Memorabilia, an important part of coronations

For a moment Zelda thought that it was the old woman's bones creaking, before she remembered that she'd heard that sound before. Several times before during this ceremony, actually.

Puzzled, Zelda looked away from the retreating woman to stare at the man who had taken her place. He was easy to identify, even if he was someone that she'd done her best to avoid over the preceding days.

Coronations were expensive things, as it turned out, even with the princess requiring very little in the way of a wardrobe budget for the ceremony. Housing all of the invited noble guests, holding a banquet to mark the occasion, commissioning a talented artist to paint the princess's portrait, and even paying the salaries of all of the guards required for the events – all of these cost rupee. Rupee that a nation that was currently rebuilding after its time under a tyrant could especially ill afford.

It probably wasn't surprising that some enterprising person had long ago decided to harness the excitement of the event to try and recoup some of those expenses by creating memorabilia of the event. Some of the earliest examples – an embossed plate and a crude, nearly featureless statue of an ancient princess, were even housed in the local museum. Most of the items were tacky kitchenware (made for display, not for use) or scarves in the traditional Hylian colours, or commemorative books. As far as this day-from-hell went, they were probably the least humiliating thing she had to worry about.

Zelda certainly recognised the financial necessity of having someone coordinating and creating these coronation souvenirs, but that didn't mean that she wanted to hear every single detail of how the most embarrassing day of her life would be packaged and sold in the most kitsch way for her people, and so she had gladly delegated that task to her administrators.

And before her now stood the man who her administrators had selected for the job of thinking up and creating as many different bits of useless clutter as possible so that those who enjoyed buying such things would have a chance to own their own decorative plate or mug or whatever else they could stamp the word 'Coronation' and today's date on in order to make it an official piece of memorabilia.

None of that explained what the hell the man was doing. As he walked up the stairs towards her he would pause, press a raised section of a strange boxlike contraption that he was holding cupped in his hands, before he would then tug at one section of the device towards the back and pull out a slightly rectangular piece of stiff, glossy looking paper. He would then place that piece of strange-looking paper in a large pouch on his left hip, before he'd then reach over to a second pouch on his right hip and pull out an identical-looking piece of glossy paper and insert it into the strange box device. Finally, he would raise the box to his head, pointing its spyglass-like front towards her, press the raised section again and go through the whole procedure again. Each time he pressed that raised portion of the box, a familiar clicking sound would emanate from the contraption,

“Good morning, Your Highness!” the man cheerfully exclaimed as he finally stopped in front of her, going through the strange ritual of pointing the box at her, pressing the raised section, and swapping in a new piece of paper. “Oh, I can scarcely contain my excitement! This is going to be the best Commemoration Book that Hyrule... no, that the world has ever seen!”

Princess Zelda stared in bemusement at the strange man and the even stranger device he was carrying. Commemoration books were a popular souvenir item for coronations, so she was hardly surprised that he was making one. They were made in order to turn a profit for the Royal Treasury, and therefore didn't contain any detailed artwork from an expensive professional artist – at best, they might have a couple of crudely broad sketches that wouldn't look like her and that wouldn't be explicit enough to turn on even the most **** of perverts. As such, despite its tendency to be widely bought and spread, she hadn't been worried about its creation. Now that she was looking at the unsettling device in his hands, she had a sinking feeling that she'd made a serious mistake in not paying more attention to this man's plans for the book.

“That... certainly gladdens my heart,” Zelda managed as she smiled, while keeping her pussy on display. She was glad that she'd heeded the advice of her handmaids and applied some scented oil there during her morning preparations – she'd likely have dried out by now without it. “I certainly hope that the people who buy it are well pleased with it. If I may... can I ask what it is you're carrying?”

“This?” The man blinked, looking down at the box in his hands. “Ah, yes, they are a bit of a rare sight in this kingdom. This is a picto-box, Your Highness. With it, we'll finally be able to produce a commemoration book that truly shows the beauty of this sacred ceremony.”

A... picto-box? She'd never heard of a picto-box before. What was... wait. Wait, did he mean picto as in pictograph?

Zelda stared with dawning horror at the device in the man's hands, even as he aimed it at her bare breasts and clicked the button again. Faded memories came to her from the last time she'd seen a device like it, way back years ago before Ganondorf, back when her father was still alive and a trader had been showing him the wondrous devices he'd brought with him from beyond the kingdom. Devices including one that painted a picture with astonishing detail and speed such that even the greatest artist would feel envy. A device that the long-ago trader had called a pictograph box...

Zelda swallowed, stamping down her panic as she maintained her royal poise. No. It was an old memory, and she'd been a child. Surely she'd been unintentionally exaggerating it in her faint recollection. “May I... may I see one of these 'pictographs'?”

“But of course!” the man cheerily replied as he pulled the latest glossy piece of paper out of the pictograph box, before turning it around so that she wasn't looking at the blank side anymore.

It took all of Zelda's will to not gasp in dismay as she stared at a picture of her naked body so complete that she could almost be looking in a small mirror. The device had captured everything. The glistening from her pink pussy. The youthful perkiness of her exposed breasts. Perhaps worst of all, the royal smile on her unhidden face, making her captured image look like she was happy that whatever future anonymous purchaser of the Commemoration Book was able to see her uncovered body, seemingly offered gladly to their eyes.

Zelda opened her mouth, before closing it. She opened it again, hesitated, before weakly managing to say, “Well... isn't technology something?”

“It sure is!” the man agreed, as he knelt down before her and manoeuvred the contraption a couple of inches away from her pussy before he clicked the button again. “Just imagine, all of those people out there living countless miles away who could never have managed to make it to one of these heart-moving ceremonies, who will now be able to live this sacred day as if they were here, again and again whenever they like, just by opening their copy of the Commemoration Book. Hundreds... no, thousands of people that we'll never meet will have the opportunity to view the spectacle of your coronation show for years to come!”

“How... how wonderful.” Zelda somehow managed to say, even as her breasts rose and fell more frequently from rapid breaths before she wrestled her hyperventilation back under control.

“It is!” the man agreed, taking one last picture before he rose back to his feet. “And I must thank you for allowing me the creative freedom to create this book as I am. Many others would have micro managed the process at every step, restricting the result to something bland. But you, as a woman of vision, stood back and let me create something that I'm sure will be remembered for years. If not decades! Huzzah!”

“H... huzzah.” Zelda hesitantly added as the words 'thousands' and 'decades' echoed through her head.