When daylight broke, Zelda blinked slowly, adjusting to the fine lines of sunrise hitting her eyes as she awoke.
She’d stayed up late, keeping an eye out for Link. At some point, despite the fire, he’d begun to shiver and sweat all at once, and she gingerly placed a hand against his swollen foot, feeling it burn wildly. From her angle, she could see where she’d crudely stitched the large wound together. She still wondered if he’d stepped on a shard og glass at the bottom of the river, or a sharp rock. But it didn’t really change the fact that Link was not going to be standing on this foot while it was infected.
They had no bandages. They had nothing to keep it clean but the scratchy blanket Link had stolen. Zelda took it down to the freezing river that had seemed so glorious the day before, when she’d been so preoccupied with getting herself clean after all this time that she’d barely noticed the temperature. She dipped a small piece of the blanket into the river before returning to Link, wrapping it around his foot again.
He shivered at the cold against him, but he didn’t open his eyes.
At some point in the night, he’d fallen asleep, and he hadn’t had the energy to re-open his eyes since. Zelda was concerned, but she was less concerned when he’d grunted out a response to one of her earlier questions.
She rested against the tree, keeping the fire going as she twiddled the knife in her hands. At this point, she was the only thing standing between them and an attack from Ganondorf’s soldiers. They’d need to get out of the open soon.
And Zelda wasn’t sure how she was going to do that.
She crawled over to Link, lightly brushing his hair back to get his attention. If she simply spoke, she knew he wouldn’t hear her. She’d tried earlier.
“Mmm?” he groaned, though he still didn’t stir.
“I’m going to see what I can grab in town. If you can, just toss another twig into the fire in a bit, okay?”
“Be safe,” he muttered, drifting back to sleep.
Zelda smiled at him, tucking her knife into her belt and grabbing the bag Link had also stolen before heading into town.
Perhaps she’d spent too much time with Link, but her first thought was that she needed to find something of value to steal.
She was up with the sun, and few others were, so it meant that most people were still sleeping inside their homes. It left few places that she could think to steal any items from.
That is, until she passed a farm.
Far from all the other animals was a goat, disinterested in everything else around him. It was almost as if it knew that Zelda was willing to offer it an adventure, and it strode over to the wooden fence. This side wasn’t nearly as reinforced as the rest of the field, so she looked around and hastily pulled the goat over the fence, keeping a tight grip as it made to try for a mad dash away from its captor. Zelda picked up the small thing and hurried away before its annoyed cries could alert the farmer to her presence.
She rushed away to another farm that she’d already passed, relieved when she saw someone at the fence.
“Hello!” she called, grunting as she received a fierce kick.
The farmer looked at her suspiciously.
“I’m looking to sell my goat! He’s… uh… too much of a handful with all my other animals.”
“Put it down, lady,” the farmer said, soothing the goat as she did. “You have a female goat here.”
A strangled, nervous sound came from Zelda’s throat as she tried to think of something to say to that. “Right. Well, to be honest, I got this goat the other day and I honestly am in over my head. I wanted to have… cheese… readily available. But I just couldn’t handle this and I just want to get rid of him. Her! I mean her.”
“You donating her?”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t afford that. Would you buy her?”
The farmer looked the goat over again. “I’ll give you a hundred rupees for her.”
Zelda made a face. She wasn’t up to speed on prices of livestock, but she knew politics. And this was a maneuver she’d seen before. “I’m sorry, no. She’s worth at least double that.”
“Not in this condition. Looks a bit starved. You’ve been struggling with her for days, and it shows. A hundred.”
“No deal, then,” Zelda said, a little more confident when she heard his lie. He was trying to play her.
“One fifty. That’s as high as I’ll go.”
Zelda puzzled it for a moment before holding out her hand. “That’s fine. Thank you.”
The farmer went inside and returned with rupees for her, which she stuck into her bag before heading into the heart of town .
What a steal, she thought to herself.
She bought food, necessities for her and Link, a cloak as well, which she pulled tightly around her.
Then, she headed to the apothecary, explaining the symptoms, and paying for the ingredients she needed, prepared to go back to Link.
To go back.
She looked down the road. She had provisions. She had a knife for protection, fresh clothes, a bag, some money. She could go. She could do it.
But then there was Link, lying by a fire near a river, his foot infected, burning with a fever, unable to walk or run or defend himself.
He’d protected her when she needed him most—though, she was reluctant to admit that he had, in fact, gotten her into the worst of her situations anyway—so she was willing to go back to him as well. She refused to admit to any more than that.
“Excuse me?” an older man asked, hurrying over to Zelda. “I was in the apothecary and I heard what you bought. Do you need assistance? I’m willing to help if you’re willing to pay. I’m a skilled healer, and I have been for years. But business is slow for an older man like myself. All you young people prefer your own kind.”
Hesitant, Zelda’s hand went instinctively for the knife tucked in her belt. “What’s your name, sir?”
He smiled, toothless and charming. “Sir? I like you already. My name is Cole. Pleasure to meet you, young lady.”
Zelda blushed, unused to the courtesy of a stranger after all this time. “What’s your price then, sir?”
He chuckled. “Twenty rupees. I’ll have whoever’s ailing fit as a fiddle in no time.”
Zelda dug into her pocket, and grabbed the rupee, handing it to Cole. She needed Link on his feet sooner rather than later. They had to get moving lest Ganon’s troops show up.
She knew if they did, she’d be no match for them on her own.
Rajasthan: बकरी चोरी के आरोप में निर्वस्त्र कर युवक की बेरहमी से पिटाई
https://theindianewstoday.com/rajasthan-%e0%a4%ac%e0%a4%95%e0%a4%b0%e0%a5%80-%e0%a4%9a%e0%a5%8b%e0%a4%b0%e0%a5%80-%e0%a4%95%e0%a5%87-%e0%a4%86%e0%a4%b0%e0%a5%8b%e0%a4%aa-%e0%a4%ae%e0%a5%87%e0%a4%82-%e0%a4%a8%e0%a4%bf%e0%a4%b0/ Rajasthan: बकरी चोरी के आरोप में निर्वस्त्र कर युवक की बेरहमी से पिटाई
You know how on every freakin tv show to show high school or college life, from Simpsons to Saved By The Bell, someone somewhere somehow steals a live animal mascot from their rival school? Apparently, people actually do that. This poor schmuck did, more than 20 years ago. And now, because of one innocent goat theft, he's treated like common criminal when he tries to cross the border.
You ever cross the border at the bridge (most people around here have, since I can see the damn thing from my window as I type this), and there's that one line where everyone seems to just fly through because they have those Nexus passes? Those are supposed to be for people who work in one country, and live in another. It's so people can get to and from work without a hassle. Except some of THESE people are smuggling things across the border!
So while one man is hassled over a little barn-yard high school humor a few decades ago, there are people every day driving through our borders with undeclared beer and engagement rings. Maybe they could all get together, and they could smuggle goats.
