Link rolled his shoulders. The sun had already made a decent climb into the sky since sunrise, and felt warm against his dark green clothes. Maybe too warm. There was so many layers to it. That always baffled him about Hylians. Too many layers. He'd never understand it.
A quiet yell spurned Epona onward towards the smear that could've been that village Malon mentioned. Kakariko, was it? Link wondered who would be daft enough to make a town at the foot of an active (judging by the continuous spume of smog and smoke) volcano. Especially when wood was so involved in making buildings here. Link made another quiet scoff to himself: too much wood. He was willing to bet every future rupee to his name that none of these people had to use dung for a fire's fuel.
Slowly his eyes closed. The wind rushed past them with a serene lull, sweetly perfumed with the windflowers of its country, as if it was coaxing Link to get off his horse and lay down in the emerald blades of grass for the rest of time itself. Just watch the opalescent clouds and the sapphire sky, and, when night came, chart the lapis and diamond heavens while a pearl chased the tracks of the brilliant and benevolent sun.
To be honest, the thought was more than appealing. So was taking off his hat and letting the breeze comb his hair, but, like the previous idea, it was dismissed. He had a duty to the divine to fulfill. He had the option of doing his tasks and then going on to live a relatively normal life, or being struck dead for his impunity towards the powers that be. The former was annoying, but at least it allowed him to live.
Link's eyes opened again as his mind wondered over how bad dying would really be for him at this point. He supposed it would probably end up with him in wherever the damned and the immoral and the corrupt went, as far from his mother as he could be in the afterlife. Maybe. He wasn't dead so he had no way of confirming any of the thoughts.
There was little time to even really begin a existential debate with himself before Link reached the gates to Kakariko.
Link wondered why the town seemed so barren, but when Epona trotted into the square he got his answer. A gigantic search party of what must have been the entire town was looking everywhere. He pulled up to who he supposed was in charge and asked, "Could I help?"
The man stood taller to answer his visitor. "Sure, kid." He laughed at Link's miffed look at being called a child, "You're part of the high and mighty castle town crowd, aren't ya?" Link shook his head, and finally dismounted Epona to join the search. The man's voice still rang with that bawdy guffaw of his, "We're searchin' for cuccoos."
Link's head snapped to the man. He tilted it, "Cuccoos?"
"That's right, cuccoos." The man replied.
Link guided Epona to a place that was already pretty well searched, but didn't have the heart to tie her up. He combed her mane with his hand, "I'll leave you here. You can go home when you want." Epona snorted and began eating the grass.
He went back to the leader of the search party and began helping him move crates aside. "So..." He grunted, "cuccoos?"
"Are you a broken gossip stone or something?" The man sighed at the empty space.
Link sighed just as deep, but moved on for another search anyways, "Well it's a weird thing to look for."
"My hopeless daughter is allergic to them-"
"Oh! We really need to find them-"
"And she can't bother herself to let someone else take care of them, or fix up the fence."
Link paused his searching in the cramped cranny. He bent around to look at the man, "Wait, your daughter is allergic to them... but is raising them?"
"Gets us eggs." The man shrugged in reply. He then watched Link move on to another spot, and grabbed him before he could begin searching again, "Name's Mutoh!"
Link realized this was probably a greeting, and stammered, "L-Link. My name is Link." He went back to his searching, and grabbed one of the offending feathery fiends. "Got one!" Link yelled.
"That's a fiver outta ten!" Someone yelled back.
While it was a good number, Link began wondering if there was an easier way to get the birds together. The cuccoo in his grasp clucked and squawked and squirmed and writhed. "Mutoh," Link asked, "is there some kind of bait you can use?"
Mutoh was trying to crawl under a fence for another cuccoo. "There is," he grunted, "but no one really likes usin' it."
Link went over the logic in his head. His hat flopped in the air as he shook it at how bizarre this town was. "Why not?" He asked, "If it would get you the cuccoos faster-"
"No one would volunteer for it." Mutoh snapped at Link, "And if they did they'd be absolutely crazy."
Link looked up at the mountain. At this rate he wouldn't even be up halfway before sundown. He'd have to spend the night with someone. Link's bangs flew up, and he asked, "So, why not?"
Mutoh grabbed the cuccoo and brought it to their side of the fence, "Well ya see, if you attack one, the others come with." Link accepted his cuccoo, nodding seriously despite his confused expression. "Every cuccoo in the area comes flocking over to defend their kin."
Link cursed as a cuccoo escaped his grasp and ran off, leaving him with one fowl in a foul mood.
"Can't you use your head you stinkin' kid!" Mutoh yelled at him. Fortunately someone else caught the cuccoo and put it up.
Link bit down on his cheek before saying, "I-I'll try harder next time."
"Well don't let that one get away." Mutoh scolded him again.
Link put the bird in the pen, too shy to admit the other one escaped because of his crippled hand. He looked around for another cuccoo, or at least a trail or sign of where to go next. "I'll volunteer." He said, "I can be the bait for the cuccoos, if you want."
"You sure about that?" Mutoh asked him. Link's ears heard the village fall silent.
He nodded, "They're just chickens, how bad can they be?"
So that was how Link found himself standing in front of a single cuccoo in the middle of town with every building boarded and locked. He looked at the house Mutoh was taking shelter in, "They're just birds!"
"Just kick the dang thing already, son! This was your idea!" Mutoh snapped through the door.
Link rolled his eyes, "For Din's sake they're just birds..." He then wound his foot back, "No hard feelings, okay?"
The cuccoo was punted a good couple meters. It bounced a little with some more angry squawks, but otherwise nothing happened. Link looked back to the door, "Mutoh-"
He covered his ears at an even louder crowing than before. He wondered if the people in castle town could hear it. The air filled with feathers as cuccoos began converging on their wounded ally. Link saw the horde and gulped. He thought there was only ten.
"Regretting it yet, boy?" He heard Mutoh ask.
Link only stared at the fluffy, feathery mass. It charged, but he folded his arms, "J-just cucco-" the moment a few landed on him and began violently pecking was the moment Link began running. He threw off one bird, and another would take its place. "Goddesses THE PECKING!" He yelled as he tried to seek asylum from the threat.
He saw Mutoh open the door, frantically waving Link over, "Come on now, we don't want you dead!"
Link ran as fast as his legs could carry him, and managed to dive into the house with only one determined cuccoo clinging to him. He pulled off the bird, carefully putting it aside before tending to all of his scratches. Link noticed Mutoh and other villagers watching him with baited breath, and Link simply said, "Okay then... Not just birds." He sat up and looked through a window to see that the cuccoo's wrath was placated. All of them pecked at the ground innocuously.
It didn't take much longer after that for Link to find out where he needed to go. The trail leading to Death Mountain's peak looked rough and worn, and Link figured it'd take awhile to get to where he could start searching. "Up in the mountains high" Din had said, after all.
"Be careful about tektites, if you feel and hear rumbling get under somethin' sturdy." Mutoh told him.
Link barely remembered seeing tektites before through some grace of the gods; it was a fuzzy memory of some spider-limbed beast that jumped around an oasis. His mother was so angry such a precious water supply had be tainted with "those dirty, disgusting things" that she pulled an arrow and shot the thing dead. Or maybe it was the thought of decent food later, not anger, that killed them. Maybe both. Link was a toddler then, not entirely in sync with the world.
He realized a sling and his clawshot wouldn't really be suited for killing them, and so he asked Mutoh, "Do you know where I can find a sword?"
"The Gorons, of course. Best metalwork around. There's a reason that the Hylian army uses their forge-work." Mutoh replied.
Link nodded in thanks, "Gorons, okay." He began his long trek with a wave goodbye.
"Won't be a pretty rupee, if you can even get one." Mutoh told Link, which caused him to stop.
He turned around, "Are they frequently out?"
Mutoh shook his head, "No, they've been... Unwelcoming recently."
Link thought it over for a moment. He shrugged, "Well, I just gotta search for somethin'. Surely they'll let me do that. I can get a sword later." He heard Mutoh tell him farewell, but Link was already well on his way.
The trail was actually a very easy climb. It occasionally got steep, but mostly it remained a steady incline that got Link higher without wearing him down too much. The path was also incredibly worn and smooth, which made Link figure that people had gone up here many times before. Whatever tektites that came his way he managed to fool into jumping off the cliff side into lower regions of the mountain, and so far the day had been clear of volcanic activity.
He stopped when a boulder up ahead began unrolling itself. It stood tall into a shape that looked stocky and humanoid, with a set of small and dark eyes above a long mouth. It seemed to be made of rock itself, with brown-orange "skin" occasionally graced with whiteish paint in rough and simplistic designs. Rougher rock descended down the thing's back, looking toothy and uneven.
Link realized this must have been a Goron, and waved his hands in a gesture of peace, "Please let me pass! I-I just need to come find something... It's for a delivery!"
The Goron rolled itself up, and Link cautiously took a step forward. Were they letting him through-
The Goron charged in its curled form right at him with unnatural speed for something so massive. Through sheer surprise and hefty force Link was launched right off the side of the mountain by the Goron's roll, and it was some miracle of the gods that he could scramble his hands against the rock to let him roll instead of fall. Link's descent stopped and he tumbled into a heap at some point he figured was near the beginning of the trail.
He could barely breathe: his chest ached with every movement and his nose was becoming stopped up with blood. His vision swayed, and for some reason a Gerudo lullaby crooned in his head like empty echoes alongside his rattled gasping. He blinked, trying to remember who owned the soothing voice. He wanted to sit up and find the singer, but his body wouldn't move. Was his arm hurt? His leg? He couldn't tell through the dull pain everywhere, like someone had bruised every inch of him.
Link heard voices. He couldn't make out what they said, but they sounded... Surprised? Afraid? Angry? He could only make out one word: "...sleep!" His eyes closed.
Yet the singing didn't fade:
"And the sands, oh the sands, will welcome you, come the time, for the longest rest..."
...
"Kid! Kid, damn you, Farore gave you life and she can't take it away yet!"
Link groaned a garbled phrase. He wondered if it was some amalgam of old Gerudo and Hylian. His eyelids danced an old memory of his first swears being old Gerudo, and he smiled. The tribe had converted their language to Hylian long, long before he or anyone else came into the world, but fragments of the old language had stayed. Old habits from the elders only died with them, but bits would continue on with the young. In fact that Windfish ballad was old Gerudo... Now he remembered that...
"Why in the name of the Generous Golden Goddesses are you smiling like an idiot and speaking like a newborn?!"
Link finally opened his eyes, his smile fading away. The pain in his chest finally registered and he began violently coughing. Every exhale sent a shockwave through him; perhaps there was a bit of blood lingering in his coughs.
"Easy, easy... it's a good miracle you're not worse." Link finally recognized Mutoh's voice, and croaked some reply. The man sat back, "You are the biggest fool around to not run when you see a Goron charging after you."
"You said... they were... unwelcoming." Link protested. He swore Din's name internally at how much he hurt. "Not... Violent..." He added, "Damn... You."
Mutoh laughed and smacked Link's back out of habit, unintentionally setting off another string of pained hacking. Link sat back and sighed. This was going to be thougher than he figured. Wasn't it always?
Mutoh turned to an old woman and shook her hand, "Thank you, Granny."
Link turned his head to her, and asked, "You... helped me?" His features screwed up; he was worse than this before, but how long had passed while he was under?
"My red potion never fails, my dear." She told Link, "The only thanks I need is to never see you again."
Link figured this was rude at first, but then his jumbled mind pieced together that she meant seeing him as a patient. But red potion... Link knew that was a rarity in the desert. He heard Granny ask 10 rupees for her service (at a discount, she even said, noting her charitable mood). He closed his eyes, trying to quell his anger. If he was home, he'd be dead. And now here he was in a country right next door being saved for a paltry 10 rupees. It made his already sick stomach unbearably ill with anger.
But it was forced down. He owed his thanks and it wouldn't be properly paid with him spitting in rage. "Thank you for helping me, I owe you." He said.
"Just 10 rupees and serendipitous timing, it's not a big deal." Mutoh replied, "You should be well enough to walk around in about an hour's rest."
"I'd be dead by now." Link said again, firmly, "I owe you my deepest gratitude."
Mutoh finally just shrugged off Link's thanks, "I'm telling ya it wasn't a big deal."
And thus Link learns the wrath of cuccoos and Goron alike.