Romani's bow was flexible and well-made, but too small to allow her to shoot for any distance. He twanged the bowstring experimentally. He earned a flat, warped buzz.
"Romani made it herself," said Romani, proudly. "Except the decoration on the ends. Big Sis carved those."
"Uh-huh."
He took an arrow from his quiver, pulled it back, and then let it go when he feared the arms might break if he pulled them any harder. The arrow struggled through the air in a lazy arc, and popped the rust-red balloon hovering in front of the barn on the way down.
"What!" Romani pouted. "That one was for Romani! You already popped all the other ones!"
Tatl snickered and said, "Don't mind him. He's showing off!" and earned herself a swat with her companion's right hand.
She deftly maneuvered around it and to the back of his tunic, which she lifted, and then cackled maniacally when its frantic owner dropped everything to smooth it back down.
Romani, her dog, and Epona stared back, absolutely scandalized, until he sprang into the air like a grasshopper and pounced upon Tatl in comeuppance. She squawked from her place between the ground and his two cupped hands, and Romani burst into laughter.
"You twerp!" Tatl screamed, and squeezed herself to freedom from between two of her captor's fingers. "If you didn't have the tiny nostrils of such a little freak, I'd fly up your nose and kick you in the brain!"
In answer, he pulled out the Mask of Scents, put it on, aimed its huge snout in her face, and snorted.
Tatl didn't smell like much- she was, predominantly, an elemental spirit- but the ranch's pungent grass and latent manure musk hit him like a speeding cart.
Romani ranch was idyllic and fertile, and the gentle winds bustling across its vista carried only a hint of the distant lands beyond its fences. The ocean to the east was too warm, and the bordering swamp to the south was dying, but the water running through the veins of the fields between them had yet to feel the strain. Whether the Skull Kid intended to send Epona here or if it was some cosmic coincidence was a mystery, but this last secluded oasis in a landscape of quiet panic had cradled her even as the world rocked in the throes of the last three days. He was grateful to a cause he couldn't name.
He snorted again.
"Better?!" he demanded. It came out muffled from behind the mask's leather snoot and heavy fake brow.
Tatl punched the mask between the nostrils. He flicked his fingers at her. She slapped them back. He poked her away. Repeat.
Epona huffed at the two of them, and then ambled away for greener, serener pastures. Romani's terrier followed.
"A pig!" cried Romani. Her spitfire hair and ebullient voice erupted around her as she threw her arms into the air. "You hop around like a grasshopper, but your mask is like a pig!"
He turned the Mask of Scents's beady, black eyes and proud snout to face Romani, and gave another loud, ungraceful snort. This one was involuntary.
Romani fell into a fit of giggles so violent that she toppled off the crate and rolled into the fresh ranch grass. The broken blades on her white linen dress glimmered in the sunlight like slivers of emeralds as she beat her boots against the ground. Behind her, Epona snuffled like what her master was smelling, she could sniff out, too.
Romani smelled, decidedly, like grass and cows and sweat and dirt and hay. Romani smelled like, well, like a little girl living on a ranch, because that is what she was. The bowstring of her lacquered yew bow was doing its damnedest, but her hands weren't yet covered in calluses like her sister's, nor did her hair smell sweet like Cremia's, nor her skin. Cremia smelled like…
Well.
"We should make lunch for your sister," he said to Romani, between snorts. "She's been working hard, and it's already past lunch time. We can eat ours, and if she's not back when we're finished, hers will be waiting for her when she finally comes in."
"Ooh! Food! Yes," said Tatl, abandoning her earlier animosity without a moment's hesitation. She breezed towards the door. "I'm particular to the strawberry preserves you make here. Ooh! D'you have any of that brown sugar butter? The inn had some in the kitchen that came from this ranch. It was about the only good thing they had to eat!"
Romani sat up and traded the smile on her face for a more conspiratorial one. "Who said Grasshopper and Firefly were invited to eat Romani and Big Sis' food?"
Tatl turned around and stared at her companion, who was bug-eyed and baffled beneath his mask. In first and second days past, Cremia always invited the two of them to eat lunch with them. He'd forgotten that he had not yet been invited. He didn't know them yet. He had forgotten.
They had forgotten, as surely as if they'd never known him. They had forgotten him.
Romani snickered. "Just kidding!" she said, and hopped to her feet. "But you have to wear that mask the whole time!"
"E-even to, to eat?!"
Romani skipped to the doorway, laughing.
The Romani Ranch household was warm, inviting, and always ready for company. A shelf of labeled products for sale and consumption greeted them upon entry from across the dirt entryway. Romani took off her shoes and set them next to the other muddy work boots, empty milk bottles, and work tools leaning against the stuccoed walls before stepping onto the well-worn wooden floor and bustling by the prominent stone fireplace. She passed a twin set of stoves and a mounted rack of well-loved iron skillets, and then a huge crate of root vegetables before stopping in front of the cupboard and rifling through it for a loaf of bread, wheel of cheese, and a few other odds and ends. Tatl hurried over and excitedly picked out ingredients with a commanding finger. Romani enthusiastically nodded her head and brought out whatever else it is she wanted, too.
"Big sis likes sandwiches with kick," said Romani. She laid the bread on the counter and sliced it in half, and then into sections. "Romani doesn't like pepper and peppers on ham sandwiches, but then again, Romani can make whatever Romani wants! Romani is the heiress of the Romani Ranch!"
Tatl ripped off a chunk of cheese from the wheel, stuffed her face with it, and then pumped her fist into the air. "Yeah! Stick it to 'em! Anarchy! Anarchy!"
She grabbed another piece of cheese, but Romani plucked it away.
"It's not ready yet!" She scolded.
Tatl wilted, and then sulked.
He left them to it and took a look around. The wooden table in the center of the room held flowers in its pink border and flowers in the twin vases on the table. One held lilies, it smelled like, and the other, roses. He suspected that one sister chose one and the second chose the other. He peered around the room in search of things in sets of two.
Two mugs, two plates, two chairs, two columns on the schedule on the wall. One was always big, and the other always small. The Mask of Scents sucked in another snoutful of air. It smelled of hay and grass and earth and charred wood and cows, and underneath that, it smelled of lavender, and sweet.
It smelled like Cremia, and the hug she'd given him on a different tomorrow night. He felt his face grow hot behind his mask. Suddenly, he was grateful that Romani had told him to keep wearing it.
Romani turned around. "Well? Grasshopper? Aren't you going to help?!"
He started. "Wh-huh? What?"
"Help? Are you going to?" Romani brandished the breadknife. Its serrated edge gave off a compelling glint.
He hustled to her side, snorting with every step.
When they finished the assembly of a heaping plate of sandwiches (pepper, peppers, ham, cheese, and mustard for Cremia; ham, cheese, salami, roast beef, mayonnaise, extra cheese, and mustard for Romani and Tatl; butter, jelly, preserves, and brown sugar, also for Romani and Tatl; and then just plain ham for the peanut gallery because he didn't know any better, paired with a dozen cookies for all of them), Romani plopped them down on the kitchen table and outlined her master plan to defend her barn.
"Now," she said. "Romani will position herself here, in front of the barn."
He frowned. If they didn't hurry, Cremia would be back before they finished. "Shouldn't we eat first?"
"In a minute!" Romani moved one sandwich in front of the loaded plate. Jelly oozed from its sides and glistened in the light of the crackling fireplace.
A drooling Tatl reached for it.
Romani rounded on her. "No! That's part of Romani's diagram! Take a different one!"
Tatl settled for a regular ham and roast beef and mayonnaise and salami and mustard and cheese and cheese.
"Anyway, as Romani was saying." She picked up five cookies and scattered them around the tablecloth. "The enemy will surround the barn and creep in close. Romani will shoot them before they get in! But Romani will need to be fast, and find the best place to station herself."
Afternoon of the First Day. Sixty-four hours remained. At fifty-two hours, a mysterious light would appear and then scatter over the grounds of Romani Ranch. Sometime between then and dawn, the light would coalesce over the ranch's main barn and take away the livestock.
Apparently. He had never been around to watch it play out that way, but according to Romani, this happened as reliably as the passing of seasons. Beings would come to her ranch, and then, provided he didn't interfere, take their cows.
That's how it would happen. This cycle, he wouldn't interfere- not directly, anyway. He would stay here, away from Anju, but close enough to search in and around Clock Town for hints about Sakon. Besides, Romani was a child, and both he and Tatl always felt more comfortable with more children around than adults. He would retrace his steps with a new, more informed perspective.
Romani pursed her lips and furrowed her brows. Despite all her bravado, she was a terrible shot, had woefully poor tools at her disposal, and knew it. He knew she knew it; the Mask of Scents picked up the scent of stressful sweat beading on Romani's body the longer she stood there contemplating. He considered scrapping his plan to seek out Sakon in Northern Clock Town tonight to help her again.
Instead, he said, "if you could get on the roof, that would be the best place to shoot them from."
Romani's head snapped up. "The roof! Of course!" She grinned. "Of course!"
She jumped up into the seat of her chair, and then onto the tabletop with a thud. The plates clattered, and her two guests scrambled to keep the twin flower vases steady.
"The roof! If I stay on the roof, I can see them all at once! It's perfect! Perfect!" She pantomimed taking aim and shooting an arrow. "They'll never take the Romani cows, so long as I, Romani, heiress of Romani Ranch, am —!"
"Romani! What are you doing on the table?!"
The three of them froze and turned around, silent, until the Mask of Scents let out a great snort.
Cremia stood in the doorway of the ranch house, watching. It was ten minutes after 2:00 pm. She was the only person around- other than Romani, who was preoccupied- to watch, water, feed, and milk the cows, so her mornings ran late and her evenings ran later. She stepped in to make lunch when her schedule allowed for it rather than when the day's schedule told her to. The Postman would be frothing at the mere thought of it.
At thirty-six hours remaining, provided the road was clear, Cremia would make the trip to the bar, Latte, in Clock Town for her final delivery. Provided he did interfere and help her, she would arrive nine minutes after 10:00 pm, and leave at 11:12 pm. Otherwise, she would be forced to turn back in a shower of broken glass and graphic sprays of milk.
Romani clamped her mouth shut and quickly retook her seat in the proper way.
"We, uh, made lunch?" said Tatl, caught between the food and hiding in her companion's hat. Ultimately, she chose the food. She crammed a bite of sandwich into her mouth.
Cremia surveyed the scene: the children, the fairy, the disarrayed cupboard, the messy kitchen, the mountain of sandwiches. For a minute, she looked like she wanted to be upset, but then, she smiled instead and strode to the table.
"I can see that," she said. "Is there something in there for me?"
The Mask of Scents snuffled softly as she sidled up next to him, and took in the entire record of where she'd been that day and who she was.
Cremia smelled like the ranch, and like lavender, but also like warmth and comfort and something indescribable. She was the kind of person someone would want holding them.
He didn't know how to feel about that.
He turned his head to the side, towards Tatl instead of Cremia, and tried to hide his face even though it was covered. He felt embarrassed, and he didn't know why.
Romani beamed and pulled one of the pepper-and-peppers ham sandwiches from the pile. Her sister accepted, and took a bite.
"Mm!" She said. "Just how I like them!" She swallowed. "May I pull up a chair and eat with you?"
He was in the chair Cremia normally used, he realized. He stood up. He stood up so fast that he almost knocked it over and sent himself toppling to the ground.
Tatl looked between the two of them and muttered, "Are you serious?" around her mouthful.
"Take mine," he said. "I'm not, I'm not that hungry anyway."
Cremia put her hands on her hips. "Nonsense! You're our guest!" She walked to the cupboard and pulled a stool out from beside it. "I'm fine with just this!" She set it down by the table and sat upon it.
Romani conspiratorially made a zipping motion across her mouth and pointed at her sister with darting pupils.
Tatl shot back a thumbs-up.
Cremia took another bite of her sandwich, and swallowed. "It's nice to have company sometimes, you know?" Her breath was pungently spicy. "Romani, aren't you going to introduce me to your new friends?"
Romani grinned. "Oh! Yes, sister! This is Grasshopper and Firefly."
"Hello," said Cremia. "I'm Cremia. I didn't realize there were forest fairies this far out in Termina."
"Actually, you can call me Tatl," said Tatl. She looked at Romani. "That goes for both of you. And, uh, maybe don't mention that you've seen me to any other adults." She pointed at both sisters. "That also goes for both of you."
Romani deflated and pursed her lips, but her sister only raised an eyebrow and chuckled.
"It's nice to meet you, Tatl," said Cremia. "And Grasshopper, do you have a name you'd prefer over my sister's nickname?"
"He wears green and patters in the grass when he walks!" insisted Romani. "It's thematically fitting, and also a lot easier to remember than his real name!"
In Hyrule, on the ranch Epona was born, a little girl named Malon lived with her father, a farmhand, and their horses. As a child, she resembled Romani. As an adult seven years older, she resembled Cremia. Seeing the two sisters side-by-side was very strange; he could pick out their differences from one another and from Malon in hair color, skin tone, and mannerisms, but the two of them still made it appear as if he was looking at the same person at two different points in their life. However, there was an unmistakable difference between the ranch sisters and Malon.
Cremia mm-hmmed and nodded. "You're in a white dress, but you always have grass stains all over you. Should I call you Dirty Laundry?"
"Only if Romani can call you the Pot, because I'm Kettle, and you're covered in grass stains, too!"
Both Romani and Cremia were infinitely cleverer than sweet, simple Malon. The best Malon had managed for a nickname was the heavy-handedly uncreative, obliviously cruel "Fairy Boy", and only because Navi was around. Without her, he was nameless in Malon's eyes.
"Grasshopper is, uh, it's fine," he said, and then snorted. He plugged the Mask of Scents's nostrils with his fingers to make it stop.
Tatl snorted instead, but in laughter.
"Grasshopper is fine," he repeated.
"See?" said Romani.
Cremia smiled and leaned towards him. He could smell the pepper on her breath, the lavender on her skin, in her hair. He felt his insides start to squirm.
"Well, Grasshopper, that's a very interesting mask," she said. "Won't you take it off so you can eat your lunch, too?"
He swallowed. His face was red, and his expression was probably the same one he wore a year ago but also seven, when he was a fairyless boy in a meadow of bullies. If he took it off, he wouldn't smell anything anymore, but then he'd have to show his face.
The mask snorted through its plugged nostrils, and he choked when fingers entered his airway instead of air. He pulled off the mask in a compulsive coughing fit and slapped his palm on the table.
Romani gaped. "Grasshopper, don't die!"
Cremia jumped up and rubbed his back. Her hands electrified him where they landed, and he pulled away with a horrified grimace.
Tatl noticed, and looked from him to Cremia with a slow, diagnostic frown.
"Are you alright?" Cremia asked.
"Yes," he said. "I'm fine."
The Mask of Scents' black eyes stared up at them from the floor in a puddle of pink pigskin. The two tusks pointed skywards like the twin ridges of pinnacle rock from the waters of the western ocean. It looked like Ganon's face, if Ganon was a fleshy, mortal pig and not a yellow-eyed beast twisted and suffocated ash black from magic. He picked it up and brushed it off, and warred with himself over whether or not to put it back on.
Cremia drew her hand away. She smiled. "Oh! What a cute friend you've made, Romani!"
"I know! He's a showoff, too!" said Romani.
"What?!" he said, and almost threw himself into another coughing episode.
"Yes! He shot down all of Romani's balloons to try and impress Romani!"
He looked from sister to sister, open-mouthed, and then downed his water to clear the last of his coughing from his throat. The bottom of his glass met the table with a dignified thud.
Cremia raised an eyebrow and took her seat at her stool. "Is that true?"
The role of the hero- the hero of legend, the figure in the princess' visions, the champion with the Triforce of Courage on his hand and in his heart- wielded a sword imbued with divine light and regaled with generations of legends. The sword was the hero's inheritance and right. However, he was not a hero here or anywhere, not really, and swordsmanship had never been his talent. He was a forest-dweller. He was a thief, a sneak, an adventurer, a spy, a trap-setter, and a marksman, not a knight, and definitely not a swordsman. With a sword, he was ungraceful but practical; with a slingshot, or a sling, or a bow, he was untouchable.
"I popped them, but I wasn't showing off. She told me to!"
"Not all of them," sang Romani.
"Ooooh," said Tatl.
Cremia chuckled and looked to her food. "I'll make you new balloons, Romani," she said.
"So Grasshopper can show off again?"
"I wasn't showing off!"
"You were showing off," said Tatl.
He pulled his mouth into a tight line, and then shoved the Mask of Scents back over his head with a decisive snort.
Immediately, the house and its contents assaulted his nose- the fire, the food, the flowers, the cows, the grass, the sweat, the lavender. Cremia was unignorably close, and the mask's power brought her even closer.
Cremia covered her grin with her napkin. "I see why you have that mask. Where did you find it? I've never seen one like it in town before."
"Grasshopper has a lot of masks," said Romani.
He didn't answer. He was too caught up in Cremia's scent, and remembering the texture of her blouse against his face, and the warmth of her body. Her breath smelled like pepper spice when she spoke.
"Grasshopper? The mask? Where is it from?"
Tatl finished a mouthful. "Swamp. Deku Scrubs usually have 'em, especially now that the swamp water's probably poisoned all their living pigs."
"Scrubs have pigs?" asked Romani. She focused on what was in front of her- the cows, the balloons, the pigs. The plates dully clattered against the tablecloth as she reached for another sandwich.
"The swamp is poisoned?" asked Cremia. Her mind was on a totally different level- the business, the blocked road, the poison, Anju, Kafei.
The two sisters looked at one another, and then at Tatl.
"Yes," she said, and continued her meal.
Cremia took a moment to process, and then cleared her throat. "I see. Does that mean you're from the swamp, Grasshopper? If you're here, that means the roads are clear, I suppose."
He looked up. "Oh? No, no, I'm not from the swamp." He bowed his head and stared at his hands.
"Oh! Did your parents move there recently?"
Tatl's roving eyes felt like hot coals, even through the mask.
"N-no." He sank in his chair, and braced himself for the oncoming frigid, awkward silence. "I don't, uh, I don't have any parents."
Cremia frowned, placidly, and with tight-lipped melancholy. She leaned closer to him, and he thought he might sink into the floor.
Meanwhile, Romani nodded amicably and claimed a new sandwich. "Neither do we!"
"Don't be insensitive," scolded Cremia.
"Romani isn't being insensitive! We don't! Romani barely even remembers them! It's just been Big Sis and Romani, you know? Maybe it's like that for Grasshopper and Firef-"
Tatl chimed menacingly.
"-Tatl," Romani finished.
"But you don't know that," argued Cremia. "Just because it doesn't hurt you doesn't mean it doesn't hurt other people.
His father was a tree with years beyond number. His mother was a place, a fairy, a girl, ephemeral. He had no depth of experience to explain himself or his feelings with. With one exception, nobody in his living memory had ever made him meals or washed his clothes, nobody since Navi scolded him or taught him, and, with one exception, nobody else had ever wrapped him up in their arms to tell him everything was going to be okay. Not like that.
Nobody except Cremia.
"Well? Is it like that? Grasshopper?"
"Romani!"
Tatl cleared her throat. "He got the mask by winning a race against the Deku kingdom's butler," she said.
Cremia followed her lead like a soldier follows a commander. "Oh! Wow! Did you meet the King?"
"Yes," said Tatl. "He was huge. All you people are huge, but the Deku King was very huge, even from your point of view. And he was loud. And kinda mean."
The Deku King and his court had taken in the swamp's poison water long enough for it to inject veins of dangerous red through their leaves and cloud their minds with superstition and hatred. It was hardly fair to judge them for their actions and attitudes beneath its influence, and in that climate: the King's daughter was missing, the swamp was warping and dying, and the Deku butler's had no answer as to why someone else was wearing his son's face.
"The Deku King was very big, yes."
Romani leaned forward. Her mouth was full of cookies. "What about the princess? Did you meet her?"
"Oh, yes. I met her." He bit his lip. "She's very, ah," he remembered the white-hot gleam of fury alight in her eyes upon her return to her father, " very expressive."
"Is it true they have monkeys as tall as Romani? And flowers as big as this house? And witches?! And giant turtles?! And a magic lake at the top of a mountain?!"
"Well, I," he paused. "Yes, actually." He nodded. "There's ruins in the Woodfall lake, too."
"I've heard the Scrubs say that's where all the water in Termina originated," said Cremia. "I don't think that's true, though."
He and Tatl looked at one another.
"It might be one of them," they both said. "Like the spring in Ikana Hill."
Cremia tilted her head. "Ikana Hill? You've been there?"
"Yup," said Tatl. "And we'll be back soon since we can't fart around forever," she mentioned, pointedly. "Hooray. So thrilled."
He snorted at her.
"Nevermind that! Do they really have magic beans that make flying plants? In the swamp?!" asked Romani.
He tilted his head. "How do you know about those?"
Cremia finished her sandwich and took a cookie. "Romani's very popular with the restaurant owners and patrons with the establishments we supply. We both talk with them a lot."
Romani dropped her sandwich and balanced over her forearms. "What else? What else do they have?!"
Cremia's hair brushed by her shoulder as she moved it out of the way. More of her scent wafted from it, and he felt himself go dizzy.
"Grasshopper? Grasshopper!"
He shook it away. "Uh?"
"Romani, hush," her sister said. "So where are you from, anyway, if not the swamp?"
He swallowed. The Mask's power was suffocating, but without it, they would be able to see him sweat.
Tatl stepped in. "Lots of places. We travel." She picked at her bread. "A lot."
"Like where?" asked Romani.
"Like everywhere," said Tatl. She tented her fingers. "What kind of place do you want to hear about?"
Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I really appreciate it, as always, as few as you are!
Please be aware that I'm probably going to move the Deku Mask chapter to somewhere in this next section of the story. After going over my notes, I feel it fits better there. For now, it is where it is, but just be aware that if one day you check this story and everything seems out of order, I've done this intentionally. Not to fear.
Thank you all, again!