Disclaimer: I don't own The Legend of Zelda
Five Times Link was Homeless
four
Malon sets the bread knife down and reaches over to pluck a piece of hay from Link's hair, flicking the tip of his ear with it. "You missed one," she says as she shoots him a wink.
Ingo snorts, across the table, and Link ruffles his hands through his hair to shake out any other bits of chaff still clinging there, just in case Malon decides to drop the next bit of scratchy hay she finds down the collar of his undershirt instead. She would, probably, and Navi's not here to warn him when her hand's sneaking to do it.
Navi's fast asleep in Link's hat, still. He put it upstairs, on Malon's pillow, so all the breakfast sounds in the snug farmhouse kitchen wouldn't wake her. She probably stayed up all night, practically, keeping watch for him.
He'll sneak a toast soldier into his pocket for later, in case she wants the crumbs.
There's three chairs around the table at the ranch: Malon's, Ingo's—which used to be Malon's mom's, ages ago before they had to hire Ingo full-time as a ranch hand—and Talon's. Talon's already loaded up the cart and left on morning milk delivery to Kakariko Village, though, so Link gets to take his chair instead of having to drag a short milking stool in from the barn.
Even so, Link's legs are long in the future, and even on a proper chair his feet don't dangle over the floor and he can't kick them while he waits. Instead he hooks the heels of his boots over the rung while he watches Ingo pour fresh milk into mugs—one for Malon, one for himself, and, after catching Malon's eye despite his best efforts, one he thumps down in front of Link.
Malon arranges strips of toast on plates, next to boiled eggs and hunks of cheese and handfuls of blackberries from the brambles that grow behind the stables. Then she passes the plates across the table, setting them down beside their mugs.
Well, beside all the mugs except for Link's. His mug is already in his two hands, so she has to put his plate next to the place where his milk used to be.
She slides the milk pitcher along after, hand on her hip, though Link doesn't notice right away because he's got his mug tipped all the way back to chug the last of it.
"I swear," she says, shaking her head and sitting down, "you, fairy boy, are worse than the cats."
Link licks the milk from all along his upper lip, then prods at his boiled egg with his spoon. Malon says that like it's a bad thing, but. He doesn't see how it can be. He likes the ranch cats. He'd take one—or three, or—along with him if only he could figure out how to stop them always climbing out of Epona's saddle bags.
And they're soft. And sometimes they'll come over and rub up against his legs and let him scratch their chins. And once—when Link left his muddy boots out on the doorstep—they even left him a dead mouse in his right boot as a present.
He found the little furry body in there when he went to leave, when he tried to tug his boot on and his toes wouldn't fit in properly. Small dead things like that are gross, of course. And therefore very cool, and Link was touched and impressed and pretty disappointed when Navi wouldn't let him stick it in his pouch to show everyone back home in the forest. Probably even Mido would've liked it.
Malon grins and dips a strip of toast in the yolk of her own egg. "Bad as the cats. One day you're hanging about the ranch like you own the place," she says, pausing to swallow a bite, "and then the next you've just up and disappeared. And no one sees a whisker of you for seven long years, until we all figure you surely must've kicked it. But here you keep turning up out of the blue, always just in time for a good meal!
"Not," she adds, "that I'm complaining, mind you. But what were you doing sleeping in our barn, of all places?"
Link pushes a blackberry across his plate with his spoon and scrunches an entire piece of toast into his mouth. He wasn't sleeping in the barn, exactly. Well. He didn't start out sleeping in the barn. He didn't mean to—
They were crossing Hyrule Field, yesterday, and Navi spotted the track that branches off to Lon Lon Ranch. And so of course they thought, how about they stop and say hello to their friends?
Link meant to stop in at the house first. He did. But the sun was setting, so instead of leaving Epona out in the pasture he put her up in the stables. And then, as he walked back past the barn, he heard it.
The faint, intermittent scritching of a spider.
Well, he couldn't just leave it there in the barn with the cows, it'd probably upset them. Besides, he made a promise to squish a hundred of those gross skulltula things, and he'll never get them at this rate if he lets them all creep away in the dark.
So he pulled out his sword and he and Navi checked in each stall, and looked in all the milk pails, and peeked inside every heavy crate, and listened at each nook and cranny and corner, and dug through every pile of hay.
Only somewhere along the line Link's burrowing through the hay must have turned into curling up in it and resting his eyes instead, because that was how Malon found him when she came in to do the morning's milking—half-buried in a nest of hay, Navi dozing in his hat, and not a spider's scratching to be heard anywhere.
And then she put a bucket in his hands and told him to start at the other end of the barn and meet her in the middle.
They didn't, not quite, because Malon's a lot faster milker than he is even when his chin's not nodding and he's not still got sleep in his eyes. But he's practicing.
Ingo snorts again, his mouth full of egg and toast. He takes a swig of his milk and glowers at Link as he says, "You shouldn't encourage him, miss. We don't need any freeloaders hanging about this ranch."
"Oh, shush, you," says Malon, leaning over to swat his arm with a grin. "He's worked for his breakfast, same as the rest of us. And he did a good job with gathering the eggs, too, because I know you'll have gone back and double-checked his handiwork," she teases. "You could never stand sloppiness."
Ingo harrumphs like a deku scrub that's been hit with its own seed, but he goes back to his breakfast without scowling at Link again.
"Besides," Malon says, "we can afford to feed a good mouser around here now and again. Especially one who'll help with the mucking out before he goes, hm?"
Link's cheeks are full of blackberries, so he just grins back at her and nods. Navi's sleeping anyway, so he's got plenty of time to help out with chores before they have to leave. He hurries to clean up his plate and drain the last bit of milk from his mug.
"Good!" she says. Malon taps the back of his knuckles with her spoon before he gets up and adds, "Mind you come back to the house before you go, alright? I'll pack you a lunch. And stop sleeping in the barn, for goodness' sake. I'll make you up a bed next time, as long as you don't make me wait seven years and forget. Deal?"
Link sticks his hand out and hooks his pinky around hers to swear it. He and Navi have too many great friends to ever vanish like that again.