In response to reviews: Freefan1412 - Thank you for the compliments and I'm glad that you enjoyed! Yeah, the chapters do get kind of lengthy at times. This chapter is roughly the same length as the Vah Rudania chapter (the sixteenth); I think they have the same page count on my word processor. I deal with Vah Naboris a different way precisely because I realised how long the chapters were getting. But these don't hold a candle to the two longest chapters in the fic as of time of writing (the sixty-fourth and the eighty-fourth). Those are gonna be doozies for sure.
About Teba and Amali chewing Link out: Link wasn't "just" activating the terminals. Remember how Link literally drove Vah Medoh across Lake Totori to crash into the cliff? Imagine if that had crashed instead into the Pillars of Erito. Or imagine if Link had accidentally turned on the whirlwind function of the fans. Why did Amali feel betrayed? Because Link promised her that she only wanted to make Vah Medoh cease to attack (go back and read the twenty-second chapter). Their goal was to go through Vah Medoh safely together. Nothing bad ended up happening, but it sure could have. Imagine leaving a nuclear weapon in the hands of an eighteen-year-old foreign girl who has already demonstrated being fairly reckless (like with the shrine); she promises not to touch any of the big red buttons, but as soon as you leave, you immediately observe her doing so from outside. I don't know about you, but I'd be right terrified if I were Amali. Remember, Amali has known Link for less than forty-eight hours.
I'm very curious to know why you didn't like Teba's characterisation, and I greatly appreciate the feedback and constructive criticism. If you can figure out or explain why, I would appreciate it! I'm always looking for ways to improve my writing and story-telling. Teba isn't meant to be an antagonist here; he's trying to do the best for his city, and Link is determined to prove herself to him.
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the memory! And yes, this isn't the first time that I've commented that Link has a "blank" or "vacant" expression. Just consider the number of times Link merely "stares blankly" in this fic; generally, she's either excited/eager/smiling, or she's just sort of gazing vacantly at more negative things.
Well, now, since when does fate care about the circumstances of the individual?
I hope that the fight scene against Windblight Ganon was fun. As always, thank you for reading and for thinking critically (as in the critique sense) about Delicious in Wilds.
To all my readers: Please note that this chapter features a rather bloody and violent combat sequence. If you wish to skip it, it begins at the paragraph starting with, "Ilia strains against the bokoblin riding her but the thief-bokoblin smacks her shoulder" and you can safely skip to the paragraph beginning with "She slides her blade once more into its sheathe" if you so choose. Stay safe!
Chapter Twenty-Five: Electro Seafood Meunière
The softness of the pool in which she lies keeps her in restful slumber. She hears voices over her, feels warm hands on her body, lifts herself up when asked and keeps herself limp when left alone.
She takes stock of herself: the discomfort of her abdomen, from roughly below her armpit to her waist. The pinging pain of her left heel. And, more than anything, the creeping agony of something hard inside of her left shoulder, that seems to swell without end to push aside her muscle and bone and make her cry out. She can feel the bones of her collarbones pushed aside, can sense the constriction of her arteries until her entire arm prickles with numbness and deadens entirely. Sweat beads over her skin. Her body flushes like flame. The fever reaches its zenith, throbs, and begins to subside until she can sense the heat no longer. The pressure-pain at her left shoulder vanishes. The aching fades. She melts into sleep.
Words drift in and out, incomprehensible. Sometimes moisture dribbles into her lips and she drinks deeply down; sometimes the aroma of a hot meal warms her nose and her mouth instinctively knows what to make of it while her consciousness continues to bob along the safe darkness.
When she opens her eyes at last—before even her eyes have adjusted to the light—she hears something scream in her ear.
The stampede of colours and touches and sounds all around flings her off of the bed. She lands on her feet and whirls around, her hand automatically reaching to her back for a blade she does not have. Her left shoulder burns from the exertion that pulls on her flesh. Her fingers clench about nothingness. She looks over her own shoulder.
The paraglider. The telescope. The slate. Gone. Missing. She shifts into a defensive stance. Movement at her left leads her to throw a punch. Her fist connects with something firm, eliciting a gasp.
"Oi." A voice she knows. "Calm down."
Her body goes rigid. She blinks. The figure resolves itself: a white-feathered rito.
Teba.
Link recoils her arm as she looks him up and down. He massages his stomach where she socked him. "You throw quite a punch." Teba turns towards the bed from which she sprang. Link follows his gaze to find Notts, Kotts, Genli, Kheel, and Cree staring at her. "Don't shock her like that next time."
Link looks down at herself. On her frame she wears a loose white-feather robe of sorts: with sleeves, but without pantlegs. The cloth comes down to her ankles and then some. Two unfamiliar rito, one feathered in dark red and the other in pink, stand near the bed, alongside a dark-skinned gerudo woman with crimson hair.
Teba introduces the red-haired gerudo woman and the red-feathered rito man as the healers who have taken care of Link these past three days. "Three days!?" Link echoes, and he nods. She took a battering with the Divine Beast and the Malice thereafter. Teba elaborates on the proceedings: After the fan sliced off its lower body, the Malice did not follow Teba into the fan, but—by intelligence or by chance—attacked Link with an arrow coated in malice, which spread through her shoulder and festered in her flesh. The healers know not of how she acquired the infection, Teba tells her. But they need no justification for saving her life.
"Over the past three days," the red-haired healer explains with a weary smile, "you've successfully fought off malice fever." With no known cure but for removing as much malice as possible, the healers have repeatedly sliced into her shoulder to drain the wound of malice and done their best to keep the infection from spreading.
Sliding her hand under her robe, Link feels her left shoulder. Bandages and gauze surround the wound, which the healers have kept open and exposed with the insert of a thin hollow tube. When she moves her left arm, the tube hurts. Yet letting the injury close would trap the malice within her skin where it could spread at will.
"We'll have to keep you here until we're certain that the infection is truly gone." The healer wipes her forehead. "But thank the Goddesses, we think you're in the clear."
Link thanks the doctors profusely and offers them rupees, monster parts, whatever services she can provide. They decline. When she insists they not treat her as anyone special, the red-feathered rito shakes his head. "I've never heard of paying for healing. Is that what they do in other places?"
The pink-feathered rito thanks Link for thanking good care of her husband. Saki, as she calls herself, appears to have taken on the responsibility for caring for Amali's daughters. During the first few hours of the hospital visit, Link does not notice. But when she tires and the doctors shoo her visitors out of the room, the fear of Amali's absence chokes her.
Genli breaks the news first. "Mom's been picked on a super secret mission that Genli's not supposed to tell anyone about," she whispers loudly, and Cree hides her face in her wings. "What? Genli didn't tell her about it!"
While Saki takes the children out of the room in the healing ward, Teba stays behind to clarify. In the chaos and noise of the Divine Beast Vah Medoh suddenly ceasing to work, Amali and Teba made a break for the slate. Link started to slip backwards from the wind. Teba grabbed her first to keep her from flying off. Without time to discuss plans, Amali—who had by chance taken the slate from Link's mouth and not yet handed it to Teba—dived towards the main terminal. Her activation of the Divine Beast gave her full control of the fans to clear them of malice. "And now Vah Medoh won't accept anyone but her. The Sages believe it would be an insult to the Goddesses to try to transfer ownership of Vah Medoh to me." His voice trails, and then his timbre firms. "I think that Amali can handle things. She wanted me to thank you, and to remind you to take responsibility for your actions." Teba does not quite smile but he does quite not frown, either. "And to remind you of your promise to Genli."
Chief Kaneli, resumes Teba, passes on his gratitude. However, in the interest of both Link and Lady Impa's wishes for confidentiality, none will hear of Link's existence in the official story of the Divine Beast Vah Medoh, wherein Teba, Harth, and Amali themselves dispatched the Divine Beast with the assistance of a slate found by Amali, clearly chosen by the Goddess Erito to undertake the mission.
Link asks Teba to thank Chief Kaneli for her, and he nods.
She spends the next few days gathering her strength. Link paces about the inner corridors of the hospital, stretches her limbs, practises flips and rolls to retrain her dexterity up until she trips over the mattress and thwacks her nose on the floor. Though most of the malice has drained, the healers re-open the injuries twice a day and fish out violent sludge with hooked needles that bite into her raw flesh. She clenches rolled-up fabric between her teeth to avoid snapping off her own tongue. The blood drains into a basin made of a guardian stalker's head. Link watches tyrian lumps of malice hiss and bubble as they eat through her own blood.
On the sixth day, no malice emerges from the wound in her shoulder. The healers wash the injury over with warm water. Nor on the seventh, nor on the eighth. Link asks when she can go free and the healers ask back how badly she wants to live.
The children visit her on a daily basis. With Amali busied by the immediate chaos of having the destiny of the Divine Beast thrust upon her, her daughters live with Saki, Teba, and their son Tulin, the latter of whom broke his right wing defending a flightless girl—Molli, her name, according to Cree—from one of the Divine Beast's whirlwinds during its final attack on Medli. Link hears an awful lot about Tulin from Amali's daughters and from Teba: she has scarcely seen a father more simultaneously proud and concerned.
Eventually the famed Tulin swings by to visit as well. A kind boy who dreams of becoming a warrior like the Champion of Erito from before the Great Calamity. Link holds back a laugh; she tells him that she knows a little about Revali. His eyes shine with the twinkles of stars.
"How!? From where!?" Tulin crows out, grabbing her hands in his and bobbing her wrists up and down. After letting go, he blushes. "I-I forgot you're a hand-talker for a second, sorry."
Link does not lie. She tells him that she has heard first-hand from some people who knew Revali themselves and does not mention that the phase some people refers to herself. She skims over Revali's tendency to insult others, his remarkable talent at consistently saying the wrong thing, and his scapegoating of everyone around him except for himself, nor does she expound on his skill with the bow or his talent with the wind. She speaks instead of the Revali she remembers. The Revali afraid of failing, of not living up his selection as a Champion, of not having the backing of fate but having to rely on his own wings. The Revali who let a little girl worm her way into his heart, who gave her rides around the city while she banged her fists on his head, who defended her to his own parents that admonished her for disrespecting him. The Revali who had a taste for sanke carp since his first visit to Necluda, who would never admit it but nearly cried over fish pie.
Genli complains that she prefers the Revali of folktale, who never missed a single shot and could wake the very winds. Notts and Kotts agree noisily. Cree waves a wing and declares that she wants to try the sanke carp, too. With pride welling her eyes with tears, Link kneels before Cree and makes her a solemn promise to make sanke carp pie for her one day; she cannot let down a fellow lover of food. Kheel takes the opportunity to convince her sisters to sing a song of Revali's triumphs that sounds as if Revali wrote the lyrics himself.
Tulin's eyes sparkle. "And even though he was afraid of so much, he was still the greatest warrior ever!" he yells out loud enough for the healer to poke his head in and shush him. Tulin's cheeks flush. He resumes more quietly but no less enthusiastically: "Wow wow wow! You know what this means!? I don't have to be a stern no-nonsense archer. Just 'cause I'm afraid of things doesn't mean I can't also be strong."
"Courage doesn't mean not being afraid," Link says with a warm smile, repeating something that someone once told her, though she remembers not the who or when, "but doing the right thing despite your fear."
Tulin bobs his head. "And I understand now." Link quirks her eyebrows. "No, really! I get it now! The secret to his success. I've got it all figured out!" Link leans in. Tulin glances left and right. He cups his hands over his beak and scoots in close enough that Link can feel his warm breath on the outer shell of ear, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "Keep this between you and me, will you? I've figured it out." He takes a deep breath. Link listens carefully as he opens his beak. "Sanke carp. The breakfast of Champions!"
Link bursts out laughing until she topples over to wheeze on the floor.
The children keep her entertained. Link inquires of recipes from the doctors and cooks them for the children when they fly over, recipes that she might never have considered eating herself, recipes that incorporate insects and rodents but which she finds taste just as delicious as the dishes she's made for herself. A reminder to try everything new.
She wonders how monsters might taste. Her mouth waters at the entire world of cuisine she could yet open for herself.
And in the moments in-between talking to the children or cooking, Link continues through her daily routine of practise with her body and her blade alike.
Yet her gaze returns again and again to the windows through which she can see the snowy mountain peaks of Hebra to the north.
The wind sings her name and the waters hum in harmony. Her body yearns for the gentle swaying of the grass, for the scent of the earth after a rain, for nothing but herself and her horse in the wilds of the world.
Her horse.
Ilia.
Link convinces the healers to allow her on an excursion, to do some fishing and to purchase a new tunic. They let her go on the condition that Saki chaperones. The instant Saki takes Link outside to the hustle and bustle of a Medli celebrating the new pilot of their Divine Beast—Link missed the public ceremony while unconscious for three days—she rounds on Saki.
"I need to see my horse. Please. Please."
Saki relents. They glide out to the edge of Lake Totori, to the grove of trees near Passer Hill where Link left her loyal companion. She wets her fingers to whistle for Ilia.
No response.
Link finds the saddle and bridle where she left them on the trees, undisturbed over the two weeks she has spent in Medli. She can feel the quickening of her heart and the shallowing of her breaths. Saki yelps for her not to overexert herself. She runs into the wood whistling, whistling, whistling, until her lips chap and her fingers raw, and even then she continues to whistle through the pain of her mouth.
On the other side of the hill she hears a familiar neigh.
She lunges. Saki flies after her, shrieking that Link has lost it. Yet none of that matters: as she rounds the crest of the hill, Link stares down into the grassy wetlands surrounding the mire to find a pack of bokoblins on horses. Five of them. Three on horses, and two sitting beside a campfire fletching arrows.
And one of the bokoblins: on Ilia.
Ilia, covered in sores, legs wobbling under the weight of the black bokoblin that straddles her.
She whistles.
Ilia strains against the bokoblin riding her but the thief-bokoblin smacks her shoulder. The second its palm connects with Ilia's neck, Link closes her fingers around the hilt of her sword, and all that makes up Link gives way to an extension of the blade.
She half-rolls half-sprints down the slope of hill. The pain in her heel, in her side, in her shoulder with the metallic tube still jammed into her bone: forgotten. She hears the bokoblins take notice of her with cries and blowings of the horns, and she vaults her blade at the thief-bokoblin astride her horse as she closes the gap between herself and the thief-bokoblin. The sword cracks the thief-bokoblin on the side of the head. It starts to slide backwards off of Ilia, then digs its claws into Ilia's shoulders. Ilia whinnies in pain and bolts.
She snags her blade from the grass. A second bokoblin on horseback—a hollowed horn hanging from its belt—charges to run her down. She bids her time to cartwheel to the left at the last second and thrust her blade out as she does. The sword slides between the horse's neck and the horn-carrying-bokoblin. The monster slices itself onto the sharpened edge.
The sudden resistance of the horn-carrying-bokoblin's sternum jerks her backwards. The horse continues on without its rider. She swings her arm down to bash the monster hanging from the blade into the dirt. It tries to kick her; she slams her boot over its inner thighs to pin the spotted-bokoblin down. She grinds the boot in, braces herself, and rips the sword from its chest. The monster shrieks. She thrusts the sword down into its open mouth. Once, twice, thrice. It claws at her leg. She angles the blade into the roof of its mouth and lifts her foot from its lower body to press her entire weight into the hilt. She feels the sword crunch slowly forward, then slide with ease, then crunch again until the tip touches dirt.
The horn-carrying-bokoblin gurgles.
A bolt of agony throbs through her upper back just below the shoulder blade. The arrowhead pierces through the feather-warm tunic. She rolls forward, leaps up, tracks the remaining bokoblins. The two by the campfire have taken up arrows. The third bokoblin on horseback has loped to the campsite and dismounted from the horse to root for weapons.
The one on Ilia has ridden away to the edge of the field.
She flicks her gaze at the archers. She watches them watch her. She feints left while her hand closes around the boomerang—the tube in her shoulder grinds against her bone—and curves it through the air at the leftmost bokoblin. The bokoblin ducks and the forked edge of the boomerang wedges itself into the neck of the rightmost monster. The injured rightmost bokoblin drops its bow. Moaning in pain, it wraps its hands around the boomerang to yank it from the wound. The plume of blood from its throat splatters its companion as it rears its arm back to throw the boomerang back.
She tries to feint again but the leftmost arhcer-bokoblin leads its shot. The arrow grazes her left thigh; a spurt of blood warms the skin of her leg and unbalances her. She bends her knees inwards to turn the fall into a somersault closer to the campsite. She hears the boomerang curve back around and hit the ground. The dismounted-from-horseback-bokoblin rips a branch from a nearby tree and sets it on fire. The rightmost bokoblin, bleeding profusely from its neck, tries to pick up the bow again. She lunges forward to bring the sword down across its wrists.
She senses the splintering of its bones under the weight of the blade and then the edge cuts cleanly through. The fingers of its hand yet twitch as the rightmost bokoblin falls softly to the soil. Its companion screams out and notches another arrow. The now-handless rightmost bokoblin pounces at her, but she thrusts her sword up to pierce through its chest. She spins the monster caught on her blade around, using it as a meat-shield to catch an arrow loosed by the archer-bokoblin.
With a grunt, she swings the sword stabbed through the rightmost-monster's body into the archer-bokoblin to push them both into the flames of the campfire.
The bokoblins screech.
She swivels around for the flaming-torch-bokoblin but the monster finds her instead, with a stabbing pain across her cheek that throws her into the ground. Her hair and the shoulder of her tunic catch fire. She rolls forward through the dirt to extinguish the flames and an agonising weight crashes onto her right hand. Dust stings into her eyes and blinds her. When she closes her eyes the right lid does not fold properly and instead catches against the wetness of her eye. She cannot react to the pain of her eyelashes squirming against her own eyes: the bones of her right hand scream from the pressure. With her hand as a pivot, she twists her entire body to bring her legs up.
Her knees connect to something and the weight relieves from her hand. She jerks her arm inwards and opens her dusted eyes. She rubs the heel of her hand against her left eye until the lid rightens itself. Her eye swells. The middle finger of her right hand has broken at the knuckle. She finds the torch-bokoblin slumped in the grass in front of her. The torch smoulders; the grass catches the fire and the hot air drives the wind upwards.
The torch-bokoblin stirs. She glances at the campsite, looking out through her right eye: the archer-bokoblins have picked themselves from the fire. The handless bokoblin lies still in the dirt but the other lurches to its feet.
She rips the paraglider from her back and opens it. Her broken finger dangles. The stretch of her muscle over the knuckle hisses a breath from her lungs. The updraft from the torch kicks her upwards. She hangs her right arm through both of the wooden supports. With her left, she pulls the slate from its pouch and conjures a bomb.
The first bomb lands on the chest of the torch-bokoblin. The monster grabs the bomb to stare at it, and it detonates to shear off the bokoblin's face and blow its limb from the rest of its body. She glides towards the campfire to drop another bomb but the archer-bokoblin—flesh charred—aims its bow.
She sees it twitch its hand and immediately closes the paraglider. The arrow whistles over her head. The archer-bokoblin notches another.
Her boots connect with its skull.
She lands heavy on the monster's head. The force of the impact knocks her to her feet. Beneath her weight the archer-bokoblin's face crumples inwards to a sick puddle of bone cleaved through the skin and blood. Still it raises its arms to furrow its claws through her leg.
Her sword carves through the monster's throat. The remains of its decapitated head sink into the red earth. Its limbs writhe. She bisects the monster from neck-stump to tail-bone; the stench of its ruptured innards mingles with the coppery ooze of its blood.
She raises her head. The muscles at her shoulder flex over the arrowhead still lodged in her body.
Her eyes narrow.
The thief-bokoblin on Ilia urges her across the field. She can see the long metal spear the bokoblin holds in its hand as it charges her.
She reaches for her bow. She lights the tip of the wooden arrow in the campfire. She lines the shot.
Then she tilts her bow up.
The arrow curves through the air. The thief-bokoblin charges and the arrow drops downwards onto its back. Though the arrowhead does not pierce its hide, the monster's clothing catches flame.
Yet the thief-bokoblin does not slow.
Inhaling sharply she throws herself out of Ilia's thunder-hoofed path. She senses the sudden coolness through her lower right leg from the back to the front, a space about a thumb's-length long. She listens to Ilia neigh and rear. The coolness leaves her leg and pain sets in instead. She thuds into the mud. When she tries to scramble to her feet, the agony in her lower right leg buckles her to her right side.
Ilia's hooves slam into the dust. She rears again.
The smouldering archer-bokoblin falls back. It hits the ground with a gasp.
Still curled up on her side, she pushes her hands towards her mouth. The middle finger of her right hand spears pain up her arm.
She whistles.
Ilia's hooves come down on the thief-bokoblin's chest. She whistles again and Ilia repeats the motion, stamping the monster through its cries of agony. She pulls the blade out once more. The trampled bokoblin lies still and silent in the ice-flecked earth. She crawls towards its muddied corpse.
She studies its ruined body, its collapsed chest, its innards swollen from its abdomen, its broken jaw frothed with blood.
Its pupils dart towards her. Its claws twitch.
For the pain through which the monster has put Ilia these two weeks, she raises the blade above her head. Her breath heaves the weight of her form. She plunges the sword between its eyes. The warmth of its spraying blood heats her face and drains into her eyes, but she need not see to hear the burble-slosh of its dying gasp.
It does not move again.
She slides her blade once more into its sheathe. Rising to her unsteady legs, her right foot dragging behind her for the clean slice through her lower leg, she approaches Ilia. The horse shies from her. She raises her arms up to stroke Ilia's neck and jaw. Her hand shakes whenever she brushes her fingertips against Ilia's skin but she does so nonetheless, cooing hoarsely to calm her companion.
She rests her forehead against Ilia's. Ilia whinnies. In Ilia's breathing she can hear her own name.
Link.
Link limps Ilia to Saki, whose eyes have widened. Saki steps backwards when Link approaches.
"Well," she manages to comment, her timbre stiff as Link's cold-numbed limbs, "I can see why Teba trusted you to fight against the Malice."
"...this is Ilia," Link says by way to explanation. She keeps her swollen left eye closed, viewing the world solely from her right. "My companion. They hurt her."
"I know they're monsters, but—"
Link turns away.
On foot Saki and Link escort Ilia to the stable near the checkpoint at Medli. The stablehands scatter when they see her soaked in blood and limping, her horse covered in scrapes and sores. The stable owner inquires if Link means any funny business.
She pleads for them to get Ilia to the stable healer. Link pays for Ilia's care by the stable healer. The healer does not know how to read sign; Link does not know how to write Tabanch. Grabbing the healer's hand, Link drags the healer outside to the bloodied and battered Ilia. The healer chastises Link for allowing Ilia to grow to such a terrible condition until the healer gets a good look at Link herself, breathing heavily, barely tremble-holding herself against the wall, pooling blood onto the stable floor.
Link would stay in the stable through the night if not for Saki insisting she return and physically dragging her to the medical wing. The healers beg her not to do anything that reckless while she recovers. They pull out the arrowhead; dress her leg; set a cast for her finger. Link waits for nightfall. Under the cover of darkness, she glides back out to the cliffs of Lake Totori and sneaks—limping—into the stable to spend the night by Ilia's side.
A horse and her girl.
Like Link, once again plunked into the medical wing after the encounter with bokoblins, Ilia recovers. With a mere handful of days her coat once again shines with health. The sores have all but faded. For the second time in the same week, Link purchases a new feather-down tunic, asking for the same forest-green affair she did the first time around, and the rito shopkeep thanks her graciously for her patronage.
"Like 'em so much you just had to get another, right?" He winks at her. She looks blankly ahead. "I under-know."
Teba, stopping by to thank Link for her words to Tulin and to inquire as to why Saki called the girl terrifying and not someone who should be around the children, mentions once more the promise that Link made to Genli.
The morning thereafter Link checks in with the stable healer, who confirms that Ilia will be healthy enough to ride in another day or two. Link swears to Ilia that she will return as soon as she fulfills her promise.
Link takes the children fishing. Teba, in the process of teaching Amali her skills with the bow, cannot accompany them. Saki does; she keeps her distance from Link. She can sense Saki's suspicious gaze following her back wherever she goes.
Cree and Kheel teach her how to fish with long Tabanch poles. The first time something tugs on the string, Link jerks the pole out too quickly. The fish—a hearty salmon—tears through the line and whomps her directly in the face. With a mouth full of salmon tail Link flops backwards onto her back and nearly chokes on the fish before it slaps her face twice to spring itself back into the water. The children giggle. She curls her thumb and index finger into the circular sign for being all right.
The fish do not bite.
Kotts and Notts fall asleep. Genli gripes of boredom, and even though Kheel tries to sing a song to keep them alert—the Sonata of Awakening, she calls it—Cree takes a nap against Link's shoulder.
Link frowns, touches her chin, and whips out her slate. Saki yips in surprise as Link summons a bomb and chucks it into the water.
The detonation floats up several trout.
Saki admonishes her but Tulin cheers. "Hylian bomb fishing!" he calls it. "I've never seen anything like it!"
The children cheer, yet Saki confiscates the slate from her. "You can have it back after we leave for the day," Saki says with a shiver of the spine, and Link can see the terror shaking in her eyes. She acquiesces without another word.
Back to the fishing poles.
Her efforts of the next several hours net her no salmon; nonetheless the aspiring fishers come away with a bucket of voltfin trout. Genli watches their sleek yellow bodies flip through the water and demands to take the bucket up to Medli herself. Under Saki's protective gaze, Genli wraps her talons around the handle of the bucket and tries to fly off.
She flaps. Two metres. Four. Six. And then she topples back to the ground. Link and Saki leap forward at the same time: Saki snags Genli from the air, and Link catches the bucket of fish so perfectly that only a single droplet of water splashes over the rim to plink her on the nose.
The kitchen near the stable of Medli suffices for Link to make the meunière. With the help of the children, she harvests the wild wheat from the rolling hills around the stable, then grinds the kernels into flour. Link skins the fish and chops off their heads and tails in preparation for cooking, then removes the less tasty parts of the guts. Saki fries the heads herself and serves them to the children as a pre-supper snack. Link rolls the voltfin trout in flour and dashes of spice. She fries the fish on butter. The bright-gold innards spark with static. The saucepan blazes up in a burst of electricity that stands her hair into a fluffy cloud of brown.
Voltfin trout, Link discovers, means voltfin trout.
She serves the meunière with a splash of lemon that she purchases from the stable. The children chow down.
Link offers Saki a plate as well, and—with some trepidation visibly slowing her movements—Saki accepts. While they eat, Link enters the stable to present two special deliveries of trout meunière: one to the stablehand who takes care of Ilia, and one to the healer who has aided Ilia's recovery.
Upon her return to the kitchen outside, Saki nods to her. "You're not that bad of a chef."
Link smiles sheepishly. She takes the final helping of voltfin trout meunière for herself. The sun setting beyond the mountains has flooded the lake with gold, and the evening breeze rolls across the gentle fields. The cool air pinkens her cheeks above the feathered collar of her new tunic and makes the warmth weight of the plate of meunière in her hands all the more comforting.
The tickle of static gives way to a delectable sweetness like the inner stem of honeysuckle. Though her body knows the taste not as meunière, her tongue remembers who taught her the recipe. The brown-skinned girl with the red hair, with the violet sash about her waist, who pressed the red telescope into her hand. "A gift for Aryll," she said, "to look at the birds she loves so much." Who gave her a wooden charm in the form of a brown-painted horse, and a leather-bound book of myths. "And a gift for—"
The girl with the violet sash.
With the basket of cucco eggs. Whose mother had a farm of wheat and cucco in the hills, who bottled eggnog for passersby, who sang every night for her patrons that joined in with voices that boomed up to the rafters and quaked the floor of Marin's room. Whose other mother ran an adjacent stable to take care of the horses of travellers and to keep a row of stalls full of pregnant mares. With their urine she brewed an elixir as green as spring, which she tried to gift Link for free but which Link staunchly paid for every time.
"I'm glad you're like me," Marin told her one day as Link packed a case of elixirs for the month or two before her courier trips would take her back west.
Link shook her head. "I'm glad I found this place. I never would've...known I could...be a..." She made a wibbly-wobbly circular motion with her hands.
"Well there's nothing else you are 'cept a girl. Well, no, I can think of one other thing." Marin paused and propped her hands on her hips. Link trembled as she awaited Marin's judgment. Marin grinned at her. "Someone who should visit more often, dummy."
In the evenings before her bedtime, Marin would sing. Her voice filled the inn and seemed to bring down the moon and the stars to listen. Her mother strummed a six-stringed harp painted red and blue that resonated the very air with the timbre of her daughter's voice. The night after she first heard Marin sing, Link told her that she had never heard anyone sing as beautifully as Marin did. Marin blushed, and her mother laughed. "If you want to learn to play the harp," Marin's mother signed to Link with an easy smile, "I wouldn't mind teaching you."
So Link set herself to learning. She could stay only a day or two a month, once on her route to deliver blacksmithy goods—the blacksmith, the blacksmith, and Rusl his name, the signs bubbling up in fish-tang under her tongue—and once on the return. Her skills barely improved. On the first day of spring, Marin took her aside with a lump in her throat. "You don't have to force yourself if you don't want to, Link."
Link looked at her, cocked her head to one side.
"I c-can tell you don't really want to learn the h-harp," Marin forced out around the tears beading at the corners of her eyes that made Link want to run away and stick her head in the pond up the hill from the ranch, and then Marin lifted her hands to speak in sign where her throat had failed her. "You haven't gotten any better and I don't have to be a genius to figure out why!"
Link blinked. "I'm only here a little bit every month." Her turn to cry, now, with her eyes stinging for how she'd hurt Marin with her own incompetence. "I forget all the songs while I'm gone. I'm...sorry I'm stupid."
"Link you dummy!" Marin hugged her. "I hope you don't forget me like you forget those songs."
"Never ever," she signed against Marin's back.
On her next visit to the ranch, Marin gave her a present tied with a violet bow.
"You don't have to like it," she said with a hint of anxiety behind the smile that crinkled her eyes. Link unwrapped a crudely carved wooden ocarina painted blue as the skies that Marin loved. She tilted her head to one side, and Marin tucked her hands behind her. "It's so you can practise the songs while you're out. I-if you want to sing with me."
"There's nothing else I'd rather do."
Link played the ocarina on every trek there and back to memorise the songs. She never learned the harp well enough to perform with Marin in the evenings, but she never stopped trying.
A farm of cucco and wheat. Wheat. Wheat must mean: somewhere on the western half of the land once known as Hyrule. She strains to remember where, to see the mountains in the distance, to make out the castle that rises over the moat, any point of reference, but her memories centre on Marin's smile so brilliant that she could rival the sun, on the voice that sang with the song of the wind, on the reddening of Link's own face as if she had broken out with fever.
They fished in a pond that fogs at the edges of her memory. They had to turn the grain mill together to grind down the kernels of wheat Marin had brought from the farm. She had not goat butter but mare butter to glisten gold on the saucepan strapped to her back. "Buttered trout," she sang in a melody that she made up as she went, "buttered trout, pat in flour 'n' fry it out." Link drew the blue ocarina from her pocket to accompany her. Not in harmony but in cacophony, they failed to guess the next note the other would sing or play. Marin could scarcely sing for laughing at every discordant chord and Link's ocarina took on the sound of a sadly deflating balloon. When the trout had fried to honey-coloured perfection, Link wolfed down her portion in the span of a few seconds, then propped her chin up on her elbow and gazed at Marin polishing off her own fish.
"How'd you make it taste so good? When I try doing it back home it doesn't come out the same."
"The secret ingredient," Marin said, balancing her plate in the crook of her arm, "is lots of love." Link's cheeks flushed. "Or that's what Mama says." She giggles and Link can hear the wind laugh with her. "I think it's the horse butter. Speaking of horses. I know you're goin' tomorrow, so don't forget your promise." She booped Link on the nose and her fingertip thundered electricity down Link's spine.
"I promise," she signed with a sheepish smile. "There's nothing else I'd rather do with my life, I swear."
Marin embraced her so suddenly that she had not the time to register the arms wrapping around her or the abruptness of the warm bulk in her lap. She toppled backwards into the water and they rolled together, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, through the shallow end of the pond to the bottom of the hill. When they untangled themselves, Marin laughed and Link covered her face with her hands.
Marin touched her wrists. Her warm fingers rested on Link's wristbones. Lowering Link's arms, Marin leaned in until Link could feel her breath on her nose, on her cheeks, on her lips.
Forget the saucepan. She could fry the trout on her own face.
"Don't forget, Link." Her eyes twinkled. "And even when you leave, don't you ever forget me, or I'll never forgive you."
"I promise."
Genli tugs on her sleeve and the memories fade. Link blinks, looks down at the young girl with a question burning on her features. "Genli wanna know! How come your meunière's so good?"
"The secret ingredient," she says, balancing her plate in the crook of her arm, "is lots of love."
—
Electro Seafood Meunière (four hearts, low electric resistance for 04:50) - goat butter, voltfin trout, Tabantha wheat
Chapter Twenty-Five. First written: 25 June 2017. Last edited: 21 September 2017.
Author's notes: Hey, we're about three-tenths of the way done with Delicious in Wilds. Thank you so much to my beta reader, Emma, for all of her help, and to you, the reader, for yours.
Indeed, just as with Yunobo, Link doesn't have a chance to speak to Amali due to Amali immediately becoming busy. However, Link does spend more time in Medli than she did in Darunia. That's a step up! And yes, before you ask, Link won't be cucked out of talking to the other new-generation Champions/pilots in the future.
You don't mess with Link's horse. I mentioned that leaving Ilia in the wood for some time was a bad idea. Well, here's why! Link's lucky that some traveller or Yiga didn't steal the horse and just run away with it entirely. I don't really want to say that I had "fun" writing the scene. Initially, I just had Link pull out her sword and then skipped over the scene itself. I realised that adding the fight would make Saki's comments much more sensible, not to mention that I hadn't added in such action for a while. I don't blame Saki for finding Link terrifying, when Link was much bloodier than she usually is in combat.
"What's that spring green elixir stuff?" In real life, some trans girls (as a reminder for those who might have missed the memo, Link is trans in this fic) take oestrogen hormone replacement therapy in the form of premarin, which stands for PREgnant MAres' uriNe (I didn't make that up). While it's not used as much anymore due to better methods of obtaining and administering said hormones, Magic Fantasy Premarin HRT Potion™ seemed reasonable to me. If elixirs can allow people to venture into volcanoes with no real threats to their body, etc., then it's perfectly reasonable for Fantasy HRT™ to also exist. That's what Link was buying from the ranch (Marin is also trans). As for why I chose the colour of spring green, I suppose that spring is often a symbol of growth, new life, and hope, which are to me associated with the possibility of transitioning. Green is associated with Link and with courage in general throughout the Zelda franchise, and believe me when I say it takes a whole heaping of courage.
"Why does Marin have two mothers?" She's gerudo and as such her mothers are both gerudo women.
"Why Marin, even?" I like Link's Awakening, and of all of the "love interests" that Link has ever had throughout the franchise, Marin's the one that I personally think was the best-written (considering technical limitations and so on). While I couldn't carry the existential themes of Marin in the limited space of Delicious in Wilds, I recommend any interested readers in checking out my other fic, adrift, for why I find Marin so interesting.
The six-stringed harp is a reference to Oracle of Ages. In Central Hyrulean, the Faronese eight-stringed harp is called a "harp" while the Parapan six-stringed harp is called an "ages harp" (pronounced ah-guess), similar to how in real-life, English often refers to the Sahara as the "Sahara Desert" even though Sahara itself already means desert, or how certain speakers might distinguish "tea" and "chai tea" or "bread" and "naan bread" even though chai means tea and naan means bread. Conversely, in Parapan, the six-stringed harp is called the "ages" and the Faronese eight-stringed harp is called the "harp ages" (essentially the inverse). Other languages tend to differ on which word(s) they adopt based on which harp their historical populations encountered first. For example, Tabanch uses "ages" and "harp ages" for the eight-stringed variant, while Necludan adopts "harp" and "ages harp" instead. Other languages have their own words for harp, such as Lanayrish, which uses the word surf to refer to the traditionally-silver Lanayrish fifteen-stringed harp.
While Link thinks that Marin's family was out west because of the wheat and voltfin trout, the truth is...
Up next: moving on to the next arc. Link getting chewed out is going to come back big time.
midna's ass. 21 September 2017.
Beta reader's comments: Marin is really, really cute. Link is really, really cute. Link and Marin together are really, really, really, really cute. This memory is extremely cozy. I don't always like romance in fiction, but it's done so well here.
Wrapping up in Medli is nice, too. Though Amali is busy, it's nice to be able to simmer down with all of the other characters, unlike in Daru-darunia, where we basically left as soon as Link got better.
The fight scene in this chapter is intense. Amazing stuff. You can see why Saki ends up so scared.
Hylian Bomb Fishing is the one true acceptable way to fish in Breath of the Wild.
Link's fond memories of Revali are really sweet.
We follow this, my favourite arc, with what is probably my second favourite. This chapter's memory was important, after all.
Emma. 21 September 2017.