In response to reviews: Freefan1412 - I'm sure that the Yiga will indeed find a way to track her. Right now, Link hasn't talked to that many people, but she's been around enough (and the Yiga, thanks to Vah Rudania, are definitely aware that someone out there is doing something for sure) that the Yiga might've gotten a clue on how to track her. Still, she's just one girl in the whole of Hyrule.
Well, Link has only seen Teba from a distance, not met him. That was Teba getting ready for the in-game attack on Vah Medoh that he and Harth do.
In-game, I think that you can get a Knight's Bow from the Sha Warvo shrine, if I remember correctly. With regards to the black, I was picturing an ancient version of the Phrenic Bow.
Yep, Link got turned away from the city properly, due to the Vah Medoh attacks, so she had to go around the lake.
Mmhm. I'll be going into the Master Sword and the court a bit later. For now, you just get these tantalising tidbits about Mipha and whatnot. And yep, as I mentioned in my author's notes, by the time Link was trying to make friends with Revali, it was a much, much, much different time than her time with Daruk. You can see her character arc in the past as well!
Revali's interactions and arc should be pretty interesting as far as the Champions go. I was fascinated by him being one of the few characters in-game that doesn't immediately fall over to praise Link and wanted to reflect that.
To all of my readers: my sincerest apologies for that lapse. With this chapter, we're back to our usual release schedule, now that my beta reader isn't busy. I sincerely hope that this sort of delay won't happen again; I've made plans so that even if my beta reader is busy, I'll be able to keep the chapters rolling out. Thank you kindly for your patience. There should not be any more blips.
Chapter Twenty-One: Enduring Carrot Cake
She learns the children's names on the short path to their house. Cree, the blue one; Kheel, the purple; the inseparable red and yellow whom she cannot differentiate for their constant Notts and Kotts or Kotts and Notts; and Genli, the green, who makes her sisters promise not to snitch on her for having sneaked out in the middle of the night for food of all things.
As they walk upwards, Link listens to the strains of tinkling music. Windchimes, hung nearly everywhere, of various sizes and assortments of wood, different shapes: some cylindrical, some hollowed spheres, some strange twisted helices that she has never seen before. They harmonise with the breeze and Link notices that the children flutter-walk in step with the music. The children's home perches on the wayside of the residential area from what Link can gather, on the very edge of the wooden spiral that juts out over the lake, with the path immediately to its left closed off. The wood that marks the edge of the world has to it a look almost of petrified stone. Beyond the grey border and a hastily erected wooden barrier painted over with large blocky characters, the skies drop into the lake.
Link need not know how to read Tabanch to hazard a guess of keep away or danger or watch out.
The house itself: wooden, as with the others, and painted brightly, mostly in blue, but with a rainbow of highlights. The most prominent recurring symbol, painted not only on the winding path that leads to the house but also displayed over the door to the home, comes in the form of a thick bluish arc, like a crescent moon with the horns cut off and replaced by golden-tan rectangles, and below it a line of musical notes in red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The roof slopes upwards to a characteristic point similar to its neighbours' roofs.
Instead of a hard door, a curtain of navy fabric hangs from the front of the house.
Notts and Kotts drag Link forward. Cree and Kheel part the fabric to reveal the dark innards of the home, lit by the light filtering through the open windows on the sides.
When the children pull her in, a flame lights in the middle of the foyer room. Link's vision adjusts to the sudden brightness to see a rito woman perched upon a curved wooden branch with a candle in her hand.
The turquoise that feathers her features does not hide the fatigue etched into the violet rings around her golden-green eyes, or perhaps rito simply look like that; Link hasn't seen enough to tell. She has tied back her plume of yellow feathers into a ponytail and sits upon the rito equivalent of a chair—like a bird perched upon a twig—with nothing obscuring the intensity of her gaze as Link studies her studying the children and Link.
Link glances at her escorts for advice and nearly topples over in laughter: all of them have puffed up into nearly unrecognisable balls of fluff and feather, like dandelion puffs standing on pairs of taloned sticks. Genli hides behind Link with Notts and Kotts stepping backwards to emulate their older sister.
Only Cree and Kheel try to stammer something out.
"Th-the visitor made food for us," Kheel explains, her timbre shrill, yet Link can hear the melody beneath her words.
"Meunière," Cree adds, fluffing up her blue feathers. "Salmon meunière."
"And we were really hungry..." Kheel continues.
"...and, that is, er, the visitor wants to see Chief Kaneli, so we said, 'We'll take her to Mother,' since Mother knows everything in the whole world." Cree beams hopefully at the rito woman with the candle, who arches her brows. "The visitor is really nice!"
Notts and Kotts butt in in unison: "C-can we keep it? Please?"
Kheel's feathers flare out further. "You're not s'posed to call people it."
From behind Link, she can hear Kotts leap up and down by the clatter of talon on wood; the child grips the hem of her tunic for support. "But the visitor doesn't look like any gerudo lady or sheikah not-rito I've seen and I dunno what to call it! It's weird!"
Notts agrees: "It's weird! It's weird! They don't have feathers so you can't know what to say! It's weird!"
"I'm a girl," Link offers to alleviate their distress, "and not a gerudo, or a sheikah, but a hylian."
"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh," the children—save Genli—say together, and then Notts and Kott yelp out together: "What's a hylian!?"
The rito woman brings her free wing to her mouth to laugh softly. She sets the candle down. "Girls, thank you for bringing her here," the woman signs with a flight of feather. "Please go to bed. I'll take care of the visitor."
Notts and Kotts abandon Link first to run off past the fabric door behind the foyer and disappear into the dark. She listens to their muffled jabbering of hylians and what in the world that could mean. Cree hugs her mother good-night, and her mother gives her head feathers a quick preen. Kheel follows in Cree's talonsteps.
Genli scoots a centimetre at a time out from behind Link. She salutes her mother. "Night, Mom."
Her mother signs a wide arc: a word that Link does not know, but suspects represents Genli's name. "Good night. If you want a midnight snack, you can just tell me, you know."
Genli's facial feathers darken to a forest-green and she scampers off.
With the children gone and the tensions relaxed Link allows herself a glance around the foyer, or main room, or sitting room, or wherever she may be. A circle of branches around a decorated floor. Paintings and portraits of the children adorn the walls alongside pictures that—Link assumes—the children have painted themselves. One depicts a family line-up. She recognises Kotts and Notts, Genli, Kheel, and Cree in a row, with their mother on their left side, and a broad blue rito holding some sort of rectangular banana on their right.
The children's mother taps Link's shoulder so abruptly that Link momentarily sprouts wings and jumps backwards. Instead of hitting the door, Link passes through the fabric barrier to smack her rear into the wooden path outside. The sudden chill of evening air hisses just under her skin.
One way to kick out a visitor.
But the children's mother lifts the veil and gestures for Link to come back into the home.
"Wait here a moment," she instructs Link, vanishing into the innards of the house. In the meantime, Link endeavours to learn to perch upon one of the branches that serve as chairs. Her feet cannot curl around the curved top even after she removes her boots. If she attempts to sit normally, the thin branch imprints a painful line into her bottom and thighs, and she falls over either way.
The children's mother returns just after Link has slid off for the fifth or sixth time, her face planted firmly in the floor and her torso in the air. The mother brings a foldable chair for guests.
The children's mother begins making tea. Link could offer her own cheeks to boil the water for the burning flush as she seats herself in the wooden chair.
"Call me Amali," she says. Amali pours tea into two cups and places the pot—green and blue, painted with songbirds—on a stand between them. The wooden cup warms Link's palms. The tea smells of rosehips, of warm cinnamon, of herbs she has scented before but for which she has no name. "Thank you for taking care of Genli." Before Link can react Amali resumes: "I know she asked you for the salmon. Kheel likes porgy, like her father; Cree has a fondness for trout; and the twins like carp." She smiles tiredly at Link. "Of course, they like it because carp sounds halfway to a swear word."
Link reflects her smile for lack of words to say. They fall into quiet. The tea soothes Link's startlingly dry throat. Draining the cup, she rolls it between her palms for the delight of the wood grain texture against her skin.
At length Amali speaks again. "You're more than welcome to more tea if you want it, you know. Now, that is...you wished to speak to Chief Kaneli?"
Link inclines her head. "I have a letter to deliver to him from Lady Impa of Kakariko," she rattles off mechanically, removing the red envelope from her satchel as proof. She notices Amali's eyes widen and then narrow into thin slits of golden-green.
When Amali resumes conversation, Link observes the deliberateness of her motions, the steadiness of the arcs through which her hands sweep, and how her feathers bristle as if prepared to leap away at any second. "If you wished to see Chief Kaneli, you should have passed through the checkpoint, you know."
Link makes an oh noise. "They turned me away!" she explains eagerly, latching onto something to say. "They said he was busy with matters of Medli. Something about recent attacks...?"
The feathers of Amali's brow arch outwards. "Have you not heard of Vah Medoh?"
She lowers her arms to her lap and shakes her head. Once more Amali studies her under a gaze so heavy that Link defaults to staring blankly ahead.
"Where did you say you were from, and whose letter is this?"
"The letter's from Lady Impa of Kakariko." Link learned enough from past experiences attempting to justify her actions to elaborate rather than state her basest honest feelings, though she is hungry. "She's been asking me to go to different towns and see how people are doing. She says that since the Great Calamity—" Link touches her fingers to her chin to recall. "—communication has been lacking, is what she said, I think? She asked me to see how they were doing in Darunia, and she didn't give me a letter then. So I went around and asked all the people in Darunia. But I don't think I did a very good job—" Her realisation comes upon her as a storm in the night. "—because this time she gave me a letter for Chief Kaneli directly. I don't know what's in the letter."
"To Darunia, and now Medli?"
Link nods excitedly.
"I suppose you truly have travelled far, you know." Amali's feathers have settled from their outwards fluff. Fluff. "Who did you say sent you?" Link repeats herself. "Lady Impa of Kakariko..." Amali brings her hands behind her head to fiddle with her ponytail plume. Then in a rush of feathers she flutters down from the perch. "Wait here." She returns within a few minutes with a slitted wooden cylinder, from which she pulls out a long sheet of parchment. A letter or book of some form. Link watches her scan the paper from right to left with a gaze so intense it radiates heat.
After a few moments Amali nods to herself. She returns the paper into the slit and looks up at Link.
"Yes, I've heard of a—Lady, you called her—Impa before. I think my husband..." Amali's feathers curl inwards; Link blinks vacantly at her. Amali polishes the side of her beak. "Well, that isn't relevant, you know. I might know why the checkpoint turned you away." Leaning forward, she asks for the envelope. Link lays it flat in her palms. "Do you see the mark upon that envelope?" Amali places a feather against wax seal: the eye with the teardrop. "That is the symbol of Sheik, you know. Yet, if you turn it upside down..." She rotates the envelope so that the tear points away from Link. "...that is the symbol of the..." She signs a word.
This time Link asks directly. "What's that gesture mean?"
Amali spells it out. Yiga.
Link blinks. Instinctively her hand moves to her right hip and Amali inhales sharply, prompting Link to shake her head. "I don't know who they are, but I've been asked before if I'm Yiga."
"You don't know who the Yiga are...?" Amali's frown etches deeper. "If you speak the truth, then you seem to know very little for a traveller, you know. I mean to bear no insult."
Link rubs the back of her head and smiles sheepishly at Amali instead; the corners of Amali's mouth hint at an upwards curve.
"The Yiga are...honestly, even I don't know that much about them. They've raided and ransacked villages all over southern Tabantha, and every year they come further north. Some say that they're worse than monsters. Monsters you can hear coming, you know, but Yiga." Amali covers her face with her wings; Link hears her breathe in through the curtain of feathers. "What would possess people to hurt others, to willingly serve the Calamitous One, I don't understand."
Link tries to inquire of the Calamity but Amali pays her little attention. She can see the wet shine of Amali's eyes. In the unsteady jerkiness of her wings, in the way that her words slur and muffle into one another, Amali seems to talk more to herself than to Link. "Since Vah Medoh started attacking things have become even worse, but...few people want to move out, because where would we even go? If we leave, there's no guarantee of safety, but neither is there if we stay, and yet I..." Amali's gestures die away entirely and she hides her face in her wings.
Link continues to sit in the foldable chair with the cup rolled between her palms. Impassively she unfocuses her gaze, the portraits on the walls blurring to a kaleidoscope of colour. She dare not breathe.
Eventually Amali tucks her wings at her sides. Link can see the darker tracks of tears down her cheeks. At least Amali cries no longer. "I'm sorry you had to see that. Recent events have...exhausted me, though that is no excuse, as I know." She flicks out her feathers as if shaking the excess thoughts from her hands. "Would you like more tea?"
Link dips her head.
Amali pours her another cup. "There are those who say that Vah Medoh's attacks are a punishment, you know. They say: if we had not settled down in villages, then our guardian would not have turned on us. They say: the winds that storm from Vah Medoh's wings and the light that burns from Vah Medoh's beak are the Goddess's warning and the Goddess's fury. They suppose that the Goddess should wish us to take to the skies as our foremothers did and keep to a nomadic existence. If I knew more of the world, then I might have my own thoughts, but for me, all I wish is to see my daughters and my husband at peace." She tucks her wings against her boy. Link blinks at her. "I suppose that Lady Impa of Kakariko would be interested in knowing that, you know. If you wanted to write down my words to bring back to Lady Impa, then that would be fine." Her feathers darken slightly in her blush. "Ah, maybe leave out some the things about the daughters and husband."
Link's sheepish smile returns. "Thank you..."
"Now, if this is acceptable, then I will take you to see Chief Kaneli in the morning. I do not suppose that he would find much pleasure in being woken up in the middle of the night, you know."
Link laughs. Amali raises a wing to cover her mouth as she joins in the laughter, up until Link nearly slumps from her chair in a combination of exhaustion and hunger. Apologising to her host. she climbs back into the chair to pour herself another cup of tea.
"Can I do anything to repay you?" Link asks while Amali follows suit on another helping of tea. "I have monster parts." When Amali's features contort she hastily adds: "And rupees."
"Hm? No, no worries at all. I should thank you for making Genli salmon meunière that even she would like." Amali pauses. "The most I could ask of you would be your name, if you were willing to give it. Link? That's a pretty name." Amali sighs. "I suppose I should ask you for another favour. If you wouldn't mind, then could you make a batch of salmon meunière for her?"
Link straightens up in her chair as though the seat had pricked her rear. "I'll whip up anything you want me to."
Amali relaxes visibly, the tension leaking from her shoulders. "She's been picky about everything lately. Please, let her antics not get to you. It's the anxiety of Vah Medoh, you know."
"I don't mind at all."
"You say that," Amali replies, her eyes slightly narrowed, "yet your face and your words seem at odds."
Link flinches back. She cannot wash her features of that hollow vacancy. Self-expression. Voice. Instead she feels her fingers pressing against her palms.
Then her stomach grumbles loudly, and Amali pushes her hand over her beak. "I've been a terrible host, haven't I?" she signs with a laugh. "Would you like something to eat?" Link leaps out of her seat; the promise of food has chased away her fatigue so thoroughly that she could wrestle the Malice and win. "Did you not have any of the salmon yourself?"
"It'd be enough if you could let me cook," Link answers honestly.
"I'll come with you, then, lest someone happen upon you." Amali rises from the perch. She dons a cloak of sorts and parts the fabric into the cool night. Link follows her. Where before the slight heat of the afternoon had kept the communal cooking area to a reasonable temperature the onwards march of night has sapped away the warmth. Link shivers.
But neither snow nor sleet nor rain nor fog could keep her from a warm meal.
"Let me help you out, at the very least. Have you ever eaten a Tabanch cake?" Link shakes her head from side to side, and Amali brightens. "My husband tells me I bake so well that I make it look like..." She pauses. Before Link can make known her confusion Amali resumes with a smile: "...a piece of cake!" She laughs to herself. The mirth that wears away the wrinkles at her eyes brings Link to laugh as well for the sheer joy of it even if she knows not the joke.
Link browses her satchel. The very last of the carrots that Koko and Cottla gave her. Endura carrots, only, all of the swift carrots having disappeared here or there into Ilia's belly, as the horse seems to prefer their immediate sweetness to the slow release of endura carrots. Amali inspects the long orange vegetables.
"I haven't seen carrots in ages. You brought these all the way from Necluda? Does everyone in Necluda speak as formally as you do? If you wanted to use that, then I don't see why we couldn't." She breaks off the tip of a carrot to nibble it. "Carrot cake it is."
They work by candlelight and rest by moonlight. While Link grinds out another round of flour—Amali insists she need not do so given the already-made flour that she has available, but Link finds the work a calming reprieve from the pressures of justifying her existence in speech—Amali grates the carrots. She boils sugarcane into a thick crust of brown sugar that she mixes into the carrots, which takes enough time that Link finishes the flour far before Amali has completed her task. After cleaning the grain mill, Link picks out acorns from her satchel, washes, and crushes them into tiny bits. In Link's cooking pot, Amali bids Link to beat goat butter, sugar, and vanilla extract—the latter from a small glass vial that Amali produces with a wink, referring to it as Tabantha's own special ingredient—alongside rock salt and a dash of cinnamon. She adds a white powder that she refers to as aerated salt, though it does not taste salty to Link when she tries it on her tongue. Link's arm threatens to fall off. Amali lets her rest as she mixes in the flour as well, to create a thick batter. When her muscles cease aching, Link takes over yet again to combine the grated carrots, as well as the crushed acorns, much to Amali's perplexed yet approving nod. Link butters, then flours, the bottom of a pan. With a grunt, she hefts up the cooking pot and pours the batter into the pan nearly to the top.
Amali demonstrates the use of the wood-fired oven. She slides the pan inside. "It'll be a few hours or so," she remarks. Without a chair, Link seats herself cross-legged on the floor and slaps her cheeks to keep awake. "I suppose you're not used to cooking at night. If you want, then you nap."
Link shakes her head. Not with the scent of carrot cake slowly enfolding in an embrace of warmth.
While they wait, a city guard passes by. Amali chatters animatedly to him, far too quickly for Link to keep up with her words; the conversation reminds her of her relative lack of fluency in Tabanch. The guard leaves them be.
Amali prepares frosting. Under her instructions, Link stirs together the remainder of the sugar with goat butter. Amali dribbles in drops of vanilla, tasting every few drops, until she nods with satisfaction. A splash of milk completes the white substance. Link beats the frosting; it becomes thick and fluffy. Amali retrieves what she calls a piping bag, into which she scoops the frosting and seals the top.
Then the two rest and await the cake in relative silence save for the grumbling of Link's stomach. Lowering her eyelids, she wonders at the whisper of cold across her skin, in the kiss of wind on her cheeks, in the wash of moonlight over her hair. If she listens, she can just make out a song on the wind, and then she realises that she has not conjured up the music, but that the night breeze conducts an aria in the windchimes.
When the wind dies down, Amali breaks the quiet.
"When my husband was here, we would sneak out to the kitchens at night. I would bake long into the wee hours of the morning while he serenaded me." Amali strokes her fingers through her plume of feathers while Link sits without words. "You've travelled a long way. Perhaps you've seen him on the road."
Link glances up at her to meet Amali's expectant gaze. She blinks at her.
"If you haven't, you don't need to feel bad, you know. He has dedicated his life to collecting folksongs from the world over, so he has gone nearly everywhere. To Parapa, to Hebra, to Lanayru, to Faron, to Eldin, to Necluda...and always he brought back songs. When Vah Medoh began its attacks, he left, promising me to return when he's fulfilled a promise he made." She exhales. "He...he has the gentlest eyes of any man I have ever known. Have you met him?"
Link tilts her head to one side, and Amali blushes.
"And of course I haven't given you anything to identify him with. Ah, he's a rito, of course. Blue and gold, and white too, with a black beak. You might know him by his accordion of trade, if you've seen a travelling minstrel."
She sits up. "Kass?"
Amali buries her face in her wings, only the green of her eyes visible behind the crown of her feathers. She nods, and Link pulls herself up the table.
Her arms become messengers of Amali's comfort. She tells Amali of her first encounter with Kass in the foothill village of Medigo on the other side of the land once known as Hyrule, and again at the Thundra Plateau more recently, far closer to Medli. She tells Amali of the songs that Kass has sung for her and the beauty of his craft both of instrument and voice. She tells Amali of the way that the entire village quieted to listen to him sing.
"...thank you, Link." Amali bows her head. "If you see him again on the road, tell them his daughters and I love him very much."
The cake continues to bake. At some point, Link notices that Amali has dozed off, while the cloak has fallen down to her shoulders. She leans over to pull the hood back up to keep Amali warm.
Link trains her gaze onto the oven. The cake rises up from the pan. She licks her lips.
By the time the cake has finished, the aroma alone has brought tears to Link's eyes and pink to the edges of the sky. She wakes Amali with a nudge to the shoulder.
They take the cake out together. She wipes drool from the corners of her mouth. Amali decorates the cake with white frosting before they carry the pan between them back towards Amali's house.
The windchimes meter out a rhythm to their walk, a method to their madness, and Link steps in time.
They barely pass the threshold of the home when five familiar faces pop out from behind the fabric door in a column. They half-fly and half-tumble in at the same time to swarm Link and Amali with demands of cake cake cake for breakfast. Link lifts the pan over her head while Amali bursts out laughing.
"Only after a healthy breakfast," Amali insists. Genli pouts and demands salmon. Notts and Kotts continue to run circles around Link begging for cake, while Cree and Kheel patiently take their perches.
"Can we pleeease practise singing right afterwards?" Kheel asks, puffing up her feathers. "You can conduct us right Mother?"
"I have to take Link to see Chief Kaneli, you know," Amali answers. She sets out breakfasts of seed-and-vegetable salad. "After that, of course, Kheel."
Kheel rustles up her feathers while Genli stamps her foot on the ground. "Genli isn't not not not not eating this!"
"Only good girls who have eaten breakfast can have this carrot cake that our visitor made, you know."
Genli glances at Link, who waves at her. "She made it!?" Link bobs her head, and Genli mopes towards the table. "Genli gueeeeeeeesssses it's okay to eat salad, if it means Genli gets the cake."
Cree giggles and Genli tries to chuck her spoon a her. Link catches the utensil; she returns it to Genli who exacts her violence on her bowl of salad.
Eventually the salad vanishes into their stomachs. Amali cuts the cake. Link expects none after the fried salmon, yet she finds a plate with a hearty slice pushed into her hands.
If she sobbed for a year, she would not properly express her gratitude.
Carrot cake.
Endura carrot. Link has eaten mixed swift and endura carrots before, but never endura by itself. She has noticed Ilia quicken her pace on swift and ride longer on endura.
She foregoes the spoon and scoops up the slice of cake in her palm. Her teeth pass cleanly through the sweet frosting that melts in her mouth and dig into the moist flavour of the cake, its mild sweetness a perfect complement to the texture of acorn. Warm cake, cool frosting, sugar and substance all at once.
She has tasted this cake before. She stood—her body stood—on a field pillared with stone. A giant bird-like beast of gold and brown, its eyes a dull orange, perched in the centre of the field, dwarfing the city of tents erected at its feet. She stood there nearby with a plate of carrot cake, while the girl with the golden hair conversed with a sheikah woman in a white robe, the latter eating a slice of the cake that Link had prepared.
"...I still believe that the activation of the Divine Beasts has something to do with the sheikah slate," the girl with the golden hair said. "There has to be some way to link the two together."
"Pah, I know," the woman replied, pausing for a moment to pull her dark hair into a taut bun before resuming her attack upon the cake. "Why else do you think we gave the slates to the Champions? Believe me that we are looking at this from every possible angle. You've been traipsing around—" The girl with the golden hair's features contort. "—excuse me, you've been working hard at unlocking that sealing magic. That's what you need to do."
"Furthermore, I have reason to believe that the Divine Beasts are associated with the Sacred Realm." The girl with the golden hair rummaged through her pack to retrieve a bound notebook. "I have with me a report—"
"No need." The woman polished off the cake. The girl with the golden hair looked at Link, who cut the woman another slice. She remembers feeling the girl with the golden hair's mounting desperation thick as the scent of carrot in the air. "We have plenty of evidence of how the Divine Beasts functioned and precious little about the Sacred Realm, if the Sacred Realm even exists. We're working on building a dictionary of Loftean as we speak. That'll give us much more to work with than fanciful folk-tales." The girl with the golden hair opened her mouth but the woman cut her off: "Maybe if you unlock that sealing magic you'll gain access to the Sacred Realm, and then you can test all of your own theories. And I don't want you to get yourself in trouble—or get me in trouble—with your father." Her gaze flickered left and right. "I know you're smart, but if the King catches a whiff of me helping you, I'll be kicked back to Hateno faster than I can say damn. Speaking of which, here comes my sister now. With Revali, no less. I'm out. Toodles." The woman turned to leave, then glanced back for a moment. "Thanks for the cake. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have research to do." The woman gave the empty dish back to Link before practically sprinting off.
The girl with the golden hair lowered the notebook. She shook her head slowly from side to side. "...thank you for helping me, Link," she said quietly. "I've been trying to get her to talk to me for ages. Who would've thought that a bribe of carrot cake would finally be the key?"
"The quickest way to someone's heart is through their stomach," Link mused.
"Oh, didn't—" A name that flits through her memories and leaves the girl with the golden hair's cheeks reddened. "—teach you that? She's not wrong." Then the girl with the golden hair exhaled. "But that conversation didn't get me much of anywhere. What did Purah say about her sister?"
Link looked behind her to find the woman in black carried aloft by the blue-feathered rito. He set her on the ground and then dropped himself down to cross his wings over his chest.
The woman in black stepped forward. "Your Majesty." She knelt before the girl with the golden hair, who hid her face behind the notebook. "I apologise, Your Majesty, but you cannot run off from your daily prayers. His Highness has given me these very instructions to guard you with my life. If you do not dedicate yourself to studying the sealing magic before the Calamitous One unseals, I will give my life to protect you but that will not be enough. Please, Your Majesty. You must understand."
The girl with the golden hair squeezed the notebook until her knuckles paled to whiteness. She said something, muffled, against the leather binding. "...like I haven't been trying..."
The rito clicked his tongue. "Tch. That's the problem with destiny. We've got the Princess and her Knight, 'cept the Princess can't do the sacred sealing and the Knight can't do the blessed blade-ing. Whumph."
The woman in black glared at him with a gaze so sharp that Link could feel its edge cutting into her despite the distance. "Revali. One more word and we will have to select a new Champion of Erito."
Revali shrugged. "Right, 'cause you could 'select' another one. S'not like the Princess or the Knight, huh? The King could even 'select' another you, ey, Impa?" The woman in black's face remained impassive as tone, and Revali spat on the ground. "Tch. So, are we getting back or what? The other Champs are waiting for you two walkabouts. See, like layabout, except you two have a tendency to walk off and make me fly around searching for you."
"That's enough, Revali."
The girl with the golden hair sank into the grass on her knees. "He's right. I don't know why we're playing at this farce. No matter what I do, it's never going to work."
Revali clapped his wing onto the back of the girl with the golden hair. "Hey now, cheer up. You've got plenty of time before the bwig bwad bwoar shows up. In the meantime there's tons of opportunity to run away, worry everyone to death, and waste everyone's time."
The woman in black looked to strangle Revali, but instead she narrowed her eyes at Link. "And you." She remembers recoiling from the cut of the woman in black's words. "We have to tolerate you for that sacred sword on your back, but how could you encourage Her Majesty? Are you trying to sabotage us?"
The girl with the golden hair stood back up with the knees of her black pants greened by grass. "Leave Link alone," she pleaded. "I begged her to help me. I ordered her to. It's not her fault."
"She's enabling you. Knight or not, if this happens again, I will be reporting this to the King." The woman in black's mouth thinned into a line. "And may I remind you of your sister's conditional stay at castle. Or would you prefer her returned to your parents?"
The memory fades into the curdling of her blood and the thudding of her heart at the fear of the threat, yet she feels no fright at all at the woman in black's final words.
No, not fright, but hope.
Whatever happened to the silent castle on the horizon—if her little sister could have been sent away—then maybe—
Link licks the frosting from her fingers, counting the names that she has collected like so many scars on her skin. The Champion of Erito, skilled with the bow. Revali. The Champion of Goro-goro, who offered her a home. Daruk. The girl with the golden hair, scholar of the shrines. The Princess. The woman in black, the Princess's shade. Impa. The girl with the red hair, who made her promise—promise something. Marin. The horse with the white mane, who came at her whistle. Ilia. The girl with the golden-brown hair, who smelled of horses. No name. The girl with the pigtails, with the red telescope, with the blue dress patterned in red flowers that Marin had given to her—she remembers this so distinctly that her breath catches. Marin, the sunrise honeying her fiery red hair and dark brown skin, with a box. For your sister. I hope she doesn't mind a hand-me-down.
The girl with the pigtails. Who found the seagull drawn into the lapel of the dress and screamed out loud with her surprise and joy.
Your sister.
She stares at her reflection faintly visible in the ceramic of the empty plate.
A sister.
The girl with the pigtails, who loved carrot cake.
She lifts her head to the children. To Cree, to Kheel, to Genli, to Kotts, to Notts. They poke fun at one another, laugh with one another, insult one another, support one another, distract their mother together to filch more of the carrot cake.
A little sister.
Her lips part into a grin that she could not stop if she tried. She can sense the tears brimming at the corners of her eyes.
Carrot cake.
She helps Amali to clean up. While she stacks dishes and the pan to wash in the basin of the communal cooking area, Amali leaves Cree in charge of the other girls, to Genli's vocalised dismay. Link stifles a laugh. She leans over to Genli to promise her another meal of salmon meunière tonight.
"For a feather faery who doesn't even know what a feather faery's s'posed to do," Genli says with half a grin, "Genli thinks you're not so bad!"
A touch on Link's shoulder makes her turn towards Amali, tilting her head up to look at her. "Come on," she signs. "I'll take you to see Chief Kaneli." Amali pauses. "And then afterwards, I can teach you to bake cannoli." She laughs at her own joke.
Link wonders if her sister would have liked cannoli.
—
Enduring Carrot Cake (six hearts, two-fifths golden stamina vessel) - cane sugar, endura carrot, goat butter, rock salt, Tabantha wheat
Chapter Twenty-One. First written: 21 June 2017. Last edited: 15 September 2017.
Author's notes: Hopefully next chapter will return to my previous release schedule. The delay actually isn't my fault for once and I have it prepared for release as of the evening of the fifteenth of September, but my beta reader had other plans.
I don't have time for a long author's note tonight, so I'll be fairly brief. Amali is Kass's wife from the games, if you recall. I decided to make her more prominent here than she was in the game. Interesting that Kass has heard about Lady Impa of Kakariko! I wonder from where Kass might have heard that name. Perhaps just on his travels, sure. But perhaps...
The Yiga being around southern Tabantha is a reference to the location of their headquarters, so they would necessarily move from south to north through Tabantha.
Unlike Yunobo, who referred to Vah Rudania with reverence, Amali calls Vah Medoh "it" which is a change of pace.
And hey! It's a younger Purah. The Champions here were selected for merit, and Impa herself is replaceable; the Princess is of course by blood, while the Master Sword chose the Kight.
Indeed, Link now remembers fully about her sister, except for a name, which will have to wait. She does, however, remember Revali's name at last.
Anyways, thank you to you, the reader, for reading along with me this far, and thank you in advance to my beta reader for pulling through whenever she does.
midna's ass. 15 September 2017.
Beta reader's comments: This chapter, again, is everything I adore about our time spent in Medli. Amali's five children are written so well, and Amali herself is a wonderful character, and they play so well into the atmosphere of the arc.
Link remembers her sister here. It's so very bittersweet in the most beautiful way.
This chapter has a cool memory, too. Getting to see Purah in the past is really neat.
Emma. 17 September 2017.