Two hooded figures emerged from the brush, their bodies bundled in cloaks and their faces masked with dark bandanas. Traveling among the trees in the dead of night, the pair was almost invisible.
They stopped at a small patch of dirt on even ground. The shorter of the two slumped down onto the ground with exhaustion, and the taller knelt to start a fire in between them with a flint and steel.
The shorter one pulled back her hood to make way for her thick blonde hair, which fell back and draped along her shoulders. Resting one hand on her bent knee, she pulled her bandana off her face and dropped it in the dirt, taking a deep breath of the cold forest air.
The fire in the pit sparked to life. The taller one focused on tending it while the girl slid closer to the pit to warm up. She kept one hand pressed tightly against her forearm- her sleeve was torn there, and blood seeped into the cloth from a wound underneath. In spite of the searing pain, her pride was too strong to make mention of it. But she could only do so much to hide the blood trickling out from between her fingers, and before long her companion took notice of it, brow immediately furrowing with concern.
The taller figure pulled back her own hood and moved closer to the girl to kneel in the dirt beside her, gently moving her hand aside to inspect the wound.
Impa. One of the last of her tribe, and the sworn protector of the princess since her birth. The two were bound by duty rather than blood, but even still, they were the only real family either had ever known.
She traced two fingers along the tear in the fabric. "Is it hurt?" she grumbled in a familiar, overprotective tone.
Impa was almost a head taller than the girl- seemingly larger than life. Slender, but still somehow large in frame, with broad shoulders and the muscles of a warrior. Her skin was shades darker than the pale-faced girl, but her hair was white like snow, practically shimmering in the firelight.
And larger than life was how she carried herself. She was never cold- especially in her more carefree moments, she had a certain youthful exuberance. But even then, she had seen countless battles, and she carried that with her at all times.
The girl remained stubbornly quiet, reluctant to accept her elder's help.
Impa looked her sternly in the eye. "Zelda."
They stared each other down for a moment, and the girl sighed, raising her arm slightly so Impa could inspect it more easily. "It's healing."
She remained still, and Impa peered through the hole in her sleeve, the ends of her fingers getting stained with Zelda's blood.
"You're right; it shouldn't be too serious. Put pressure on it," Impa instructed eventually, pulling a handkerchief from her satchel to wipe her fingers off. "You need to rest up. We'll have to get moving early tomorrow. You need your strength."
She did not wait for a response to stand up again and begin setting up camp, laying out a bedroll for each of them. From her satchel she pulled a whetstone, and as she settled into a seat on the dirt, she drew a jagged knife from her boot to sharpen.
But Zelda was more stubborn than that. "We need to chase after them." She shuffled around the fire as she declared it.
"Oh, we?" Impa chuckled wryly and peered up for a moment, drawing sparks as she ran her blade along the stone. "You mean I need to chase after them?"
"I don't care what you do. I'll do it myself."
"Uh huh." Impa pointed her knife toward Zelda's bedroll with a roll of her eyes. "Lie down. Put pressure on your wound. I need to bandage you up."
She made another familiar face. The kind Zelda was smarter than to argue with.
Albeit with an exaggerated groan, Zelda ceded the point, resting both hands under her head and looking up at the stars through a gap in the thick canopy. "You're so content to let people push you around…"
"They only made off with some rations. It's not worth risking my life over. Certainly not worth risking your life over. You'd do well to learn that, Princess, before you lose that arm." Impa set down the whetstone and slid closer to Zelda, who limply offered up her arm. "You know what the elders said about you?"
"Yes."
"A living legend, they said. 'Golden hair, the color of the sun. Fire in her eyes. And a wisdom beyond her years.'" Impa snickered. "'Wisdom beyond her years.' That's how the legend goes. 'Insights beyond even the eldest sages and scholars.' Have I ever told you this?"
"Everyone has told me this at one point or another."
Impa allowed herself a brief, teasing grin, pleased with the response. As she did, she leaned down to dig through Zelda's pack, retrieving a small medicine bag full of materials the pair had been gathering.
"What the legends failed to warn me about," she continued with a hum, "is that the insights they were referring to consisted of running headfirst into danger without disinfecting wounds." She squinted at the contents of the medicine bag, plucking out a small berry and pinching it between two fingers. "Or trying for the third time to take the purple berries with the three-pronged leaves- honestly, are you trying to get sick? The journey is grueling enough, don't you think?"
Zelda sat up a little with a look of concern. "I thought the purple ones were safe?"
Impa flicked the berry into the woods. "Purple is safe if the leaves are thin and don't split at the ends like this. Red you can eat if the leaves are three-pronged. But those aren't medicinal."
"How do you remember all this?"
"It's my job to know these things. So you don't have to. …Although, that said, it would make my life a lot easier if you would keep track of them, too, so I don't end up having to carry you to Kakariko on my shoulders."
Sifting through the contents of the bag, Impa settled on one of the herbs and put it promptly into her mouth.
"What's so special about this village, anyway?" Zelda sighed, resting her head back against the bedroll again. "We have real military strongholds. I would think that would give us a better chance of finding a worthy knight."
Impa spit out the chewed leaf into her hand and promptly pressed it against Zelda's wound, who winced at the sight.
"Maybe. But the goal is subtlety. And Kakariko is one of the few places we can be confident they won't come looking for you." She wrapped up the wound in a bandage, pulling down Zelda's sleeve again to cover it. "…Speaking of which, cover your face back up. At least with the bandana. You never know who's watching."
"You say that, and yet you're still carting me off to some unknown village in the middle of nowhere to introduce me to a bunch of strangers. Doesn't seem very safe to me." Zelda rubbed a hand on her sore forearm and sat up, reaching obediently for her bandana to cover her face again.
A look of pity flashed on the elder woman's face. From the day she was born, the princess had spent almost all her life sequestered in a single village. Taking everything on faith.
She reached for the whetstone again, and drew her dagger from it, resting her thumb against the hilt and pointing it nonthreateningly toward Zelda's chest. "Look at this," she said quietly.
Zelda looked straight down to stare blankly at it. "…You're not going to stab me, are you?"
"Ay… look." Impa poked a finger toward the base of the blade, which was decorated with a small symbol of an eye and a tear drop.
"It's the crest of the Sheikah. What about it?"
"This crest adorns the gate to the village. It's where this knife was forged. It's where I was born."
A weighty pause followed. Zelda was genuinely taken aback by this small bit of personal information, a rarity coming from her.
"You've never talked much about your home…"
Impa shrugged halfheartedly. "Well, this is it. For generations, Kakariko was the birthplace of all Sheikah. For the few of us that are left… well, it means a lot to us. The elder of the village is a woman very dear to me. She's the one that gave me the assignment to protect you." She tucked the knife back into the sheath on her ankle, sliding back toward her own bedroll. "We'll be in good hands there. You have my word on that. The Sheikah are sworn to the royal family. That's how Kakariko ended up an outpost for the rebellion in the first place. Whomever they provide for us, it will be someone we can trust."
Zelda watched her carefully. Impa rarely softened so much- it was quite a gesture.
She nodded seriously. "If you trust them, I trust them," she decided, pulling her hood up with both hands.
Impa looked back over her shoulder. Beyond the light of the fire, the woods were pitch black in every direction, and dead silent.
"Tomorrow," she said with a frown. "For now, sleep. Get your strength up. I'll hunt down something for us to eat before we head out in the morning." She clasped her hands together. "Things are only going to get harder from here."