A sequel to the 3-sentence fic "Snissing and Sluddles" - both fics co-authored by @newtsnaturethings - who still has the absolute best ideas and the scoop on slugs. 😄 (If you want to read this fic, I recommend reading "Snissing and Sluddles" first so you know what in Hyrule's going on here!).
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When Zelda manages to tear her gaze from Link’s mating-slug-laden shovel to look at his face, her expression shifts from an excited grin and glittering eyes borne of all-things-nature-enthusiasm to raised-eyebrows and mouth-oh of empathetic shock (very nearly reflecting Link’s expression, though his surprised-mouth makes more of an ‘ah’ than an ‘oh’).
“Don’t panic!” Zelda shouts.
“SHHHHHHHHH!” Link hisses. “You’ll disturb them!” If he was a slug about to mate with his slugnificant other, he would be so mad if someone disturbed them. It’d be so rude!
At least he isn’t freaking out. Much.
Hesitating—that he’s doing in spades. He has to hold still! Zelda’s absolutely right—don’t panic, Link! You can do this. You helped Zelda defeat the Calamity. You can DO THIS.
…He can do what?
Hold them steady until they’re finished?
How… how will he know when they’re done?
How long does it take slugs to mate??!?!
“Zelda?”
“Yes, Link?”
“What the heck do I do with them?”
Zelda’s mouth opens and closes several times. “Well. You could always put them back where you found them,” she says, but the wide-eyed half-pout of disappointment on Link’s face tells her all she needs to know. “Or,” she re-starts, “I can prepare a suitable environment for them.”
Link nods enthusiastically. “I’ll—I’ll hold on to them while you get ready!”
“Keep them shaded. I shall—I shall fetch a pail of water. If they seem to be drying out, please apply a little water to the sod they’re on.”
“Got it!”
So, Link holds the shovel and stares at the slugs with the single-mindedness of a guardian stalker while Zelda hurries through the doorway to their (relatively) new add-on: her space and his to fill with all sorts of wildlife and watch it grow (and of course, for Zelda to study it—she’d already gone through two whole journals!). He hears her bustling, her little-bird-like hums trilling their way into their living space, and he can’t help but smile like the love-befuddled dork-head he knows he is when he hears it.
Zelda brings him a pail with just a few inches of water in it, a smile dimpling her right cheek when she sees his trying-to-concentrate-but-feeling-lovey-dovey face. “They look like they could use a little already,” she says, adding just a little moisture from the pail to the sod around the slugs.
Link notices how careful she is not to touch them—she probably doesn’t want to disturb their intimate moment, either. She leaves again, her hums resuming the moment she enters the airy, plant-filled space on the other side of the wall. He hears her shift something, then exit the house entirely a few moments later.
Now all he has to do is wait. He knows whatever Zelda does, it’ll be perfect.
He stares at the slugs so hard his eyes burn, but he’s determined. They make a funny sort of squeezy wave-like motion. Link tries not to think too hard about that. After all, if he and Zelda were curled around each other like two strips of cinnamon roll, he wouldn’t want anyone else barging in and analyzing their movements.
Link blushes, a little ashamed of himself, picturing a hinox plucking the two of them, bed and all, out of their house to take them home as its cute snuggling people-pets.
At least the hinox wouldn’t have to keep them moist. It’d be even more awkward if it did. He imagines it having to keep dripping water from its great big warty fingers onto their mattress so they didn’t get all shriveled—but nope, it wouldn’t have to do that! They’d have a (mostly) dry mattress: the silver lining-
OH!!! OH, Link!! Silver SLIMING.
Link, you clever cucumber, you!
Link spends the next ten minutes trying to figure out how to work ‘silver sliming’ into a conversation with Zelda.
~
Zelda returns with a ten-gallon terrarium laden with moss, lush greenery, and a few moisture-darkened half-logs propped to create safe little slug hiding-spots.
“I’ve made sure everything is suitably moist already. Can you maneuver the sod into the bottom, Link?”
Link nods as Zelda cautiously rests the base on the table and tips it toward him, allowing the shovel to enter it without risking a catastrophically heartbreaking fall. At first, the sod doesn’t want to slide, but Zelda eases it gently toward the end of the spade with her palm, and the rest goes smoothly; the chunk of earth, grass roots, greenery and slug, slime and all, rests in the exact center, and Zelda lowers it with supreme care and slowness all the way down onto the table.
They watch the slugs squeeze-wave a few times. Then, they lock eyes.
Link’s very special and only-for-Zelda lopsided smile appears on his face just before he says, “Slugtacular.”
Zelda snorts and play-whacks his shoulder with earthy fingertips—Link snags that wrist and pecks a swift, soft kiss to it, paying absolutely no mind to the tiny flecks of water-logged bark beneath his lips.
At least, not at first.
Once the smell hits him, he blushes real hard.
He can’t help it. Anyplace Zelda’s in is his favorite place to be, but one of his top two favorite favorite places to be with her is lying under deep-tree shade, the scent of moist leaves and earth and bark filling their nostrils.
…Maybe it’s one of the top three favorite favorite places, now that he thinks about it. The bed was obvious, but the bath is awfully nice, too.
Oh. Maybe it’s four? Because pond under the apple tree.
Ohhh maybe it’s five, because their new add-on.
She likes the table in there, and really anything she likes is his favorite.
Kitchen. Table.
Yeah, there are a lot-
“Link?”
Zelda’s smirking at him with that one eyebrow arched and her forehead tilted toward him.
He’s… still holding her wrist to his face.
She knooooooows.
“What has whisked you from the present this time?”
He just barely nuzzles the center of her palm with his nose-tip. “You.”
She hum-laughs, her shoulders rising and falling twice. “I oughtn’t be surprised. However… perhaps we ought to settle our new friends in, first.”
“Yeaaah,” Link says, giving her wrist one more irresistible peck before releasing it.
He lifts the terrarium gently, and Zelda leads him into her new room (nature-study—maybe he could call it that? Does it sound too much like ‘study’ and would bring up old memories better left to rest? He’s not sure, not yet). She’s already made a space for it nestled between long, draping plant-tails lush with healthful leaves. He places it just-so and she puts the lid on.
“How long will they… um…”
“…Continue mating?” Zelda offers.
“Yeah.”
“Depending on how far along they were when you found them, it could be several hours.”
“Woah!” He had no idea slugs were that dedicated to their partners. “Will they stay together to raise the babies?”
“They don’t raise the babies at all. They’ll lay their eggs beneath some protective vegetation—quite likely these logs we’ve provided for them—and leave the young to their own devices.”
“Aw.”
Zelda takes his hand, smiling at his ability to give corners of his heart even to the humblest of creatures. “They’ll be fine, Link. The hatchlings need no tending.”
“…What about the slugs? Will they stay together? Oh! Can you tell which one’ll actually lay the eggs? The girl and the boy look the same to me!”
Link snaps his eyes to Zelda’s face after a highly unusual quiet. She has an odd look on. He’s not sure he’s ever seen it before. It’s sort of a grimace, but not really—her mouth is open and wide but not quite smiling, her eyebrows are way closer to her hairline than usual with some real impressive forehead-wrinkles above them, and she’s giving him wide-eyed-side-eye (which he’s sure he’s NEVER seen).
What could that possibly mean? “Zelda?”
“Ah- ahhhh. Well. Link. You see—there is no girl.”
“They’re both BOYS?! Ohhh, gay slugs? No eggs?” He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Those slugs had a right to sluggle whatever slugs they darn well pleased, but Link had been looking forward to slug babies.
Zelda held both hands palm-out toward Link and waggled them. “No, no, Link, that’s not—well. Well, it sort of is, but not quite, not really, not exactly.”
“So… the are both boys?”
“Yes. NO!”
“Huh?!”
“Link, they are hermaphroditic.”
“Wait, they’re… do you mean hermits?”
“No- no, oh goodness.”
Zelda’s head in her hands means once again, Link is dumb. But he doesn’t know in what way yet.
“I’m sorry, Link. I- it’s easy for me to forget you haven’t read all the materials I did before- before-“
Link takes one of her hands gently, then folds that entire forearm of hers between his and his chest. Before. He knows. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say. I’m sorry it’s hard to talk to me.”
“It’s not difficult to talk to you at all. You’re the easier of the two of us by far.” She rushes to place a kiss on his cheek, lingering there. “I feel I sometimes… get lost in memories of old books. Words long gone except in my memory and those few who maintained oral traditions.”
“And Purah.”
“Heh. Yes. And Purah. And Robbie, and Impa, as I’m sure you were about to say.”
“Yep!”
“Well. Link, forgive me for my vocabulary. I mean to say, slugs are both male and female at the same time.”
“Wh- really?!”
“Yes.”
Link looks at the slugs. He looks at Zelda. He looks at the slugs again. Then back at Zelda.
Then he breaks into a huge grin. “That’s so COOL!!”
“Is it?!”
“Of course it is! You can have babies AND make someone else have babies?!?!! Could you imagine if people did that?! You could have two babies at the same time but it wouldn’t be twins so it would be so much easier to carry them and so cooperative, and the kids would always have a playmate—well, I say always, but I mean things can go wrong in pregnancy, so maybe not always, but usually and it would just be so awesome—I mean, to have two kids you could be one and done!!”
Zelda stares at him.
Then she smiles.
Then her eyes well up.
Link’s not sure why—they’re slugs-
She leaps at Link, arms wrapped tight about his shoulders, her chin jutting out over his back, and her legs wrapped around his hips—he quickly moves to support those as he laughs, wondering what this is for.
“Link—I love you.”
“I love you, too!”
“I mean it. You are the sweetest—do you have any idea how large of a heart you have?”
“Um. Maybe about fist-sized?”
She laughs in his ear and squeezes tighter. “What I mean, my erstwhile appointed knight, is you are accepting, understanding, sympathetic, and kind. Even to slugs.”
“How could I not be kind to them? Just look at them sluggling.”
They stay like that for a few moments in comfortable silence, the scent of all things green and full of life enveloping them. Link nuzzles deeper into Zelda’s newly-short hair. He still gets a pleasant shock every time he does—its little hair-ends tickle his nose and lips in tandem like her long hair never could.
Link finds his mind wandering to just how short of a walk it is from here to the bed. He could carry her like this. She deserves to be carried once in a while—she carried him yesterday just because she could. Today, it’s his turn.
“So…” Link says with a blush. “Can we sluggle like the slugs?”
Zelda squeezes him REAL HARD with her legs. “I’d be disappointed if we didn’t!”
He has her up the stairs so fast she’s giggling unstoppably when he deposits her among the messy blankets.
The sheets are going to smell like wet bark after this.
It’ll be the absolute perfect place to be with her.
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Check out Newt's Tumblr - on the archive you'll see so many examples of Hateno Homestead art that's sweet and compelling, and full of so much personality! 🤩
Ooooooohhh yeah! I also have a bunch of my Cosmic Love rainbow pins listed today! Mating leopard slugs are still one of the most beautiful alien like things to me :P
Finished two felt handmade ornaments of mating leopard slugs. This is the only time of the year I allow myself to use glitter and I must say, it fits their mating organs perfectly!
I’m planning on selling ornaments, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to finish them before Christmas, so I’ll probably list them next year (my ornaments will stay throughout the whole year obviously...)
If you haven’t seen leopard slugs mating, I highly recommend watching this amazing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG9qpZ89qzc
