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Sometimes, it felt as though Link’s soul did not align perfectly with his body: the size and shape of it; the age. Something had come loose when the sages sent him back and forth through time, using magic to age him and try to make him into the incarnation of a hero. Sometimes, Link’s soul felt as though it fit his body like water filling a tumbler to the very brim: every part of him perfectly aligned with the vessel of his fingers, his chest, his legs and his feet. Other times, his body felt too small, his soul curled up into a cupboard-shelf sized boy’s body, and his arms did not have quite the right reach, quite the right strength. It wasn’t just the physicality of the experience that bothered him. It was also the feeling inside of his head. He could not hold onto the feeling of being the right age, of containing all the sensations and moods of being fixed into a particular stage of life that fit the mold of his body. Time moved for him like water washing away at the banks of a river—sometimes bringing new silt to build the bank back up, sometimes taking soil away, eroding the shape of it.
Link slid between the ages of eleven and seventeen. He could feel it sometimes, waking up in the mornings, and settling into his body. Today he felt eleven. Another day, he felt fifteen. Sometimes, it was more an amorphous feeling, shifting according to the day, according to what he was doing. Sometimes it was a clear as waking up in a very particular time, a very particular place… and he did not know, he did not know, and all he knew was that when he knelt at the feet of the princess, telling her that he was leaving Hyrule, there had been a terrible feeling of loss in his heart. He had lost Navi, his truest friend in the entire world alongside faithful Epona, and he had lost time. They had taken all the years of his life, tried to replace them with dreams of valor to help grow him into the hero that they had wanted, and then shaken him up, everything rattled loose and mixed up.
The day he met the Skullkid in the woods, the one who wore the cursed mask, Link had been fifteen, looking at this kid who was trying to rob him, getting his mitts on Link’s ocarina, and thinking what shit was this, after all of that time running around Hyrule, saving the kingdom, he wasn’t going to allow some trouble-maker like this child to get the best of him. (The fact that Skullkid had managed to still get the best of him was besides the point).
In Clocktown, when the bomber boys had insisted Link catch them all before they revealed their secret code to him, Link had slid back and forth between eleven and thirteen. He didn’t know whether he was annoyed that these kids were making him run round and round like this, or whether he was happy, so happy that he could laugh with it, he couldn’t remember the last time he had been allowed to play like this, running through the grass and over the cobbled streets, spending time with other children, even if those children were younger than even he was.
Link at seventeen could sit in Clocktown square and watch girls go by and wonder about stories of heroes who lived happily ever after with fair maidens. (They seemed so far from the truth that the idea of them was laughable). Link at seventeen went out into Termina fields and beyond, slaying monsters and shutting all the old fears and unhappiness away into little boxes where they couldn’t touch what mattered most: his desire to always help others, to keep harm from being done, to keep the moon from settling on this earth and turning it into a wasteland.
Link at fourteen strolled into Clocktown shops and bargained for prices with all the impishness of a boy his age.
Link at sixteen practiced archery in the local shooting gallery, hitting the marks in the very center, every time.
Link at eleven sat on the roof-balcony of the Stock Pot Inn. He was watching the sun set on the evening of the First Day, the warm streaks of light painting the sky and the clouds. He could smell supper cooking in the kitchens of the inn, and he could see the jugglers who were out practicing for the festival, and the townspeople going to and fro on the streets below, talking and enjoying themselves. Down below, Link could see the glow of Tatl the fairy flitting about, exploring nooks and crannies and windows, bored and playing aimlessly and waiting until they went inside for supper. Tatl sometimes called him moody, but quite as often she did not, she was starting to see that there was something underneath his young face that made her hesitate and quiet and Tatl didn’t like that, not very much, she was a chatter-box at heart, filling silences with her words words words and Link did not mind. He missed Navi. Tatl wasn’t Navi, but she was companion, and Link valued her presence and conversation.
Link at eleven wanted to enjoy the evening the way he had enjoyed the quiet evenings of his childhood in the Kokiri Woods with Saria. Clocktown was so different from the old forests, but here at least there was the sound of music in the air, and the scent of good things to eat, and Link did not turn his head to look at the moon getting bigger and bigger in the sky, high above them all. Sometimes, he felt that temptation-desire: to keep rewinding time over and over again, and to never look up to the sky. But when he turned his eyes to the recurring patterns of the lives of all these people, the eerie clockwork—well, the feeling would pass. He would do something about this moon, that mask, that Skullkid. He would take it one step at a time.
He had two days left, and all of the time in the world.