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Hyrule is beautiful.
It was the first thing Link noticed when he ran out of the strange room in which he'd just woken up, confused, disoriented, with nothing for memories but a bright light and a soft voice calling his name. There was no fear as he took in his surroundings, no worry at all, as it didn't even occur to him that he should remember more.
So he opened the chests, pulled on the clothes, took the mysterious device, stumbled a bit as he acquainted himself with a body whose movement felt foreign, and went out.
The light was blinding, painful in his eyes. The air was full of scents overwhelming and enchanting; the uneven ground made him fight for balance. He took a few stumbling steps before adjusting, running into the sun.
Then his step faltered again, overcame by the splendour of the view in front of him.
He's lost so much, he's discovered since then. He feels them keenly now, the holes in his soul, like a black void of malice sitting at the centre of his chest. His mind is in ruins just like this land, with only a few pieces staying upright amidst the rubble, reminders of a golden past, of everything that was destroyed.
But there was none of that, in that first, blessed moment. There were just the plains stretching out in front of him, the sun rising behind the peaks of the mountains, the miles and miles of rocks and green and grass, of nature, of life.
In that moment, Link set his eyes on this land that took his breath away, and loved it.
It's a moment he will cherish all his life. No matter how much he remembers, no matter what broken shards of his past existence come back to him. This is his birth, this sense of awe and wonder and pure, wild love, and he will carry it forever.
He takes it with him on the road as he sets out to find this destiny he was told about. It is nebulous and distant, that story of a monster and a princess and a knight fallen in combat. Far less real than the heat of the fire, the song of the birds or of the wind rustling in the leaves. At first he sleeps on the ground and awakes covered in dirt, eats grilled meat with apples and mushrooms, fights monsters when they attack him. It's a simple life, one that comes easily to him.
He wanders, his aim so huge and remote he might as well not have any. Finding Impa in Kakariko Village, when he only just learnt the vast green stretches under his feet are called Hyrule, already feels more attainable. He talks to people in stables. He trains in the shrines and prays at the statues of the goddess, feeling his body strengthen little by little. He fumbles his way to his destination, cantering in circles when he cannot find the road he was pointed to, stumbling upon camps of monsters that he kills to collect their weapons and sit by their fire.
That's when he starts to question. Who he was, who he is. There is immense grief in him, a deep melancholy that strikes him at the most random times when he looks at the sky or gallops through the vast plains, and he cannot place it.
But still, the land is there, comforting him, welcoming him. Its warmth, its secrets, the smiling sting of its cold, it all echoes the voice that roused him from his sleep and still calls him, sometimes. He lays awake at night between his horse and the fire, listening to it, imagining it, not knowing how much of each.
So he roams, tries to find himself while he goes about helping the people he comes across, setting out to right one-hundred-years-old wrongs. Slowly, memories surge, at certain places, certain times. They're everywhere, really, small embers that disappear as soon as he tries to catch them; but the emotions linger, taking him at the throat as he comes to realise, little by little, how much the land was scarred by the evil that attacked it.
And yet nothing takes away the sense of wonder and reassurance looking at these landscapes brings him, as he sets out with his horse through the vastness of open nature.
There's a mystery there, a mystery so deep he doubts even Ganon managed to taint it. Moss grows over the ruins of the ancient temples, children run in the streets of Hateno Village, just like Link hears Princess Zelda's caring words in his dreams.
He has a name for the voice, now. He has her pictures, too, to help him gather his broken mind. She was a real girl, laughing and crying, with her struggles, her weaknesses, her strengths. Link is fascinated by the thousand-faceted image he glances of her, as if looking through shattered glass.
He has a drive, a goal: free the divine beasts, free the perished champions' souls, free the princess from the demon that holds her and that she holds.
It isn't enough. That primal horror he feels in the huge automatons isn't his own, and yet it suffocates him all the same. These people talk to him as friends, brimming with pain and waiting for release. Link barely knows them, but his sorrow at their fate crushes him nonetheless, regret for all that wasn't and could have been, rather than for what was.
In a world filled with people, he is alone.
But the land is there, keeping him and his horse company as they roam and discover new things wherever they go. The sun never rises or sets in the same way; there is always a new path up the cliffs. Link will never tire of it.
The princess he is meant to rescue is always on his mind. He slowly pieces her together thanks to the pictures she left behind, an elaborate puzzle and a treasure hunt at the same time. It is so little, flashes at best. Nothing like a life truly led. Link doesn't think he will ever recover that life of his, no more than the temples will rise from their ruins.
But the sense of her is everywhere. In the shade of the trees, in the shape of the clouds, in the light of the sun. He misses her; he cannot wait to meet her. His destiny is still daunting, frightening; he has just come to life again, he doesn't want to leave it behind, for all that it was given back to him for one purpose only. But he will brave it all for her, as he knows he once did, as he would do a thousand times over.
He loves her, just as he loved her then. It might be the only thing that hasn't changed, in this world struck by desolation and rebirth.
When those anxieties overcome him, when the night grows black and purple and fear steals his breath the way a guardian did a hundred years ago, the land is there for him. He lets himself be soothed by the softness of the grass under his body, by the song of the water in the creek, by the slow slide of the clouds, so far above his head.
Hyrule is there. Eternal. Constant. Broken and grieving and beautiful. It's with him, it's in him.
Maybe that's enough.