Disclaimer: I don't own Legend of Zelda, obviously.
He was glad for his wolf body when he was tracking down things that would otherwise be indecipherable to him as a human. When tracking down the children, he memorized their scent easily. They smelled of the spices their parents used, and of the rivers and earth they played in. When trying to track Ilia, he merely had to follow the smell of sweet hay mixed with wildflowers. He really liked that scent. Both scents came on strong because of his improved nose, but they kept him as he ran across the landscape with only scraps of hope for better days left.
For all the convenience that was his ability, it could be troublesome when tracking other things. Tracing the scent of what seemed to be a reekfish larger than life was a task that couldn't get done fast enough, and trying to find that medicine-soaked wooden statue was almost agonizing. He was very happy to forget those scents once he turned human again.
But something he's never forgotten is the scent of a Poe. At first it hadn't smelled like much of anything; a bit like the dust floating in an old library. He'd thought his job would be considerably easy. But as he'd followed the trail through the massive coliseum his chest had begun to feel more constricted. The back of his throat became so dry that he was half to gagging, and his body shuddered involuntarily.
And then his brain had started to process what he was smelling. The smell of death. Not simply how a dead person or a tomb smells, but how the presence of Death itself smelt as well. Like the passing of a person weighing on one's heart, the suffocation of a room where you are alone with a person lingering on their last leg of life with ragged breaths, the smell of sterile sheets and too many years gone by with regret and despair. Not only that, but also anger, and evil. Each sniff burned down his esophagus and choked his lungs, gnawing at his mind, whispering of wicked intent and a hatred so deep that he shivered violently as he grew nearer to to each one, his hero's soul revolted.
Even years after those days are gone, his human form long since restored and all other scents banished from his memory, he isn't been able to forget it. It still shocks him that such a hideous thing could have existed, could have wandered through the lands as people lived, through the streets or under the the feet of those who slept in Hyrule.
His only solace for the days when his thoughts wander to the smell is in the light scents of Ordon. Those are the days he spends all his time outside.
Those are also the days when he spends almost all his time alone.
A/N: The Poe hunts in Twilight Princess were decidedly my favorite thing to do (aside the one involving getting to that ledge near Lake Hylia only to discover that the sun was rising just as you got to the top). The Arbiter's Grounds was a fascinating level that allows for a lot of speculation about the land's past, and though probably one of the more "frightening" parts of the game, I enjoyed the hunts there. But I always wondered what the heck a Poe would smell like, and it just seemed to be too simple to just leave it at the smell of a rotting corpse. Poes in Ocarina of Time struck me as more comical than anything. These four Poes in Twilight Princess were creepier. And thus you have the speculative piece of writing above you!
Thank you for reading~.