As recommended by a friend, I've been watching Daredevil this past week or so. His heightened senses may or may not have subconsciously inspired both prompts for the first and the third day. Regardless, I love the idea that Link sharpened his human senses so they could match his wolf form's.

Enjoy!

iii. The Breath of the Wild

Her arms are wrapped around him as Epona slows down to a stop. Her touch is careful, distant; Zelda is still too proper, too conscious of etiquette and rules to forget formalities when around the hero of her people. Perhaps, that is the reason why he snuck her out of Hyrule Castle in plain daylight, dressed her in some clothes he borrowed from Uli – clothes that are rather small for a woman so tall – and rode her away from the busy city and its loud conversations.

"Do you know where we are?" He asks, his tone a mix of all the accents he came across during his journey, still heavily tinged by the Twili that he heard on a daily basis.

Link looks at her from over his shoulder; her face, what is visible of it, is impassive, her lips relaxed in an expressionless line. Her eyes are blindfolded with a dark strip of fabric, stopping her from seeing anything at all. Her shrug is minimal, imperceptive. "The sun is not burning my scalp anymore, and for that I am thankful. That is all I know."

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly, unwinds her stiff arms from around his middle and hops down his steed, taking notice of her rigid pose before he moves in to help her down. Her fingers barely curl around his hand as he guides her to solid ground; she masks a wince as her legs stretch after a long horseback ride, one that was not planned beforehand, and so she went a long way saddleless, similar to that one time when she aided him in taking down Ganondorf.

Zelda does not dare to as much as take a step to follow him as he wanders around. Clearly, she is uncomfortable. She mainly relies on her vision; she is not like him, someone that can pick out every smell and sound that is around him, and so her current lack of sight proves to leave her restless.

"Relax." He smiles when she turns her head in his general direction, bare hands folded before her navel as if she were standing before her people. "That's why I brought you here for."

"Wherever 'here' is," she starts, slowly reaching out ahead of her, hesitant to seem like a fool before him, "I would like to see it."

"Try feeling it instead." Link suggests with a shrug of his shoulders and loudly sits down on the grass beneath him with a sigh, reclining against the tree trunk and watching as her lips frown minimally at his answer.

Her hands fall back to her sides and, instead of ripping off her blindfold as he expected her to, she begins to crouch, slowly bending her knees until her fingers brush against the thin blades of grass. Zelda tilts her head, her braid falling over her shoulder, and presses her palm fully to the soil, spreading her fingers wide and feeling the texture, the dampness beneath her skin. Her lips part and move, mouthing words he cannot hear, but he can read. What, she asks herself, inching her touch around herself and exploring the ground.

"When was the last time you actually touched grass with your bare hands?"

She remains quiet for a moment. "A while."

He snorts. "Really? You have courtyards and a private garden, and you don't interact with them?" Zelda does not reply, merely turns her head away slightly. Link rises to his feet and walks over to her, gently wrapping his fingers around her wrist and tugging her upright. "Come."

"Where to?"

"You're exploring these woods. Damn, I never thought you'd find this experience so foreign."

Link guides her over to the nearest tree, places her palm on its bark, watches as her fingertips glide over its rough surface, over every crevice, as if it is something that needs to be deciphered. It is weird, to say the least, to see her so awed by nature. It is something natural to him, to everyone from Ordon, to truly appreciate the trees and the water, every flower and fruit they come across. Different upbringings make different people; Zelda was, most likely, raised to admire everything from afar, with the few exceptions of flowers she is gifted every once in a while.

"Take off your boots." He does not give her the time to protest, for in the next second he is working on the shoelaces and tugging the pieces away from her, touching her bare ankles in a way that nearly makes her squirm, in a way that is not supposed to be proper. Her toes curls, wriggle as the grass underneath tickles her skin and she tilts her head down as if she can see what is happening.

He smiles. It is sort of endearing seeing her reacting this way to everything around her, and in a hushed voice, he instructs her to calm down, to concentrate on what she can hear and feel, on what she can smell. He is touching her hand now, and her fingers are warm against his skin, holding on to him as she breathes in deeply, fills her lungs with the pure air of Faron Woods, smells the lingering scent of rain. She cannot hear the frog croaking in the distance, of that he is sure, yet her ears twitch when the wind plays with the thick canopy above, swishes the leaves in the breeze. Zelda turns, facing south, and he slowly walks her there, noticing when she steps over sturdy roots and twigs that snap beneath her feet.

The sound of running water is clear now and he lets go, allowing her to wander around the clearing of the Spirit Spring. When she walks into the water, she halts and shivers, her goosebumps visible to him even from afar. Zelda walks further in, until she can touch and feel the cool water that falls over the edge of the suspended pond. Dipping the water into the liquid that originates from deep within the woods, she inquires. "Where are we?"

Link is next to her in a moment, his eyes tracing over her parted lips, hand reaching behind her head to undo the sloppy bow that ties the blindfold in place. "We're where I grew up in." Her lashes flutter and her eyes open, pupils shrinking as light reaches them and she sees the forest ahead of her differently.