Does HDW Link run warm? If so. Maybe it's a cold night and Link and Zelda and Mask sit close together to take advantage of the warmth?
It's cold.
So cold.
Stupidly cold.
Link shivers, pulling his scarf tighter around his shoulders. It should be illegal for it to be this cold. He can barely feel his fingers, and he knows his tent is going to be even colder.
Link hears somebody sniffle, and he looks over to see Mask walk up, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
"Why is it so cold," he shivers, and Link shrugs, rubbing his hands together.
"Blame the ice wizzrobes, I don't know."
Mask shivers again, and Link frowns, noting how red his nose is.
"Do you have a cloak?" he asks, and Mask shrugs, abruptly sitting down and tucking himself into Link's side.
"Don't need one," Mask yawns, teeth still chattering. "You're plenty warm."
"I don't feel warm," Link grumbles, but he pulls his scarf around Mask's shoulder, pulling him close.
"Dragon heat," Mask sighs after a minute or two, his voice not shaking nearly as much. "It's nice."
Link smiles just a bit, and ruffles Mask's hair, an action the younger hero would usually bristle at, but merely sighs at for now. Footsteps sound out, and Link looks up to see Zelda approach his seat, her expression a little hesitant in the firelight.
Her nose looks almost as red as Mask's did.
"Zelda?" he questions.
"You two looked a little cold over here," she says in what Link thinks might be a slightly embarassed voice. "And... I am a bit as well. I thought maybe I'd move over here."
Link blinks in surprise, then smiles at her and nods, Mask yawning again beside him. Zelda walks and sits down, and adjusts herself so her side is against Link's. Link's face doesn't feel nearly as cold as it did before.
"You're very warm," Zelda says in surprise, and Link hums.
"I think it has to do with the dragon thing," he admits quietly, and Zelda doesn't say anything for a moment.
Then she rests her head on his shoulder, letting out a hum of her own.
"It's nice," she says softly, and Link swallows.
Mask makes a snoring noise, one that almost sounds fake, but Link can't quite tell. Zelda huffs a quiet laugh, and Link pulls his scarf around her as well, warming all three of them.
This is nothing new from the old house with the flaking paint and overgrown lawn, at the edge of Hateno village. The youth that owns it is widely known as eccentric. A soft-spoken, polite, and very helpful young man to be sure, even if rumors that float back with the peddlers are odd to say the least. And it isn't uncommon to see smoke rising from the chimney, given his predilection for cookery in all its facets.
However, it seems to be rising from the windows as well, heavy with the stench of char.
One or two folks look up when the door bangs open, Link rushing out with a blackened skillet towards the drop-off that encircles his property, but don't investigate further. Not their business, that. Nor do they pay any mind when that girl he'd brought home a week prior rushes out after him, begging forgiveness with every with every step.
“-swear that I will get you a new one, Hylia as my witness!” she's crying, cheeks flush with mortification, “I had no idea that oil reacted that way when exposed to water of that temperature!”
“It's fine,” he replies urgently, before hucking the entirety of the skillet's contents into the river below.
“I didn't! Goddess have mercy, just once I wish something would go right for me!”
“It happens to everybody.”
“Not to you! You can just throw ingredients in a pot and all but dance themselves into lunch for-”
Her point is cut off as the door swings shut behind them both. Folks stare a moment longer, until they're satisfied that there'll be no smoke. Eccentric, those two. But again: not their business.
***
Link comes downstairs a couple days later, and finds Zelda has commandeered his table (and a large chunk of the floor) to accommodate a veritable carpet of literature pertaining to cookery and the mechanics thereof. He quirks an eyebrow.
“I'm doing research,” she replies without looking up from the three individual tomes she's glancing between, “On what exactly constitutes a 'pinch of salt'. Or 'golden brown'.”
Her host steps away for a moment, returning a moment later to set a ceramic jar before her. The princess pauses in her investigation to watch as he unscrews the cap, revealing a mass of granulated salt. She scowls as Link makes a show of offering his thumb and forefinger, pinches a small quantity of the mineral, and then presents it to his liege.
“But not everyone in the kingdom has fingertips!” she retorts, “If I were a Rito, I'd have been thwarted by the ingredient list!”
The Hero shrugs, not committed to dissuading her, before recognizing the book to her right. Not just the title; he knows its scuffed and battered cover, the missing top-right corner, from the kitchens of Hyrule castle. It had been utilized as a missile against him many times by the eternally frazzled head chef.
“I wanted something normal.”
Link looks to Zelda, who takes refuge from his inquisitive gaze in the depths of the manual. “Something familiar. Remember? When a company of knights accomplished something marvelous, slayed a Lynel or ran off a Yiga band, my father would commemorate their heroism with a great feast. After we destroyed Ganon, you cooked for me. I wanted to...”
She freezes as a calloused hand finds her shoulder, offering a comforting squeeze. “You're not your father,” he says kindly.
The Princess purses her lips and bristles, ready to give him an earful, though the words die on her lips when she whirls and finds such warmth in his eyes. She has gooseflesh beneath his hand and it lingers for a long while after he pulls away. The Hero explains bokokin have been sighted by the old Hateno Fort, and planned to “move them along”. He'd be back tomorrow. Zelda spends the rest of the night thinking on what he'd said, how such a dismissal could be meant as a positive.
When she finally happens upon the meaning, the books become pointless.
***
Link returns to find a furnace protruding from the side of his house. That's not to imply that it had been idly abandoned there, as a Hinox would drop a tree trunk. It's bolted into the wall and part of the chimney, familiar orange circuits threaded throughout the structure the stone. The Hero grimaces, scars across his body prickling in remembrance of the destructive nature of Sheikah technology.
He's even less enthused when the door slams open and Zelda comes scurrying out, making a beeline for the furnace.
The Princess has abandoned her finery, trading it for one of his shirts and a leather apron, hair in a bun and tied with the straps on a pair of goggles she must have pilfered from Purah, up the road. She's soot stained, glistening with perspiration, and whispering to herself with such manic fervor that Link wonders if perhaps he's looking at a stranger. He finds some semblance of familiarity, however, when he's able to approach within arms reach of the young woman without her even noticing him, until she whirls around and nearly barrels right into him. He grunts and she squeaks, beginning to offer an apology before recognizing her knight.
“Link!” she exclaims, face brightening instantaneously, “You're back! And with perfect timing; you need to see what I've made!”
He takes a moment to glance at the furnace again, before looking back to her, discomfort written in capital letter across his face.
“Oh shush,” she says, “You'll like this.”
Zelda leads him inside by the arm, and he would admit to being slightly relieved, if pressed. Despite the bulky addition to the building's exterior, the apparatus within is at least smaller than expected. But though he recognizes the shape of a stove and oven, azure flames lick the bottom of the device. Curiouser still what appears to be a bugle suspended above the device, the nadir of which feeds into a container that is secured into a bellows, of all things. Before he can ask for an explanation, the Princess is shoving him down into a chair, and darting to and fro about the living, room, grabbing ingredients from his icebox, cupboard, spice rack and laying them beside her invention.
“I realized that my mistake was attempting to think like a chef,” she says, taking a skillet, laying it atop the stove, and coating the surface in oil, “All those books were written for people who think in terms of food: gibberish to me. But, once I considered the idea that I had to approach this conundrum like a scholar, then everything changed!”
She pulls a lever on the side of the oven, and the stove-top erupts in blue flames. Link hisses as the wall behind it blackens, but the threat of burning recedes with the fire and his princess reduces its spread by twisting the handle. Even at a simmer, the oil is hissing within moments, and she wastes no time dropping an assortment of mushrooms, meats and vegetables onto the pan. The heady aroma of seared beef swiftly fills the house, and the Hero cannot help salivating, despite Zelda's spiral into culinary madness.
“Artisans keep waxing poetic about the preparation of a dish,” she continues excitedly, “Using abstract terms like a 'pinch of salt'. But cookery isn't about flourish! It about knowing the liter to gram ratio before your ingredients become oversatured in oil! It's about knowing the precise temperature at which meat burns! The exact measurement of spices that produce the desired gustatory sensation!”
Zelda says this as she's loading the bugle with granulated salt. And pepper. And Goron curry spice. The list goes on, until Link is positive that the seasoning alone will be enough to burn his tongue off. But the Princess is utterly enraptured by her work, pumping the bellows like a woman possessed, chatter pouring over her lips faster than a Zora cuts through water.
“This is what I've been missing!” she cries, throttling a massive switch Link did not remember being there yesterday, “No magic swords, no divine intervention! I'm talking about practical solutions for everyday problems; I'm talking about SCIENCE!”
To say that she's laughing as she heaves downward on the massive handle would be too small thinking. The Princess cackles, a frenetic peal of mirth and triumph that drives hordes of nesting birds skyward in absolute terror. Of course, there's also the fact that the entire house quakes when she activates the bugle, the spices hurtling through the tube at speed, until they collide with the contents of the skillet with force equitable to a missile. The oven splits in half, the pan flips over, and the ingredients are catapulted everywhere with startling velocity. Zelda's laughter becomes a shriek of terror and Link avoids braining only by diving backward over his chair. The air cracks with the sound of breaking glass, breaking ceramic, weapons clattering to the floor along side pictures and pottery as the culinary projectiles hit everything. The scent of cooking food drifts off through the windows, and the room falls to stillness as both parties wait tenuously for another eruption. Then the Princess sinks to the floor, glowering at the room.
“Oh, that's right,” she grumbles, “ 'Normal' is synonymous with complete failure. Welcome home, Link.”
The Hero stands, regarding her silently, before bending down. When he rises again, he has a glistening mushroom held between his thumb and finger.
“Oh, come now,” says Zelda, “You don't want-”
But considering how quickly he pops it into his mouth, he apparently does. Her knight takes a moment to regard the flavor, chew it a bit. Swallow. When it's gone, his smile could have melted Hebra.
“Yum,” he tells her, “Thank you.”
The Princess blinks, reaches for a reply but finds nothing, settling at last on matching his grin tooth for tooth. Link pulls two apples out of his rucksack, offers one to Zelda, and then drops down to sit beside her, both of them surveying the absolute mess the house is in. Maybe this isn't normal. But it might be better.
Man imagine if someone had voice acted dialogue for Link. Just one or two lines. Ganon's presence is fading, Zelda is free from holding him and sealing herself. "Do you truly remember she asks?" The fleeting ghosts of her father, and the other champions are behind her. Link clears his throat. His voice is coarse and dry, it is weary and tired, but the joy and happiness of being able to finish what he could not 100 years ago is present in his voice. "Thank you." He says, it goes past Zelda and to their friends. She turns and nods. She thanks them, tears sliding down her face, but her smile doesn't tremble. They leave, Link steps closer as she turns around. He catches her off guard with a hug. "I knew you could do it Zelda." He says. She smiles and returns the hug.
