I've just finished writing some hang out scenes with G, plus the photography exhibition, more than one scene with MC's mother, and am halfway through Thanksgiving with Sam now!
The new chapter should be at least till the end of Thanksgiving weekend!
I'm hoping to be done with it by the end of this month, sending it to beta testers and having the non beta-tested version ready for kofi and Patreon supporters by early May, but I'll do another post with the release dates when I've got all the writing done.
I've been quite busy lately, though, so it appears my updates are MIA. I know there's probably at least someone out there wondering when I'll post something new.
Basically, I'm trying to get my shit together irl. I'm doing some volunteer work one day a week at this point, to get work experience to try and get a job. Shout out to living on no income for over one and a half years, but I'm sick of being a loser, so in-between that I'm writing/creating and just living my normal life.
In terms of Such Sights are Bright, let's just say you'll be getting a nice, long, fluffy and beyond Bumbleby-fest! I've made progress with it slowly, and I'm excited to get it out - but it will still be a bit of a wait. Sorry about that, but I want it to be of a consistent quality. I hope whoever was reading it will like the last arc...and whatever may come after it... *wink*
She has no throne. Girls without thrones should not have knights, but hers won’t go. Princess Zelda – the girl who killed Calamity – would love to fade into legend, but Link’s bought a house, he’s fighting off monsters, and he’s selling giant horses to strangely familiar Gerudo men. She’ll never have any peace now. (ao3)
When Zelda wakes up, the sun is coming through holes in the roof, illuminating the otherwise dark interior of what was once a cottage. The stone work has held up, but the wooden panels rotted out, leaving only the support beams choked with creeping plants and hanging vines. The floor is packed earth carpeted in moss. Wildflowers grow riotous in the corners. Perhaps, she thinks, the flowers weren’t there last night but this is just what happens when Link stays in one place for too long – an involuntary resurgence of the wild.
He’s asleep presently.
Lying on his side, facing her, his head resting on her arm – Zelda should be used to this. To seeing Link unaware in the mornings. She should be bored of how he pulls near to her, annoyed by the fact her arm is numb or that his hair is damp and he obviously didn’t dry it out properly before getting back in bed. (He woke early to bathe in the lake.) She should not care that his skin smells a little like mint bar soap. She should not catalogue the small involuntary way his lips part when he breathes. His features smoothed by sleep should be familiar (one hundred years familiar). It should not be so impossibly hard to resist touching him.
Zelda flexes her fingers experimentally, pins and needles roving down the limb. Link’s breathing evenly against her shoulder. Laying like this, her fingers can just barely reach the empty section of bedding where Draga laid last night. It’s empty now. Cool with the absence of its right occupant. She wiggles her fingers. Feels a stab of numbness.
She is loath to move, but does, slowly sliding her arm from under Link’s head and rolling onto her stomach.
When she does, she finds Link awake and looking up at her.
“Hello,” she says.
He mouths something that might be a ‘morning’ but it’s too early for speech.
She pushes his hair gently from his brow. “Where’s Draga?”
Link doesn’t raise his head, but he signs, one handed, ‘Scouting. Mountain.’
“Will that take a while?”
Link nods closes his eyes.
Zelda is struck – though not for the first time, nor the last – by the impression Link looks… not odd exactly. Rather, in moments, in passing, from certain angles between one breath and the next, he looks out of place. Like she’s seen his face in another context -- on ancient coins or the carvings of lost civilizations. He’s anachronistic. A fixed point.
Led by impulse, she traces his features with one finger.
Link, for his part, lets her do it. His eyelids twitch a little, like he’s very consciously keeping them closed. Zelda monitors this with a small corner of her brain, while the rest of her attention follows her fingers on his skin. Like a blind woman reads braille, Zelda runs her fingertips over Link’s mouth, resting there to catch the heat off his breath. Then she draws her thumb with some modicum of pressure – like touch-testing a tea mug – against his lower lip. He opens his eyes and looks up at her.
For a moment, neither of them move or say a word.
Link just studies the way Zelda looks at him.
Then – gently, with the ease of long practice, iterated in a history she still has no notion of – Link takes her thumb between his teeth and closes his mouth around it. She stops breathing. Her thumbprint is hot against his tongue, a coiled press of heat in his mouth. Then he licks an obscene path from her thumb to her forefinger and she just –
Zelda loses track of things then.
She’s aware in broken instances -- her fingers tangled in his hair. His weight on top of her. That she’s kissing him, mouth-to-mouth and clumsy, her lips prickling with pressure. She closes her fists at the back of his skull. When she does, Link makes this low animal sound in his throat. She pulls his hair and he moans , eyelids fluttering for a second. Intoxicated by this, Zelda pushes Link’s head down against her throat and he kisses her there. She guides him lower, guides his mouth against her body and he kisses her wherever she takes him – a slow path from her breast to her belly.
He only moves on his own when his mouth finds the waistband of her panties and he uses his teeth, then his right hand, to draw it down her leg.
The sight of him – her unreadable knight escort, bowed, eyes closed, his face between her legs – is manifest every sweat-sticky fantasy Zelda’s ever known. Formless teenage notions long before it was okay to think such a thing about him. Ignored and pushed down until now where it asserts itself as a compound rush of want and guilt. It’s so intense she almost stops him, but before she can speak, he looks up at her. In no fantasy of hers did she imagine that expression – arresting her where she lies.
He smiles just a little. It makes her entire heart hurt. Then he lowers his head and kisses her, gently, at the soft V of her legs. She very much forgets to feel guilty then. Link touches her, fingertips first, exploring, pushing gently but insistently in. When he has her writhing, he draws his tongue against her labia and circles her clit. Then he does it again.
Zelda moans.
When his tongue slides into her, she’s shaking. When he licks her open, she’s arching her hips to meet him. Rising and falling slowly. She cries out but the sound melts into a moan, her body pulsing in time to the rhythm Link laves into her. She’s breathless. The orgasm is in her toes and her fingertips, sparking blue behind her teeth. Zelda comes when Link is knuckle-deep inside her, two fingers coaxing her to obscenity. He closes his mouth over her clit and swirls his tongue over and over in agonizing little circles until she’s gasping, toes curling, spine bent, riding out her climax against Link’s mouth until the lightning recedes from her blood. Then she’s slack beneath him. Her heartbeat throbbing in every nerve.
Her fist aches where it’s closed against the back of Link’s head. Retroactively, she realizes she must have been yanking discourteously hard for the last ten seconds or so.
“Oh, my goodness!” She lets go. “I’m sorry . Did I hurt you?”
Link sits up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He still doesn’t say a word. He just shakes his head. His eyes search her face – looking for direction she thinks. So, Zelda sits up and pulls her shirt off entirely. He doesn’t move. Just… looks at her like he’d be fine just sitting there and getting to look. So, she slides her fingers into his hair with two hands and closes them tight. Tugs, gently, until he draws a shaky breath and she rolls sideways, pulling him down on top of her.
He’s still fully clothed.
He’s got one knee between her legs and his mouth pressed along her jaw. She draws one knee up, setting her heel into his lower back, making sure he feels her do it. She is fairly certain where things are supposed to go next. Link’s breathing fast and unsteady. He turns into her touch, time and again. She pushes his tunic up so she can hook her fingers into the waistband of his pants but when she does it, his breathing hitches too hard.
She stops and lies back, smoothing her hands against his hips beneath the tunic.
He looks at her. His hair’s in his eyes.
“We don’t have to,” she whispers.
Link keeps watching her.
“We have all the time in the world now, you know.”
When she says that, Link leans down and kisses along her jaw to her ear. His voice comes, finally, a little rough, a little hot against her skin when he says, “I feel crazy when I look at you.” And when she shivers, he buries his face against her neck and says, “I don’t know what to do.” She can hear his smile. “You make me nervous.”
She laughs. “You don’t seem like you’re nervous. You seem like you know exactly what you’re doing.”
“I’m shaking,” he whispers.
His eyes are closed against her neck. She can feel his heart racing where his chest is flush to hers. He’s not wrong, now that she’s paying attention. There’s a tremble in Link’s shoulders, in his hands. Like pre-battle nerves. She hadn’t noticed when he was moving and… being distracting but now – laying on top of her, his weight braced against his hands and knees – she can see the shiver in the lines of his body. So profound it’s almost in his breathing, on his tongue.
She slides one hand into his hair, holding the back of his head. “Why are you nervous?” she murmurs. “It’s just us.”
He mumbles something against her collarbone.
“What?”
“That’s why I’m nervous.”
She laughs. “Well, what do you like to do? If it wasn’t me?”
She can feel him blushing without even seeing it. He raises a hand to cover his eyes. “Not helping…”
“You’re embarrassed?”
He nods.
“You know you don’t have to be, right?”
He peeks at her through his fingers.
“I would be… curious to know what you like. I, ah, am not very, you know… experienced, but I’d like to…” She clears her throat. “Be warned, I might not know enough Sign for this kind of conversation.”
Link laughs and that’s the same moment that Draga – back from his scouting mission and having heard conversational voices from the cottage – steps through the open doorway with a pack over his shoulder. Zelda is too surprised to react. She just sits there totally naked with her former knight escort lying on top of her. Draga blinks at them, a little surprised. Not the appropriate amount of surprised. Just a little surprised. Like you’re surprised to find a stack of laundry not the way you left it. Then, he shoulders his pack, rolls his eyes, and walks right back out the door.
“Sorry,” he calls, waving over his shoulder.
Link, dumbfounded, looks to her.
“Wait. Draga!” Zelda flails, grabbing her tunic. She yanks it over her head and dashes out the door, tugging her hair out of the collar. It’s inside out. Wonderful. It’s long enough it covers… most of her thighs. Whatever. It will have to do. She scrambles down the overgrown garden path, chasing Draga toward the lake. “ Wait . Hold on.”
Draga’s halfway to the beach, down the path from what was once a fence now rotted to a series of posts stuck up from a choke of wildflowers. He, unlike Link, looks a little out of place in the untamed greenery. He turns to watch her race barefoot out of the cottage to stand in the grass in front of him, panting a little, her hair going every which direction. He waits. Which is unfortunate because she ran out the door in such a hurry, she hadn’t fully formulated what she was going to say to him and now she’s not wearing any underwear and standing in wet grass and it’s terribly undignified. Draga, sensing she might be at a loss, glances very particularly down at her toes sunk in the moss and then levels a look at her, eyebrows arched.
“Yes?” he says.
“Um,” she says, the picture of trained diplomacy and royal upbringing. “Sorry.”
He gives her an owlish look of genuine confusion. “For what?”
“For… that.”
He blinks at her. Birds chirp in the canopy.
“Well,” he says slowly, still looking a little puzzled, “you might warn me next time so I don’t walk in, but otherwise you have nothing to apologize for.” He tilts his head. “Unless you think you do?”
“Oh, um…” She should honestly be better at this. Except that’s not true because you don’t practice for a division of need in twin directions and how to articulate that. She blows air between her lips. “I don’t know. We never talked about this kind of thing so, given that I didn’t set any ground rules – which is entirely my fault – I’m asking if I have something to apologize for. I… I suppose. Yes. I’m asking.”
Draga sets on hand on his hip and gives her a lopsided look to match his smirk. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. Don’t make fun. I’m new at this.”
She feels Link walking down the path behind her, moving to stand near the gate to the garden, listening. Draga glances at him, then at her.
“I thought I made it clear I don’t have any expectations.” He slings his pack to the ground, leaving it there to face them properly, arms folded over his chest. “You don’t have to tell me everything. I’m not unclear on this; you two have been partners a long time. You deserve to have this – whatever it is – without complications.” He shrugs. “If you would like to complicate things, that’s your choice. I do not care either way.” He pauses when, in review, that sounds a little harsh in Hylian and swaps to Gerudo. “I mean that I value our relationship, I just mean you’re not obligated to include me in everything. You’re not committed to me. I don’t harbor resentments on that front.”
Zelda processes this.
“Well, just so you know, I think we feel fairly committed to you.” She glances at Link to confirm and gets a nod. “Yes. So, we are comfortable complicating things.”
Draga frowns. “Do not rush into this.”
“I’m one hundred years late to everything,” Zelda says blandly. “I physically cannot possibly rush anything I do.”
Draga looks a little appalled. “You know what I mean.”
“I do. I’m pointing out that I don’t feel that I’m rushing into anything.” And when he looks skeptical, she says, “Okay, admittedly if we’re talking strictly physical things—” Draga’s brows arch a bit— “then I will need to go slow because I do not know what I’m doing, but in all other matters I feel very confident.” She tries to not be aware of the fact she’s wearing an inside out tunic and has terrific bedhead. “I meant what I said back in Tabantha, you know. I still do.”
Draga shakes his head. “I know you do. I’m just saying that you’re under no obligation.”
“Have I ever told you… what it was like fighting Ganon for one-hundred years?”
The neutral green of his eyes disappears. “No,” he says. His eyes are very wide. He looks over her shoulder to Link then back at her. “You’ve never told me that. Why does that apply to what we’re talking about right now? Not that I do not want to hear about it, but…”
“Yes, it relates. I promise.”
She’s suddenly happy for her bare feet in the grass, the feeling of the morning air on her skin in new and intimate places. She feels Link move to stand at her side and after a moment he takes her hand in his, threading his fingers through hers. It’s unreal how such a simple thing makes her heart swell. She smiles at him. His eyes seem bluer than the sky in that moment.
“I haven’t really told him either,” she explains, looking back to Draga.
“You don’t have to tell either of us,” Draga says quietly.
“I think I need to tell you.”
He and Link exchange a look. “Then tell us. We’re listening.”
She begins.
“It wasn’t linear exactly. It’s not like I was aware for one-hundred years straight in that castle, in that… room. That’s not how it worked. There was magic. So much of it I was barely myself sometimes.” Zelda tightens her grip on Link’s hand. “I slept when I made Ganon sleep. I woke whenever he woke. I was not aware of the time between unless I…” She shivers. “There’s part of me that was aware of time you see, but I just keep that part separate. I couldn’t stand it if I remembered. What I remember is it was like waking from a nightmare over and over except it was the nightmare you were waking up to.”
Draga’s looking at her in a way she’s not sure she knows. Link’s hand in hers is tight.
“I fought for so long. So many times, I woke and I… it was like smothering someone.” She’s breathing too fast. “The binding magic I mean, it was like holding someone’s head underwater over and over. I would wake up and kill him again and it was so…” Violent. Intimate. Necessary. ( But , says part of her, didn’t it feel good to put the bastard down ?) She swallows. “I don’t know if I could do that again.”
There’s a quiet.
In the silence Draga says, “Him?”
She blinks.
His eyes seem iridescent. She’s not sure how. The color of someone’s eyes is not usually so notable. He inclines his head. “You said ‘him’. The Calamity… was a person? I don’t understand.”
Link’s looking at her too.
She wipes her eyes.
“Once. Maybe. Eons ago. Human and something else. You can’t seal a human soul for ten thousand years. A conscious being. It rots like a carcass. Goes insane. Becomes . That’s what happened to him and what I started to think it would happen to me.” She tries to smile, but her mouth won’t do as she asks. “I fought him so many times I’ve lost count. I woke, I fought. I woke, I fought. Over and over. I never remembered the sleep so it was like… like a hundred battles in an unbroken string. Like fighting a war but never sleeping. As a whole… it wasn’t that long really. But it was relentless. After a while, I stopped feeling anything.”
Draga is closer now, close enough to touch. “That’s a very human reaction to an impossible thing, Zelda.”
“I’m not always human though.”
His expression crinkles. “Don’t say that.”
“Sorry. I just… I didn’t feel human when I was fighting Calamity. I didn’t feel human again until Link woke up.” She laughs, but it’s a cracked sound. “You two make me feel human again and you should know that because I just don’t feel about things like I used to. I just don’t give a shit about too fast. Or proper or right. There is no ‘too fast’ for me and it scares me because I know other people don’t think like that. And you’re not obligated to think like that, but you should know it’s how I feel. I just love being awake, finally. Does that make sense?” She scrubs her face with her hand. “Am I making any sense? I can’t –”
Link catches her chin in his fingers. When she turns, he kisses her. Her tears wet his tongue, but he just keeps kissing her until her shaking recedes and her breathing slows, until she’s grounded. He pulls back then and Draga touches her cheek so she looks at him. He’s bent a little at the waist so he’s closer to eye-level with her, his face close enough that she feels the pull to kiss him too, but she holds still.
“You make sense,” he says. He lowers his hand. “Thank you for telling us.”
“I didn’t mean to start crying. Goodness. I’m always crying.”
“Zelda, of all people, you owe no apologies to anyone.” Draga holds her gaze. “You defy explanation. The fact you still think you owe anyone any explanations…” He shrugs. “The both of you are better people than me in that way.”
“You’re a good person,” she says, a little defensive on his behalf.
He gives her a lopsided smile. “I’m better when I’m around you two and I’m not fishing for reassurances. You deserve to be happy.”
Link looks at Draga.
“So do you,” he says, out loud, quietly.
Draga reaches for his travel pack. “I’ll try to remember that,” he says, grabbing the strap. “Are we going to hike out of here or –?”
Zelda catches the front of his tunic so she can kiss him. He holds still for her while she does it. When she pulls back, he gives her a carefully calm sort of look. Business-like. He picks up the pack like she hadn’t done anything.
“Okay. Are we getting a late start then?”
Link grabs him by the collar and pulls him down, mouth to mouth, grinning. Zelda yanks the pack from his hands and Draga laughs – muffled – when she grabs him at the waist and starts pulling him back up the path toward the cottage, but pulling with comic over-enthusiasm so he threatens to over balance. He fights to keep his feet, saying loudly, “We really need to get on the road,” and “I appreciate this, but if we leave any later we’re not going to reach the shrine until sun down,” and finally, “We really, really don’t have time for this.”
Which is when Link hooks a leg behind Draga’s heel and torques hard to the right, yanking the taller man over with a “ Goddammit , Link!” and all three of them end up sprawled in a patch of wild flowers. Zelda, who was not expecting that, spits her hair and a bit of heather out of her mouth and glares at her knight escort who doesn’t look even a little sorry. Draga’s laughing, lying on his back with one hand over his face. Link uses the opportunity to climb on top of Draga, swinging one leg over his hips to take a seat on top of him. Zelda uses the opportunity to grab his wrists and pin them in the moss over his head.
He rolls his eyes.
“You’ve got me,” Draga says sarcastically. “We’re on a timetable.”
“No, we’re not,” she says, bending down to press her nose against his, scrunching up her face.
He scowls for dramatic effect. She just kisses him a bunch, all over his face, until he makes a sound of disgust.
“We have –” she keeps kissing him – “all the time –” she does it some more – “in the world.” She threads her fingers into his, leaning her weight against his palms and bending down over him so her hair falls over her shoulders, framing his face. She leans down to kiss his mouth, feels him go a little slack under her. “But I’m always in a rush.”
She hears the sound, unmistakably, of Link pulling Draga’s belt open and the Gerudo draws a breath through his teeth.
“Are you serious?” he demands, annoyed.
Link shrugs. “I can make it quick,” he says in a tone that sends a zip of heat down Zelda’s spine.
Draga looks unimpressed. “That’s what you think.”
Zelda leans down to speak in Draga’s ear, “Do you want us to stop? For real?”
He thinks about it. Then, “No, but I’m serious about not wanting to hike in the dark.”
Link and Zelda exchange a look. Link shrugs.
“Fine,” Zelda says brightly. “Like I said: All the time in the world.”
“Great.”
There’s a beat.
“Are you going to let me up?”
Zelda leans back, tilting her head like she’s admiring the view. “In a moment.”
He glares. “You’re making us late.”
“Mmhmm.”
Draga mutters, “Fucking Hylians…”
Climbing a mountain is not the hardest thing Zelda’s ever done, but it certainly won’t be easy. The pale stone cliffs of the Gerudo Highlands stand as monstrous vertical walls jutting upwardly over the steep incline of the foothills and disappearing into the clouds. There is a narrow path, barely more than a mountain goat’s migration route, that is known to both Link and Draga. Leading from Lake Alumeni, along the cliffs at base of the highlands, to an ancient lava flow known now as Hamaar’s Descent. This is how they will reach the Statue of the Eighth Heroine.
“Properly this time,” Draga says, side-eyeing Link, as they prepare to go.
Link, who at this point is no longer sorry for paragliding into an ancient temple, shrugs.
“See,” Draga says, tugging his rucksack shut, “he’s not actually sorry he did it.”
Link signs, ‘I have climbed into hundreds of ancient shrines and temples. It was literally my job.’
Draga does not even bother trying to read his sign. “Whatever he just said, I’ll bet it wasn’t an apology.”
Link makes a face and they set off for the mountain.
They leave Epona and Arbiter to fend for themselves at Lake Alumeni, penning them under four large apple trees and shaking down said apple trees for fruit. Arbiter, it’s known, will do as he pleases but seems content to wait for Draga in whatever situation the Gerudo man leaves him. Link admits that the same horse would, in his own travels, often run off in the middle of the night then return days later.
“Arbiter comes from a wild lineage,” Draga says, navigating a windy switchback. “I told you before that my people came from the Deep Desert. Before there were sand seals, they bred giant horses specifically for traveling through the wastes. They were the best for the task, but wild in temperament. They would reject all riders except the largest and strongest in a tribe. So, take it as a compliment he let you ride him at all.”
“How do you… know all this?” Zelda pants a little, following close behind the larger man.
“I read about them when I was younger,” he says, turning to give her a hand up into a narrow chute of stone, pushing her gently up the steep incline. “It’s odd what survives in recorded history. I can read five volumes of ancient animal husbandry, but we’re still not entirely clear what the hierarchy of chieftains has been in the transition from the Deep Desert to Hyrule. There are gaps in the line of succession. There is much, in my opinion, that has been purposely omitted, particularly around the arrival of the Gerudo in this country and it frustrates me.”
Zelda laughs, pulling herself up over a bit of a ledge. “Draga, if you hadn’t told us your intention to be swordhand to your people, I would assume you wanted to be a historian.”
“Swordhand isn’t the right word,” he says, grunting as he pulls Link up onto the ledge with them. “It doesn’t quite translate in Hylian, my declaration.”
“What’s an approximation?”
Link and Draga dust themselves off while he thinks about it.
“I’m not sure. It’s like a knight and a witch I suppose. Urbosa was, technically, of this profession if she hadn’t been chieftain.”
She frowns. “What’s the word?”
“ Ko’tame .”
“I don’t know it.”
“It’s a very specific role,” Draga says, moving past her. “Not common either. Urbosa’s duty as Chief supersedes being ko’tame.” He surveys the wide ledge snaking along the foot of the cliff. “Hmm, there are coyotes up the way. Keep a look out. I expect they’ll run when they see us, but it’s hard to say.”
Link slings his bow from the strap on his back, stringing it deftly.
Zelda tilts her head. “Do the Gerudo keep much record of magic-use in their culture?”
Draga shrugs. “Some do. The tribes from the Highlands keep close record because ko’tame are more common among us. Like a fishing village keeps record of good and poor fishing seasons and practices, but would not keep close, say, methods of blacksmithing. Most Gerudo culture does without serious magic. The most common magicians are stone workers – those who can draw out the nature of certain gems. Link has a few such pieces. The craft is very specific to old Gerudo magic.”
“I didn’t know that,” Link says.
“Why would you?” he says, a little bluntly. “The Gerudo hardly recollect it: that stone speaks to the People. History is not a priority to them.” He shakes his head. “When the Yiga started to kill my clan in Karusa Valley, capitalizing on an opportunity as we weakened, they told us to abandon the Naboorian ruins. Our temples and archives. They said the ancient fortress was not worth fighting for even though those are the very walls from which we took all our recorded history.”
“You grew up there?”
“For a time. But we had to leave it to Kohga and his mad clan because the rest of the tribes didn’t care.”
Link shivers.
Draga glances at him. “What?”
“Link killed Kohga,” Zelda says. “Did you know that?”
Draga frowns. “I heard he was dead. I didn’t know it was Link who did it.” He studies the smaller man, picking his way along the trail behind them. “Who in Hyrule haven’t you killed?”
Link looks stricken.
Realizing that he misjudged the severity of that phrase in Hylian, he amends, “I apologize. That came out wrong. Kohga was a monster. I don’t care who killed the fanatic.”
“He killed himself anyway,” Link says under his breath.
“Then he got off easy,” Draga says. “If he were still alive and his clan occupying that fortress, I would have gone there myself.”
“To drive them off?” Zelda says.
“No. To wipe them out. Every single one of them.” And when that earns him a pair of surprised looks, he frowns. “You don’t have context here. They killed members of my tribe when they besieged the fortress and they put their filthy fucking banners in all our shrines. There is a temple to the Eight Heroines there where I studied as a child and they filled with their symbols for abomination. I have no pity for them. They’re just like the beasts the Calamity set upon the land.”
“They are people ,” Zelda points. “I don’t disagree that they forfeit their lives when they sided with the Calamity. But they aren’t beasts.”
“They are to me,” Draga says calmly. “They are worse than beasts. They chose a demon and abandoned their humanity. They tried to kill you. To kill Link. To kill my people and end this world. Someone like that?” He shakes his head. “I kill them. That’s it.”
Zelda studies the back of his head. “You would have really killed them all?”
“I didn’t learn how to fight to then hesitate in defending what I care about.” He glances over his shoulder at her. “If they appeared, right now, and tried to kill Link before your eyes, don’t tell me you wouldn’t incinerate them.”
“I probably would,” she admits evenly, “I’m just saying, they’re still people even if I’m deciding to kill them.”
“Being a monster and being a person are not mutually exclusive things,” Draga says under his breath.
“Very true,” she says. “Which is why I would not lose too much sleep over it.”
He looks at her again. “Surprisingly cold-blooded.”
“I say that, but I would probably cry,” she says. “I cry very easily. Not while things are happenings of course, but later when I think it over. So temporarily cold-blooded. Maybe. I’ve never needed to kill anyone with magic or otherwise and I would like to think that I never will have to do that, so for now I’ll simply say that I have no idea how I’d really behave in that situation.”
“I laughed when Kohga killed himself,” Link says.
She and Draga both stare. Link shrugs, readjusting his shoulder strap.
He says under his breath, “It was funny at the time…”
They take a break.
For twenty minutes, they lay on a warm flat of stone and stare at the sky. Link lies between them as Zelda argues with Draga about the historical non-value of the Hylian record archives as they stand while Draga vehemently argues the opposite. He’s chops his hands through the air, angrily framing his points while she flails her arms pointing out the holes in his neatly boxed up ideas. Link, bored, watches them wordlessly until they’re basically shouting at each other. They sit up to do it properly.
“In a land like Hyrule,” Draga snaps, “I just don’t understand how you can be this careless with history.”
Zelda tosses her hands. “I’m not being careless. I’m saying I read most of those records and they were twaddle. We lost everything important already.”
“So just give up? That’s better.”
Zelda tosses up her hands. “This kind of thing really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” he says, looking sharply at her. “You of all people know about repeating history.”
“Yes,” she says a little quietly. “I do know about that. I just didn’t realize it upset you this much.”
For a time, he doesn’t answer. Then:
“The Gerudo come from an ancient line of thieves and bandits.” He shakes his head. “You need to understand: We weren’t always a refugee race and we certainly are not one now. But we don’t even remember what brought us here, what disaster broke us or why we even came back to Hyrule in the first place. It’s not clear – in some texts, we came back because we sought the ‘heart of the world’. In others… we were just starving. But no matter why we came, the fact is my people have lost all account of it and I think there’s something there. Something important.”
“What makes you think that?” Zelda says.
“I don’t know. A feeling I’ve always had. I trust my instincts.”
Zelda smiles. “As I said, you sound like a historian.”
Draga snorts. “Maybe in another life.”
“Still think you’re wrong.”
“You are infuriating –!”
Link signs , interrupting, ‘You’re both pretty attractive when you’re yelling.’
Zelda, who caught most of his comment, sputters.
“What?” Draga says. “What did he say?”
“I’m not translating,” Zelda huffs.
“You’re hot,” Link says, ditching Sign.
Zelda immediately blushes red. Not because of what he said exactly but rather the fact it is the first time Link’s said anything like that out loud. He yawns, stretching like sun-warm cat, and lies back again. Draga glares. Zelda gets the impression that, were they not on the road to a site of extreme cultural and historical import for his people, Draga would be a little more receptive to the multiple advances.
As it stands he stops looking disdainful and with the same lazy disinterest, he rolls over, swinging one leg over Link’s so his knee is between the other man’s thighs, not touching him but Draga levers himself up on one arm so he’s looking down at Link from a sudden and somewhat suggestive position on top of him. It’s suddenly very apparent how much bigger Draga is. Link stares. Draga’s expression is still bored. He leans down, puts his mouth by Link’s ear, still not touching him but close enough Zelda can see his breath disturb Link’s hair when he speaks.
In Gerudo he says, “ Every time you talk, I imagine what you’ll sound like screaming.”
In Gerudo, ‘screaming’ can conjugate to very specific meanings. He means a very particular kind of scream. And Zelda, who knows that, covers her mouth to stifle a noise somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.
Draga rolls over and lies back again. “Anyway, Zelda, you’re wrong.”
“I am not!”
Link, red in the face, doesn’t seem like he’s going to interrupt them again.
They reach the foot of Hamaar’s Descent by sunset. From here, looking up, Zelda cannot see the statue. Just a long climb to an unseen trailhead. The ancient lava flow is a ripple of stone descending like steps to the ridge where they stand, walled on either side by high vertical cliffs, like the flow cut a fissure into the mountains. The air is colder here. Nearer to the snowy climes at the top of the mountain. There is a peripheral hum – a pressure along the sides of her eyes. Her hands feel scratchy when she looks up. Her heart’s racing.
“There’s old magic here,” Draga warns her. “That’s what you’re feeling.”
She nods.
They make the climb in silence.
Draga doesn’t look back at them while he leads their climb. They follow him until the sun is gone and Draga has to strike a spark into a torch from Link’s pack, the flame throwing shadows against the canyon walls. Eventually, the ground levels out and Zelda finds herself at the literal foot of a massive stone figure, ten stories tall and ancient – a carved Gerudo woman in robes, her hands extended before her and resting on the missing pommel of some great sword.
Draga stops at the top of the incline, torch in hand, and Zelda feels him tense.
“What is it?”
Eventually, Draga says, “My sisters were the last ones to come here.”
Zelda and Link stay where they are while Draga moves toward the foot of the statue. There are massive oval disks carved on the top of the statue’s feet, smooth and blank when he approaches. Zelda smells the familiar metal scent of magic and Draga runs a hand over the first tablet, like he’s wiping sand from the surface, and when his fingers pass over the stone, lines begin to push up like veins in an arm, snaking words into the rock and in that way, line by line, he starts to read. He is quiet long enough that Zelda supposes he’s immediately lost himself in translating what’s there.
“Draga, can you read it?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Draga, can you read it?” she repeats.
He still doesn’t answer.
“ Draga .”
“My name is here,” he says softly.
Zelda stares. “What?”
“My name is written here.” He sounds baffled.
“I don’t understand. Your family put your name here…?”
“No. My tribe died before I took this name. This record is over ten-thousand years old. My chosen name was written here.”
Zelda feels a prickle down her spine. “I don’t understand.” Zelda’s heart is racing. She can’t say why, where this panic is coming from, real as the fear before a fight. “What does it say?”
Draga doesn’t respond.
Her nails are biting her palms. Link’s restless suddenly at her side. He keeps looking around, like he hears something, but she can’t care about that because her entire being is knotted up, the fine musculature in her heart and in her fingers clenching. She doesn’t know why though. She can’t figure out why. Like the panic in a premonition, this feels like deja vu, her soul recollecting some terrible pain and anticipating it again.
“I don’t understand this,” Draga is saying. “This isn’t a full historical account. It’s a single record of the Chief who led Nabooru and the First People out of the desert. These are Nabooru’s own words.” And then, after a while, he whispers, “This can’t be right…”
And Link draws the Master Sword.
When he does – the blade burns silver in his hand.
Holy light lies now across the clearing, across Draga’s back. In the sudden illumination, Zelda can see what it is that Link was reacting to. There is a shadow. There. On the wall opposite Draga. But this shadow, unlike every other shadow cast against the stone, does not move when the light flickers. It’s opaque. Fixed. The shade – vaguely human in shape, grotesquely bulked, and impossibly tall – is so dark eats the light and smokes like a fire pit around the edges. Like the darkness is toxic and burning. Then, as Zelda looks on, fixed there by her horror, something writhes in the shadow and two red slits roll open. Two eyes roll open, inflamed and burning, draconic and unblinking, and fix on Draga.
Then…
The shadow steps forward.
Out of the wall, through the door (because, after all, it was always open) and it grabs Draga’s arm.
The effect is immediate. The entire mountain heaves. A tectonic uproar screams through the core of the earth the air sours , rots, turns chemical on Zelda’s tongue and the canyon goes black around them. All the light in the entire world goes out except the blazing star-shine burning in Link’s sword. It’s the only source of light to show them the scene: Black flames, oily and toxic, are burning from the demon’s flesh. It’s a pillar of smoke and ember. The hand is so huge it circles Draga’s entire forearm and when he – too shocked, too paralyzed by the impossible totality of every nightmare coming true – fails to move, it uses its other hand to touch his face. This opens same wound along his cheek that it put there in the Rito Village and his blood runs down his jaw and drips in the sand. The air stinks like copper and corpses.
It says, “You know your nature now.”
And vanishes.
Draga wrenches back from the stone alter and falls, a ragged cry caught in his throat. His shadow is thin and empty again. The crushing darkness is gone and in the aftermath, Draga just lies there, panting, shaking so hard she can see it where she’s standing. Link’s faster than her, so he beats her to Draga’s side, grabbing his shoulder to steady him. The sword in his other hand has begun to dim, the light receding as the evil withdraws but Draga just keeps shaking, breathing too hard, too fast. Even when Zelda kneels beside him, a halo of golden light in her skin, and touches him – he just keeps shaking, body racked with adrenaline.
“Draga. You’re okay. It’s gone. We’re with you.”
He whispers, “Calamity started with us.”
Zelda shakes her head. “No, listen to me: demons lie. Right? You told me that. You can’t –”
“It started with us.” Draga’s face is blank. “The Demon King was born Gerudo. The People were dying in the desert as he tried to lead them from the wastes. The demons came to him. The abomination began in him. The lord of monsters came to him in the desert and offered him the heart of the world.” Draga’s voice is steady, like he’s reciting and Zelda realizes he’s reading back the text on the tablet. His expression is blank, but in the dim light Zelda can see his cheeks are wet. If he knows he’s crying, he gives no sign. “He took it.” His voice buckles then. “He traded us for the Tri-Force. Every generation down the line.”
He makes a sound, almost a sob, but like the kind you make when someone wrenches a dagger from a wound, like he’s bleeding out. Like he’s wounded.
“Gods… I picked this name.”
“Draga. Please, this is a trick.” She gathers his face in her hands, shaking her head. “It’s just trying to trick you.”
“No, it’s what’s written. This was his name.”
“What are you talking about?” Link says, afraid.
“The man that became Calamity. His name was Drag’mire. That’s… my name, just older.” He turns his head away, pulling from her hands, and there’s blood and salt on her fingers. “You don’t understand. You don’t see how it works. I see it. I can see it now – the structure of the curse, it’s so fucking obvious now.” He’s breathing so fast, so ragged. “Zelda, I can’t…”
“Calm down,” Zelda whispers, horrified by his helplessness, afraid to her core. “Please, just tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m next,” he says.
“What?”
“I’m the next Calamity,” he says.
He looks at her when she says nothing.
“That’s why we were drawn together. You’re supposed to kill me.”
And Zelda, too startled to stop herself, says, “He gave up on reincarnation… he… he gave up… I didn’t… This… can’t be what he meant.”
Link drops his sword. He shakes his head and stands up, backing away.
“No,” he says, totally calm. “That’s not it.”
Draga breathes out, shakily, and looks at him. “You know it is.”
“No,” Link says. His face is bedrock. “You’re wrong.”
“You can feel it.”
“Fuck this,” Link says, startling them. He starts to sign, “Fuck this. Fuck that thing. Fuck this endless bullshit.” He steps forward, puts his boot on the hilt of the sacred sword and kicks it away, spinning into the sand where it lies shining and perfect in the moonlight. He moves forward, kneeling close so he can fit his hands along Draga’s jaw and look him in the eyes. He fights to keep his voice, “It’s not happening. We’re done. Zelda and I, we’re done with all of that. It’s over. No incarnation has ever had to do it twice.”
“It killed my whole family,” Draga says, “just so I’d be alone when it came.”
Link pulls Draga forward, kisses him, a little frantically, a little too deeply. He swallows, afraid, and pulls back. He says, “You’re not alone. You’re with us.” Like that’s enough to protect them. “Do you believe me?”
He obviously does not.
But Draga says, “I believe you.”
And it’s that lie that sustains them until the sunrise.
Exercise Journal Supplemental: Hurricane, antibiotics, and co-pays
This is still a fitblr, despite my recent spate of health issues including antibiotics meaning that I have to stay out of the sun and feel tired. The stress of the hurricane preparation and the storm and the aftermath didn't help matters.
She has no throne. Girls without thrones should not have knights, but hers won’t go. Princess Zelda – the girl who killed Calamity – would love to fade into legend, but Link’s bought a house, he’s fighting off monsters, and he’s selling giant horses to strangely familiar Gerudo men. She’ll never have any peace now. (ao3)
They depart the Rito Village – albeit with some apologies for the structural damage to several rooms – and some notion of heading south toward Tabantha where, as Link promised, there was the possibility of dragons. They’re almost a mile along when a shadow cuts a swift but massive path across the road before them. They look up just in time to catch the sudden, high-speed intercession of a mostly recovered Mishi. He lands with a massive backdraft directly in front of Zelda’s horse, hitting the ground hard enough to kick up dust and mini cyclones. Luckily Maru is long accustomed to bizarre happenings and barely nickers even when a giant bird person appears from the sky. She just stops and snorts, offended.
“Wait!” Mishi says. He’s breathless, frazzled. “I didn’t want to miss you!”
Zelda, thrilled, dismounts to meet him in the road. “Mishi! You’re looking much better!”
The color in his plumage is brilliantly dark and glossy now, his eyes bright, feathers ruffled with emotion. Standing directly in front of her, he’s about half a head taller than her, wearing Rito archery gear, a breast-plate engraved with his clan crest, and a massive long bow clipped to his spine. Above them, the sun’s begun to track across the morning sky and – for a moment – Zelda feels herself pulled by anachronism. She’s been on this road before. Stood like this before. Facing a man like this before wearing armor like that before.
Zelda can feel Link behind her, waiting.
She roots herself in the present. Mishi, not Revali, touches her forearms lightly, cupping them in the massive curl of his wings
“I couldn’t let you leave without thanking you.”
“No thanks necessary. Just… stay away from the eastern wind temple. There’s old magic there and that’s probably what..” She swallows. “I’m very glad you’re doing better, you know. We were worried.”
“Thanks,” he says. He reaches up and un-snaps a cord from his neck – a feather and stone pendent, a white arrow-head affixed with thin blue-black plumes. He carefully places it in her palm. “Carry that with you, priestess. On my family’s behalf. If you ever need help, you’ll have it from me and all my clan. You and your allies.”
Then, quite before she can do anything except stammer, Mishi puts both wings over her shoulders – warm, dark, and heavy.
“I won’t forget it, Zelda.”
He, gently, bumps his forehead against hers. Then he steps back… and takes off, straight up, launching skyward with such force the gale he leaves in his wake kicks up a spiral of wind – tearing her hair up into a weightless whirl as Zelda stands, laughing, shielding her eyes from the sun to watch Mishi rocket through the atmosphere. He cuts a sharp arc toward the mountains, tearing away on an unstoppable trajectory beyond the foothills and into the highlands. She presses her fingers, curled around the totem, to the smile on her lips and for a moment she lives in that rising heat, like warm waters on a tide, rising within her.
Then she ties it around her neck and mounts up again.
Link signs, ‘He’s fast.’
“Just like Revali,” she agrees. Then she blinks, hard, beset suddenly by a heat of tears. She clears her throat. “Draga’s upset with us.” She nods to the shrinking silhouette in the distance, largish and moving at a fast canter. “He hasn’t done that since the mask incident. He didn’t even want to talk about looking for dragons in Tabantha and that—” she makes a face – “is probably a bad.”
Link signs, ‘You think it’s because I punched him?’
She shoots him a look. “Don’t be smart. Why did you do that, anyway?”
He shrugs.
“Do you ever think about what you do?”
He shrugs again, more deeply.
Zelda shakes her head. “I think, before, you tried much harder to hide that kind of thing from me.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Not really. I wasn’t this reckless before.”
She blinks.
Link’s still watching the road. Zelda studies his face, but his expression is neutral and unconcerned. He pats Epona fondly and fishes for something in his shoulder satchel. She waits. Oh. He’s eating a snack. That… that was it. He just said that and now he’s back to riding. Zelda tries to look less worried while her former knight escort chews on a bit of dried apricot and hums to himself, content to set a steady pace beneath the cold morning sun. He’s wearing his hood up, lazy, letting Epona pick her own path down the road while he guides mindlessly with his knees. Zelda slowly looks away so she can frown privately at the back of Maru’s ears.
Eventually, Link takes not of her silence. She hears a short whistle. When she looks up, Link’s arching a brow at her like he’s been trying to get her attention for some time now. The sun’s moved in the sky. Draga is still pacing about a quarter mile ahead of them, so he’s still mad.
Link’s face asks before his hands. ‘What’s wrong?’
“What did you mean when you say you aren’t as reckless as you were one-hundred years ago?”
He gives her a funny look.
‘I meant what I said,’ he signs.
“Yes, but…” She stops.
It’s a clear day, but the Hebra cold leaves breath visible. There’s a thin layer of snow on the foothills not far above them. Link’s still staring at her, cheeks red, brow drawn down, half a question on his lips that never quite becomes. Then, slowly, a dawning blankness moves into his face and sets fine lines of dread across the interior of Zelda’s lungs.
Then Link just faces forward again and says nothing.
Epona tosses her head a little so he leans forward to run his hand across her neck and Zelda makes a detailed study of Link’s hand as he smooths it over Epona’s downy hide. At some point, Link let a stable girl to braid her mane into a loose series of rows and knots that allowed her to thread several bouquets worth of mountain flowers into it – trapper bells, apple bloom, and violets mixed with wisteria. They’ll wither by the end of the day, Zelda knows. He’ll have to comb and pick the dead plants from Epona’s mane and she thinks of him one-hundred years ago – his old war horse, tacked for battle, meticulously groomed and saddled.
“Is that… silent princess?” she asks eventually, pointing at a flower behind Epona’s ear.
Link glances at her. He’s lowered his chin a little, so the lip of his hood shades his eyes. She has to watch his mouth to read anything from the way he nods instead of speaking. Zelda, carefully, leans from Maru’s saddle so she can lift the flower from Epona’s mane. Zelda sits back properly again. She spins the blossom between her fingers then, on a whim, she slides the stem behind her ear, arranging it into a fetching angle at her temple.
“There. How’s that look?” she demands, swiveling at the hips to face Link.
He gives her a very small smile and thumbs up.
“Useless. I’ll ask Draga.”
‘He’s still mad,’ Link signs looking a little offended. She can see his eyes now.
“I didn’t punch him. You did. And he got the best of you in that fight, by the way, I hope you don’t think I didn’t notice.”
“What? No, he didn’t.”
“Bye,” Zelda says, kicking Epona into a canter.
“Hey!”
They race to catch up with Draga and she loses the flower before they even get there.
“Link, do you want to go back to Zora’s Domain?”
He glances at her.
The fire crackles, the scent of roasting fish rising warm from the small travel-sized skillet, the oils popping softly. They’re seated in the shade by a small creek near the road. Link is halfway through the motion pinching herb into the pan and he squints at her instead of giving it the attention it needs; he’s finicky about how things are salted or flavored. Damn. She should have waited until after lunch to ask that question. Ruining a meal with personal questions. She intended to ruin the afternoon generally with personal questions, but ruining food as well… that was just unnecessary.
“Sorry. Never mind.”
Link finishes sprinkling herb and dusts his hands on his pants. Then he turns to crouch facing her. Oh no. He’s giving her his full attention. Which isn’t to suggest he doesn’t usually, but rather that she wishes he wasn’t doing that right now because her question in retrospect seems presumptuous. Link folds his hands between his knees, his elbows on his thighs. Oh, Goddess. He’s giving her his full undivided attention. Link’s full undivided attention, among other things, has brought down giants.
Presently, it’s just making her deeply anxious.
“I only ask because… we’ve only been back the one time. Now that the shrines aren’t working, it takes so long to travel and I just wonder if you wanted to make some time to go there and…” She gives a helpless shrug. “Visit?”
Link thinks about it. Then signs, ‘Do you want to go there?’
“Well, it’s comforting you know.”
Link eyes her steadily then signs, ‘I’m fine.’
“I know Bazz and Gaddison have asked you to come around. Are you afraid they’re going to group hug you to death?”
“Terrified,” he says calmly.
“But, Link, all joking aside. Do we need go back?”
Link gives her a look.
Draga, who is no longer actively avoiding their physical presence, looks up from where he’s seated nearby – back against a log, reading a book. It’s much warmer now that they’ve dropped elevation but he’s still wearing full Snowquill gear and a scarf. This does nothing to detract from the vague sense of dangerous he exudes when he eyes them over the coils of said scarf.
“Zora’s Domain is on the other side of Hyrule. You know that, right? We could not be farther away, presently.”
Zelda glares back at him. “Yes. I know. I am aware.”
“Just checking.”
“I’m sorry, but don’t pick a fight with me just because you’re grumpy.”
“I’m not. I’m saying Zora’s Domain is far away.”
“Bravo. Geography. You know I was the Princess of this land once, right? I might know where things are located.”
Link, visibly uncomfortable, laughs nervously. “Can we not?”
Draga shuts his book. “Why do we need to go to Zora’s Domain?”
“Maybe that’s personal,” Zelda says, folding her arms. She lifts her chin slightly. “Maybe it’s none of your business.”
Draga looks at Link. “Why do we need to go to Zora’s Domain?”
The Hero of Hyrule, Hylia’s chosen hand, embodiment of the Light, glances quickly toward the creek like he’s wishing it were much deeper and he could throw himself into it to avoid this conversation. But he can’t and Draga’s sitting forward now, draping one arm over his knee, his book dangling between his fingers as he narrows his eyes. Draga’s right cheekbone is still bruised. He didn’t let Zelda heal him and seems to have used just enough first aid to close the cut there, but nothing else. Link still has a split lip and scraped knuckles.
“We don’t,” Link says.
“Zelda is making a face. I don’t believe you,” Draga counters.
Link glares at Zelda who wasn’t aware she was making any face whatsoever and tries to stop having a face immediately.
“I’m fine,” Link says.
“Why,” Draga drawls, “did you assume I thought there was something wrong with you?”
Link tenses.
Draga just stares, calmly, waiting.
“I’m sorry I hit you earlier.”
“Thanks, but that is not what I’m talking about right now or why I’m asking.”
Link signs, ‘It’s no problem.’
Draga signs, carefully, ‘L-I-A-R.’
“Leave it alone,” Zelda starts to say.
Draga interrupts. “But since you brought it up – why did you attack me? You’re crazy, but that was rude. You’re not usually rude.”
“I’m not crazy,” Link says calmly.
Draga rolls his eyes. “You’re reckless but you’re not rude. So why did you do that?”
Link’s mouth thins. Then, “I don’t know. Just felt right.”
“Hitting me felt right?”
Link shrugs.
“Are you sure you’re not crazy?” Draga sighs, a little dramatically, seemingly ready to abandon this line of questioning.
Then Link repeats, quietly, “I’m not crazy.”
And then there’s a long silence.
Draga, who was clearly not trying to dig at a nerve, seems mildly unsure what to do upon realizing he’s found one. Zelda, who was not aware that was a nerve to dig at, blinks. Link, who seems to realize what he’s just done, freezes. Luckily that’s when the fish he left in the skillet starts smoking and then bursts, somewhat improbably, into flames. Small miracles. Draga points. Zelda yelps. Link, noticing the sudden flames, grabs the handle on reflex and promptly burns his hand. He hisses, then tries again with a towel whereupon he just flings the whole pan into the creek where it ricochets off a rock and disappears into the shallows on the opposite bank.
Zelda stares.
Draga, dumbfounded, says, “You lost your pan.”
“Damn it,” Link says.
He inspects his burned hand. There’s a bright red band bisecting the centre of his palm.
“Here,” Zelda says, standing up. “Let me see.”
“Don’t,” Link snaps.
Zelda stops exactly where she is, boots rooted suddenly to the ground. Draga doesn’t say a word but Zelda can feel him… settling on her peripheral. Link flexes his hand a few times, furling and unfurling his fingers as the burn darkens, flushing with heat. She’s pretty sure it’s going to blister. She’s certain it must hurt. He looks over his shoulder at them and Zelda isn’t sure how to describe the specific notion that Link’s eyes get bluer somehow, intensify with his temper, even though that cannot be true. When he looks like that… huh, she thinks of the Wolf on the road.
“So there’s a demon in your shadow,” Link says, looking at Draga.
Draga, who was nowhere near that topic of conversation, stares then slowly allows the violent change of subject. “Yes, we established this. Are you getting that pan or…?”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course, it bothers me, but you get used to it.”
Link turns around. “Do you want us to try and get rid of it?”
Draga laughs, then seems to realize Link is serious. “That’s a notion, but no. You can’t break the tie with this demon. It’s too ancient even for you two. I admit, there is a wildness to you both that defies the laws of convention so nothing is impossible, but unless you exhibit some control over what you do I can’t imagine you breaking a curse this powerful.” Draga tilts his head. “No offense, Link, you’re strong. What power you possess, it tends to wipe out what stands before it, but you act in instinct. Do you even know how you did what you did back in the Rito Village?”
Link says nothing.
Zelda cuts in, “I could try though. The entirety of my inherited magic is fashioned for sealing malicious power.”
“And you used most of it against the Calamity,” says Draga evenly. “And what practical application has there been from your study of sorcery at the Hyrulian high court? Any at all? Or do you, like Link, draw on some unspecified knowledge at the time of necessity?”
“That may be true,” she says, ignoring the sting of that – the implication that years of prayer and study have amounted to nothing so much as book knowledge, “but how can a single dark spirit be more dangerous than the Calamity Ganon?”
“I don’t believe it is more dangerous, just more subtle. Zelda, your power is a hammer.”
“And that won’t work because…?”
“You cannot kill what you cannot reach. The demon isn’t… here. It’s on the other side of the veil. The demon tribe does not exist on this plane until they choose to do so and they needn’t present themselves in our world to do harm.” Draga gestures to his bruised cheekbone, the place where the monster laid a gash open during the fight. “Again, what you saw was a shadow on a wall. The real beast is… bigger.” He hesitates, like even talking about it sets him on edge. “But this is all beside the point: I have protections afforded me by my family. So long as I do not engage in pact magics, I am safe.”
“You’re sure?” Link says.
“After two decades of living with it? Reasonably.”
Zelda frowns, moving to take a seat on the log he’s leaning against. “Your basing this off the fact it… simply hasn’t tried anything historically?”
“No,” Draga says quietly, “I’m basing it off the fact my sisters worked very powerful magic to protect me before they died. Generations of my family have fought endlessly to break the curse and they’ve come the closest to doing it – to limiting its scope. It would dishonor their efforts to expose others needlessly to the danger now. So… I thank you, but pick a different battle. This one is mine.”
“So fight all the battles that aren’t close to us?” Link demands.
Draga looks at him. “Why are you so eager for a fight?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re being rude again. Are you going to fight me now?”
“Of course not.”
Draga narrows his eyes. “Okay, what you actually angry about? Because it’s not my curse. You’ve been in a mood since we left the Village this morning and you were fine before then so what is it? Because I think I’ve humored you long enough about something that is, actually, deeply personal so either respect my wishes not to be your next battleground or tell me what’s actually wrong.” He folds his arms. “If you can do that, maybe I’ll consider letting you help. Your choice.”
And Link, rather precisely caught, looks away.
After a while, Draga sets his book aside and moves somewhat laboriously into a crouch.
“If you’re not going to get that skillet, then I’ll do it. You’ll just be irritated about it later –”
“I don’t remember things,” Link says, cutting him off.
Draga stops. He processes that, then calmly, “I thought you said you’d recovered most of your memories.”
“Some,” Link murmurs. “Not most.”
“And that bothers you?” Draga asks.
He doesn’t quite smile. "You get used to it."
If Draga resents his words being echoed, he doesn’t give sign. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. Is it the first Zelda’s heard of it?”
And Link looks at her. She’s fighting back the knot in her throat because he looks so tired in that moment.
“I knew,” Zelda cries, hands clenching tight in her lap. “I thought it was… Link how bad is it? You never talk about it! You remember so much. We talk about the past all the time. I… I sensed that you’d remembered our time together. What do you mean you don’t remember things? What’s missing? Was I wrong?” She stops when Link folds his arms and looks away, a slight visible pain moving across his face, then sliding back into unreadable calm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He doesn't answer.
“We can go back to Zora’s Domain,” Zelda says, desperately now. She stands up, hands clasped tight, pressed against her stomach. She feels nauseous. Dizzy. “They remember you from before I knew you. You said before that they helped you get things back. You have so many friends there. They would certainly help you. Please, you don’t have to… pretend everything is fine. We can stop. We can go back. Just talk to me.”
“I don’t think it will help.”
“Why?”
He shrugs.
“Link, no. Tell me why.”
“I always…” He tries to go on, but his next words stick and die. He says nothing for a moment, as though he’s not certain about continuing at all, but Draga is waiting and Zelda is waiting, trembling with the silence, so he signs, ‘I always assumed I’d lose my mind. So, it’s not a priority.’
Zelda says nothing.
Then, “What?”
Draga, who is probably catching only a handful of Link’s sign, looks sharply at her.
“You’re not going to lose your mind!” Zelda cries.
“What?” Draga echoes.
Link’s completely emotionless as he, wordless, lays it out in gesture and sign. ‘I already did once. It’s not unreasonable to think it’s likely.’
“Why would you say that?” Her voice is starting to crack. “What do you mean…?”
‘I don’t know. I have a feeling. My instincts tend to be good. That’s all.’
“How long have you felt this way?”
’Since the sword chose me. Draga is right: I have no control over the power inside me. It's going to eat me alive.’
Zelda covers her mouth with one hand, shaking.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how.’
“I don’t understand what he’s saying,” Draga says tensely.
“Link…” Zelda hesitates to see if he wants to speak for himself but he gives her a small permissive nod. “He's saying he has no control. That... the magic itself is going to drive him insane and...” She looks desperately at her once knight and partner, who calmly waits for her to translate the massiveness of his admission into plain words. “…because he lost his memories once already, it's accelerated the timeline. He thinks he will lose his mind and that it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. That's why he's pushing about the curse, because he thinks it's going to get worse.” Tears are brimming in her eyes. “Link is that right?”
He drops his gaze.
He nods.
And Zelda, barren of any other instinct in that moment, shakes her head. Slowly at first, then hard, until her hair is in her eyes and her heart in her throat and she can’t – she can’t –
She dashes across the short distance, hitting Link in the chest, palms first. She hears him grunt softly with the impact. Her hands close on his tunic. She can feel the scale mail beneath it – a token of his childhood friend, hand-crafted to fit him. His eyes are wide. She can see every organic fractal of blue in his irises and the faint scar at the top of his forehead where his hairline starts. He got it from a riding accident when he was ten. His ears are pierced because Zora give jewelry so casually as a gift.
His hands close over hers. She can pick out a myriad of pale scars on his fingers – a history of learned violence she was never witness to. She doesn’t know the stories in the callouses. She doesn’t know the topography of his lost history, mapped out in implication only and gone now in the wake of the Calamity. Her fists ball up in his shirt and she pulls at him so she can drop her forehead against her fists and breathe.
“You could have told me,” she chokes. “I wanted…. I wanted to know that.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, aloud but so softly it could be lost in the breeze. “It was easier to pretend.”
She draws back, lifting her eyes. “How could that be easier?”
He doesn’t answer for a moment, just turns from her, so her hands slide from his breastbone to his shoulder. When he continues not to answer, she moves behind him and (after a hesitation, intense, all encompassing, white hot) loops her arms around him, tucking her arms around his ribs, her hands lacing over his chest. She lies her cheek against that back of his neck. His hair tickles a little. He smells like the floral bar soap from the inn. Her heart is slamming in her chest – rabbit-quick and afraid.
“You can tell me.” She swears it to him, but still the silence stretches. “Please. Please, just tell me…”
“You didn’t know me well enough to tell the difference.”
Zelda nods, just once, then presses her face against the slope of his neck, feels his hand close over her inter-locked fingers. Squeezing tight. Like an apology or to keep her from pulling away in the aftermath. She’s not sure. She’s not sure about anything. She's not sure he could have hurt her more if he drew his blade across her arm – letting blood from her veins like venom from a bite. His hand tightens until the bones in her fingers ache and she, acting on impulse, mouths ‘it’s okay’ against the nape of neck until his hand relaxes.
“Link,” Draga says, when it's clear Zelda can't go on, “do you want my opinion?”
He waits for Link to nod.
“In Gerudo teachings, magic use of any kind always carries some measure of madness. An attitude of risk. The greatest danger to any sorcerer is the possibility of losing themselves to the powers within them – The Thousand Voices. The Sea of Lives. To lose yourself to any of these is to fall to abomination and possession. It’s what killed my family and what stands in my shadow... so when you tell me you’re afraid to lose yourself, know that I hear you, but also know that I have some notion of the signs.”
He lets that settle for a moment.
“When you say you’re going to lose your mind, do you mean you’re going to lose yourself to the Sea or that your memory loss has made you a different man?”
“Both,” Link says quietly.
“One may not have anything to do with the other, you know.”
“I dream about drowning in twilight and a moon that falls time and again, infinitely.” Link’s hand tightens on Zelda’s again, his shoulders set. “I dream about falling so far from above the clouds that I can barely see the earth. In the dream, I’m another person. When I wake up, I feel that I don’t have enough of myself left to keep them out. One has to do with the other.” He shivers. “I’m… afraid of losing my mind again. It’s like dying…”
“Look at me,” Draga says. “Link. Look at me. You embody the soul of the hero, yes, so you have many lives lined behind you. Maybe they tell you how to move. How to fight. How to employ magic you’ve never learned or a tactic you’ve never tried. Maybe, in moments of battle or fear, you see a window into a section of their lives, but I don’t believe they will consume you.”
Link's looking at the creek, not Draga.
Link says, “Why not?”
“Because those lives are yours, in some degree. They’re behind you. Like memories. You’re troubled because you’re beginning to see memories that are not your own when your own memory has been so dramatically reduced. You were wounded in battle, Link. You lost parts of yourself. I won’t say that I know whether you will ever get those pieces back, but even so the man you are now… he’s far too stubborn to fall to the men that came before him.”
“None of them lost to the Calamity,” Link murmurs.
“None of them had to come back from losing.”
“I can’t control it.”
“Such is wild magic. It’s not for you to control, but it’s intent is not your destruction. You can stand in the eye of the storm and direct its trajectory, Link, simply trust that you’re unmovable.” And when Link does not look at him, Draga moves forward and with two hands takes his head into his palms, fingers curling around the back of his neck, thumbs hooked behind the line of his jaw and when Link doesn't pull away, he guides his eyes up. “Listen to me," he says. "You are not insane. Even if every hero before you was utterly mad, you are not and you will not be."
Link exhales. "Why not?"
"You have Zelda. You have me.” He searches Link’s eyes, shakes his head. “I do not see the signs in you. So, you won't be lost."
Link doesn’t move. Doesn’t relax.
“Do you believe me, Link?”
Zelda can smell copper, taste it, like a coin on her tongue.
Link exhales, slowly. “I believe you.”
“Good. Then we should get back on the road.” Draga lets Link go and moves to pick is book up from the grass where he left it. “There are dragons at Tabantha Bridge. Or was that not true?”
Link turns in Zelda’s arms. Before she can react, he cups her face in his hands and presses his mouth to the plane of her right cheek. He says something, soundless, against her skin. ‘Thank you’ perhaps or… or something else. She freezes. Her entire face flushes, but as fast as he does it, he stops. He steps away, moving past her toward the creek where he starts to wade across the shallow water, hunting for the skillet. Zelda can’t explain why her lips, not her cheek, seems to ache from contact (or lack thereof) and the shiver that runs down her body ends somewhere in her stomach.
Draga turns around, slinging a satchel over his shoulder. “Gerudo country isn’t far from here. We have time to slow down before we head that way.”
Zelda rubs her cheek. “Yes, right. Of course.”
Link’s plucking the lost pan from the water.
Draga’s looking at her. “Are you alright?”
“Hmm? Oh. Yes. I’m okay.” She pulls her hair back. “Uh, thank you again, Draga. I… I appreciate it. I think Link needed to hear that.”
“You two need to talk more,” he says quietly. “I mean what I said – he’s safe but much of that has to do with you. Isolation is the fastest way for the Sea to take a soul beyond the shore.” He moves toward the clearing where the horses are penning beyond the trees. “I may not always be here. You need to be sentinel.”
Zelda hops the log by their rest site, chasing him down.
“Draga.” She catches his arm, pulling him around to face her. “If you leave Link and I, who will be your sentinel?”
He says nothing, just peers down at her, eyes unfathomable and green. He’s so tall he casts a shadow over her. She waits.
“I’ve been alone since I was fifteen, Zelda. I’ve had seven years to work out how to protect myself by myself. You needn’t worry about me.” He smiles a little. “But I appreciate it.”
She lets him pull away to check the tack on his horse.
“Okay,” she says to herself.
Behind her, Link is putting out the fire and packing up. Draga is patting Arbiter. She stands there, aware of them both, and silently over and over she hears Draga saying, ‘I may not always be here. I may not always be here. I may not…’
They board their horses at Tabantha Bridge Stable a full day later.
It’s a quiet and somewhat isolated outpost perched almost directly on the cliff besides its namesake – narrow arch of wood planking and rope that tenuously spans the dizzying plunge of Tanagar Canyon. So deep is the fissure in some sections of the country, the bottom vanishes into a deeper, darker layer of cloud and mist that seems it could very well be the migratory path of draconic beasts. Tabantha Bridge is the only permanent bridge linking the plains of Hyrule Ridge to the snowy region of Hebra and therefore, an essential waypoint for merchants and travelers of all variety.
They take day packs and hike out to the far edge of the canyon at the foot of Mount Rhoam, far from the bridge itself, and set up a comfortable spot for themselves on a wide jut of stone overlooking the canyon course. Zelda lays down several blankets within minute Draga has produced alcohol from a deceptively small flask that tingles when Zelda takes draft from it. She suspects, somewhat, that it’s enchanted in the way Link’s travel satchel is enchanted and carries far more than its dimensions should allow.
So, getting increasingly more drunk, they watch the color leech from the sky.
Turns out Link isn’t a talkative drunk.
After quite a few long draughts from the flask, however, Link does discard all sense of personal space. So he’s presently trying to climb on Draga’s back and Zelda – eating a small bag of candied fruit – makes absolutely no move to help. Link keeps saying something about ‘higher ground’ as he clambers their giant friend the way he might climb a rock face. Draga doesn’t seem amused. He pries at the smaller man with little success, Link clinging, tenacious as a limpet. He gives it up until Link is literally sitting on his left shoulder, squinting across the plains with the attitude of a mountaineer surveying the country.
Draga sighs and loops a hand over Link’s knee to keep him from tipping. He eyes the impetuous Hero of Hyrule with a long, calculated stare that is surely counting down to the moment he flings Link into the dirt. But he makes no move to do so. His hand on Link’s thigh is so large that his fingers very nearly encircle his leg just above his knee.
“I could throw you like a shotput,” Draga reminds him.
Link says, loudly, “Don’t be a drag, Draga.”
The Gerudo gives him this look like Link’s immediate future as a human bolo is forthcoming.
“Are you certain the dragon comes this way?”
“Yes,” he says.
“When?”
“Very late at night. Or very early in the morning.”
Draga promptly torques to the left and flings Link to the ground next to Zelda. Zelda, still eating candied fruit, moves the bag out of the way so it doesn’t get crushed when Link rolls onto his back and lies there, a little red-faced, on the blanket. Draga takes a seat at the far edge of the blanket, the small campfire to the side casting relief on the three of them, the full moon laying silver highlight across the grassy slope up Mount Rhoam. Link points at the moon and signs.
‘I keep thinking it’ll turn red.’
Draga looks up, stunned. “The blood moons have stopped now that Calamity is gone.”
Zelda tilts her head. “Yes. You didn’t know that?”
Draga runs a hand through his hair, the wind ruffling some of the shorter bits. “I did, I just now realized that’s directly attributable to you two.”
Zelda does a little half bow/wave combo. Link gives a thumbs up.
“I take it back.” Draga lies back on the ground, lacing his fingers behind his head. “It’s not that impressive.”
“We probably should not be drinking if we’re trying to spot a dragon,” Zelda points out. “I’m already sleepy.”
‘They aren’t dangerous,’ Link signs.
“Wake me if dragons show up,” says Draga, closing his eyes and with a soldier’s immediacy, falls asleep.
Zelda prods the sole of his boot with her toe and gets no response. Link laughs, but silently, shoulders shaking a little. Zelda sits up so she can crawl over and peer down at Draga who, yes, appears to have completely dropped to sleep in the span of one moment and the next. She satisfies herself that it’s so by mock lunging and waving her hands inches from his face. Nothing. She sits back on her heels, examining their friend’s sleeping face. In consciousness, Draga’s neutral expressions are somewhat severe, lending him a default mien of someone vaguely irritated, just on the verge of a scowl. In sleep, the edges smooth away; you might notice his eyelashes are a little long, or that his hair curls where it get loose from the braids and clasps. Zelda has to resist a small, familiar impulse to smooth his hair flat where it’s sticking up.
She catches Link in the corner of her eye, signing.
‘I think we can break the curse.’
Zelda, glancing warily at Draga, signs back, ‘We should respect his wishes.’
Link sighs and flops back down, running his hands over his face. He signs, from his back, ‘We could fight it.’
Zelda moves to kneel beside him, leaning over her fallen knight so she can sign down at him. ‘I don’t know how to fight it.’
Link tilts his head. He’s so much smoother with his hand signals. ‘I think you did pretty well.’
She gives up on sign. “I didn’t know what I was doing. It was just… in the moment.”
Link grins. ‘You shouted down a demon.’
“I did not.”
He shrugs, makes a lazy one-handed gesture that translates, thereabouts: ‘I liked it.’
Link’s still grinning. His smiles linger longer, stick more easily when he’s tacky with liquor and slower to rein in the translation of emotions to body language, like drink gums up the gears that tell him to be stone before the eyes of others. A breeze rising from the valley ruffles Link’s bangs slightly. He’s a little more slack than usual, a warm fluidity born of drunkness and, she thinks, happiness. He’s been lighter since their talk at the creek. Quicker to smile and take to a joke. The firelight’s putting little strands of gold into his hair. He smiles up at her.
Zelda is not sure how it happens, or what part of her mind goes into automatic movement but the impulse – always there, vaguely, unformed and unexamined – comes to the forefront of her brain and asserts control. She places one hand on the blanket by Link’s head, bracing herself so he’s beneath her, looking up at her. He watches her, curiously, and begins to mouth a word. Lips parting on something, a question maybe or –
She kisses him.
Her lips find his just as his voice finds his throat. The vibrato comes across his teeth, settles in the bones of her face and it’s so unexpected she jerks back immediately, as if shocked. Link stares at her, half braced on his elbows in the attitude of rising, eyes wide in the dark, his lips still parted on whatever he was going to say before she put her tongue in his mouth and caught his voice against the back of his teeth. He can’t seem to get it back – rendered all again mute by her.
“I’m sorry!” Zelda covers her mouth with her hands. Horror possesses every fiber in her body and knots them up. “I didn’t – I’m sorry! I’m drunk! I didn’t mean that!”
Link sits up very slowly, expression… odd. His lower lip is a little swollen. She shakes her head, whispering.
“I don’t know why I did that.”
He keeps staring at her.
“That wasn’t fair. Oh. That was stupid. I don’t… I guess…. I thought it was funny what you said. Shouting at demons. Oh… that’s not very funny actually.” Panic. She’s panicking. Link’s all blue-eyed and pale and just staring at her and she’s losing her mind right in front of me so of course she rejoins, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It seemed like a good idea! Oh. Why do I keep letting Draga give me alcohol?! Just because I stole his wine that one time and suddenly it’s, like, a challenge of some variety I honestly… I don’t…”
Link is still staring. Zelda gives up entirely and covers her face with two hands, peeking between her fingers, because that will somehow make this less horrible.
Voice muffled, she whispers, “I didn’t ruin things, did I?”
Link stares. Then, “What?”
“You know… by doing that. Did I… ruin everything?”
Link again, says, “What?”
“Did I break it?”
“It?”
“Us.”
“What?”
They might both be a little too drunk for this.
“You know!” Zelda flaps a hand. “With the kiss.”
Link stares.
Then he promptly bursts into laughter.
Which, given how appalled she is, seems almost offensive – him amused in the face of her utter mortification and crisis. Link falls over on his side and lies there gasping, hair in his eyes, just lost in laughter. It occurs to Zelda that she’s never seem him laugh like that – that he’s very, very different when he’s breathless and smiling and loud even in a passing moment and in this passing moment, Zelda’s heart seems to constrict in her chest. Suddenly, she’s very glad she decided to kiss him if for no other reason than this.
Eventually, Link stops laughing.
Zelda lies down on the blanket facing him, smoothing her hair in annoyance.
Link signs, carefully, ‘You can’t break us.’
“Can’t I?” she whispers.
He looks at her. Then says, calmly, “No.”
And she doesn’t know what to say, so she says, “I might sleep this off and miss the dragon.”
She has no throne. Girls without thrones should not have knights, but hers won’t go. Princess Zelda – the girl who killed Calamity – would love to fade into legend, but Link’s bought a house, he’s fighting off monsters, and he’s selling giant horses to strangely familiar Gerudo men. She'll never have any peace now. (ao3)
(chapter one) (chapter two) (chapter three)
They cross a trio of traveling merchants on their way toward Hebra.
There’s an outbreak of fever among the Rito, something Teba wrote Link about, something… strange. A sleeping disease that comes quickly and then smothers the afflicted incrementally, relentlessly, to death over the course of a few weeks. Link sent the message back that they’re coming to help. Fruit purchases would seem secondary, but Teba’s boy, Tulin, likes Lurelin star fruit and Link has a notion of spoiling the kid. So he picks out a dozen, sorting non-bruised specimens from a large saddle-strapped basket.
Zelda watches Link’s process while trying very hard to appear that she’s not watching him because then he might become self-aware of the faces he’s making when he carefully thumbs the skin of an unsatisfactory fruit and puts it back. He kind of wrinkles his nose, looks apologetic, and tried another.
Draga, who is not hiding that he’s watching, says, “Teba is the warrior who fought with Link to subdue Vah Medoh. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Not the one with the accordion.”
“No, that’s Kass.”
“Kass is the traveling musician?”
“Hence the accordion.”
“Do the Rito know about Link?”
“No. They think he’s a great-great-grandchild of the Champion and Link doesn’t, you know, argue with them.”
“You’re both unbelievable.”
The other two merchants – a spice-trader, and fish-merchant respectively – are eyeing them a little. The larger one, the fishmonger, sits forward on his horse a little bit, squinting as though he just can’t quite get a proper look at the three of them. Zelda isn’t sure, but the fishmonger might be day-drinking if the slack-muscled blinking is any indicator. The spice-trader looks nervous. Like a woman waiting to jump in to break up a fight, like she just knows something is going to go wrong in the next few moments. She’s certain.
And then fishmonger says, “Oi, you’re that fuckin’ guy,” and the spice trader literally starts appealing to the gods.
It takes Link a second to realize he’s being spoken to. He frowns, in the middle of counting out payment, and doesn’t answer.
“Link right?”
Link ignores him.
“Yeah, thought so. Jessie, you shouldn’t sell to ‘im.” The fishmonger hiccups, cheerful in his bearing of bad news. “He’s a demon, ya know. Traded his fuckin’ soul to the Mountain Lord for power.” Another hiccup. “People saw ‘im. Riding the beast of Satori Peak across Hyrule Field. No lie.”
Zelda and Draga exchange a look. It’s not… a surprised look.
Link’s ignoring the man, calmly ties the fruit-bag to Epona’s saddle to evenly distribute the weight. He selects one of the starfruit, however, and careful sinks his teeth into it. That way, it stays in place while he mounts up. Once seated, facing his abuser, Link doesn’t make any move to eat the fruit, just sits there with it in his mouth, staring. The star-fruit is just the right size to make him look a little like a dog with a ball. Fishmonger, too busy expounding on his story, doesn’t notice.
He’s wagging a finger now. “It’s people like you… you are the reason…”
Link reaches up and slowly takes a bite of fruit.
“You are the reason that… this kingdom is going to the dogs. You. People like you.”
Link proceeds to slowly eat the fruit while maintaining the polite, emotionless expression of a person trapped in line with the town’s fanatical but harmless whackjob. Occasionally, he gives a sympathetic nod. Yes. He is a monster/demon/changeling/whatever. A were-creature. A whatcha-ma-call-it. The other merchants look ashamed. Maybe they look a little afraid, but that’s mostly because Draga looks really aggravated mounted up on his giant war horse looking Lynel-sized and murderous in his dark traveling gear and glaring. Eventually, they route the drunk man away, hushing him loudly as they go.
Link wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and waves cheerfully.
“You rode a god?” Draga demands when they’re alone.
Link looks abashed and goes back to eating his fruit, discretely kicking Epona into a trot.
“You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.”
Draga follows him, sounding a little desperate.
“Link, are you joking?”
Link rides away faster.
“Link!”
Zelda watches them zig-zag up the road like an absurd cat and dog, racing away too quickly for Maru to bother catching up. They’ll circle back after Draga finishes yelling. Knowing that, Zelda takes a moment to enjoy the quiet as the distance grows. Soon, she can’t hear anything but Maru’s hooves on the road. She closes her eyes then, gathering her hair at the back of her neck and turning her face into the sun. For a moment, it’s just that feeling – sunshine on her face and the rhythm of Maru walking down the road. She smiles at little. She smiles a lot. She’s not sure what to do with it – the excess of happiness in that moment so she lets it just breathe.
She feels a tug, just a little, like a thread twined around something somewhere behind her breastbone and running down her right wrist.
When she opens her eyes, Link and Draga have stopped to circle back.
But the sun and the happiness are easy to focus on and she’s looking forward to making fun of them when they get back to her. The point is, she does not think anything of the tug. Nothing at all.
Serenne Stable is populated primarily by trappers, traveling merchants, Leviathan researchers, and Rito flying in from the north-west part of Hebra. The main room’s crowded. Loud with guests both coming and going. Link is at the front desk smiling at the innkeeper in that way that will probably get them a discount. Zelda would tell him to knock it off, but there’s something kind of fascinating about watching strangers get charmed by a man she sees so often she has no unbiased perspective of him. She and Draga claim a table near the back of the common room and start dumping gear on the floor, glad to be off the road for a moment.
“I can never tell,” Draga says, taking a seat, “which Rito are male or female.”
Which might be a strange break into conversation, except one of the Rito, a red-feathered hunter by the looks of them, is pulling Link aside to speak with him near the front door.
“Can’t help you there,” Zelda says, sitting down across from Draga. “There isn’t much in the way of sexual dimorphism in their race, at least not now. I think in different ethnicities of Rito, there are definite phenotypical signs, but so many of them have inter-married now that’s hardly a reliable checklist to refer to.” A beat of quiet goes on too long as Zelda catches the look Draga’s giving her. “Uh, that is to say… I don’t… I don’t know either.” She coughs. “That one might be male through. He’s kind of… tall?” As though there were not tall female Rito. She bows her head. “I don’t know.”
Draga’s leaning back in his seat, which is putting some real strain on the carpentry.
He’s watching Link, who’s got his hands on his hips, listening to the Rito. The hunter is making a comment, Zelda thinks, about the feather token braided in his hair because they kind of touch it with the edge of one enormous wing, lifting it from where it hangs against his chin. Which means, when they move it, they touch Link’s face. Both Zelda and Draga kind of… tilt their heads concurrently. Link doesn’t seem bothered. Perhaps he knows the hunter. He’s not smiling but doing that calm neutral stare that says, without a single word, I’m listening. You have my attention. The Rito laughs, then kind of bends down to say something, softly enough that Link has to turn his head and let them put the long, wicked curve of their beak near his ear.
“I think,” Draga says, rocking back on the legs of his chair and openly trying to get a better angle. “I think that Rito is preening his hair…”
Zelda snorts.
“Link’s not giving a damn thing away, but I think that’s what’s happening there.”
“Is he getting red?”
“A little.”
“That’s probably what’s happening then.”
“Is that flirting?”
“For Rito? I mean… well, it’s a little more than flirting, I think.”
Link takes a seat at their table a few minutes later. He’s just a little pink, but otherwise calm. He puts a single brass room-key on the table between them – meaning he’s sprung for a party suite and soft beds. Zelda is, very briefly, distracted by the imminent possibility of a bath and extremely soft sheets. Link presently goes about the task of unpacking things from his bag, putting his bow on the table, beginning his routine for weapon repairs with a kind of singular focus. He does not look up at either of them while he does this, though it’s obvious he can feel their expectant gazes against the top of his head. He digs a bag of roasted almonds from his pack and starts eating them. Studiously, even professionally ignoring them.
“Do you know that Rito?” Zelda asks conversationally.
He nods once, curtly.
“Who is… she? He?”
Link eats a handful of almonds and says, through the lot, “He.”
“What did he ask you about?”
Link, swallowing audibly, points at the feather in his hair.
“What about it?”
“It can mean things,” he says ambiguously.
Zelda laughs. “Like what?”
Draga grins, folding his arms. “Did Fyson give you an admiration plume?”
Link stiffens.
Zelda gasps in delight, hands coming together against her lips. “Oh! Oh, did he? Is that what they look like now?” She flaps a hand at Draga when he frowns at her. “No, see, one-hundred years ago a Rito would give a feather on a necklace or something more formal. Is it less formal now? Do they just put it, like, in their head feathers now or…? Oh. That’s sweet. Does it still mean what it used to mean? Because back then it was like this… well, it was kind of a declaration you were interested in them, but it could be just for great admiration or…”
Link rather pointedly flips his cloak’s hood up and pulls it down low over his eyes.
Draga sits forward, boots flat on the floor, still grinning. “Did that Rito come on to you because you have it?”
Link’s turning red now. He just sits there for a moment, turning redder, then, “Maybe.”
“But you turned him down?”
Link yanks his hood off so he can give Draga the full effect of his glare. Draga is entirely unaffected. He’s got his chin propped in his palm now, kind of smiling in self-satisfaction. Zelda has both hands clasped under her chin. Link, seeing this, tosses both hands up and gives them a very clear sign with one finger and starts to go back to weapon repairs. Or, at least, he starts to. But Draga sits forward and reaches over to hook two fingers around the offending braid, lifting it so he can look at it more closely.
Link side-eyes him, but doesn’t move away.
Draga studies the detail work. “You don’t mind it when Rito men give you their attention?”
Link arches a brow. Then, after a moment, with careful enunciation: “No,” he says, “I don’t.”
“Hmm. Discount rooms. Admiration plumes. Zora armor.” He flips the braid with a teasing grin. “Do you get marriage proposals everywhere you go?”
Link stops blushing. Instead, all the blood backs out of his face and he tries, unsuccessfully, to smile.
Zelda’s hands just drop, however, and all traceries of previous delight evaporates.
Draga, sensing he’s made a mistake, immediately sits back. “Sorry. I meant nothing by that.”
Link gives up on the defensive smile and the void left in his expression doesn’t seem to fill. He starts signing.
‘Do you know Zora wedding traditions?’
Zelda translates.
Draga shakes his head. “I don’t.”
’Zora don’t make armor for their betrothed. They usually hand-craft jewelry.’ Link waits for Zelda to finish translating. ‘Zora royalty are expected to lead soldiers in battle, physically, to be on the field. So, Zora princesses craft armor with lightscale for their intended.’ Here Link touches a spot just below his throat, near the dip of his collarbone. ‘Lightscale is here, on a Zora. Only the females. Thin as paper, harder than diamond. A Zora princess can spare the one over her heart and the scale that grows back will be twice as tough, every time.”
“Doesn’t that leave the princess vulnerable for a time?” Draga asks softly.
Link laughs. Once.
“Yes,” he says.
That’s the point, he does not say. That she bares her heart for her people. That she might risk death for them.
Link’s looking very hard at the table in front of him, at his hands resting there among the tools and weapons he’d started to work on. No one says anything for a while. Zelda can’t even remember Link unpacking Mipha’s tunic – feather light scale-mail, so strong it can turn aside any blade, and so obviously a treasure he doesn’t dare wear it openly lest it draw attention. She does know, sometimes, discretely, he wears it under his tunic in place of regular mail. She catches him, sometimes, touching the filigree in the sleeves beneath his shirt, like one counts off beads on a rosary.
Maybe that’s how Draga saw it – caught Link in a thoughtless moment remembering the dead.
He waits until Link’s shoulders relax a little before speaking again, quietly.
“Did you ever get to see the Lightscale Festival?” Draga looks at Link. Gets no response so he elaborates. “The Zora hold the Lightscale Festival every year when the rains come. All Zora come back to the Domain. On the festival day, they send down the river, with their prayers, hand-crafted lanterns made from the shells of ocean creatures. Everyone knows this, because all the rivers in Hyrule carry tens of thousands of lanterns to every corner of the kingdom… and every one of them has her name written inside.” Draga leans forward a little. “I lived in a land where no rivers reach and even I know Princess Mipha was a wonder.”
Link has his eyes closed. His hands are fists on the table top.
“I’m sorry, my friend. I… didn’t make the connection.”
Link tries to say something but can’t get the sound to touch his tongue. His hands don’t move from the table where Zelda can see he’s clenching them so tightly the bones of his knuckles are pushing white beneath the skin. His palms will bleed where his nails dig in. Link finally signs something, but he doesn’t… do it properly. He just slowly spells out the words so he doesn’t need to raise his hands much. Like moving too much will disturb an old wound, like he can go still enough to avoid it.
Zelda translates for him.
“Mipha and I… grew up together.”
“I knew you grew up with the Zora,” Draga murmurs. “I just didn’t assume who specifically.”
The silence goes on long enough (Link struggling visibly to say anything for long enough) that Zelda swallows the terrible heat in her own throat. She moves on reflex, her hand moving to touch Link’s hand, then stops, unsure. But she can’t take it back now, so she lays her fingers carefully over his hand.
“Do you remember,” she asks, “that time Revali and Urbosa were fighting about how to position the Divine Beasts? They fought about it for three days straight.” She swallows, pressing on into his silence. “They just… couldn’t stop fighting. About everything. I thought they were going to kill each other before the Calamity even came. Honestly, it was very disheartening. I…” Zelda doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. She tries a new one. “Do you know that they stopped fighting because of you and Mipha?”
Link finally looks up. Gods, has he always been this blank with grief? Has it always been this obvious? When he’s holding still, no longer moving, was it always this clear? How did she miss it? She grabs his hand with two of hers, holding tight.
“That day you two were sparring and… Anyone could see it – that you’d trained together for years. That you trusted each other. Mipha was the fastest, the deadliest with her Beast but the quickest to… to be gentle when it was right. She was so much… better at everything and I loved her too. Have I ever said that?” She swallows, hard. She’s not allowed to cry this time. “Mipha brought everyone together. Everyone. And I… I am so sorry for…”
Link’s calm buckles.
He grabs her hand too tightly, crushing her fingers in his, but she ignores it. The bone-bruising pressure is a relief, an echo far, far away. Because the pain has snapped to the forefront of Link’s entire being and, for a second, it’s there on his face – twisted up and ugly, a knife wound, a fucking certainty. All the stillness and silence and calm scraped away to the raw face of it – the fact of it: That he is alive and Mipha is dead twice over, her body consigned for 100 years now to the tomb Vah Ruta. Her shade departed. No burial rites in the face of the final battle. Nothing left at all.
Zelda is, she knows, a whole century too late for condolences.
But Draga has no concept of that. He doesn’t live in their distorted timeframe. He just moves forward and places a hand against Link’s shoulder and says:
“I’m sorry she’s gone, Link.”
And it’s so normal of him. Like their just people. Like they’re anyone else.
She thinks, perhaps, they don’t know how to do that anymore.
When the first spasm of weeping hits Link, it’s not actually at the table but in the stairwell as they move their things to their room for the night. He hits the wall like his right knee gave out suddenly and Draga grabs the back of his tunic. He says nothing, just waits. Link recovers. Physically, literally bites it back, keeps hauling his things up the steps and into the hall. Zelda waits. Draga waits. The second spasm hits Link in the door to the suite. Again, he swallows it back. Makes it two steps into the room. The third spasm floors him.
Draga, seemingly prepared for this, lets Zelda pull Link onto the nearest bed while he goes about unpacking food from a rucksack. He ignores Link’s hyperventilating, his shaking, the way he doesn’t seem aware of the tears running from his closed eyes, or how he keeps grinding his teeth instead of sobbing. Draga just kneels in front of him to push things into his hands: A napkin with a piece of gummy cake and canteen of something that smells like honey and turpentine. Link opens his eyes long enough to shake his head, trying to refuse it, but the bigger man just presses both insistently into his lap.
Link hisses, frustrated.
“Just eat it and drink,” Draga says. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to after that. Okay?
Link barely manages it, but he does manage. It’s hard to cry and eat at the same time. Maybe that’s the point. Whatever is in the canteen sends him into a fit of coughing, but by the time he finishes, the hyperventilation is slowing and the uncontrollable shaking smoothing out. Draga takes the empty napkin and the canteen and sits forward enough to – with an inquiring slowness – reach a hand toward Link. When he nods, Draga carefully uses two fingers to turn his face into the lamp light, watching his pupils react to the brightness. Satisfied, he turns the touch into a soft tap against the hero’s chin.
“You’re okay,” he assures them both. “Try to sleep.”
“What was that?” Zelda asks, a little suspiciously.
“Possibly the last Akkala honey-wine in the kingdom, but it seemed like the occasion.” He shrugs. “It’s, uh, strong.” A beat. “In a couple of ways.”
Which is about when Link collapses back on the mattress, body slack, and lies there breathing slowly, like every bone in his body just stopped supporting his weight. Zelda scoots back so she can peer down at him. Draga just stays where he is, kneeling, waiting. Link’s gaze is pale and unfocused, roving the ceiling for a while as the full effect of the drink unfurls warm fingers through his body. He inhales, but it’s shaky. Every breath has a rattle. He wipes his face with one hand.
“You can miss things retroactively,” he says.
That probably shouldn’t break Zelda’s heart. It does though.
Later, lying in bed, Zelda runs her fingers through Link’s hair, not sure if that’s soothing, not sure how to touch him at all. He feels like a river interrupted. He shivers in her arms and its dangerous. Like she could break a circuit inside him and all that terrible agony would jump off his skin and hit her blood like lightning. She holds him anyway. Fully clothed, waiting for the sun to rise, waiting for light to move across the walls, for Link to catch his stuttering breath, for Draga to move from where he’s sitting with his back against the bed, arms folded, also wide-awake and waiting.
“Thank you,” she says much later. After Link’s breathing slows and deepens.
Draga turns his head. “No trouble,” he says in Gerudo.
“I never knew how to talk about her.”
“There is no right way to speak about the dead and no right way to comfort the living. Just make your best guess.”
“She was everything to him.”
“You’re probably right.”
A beat.
“Akkala honey-wine is worth its weight in gold, you know.”
Draga stands up, slowly, stretching when he gets to his feet. “Don’t tell Link. He’ll just feel guilty for not enjoying it.”
“Thank you, though, Draga. Really.”
He turns around to look at her. She can’t move because Link’s sleeping on her arm, his head against her shoulder, one arm around her ribs. They didn’t undress, so they still smell like the road. When she moves her head, she can smell campfire smoke in Link’s hair, the sour aroma of salt and sweat. Their legs are tangled, one of her knees crooked slightly between his legs, his right boot heel hooked behind hers. Draga tilts his head and, for a moment, she can’t read the way he’s looking at them – curled together like cats in a blanket.
Then, very carefully, he moves one hand toward hers, where she’s idly running her fingers through Link’s hair. She stops so Draga can, gently, tuck a section of wheat-gold hair behind the other man’s ear and, for a moment, lay his hand against the top of his head. Then she can read his expression – this formless kind of regret. A mirroring grief that wasn’t there before but she knows instinctively. Zelda isn’t sure what to say or where that’s coming from, what wound or rivaling loss… so she just lays her hand over Draga’s. She threads her fingers through his from the top so her fingernails scrape just slightly at Link’s scalp and they both feel him sigh, deeply, in his sleep.
Draga catches her eyes then, just for a second.
In that second, Zelda becomes aware, suddenly, of her palm pressed against Draga’s knuckles. Of all the bones in her hand, of all the bones in Draga’s hand, of Link’s breath against her collarbone – all three things common as sunlight and boring as bread in any other context but this moment suddenly. Link turns his head a little against her shoulder. She ignores it. She smiles, loops her fingers more firmly though Draga’s and holds his hand tightly – converting the moment into something more recognizable to her.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Draga gives her a half-smile. “I just wanted a horse, you asshole.”
She has to physically choke back the laugh to keep from waking Link.
Link cranes his neck to look over his shoulder, twisting in his saddle to see. Zelda looks too and sure enough, there’s a wolf on the road behind them. For a moment, she doesn’t get what Draga means when he says it’s big for a wolf since the average wolf is nearly twice size of a grown man on all fours. But then she realizes that the perspective is tricking her eyes. She thought it was nearer than it is. The wolf is quite a distance back but it just happens to be the size of a pony. It’s loping easily along the edge of the old forest path.
Draga pulls Arbiter’s reins, turning his horse around in the road. The wolf stops. They wait a while. The wolf doesn’t move. Cautiously, they set out again down the road and, in step with them, the wolf breaks into a trot. Like a Hylian Retriever headed for the farm. Draga stops again, this time reaching for his bow.
But Link says, unexpectedly, “Don’t.”
Zelda looks at him. “Link?”
“We’re downwind from it.”
“So?”
“The horses aren’t spooking,” Draga says warily.
Link stares up the road at the wolf, face… interested but blank. Eyes fixed on it in a way she’s not sure she understands. For a moment, she thinks the light in his eyes is animal green, back-lit by fairy luminance, but she can’t be sure. He pulls Epona around to face the beast. The wolf cants its massive head at him. Now that she’s really looking at it, the beast’s fur seems matted. Like it’s got its hackles up or… No. Not that. It’s just… almost maned, like a lion alone the back of his neck and spine. Storm gray, cream under belly and jaws. She can’t quite make it out, but she thinks there’s a marking on its forehead – like a sigil whorled there in ink. Its eyes though – bright almost phosphorescent blue in the dark mask of fur.
“What is it, Link?”
“A god maybe,” he says.
“Of what?” Draga murmurs.
“The forest.” Link hasn’t taken his eyes off it. “Or wolves.”
Draga surreptitiously glances at Zelda. He’s palmed the massive recurve bow from his back, his other hand resting on the quiver at his hip. They’ve traveled together long enough that Zelda knows Gerudo gods don’t walk the roads of their sacred lands in physical forms and, to him, there’s some question in his mind what is divine and what is demonic in this kingdom. She can feel that tang in the air that suggests he’s idly pulling some sorcery to bear – close to his skin, like heat off a stone. Link doesn’t seem to notice – or if he does, he doesn’t care – because he dismounts. Epona seems equally indifferent, lipping his shoulder fondly as he moves toward the wolf.
“Link,” Draga says through his teeth.
When he’s ignored, he looks at Zelda.
“I don’t… think it’s dangerous,” she says. She glances at Draga. “What are you feeling?”
He lowers his voice and in Gerudo, says, “Like it ripped my throat out in a past life.”
Before she can react to that, Link kneels in the middle of the road, one forearm braced against his knee, opposite fist set against the dirt. She can’t hear it, but she’s pretty sure he’s speaking – words low and unfamiliar. The giant wolf tilts its head back and forth, like its listening to whatever he’s saying and, for a moment, Zelda could believe it: a rogue of god wolves hearing a traveler’s prayer on the road, the forest bending inward with every divine lupine breath…
But then the giant wolf kind of bounces on its forelegs. Then it bounds forward in a single terrifying lunge, so fast Link jerks back but not fast enough and – the beast knocks him down and drags a giant tongue from his chin to forehead. Then it barks, panting, and bounds off into the trees, vanishing into the underbrush.
Link sits there, kind of stunned, blinking.
Draga lowers his bow and the air around him seems to cool.
“Mad,” he says, turning his horse around.
Link scrubs his face and turns to look at Zelda. He seems genuinely perplexed.
“You should stop being strange in front of Draga,” Zelda says, ignoring his confusion. “He’ll catch on if you don’t rein it in.”
Link just grins at her.
Maybe Link wasn’t taking the fight seriously. Maybe it’s been a while since he fought a person and not a monster.
Either way, he seems genuinely surprised to find himself flat on his back all the air knocked out of him. For a moment, he just kind of lies there, eagle-spread, looking puzzled. Draga looms overhead. He’s holding that claymore-sized scimitar one-handed. He seems vaguely unimpressed. Link nurses the region just below his sternum where – after blocking a blow like a cannonball – Draga swatted his defense aside and put a back-handed pommel in his gut. He grimaces, struggling to sit up, and Zelda can’t remember the last time she saw anything short of a Lynel put Link in the dirt.
“Focus or I’m going to hurt you,” Draga says.
“I’m not healing either of you,” Zelda shouts from her seat very far away. The horses are penned around the log she’s sitting on, grazing boredly around her. She raises her voice. “This is going to end badly!”
“Don’t worry,” Draga calls. “We’ll be back to Lynel hunting or dragon chasing or army killing or whatever terrible thing you’ve found for us to do.”
“Healing sick Rito children you mean? That?”
Link sits up, warily.
Draga smirks at him. “You best just use whatever magic you have, Hero. I plan to do some cheating of my own.” A beat. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”
Link climbs back to his feet, wrinkling his nose at his opponent.
“Forgot how to lose?” Draga asks, squaring up casually. “Or does that sword do all the work?”
Link hefts his sword a little and rolls his shoulder. He eyes Draga sidelong as he a takes up defensive stance across from him. They’re not using shields which Zelda thinks might be more to Draga’s advantage than Link’s – the man with double his reach, height, and body weight. But then again, Link’s never up to size against any opponent. It also rarely makes a difference against Link’s inhuman precognition and speed. And, more to the point, Link has that blade in hand and there’s nothing in the universe that stops him, truly, when it’s awake.
“Ready?” Draga says, the scimitar up, angled slightly between them.
Link exhales, then nods.
It’s instant. Draga darts across the space between them so fast Link only just manages the footwork to block. Zelda’s palms itch. She rubs them together as Draga slams Link’s sword aside in a series of deadly rapid swings, each one hitting with such force that the third blow throws Link staggering. Draga’s fast despite his size. He’s immediately in Link’s guard for the follow through, slashing at his open flank. Link has to dive-roll to the right, scramble back then somersault away from a two-handed downswing.
Draga’s sword slams into the ground like a pickaxe. Link lands cat-like then lunges. Draga’s wide open, fully committed to his previous swing and – Wrong. Draga pivots, raking the ground with his free hand and flings gravel directly into Link’s face. He flinches. Draga puts a boot in his chest and hits Link so hard he skids in the dirt for three meters before rolling back on his feet. He looks shocked. He coughs, grips his ribs with one hand, blade up with the other.
Draga inspects a long tear in his shirt, a shallow cut in his light mail from his hip to his shoulder – a defensive swing, struck before he could kick Link out of range. Draga eyes him, clearly deciding on another attack. But Link’s giving him a look: confused, almost hurt, blue-eyed and just on the edge of anger. He wipes the dirt from his face, pointedly.
“This isn’t tournament rules,” Draga says, a little exasperated. “Cheat back, hero.”
Link tilts his head. There’s something a little… predatory about how he does that. He rotates the sword in his hand a little… then grips the hilt, hard, like he hadn’t had a proper hold before and Zelda feels the change, a focus running from the blade to his palm to his boots and rooting him in some previously untapped current in the earth. Grounding him. The hair rises along her arms and she sits forward, frowning. Link squares up again. Draga does too, slowly. He can smell the change the same as she can but she can tell it interests him. She can feel that… shapeless density Draga has coming to bear somehow. Like extra gravity, like the world pulls in more tightly around him and he brings his blade to bear.
Zelda shivers. Digs her nails into the mossy wood beneath her.
“Ready?”
Link nods.
Zelda catches the spilt-second grit in the dirt when they both leap forward, where their boots push off the earth – then the deafening explosion when Draga’s sword connects with the divine blade and explodes. Not snaps. Explodes. Like a black-powder charge detonating between them. Draga hits the ground on his back, snarling, armor smoking. The tang of metal and defensive magic – thick, almost sickly sweet, and likely the only reason Draga’s head is still attached. The remains of the scimitar rain down in brittle pieces, the hilt landing somewhere in the woods.
Zelda’s on her feet immediately. “Draga!”
Link lands in a crouch. She’s never seen that expression before – that razor-thin edge of grief and shock where she can see him replaying the thousand alternate universes where his friend is dead by his hand.
He throws the Master Sword down and dashes forward. Zelda is already on her knees beside Draga who’s levered himself up into a sitting position, grimacing as he inspects his sword arm. There’s blood. A lot of blood. The entire limb shakes either from the pain or struck tendon. There’s a gash in his palm and his fingers, like the hilt of his own sword turned against him and cleaved through his glove into his hand. Bone glints in the red pulse of blood and Link stares at the wound, speechless. He tries to say something, but the syllables stick so violently they almost manifest a stutter.
Draga shakes his head. “No. I goaded you into it. It’s not your fault.”
“You’re an idiot,” Zelda snaps at him, heat gathering in her palms. She does not look away from her work, one hand holding his wrist, the other cupping the back of his knuckles. Her fingers start to glow internally. “He broke your wrist and most of the bones in your hand and you’re lucky that’s all it did. You knew what the blade was. Why on earth did you try this?”
He shrugs. “Wanted to see what the Lynel felt like.”
“The Lynel felt dead, Draga.”
“Well, I don’t. So, all’s well, princess.”
“Do not ‘princess’ me while I’m gluing your arm back together.”
He nods, almost thoughtful. “Can I tell you two something?”
Link makes an exasperated noise of assent.
“What?” she grouses, eyes fixated on the knitting skin beneath her fingers.
“I think, if I’d managed my focus a little better… I’d have had that exchange.”
Zelda looks at him. She’s not sure what his face is telling her when she studies him for any sign he’s joking, that he’s serious about defending against the blade that seals evil when Link’s holding it with any real intention. He seems calm, polite. She doesn’t think he’s unrealistic about things and that concerns her – his sincerity that he can beat Link. That he’d like to. She feels a shiver climb her spine, a cold crawl in her body. What? For gods’ sake it’s just Draga. Link’s hovering anxiously behind her, watching her undo the damage – the familiar recapturing of stray blood and the atomic stitching of muscle and skin. She erases any sign that there was a fight between them.
“There,” Draga says, showing Link. “No harm done and nothing a couple fairy tonics couldn’t undo, even if Zelda didn’t loan us her expertise.”
She feels Link start to smile without looking, a quiet glow of relief.
“You’re not immortal,” she says. “Being brave or reckless doesn’t make you immortal.”
Draga, flexing his hand, looks sharply at her. Link too, because he recognizes the words and the tone. Zelda looks over her shoulder at him, glaring.
“You know better,” she says.
“Zelda…” Link starts to say, but she’s already on her feet and walking off.
“Don’t fight again!” she says, loudly.
She can’t explain her panic, the cold rise of hair and gooseflesh, the heat behind her eyes, her mouth bone dry. She can feel them staring after her, confused. Good. They will think she’s just mad at them for injuring themselves, upset generally at their recklessness, their bloody-mindedness – the usual sensible reasons for being mad and not this… instinctive terror. A terrible de-ja-vu. It’s in the roots of her teeth, in her palms, the marrow of her bones. She stays away from camp until her hands stop shaking.
When she comes back, Link and Draga are seated cross-legged facing one another in the grass.
Link is signing, ‘I love pie.’
Which seems odd until Draga awkwardly mirrors Link’s hand-motions and says, “That seems lengthy for a hello.”
Link maintains his cool. “No. It means ‘hello’.”
Draga signs, ‘I love pie.’
Link smiles.
“Like that?” Draga says, suspicious.
“Yes.”
And suddenly, Zelda is less anxious than she was before.
