Synopsis: He opens the door to the bus to let the sound of the rain in. The drops beat against the roof in a fast tattoo. He yawns widely, trying to hold it together for a bit. Squatting in front of the open door, he watches as the rain comes down across the plains. He kind of misses the ocean, he thinks.
As if summoned by that thought, he hears his slate buzz. He ignores it. It buzzes again. He rubs his nose. The buzz comes through again. Link puffs.
He reminds himself that he loves her as he reaches behind him for his slate. Even if he wants to toss her into the ocean.
Link barely scans the barrage of messages on his slate and just calls her. When she picks up, he tells her, “Hey, I’m outwith Kakariko. I’m alive. No meds. You’d like these stupid frogs statues they’ve got.”
“You weren’t answering!”
“Yeah, I was sleeping,” he yawns. “Hold on…” He taps through his slate to get to the fitness app and opens it up. “Yeah, so in the last twenty-four hours I’ve slept… almost seventeen of them.”
“No way.”
“Want the screenshot?”
A mundane yet fun story! It really grounds you in Link’s life as he goes about every day dealing with the challenge it is for him to just stay awake, while being very charming as he makes the best of it and enjoys building connections with others. - louwhose
I feel so seen with Link’s struggles with meds and energy levels. I feel for him so much - Folodu
A charming exploration of mundane life with a classic Zelda twist. This work is very soothing to following, and an interesting exploration of the effects on daily life of narcolepsy. The characters are a delight and this work promises to be some comfortable fun for a while yet. - amelias-hart
“By your lighthouse,” Link lies. He sees her run past the front of the Abel Sisters to go to the northeast corner of her island, and then he slips inside so he can plop the Hotline Miami letterman jacket back on display. He notices that while she did remove Jacket’s letterman jacket, she left his design on display for Biker’s hot pink puffer vest. She must not know about that one.
She’s suspicious. “I don’t see you.”
Link starts hoofing it over to the coastline before Aryll catches him coming out of the Abel Sisters. “Moved south,” Link tells her, throwing out a fishing line like that’s all he’s been doing this whole time.
He snickers when he sees Marshal stroll by, decked in hot pink.
“Why are you laughing?” Aryll demands, finding him on the beach. Fishing. Innocently.
Midna gestures wildly at Zelda, who sits like a stone unbothered by the vitriol being launched at her. “This is stupid. You going to get her in line here?"
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
Zelda flips a page of her magazine. “It’s a case out in the Gerudo Highlands,” she explains. Oh. That is far. Why the hell would they go out there? Zelda’s bored eyes look at him from above the magazine. “There’s a Twili temple out that way that’s experiencing a leak, and they need assistance.”
Link stares at her. “Sounds like they need to call a plumber then.”
The Scientific Hyrulean slaps down on Zelda’s desk. “Don’t be obtuse,” Zelda chastises. “It’s a super spooky supernatural leak.”
Part 8 of Link and Midna's Investigative Services
Smothered Mate
Complete
By the late winter of 1930, Link has to face the dumb dog's mortality, but the bean nighe will never let him go it alone, and Link finds himself stalked on a job.
“Ye’re not giving him yer surname,” Link finally snaps.
“It’s the kind of nepotism that calls for a security expense write-off," says Midna.
“I don’t think ye know what a write-off is,” Link retorts. “Also, I’d like tae remind ye that while we got away with the Misko spaghettification incident, Revenues and Customs isn’t liable tae be so kind.”
Link mistakenly believes that’s the end of it when Midna doesn’t say anything more.
As he races down the cliffs to the beach, he feels something soft and uneven underfoot. Link pulls his skimmer away to find a mouse lying on the path, dead. He stoops to take a closer look at it. Blood has spurt from its mouth, though he’s not sure if he’s the cause honestly. It strikes him that he may have killed the small rodent, but he doesn’t think much on that.
No, that’s not the odd part of it. Of course there are field mice and rats on the island, but the rodents are never this close to shore, and they certainly keep out of the open where men are known to frequent, the skittish things that they are. The likelihood, essentially, of him running across a live and healthy mouse is slim.
When he comes to the shore, the captain is sitting in his waka ama’s main hull, staring out into the ocean. Seeing him approach, Tetra quickly wipes her eyes and nose, her cheeks a dark, rosy color. Her strange purple eyes are swollen and puffy. The shattered expression on her face is so different from her usual confident, steely air.
WILD GO
In Progress
They say the heat makes people crazy. Deep in an economic depression, the simmering civil unrest reaches a fever pitch on Summertide in Castleton when the Yiga cause a citywide blackout. When Link offers to accompany Zelda to check on her ailing father, he quickly finds he has more to worry about than the dark when rioters flood the streets and a killer takes advantage of the chaos to make a final sacrifice to the Old Gods.
Zelda gapes at the blackness beyond the window of Romani's. Suddenly it feels like she’s floating in some dark cloud, not high above a city that should be filled with the glow of lights and neon. Five minutes pass, then ten, then fifteen, but no sign of the lights coming back on. The quiet murmur begins to pick up to a light chatter and then to animated talking in the restaurant.
The first was Revali on Summertide. The next was Urbosa on Autumntide. Then on Wintertide was Daruk. Mipha was last on Springtide. Rusl wonders who might be so unlucky to face Calamity tonight. The fierce look in Mipha's little brother's eyes and the way they demanded that somebody DO SOMETHING haunt Rusl even in the waking hours.
Zombie Cake
In Progress
He opens the door to the bus to let the sound of the rain in. The drops beat against the roof in a fast tattoo. He yawns widely, trying to hold it together for a bit. Squatting in front of the open door, he watches as the rain comes down across the plains. He kind of misses the ocean, he thinks.
As if summoned by that thought, he hears his slate buzz. He ignores it. It buzzes again. He rubs his nose. The buzz comes through again. Link puffs.
He reminds himself that he loves her as he reaches behind him for his slate. Even if he wants to toss her into the ocean.
Link barely scans the barrage of messages on his slate and just calls her. When she picks up, he tells her, “Hey, I’m outwith Kakariko. I’m alive. No meds. You’d like these stupid frogs statues they’ve got.”
“You weren’t answering!”
“Yeah, I was sleeping,” he yawns. “Hold on…” He taps through his slate to get to the fitness app and opens it up. “Yeah, so in the last twenty-four hours I’ve slept… almost seventeen of them.”
“No way.”
“Want the screenshot?”
Bury Them Bones
In Progress
Standing just outside the portal is a beast of a man, at least twice Link’s size. The behemoth turns to the pair at the threshold of St Fi’s grounds. “This is as far as I can go, yes?” he asks the behemoth. The beastly man grunts and turns to watch a pair of cardinals flutter by.
Zelda gives Link a small curtsey, and he feels his face redden. He is not used to such courtesy, not deserving of it. “Until next time,” she says, and she walks through the portal with a polite nod to the behemoth.
Link watches her go for a spell until he feels the stirrings of guilt, knowing he is shirking some of his duties within the cathedral. He looks over to the guard, who seems to take no notice of him. Trying his luck, he leans over through the portal. “Do you wish to lose your head?” comes the low rumble, and Link immediately straightens.
Link has one year to prove himself innocent so long as he stays within the grounds of St. Fi's cathedral, and he swears to the gods that he'll do it.
“Yeah.” Link taps through to the fitness app. He starts to laugh when he sees the sleep tracker. It’s absurd. It’ll break her brain. “I feel rested, actually,” he gushes to Aryll.
Aryll, suspicious, asks him, “Really?”
Link counts out the hours from the last time he texted Aryll to now. “It only took… sleeping thirty hours total in the last day and a half.”
“Be for real.”
Link sends her the screenshot.
“Oh my gods, you’re so gross.”
“I feel it,” he agrees, scratching at his itchy scalp under greasy hair. “Damn, is this how people wake up with only eight hours?” It’s crazy. Unfathomable.
He’s probably on Aryll’s island for all of ten minutes before she starts losing her shit. “NO! DON’T TALK TO HAMLET!” Aryll screeches. She spins around him.
“I’m gonna talk to him even harder,” Link threatens.
“Nooo!” she wails. “I know you have an open slot since you let Wendy move away!”
Hamlet is a chill dude. Very into working out. Always a super positive bro. Link thinks maybe he’ll put the red letterman jacket with the B on the chest that he designed in Aryll’s shop. “I’m gonna turn him evil. Like Plucky.”
“What?”
Link realizes Aryll’s never played Hotline Miami. He decides not to fill her in. “I’m gonna bring him to the dark side and convince him to move to my island,” he tells her instead, yawning.
“I’ll hate you forever,” she hisses into her mic, and her little villager runs off the side of his screen.
