. The one who smells of sulfur and rot."
"He will destroy everything," Zelda said, the prophecy's fire burning away her fear. She straightened her spine, unconsciously summoning the regal authority she had lost in the garden. "So go home, Brenn. Go back to Elke. She’ll be waiting. If you leave now, you can slip back into the servants' quarters before sunrise."
Brenn flinched at his wife’s name. He looked down at his rough, soil-caked hands, then back toward the distant silhouette of the castle.
"Elke made me a hot venison stew tonight," he murmured, his voice thick with memory. "Told me not to stay out too late fussing over the nightblooms."
"Then go to her!" Zelda pleaded, her voice cracking. "Don't let her wake up a widow. I can't ask you to leave her for my burden. I must do this alone."
Brenn looked at her for a long, heavy moment, his gaze unwavering. A faint, sad smile touched his lips.
"With all due respect, Your Grace, you couldn't even make it across your own garden," he said, the words gentle but unyielding. "Besides… if I go back to that warm kitchen and tell Elke I found the Queen's daughter terrified and alone in the dark… and that I let her walk into the wasteland by herself?"
He shook his head slowly, the movement full of grim finality. He adjusted the strap of the heavy spade on his back; it looked less like a garden tool now and more like a weapon.
"She wouldn't just be heartbroken, Zelda. She would never forgive me. She loves you like the daughter she never had." His voice dropped, thick with a quiet, unbreakable resolve. "And I would never forgive myself. A man who abandons a child to the wolves is no man at all."
A lump formed in Zelda's throat, hot and painful. She wanted to argue, to refuse his sacrifice, but the fierce, paternal loyalty in his eyes was an oath already sworn. It could not be refused.
"We need supplies," Brenn stated flatly, his voice now that of a commander, brokering no argument. He turned his back on the castle, on his home, on his wife. "And if we are to survive the desert, you need a guide far greater than a gardener."
Zelda’s eyes, drawn by an invisible thread, drifted back to the Temple of Time. She felt it again—a pull from within its sacred halls. Not the divine weight of the Triforce, but something else. A flicker of light. A promise. A key.
"The Temple," she whispered, the name a prayer on her lips. "We go there first."
Thye game glosses over this, and you are led to assume Impa trained her, but that's frankly boring. This is my take on what happened while Link was frozen in time
All characters are 18 or older
Word Count: 5,306
*/F | feet Tickling | Vine Tickling
The water in the porcelain basin was freezing, brought up from the deep cisterns beneath the castle, but to Princess Zelda, it felt tepid.
She stood before her vanity, stripped to her white silk chemise, scrubbing her right hand with a rough linen cloth and harsh lye soap. The smell of it—caustic and clean—did nothing to mask the phantom scent she was trying to erase. She scrubbed until the skin over her knuckles was scraped raw and weeping, the pink flesh burning under the friction, but the sensation wouldn't leave. Her breath hitched in her throat—hh-uh, hh-uh—a rhythm of panic she couldn't suppress, each tiny gasp tasting of lye.
Get it off. Get him off.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but the darkness behind her lids only summoned the memory back with terrifying clarity. The Throne Room. Three hours ago.
The air had been thick with the cloying sweetness of court incense, but he had cut through it. Ganondorf. The Gerudo King was a mountain of muscle and dark desert leather, his sheer mass seeming to lower the air pressure in the room. He towered over her father’s frail, aging frame, a predator introduced to a birdcage.
"A union," her father had beamed, his voice echoing with a hollow, forced heartiness in the cavernous hall. "To unite the sands and the fields. A new Golden Era."
Zelda had stood frozen as Ganondorf stepped forward. Up close, the density of him was suffocating. He didn't smell like a suitor; he smelled of hot iron, dry wind, and something muskier—like a wolf marking territory. He had taken her hand, his palm rough as sandstone and radiating a dry heat that seemed to leech the moisture from her own skin, leaving it feeling tight and papery. His grip was not a gentleman's hold; it was an owner's claim, his calloused thumb rubbing a possessive circle over the delicate blue veins of her wrist.
He hadn't kissed her hand. He had merely held it, his golden eyes boring into hers with a look that wasn't affection. It was hunger. It was the look of a thief appraising a lock he intended to break.
"Your Highness," his voice had rumbled, a bass tone so low it vibrated not just in her chest, but up through the bones of her jaw. "You are... ripe for the throne."
"Ngh!"
The sound was a raw grunt of revulsion, torn from her throat. She plunged her right hand into the basin, driving it deep into the freezing water as if to extinguish a flame. The impact sent a shockwave through the porcelain, sloshing icy water over the rim that splattered onto the stone floor with a series of sharp plinks.
The noise and the biting cold shattered the memory, but not the feeling. She gripped the edges of the vanity with her free hand, knuckles white, her chest heaving. The phantom brand of his dry, rough palm was still fused to her skin. It felt grimy, invasive, a stain that soap couldn't dissolve.
She looked at her reflection. Her blue eyes were wide, rimmed with the red of exhaustion, staring back at a stranger who looked trapped.
"I cannot," she whispered to the empty room, her voice trembling. "I cannot let him..."
She dropped the cloth, letting it sink into the basin. The room suddenly felt too small. The high stone walls, usually a comfort, now felt like the sides of a cage. She paced to the window, then to the door, checking the heavy iron bolt. Ssch-lck. Locked. The sound was small and foolish. A metal bar could hold back the night, but it offered no defense against a predator who had been handed the keys to the kingdom.
She hugged her arms around herself, shivering despite the summer heat. Staying awake meant thinking about tomorrow, and thinking about tomorrow made it hard to breathe.
"Sleep," she commanded herself, though the word tasted like a lie.
She extinguished the oil lamp with a quick puff of air, plunging the room into shadow. Fff-t. The darkness seemed to stretch, the corners of the room looking like grasping fingers. She climbed into her large, canopy bed, pulling the heavy quilt up to her chin not for warmth, but for a shield.
She squeezed her eyes shut, begging for oblivion. Sleep was not a comfort tonight; it was a hiding place. But the moment she drifted off, the darkness didn't fade. It sharpened.
---
The dream was not a dream. It was a drowning.
Zelda found herself suspended in a void of absolute, crushing blue. There was no air, only a heavy, liquid silence that pressed against her eardrums with a low hum, making her teeth ache. Her lungs screamed for air she couldn't find. Then, the heat started.
It began as a prickle on the back of her right hand, directly over her knuckles. Within seconds, the prickle escalated to a brand. A searing, white-hot line of agony traced a triangle into her skin.
"Khh-ahh!"
She tried to scream in the dream, but the blue void swallowed the sound, the pressure forcing it back down her own throat.
A voice, genderless and resonating like a struck bell, vibrated through her bones. THRRRUMMM.
The Golden Land bleeds. The Desert King brings the rot.
An image flashed before her mind’s eye: the lush Hyrule Field turning to gray ash, the Zora's rivers running with black sludge, and her own castle crumbling under a blood-red sky.
The voice did not relent. It grew louder, a resonant frequency that vibrated against her ribcage. THRRRUMMM.
Seek the Silver Spirit. The Thief who denies the King.
The image of the dying fields faded, replaced by a sudden, jarring shift in perspective. Zelda saw a vast expanse of sand under a blistering sun. Standing atop a dune was a woman—tall, skinned in bronze and muscle, hair like a flame. She held a scimitar with effortless grace, her expression one of fierce, defiant pride. She was a Gerudo, but her eyes held none of Ganondorf’s malice. They held a warrior’s honor.
To guide the Hero of Time... you must become the Shadow.
The dizziness spun Zelda around in the dream. The sand dissolved into shadow. A figure stepped out of the darkness. It was a slender warrior clad in blue and white wrappings, their face obscured, a solitary red eye visible beneath a cowl. The figure stood in a fighting stance, protecting a silhouette—a man, clad in green, holding a sword that shone with starlight.
"Who... who is that?" Zelda murmured in the dream, reaching out. The figure in blue felt strangely familiar, like looking into a distorted mirror.
The triforce on her hand flared white-hot, the pain a clean, purifying fire this time.
"AWAKE."
Zelda gasped, shooting up in bed, her hands clutching at her throat. "Hhh-ahh!"
The room was silent. The heavy velvet curtains hung still. The dream receded rapidly, leaving a sharp spike of iron behind her eyes and the phantom smell of ozone in her nostrils. She slumped back against the pillows, rubbing her temples.
"The wine," she rasped, the word a dry scrape in her throat. Her voice sounded alien in the silence.
Father’s spiced vintage... too strong, she thought as she swung her legs out of bed. The stone floor was cold against her bare feet, the chill a welcome, grounding shock. The terror of the dream felt foolish in the waking world. A warrior woman? A shadow in blue? A hero? They were just fairy tales. Hallucinations born of a stressful evening and heavy alcohol.
I need air, she decided, her mind latching onto a simple, physical solution. Just a walk to the library. To clear the fumes. She grabbed a silk robe, cinching it tight around her waist. "Just a walk to the library. To clear the fumes."
She didn't dress for travel. She dressed for a midnight wander, barefoot and in her nightclothes, convincing herself that with a glass of water and a book, the world would make sense again.
She slipped into the corridor. It was darker than usual. The torches were dimmed low, their flames sputtering with a soft, greasy fup... fup... fup.
As she walked the silent, drafty corridor, her mind drifted back against her will to the final image of the nightmare. The silhouette in green.
It hadn't been a knight’s armor. It was a tunic—simple, rough-spun, and dyed the vibrant, verdant green of deep forest moss. A color that didn't belong in the stone and mortar of the castle.
A memory pricked at her, sharp and sudden. The courtyard. Seven years ago.
She saw the face of a boy with messy blonde hair, standing awkwardly in the manicured gardens, wearing that same impossible green. A boy who had looked at her not as a princess, but as a conspirator.
The thought shattered as a sound tore through the quiet hallway—a jagged, wet noise that froze the blood in her veins. It wasn't the wind. It was the sound of a man breaking.
It was her father. And he was weeping.
Zelda froze, pressing herself against the stone wall, the rough-hewn blocks biting into her back through the thin silk of her robe.
---
Zelda held her breath, her hand clamped over her mouth to stifle the tiny, rhythmic hitches of her own breathing. Hhh... hhh...
The King's study door was ajar, a sliver of golden candlelight spilling onto the dark flagstones. Through the crack, she saw her father slumped in his high-backed chair. He looked small. The crown sat on the desk next to a decanter of wine, looking heavy and cold.
Opposite him stood Impa. The Sheikah advisor’s silhouette was razor-sharp against the light, her arms crossed, her presence a coiled spring of tense energy.
"The man is a viper, Your Majesty," Impa’s voice sliced through the quiet, a low, jagged whisper. "The shadows in the desert grow longer. His loyalty is a farce."
"I know!" The King’s voice cracked, a desperate gurgle of sound. He buried his face in his hands. "Chh-hhh... Do you think me blind, Impa? I see the hunger in his eyes. I smell the rot he brings."
"Then send him away," Impa urged. "Fortify the borders."
"And doom us all?" The King looked up, his eyes bloodshot and raw. "His armies are vast, Impa. Hyrule is weak. The famine... the unrest... we cannot fight a war. Not now."
He reached for the wine glass, his hand trembling so violently that the dark liquid sloshed over the rim, staining the papers on his desk.
"A marriage alliance," the King whispered, the words tasting like ash in his own mouth. "It buys us time. It buys us peace."
"And the price?" Impa asked, her voice turning to ice. "Zelda?"
Zelda felt her heart stop. It wasn't a figure of speech. For a long second, it felt as if the muscle had seized in her chest, and the corridor seemed to tilt, the air turning thin and cold.
"She is... she is strong," the King mumbled, trying to convince himself. "She is of Royal blood. She can handle him. She must. It is her duty to the crown."
"She is a child," Impa hissed. "You are feeding her to a wolf to save your own skin."
"I AM SAVING THE KINGDOM!" The King slammed his fist on the desk, the impact echoing through the stone with a deep, resonant BOOM. "If sacrificing one saves thousands... then God forgive me, I will make the trade."
The silence that followed was suffocating, heavy with the smell of spilled wine and despair.
Zelda slowly backed away from the door. Her legs felt numb, as if the blood had turned to ice in her veins. The cold stone seemed to bite into the soles of her feet.
Sacrifice.
The word hung in the air, a physical thing with weight and sharp edges. The revulsion she had felt earlier wasn't just distaste; it was intuition. Her father wasn't blind. He was terrified. And in his terror, he had just sold her.
The safety of the castle walls evaporated. This wasn't home anymore. It was a prison cell, and the executioner was already sitting at the dinner table.
She turned and ran.
She didn't care about the noise now. Her bare feet slapped against the stone as she sprinted back toward her chambers. The earlier hesitation was gone. The dream was right. The prophecy was real.
Run.
She burst into her room and slammed the door, the boom echoing in the sudden confines of her stone sanctuary. She didn't bother with the bolt. Leaning her full weight against the heavy oak, she gasped for air, her lungs burning, each breath a ragged tear in the silence. Haaah... haaah...
Tears burned behind her eyes, hot and useless. She scrubbed them away with the back of her hand, a furious, violent motion. There was no time for grief. Grief was a luxury for those who still had a future. She shoved herself off the door and moved to the cedar chest at the foot of her bed, throwing the lid open with a clatter that scraped her nerves raw.
The familiar, comforting scent of the wood and dried lavender was a cruel reminder of a life that had just ended. She ripped out the contents with frantic, jerky movements: riding leathers, thick woolen socks, sturdy boots. The fine silk of her chemise felt like a shroud. She tore it off, her skin erupting in gooseflesh as the cool night air hit her sweat-slick back.
She dressed with the desperate haste of a cornered animal. The leather breeches were stiff, their rough inner seams chafing her skin. Her fingers, slick and trembling, fumbled over the laces of her tunic, pulling them so tight they bit into her ribs. She grabbed the small dagger from her vanity—an ornamental thing of pearl and silver, meant for slitting the wax seals on letters—and jammed it into her belt. It was a pathetic sliver of steel against a King of Thieves, but its cold weight against her hip was a small, hard point of courage.
She threw the slate-grey cloak over her shoulders, the heavy wool settling on her like a shroud of anonymity. The hood, pulled low, plunged her vision into a narrow tunnel, erasing the gilded cage of her room and leaving only the path forward.
The main gates were impossible. The stables, a death trap. Her mind, sharpened by pure adrenaline, latched onto the only viable path. The Gardens. An old service gate, hidden behind the arboretum, used by groundskeepers to haul mulch and soil. It led to the Castle Town outskirts. It led to freedom.
Zelda didn't hesitate. She scrambled to her window, the stonework cold and rough beneath her palms. She swung her legs out, her stomach lurching as she dropped onto the narrow decorative ledge that skirted the castle wall. The wind whipped at her cloak, threatening to turn it into a sail. Pressing her body flat against the masonry, she shimmied along the ledge until her questing fingers found the thick, gnarled vines of the ancient ivy trellis.
Gripping the living ladder, she began her descent. The thick vines were coarse under her gloves, the leaves slick with evening dew. The air grew heavy as she neared the ground, thick with the cloying, almost suffocating perfume of night-blooming jasmine and wet, black earth. The Royal Gardens were not merely quiet; the silence was expectant, predatory.
Her boots sank into the damp, loamy soil with a soft squelch. Zelda kept low, moving in a crouch through a labyrinth of moon-drenched hedges and topiary beasts whose shadowy forms seemed to twist and watch her pass. The ground itself felt wrong. With each step, the earth didn't just yield; a faint, almost imperceptible tremor vibrated up through the soles of her boots, as if she were walking on the skin of a sleeping leviathan.
She passed a row of hydrangeas, their heavy blue heads nodding in a breeze she couldn't feel. The prickling sensation of being watched crawled over the back of her neck like a spider. She whipped her head around—snap—but saw only the swaying, inky blackness of the leaves.
Then she saw it. A gap in the dense outer hedge. Not a gate, but a breach—a jagged, inviting wound in the greenery, just wide enough to slip through. Panic, a sharp and stupid commander, overrode the scream of her instincts that warned nature rarely carved such convenient doors. She ducked and plunged into the gap.
The foliage pressed in, close and damp, the broad leaves brushing against her cheeks like cool, wet hands. But as she pushed deeper, the branches didn't bend. They stiffened. Resisted.
She was halfway through when the atmosphere shifted from passive to active.
A distinct, sinuous pressure coiled around her left ankle. It lay there for a single, terrifying heartbeat—heavy, warm, and flexible, like a resting python. A faint, musky-sweet smell, like pollen and damp rot, wafted up from it.
"Ngh!" she gasped, the sound swallowed by the leaves. "Let go..."
She tried to wrench her foot free, but the vine didn't snag; it constricted with a smooth, muscular power.
Her hand flew to the dagger. She drew the small blade and slashed downward blindly into the darkness around her leg. The silver edge bit into something thick and fibrous.
A wet, tearing sound. Shhrrrk.
The garden woke up.
The instant the blade broke the vine's skin, the entire hedge exploded into silent, violent motion. It wasn't one vine. It was the whole organism. Thick, fuzzy tendrils, covered in what looked like fine, mossy hair, shot from the leafy walls with the speed of striking vipers.
"N-No! Wait!"
One whipped around her right wrist, snapping tight with a wet, fibrous crunch that sent a jolt of pain up her arm. Her fingers went numb and the dagger dropped from her nerveless grasp, vanishing into the dirt with a soft thump. Another tendril, thick as her arm, looped around her waist, yanking her off her feet with the irresistible, fluid power of a rising tide. There was no sound of mechanics, no ratcheting—only the silent, terrifying swell of pure botanical muscle.
Zelda thrashed, her grunts and cries muffled by the dense leaves. The struggle was a fatal mistake. It triggered a furious, overwhelming response. More vines erupted from the hedge, layering over her, winding around her torso and pinning her arms to her sides. They pulsed against her ribs, swollen and hard with pressurized sap, stronger than any rope and unnervingly warm to the touch.
Within seconds, she was helpless, suspended in a living cocoon of greenery. She couldn't move her arms. She couldn't kick. Only her head was free, her cheek pressed against the damp leaves, her feet dangling a few inches from the soil.
Then, the trap's intent shifted from mere capture to interrogation. Two thick, rough-barked vines snaked around her boots, their ends expertly hooking onto the heels. With a sickening, leathery pop-squeak, the riding boots were peeled off her feet. A moment later, a pair of smaller, more dexterous tendrils coiled around her ankles and stripped away her woolen socks, leaving her bare feet exposed to the cool, damp night.
"Hhh-uh! Stop! Mmph!"
Zelda clamped her jaw shut, her teeth grinding together. She couldn't scream. A real scream would bring the guards. And the guards would mean the tower. The tower would mean the wedding. The wedding would mean him.
The vines didn't stop. The rough, fuzzy texture of the creepers began to move against the arches of her feet.
It wasn't a grab. It was a test. A deliberate, rhythmic flutter. Broad leaves brushed against her arches while thousands of fine, hairy filaments traced the exquisitely sensitive skin between her toes.
"Mmm-mmph!"
The sensation was electric, a jarring shock of unbearable ticklishness that shot straight up her spine like a lightning strike. Her toes curled violently, trying to shield themselves, but the fibrous hairs followed every twitch, digging in deeper.
"Nnn-gh! Khh-hmm!"
She bit her lip until the sharp, metallic taste of copper flooded her mouth. Hot tears pricked the corners of her eyes. The urge to laugh was a physical pressure building in her chest, an expanding balloon of hysterical panic. Don't laugh. Don't make a sound. Do not laugh.
"Mmm-hee-hmmph!" A strangled, high-pitched squeak escaped her nose. She bucked against the cocoon, her body thrashing uselessly against the unbreakable grip. The friction of the fuzz against the smooth, sheltered skin of her soles was an escalating, agonizing torment.
Behind her, heavy boots crunched on the gravel path. Krshh. Krshh. Slow. Calm. Deliberate.
Zelda went rigid, her breath catching in her throat. The vines held her head fast; she could see nothing but the dark, glossy leaves pressing against her nose and a sliver of cold moonlight filtering through the canopy above.
"Well, well," a voice rumbled from the shadows. It was calm, laced with a weary amusement, and terrifyingly close. "Usually, the greedy ones get caught trying to break in. Rare to see a catch pointed the other way."
Zelda’s heart hammered against her ribs as if trying to break free. She knew that voice. It was the cadence of long afternoons spent in the greenhouse, the patient rumble that coaxed life from stubborn seeds.
Brenn.
At the sound of the intruder's voice, the vines redoubled their efforts, as if eager to show their prize. Smaller tendrils coiled around each of her toes, pulling them back and splaying them open, exposing every millimeter of skin. The main fuzzy vines then burrowed into the mercilessly soft curves of her arches and scribbled frantically across her heels.
"Mmm-MMMPH!" Zelda choked, biting down on a scream that clawed its way up her throat. The sensation was no longer just ticklish; it was spikes of pure, white-hot static shooting up her legs, overloading every nerve.
"Ooh, a ticklish one today," Brenn mused. She heard the rustle of coarse fabric and a heavy thud—the sound of a large man sitting down on a nearby stone bench. He sounded bored, utterly unimpressed. "Usually, thieves like you hold out for a good ten minutes before the laughter brings the Royal Guard running. Judging by that squeak..."
He paused, letting the sound of her frantic, muffled whimpers fill the air. "I’ll give you two."
The vines surged, a final, overwhelming assault.
"AHH-haha-Ngh! STOP!" The dam broke. A desperate, breathless laugh tore through her restraint, raw and panicked. "Brenn! It's me! Z-Zelda! The Prin-hahaha-cess!"
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the wet, frantic rustle of the leaves and her own high-pitched, involuntary giggles.
"A shapeshifter could say that," Brenn’s voice came again, the boredom vaporized, replaced by the flat, hard edge of cold steel. "Or a mimic. If you be her Highness... tell me something only she'd know."
"P-please!" Zelda shrieked, her toes cramping from the strain. "Make it—haha-stop!"
"Answer me!" Brenn roared, the sound cutting through the night. "What did I carve for you? Twelve winters ago! When the Queen passed!"
Zelda squeezed her eyes shut, the laughter bubbling in her throat like a toxic spring. The vines were a relentless neural torment, bypassing her rational mind entirely.
"A... A wooden... hahaha!... A wooden horse! You... you painted it blue! You said... you s-said blue was for h-hope! BRENN!"
There was a sharp, sudden intake of breath from the bench. Hiss.
Then, a profound silence. No movement. No rebuttal.
A low hum suddenly reverberated through the soil—Thrummm. It wasn't a sound she heard with her ears, but a deep vibration she felt in her teeth and against the abused soles of her feet. It was a command. Zelda twisted her head just enough to see Brenn's kneeling shadow, one hand pressed flat against the trunk of the massive hedge, his lips moving in a silent communion.
The garden obeyed. The vines went limp, their internal pressure vanishing as if their sap had been instantly drained away.
She collapsed forward, catching herself on her hands and knees in the soft dirt. Her whole body trembled with the adrenaline crash, her lungs burning as she dragged in ragged, wheezing gasps. She clutched her chest, feeling the phantom pressure of the vines still squeezing her ribs. "The vines…" she rasped, pointing a shaking finger at the now-docile hedge. "What… what did you do?"
Brenn slowly lifted his head. His weathered face was a mask of pale concern in the moonlight, but his eyes weren't on Zelda. They were fixed on the hedge, his expression a mixture of paternal pride and stern disappointment, as if scolding a prized hound that had jumped the fence.
"This one can be… possessive," he said, his voice a low rumble, laced with the weary affection of a breeder for his most difficult creation. "She gets over-eager. Forgive her, Highness." He finally met Zelda's gaze. "I just had to remind her of her manners."
He stood, brushing the rich loam from his knees with movements that were suddenly too deliberate, too steady for a simple gardener. He walked to the tangled mess of greenery near the wall and, with a few sharp tugs, pulled her riding boots and woolen socks free from the retreating foliage. He placed them on the grass in front of her.
"Put them on, Highness," he murmured, his eyes already scanning the parapets above, his hearing tuned to the night. "The earth is too cold for royal feet tonight."
Zelda didn't argue. She scrambled to pull the socks on. The rough wool felt like sandpaper against the still-tingling, over-sensitized skin of her soles, sending a final, agonizing shiver up her spine. She jammed her feet back into the boots, her numb fingers fumbling with the buckles just as the night erupted.
THWUMP. THWUMP. THWUMP.
A series of sharp reports echoed from above as torches were struck and flared to life, painting the battlements in strokes of frantic, dancing orange.
"Lights! To the East Wall! I heard a scream!"
The shout was followed by the discordant clang of a dropped polearm and the heavy, panicked thud of armored feet on stone.
"The guards," Brenn grunted. He stepped forward into the edge of the light, raising a hand as if to hail them, to explain.
"Brenn, no!" Zelda hissed, lunging forward and yanking his arm down with all her weight. "Please, don't! They cannot see me!"
He looked down at her—at the raw terror in her eyes—and whatever plan he’d had dissolved. He nodded once, a sharp, decisive dip of his chin. Grabbing her arm, his grip firm but careful not to bruise, he pulled her toward the castle wall. "Come."
He shoved his shoulder against a dense thicket of thorny berry bushes. With a low groan of wood and protesting roots, it swung inward on a hidden hinge, revealing a gaping black maw that smelled of damp soil and decay. "Inside. Now."
They stumbled into the dank tunnel just as a lantern beam swept across the grass they had occupied seconds before. The heavy door swung shut behind them, plunging them into absolute darkness and a silence broken only by the sound of their own harsh breathing and the slow drip… plink… drip… of unseen water. They walked for what felt like an eternity, the clean, living scent of the garden rotting away, replaced by the cloying grease of damp cobblestones, stale ale, and old woodsmoke.
They emerged through a concealed grate behind the Happy Mask Shop, spilling out into a narrow, debris-strewn alley in the Castle Town Market. The city was asleep. The only sounds were the distant, placid murmur of the central fountain and the mournful whine of a stray dog. Over the rooftops to the north, the massive, pale stone spire of the Temple of Time loomed, glowing faintly against the star-dusted sky.
Zelda leaned against the cold brick wall, her legs threatening to give out. "You have to go back," she said, her voice thin and reedy. "If they find you with me… my father…"
Brenn didn't answer. He moved to the edge of the alley, a hulking shadow against the moonlight, peering into the main square. He watched the distant, bobbing torchlights of the guard patrol, his eyes narrowed, calculating angles and gaps in their perimeter. He was no longer a gardener. He was a hunter assessing a trap line.
He pulled back into the darkness, his face a grim sculpture of shadow.
"It's clear. They're heading for the East Gate, sweeping toward Kakariko." He turned, and the hardness in his face softened with concern. "Your Grace. What… what is going on?"
"My father," she began, the words catching in her throat before she forced them out, looking up at him with blue eyes that had turned to chips of ice. "He intends to marry me to the Gerudo King. To Ganondorf. To buy peace."
Brenn went perfectly still. His jaw tightened, the muscles bunching violently beneath his beard, and a low growl rumbled in his chest—the sound of a loyal dog seeing a wolf at the gate. "The Desert King. The one who smells of sulfur and rot."
"He will destroy everything," Zelda said, the prophecy's fire burning away her fear. She straightened her spine, unconsciously summoning the regal authority she had lost in the garden. "So go home, Brenn. Go back to Elke. She’ll be waiting. If you leave now, you can slip back into the servants' quarters before sunrise."
Brenn flinched at his wife’s name. He looked down at his rough, soil-caked hands, then back toward the distant silhouette of the castle.
"Elke made me a hot venison stew tonight," he murmured, his voice thick with memory. "Told me not to stay out too late fussing over the nightblooms."
"Then go to her!" Zelda pleaded, her voice cracking. "Don't let her wake up a widow. I can't ask you to leave her for my burden. I must do this alone."
Brenn looked at her for a long, heavy moment, his gaze unwavering. A faint, sad smile touched his lips.
"With all due respect, Your Grace, you couldn't even make it across your own garden," he said, the words gentle but unyielding. "Besides… if I go back to that warm kitchen and tell Elke I found the Queen's daughter terrified and alone in the dark… and that I let her walk into the wasteland by herself?"
He shook his head slowly, the movement full of grim finality. He adjusted the strap of the heavy spade on his back; it looked less like a garden tool now and more like a weapon.
"She wouldn't just be heartbroken, Zelda. She would never forgive me. She loves you like the daughter she never had." His voice dropped, thick with a quiet, unbreakable resolve. "And I would never forgive myself. A man who abandons a child to the wolves is no man at all."
A lump formed in Zelda's throat, hot and painful. She wanted to argue, to refuse his sacrifice, but the fierce, paternal loyalty in his eyes was an oath already sworn. It could not be refused.
"We need supplies," Brenn stated flatly, his voice now that of a commander, brokering no argument. He turned his back on the castle, on his home, on his wife. "And if we are to survive the desert, you need a guide far greater than a gardener."
Zelda’s eyes, drawn by an invisible thread, drifted back to the Temple of Time. She felt it again—a pull from within its sacred halls. Not the divine weight of the Triforce, but something else. A flicker of light. A promise. A key.
"The Temple," she whispered, the name a prayer on her lips. "We go there first."
