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Chapter Text

“Just darners again?”

Shade envelops the gorge like a cool blanket, even though it doesn’t make breathing any easier. The occasional horse or donkey kicks up the dust from the road and it gets stuck in everyone’s eyes, making the overall rate of blinking much higher.

“What can I say, it’s good branding to specialize in a niche. What about you, the usual?”

It’s a slow day at the stable, although everything near the desert barring the bazaar tends to be slow. It’s like the heat is so primordial and ancient it penetrates your bones and halts your sense of time, and that’s how you know: you play by its rules. You’re in its domain.

“The whole stock, please.”

Some exhausted traveler is banging his spoon on the cooking pot as he haphazardly stirs his stew, the brushing of a horse’s mane seems to fall into a rhythm, too, unbeknownst to the stable girl. It is all but an accompaniment to the whirring winds right past the narrow arch, the hellish choir that birthes sandstorms and blinds merchants.

“My Goddesses. Don’t come whining to me if they lay eggs in your pockets!”

There’s a single poor soul not lazing about, trying to climb to the top of a large spire to collect rushrooms. She has fallen only twice, so far. She’s the most entertaining thing for miles, which is a bit sad.

“Quit fretting over me and start worrying about restocking. I hear there’s a large caravan heading from the bazaar, they should be here by noon tomorrow. They’ve got money to spend, so surely they’ll buy whatever’s offered.”

The amateur climber has finally reached another rushroom, and just as her hand left the rock to grab the prize her foot slipped and she fell on her ass. Again. She’s standing up for another attempt.

“Fucking hell, you knew all that and still asked for all I have? You really are heartless! Your parents never taught you empathy or what? What do you need that many darners for, anyway?”

She finally manages to obtain the stupid shroom, and with the entire spire clear she decides that’s it for the day, and goes inside the stable to rest. Damnit. Now there’s no entertainment for miles, which is even sadder.

“I’m going to mass brew elixirs and sell them in villages and towns. My boots are getting out of shape and I want to have enough money by the time I reach a repair shop.”

The fellow at the cooking pot dozes off, and the spoon slips with a splash and drowns in the concoction. 

“Repair shop my ass, you just want to wear these out as long as possible. You’re my regular customer for almost a year and I’ve never seen you in a different pair, you run in them, you climb in them, I bet you even sleep in them! You barely even take care of the poor bastards… but you know, if you’re looking to change your ways, I know of a deal that might be right up your alley…”

The horse slaps a fly with its tail so hard it hits a stable girl in the face, and her lull of brushing is interrupted.

“Don’t involve me in your multi-level marketing schemes, please and thank you.”

“It’s not a scheme! I just have a buddy that left for Akkala today with pretty good fuckin’ wares, and you should be thankful I’m telling you about it! He’s probably out of the canyon by now but you should be able to catch up to him no problem if you take a horse.”

“And he sells shoes?”

“Not just any shoes! He recently came across the best loot possible for any scavenger: leftovers of the royal family. Any number of items is priceless, of course, but he came across a goldmine with all sorts of capes, pelts, leather guards… He said it must’ve been a hidden stash in case of emergency evacuation, and it seems nobody got to it on time… Anyway, the minute he came across it he bolted straight to me to check if they were fakes or something, I saw them myself: no mistake! No other kind of maker can reproduce that stuff, it’s definitely not peasant stitching, it’s the real deal.”

“Good Goddesses, I’ve never heard you sound so full of yourself. I don’t need capes, and I don’t care about the stitching.”

“No, no, hear me out, here’s the kicker: it’s the prized gem of his collection, the magnum opus of the merchant trade, a pair of certified royal boots. With the regalia and everything, they’re sturdy, sharp, stylish – everything you need! Definitely better than trying to inject some life into your crappy pair. The royal boots are a real beauty – white with gold rims, highest quality leather, would fit you wonderfully, both in size and grace, and the best part – you’ll be the talk of any town with the royal insignia right atop your shoes!”

The stable girl wrestling the horse back under control suddenly stops being the most interesting thing happening, as the wandering spirit of battle and eccentric fashion choices hones in on an objective much more fascinating.

Zelda’s nose scrunches with a grimace of disgust.

“Ew.”

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that!” the merchant groans with exasperation, questioning what life choices could possibly have lead him down the path where his most valued, consistent and well paying customer is the most exhausting teenage girl to be around. “It’s really, really worth it, better than walking around in those– AH!”

The merchant jumps back as a figure materializes like a lightning strike, in a fury of diamonds and leaning his arm atop Zelda’s head, to which, surprisingly, her expression of mild annoyance only changes to slightly less mild frustration. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ghirahim holds up one finger, suddenly deeply invested in Zelda’s trade barters, despite previously deriding them as a boring waste of time. “Repeat everything you said in the last, like, ten minutes – what about the white shoes with gold rim?”

“Ghirahim, we are not buying you shoes,” Zelda sighs, pushing his arm off her head.

“Why on earth would we not buy me shoes? We’re always buying pointless crap for you, are my needs less important?”

“No, you just don’t need shoes.”

“Of course I need shoes! It is a basic need to feel comfortable in your own form and body and as such I need to own clothes in which I look good in order to be at my full capacity! And you need me to be at full capacity, so stop being frugal and buy me some damned shoes!”

“No, Ghirahim, I mean you literally don’t need– You know what, never mind, we’ll have this conversation later, we have to go–”

“Wait, wait,” Ghirahim jumps up to the poor merchant, grabbing his hands and doing his best puppy eyes, which is a bit difficult when you are a taller than average human, pale, intimidating figure with weird eyes and your hands are. Cold. 

The merchant squeaks as Ghirahim towers over him, Zelda rolling her eyes in the background like an owner of a very old, smelly and obnoxious dog. 

“Tell me the name of your buddy, and what he looks like and also how to get him to give us a discount,” Ghirahim smiles, but everything considered it looks more threatening than friendly. 

“Uh,” the merchant opens his mouth a couple of times like a fish. “Kain. A bit short, black hair, uh… just tell him you’re from me, that’ll probably do something for you…”

“Thank you very much!” Ghirahim exclaims, overjoyed, and then bounces back to Zelda. “Well, we’ll be off then! We both know our next destination.”

“Yeah, we do,” Zelda nods, brows furrowed, eyes trained on the path ahead of her. 

***

Rito village is cold, windy, and, notably NOT Akkala, and NOT EVEN ON THE WAY!

“Why didn’t you go East?” Link asks, dumbfounded. “Now you’re just making a hook.”

“Don’t take his side!” Zelda smacks the side of her cooking pot with her spoon, almost making the disgusting mix of monster parts and insects splash out. “I’m telling you so you can agree with me and tell him he’s being an idiot!!”

“It’s just not very efficient,” Link shrugs, with his usual charming simplicity shining through anything Zelda is actually saying. “It’d take much less time to get the shoes first and then visit me.”

“Okay,” Zelda sighs, draping herself over the pillows she’s nestled in. “But have you considered that I just miss you?”

“Fair point,” Link shrugs, and shifts a little closer to the girl. 

“And I miss the fleeting momentary serotonin of frivolous trinkets!” Ghirahim pipes up from his place on the hammock in the small Rito nest they find themselves settled in. He dramatically splays out his arms, letting them hang limply in a way that would make any actually living being highly uncomfortable, considering he’s lying on his back.

“You don’t even produce serotonin!” Zelda shoots back.

“Oh, so sorry, miss biology expert,” Ghiarhim grumbles, peeking from behind the patterned cloth. “Your elixir is burning.”

“It’s not,” reflexively denies Zelda before she can even get back up to inspect her batch. After a quick taste test, she deems it good enough, and diligently fills bottles upon bottles with the liquid. 

“I just want one thing,” Ghirahim whines. “I am always so humble and undemanding and wonderful but the minute I ask for one thing I’m being unreasonable?”

“You’re being unreasonable for asking me to go on a days long journey to catch up to some stupid shoes,” Zelda retorts, lining up her elixirs in a neat line. This batch is spicy, and she plans to give the supply to the local inn so they could sell them to tourists. If they won’t take it all, she’ll just sell the rest to the stable. 

“Well, it wouldn’t have been a days long journey if we just caught up to him on a horse immediately like the guy told us,” Ghirahim shrugs.

“I still need to make the money for it, dumbass,” Zelda glares at the sword spirit. “I don’t think that discount is going to do much, and I’m not going into debt for some sleazy fuck reselling shit from the castle.”

“I can take care of prices!” Ghirahim shines with his charming, lovable and definitely terrifying smile, at which Zelda only glares harder.

“You’re not ruining my image in front of merchants, especially not those within my network,” Zelda slams one of the filled bottles on the wooden floor with finality. “It’s not actually easy to get a consistent source of income with these guys, especially when your competition is this naturally likable prick!”

She points an accusing finger at Link. Link puts both thumbs up. She smiles to let him know she didn’t mean it in a bad way. Ghirahim blows a raspberry.

“Also, they’re not some stupid shoes,” the sword spirit mutters. “They’re royal boots.”

Zelda only groans, beginning to shove filled up bottles into a leather bag. Link shoots her a concerned glance. 

“By all that is holy, who even cares about all the royal bullshit?” Zelda huffs, training her eyes specifically on her task, just so she can easier ignore Link’s facial expression hovering in her peripheral. “You slap some gold and a symbol on some scraps and suddenly a century old, dusty chunk of leather is better than a well crafted pair of perfectly fine boots?”

She stands up, closing the bag, glass clinking on glass. 

“That ancient shit wasn’t even made for this.”

“A century is not ancient, girl,” Ghirahim only lets out a low hum.

“I don’t even care that you want royal boots, Ghirahim!” Zelda snaps. “I just don’t get the point! You literally do not need boots, your clothes are a part of your form that is fully under your control!”

“I told you,” Ghirahim shrugs. “There is a joy in frivolous trinkets.”

Zelda goes quiet for a bit. She hugs her bag, feeling the smooth bottles under leather, the way they slot together and move around under pressure like a nest of larvae. 

“I’m going to go sell this,” she finally mumbles, turning around already.

“The conversation isn’t over, Your Majesty,” Ghirahim says, and Zelda doesn’t know if he does it just to be a dick or if he has a greater point. You never know, with that guy, but that doesn’t make the day-to-day mockery not infuriating. “Our friend over here hasn’t said a word since we started bickering!”

All eyes turn to Link, who’s still sitting, looking like he’s deep in thought.

‘I guess I just don’t understand the problem,’ he signs. ‘What are you fighting about?’

“I want boots from the merchant boy going to Akkala,” Ghirahim states.

“I don’t want to trek all that way for a pair of stupid boots he doesn’t need,” Zelda responds.

‘Give the money to Ghirahim and let him go alone?’ Link sheepishly suggests.

“I don’t trust Ghirahim alone in Hyrule period, let alone with my money,” Zelda grimaces.

“Oh, please, I’ve been alone in Hyrule for millennia,” Ghirahim rolls his eyes. “And, of course, I’ve found ways to make money before. I’m very financially responsible.”

“Yeah, I’d tell you to go and make that money then, but again, I don’t trust you,” Zelda gives him a very hefty side-eye. “You’ll probably either kill people, or rob people, or start a weird circus.”

“Aw, scared I’ll become more famous than you two?”

“In conclusion: he’s not going alone,” Zelda sums up, with a deeply unamused stare.

‘Why don’t you want to go to Akkala?’ Link asks.

“Because it’s far, and wet, and we just got here,” Zelda pushes out with frustration, fidgeting with the clip on her bag, a habit she can’t seem to get rid of. “And I know you’re just babysitting until Kass and Amali get back, but I miss you, and I don’t want to just leave again for who knows how long, and I’m tired, and Akkala’s far, and wet. And also far.”

Zelda concludes nervously, because she’s still shy to voice childish urges like this, but the little silence both Ghirahim and Link grant her once she’s done helps her come to terms with it, a little bit.

“Great attempt at vocalizing your feelings,” Ghirahim commends. 

“I can never tell if you’re sarcastic or not.”

“Well, I did say attempt.”

‘How about you leave tomorrow then?’ Link decides, with the kind of smile on his face that makes him hard to refuse. Dammit, he is a naturally likable prick. ‘You can stay the day, sell your elixirs, and then in the morning you head out, and wait for me in Akkala, since Kass and Amali will probably come back from their vacation by then…’

“I hate discussing logistics,” Zelda grumbles. “What are you doing today, Link?”

‘Oh!’ Link immediately lights up, jumping to his feet. ‘Me and the fledglings are going to play the game where we go in the frozen river and see who can last the longest! You guys wanna come?’

Zelda keeps her grimace mostly under control. Mostly.

“Well, you kids have fun, I’ll pass on this one,” Ghirahim responds, tucking himself back into the hammock.

“Um, I’ll see on the going into freezing water part,” Zelda slowly nods. “But sure, I’ll join you.”

She still clutches onto her bag, fascinated by the feeling of elixirs crawling under skin, as they leave their little nest. She hands them off to the inn-keeper for a good price, and then watches as the fledglings flap around in the river until Link almost turns blue, and it doesn’t remind her of anything at all, even though she feels like it should. She gets splashed too, in the end, and that feeling is wholly unfamiliar, as well, and she laughs a little too hard, but nobody that surrounds her even knows that laughing too hard is a thing, so they laugh with her, too, and then she steps in. 

“Ah, shit,” Zelda scoffs, forgetting both to not swear around children and the fact that her boots have, in fact, seen better days, so when she feels her socks get drenched, it comes from a hole in her toe. “I still need to repair these.”

‘You can do that in Akkala!’ Link cheerfully supplies, shivering and wet.

“You’re going to Akkala?” Genli asks, vibrating from excitement. And also probably from the cold. She is soaked. “Take me with you!”

“Sorry, no can do!” Zelda giggles, as the fledgling clings to her arm. She raises it, letting Genli flail on the thin limb. “Maybe when you’re older.”

Genli pouts, sliding off Zelda and plopping into the water with a splash. 

“Why are you going to Akkala, anyway?”

Zelda takes a long, deep sigh.

“To get something for someone very needy.”

***

“Get a horse.”

“No.”

“Get a horse!”

“No! I don’t like horses, they’re uncomfortable.” 

“Since when?”

“Since my horse died in the apocalypse.”

“Oh, please, apocalypse this, apocalypse that, you have to move on! Just get a fucking horse.”

“No.”

This conversation has been going on for around an hour now, and Zelda is getting quite exasperated. Probably the worst thing about Ghirahim is that she has to physically carry him around, and he can get quite heavy when he wants to. Or, possibly, he can just get so mentally exhausting you can feel the repercussions in every way imaginable.

“At least tell me why you actually don’t want to get a horse,” Ghirahim grumbles from his weapon form, his chiming like a very annoying phone ringtone.

“Because we’re not going on a road, okay?” Zelda finally gives up, and immediately prepares for the beration about to come.

It’s eerily silent for a moment. Two.

And:

“That’s stupid.”

“Look, it makes sense, the fastest path is to just go straight!” Zelda promptly and very passionately begins defending her vision. “Why waste all that time when we can just go in a line? A horse will get all confused and scared by all the obstacles, ergo, no horse!”

“A straight line? Are you shitting me right now?”

“You want your boots as fast as possible, I want to rest as fast as possible, this is in both our best interest!” 

“Zelda,” Ghirahim appears right in front of her, blocking her way and putting his hands on her shoulders. “You are very keen on making your life harder. And, usually, I would not be particularly urgent to stop you from such endeavors, but here we run into a problem: you’re making my life harder too.”

“Harder how?” Zelda pouts, needlessly stubborn because she’s still very insistent on finding catharsis in this. “What, you’re scared of a couple more monsters? Can’t take them on?”

Ghirahim sighs, groans, does the whole shabang short of collapsing onto the ground and rolling around. He pinches the bridge of his nose, just as a cherry on top. 

“Fuck you,” he says, finally, and disappears again, heavy warmth flooding back into the husk of metal on Zelda’s back, and she feels great triumph, because it’s one of those moments where she goes: ah yes! The mutuality of such relations! The two-way contract to piss each other off endlessly, fighting battles that are completely inconsequential!

In Zelda’s humblest of opinions, the best battles are always inconsequential.

“Well, lead the way, smartass, since you have it all planned,” grumbles the sword from his very cozy bow home, and Zelda does set off, not even bothering with a comeback because behind all the arguing there’s a great amount of trust in this, trust that may be begrudging or trust that is invested with the idea to say “told you so” at the end of it all, but trust nonetheless. 

Trust that Zelda is handling very well, up until she walks through some bushes and ends up in the middle of a bokoblin camp.

“Ah shit,” she says, pulling out an arrow faster than she can think. “Forgot this was here.”

Chapter Text

“I hate you,” Ghirahim states plainly, staring at a gash in Zelda’s leg. That’s the only injury she sustained, which is a great achievement if you ask her, considering all the pig faced monsters lie motionless, slowly seeping away into purple-black dust, and one of them was silver! 

What isn’t a great achievement, even though Zelda is reluctant to admit it out loud, is injuring one of the two limbs absolutely necessary for walking. 

“I’ve been worse,” Zelda frowns, which isn’t a lie. But better than some past endeavor doesn’t mean good in the present, as she still hisses through her teeth as she stands up, her grip on Ghirahim’s husk tightening until her knuckles are white. Okay, it’s pretty bad. 

Ghirahim’s form dissolves in her fingers, and he appears in front of her with a very unamused stare. She’s almost convinced that look was the only reason he formed physically, until he grabs the pouch hanging off her shoulder and starts ruffling in it. 

“Don’t tell me you make your living off of selling elixirs and don’t have a single one that will heal you,” he says, more fed up and carelessly frantic the more he searches, before unceremoniously dropping the bag at his feet with a frustrated sigh bordering on growl. 

“Those sell the best,” she retorts, even though she doesn’t buy the excuse herself. Maybe she just got a bit too drunk on freedom from royalty that she became a little too irresponsible. Oopsie. 

“We wouldn’t go through any of this if you just took a road like a normal person,” Ghirahim points out, and doesn’t give her a chance to bark back a comeback before putting on his saccharine but still clearly angry voice: “Open wide!” 

He extends his hand holding a single fish skewer, and Zelda is sure he’s about to do the “here comes the airplane!” routine so she grabs it herself. He doesn’t let go. 

“I can feed myself,” she hisses, aggressively instead of in pain this time. Maybe the pain is helping it sound a little more visceral. 

“Can you?” Ghirahim raises an eyebrow, and she begrudgingly accepts the embarrassment brewing in her belly, biting down on the fish while it’s still in the weapon’s vicious grip. 

After she swallows the first bite, he seems convinced she’s going to eat it all, so he lets her get to it and turns his attention to the bag. 

“We’re not using up a fairy for this,” he says, idly ruffling through her inventory contents. It’s a collection of the most useless shit ever. “Link’s better at catching them than you, and you might actually need one later on.” 

He sighs again, throwing his head back obnoxiously, and Zelda just glares at him from behind her half eaten skewer. 

“The food’s going to help, but the wound will take a while to become inconsequential, so,” he closes his eyes, pressing into them hard with the balls of his palms, as if holding back another long and pained sigh. “We have no other options. Get on.” 

“Huh?” Zelda says with her mouth full, none of her princess etiquette showing at all. 

“I said get on,” he repeats, accompanied by his best judgemental look. “I’ll carry you.” 

Zelda is silent for a moment, bordering on shell shocked. 

“Fuck off.” 

“You brought this upon yourself!” Ghirahim points out, spreading his arms to illustrate his point. “You’ll walk slow as all fuck, and will likely only worsen the wound, so fuck off right back! Get on!” 

“You’re not giving me a fucking piggyback ride across Tabantha bridge!” she adamantly seethes. “That’s fucked up and embarrassing and not warranted!” 

“You’re right, it’s not warranted at all, if only you had a horse! It’s either a piggyback ride or carrying you bridal style, my deepest apologies for assuming you’d prefer the former!” 

Zelda runs out of things to say, so she just kicks Ghirahim with all the rage she can muster, and he obviously doesn’t even flinch. What she hasn’t accounted for in her flurry of emotions is the fact that kicking a being of metal with an injured leg doesn’t yield good results, so she curses in pain and stumbles a bit, and he just grabs her arm even though she wouldn’t have fallen anyway, so it just makes her angrier. 

“Get your hands off me,” she grits through her teeth, and he, of course, doesn’t. 

“You’re getting on my back, and I’m carrying you to the stable, and we’re stopping there for half an hour at most, you scramble and do your damn best to get your hands on anything that will heal you better than this piece of shit skewer, and you better pray that by the time we get to Akkala the boots are still available, because I swear to every Goddess that ever existed, if they’re not I’m blaming it on you regardless of how that came about.” 

Zelda stares into Ghirahim’s cold eyes, but staring contests with him always suck because he’s an inhuman creature who never actually needs to blink, so she just makes several incoherent noises of anger and helplessness, before giving one last, savage bite into the skewer, and gets onto his fucking back. 

“Die,” she says right above his stupid ear and he adjusts his grip on her legs. 

“Pray to Hylia on that, maybe the millionth fucking time she’ll listen,” he retorts without even giving Zelda a glance, and sets off. 

***

Being unceremoniously dropped at the entrance of a stable by a silent and fed up sword spirit would be the most humiliating experience of Zelda’s life, was it not for her previous lifetime as a princess. After causing an entire apocalypse over not loving enough or whatever the hell, you kind of stop caring about the ceilings (or rock bottoms) of pathetic. 

She gets up with a grumpy grumble, like some bitter old lady, and dusts herself off while trying as hard as she can to not pay attention to any glances she’s getting. Ghirahim doesn’t disappear, hovering behind her with his arms crossed, and she’s giving him the silent treatment, too. It’s very much mutual. 

She waltzes up to Beedle, who frankly looks a little concerned. Perhaps it’s because she has a noticeable limp. Perhaps it’s because her wound barely stopped bleeding. 

“Got anything hearty?” she asks the vendor sitting on the floor. 

“Lizard?” he offers, producing a blue critter from his backpack. “You know, there is a first aid kit–“

“Don’t care,” Zelda cuts him off, ruffling through her pockets before taking out a little yellow bug. “Wanna trade?” 

Beedle eyes the insect like a precious jewel. 

“You know, hearty lizards are very slippery–“

She gets out a second one. 

Beedle silently makes the trade, slowly taking the beetles out of her hands. 

Ghirahim keeps hovering even as Zelda sits down at a pot, chasing away the local kids just with the sight of monster blood on her boots. 

“Better make it potent,” he comments, watching her throw in a lizalfos horn. Apparently, the silent treatment was something Zelda made up in her head, which she tends to do sometimes. 

“Unless you expect me to hunt down Dinraal and put her horn in here, I don’t know what you want from me,” she mumbles, stirring the most disgusting stew in existence. She throws in a talon. 

Ghirahim brings her a cup to put the concoction into, because she doesn’t want to waste a clean bottle. She tries to down it at once, but has to stop midway to gag at the disgusting taste, and he gives her a pat on the shoulder. Aw, he’s not completely heartless! 

She wobbles to her feet, watching the wound slowly shrink and her limbs filling up with energy and vigor. The wound doesn’t close all the way, and she subtly grimaces at the her own underestimation of the injury, but the pain is tolerable now. 

“I can walk,” she declares. 

“You know, we’re at a stable,” shrugs Ghirahim. “Perfect place to get a–“

“I’m not taking a horse,” Zelda cuts off. 

“Okay, what’s your actual problem with horses?” he eyes her with exasperation. “You never actually said.” 

“I did, shit for brains, we’re–“

“Going through a field,” he points out. “You can cross a field with a horse.” 

“No, it’s–“ she stumbles with her words, feeling deeply irrational and it brings back memories, oh so many memories, way too familiar with feeling like she’s crazy. “Look, I just said no! Drop it.” 

Apparently, she sounds pitiful enough that Ghirahim shuts right up. The terrible sensation still stirs, deep in her stomach, and it’s unlikely it’s the elixir digesting in her guts. She sighs, dragging her hands across her face, and starts walking, without looking if Ghirahim follows her. 

She has no indication he’s actually there until she feels the familiar weight of his weapon form on her back, and it floods her with a comfort she never realized she felt before. She takes it out, briefly, just to squeeze the metal ends of its cool body, and it’s her way of saying sorry. She’s not sure for what she’s apologizing for. Something deep in her brain tells her she’s apologizing for being fucking insane, but she knows that’s a sorry he’ll never in hell accept, so it’s a nebulous beg for forgiveness. She feels bad, worse than she’ll ever let on. 

The bow hums in acknowledgment, wordless but responsive, and she feels just vulnerable enough to have the urge to hug it, like a big idiot, but she doesn’t go through with it. She sheathes him back, squeezing her eyes, and continues walking. 

***

“Stop,” Ghirahim says in the middle of Zelda zoning out and staring at clouds because she’s bored out of her mind walking. She halts before she processes why the command was given, looking around and blinking in confusion. 

She finally notices the offending party: a girl standing just near the shallow water of Ludfo’s Bog, whistling to herself and tapping her foot, as if waiting for something. 

“That is not a traveler,” the two say in unison, and Zelda slowly backs behind the mushroom-like tree before she’s noticed. 

“If only you took the roads,” Ghirahim grumbles, making her roll her eyes. 

“They’re more common on the roads,” she whispers. “I don’t know what the hell this one’s doing here.”

“They know what you look like, right?”

“It’s a 50/50 these days,” Zelda shrugs. Some of them genuinely didn’t get the memo, and some have seen her with Link often enough to connect the dots. Ever since the second coming of the Calamity they’ve been sporadic, some avoiding trouble to focus on rebuilding their forces after Link blew up their hideout (twice), and some even more vicious and vengeful than before. 

The yiga are a wild card, as it currently stands. And yet, her hands itch for her bow, the conscientious part of her pleading. 

“What if they attack some other traveler?” she finally says, her consciousness winning over her bitterness.

“Let me take care of it,” Ghirahim buzzes in her hands. 

“No, I can do it,” she frowns. 

“You’re injured.” 

“Yeah, not incapacitated!” she protests. 

“I do not trust your fighting capabilities.”

“Liar.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean you’re a lying liar, you do trust my fighting capabilities, you think I’m the best!”

“Link’s the best.” 

“You do not believe that.” 

“The hell I do.” 

“Yeah, and how many times do you let him wield you?”

“I have obligations to my master, it’s not my fault I get stuck with a reckless girl who’s too stupid to account for that recklessness!”

“Liar again! You don’t believe I’m stupid!”

Zelda can feel Ghirahim’s retort coming, but they both get cut off by a small chuckle behind them, which is the only indication before a whistling slash comes down from above. 

Zelda shrieks in surprise and jumps away, the blade barely missing her entirely. In her bickering with Ghirahim she completely forgot why she began the conversation with whispering. Oopsie!

And, because the attack completely blindsides her, her body moves on its own and suddenly she’s swinging Ghirahim like a damn baseball bat and whacking the soldier right across the head. The soldier doesn’t dodge, perhaps because nobody in their right mind has done that before. 

They stumble backwards, clutching their head, giving Zelda just enough time to fumble and assume proper battle position, an arrow pressed against the tight string. She kicks the enemy in the ribs, still frantic but at least passable as a legitimate combat technique, and this time she grits her teeth to avoid any verbal acknowledgement of pain in the still healing gash slipping out. 

The soldier falls on their ass, still disoriented and deeply confused, which Zelda uses to her advantage to pin them to the ground with her foot, arrow trained on their neck. 

She’s breathing heavily, trying to regain oxygen, and she doesn’t know why she hasn’t shot yet. She stares down at their masked face as it limply rolls to the side, their breathing also in shambles, perhaps because they took a heavy blow to their skull. 

“Shoot,” Ghirahim prompts. She doesn’t listen to him, instead carefully leaning down, slowly, almost gently taking off the mask of the inverted eye. 

Black stands of hair fall onto a sweaty forehead, sticking to tanned skin, their amber eyes narrowed into slits that stare at the girl above them with hatred. It’s a young face, couldn’t be a few years over Zelda’s own age, at least the visible one, there’s a faint scar across their lip. They pant through the mouth, revealing a tooth gap. 

“Why?” Zelda only asks, her imposing silhouette bathing the person below in shadow, and this is the first time in her life she feels like a person with some kind of power over another agent, like someone who’s authority may not be respected, but felt nonetheless. 

The person scowls, and growls before disappearing in a burst of runes, and Zelda’s foot comes down on a pile of bananas, squishing them. 

“Well, this one knew your face,” Ghirahim comments. 

“Now it’s mutual,” Zelda responds. They know her face, because initially they might’ve attacked a cooky girl talking to herself a bit too close for comfort, now they definitely know she is the ex princess. She holsters her bow. 

She continues her walk, silent. 

***

“It’s bedtime for insufferable children,” Ghirahim chimes at about three a.m., as Zelda is crossing Carok bridge. It takes her a little off guard, because he’s been dead silent when they were crossing the breach of Demise, as he always is in that valley. Zelda thinks he’s convinced she doesn’t notice, but she does, she just doesn’t bring it up, because she’s considerate like that. 

“I can go longer,” she dismisses, even though her legs are, just a little bit, jelly. 

“You need to sleep.” 

“I’ll sleep when…” she trails off, because she doesn’t actually know when she’ll sleep. She hasn’t thought this far. 

“Make a campfire, we’re stopping.”

“You can’t make me do shit,” she says, stubbornly, because she still really hates this entire journey, and a century of sealing away a great evil beat any urge to stall out of her, ever, so now she’s very much a “get this over with and die in peace” kind of girl. 

“I can,” Ghirahim argues, but still doesn’t form physically, perhaps as his idea of gentleness. 

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” she admits, perhaps a bit too honest, but she is genuinely tired, and that always brings out the wet, sobbing blanket of a girl in her. 

“I’ll be on watch,” Ghirahim says, knowing full well that is not the problem. “You’ll pass out from exhaustion at some point, anyway, you might as well do it in a safe and comfortable spot.” 

One hard boundary Zelda does have is: don’t touch her in her sleep, unless it is to wake her up. This rule doesn’t apply to Link, and a part, a very poisonous and disgusting part of Zelda sometimes says that’s hypocritical and unfair, but, a bit surprisingly, Ghirahim never made a single comment about that. 

She’d pass out in the worst places ever, ranging from face planting on her desk to middle of monster camp on a blood moon, and she’d wake up with her neck sore and surrounded by monster remains, only to find Ghirahim diligently on watch, having not moved her an inch. 

It was something Zelda was sincerely grateful for, even though she rarely verbalized it. Whenever she did, Ghirahim would swat it away like a pesky fly, like it’s no big deal. Maybe it wasn’t, to him. 

“Fine,” she concedes, her voice shaky, because there are tiny tears in her eyes, and if she’s gotten tired enough to cry over nothing, it’s a sign she has to get herself unconscious pronto. 

She doesn’t even know why she doesn’t want anybody touching her in her sleep. It’s something about autonomy. Something about things being done to her body without her knowledge or control. Something about deep seated trauma from her childhood she has no way to unpack because not a single person in Hyrule has invested into psychology research yet. 

She starts a fire with trembling fingers, and Ghirahim doesn’t help her. He sits with his back to it, the two setting up camp at the base of a hill. Zelda revels in the warmth of the flames for just a tiny bit, before letting the grass take her, envelop her and prickle her cheek. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. 

“What for?” Ghirahim asks, without looking back. 

“I don’t know,” she confesses, just wanting to fill up a silence. 

“You're fine. You just need sleep,” he says, almost softly. 

“The reason I don’t like horses is because I think they all hate me,” she says. 

“Why?”

“I think they sense I’m responsible for the death of their brethren in the Calamity. None of them like me.” 

“They’re just horses.” 

“I sound insane.” 

“If you don’t want to ride a horse, I’m not going to force you. I dropped it.”

“They hate me, deeply, and it’s probably deserved. Even tamed ones glare at me like they want me dead. I do hate horses ever since mine died in the apocalypse.” 

“You’re not responsible for every little thing that happens in this fucked up kingdom.”

“The apocalypse wasn’t little,” Zelda hasn’t started sobbing yet, perhaps because she’s too tired to. She really needs sleep, but now she’ll definitely have a nightmare about a murder horse. God, this is so stupid!

“It probably was for the horses,” Ghirahim shrugs. “They’re close to ancient too, you know.” 

Zelda doesn’t say anything to that. How old are the horses? Zelda is versed enough in academics to know that her kingdom is not the first, there were kings before her lineage, empires that fell and rose back up again. She hates history, mostly because the only consistent framework that exists to comprehend it is religious, and that’s a sour subject. But her hatred is deep enough to have earned as much dedication as love, maybe even more. She’s been a hateful little thing for what feels like forever. That tends to happen, when you’ve been seventeen for a century. 

Horses run as far back as some of the heroes, the really old ones, Link has a legacy of being accompanied by mares. In her old life, her old Link shared some tips on how to get along with them. Maybe at first, horses disliked her because they knew what was going to happen to them at her hands, and only eased up once Link, their old friend and probably the closest thing they have to a deity, showed his trust in her. She’s betrayed them forever now. Even if Ghirahim is right, and it’s just a petty grudge, Zelda probably won’t live long enough to see their forgiveness. She’s already overstayed her welcome.

“What was your first time meeting a horse?” she asks, idly picking at grass. She hopes something like a bedtime story will put her at ease. 

“Hm,” Ghirahim snorts. “One kicked me in the ribs when I tried to shoo it away from my favorite clearing. It was eating all the peonies, that bastard.”

“What era was this? What hero?”

“This was in a limbo, an in-between of sorts. I really don’t remember between which ones. I’m not very good at keeping track of the progress of your human civilization, sorry. One day I went off to take a nature retreat, so to speak, for a few thousand years, and when I came back horses were the standardized transport. You hylians are fast to immortals who aren’t paying attention.”

“Are there any immortals who are?” Zelda scoffs. 

“She is,” Ghirahim says, tentatively. Probably the one thing that makes Zelda more uncomfortable than Ghirahim jabbing at her wounds is him gently acknowledging them. “She just… doesn’t always intervene. She’s made the mistake of playing favorites about the Hylian race before. It doesn’t really end well.”

“I know,” Zelda sighs, she’s still bitter about all that, she just can’t muster the energy for anything but defeatism right now. She won’t ever admit it, but she is sympathetic to the Goddess, or, well, as sympathetic as a daughter can be to her mother. 

“I can tell you about the time I stole a King’s horse,” Ghirahim offers. “I had to be a fugitive for close to a century, because his Sheikah advisor just wouldn’t succumb to old age! She’d hunt me from the retirement home if she could, I swear.”

“Okay,” Zelda doesn’t wipe the little tears of exhaustion streaming down her face. She just let them get absorbed by the earth. 

“It all started at a festival: it hasn’t been celebrated for millenia now, but long story short it used to be dedicated to Din. Din’s festivals are always the most decadent ones, so of course I snuck in to indulge. I was disguised as a travelling fortune teller, with all the fortunes being fake and jokes that were funny to me only, of course. They had a three day parade, with the King himself marching on the third day, and that’s where I saw him: a huge, black stallion with a well-groomed golden mane, a powerful, prideful beast. It was a ceremonial horse, they had one for each golden goddess, and taking one was surely blasphemy, which is what sealed the deal on my scheme, other than the fact that the horse was just damn cool. So, I worked my magic with my undeniable charm and swashbuckling bravado, and got close enough to one pretty little servant to sneak into the royal stables, with nobody suspecting a thing…”

Chapter Text

Zelda opens her eyes because a stray darner is tickling her face. She’s had a blissfully dreamless slumber, no murder horses or animals of any other variety, which is a pretty good start to the day. 

“Breakfast,” Ghirahim helpfully offers a freshly plucked duck along with a handful of what could only be presumed to be its own eggs. 

The morning is chilly, and perhaps Zelda slept in a little, judging by the fact that the sun has long risen and the birds all around are singing their stupid songs. Zelda’s limbs are sore in the way she is used to by now, what seems like a lifetime of sleeping on grass. 

She eats in silence, and in equal silence Ghirahim slides her two dead blue lizards. There’s no judgement or snarky remarks, and miraculously Zelda doesn’t feel the urge to take the gesture as an insult in itself. She pockets them and neither address the issue further. 

Even though she accepts his kindness, she still doesn’t say anything to him. She feels a little too raw from last night, and having slept she newly remembers their recent argument. This is possibly even worse than if Ghirahim was still mad at her: as of now it’s just awkward, and Ghirahim probably knows everything she said last night was through a fugue of sleep-deprivation and heightened emotion, otherwise he wouldn’t so easily give into her silent plea for a bedtime story, and he probably also knows that she knows he knows, and he knows what she wants right now is to stew in her own self-loathing for a little, and he knows that’s not at all what she needs, but not everything in life is about strict needs. He’s not her keeper. She doesn’t want him to be her keeper.

She doesn’t know what to do with him, when he’s non-combative like this. She’s fully aware she’s a fickle thing, if he pushes too much she’ll just thrash more, probably say a bunch more shit she doesn’t mean, probably follow it up with another late night of silent crying and pathetically begging him to talk her to sleep. The only thing she fears more than not talking to him is becoming stuck in this cycle of weird dependency, especially with someone who cannot refuse. Her desire to stew in her own self-loathing is, of course, a desire secondary, she knows it’ll be deeply unpleasant and probably painful, and, contrary to understandable misconception, she’s not actually a masochist, so what she wants more than anything is for things to go back to normal. But, that’s too difficult, so they exchange no words as she packs up and they set off.

He goes back to his weapon form and she secures him behind her back, which makes things a little easier and a little more difficult: on one hand, it’s a little less dreadful without a humanoid figure silently following her, on the other hand, that makes it harder to start a conversation in case Zelda decides she’s had enough of her own fucked up mind palace. She unenthusiastically braces for her fate.

She makes a mental note to stop at Woodland stable, since she isn’t exactly rich enough to afford the royal boots without going completely broke, and she’s not exactly thrilled at spending her entire fortune on Ghirahim’s frivolousness. She wonders what she’s going to do in Akkala while waiting for Link. Robbie has been in Hateno for the past few months, working on a project with Purah, and his wife went with him, so the lab is empty for the time being. He did tell Zelda to feel free to take lodging in there, and work on any of the countless works in progress he’s abandoned years ago. Zelda likes Robbie, and not just because he’s one of the relics of her old life: he’s peculiar, and enthusiastic, and lets Zelda tinker with just about anything he owns, except for the furnace. Zelda prefers not to think about his relationship with the furnace, or how young his wife is, for that matter. Ghirahim once said she’s so willing to overlook Robbie’s misogynistic tendencies because he reminds her of her dad except he actually supports her interests, and Ghirahim received a few good kicks for that. They, of course, hurt Zelda more than him, because he’s not human and her flesh is, but it was more to demonstrate a point than anything.

The only problem with the lab is that it gets lonely, despite how close it is to the stable. Zelda doesn’t like staying in other people’s houses, places that constantly remind her they’re lived in and not by her. She’s never really had a space that felt personal, not like Robbie’s littered lab or like Kass’ cozy nest or even like Link’s new house, littered with weapon displays that he sometimes uses to store a mop. Zelda’s room at the Castle was strictly royal – it was cleaned by servants, and even the bow that she displayed was replaced without anyone telling her when the maid noticed some scratches on it. Her study was the closest she came to having a room that felt hers, although she wasn’t allowed to sleep in there. The pressing issue with the study was how secretive she was about everything that went on in there: her father never raided it to confiscate her research materials, but he did threaten to on multiple occasions. One time when she was fourteen she learnt how to book bind specifically to replace the cover of one of her notebooks with the cover of a children’s fairytale book, in order to look as inconspicuous as possible. She was always paranoid, what can she say. 

She’s never had four walls in which she could feel at ease, and nowadays she travels too much. All of her research is stored in different places: some projects tucked under Link’s bed, most semi-official scientific contributions are with either Robbie or Purah, Impa’s holding onto her anthologies of different flora found in the Hyrulean wilds. Even Sidon has a few scrapbooks from the phase where she briefly became obsessed with geology, he says he occasionally peruses them during his free time and finds it to be of great educational value, and she always laughs like it’s a joke even though she knows it isn’t. Zelda thinks that even if she one day becomes normal enough to settle into a lab of her own, she’d prefer this form of storage anyway. It’s nice to have friends, and even nicer when you have an excuse to visit them. 

She’s thinking of picking up a new field of study – her heart always lies towards technology and an extra something, and that extra something fluctuates fairly often. She’s pretty much mastered the art of elixir making, because it’s really not difficult at all, but she thinks she could give the domain of alchemy a go. Most of her customers slash colleagues frown on the idea of tempering with well-worn recipes: they brew because they know the traditions that have been passed down for a century now, not out of a passion for creation. Not everyone can be a frivolous little ex-princess with a silver spoon in her mouth that stayed right where it was even after the monarchy collapsed, replaced by friends who are very invested in keeping her alive, for some misguided reason. Some people have mouths to feed. 

Ronan, one of her most friendly customers, once said that he’d probably be the only person in all of Hyrule willing to try her brews, and that’s only because he’s sure she’ll eventually stumble into a really fucked up moonshine recipe, and he’s nothing if not a professional drinker. She told him he’d be the first she summons if she manages to make rubbing alcohol, and he said he can count on her to make it taste like shit, considering the assorted flavors of her elixirs. She likes Ronan, he’s easy to talk to and he’s close enough to her in age to understand her need for bad decision making. She hopes to run into him at one of the stables. 

Ronan doesn’t know she’s the ex-princess – pretty much nobody does, outside of those directly involved in the whole Calamity ordeal. He thinks she’s Link’s dastardly half-sister, half because he found out their birthdays and deduced they were not nine months apart, so he whipped up a story in his head about how Zelda’s the affair baby, and that’s also why their features are distinct despite still being similar enough to construe as somehow related. Ronan’s little fairytale goes like this: Link’s mother and father lived a happy little life in Hateno, they married young and the father was enough of a slave to his vices to not think too hard about the responsibility of a union. And then she got pregnant with Link, and at first his father was happy but he was quickly overwhelmed with the reality of what the rest of his life is going to be like, and to escape that feeling he had an affair with the daughter of the baker, and when she got pregnant he acted like she was a lying whore who was trying to swindle him out of his money for her own obscene behaviour, and ruined her reputation forever. And that’s why Link is so normal and Zelda looks like she hates men. 

Zelda likes feeding little facts to Ronan to see what kind of stories he’d spin out of them, and he tells them with a dusting of tipsy red across his cheeks and easy laughter, which in turn makes it easy for Zelda to not get upset at these stories. She wonders if she can pretend this fake biography is true, she is Link’s bratty half sister, her mother drank herself to death from grief, her father is a terrible human being who’s name she doesn’t know and who’s still alive because the universe isn’t just, and Link’s parents are divorced because you can’t keep affairs secret forever. It’s a less complicated life, she doesn’t have to think hard to decipher it, and it’s so utterly not true, making it comforting. It’s also a life that doesn’t account for Ghirahim at all, which makes Zelda’s chest hurt to think about.

Zelda’s melancholy train of thought only stops somewhere halfway through Hyrule Forest Park.

“You hear that?” Zelda perks up at Ghirahim’s warning, but to be honest she’s not been listening to anything for the past half hour. She’s always at her most vulnerable when alone with her thoughts, it always comes back to her fears and a twisting feeling in her stomach somehow. She much prefers her journeys with a game or two of imaginary chess with Ghirahim, but she’s clearly not been ready enough to cross that bridge, her embarrassment taking over every time she wants to open her mouth. 

When she does listen, she hears what sounds like faint bells from a nearby collection of trees. 

“Could be a trap,” she whispers, readying her bow and sneaking towards the noise, concealed by the small bushes. Her face rubs against harsh leaves but she ignores it, hoping Ghirahim doesn’t comment on her grimace as she’s pricked by branches. 

She carefully looks over the foliage, and is dumbfounded to see a crying korok.

“Oh Holy Din,” she mutters, beginning to sneak backwards. 

“You’re not going to help it?” Ghirahim asks.

“They’re usually just lost,” she grumbles back. “Some local children will find it and help it on its way, it’s fine.” 

She backs out of the bush, and begins walking, still hunched over, trying her best to ignore the cries filling her ears. 

The bushes concealing her do, however, stop, and she realizes that the direction she was walking in would’ve put her in direct sight of the korok anyway. It notices her immediately. 

“Hey! Hey! Can you see me? Miss?” it shouts to her.

She presses her hand to the side of her face to hide her eyes. 

“You’re heartless,” Ghirahim says. 

“Please! Can you help me? I hear korok seeds in your pouch, you’ve found my friends!”

“Since when are they so smart…” Zelda hisses under her breath, and turns to face the little guy. “Hi! Are you lost?”

“No!” the korok cries louder. “I lost something! And I can’t find it!” 

It erupts in more tears. Zelda grimaces before letting out a defeated sigh. 

“What did you lose?” she walks up to the forest child, crouching to be on its level. 

“My favorite broche,” the korok whines. Koroks don’t even wear clothes. What was it putting the broche on? “I was going here to hide from Hetsu, but when I came I realized it was gone… I carry it around with me everywhere, I can’t believe I lost it!” 

The korok erupts into a fountain of sadness. Zelda tries her best to school her expression. 

“You probably dropped it on the way,” she attempts to smile to console the poor kid. “Which way did you come from?”

“Oh!” the korok lights up, seemingly not as sorrowful now that it moved onto a different subject. “I came through the Spirit Realm. The Deku Tree tells us it's safer to travel that way, so we don’t get hurt.”

Zelda blinks. 

“So… uh..?”

“So it’s not in this plane of existence, dummy,” Ghirahim helpfully supplies, materializing out of thin air, leaning on a tree trunk. 

“Mortals can’t go in the Spirit Realm,” the korok chimes in, nodding. “Only spirits!” 

Zelda blinks some more. 

“So I can’t help you?”

The korok looks at her quizzically. 

“You have a spirit, don’t you?”

Zelda’s hands quiver where they are planted on her knees, fisting the fabric of her pants so she doesn’t rip something in half. 

“Ghirahim, explain,” she orders, exasperated. 

“The Spirit Realm is a non-physical plane only spirits can enter,” he says. “Although that rule is fast and loose. All mortals have a spirit, of course. For example, Sheikah shrines dabble in some spirit-based transference. Probably learned that trick from the Goddess, those dogs. She loves sending her chosen hero off on non-physical quests to prove he has some remnant of the soul of her dead boyfriend.”

Zelda stares at the ground, trying to process the information. 

“So, like one of those trials Link went on to bond with Fi?”

“Kind of-f-f,” Ghirahim draws out, shrugging slower than he should. “Strictly speaking, no, but it’s a similar idea of a plane of existence in which only the soul persists.”

Zelda points an accusatory finger at Ghirahim.

“You’re a spirit.” 

“Correct,” he nods, clearly amused. 

“Can you help me, please?” the korok pleads, left out of the conversation for long enough to remember its loss. “I’ll give you a reward!”

The reward is, most likely, a korok seed. That’s the only thing these wretched children have to offer. Zelda spreads her lips into a thin line, not enticed by the offer. 

“Can I even–” she trails off before she can finish, connecting the dots. She stares right at Ghirahim. “Wait. Fi transported Link to the Spirit Realm. Can you do that?”

“Well, as I so helpfully explained, what Link did isn’t the same as–”

“You didn’t actually explain that part.”

“–just going to the Spirit Realm. What he did was go inside the Master Sword, which he can do because the Master Sword was made to aid him in proving himself and such. I don’t have such a deep inner world, I’m afraid.”

“Okay,” Zelda frowns. “But you’re a spirit. Can you travel to the Spirit Realm?”

“Mayhaps,” Ghirahim shrugs with a shit eating grin. 

“Okay, more useful inquiry: can you get me to the Spirit Realm?” she is beginning to get frustrated. 

“M-m-m-m,” Ghirahim rubs his chin in consideration. “Sure.” 

“Does that mean you will help me?” the korok looks up with hope behind its soulless mask. 

“Well, little guy, I’m not sure, because–” she doesn’t know how to break it to the fellow that she’s deeply uninterested in more korok poop. 

“Is scientific inquiry not reward enough?” Ghirahim buts in, as if reading her mind. A shiver runs down her spine at that thought, and she glares at him. 

“What are you on about?”

“Well, considering you’ve been interrogating me on the subject for the past few minutes, I just assumed you might be interested,” he shrugs innocently. “Plus, I did already mention Sheikah Shrines make use of similar properties, and I, being an attentive and amazing companion, do recall you have an interest in such technologies–”

“You son of a bitch,” she curses, springing to her feet. 

“Don’t swear in front of children.”

“First, fuck you, second, what does your broche look like little guy?” she turns to the korok, who looks a little bit unsure and afraid of her at this moment.

“It’s, um, gold. With a purple thingy in the middle. It looks like a yellow leaf.”

“Uh-huh, wonderful!” Zelda rubs her hands together, and she cannot believe she’s getting wrapped up in another stupid side quest, but Ghirahim, the bastard, bribed her with the one thing she cannot decline: scientific zeal. “Ghirahim, take me to the spirit realm.”

“You’re so easy,” he chuckles under his breath, and she ignores his comment as his weapon form comes to rest heavy in her palms. “Okay, first of all, tether me to the ground.”

“Huh?” 

“Stick me into the fucking dirt kid.”

She obeys the command with a little more force than probably required, making sure the hilt of the bow is firmly in the soil. 

“Okay, now sit in a comfortable position. You might be stuck that way for a while, and your limbs will go numb! Just a warning.”

Zelda sits cross legged, because she’s not really sure what a comfortable position would be, for her. Her arms are already aching. 

“Mhm, now hold onto me. Close your eyes, focus. I’ll bring you through.”

She nods, shakily, and squeezes her eyelids until all she sees is darkness, broken up by colorful static. Then, she feels a pull. She tries her hardest to trust it. 

After about three bouts of nausea she feels floaty, then she distinctly feels ground under her feet. She opens her eyes to find herself standing. 

“Welcome to the Spirit Realm,” the metallic voice supplies, dryly, and Zelda looks up to see Ghirahim.

He is much, much shinier than he usually is when humanoid. He is dark obsidian, with orange diamonds on his body. His hair stands to a point, and his eyes reflect with opaque crystal.

“Okay,” Zelda breathes out, surveying her surroundings. It all looks normal, the clearing is still the clearing, except more dream-like, shimmering and slightly desaturated, as if Zelda’s vision is blurry, except squinting doesn’t help. “Link was in one of these.”

“Link was inside the Master Sword,” Ghirahim clarifies. “Those are very different to what we’re dealing with here. The Spirit Realm Link visited was specifically designed as a trial within a controlled environment, enclosed to the boundaries of that trial and almost impenetrable from inside or out. This is just, well. Open space.”

“Link said anything that happens here doesn’t affect my physical body,” Zelda says, still only half-listening. Ghirahim grunts in frustration. 

“As I was saying, Link’s experiences are biased and largely non-applicable,” he floats, Zelda just noticed. He doesn’t stand on the ground, floats a couple inches above it. “What he was in was a box designed specifically for him. Obviously, the Goddess nor anybody affiliated with her would wish to aid Link’s failure, therefore they give him leeway in the challenges they design, just so he can try again, train his spirit until he’s ready. You’re not in a training arena, so what you encounter here is not controlled.”

“So I can die?” the words fall out of Zelda’s mouth clumsily. 

“I didn’t say that,” Ghirahim is squinting at the girl. Why is he talking like a mildly sassy manual? “As I was explaining, the challenges Link faced were training. All of them were made so that his physical body pays no toll, only his spirit. You are not inside a box right now, so, theoretically, anything could get in or out. Most spirits are rather peaceful, like the koroks. Most who only reside in this realm just wish to be left alone. What consequence you face is dependent largely on the intentions of whatever entity you manage to piss off. Likely, they’ll just want to chase you away, zap your spirit enough to kick you out of here so you never show your face again. However, it’s not entirely impossible for damage to the spirit to reflect on your actual body. Those two are connected, after all.”

“I’m going to die,” Zelda declares. 

“No, you’re not,” Ghirahim argues. “If anything, I can pull you out before you cause any trouble.”

“And what if something attacks me?” she glares at Ghirahim, but soon averts eye contact. It’s weird to stare into eyeballs that are clearly there, but still entirely blank. “Do I just stand there and take it?”

“Well, that’s the interesting part,” Ghirahim grins. “No idea! See, with Link, since all he was in were training boxes, what he could do was largely dependent on the facilitator of the challenge. Even then, Link is defined by his spirit. All of them share the spirit of the hero, however they acquire it, or have potential for it, or otherwise prove themselves to be cut of the same cloth. Either way: his soul fits a predetermined shape, and while variation is present, the structure is the same. You, however? You’ve got the blood of the Goddess. That’s entirely flesh, darling. I have no clue what your spirit is capable of.”

Zelda looks down at herself, feeling weirdly empty without her equipment. She looks at her hands, and finds that she, as well, has no idea what she’s capable of. 

“Wait,” she feels terrible bubbles of anxiety pop in her joints. “So you’re telling me I don’t have access to my power here?”

“Don’t think you’re supposed to,” Ghirahim shrugs. “Try it.”

Zelda does try it. She concentrates with all her might on summoning the Bow of Light. She thinks of what she loves. She thinks about Link, and the Rito fledglings, and of all of her friends in this new Hyrule. Her fingers don’t shimmer, don’t even buzz. She feels dread. 

“Oh fuck,” she swears, feels herself beginning to shake. 

“You haven’t even run into anything and you’re already terrified,” Ghirahim comments. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is I’m useless,” she hisses. “I don’t have my power, I don’t have my tech, and I don’t have a weapon. All I have is my stupid mortal body, and you, and for some reason you talk weird, and it’s freaking me out.”

“Actually, all you have is your mortal spirit,” Ghirahim corrects. “And the way I talk, well. That’s just what this form does to me. I’m a lot more, um, in your face weapon spirit when I’m like this. With wretched honesty and helpful explanations.” 

“Is that all you can do?” Zelda asks, accusatory. “Be honest and info dump?”

“Yes,” Ghirahim deadpans.

Zelda seriously considers taking up praying again. 

She looks around: the landscape looks semi-normal, if you discount the fact that it’s desaturated and shimmery. It feels like she’s looking at everything through a haze, and she blinks to see if she just didn’t notice her eyes watering, but quickly realizes this world is just a little more blurry. The distance is covered by fog, a bit like the Great Hyrule Forest, except not nearly as foreboding. She experimentally takes a step, and the ground feels a little more malleable under her foot than it should be. She pinches herself, to find that her body is still tangible, she just doesn’t feel any pain.

“Why did you make me do this?” Zelda suddenly asks.

“I didn’t make you do anything,” Ghirahim shrugs.

“You convinced me to help the korok and go to the spirit realm. Why?”

Ghirahim purses his lips, looking like he’s holding back something. 

“Thought it’d be fun,” he answers, finally. 

“You’re lying,” she squints. 

“I can’t lie in this form,” he says through clenched teeth. 

“You’re lying again!” she crosses her arms. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

“I. Thought. It’d. Be. Fun,” he pushes out. “You ought to relax a bit, get some whimsy into your life from time to time. You’re too much flesh, girl. It eats you alive.”

Zelda shrinks away from that statement, viscerally uncomfortable. She suddenly feels raw again, and everything she’s been thinking about since this morning floods back in, washes over her like an unpleasant slime that cascades off her legs and somewhere into the ground. It’s a more physical sensation of displeasure than she’s ever experienced before, which is why she’s content to leave the topic alone and find the stupid broche.

She begins walking through the trees, running her hand through the leaves of bushes. They are just slightly incorporeal, like covered by a layer of unfeasible matter, and they don’t feel as scratchy or thorny as they do in the real world. She’s barely walked a few meters when her ears pick up on a quiet ding. It reminds her of Fi, and that floods her whole body with lightheadedness (which she had no idea she could experience anywhere but the head before), and she snaps to stare in the direction of the noise as if compelled rather than in control of her actions.

Something shiny lies there, in the grass, the flowers around it swaying lightly even though there’s no wind. She approaches with caution, mouth slightly agape, which probably makes her look stupid, but for some reason that’s the last thing that’s on her mind. 

She was right to be careful, because the corner of her eye catches something and she darts behind a tree. 

The left side of the clearing is consumed: it looks like fog, but pulsing purple and magenta and wobbles in place. The flora around it pulses too, trees bending slightly in a way they aren’t supposed to, as if trying to get away from the strange veil. 

“What is that?” Zelda whispers, clutching the tree she hides behind. It feels softer than it should be. 

“A monster,” Ghirahim explains. “I theorize that after a century of blood moons the veil of the Spirit Realm has weakened, and some malice seeps through, sometimes. This is likely one or two bokoblins, reduced to what they really are: a cloud of malicious essence. This is probably also why the blood moons persist, even if rare, nowadays. The leftover malice, when accumulated into large enough quantities, gains enough power to cross the bridge back into the physical world.”

The purple cloud pulses, moves slowly and aimlessly around the trees. 

“Are you writing this down?” Ghirahim smirks down at Zelda, who pouts. 

“I’m making you repeat all of this when I actually have a pen and paper, asshole,” she glares at him. “Why can’t you be like this more often?” 

“I’m deeply offended at your displeasure with my dashing personality,” he says, greatly amused. “I haven’t been in my spirit form for millennia, even longer I haven’t occupied it while in conversation with my master.” 

Zelda purses her lips, feeling a little bad, even though Ghirahim seems to be wistful, lost in a sentiment she’s not fully privy to. She pushes down the sudden guilt to focus at the task at hand. 

“Okay, but the broche is right there,” she talks through the problem out loud, to not get distracted by pesky emotion filled thoughts. “What do I do with this.. thing?”

“It’s slow, but definitely hostile to mortal spirits,” Ghirahim warns. “You could probably get by undetected, however, we are not in a physical plane, the matter of stealth isn’t dependent on sight.” 

“So it will… feel me, rather than see me?” Zelda reasons. 

“Correct,” Ghirahim confirms. “See, you make deductions quite well. Do you even need me?” 

“Yes, I do,” she protests. “You know things, you’re just throwing me a problem solving bone to make me feel better.” 

“How observant,” he scoffs. “But it’s working, isn’t it?”

“How do I make it not feel me?” Zelda avoids answering the question. 

“Malice responds to malice.” 

Zelda’s expression sours. She glares at Ghirahim with a prolonged stare, to which he responds with a blank gaze of his own. This is just his way of telling her to be less of a bitter little shit. Even in this form, he stays insufferable. 

“So what, do I meditate here until I feel calm and exude no foul energy that would attract every terrible spirit within the vicinity?” she asks, sarcasm thick. 

“Think happy thoughts, dear!” Ghirahim chirps, and extends an inviting hand towards the clearing with the broche. 

Zelda sighs, grunts, does just about every single noise of annoyance she can muster, burying her face in her hands. Think happy thoughts. Just like the stupid Goddess power, imagine Link’s stupid face, the world you were willing to die for, the little gadgets you tinker with on chilly Sunday mornings. 

She takes a careful step out of her hiding. She remembers sand seal racing with Riju, scorching sun wrapping its rays around her entire body, dunes under her shield. She walks tentatively towards her goal, half crouched. She reminds herself of Sidon’s smile, the way he so eagerly invites her fishing when he senses even a dollop of sadness in her body, the way slimy carps lie in her palms. She reaches her fingers towards the broche from about a two meters away. She remembers the shooting range in Hebra, and the hot springs in Eldin, her body experiencing the ghost sensations of snowy frost and hot water at once. 

She lays her fingers on cool metal, and feels the taste of fruitcake on her tongue, the cream a perfect balance between airy and dense. Link makes it better than the royal cooks ever could, cutting up vegetables on rough wood by the stable’s communal cooking pot. She imagines what he’ll cook for her when she finally sees him again, after this burdensome task of a journey, how he’ll hug her without any reservations or awkwardness, how easily he’ll say he missed her, how honestly she’d reply. She takes the broche, bringing to her chest, and feels soft tears fall down her ghastly face. 

“Oh shit,” is the only thing she hears from Ghirahim, somewhere far behind her, before the thick cloud of magenta fog emits a screech clouds aren’t supposed to be capable of making, and begins moving towards her, encircling the clearing. 

She quickly tries to wipe the tears from her face, curses herself for letting her thoughts linger on how much she misses her best friend, and curses the world, for good measure, for demanding so much emotional regulation from her all the fucking time. She throws her hands out in front of her on autopilot, not sure what to even do, and hisses through clenched teeth: 

“I will not fucking die for loving my best friend too much!” 

Suddenly, the fog seems to hit some kind of barrier a few inches from her feet. It screeches again, sounding like it’s trying to claw its way to the girl through some invisible wall. 

“Huh?” is the only thing Zelda can say before her vision fades to black, barely giving her time to process anything, and she feels nauseous as something pulls at her again. 

When she can breathe again she gasps, hands falling by themselves from the hilt of her bow, and she gasps and pants, feeling the sensation of air filling her lungs again. Something clutters beside her, and she stares at the golden leaf in the grass. 

“You found it!” the korok beams, its happy chiming filling the air as it runs up to Zelda. “Thank you so much!” 

“What was that?” Zelda chokes out, then grabs her bow again so Ghirahim could tell her. “What was that?”

Ghirahim is silent. She squints at him, but her attention is quickly pulled away by the korok. 

“Thank you, thank you!” it pulls on her sleeve like an under-acknowledged child. “Here’s your reward, as promised!” 

It extends a korok seed. Zelda can’t hold back a grimace. 

“It’s okay, I have enough of those,” she says, as gently as she can. “Keep it.” 

The korok visibly saddens, perplexed by her rejection. 

“But I want to give something to you as thanks!” it pleads. “But I don’t have anything else… oh. Well, the only other thing I have is this, so I guess you can keep it!” 

It points at the broche. Zelda blinks. 

“But I got it for you so you weren’t upset–“

“It’s fine, really!” the korok reassures. “I don’t need it that much.”

Zelda blinks again. She takes a deep breath through her nose, saying affirmations in her mind: “this wasn’t pointless, it was interesting research, I am at peace, I am a good person”, and since she doesn’t want making a korok cry on her conscious, she takes the trinket. 

“Thanks,” she mutters, clipping it to her cloak. 

“I’ll see you around!” the korok exclaims before poofing. She turns back to Ghirahim. 

“Fuck you,” she says, mostly for the emotional catharsis. 

“Well, at least you got introduced to helpful and informative Ghirahim,” he points out. 

“Yeah, so now I can be even more tormented by the fact of being stuck with you,” she scoffs back, untethering the bow from the dirt. 

“You got a nice little accessory out of that!” 

She glares down at the broche, not sure if it’s of any consolation. At least she now has one more decoration without the royal regalia on it. 

“Uh-huh,” she says, unimpressed. “Well, now that that detour is over, we can go back to more boring senseless walking.” 

“We can play more imaginary chess.”

“Sure. Go first.” 

“Pawn to E4.”

“...pawn to E5.”

Chapter Text

They arrive at Woodland stable a little past one p.m. Their final chess score is two to one, with Ghirahim insisting the one victory Zelda managed to snatch was simply a tactical concession on his part, because he felt bad for her. Their ensuing argument is cut short when Zelda notices the stable girl giving her a weird look. 

Zelda gets a bed, and goes near the pond so Ghirahim can assume his humanoid form without prying eyes asking questions. This is a well practiced routine, to the point where nobody questions where Ghirahim just appears from. Apparently, there have been enough whispering about him to earn him an entry in the rumor mill: Traysi theorizes he’s a former bandit who Zelda does business with in exchange for aiding his continued escape from vigilanties. Ghirahim says that if she ever gets her ambitions of a newspaper business off the ground, he’d be willing to give her an interview. 

There’s a traveler already at the cooking pot, so Zelda claims her spot in the queue and goes around the stable to try and sell the few leftover spicy elixirs she’s stashed. Ghirahim takes his time to hang out with the goats, pretending he’s conversing with them because he’s obsessed with fuelling strange speculation about himself, and he gains an audience of a few kids who do their best to pretend they’re not staring at him (they blatantly fail). 

Zelda goes to Beedle first: she never figured out how he’s seemingly able to be a stable every time you go looking for him. 

“How’s your injury?” he smiles.

“All better. The elixir really helped, it basically doesn’t hurt anymore,” Zelda hasn’t thought about her injury since drinking the healing extract. She’s good at what she does. 

Beedle is a good customer, he’ll buy just about anything since he travels everywhere. He tries to get Zelda to buy five frogs, which she declines as politely as she can. To avoid being on the receiving end of more hopeless marketing, she moves onto some of the other travelers. A few are familiar faces – not people she’d know by name, but definitely ones she’s seen around. She bets if Link was here he’d be able to strike conversation with everyone here as if they’re old friends, and they’d somehow reciprocate. She doesn’t understand how he does it, really, she gets he’s hard to dislike (she tried) (he used to put mud into her shoes when she pissed him off in lieu of starting arguments) (she failed) (he’s since moved onto replacing mud with snow), but he’s also quiet and a loner, and yet somehow he’s friends with the entire world.

Quite ironic, how she’s the louder one, she never shuts up, and yet she’s a spiky little urchin, or a durian, perhaps, and he’s so silent sometimes he doesn’t feel the need to notify anyone of his presence, and yet he’s more personable than any diplomat Zelda’s ever met. 

Pretty much the only person she’s ever heard of Link disliking was her father’s ghost, who kept being annoying about giving him a paraglider.

Zelda doesn’t think about her father much anymore. He used to be a kind of obsession, for the first few months after everything was over. She wanted to see him again, to yell at him, ask him something, anything at all, conduct experiments to satisfy the urge to understand the man that gave her life in the most fucked up way possible. This used to make her relationship with Link testy, possibly because the thing Ronan made up about them being half-siblings isn’t too far from the truth. She always felt Link satisfied her father’s need for a legacy, one Zelda couldn’t provide him, maybe through no fault of her own. Hyrule is matrilineal, after all. 

Nowadays, the dead are a dull ache at the back of Zelda’s skull. She’s less haunted and more a very old house, with a few ghost stories from a century ago. 

The other travelers mostly decline her offers of spicy elixirs. She ends up handing off her last one to a guy who’s been eating the blandest soup known to man for the past week, and is so desperate he intends to use the elixir as seasoning. She could tell him the elixir has a nasty after-taste of insect, but she needs the money more. 

By the time she’s done, it’s her turn on the pot, so she makes her way over with her travel pack, and starts setting up on the grass, laying out ingredients and organizing her work station.

Ghirahim joins her as she’s in the middle of crushing up bugs. 

Zelda’s tongue urges to say something, and she can only resist for about five minutes.

“You know,” she side-eyes Ghirahim. “I’ve been thinking about the Spirit Realm.”

“Have you?” he grins. Fuck alchemy, Zelda found something else to obsessively dissect, because fate is a fickle mistress and fate’s name is Ghirahim and she’s a dick.

“Yes,” Zelda ignores the smugness practically rolling off Ghirahim in waves. “I want to… try a few things. I need to go back.”

Ghirahim raises his eyebrows.

“Here?”

“Why not?” Zelda frowns. “Is it particularly dangerous here? Is this the home of some ancient spirit?”

“The Spirit World’s not the problem,” Ghirahim shakes his head. “I already told you it’s pretty safe, especially here: this place is always bustling with mortal energy, most things avoid places like this. In the mortal world, however, people usually get concerned when they see a teenage girl clutching a weapon and sitting with her eyes closed for hours, especially if she’s unresponsive. You might cause a real ruckus.”

“Well, it’d probably be worse to do this in the middle of nowhere…”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting,” Ghirahim says. “The safest way to do something like this is to get someone in the physical world to watch over you and ensure nobody messes with your temporarily soulless body. Someone you trust, that is.”

The last part complicates things. Zelda purses her lips.

“Who do I trust at this stable…?” she wonders aloud.

“Beedle?”

“What? No, that’s weird.”

“I like Beedle.”

“You like– okay, well, I didn’t know that, but nevermind, stop getting me sidetracked.”

“I’m not getting you sidetracked, I’m just pointing out that there’s nobody here that fits the bill in your eyes,” Ghirahim shrugs. “You’ll have to curb your enthusiasm for the time being, hotshot.”

With that, Ghirahim rises to his feet and leisurely walks off, grabbing an apple on his way. Zelda drills holes into his back, squinting with suspicion. She can’t come up with an argument to counter him, so she leaves the topic be, for now.

She turns back to her pot. Maybe there is some time to try out alchemy after all. 

***

At hour three of elixir brewing Zelda nearly bashes her skull in. The most potent (and expensive) elixirs use guts, but she doesn’t have any guts, plus she’s pretty sure her current business strategy is more profitable in the long-term, creating a stream of consistent repeat customers at less cost. It does, however, take forever to combine tens of insects with tens of teeth or horns or whatever else bony appendage she carries so much of. By now she’s pretty sure they’re just going to spend the night here, at the stable, which is mildly frustrating.

To make matters worse she can’t exactly find enough people to peddle this shit to – this is not exactly a good spot to sell chilly elixirs. Her spicy ones did pretty well in Rito Village, but here in the moderate climate nobody really cares about over or underheating. She’s tried to push the notion that it does get warmer up in Eldin, but anyone heading that way would rather just get fireproof elixirs right off the bat, and Zelda doesn’t have any ingredients for those and also that market is just too competitive to establish her turf. She’s used up some of her miscellaneous supplies to whip up some hasty and energizing ones, because those always do pretty well, but she’s ran out of materials for those quickly and buying more would only complicate the management of finances and probably wouldn’t result in a big enough profit anyway.

Damn Ghirahim, that needy bastard, making her rethink all her business plans. 

Just as she’s about to concede to her fate of having too many useless bottles of crap that she’d have to underprice to get rid of, her savior arrives. 

“So, is this finally moonshine or just more boring crap?”

She whips her head up with a little too much excitement. Ronan’s dark eyes are already half-lidded, visible signs of intoxication, which is impressive in a really pathetic way considering it’s barely five p.m. His brown skin shines under the orange rays of the sun that’s just about decided to start setting, his smile is relaxed and so are his clothes – he must’ve already booked a bed and made himself comfortable. His hands nurse a cup of some mysterious liquid, which is surely alcoholic. Zelda grins wider than she’s been able to muster the past few weeks. 

“Are you in the market for an ungodly amount of chilly elixirs?” she asks as he sits beside the pot. 

“Why, I was actually desperately looking for exactly that for weeks, how did you know?” he chuckles, examining one of the ready bottles Zelda set aside. Ronan’s always said his favorite part of Zelda was how hard she presses the cork in – it’s so nestled into the neck it’s only possible to open it with your teeth. “Are you gonna do mates’ rates?”

“If you buy enough,” Zelda shrugs.

“Your entire stock, please! How much?”

“A thousand.”

“By Farore’s ass!” Ronan bursts out laughing, but also bursts his wallet from his pocket. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a conman!”

Zelda takes the rupees without counting, even though she probably should, not even because Ronan is untrustworthy but because half the time he doesn’t even know his own financial status. That’s something Zelda can only deeply respect: such a nonchalant approach to life and simple blind faith that whatever happens, it’s probably going to be fine. She likes her men in equal parts easy and reckless.

“I’m flattered you think I have the charisma to pull that off,” she scoffs.

Ronan uncorks one of his newly acquired bottles and chugs the contents. 

“Pretty good chaser,” he compliments, or at least Zelda chooses to interpret that as a compliment and not mockery, considering that is definitely not the elixir’s intended use. “Tastes horrendous, just how I like it.”

Zelda lightly punches him in the shoulder for that, but both laugh soon after. She finishes up the last of the elixirs, bottling them and handing them off to their rightful owner. This is the first time Zelda’s ever seen Ronan surrounded by so many bottles that do not contain booze. 

“What brings you here?” he asks.

“I’m on a quest for some boots,” she shrugs. “But, that’s boring. What about you?”

“If you think my life’s more interesting than yours, you’ve got some messed up standards,” he smirks. “I’m on my way to Eldin. I’ve been wanting to soak in their hot springs for quite a while… I bet sitting in one of those with a lukewarm margarita is the best feeling in the world.”

“Have fun scrounging enough funds for a supply of fireproof elixirs, considering how much you just spent on my dogshit.”

“You’re heartless,” he pouts jokingly. “And you wonder why I think you’re a man-hating lesbian!” 

“Only one of those is true.”

“Holy shit, you’re not a lesbian?” he mockingly widens his eyes. “Why haven’t you told me sooner, we could’ve been making out by now!” 

Zelda snorts with laughter. Ronan is a disarming presence for her in many ways, for example if any other man, of any age, has hit on her, even as a joke, she’d be trying not to hurl in disgust at the mere idea, and yet Ronan can make things sound so light-hearted they barely mean anything. With the amount of joke-flirting he has initiated and her paranoid overthinking, it’s downright shocking she never seriously pondered the notion of whether he’s romantically inclined towards her, and yet miracles exist in this kingdom, apparently.

“How long are you staying here for?” he asks.

“Just the night,” she buries her fingers in the grass, now that she’s done with all her work. She’s scraped enough to probably afford the boots without longterm financial consequences, but she’ll probably still whine at Ghirahim until he goes out and finds more frogs and butterflies for her to make extracts from. The boots are for him, he might as well put some elbow grease in.

“Well, how early do you need to be up tomorrow?” he slyly extends the mug of unidentified substance towards her, and she scrunches her nose. 

“You know I don’t drink.”

She tried getting drunk once, with Ghirahim, because he’s a terrible influence. He somehow got a bottle of what was apparently nice port (she knows he stole it, but at the time she didn’t much care), and shared with her despite his inability to get drunk, just to introduce the concept of drinking as a social activity to her. It started out nice enough – she felt more at ease, a little more open and social than she usually is. And then a couple glasses turned into a few, and she stopped feeling in control of her own body, and became more and more confused until eventually she had a panic attack and hurled while Ghirahim patted her on the back. 

Needless to say, booze is not her style. She sometimes smokes lavender, or whatever Zoran herb blend she manages to get her hands on, but that should be understood as a mildly self-harming activity and not recreation. 

“Yes, I’m very sorry, I forgot your grandmother is a serious alcoholic,” he sighs, taking another sip on his own.

“I thought you said my mother suffers from alcoholism.”

“Why can’t it be both? It does run in families, doesn’t it,” he shrugs. 

“Does it run in your family?”

Something about Ronan also makes Zelda far too comfortable asking questions like this and not feel the immediate social awkwardness of prying. It’s the absence that’s surprising: usually when she’s being rude or otherwise inconsiderate it’s either something she immediately regrets or doubles down on. With Ronan it feels like she can just throw spaghetti at the wall and not mourn whatever doesn’t stick. 

“What, are you implying I have a problem? I’m hurt!” he giggles, and then takes another gulp, more substantial this time. He circles the rim with the pad of his finger, looks at the liquid and then at the still going fire. 

“I’m the first in the line of this particular vice,” he says after a short silence. “My parents work at the inn in Hateno. My dad’s from Lurelin, so he’s a fisherman by trade, but he moved for the sake of my mom. The legacy I’m building here – that’s entirely my own.”

There’s a melancholy in his voice Zelda doesn’t understand. Maybe he wants her to imagine her own explanation for it, just like he does with her stories.

“What about your family?” he raises his head to look at her. “Does your brother drink?”

“Link doesn’t,” she’s never seen him do it, at least. “I don’t think it’s on principle though, he’s just not that kind of guy. He’d rather go on a hike in the middle of nowhere than sit in a tavern.”

Ronan snorts. 

“Yeah, I can tell. You can know a lot about a man by what he carries in his pockets.”

Zelda wonders what a stranger might think about Ronan judging by the lifetime supply of chilly elixir. 

“Anyway, last time I saw you, you were researching something about amphibians,” last time Ronan saw Zelda was around a month ago, and this is true: she was very invested in classifying frogs. She gave up on that endeavor quickly, though, ragequit because of how slippery the critters were. “Did you find out anything interesting?”

“All my scientific relations with frogs and any of their associates are over,” Zelda decisively declares. “I did recently discover a new topic of inquiry, but it’s still in the preliminary stages of–”

Zelda cuts herself off. Cogs turn in her brain. Ronan frowns.

“It’s still…” she tries to continue, but her words are stilted, like there’s a subconscious urge to try and come off socially adjusted that’s badly masking whatever her mind is actually doing. “Oh Goddesses above, Ronan!”

She suddenly lights up and almost lunges towards Ronan, making him flinch. 

“I know you have no plans for tonight except get mildly to moderately drunk and pass out, but you can really help me out here, I promise there’s nothing difficult or even that demanding, please! I just need a few hours of your time, that’s all.”

Ronan blinks.

“Is this a date?” he grins.

***

Ghirahim seems really displeased with Zelda finding an impromptu solution to the problem he posed. When Zelda found him lounging by the pond, he groaned and was incredibly uncooperative. At first she thought it was just his usual laziness and sour attitude, but he’d been unusually un-vocal in his distaste, just silent eye-rolls and judgemental looks. She chose to ignore it for the time being, but took note of it nonetheless.

“I just have to sit and look?” Ronan asks, a bit perplexed by his role in all of this. 

“You don’t even really have to look,” Zelda is currently assuming position and looking for the best spot to ground Ghirahim, who isn’t even taking the opportunity his weapon form provides him to annoy Zelda with commentary only she is privy to. “Just sit around and make sure nobody tempers with me, or gets worried or something. You don’t get worried either. I’ll be unresponsive but I promise I’m fine.”

“Okay-y-y…” Ronan tentatively shrugs. He’s already been informed this might stretch to a couple hours, so he brought his supply of booze ahead, so he doesn’t have to leave Zelda’s side. 

Zelda closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, focuses on the sensation of pressing the bow further into the ground. She hasn’t given any kind of signal to Ghirahim, not wanting to come off even crazier than she already has to Ronan, she hopes he just gets it. 

He does. She feels that same floaty sensation, the urge to throw up is more subdued this time, and then there’s ground under her feet. She opens her eyes. 

She can see the stable, and every object surrounding it in that same shimmery-pale rendering, but none of the people. Ronan’s few bottles of alcohol are right there, but the man himself is missing, only the dream-like environmental storytelling of his person left behind.

The first thing Zelda does is check her pocket. It’s empty.

“Aw, damn,” she pats herself down. “Even regular objects don’t get transported?”

“Seeing as this is a representation of your spirit, yes, none of the objects you carry on your physical body pass through,” a familiar voice behind her chimes. “Really, even things like clothes are an abstraction and not the actual thing – the fact that you are not naked is not an inherent feature of the form you inhabit, but rather a projection of your own ideas of the social and cultural use of clothing, influenced by factors such as your preferences in expression and the importance you place on being clothed. If a hypothetical person felt zero shame or stigma from being nude, they would appear so in the Spirit World, although that is unrealistic considering public nudity being frowned upon is a somewhat universal social standard. By similar logic, if you were physically wearing an outfit you dislike, the Spirit World would instead project your subconscious view and presentation of yourself rather than whatever binds you in the mortal world.”

“Man, see, I was trying to bring a notebook and a pen to take notes on exactly this kind of shit!” Zelda sighs, turning to Ghirahim. “Why can’t you be this thorough in the physical plane?”

“Because, unlike for you mortals, for whom the divide between the spirit and the body can be somewhat accurately described as your physical body and your true self, my forms differ along different criteria,” he’s somehow more drab than Zelda remembers him being. He’s still wearing the sour expression from earlier, although it comes off more neutral in his metallic face. “Being a weapon spirit, my physicality is what stores more of my personality, due to being shaped by experiences, choices and actions I have taken in the physical world. In my spirit form, more of my ‘base programming’, so to speak, takes over. While for you the physical body is what’s more constrained by social and other expectations, for me it’s more the other way around.”

“Okay, but you’re more flat than you even were last time,” Zelda squints. “Are you infodumping as a passive aggressive gesture?”

“I struggle to understand how neutrality is more passive aggressive than my usual disposition,” he continues. “If you would like you could give me an order on how you would like me to present myself in our dialogue.”

“Oh my god, it totally is a passive aggressive gesture,” Zelda groans. “You’re un fucking believable. What the hell is this about? Why didn’t you want to come to the Spirit Realm?”

“My feelings on coming to the Spirit Realm are entirely neutral, and entirely not in the passive aggressive way,” he’s again floating slightly off the ground, but his pose is unflinching. “I did present the enticing appeal of being more informative in this form, and pointed out your scientific interests lie tangential to understanding this plane. It is entirely understandable and predictable you’d wish to return, and, considering your personality, you’d want to do it as soon as possible. I have nothing against aiding you in your research.”

“Then what’s wrong, why are you acting like this? Is it about Ronan?”

“I do not understand what ‘it’ is and what it has to do with Ronan.”

“You don’t like him, do you? Why?”

“I still struggle to see how my opinions on Ronan are relevant.”

“Because you’re acting weird and believe it or not, you’re my friend and I care about you. Why don’t you like Ronan?”

“I have nothing against Ronan as a person, I’m sure you’re already aware of my general attitudes towards vices such as alcohol, and to quench any possible doubt: I love drunkards of all shapes and sizes. I simply have… my reservations about your choice of having him watch over you while you embark on this non-corporeal journey.”

“What?” Zelda frowns. “Who the hell cares? All that’s required from him is sit there and assure any passer-by that I’m fine, if anything me being around him plays into my hand because most will assume I’m just drunk and passed out rather than anything more worrying. Why do you care?”

“My apologies, Zelda, but I find the question of why I care about your wellbeing to be insulting.”

“Oh for Nayru’s sake that’s not how I meant– okay, yes, fine, I know you care about me, that’s great and I appreciate it, what I was asking is why Ronan watching over me is a problem in your eyes.”

Ghirahim hesitates.

“I did not characterize it as a problem. I… would have preferred for it to be someone else.”

“Like who, exactly?” Zelda cocks an eyebrow.

“...Link.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s not a hot take, is it, because we both know if Link were here I’d ask him in a heartbeat, but he’s not, and you’ve already established that you know I’d want to explore this new discovery as soon as possible, so I do not see the issue in my decision making.”

Ghirahim doesn’t respond. His lip twitches, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“Also, can you please start speaking at least somewhat normally?” Zelda says, looking away. Frankly, this version of Ghirahim has been making her uneasy. “And that’s not an order, or anything. I’m asking as a friend.”

Ghirahim shuts his eyes, and then sighs. When he opens them his expression is a bit more exasperated. 

“Just… can we drop it, please? It’s been done, I haven’t opposed your decision, hell I didn’t even make a jeering comment. You wanted to ask some questions about this place, as I recall?”

Zelda squints, but decides to grant him this, just this once. She’s not stupid, she can tell there’s something more here, but she’ll have to revisit it at a later date. 

She takes a moment to examine her surroundings. It’s much like it was in the small forest: everything is just a tiny bit blurry, just enough to be disorienting at first glance. Interestingly, all the objects are present, but they don’t move. The cooking pot’s fire is unlit, despite Zelda remembering someone cooking dinner just ten minutes prior. The vegetables lie motionless nearby, as if abandoned. Ronan is definitely knocking back bottles in the physical world, but here they’re peacefully half-buried in the grass. The place where Zelda’s supposed to be is empty, the daisies not even squished. Ghirahim’s bow form is also absent. 

Zelda pats herself down again. Her pockets are completely empty, even stray lint is gone, apparently too physical of an object to be here. She remembers what Ghirahim said about clothes, and inspects her own for any changes: the tiny tear at the base of her glove is gone, which makes sense since she forgets about it half the time. Everything is largely the same, though, which probably means she dresses exactly as she wants to. Even her boots are as worn and full of holes as they are in reality, and she finds it amusing that her dishevelment is apparently a crucial part of her self-preception. There’s a small golden leaf near the button of her cloak.

“The broche!” she completely forgot about it since pinning it. “That’s a physical object, but it travelled here with me.”

She unpins it and turns it round in her hands. She drops it to the ground experimentally, and it lands in the grass.

“And it can interact with this world…” new hypothesis: formed. Moving on to testing.

She unbuttons her cloak and pulls it off, reaches it out in front of her and lets go. The moment it stops making contact with her fingers, it disappears entirely, as if never there. New hypothesis: disproven. Ghirahim snickers somewhere to her side.

“...How do I get it back?”

“Pretend you’re putting it on again,” Ghirahim suggests.

Zelda does exactly that, and suddenly there’s fabric hugging her shoulders again. 

“Okay, correct any wrong conclusions I come to,” she begins. “Since this form of mine is based on my self-perception, and the clothes are largely just a byproduct of my presentation, they’re not actually physical objects, but tied to me and cannot exist outside of me. I can also, seemingly, alter some parts of my appearance by… materializing my thoughts?”

“Well, you’re right about them not being physical objects,” Ghirahim nods. “But the other bits are only half true. You can alter your form as long as it’s in the general realm of your usual self-perception, you can’t just become a completely different person or try to appear as something outlandish. And, since this isn’t a material plane, you’re technically not materializing anything. But the practical principle is the same, yes.”

“What about the broche?” Zelda picks it back up, tries to examine it, but it’s a regular old trinket. 

“Colloquially they’re known as Spirit Objects,” Ghirahim explains. “They’re either crafted in the Spirit Realm, or crafted in the physical world by a spirit and given spiritual energy. It depends on the object, sometimes they have two different forms, just like us, sometimes they’re only spiritual, and sometimes they switch properties depending on which realm they’re in. This broche seems to be the latter.”

“Okay. Can I, er, enchant my pen and notebook in the same manner?”

“It’s not an enchantment, kid,” Ghirahim scoffs. “You’re asking me if you can give your notebook a soul.”

Zelda pouts. Maybe she can ask one of the koroks to make her a spirit notebook. They seem to find the time for broches, so why not? If only she knew more spirits who weren’t stupid little kids–

“Can you make Spirit Objects?” she snaps her head towards Ghirahim.

“No.”

She frowns and squints. She looks his metallic form up and down, remembers something Ghirahim said about his physicality and personality. 

“Can you change your form in the Spirit Realm?”

“No.”

Zelda folds her arms.

“Why did you lie to me about being unable to lie in spirit form?”

Ghirahim’s lips form a thin line, and he tenses, although barely visibly. He hesitates for a second with his answer.

“I only simplified the truth,” he says, carefully. “It is significantly more difficult for me to lie and withhold information like this.”

Zelda isn’t sure what exactly is confusing her, she can just tell something is off.

“Can I… Can I, as your master, allow you to be dishonest in this form?”

“No,” Ghirahim shakes his head. “My presentation in this form is beholden to my original purposes, with little room for changes.”

He stops for a moment, the corners of his mouth jerk, as if he’s not sure if to say the next part aloud.

“You’re not the first one who’s not been entirely satisfied with this form before.”

Guilt hits Zelda like a truck. Almost literally, it’s nauseating, she feels herself stumbling and has to take a second to regain her senses. Ghirahim seems unphased, and Zelda is unsure whether to take that as a kindness or salt in the wound. 

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’ll stop…” she doesn’t know how to phrase it. Conducting experiments on her loved ones? Treating her friends as specimen? “...prying.”

Ghirahim doesn’t comment. Zelda decides to drop literally everything relating to this line of inquiry and move on. 

“So, I’d want to bring my notebook here, but I can’t…” she reasons out loud, to try and retrack her train of thought. “Who can make Spirit Objects?”

“Plenty of spirits can,” Ghirahim shrugs. “And some Gods, obviously, but I doubt you’d like that option. Out of the spirits known to you, Koroks have the ability to do it.”

Zelda’s face sours.

“I have to ask a korok to get me a magical notebook?” she doesn’t like koroks, sue her! They’re annoying little children who keep chirping at her. The mere idea of the act of trying to explain what kind of favor she’d want from one gives her a headache. 

“Well, no, because I said they have the ability to. Theoretically,” Ghirahim lets himself smirk. “You really think those kids can make a Spirit Object consciously?”

Zelda groans. Of course, of course. Stupid, annoying little children.

“So, what, they can make them subconsciously?”

“Yes. You know korok seeds?”

Zelda buries her face in her hands to hide her scream of frustration. Of fucking course. Shit counts as a Spirit Object. Academic inquiry is so stupid sometimes. 

“So, who can make me a Spirit Object?” Zelda asks.

“I’m uncertain. I haven’t been here in a while, I’m unaware of the current status of which spirits lay dormant and which are active. It’s not like any of them particularly ever liked me.”

Zelda pouts. She chooses to interpret this as a temporary setback rather than a dead end. This just means exploring the new world under her non-corporeal feet goes hand in hand with a goal-oriented approach, which, in turn, means she can multitask. Means she will be as occupied as she possibly could be. 

“Okay,” Zelda pouts, and notices the sky has gotten a little more lilac than when she first got here. “How does time work? The same rate as the real world?”

“Somewhat,” Ghirahim looks towards the sky as well. The muted colors create a scape you cannot really see in the real world, like a cup of a watercolor painter that got left overnight, the fog of white gouache they used for highlights sinking to the bottom, waiting for you to stir it and stare at the unsettled swirling. “It’s slightly slower here.”

Zelda looks at the bottles of alcohol sitting where Ronan should be. They still haven’t moved. It’s ever stagnant, here.

“We should wrap up then,” Zelda says. “I still need a good night’s sleep. Take me back.”

This time, there’s no lurch. Zelda closes her eyes as if compelled by two invisible fingers gently tugging them down out of respect for her corpse. She feels as if waking up from a dream, blinking herself back to vision to find Ronan in front of her, splayed out on the grass and staring. 

“Why, hello,” he smirks. He’s clearly very, very drunk. Most of his bottles are empty, which is the first indication of the passage of time Zelda gets. His shirt is half open, and he’s scratching his chest. Zelda thinks about what Ghirahim said about Ronan, for a reason that alludes her. “Had a fun nap?”

Zelda sits up on her knees, carefully placing her bow down. She stretches her limbs, gone stiff after hours of the same position. 

“Yeah,” she says, dismissively. “Thanks. I think you should go to bed now.”

Ronan’s head rolls onto the grass, and he accidentally tips over the bottle he’s holding, some of its contents spilling on him. 

“I think I’ll crash here,” he mumbles. “Feel free to join.”

Zelda does exactly that with Link. They only sleep in beds in settlements, where staying at an inn means staying downstairs from your friend. In the larger wild, and the stables, they prefer the grass tickling their faces, laying on two sides of the same campfire. She likes the smell of burning coal hitting her nostrils as she drifts off. She prefers it to a soft bed, even.

“No,” Zelda says, standing up. “I already paid for a spot inside, anyway.”

Chapter Text

Zelda wakes up at break of dawn, and leaves immediately, without checking if Ronan did end up in a bed or not. 

She packs her things as quietly as possible, says curt goodbyes to the stable boy who’s half-asleep because his shift is coming to an end, and sets off with a brisk walk.

It’s not uncommon for her to leave unceremoniously, in general: most her friends, perhaps bar Link, have had the pleasure of finding that she vanished overnight. It honestly depends on the friend, whether she feels bad or not. 

The residents of Karariko Village are the most understanding. A guard or another usually spots her, and passes the word on. They never bring it up when she returns, they’re just happy to see her. Sometimes she wonders if Impa takes it personally: if she assumes it’s because Zelda cannot bear to see her like this, aged like fine wine, meanwhile Zelda is as if she’s been fermenting in amber. Nowadays, Zelda tries not to ponder this question, because she can’t really answer it herself.

The Gorons just don’t mind. They are a people that tend to chalk up a lot of things to cultural differences, or perhaps they simply don’t bother trying to comprehend the Hylian mind. They live in their own world, in their own volcano, and that has the benefit of the rules being self-imposing. If you don’t treat Death Mountain with respect, it will prove to you why it has Death in the name. Everything else is secondary. If you can leave the mountain unscathed, that’s worthy of respect enough. 

Riju has better things to worry about, than whatever Zelda is doing with her time. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t worry, of course, because she is still a young girl, and having friends who aren’t servants is a privilege every Gerudo Chief seeks, even if some are robbed of it prematurely. Riju doesn’t take it personally. She knows a big part of friendship is belief, belief they care about you as much as you do about them, and belief they are fine, even if they can’t always be there to prove it. Riju cherishes belief a lot, because that’s what loss does, to some people.

Zelda knows the Rito regard her with a certain pity. She feels the most like a child, around them, taken under literal and proverbial wings, and yet Teba also values independence. They would never hold her back, even if they are sad to see her go. It’s a melancholy they’re collectively used to, the melancholy of a fledgling leaving the nest, jumping off a cliff to learn how to fly. Despite how reckless, irresponsible, or tragic the action is, they must permit it, because that’s the only way the young can mature into the elder watching their children leap.

Sidon is probably the worst to abandon out of all. He, sadly, is used to seeing princesses, ex or not, vanish. Zelda still does it, because Zora’s Domain can be the most painful place to prolong her stay at, but she does it through bile. She’s grown close to him since they managed to bridge the awkward gap of feeling too raw to bring up the unspoken. They speak of nothings, now, which is pure bliss. She imagines he thinks about it, when he wakes up and finds her gone. She would, were she in his place. He never brings it up, but she cannot help it. She is a stray, at heart, even though she knows there are people who want her to stay. 

Ronan is strange to think about, in this context. They run into each other on occasion, not on purpose, so their partings are similarly meaningless. And yet, Zelda still has to contend with the fact that she considers him a friend, and he probably does, as well. Has to doesn’t mean does, however, so Zelda leaves at the break of dawn, without checking if he ever made his way to a bed. 

The first few hours of her walk are uneventful, as Ghirahim provides idle noise in the form of informing her of any enemies nearby. Perhaps, he knows she might be too consumed by her thoughts, if he doesn’t speak, despite not being spoken to. Perhaps he just wants to be helpful today. Zelda doesn’t care either way, because the brief words from her weapon cannot let her thoughts stray from the scenery too much. 

“We’re pretty close,” she says, absentmindedly, one of the rare instances she offers up small talk sincerely.

“Yes!” Ghirahim perks up. He’s been reminded of the fact that this journey is about him, which goes straight to his head, which means it goes straight to his ego. For once, Zelda doesn’t mind. She likes the distraction. “I can already feel, picture those beautiful leather babies on my feet!”

Zelda comes close enough to Zorana to notice that it’s been raining heavily in that region. She notices, because half the road is flooded. A few rocks peek out to promise a more or less safe passage, even if more difficult than otherwise.

She considers just wading the shallow water, but then remembers that her own boots are in a condition only slightly above actual donkey shit, and walking in wet socks for the rest of the day would be too uncomfortable.

She prepares with uncharacteristic optimism, and then makes the first jump.

“What are you going to do with the boots?” Zelda asks, jumping to the next rock. “Can you even wear normal clothes while you’re in weapon form?”

“Of course not, let’s not be silly here,” Ghirahim muses, clearly anticipating the moment she falls into the water to mock her relentlessly. “I don’t have a pocket dimension for my trinkets or anything. It’s going to be for special occasions!” 

“What special occasions?” she almost slips, but catches her balance last moment. “Nothing ever happens.”

“For when Link gets invited to another wedding,” Ghirahim suggests. “And brings you as plus one, and you bring me as plus one.”

“Plus ones aren’t allowed plus ones.”

“Even better! There’s the special occasion: crashing a wedding.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t fully count as crashing,” Zelda reels it back in, not willing to concede a loss, as if they’re just playing imaginary chess again. “If you’re friends with both me and Link, you’re not really crashing, since you’re not even human either.”

“What, am I meant to scout all of Hyrule for random weddings to show up to?” Ghirahim sounds frustrated, and Zelda isn’t sure if it’s at her line of reasoning or the fact that she nearly made it to the end of the giant puddle unscathed and with dry socks. “There’s not enough infrastructure to exploit here!”

Zelda giggles.

“Am I meant to understand I underestimated your capacity for malicious mischief?” she eyes the next target of her jump, and her feet prepare to take off. “Why, I thought you’d be all powerful and dedicated enough to–”

Then, something in the corner of Zelda’s eye catches her attention.

Her wet sole slips on the precarious rock, and she falls on her ass right into the water.

“Wow,” Ghirahim whistles. “Fantastic performance, your majesty.”

For the first time in ages, Zelda hears ‘your majesty’ and doesn’t feel deeply hurt, and yet that’s not what she fixates on. She’s staring to her left, squinting her eyes, as if she’s not soaking up ice cold liquid by the second.

“Did you see that?” she asks.

“What?” Ghirahim sounds genuinely confused.

“There was something in the bushes.”

“There are no enemies in the nearest–” Ghirahim pauses, and then changes his demeanor. “Do you think it’s a Yiga?”

“No, no, what–” Zelda shakes her head, and finally stands up. She doesn’t move, though, and her boots are still being flooded, and she doesn’t care. “There was a light.”

“What?”

It’s midday, by now, so of course the entire world is filled with blinding light. That is what some people might call “the sun”.

“Over by the bushes,” Zelda has her eyes trained on one spot. “It was sparkling.”

Ghirahim loses his speech for a solid second.

“Sparkling?” he almost stutters. “Zelda, come on now–”

“Ghirahim,” she steps out of the water, still wet, still cold, but it’s as if none of it matters. “I need you to take me to the spirit realm.”

Ghirahim loses his speech for a solid two seconds.

“Spirit realm?” he can only spit out.

“Yes!” she takes him out of the holster, looks directly through him. “Look, I’ve never seen anything like that before! It must be something not from this plane.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just imagine something?”

“No!” she plants him into the dirt. “Come on, I only see this after I found out about the spirit realm and travelled to it? It’s a sign!”

She’s almost frenzied with the way she clenches the weapon. 

“Sign? What the hell happened to you?” Ghirahim tries to chuckle, even though it betrays a nervousness. “I thought you hated religion and needless symbolism! You’re a woman of science, are you not? Come on now–”

“Ghirahim,” Zelda is steady with her voice. “I know what I saw. Even if I hate religion, spirituality, call it whatever you want, I cannot deny it exists. It is a fact of who I am, I am the maiden. And something is calling to me.”

Her hands shake.

“I’m not–” she inhales sharply. “I’m not betraying my principles. If it is Hylia, I promise, I will sock her in her stupid face if she ever tries to recruit me for another stupid scheme to degrade myself and–”

She lowers herself slowly, to her knees.

“I just… I need to know what it was.”

There is one reality that is inescapable: even when your mother is dead, either literally or metaphorically, she still haunts you. There’s nothing more tempting than the gentle whisper of purpose. 

Ghirahim doesn’t respond, for a while. Zelda is too lost in the allure of a something to ponder how he’s feeling.

“First, move somewhere safer,” he finally says, as evenly as he can. “Out of sight.”

Zelda doesn’t negotiate further. She stands up, and wordlessly finds a cave. There’s one by the hillside leading to Upland Zorana, so she halfheartedly barricades the entrance with a few rocks, tucks her own body into a corner, and slumps against the cold wall.

“No tricks,” Zelda finds herself saying, without considering whether it has hurtful implications. She isn’t sure why her body felt the need to say that, maybe it’s because she’s always had trouble with both gauging and conveying the seriousness of the situation to Ghirahim. Maybe she’s scared he’ll make a joke, and she won’t laugh. Maybe she’s more scared of herself, for not laughing, than of him, for making a joke. 

“Okay,” Ghirahim responds, quiet and resigned and defeated.

Zelda closes her eyes, seeing the flickering light behind her eyelids.

When she opens her eyes again, she doesn’t even look around for Ghirahim. She just bolts, out of the cave, back into the opening, to the very spot that caught her eye. She jumps over the water effortlessly, in one leap. She arrives at the bush, and all but rips it off its roots. 

She finds nothing. She remembers what one of her many religious tutors told her:

“The Goddess values tenacity. If your first attempt doesn’t bear fruit, try again. You must always believe your next try will heed results. That is what faith is all about.”

It is weird, that she’s remembering his words right now. She hated him all her childhood, right until he had to retire after a horse riding accident. When she was informed of this, she was happy, because it meant she wouldn’t have to do her homework for him that week, which outraged her father, because it was a horrible thing, to rejoice at another’s suffering, especially for a maiden. What her father missed was that she wasn’t a maiden, she was eight.

Zelda never before believed a single word that tutor said, because science isn’t about believing in the outcome, it’s about being open to any result. And yet, right now, she’s tearing open the brush in search of a flickering spark she saw in the corner of her eye. 

“...Zelda?”

Ghirahim’s voice comes meekly from behind. She’s never noticed before how much more pronounced the metallic chiming in his voice is in this world. She swats a branch away and moves further into the brush. 

“Zelda, I’m really not sure what you saw, but it’s more likely that the water caught the light in a weird way, or something–”

“Can you scan the area?” she asks.

There’s a silence that follows the question. She continues flickering her gaze between dull greenery. 

“No, I cannot,” Ghirahim finally says.

“What?” that distracts her momentarily, and she turns around to finally look at him, at his neutral, steel expression. There’s still an urge in the corner of her eye, for her to turn away again. 

“I’m sorry, I cannot scan surrounding areas in the spirit world,” his tone sounds sincerely sorrowful  – or does it? She still cannot tell, in this world, whether he’s expressing emotion or she’s just projecting. She’s too good at projecting to trust her judgments. “Not for spirits, not for enemies.”

Zelda furrows her brows, and ceases looking at him, to continue her search. 

She wades through leaves, checking behind trees and rocks. She wonders if this is what korok hunting is – from what Link told her, it looks similarly stupid. She’d be mad if it turned out to be just a korok. 

In full honesty, though, as that is what is most appreciated in this realm, she doesn’t think, even for a second, that it was a korok. She barely thinks at all – a blood smelling shark, a police hound that smelled cocaine. A Victorian orphan with a promise of bread. A cyborg with an inkling of humanity. 

She only thinks that, maybe, it wasn’t all lost. Maybe, she was just seventeen, and there was still time. 

She gets inane enough to start checking the grass. If Ghirahim says anything, she doesn’t hear it. She’s plastered on the ground, fingers boring into dirt, eyeballs tickling grassblades, and then she briefly lifts her head, and she sees it:

Its face is wood.

It’s a stupid thing to note, off the bat, because it tells her nothing informative about the creature (question mark) inches away from her nose. 

Its face is also upside down. That may be because it is, also, upside down. It hangs from a tree, its limbs a single string with wooden discs slotted on, currently being pulled down by gravity, collecting near the base of its legs. Its eyes are little flames with no holes to slot into, so they simply float in front of the solid plate – it has no nose, and Zelda cannot find a mouth. 

It’s covered in moth and straw, its clothes seemingly just dried plants hanging off its frame. For a second Zelda forgets herself, and her skepticism tries to kick away her startled fear, assuming it must be a doll, a scarecrow of some kind, perhaps, a creepy thing of the scenery, nothing more. 

Then the flames go out for a second, as if a blink, and the faceplate tilts.

That’s when it all hits her – fear, surprise, apprehension, guilt, shame, determination – it’s a nauseating cocktail of emotions that deposits itself in her limbs like bricks, much like weights shackled to her ankles before being thrown into a river to drown. 

She doesn’t even know what happens. She thinks she probably screamed, but she honestly cannot tell – it’s an explosion of something she cannot comprehend, she’s frozen for several seconds as it washed over everyone, as sounds become images and images become sounds. She’s at the epicentre, of something she cannot quite tell, substances cease to be chemistry, so it’s out of her domain of knowledge, the creature – she’s sure it’s a creature, though who made it alludes her – rattles, shakes like a leaf in the wind, flies off the tree by the sheer force of the blast. 

Then, suddenly, Zelda’s own body (god fucking dammit, it’s not a body, is it? It’s a spirit) lurches forward, and her own feet, down to their god forsaken boots full of holes and tears, carry her somewhere, somewhere her brain cannot catch up to. She just runs, without discerning a direction, without realizing what’s going on, without a single thought. It’s all pure feeling, her heart is about to rip open her ribcage and cannibalize the rest of the flesh.

And, as suddenly as she started moving, she collapses – the grass tickles her face as she thuds against the ground. She just lays there and pants, for a while, as she recovers from what felt like the full, concentrated power of the sun targeting her point blank. She squeezes her eyelids shut, opens them again, tries to comprehend a single thing, tries to get her mind to work beyond the sheer panic response. 

Once she finally reaches a state calm enough where she can control her limbs again, she slowly, painfully sits up. She looks back, expecting Ghirahim to have his steel expression betray an underlying worry a meter away from her, she opens her mouth to ask what the fuck just happened. She immediately shuts her lips tight in a silent horror.

Ghirahim is nowhere to be seen. She blinks a few times, as if this is just a setback of her vision. It doesn’t help.

She frantically looks around: she has no idea where she is. She’s surrounded by trees, normal looking enough to be just about anywhere in Hyrule. There’s not a soul to be spotted anywhere.

She gulps, loud enough to hear it rattle against the inside of her eardrums.

She’s fucked.