A middle-aged woman trails her shadow across a well-trodden path. She notices that the tracks upon the path, which zigzag and intertwine in hundreds of preserved impressions, were produced of horses. The trip has been a tedious one, and the woman, not being of horseman ilk, wishes for the first time in her life that she were.
Above her, a great kargarok croaks his terrible, monosyllabic refrain. He has been following her tirelessly for hours now.
In crossing Hyrule Field on foot, the woman, who witnessed the birth of the new day's sun, now despairs at the sharp redness of the sun in its death throes. She worries not for the sun's departure, for it is known, like the monster from the desert whose very presence is indelible, and whose name is so feared as to be lost to all but the most knowing of tongues - it will rise again. She knows this. What truly antagonizes her is the prospect of the final leg of her journey: the forest.
There is a low outcropping of white rock that serves as the southern border of the field. The immediate center of the rock is cleared away, either by explosive or natural erosion. It is there her path becomes the entrance of Faron Woods, a forest comprising much of the southernmost portion of Hyrule. Inexplicable dangers lie ahead, in the forest she gazes upon, yet with only rapier and an irrepressible will must she tackle these dangers. And with haste, for her destination, which lies below Ordon Village at the foot of Hawk Grass Mountain, is a great distance still. She will traverse, north to south, through the entirety of the luxuriant forest—and she will do this alone. Given the sun's present location, much of this jaunt must also be achieved by moonlight.
She is not long in dwelling at the entrance of the forest. She gathers her impressive courage, attires herself in her frayed, off-white yeti-pelt hood and dashes into the forest.
The dusk sun in Faron Woods feeds through the dense canopy of massive trees, blanching the grasses with mottles of brilliant white. The stones strewn about the forest sparkle with iridescence under the fading sunlight. The raven-haired woman is curiously drawn to the singularity of her surroundings: the sheer height of the canopy, the massiveness of the trees themselves (with plumed crowns of impossible diameter), the ubiquitous hues of green—above and below—which give the forest a salubrious appearance, and the aged yet eternally fecund smell that is carried on the visible air, bearing down upon her.
The beauty so enthralls her that, for a few steps, the woman's pace slackens. A smile carves through foreign area in her face. In this instant, she snaps out of her daze; the smile served as the alarm. She does not normally smile. It is not that she possesses a melancholic disposition, nor is she sullen. The fact that she rarely smiles hinges plainly on her upbringing as the daughter of an errant knight errant who raised her to be a stoic, contemplative warrior.
The warrior becomes the worrier, as the cause of her smile manifests within her as fear. She recalls the myths of her youth, the bedside stories pertaining to deep, lost forests of antiquity, and what became of those who couldn't escape before the man in the moon lit his beacon. Luckily, the sun still has an hour of visibility, or so she believes. She rinses her face with water from her gourd, fingers her eyes to see that they maintain the complexity of a human's, rubs her shins to ascertain the shapeliness of her muscles and sinew and begins to dash.
A gentle kiss of wind brushes the woman's cheek as she enters a cave passage. The cave is black as starless night, and her lantern is without yellow chu oil. She is ostensibly running blind, blindly over damp dirt and slippery rock. Her pace is rabbitlike when something adhesive clings to her legs and left arm, halting her process. She unsheathes her rapier and slices the unknown material, freeing herself. She continues with rapier at the ready. Finally, the exit comes into view from a distance. Her calm is interrupted by the sound of breaking ceramic, which resounds keenly in her left ear. She focuses, through the gloom, at the location from which she believes the sound came. Her eyes squint at what moves across the ceiling of the cave, but all she can perceive is an odd, circular glint reflecting multiple times. There is caution as the specter is out of sword range. The woman knows she is at a disadvantage. She turns face and hastens to the exit. She meets no further impediments.
Once beyond the cave the woman faces the exit with sword in hand. Her breathing is controlled. There is a scurrying sound and two large, bloodthirsty rats run past her. They squeak as if laughing at her disquiet. The woman is tickled by their presence. She then checks her left wrist. There is a gauzy but strong thread of the palest green attached. Yanking at the thread, she manages to pry her arm from the material; but it requires the whole of her strength, and she is very fatigued. She uses her rapier to sever the strands attached to her legs. Now clean, she will take the incoming landscape at a pace beneficial to rebuilding her wind.
As the land descends, a mauve fog nearly envelops the woman. She retreats a couple steps to higher ground. There is a tremor that passes through her body, which discombobulates her senses, inverting her directions. With each additional cough, the feeling seems to grow in intensity. The woman rests upon a cloudlike stone and surveys her surroundings. She notices that many of the trees in this part of the forest are dark and desiccated. The air is pungent and suffocating, with its intangible weight seemingly bearing down upon her every pore. She needs to escape, but the toxic fog stretches the length of the invisible forest floor. Standing apart from the fog, she can still feel it biting at her equilibrium. The immediacy for action is upon her, but still she cannot locate a safe passage through. Bracing herself, she tries to cut through the fog. Foreseeably, due to her distorted sense of direction, she does not penetrate much before she is lost. The pain dealt by the poison fog is immense. It wells up in her brain and she succumbs to unconsciousness.
Black fingernails grip at her lifeless body. She is hoisted by a single indigo hand and taken clear through the fog to a grassy bank that leads to a cave marked by dual pillared lamps. Placed before the cave, the woman is shaken by big, furry hands. The hands also compress the woman's chest in a steady motion to encourage respiration. She does not wake. Frantic, the hands rummage through the woman's goatskin pouch. A bottle is unstopped. Parting the woman's mouth, the hands pour an orange mélange of chunky liquid down her throat. The large hands then rest upon the ground, as there are no remaining options.
The inquiring calls of a distant owl awaken the drowsy woman. Her vision is cloudy, but she makes out the faintest of stars, as well as two black walls arching toward each other, leaving only the slightest vertical slit of the visible night sky. The woman notices that her yeti pelt hood has been bereft of her person. She locates it suspended upon a thin branch out of her reach. Wondering why she rests so cozily without it, she discovers that she is wrapped snugly in a fuzzy blanket of white. She knows she should examine the circumstances surrounding her, but the relaxation and the lingering toxins gain the upper hand. She slumbers once more.
When she wakes the second time, she is fully energized and eager to finish her journey. There is a decidedly fishy smell on the air. To her shock, she detects that her furry covering seems to be rumbling. She flips to her feet and makes a spinning motion to draw her rapier, but the blade is not there. When she turns to face her blanket, she finds a giant humanoid of thick white fur sitting Indian-style upon the dirt. He is facing away from her and sits nearly twice her standing height.
The movement startles the creature and he turns his head to the woman. He says, "Oh, good! Yetu think Ash-Ash go to dreamland for good. Me worry sick!" Yetu's rotund tail is covered in circular-plated shields. The same overlapping fur shields heavily insulate Yetu's muscular chest. This natural muscle runs through his arms and legs. An ostentatious green mohawk is crested upon his head, somewhat hiding his large and bulbous eyes of a morning shade of aquamarine. His mouth is wide and smeared with the grease of a cooked fish. The protruding canine teeth of his plate-sized bottom jaw render his grin rather intimidating.
"What are you doing here, huh?" the woman asks with genuine interest.
"Ash-Ash not hear? Yetu now part of group, yes."
The woman's eyes widen. She walks to the front of Yetu and says, "You're a member of the Resistance, yeah?"
Yetu smiles widely and his eyes shine like rupees. He claps his hands and states, "Count say, 'Yetu, you be big-big and more strong than boulder-man. I need you, yes-yes, for special thing."
"The Count? Will he be attending tonight's meeting?"
"No think so."
"Predictable, yeah," the woman says as she examines Yetu's fire and the growing pile of catfish bones between his knees. She kneels next to the fire, warms her hands above the flames and continues, "It's been a long time since last we convened. The uncertainty of this summons, along with the length of the journey, must've drained me. I must've made a foolish decision somewhere, yeah. I was very tired. Very tired. I'm sorry to've troubled you, Yetu, good sir."
"Yetu find you in fog. You should no go in fog. Fog bad for man. It make him sleep for good-good. But Yetu strong. And," measuring with his hand, the height of the smoke, he continues, "Yetu's head stand above the bad."
The woman directs her attention toward her suspended yeti pelt. Yetu, noticing her lack of a response, turns to face her. He sees what attracts her focus and says, "Why Ash-Ash still wear yeti skin?"
Standing with back turned and arms akimbo, the woman responds, "It's the only accouterment I possess that serves as both an article of warmth and a deterrent for enemy attack. I know how you must feel, but take solace, yeah, in the fact that I've used that pelt for two decades now. It was a gift from my father and therefore I cherish it."
Yetu stands up and ambles past the impatient woman. He smiles at her and pulls the hood from the protuberant, old root of a dead tree which once sprouted through the mountaintop. Holding the pelt vertically with both hands, he tears it in half. He then tears the halves into quarters.
The woman is enraged, but she has no weapon. And without time to prepare, the natural tools of man pale greatly to those of the yeti. It must also be stated that the woman does not wish to engage an ally she has known since his birth to two yeti she dedicated a good part of her youth to befriending.
The yeti walks a few steps to the rope bridge that connects Faron Woods to Ordon. Below there is a deep gorge from which only blackness is visible. Yetu peers into the canyon, then glances back at the incoming woman. Casually, he tosses the tatters of yeti pelt into the pit and faces the woman. She is now standing beside him.
"That was a very foolish thing to do, yeah," she says, watching the white hood float into the darkness.
Yetu stands erect. A look of vehemence deepens his usually jovial expression. He beats his chest and speaks, "There too few us left to wear skin of yeti and think not the pain caused!"
The woman is taken aback by the depth and passion of Yetu's succinct proclamation. She did not think him capable of such eloquence, such keen sense of loss. It stabs her heart, yet she must not soften and yield to Yetu's rash actions. It would not befit her character, and it is not the response the situation requires.
Staying firm, the woman says, "It is true what you say. Ideally, every creature would keep to itself, never harming other races in any way, but this is fallacy. In the natural world there are predators and there are prey, and one's position on either side of the spectrum is never etched in stone. Take for example the Gerudo dragonfly. It is eaten by the blue frog, which in turn is eaten by the Hylian loach, which is then plucked up by the hawk. Every creature depends on others to survive. You yourself wear a light sheen around your mouth from the Ordon catfish you angled. How does my wearing a yeti pelt differentiate from your consumption of a catfish? You caught and slaughtered your fish, while my father only found the yeti corpse already in a state of decay. At that time, Snowpeak was suffering a great famine, and my father gathered the yeti solely for research, yeah. With his studies completed, he made a hood out of the yeti to preserve his memory of the specimen in a way he believed was a gesture of honor. Whether or not it was is up to you."
Yetu's stern face slowly eases back to the normal false grin created by his immense teeth. He thrice pats the woman's head and articulates, seeming on the verge of tears, "Yetu not know Ash-Ash dad care about yeti."
"My father was once a knight of Castle Town. Then when the chivalry descended into ineptitude, he suffered a disagreement with his superiors regarding the way the knights were being led. He immediately discharged himself, leaving his honor intact. The knights subsequently became a mere mockery of their former status. The name of the Hyrule knight became jeopardized when a superior ordered the slaughter of an innocent band of bulblins in the land west of Hyrule Gorge. Firstly, my father didn't agree with killing what he perceived as a non-threat. And he really didn't believe in traveling outside Hyrule's boundaries to do so. He would never stoop to the act of slaying the sick or wounded of any race, yeah."
Yetu lifts the woman from her feet and clasps her in an iron embrace. Holding her in his big indigo hands, he moves her away from his chest to attain eye contact. He cries, "Yetu sorry! Yetu not mean to trash Ash-Ash nice dad's gift."
"It's o-okay," the woman whispers through strained breaths, "the hood was improper to wear in a land inhabited by yeti. I don't recollect ever receiving compliments from a yeti, only distant looks of intrigue followed by grimaces. It was time, yeah, for the disposal of the hood. In my delegated position as Castle Town representative of the yeti, I should never have worn that pelt, nope."
The yeti gently places the woman back on her feet. She inhales deeply as his hands unclench her diaphragm. When she gains her breath she notices Yetu's shoulders are hanging oddly. She asks him what is wrong and he responds, "It okay. Yetu just feel he act too rash when Ash-Ash been his friend for long time."
"Since the day your mother gave birth to you and I first peered into those big beautiful blues," the woman says, gripping the yeti's forearm for sincerity.
Yetu and the raven-haired woman share a moment of friendship under the moonless sky. A sand cicada sings loudly from the pit below the bridge. It's odd presence is unnoticed by the two.
When Yetu notices the woman grasping for her rapier, he feels around at the spot on the ground where his friend had lain in her convalescence. He touches upon her sheathed blade, which she takes from him and attaches to her waist. The woman then corrects the wrinkles in her ribbed grey sweater and brushes the dirt from her maroon trousers. She roves over to the spot near the fish bones and locates her armor. Yetu never separated her from her boots, but her gauntlets, boots and plackart were all removed to aid breathing. They are stacked in a heap, sparkling with a silvery luster despite the absence of any light except the dying flame on which Yetu blackened his fish. The woman arrays herself with the ornate, reflective pieces. She is the image of health and strength. After the woman secures the remaining pieces to her person, she pulls her ponytail tight. She is ready to press onward.
Yetu quells the fire with his bare right sole. He brushes his hand through his green mohawk causing it to stiffen and stand. Taking the fish bones in hand, he dumps them into the gorge. The woman peers into the blackness underneath the bridge and then meets the gaze of Yetu who, with his left hand, gestures for the woman to lead.
They cross the bridge one at a time to prevent certain disaster. The difference in weight must not be overlooked; the slight weight of a woman compared to the hulking mass of the yeti. As the woman crosses, a gale stirs the bridge so violently that Ashei has to grip the ropes to steady herself. She then makes it safely across. Yetu's passage occurs uneventfully.
The woman has made it to Ordon. The village is but a short walk up the trail. She thinks she already hears the gentle lapping of a pond. Yetu can smell pumpkins.