In response to reviews: Freefan1412 - I wrote Romani as very much the kid that she is; I don't know if you've been around ten-year-olds, but many of them act like that (not all ten-year-olds, of course). Her personality was based on her depiction in Majora's Mask. And don't worry: Romani isn't going to be major fixture in the story.

As for what happened to Epona: either way, it's been one hundred years! If Epona survived the Great Calamity, she would have died in the meantime, unfortunately. If you go back to the chapter where Link first meets Ilia the horse, you'll notice that Link believes that her past horse was named Ilia. Link did indeed mix up the names in her memories: Epona, as she learns, was the name of her horse. But then who was Ilia?


Chapter Twenty-Nine: Creamy Heart Soup

They offer her the guest bedroom; Link insists on sleeping with Ilia in the barn. The musty scent of hay calms the beat-beat-beating of her heart. She curls up beside Ilia, the tears still fresh on her face, but despite the comforting warmth of her companion beside her the entirety of her frame trembles. The few hours until dawn find her alternating between closing her eyes to try to squeeze out a wink of sleep and staring into the darkness to recall the patterns of red and blue from her memories.

The sound of the six-stringed harp. The call of Marin's voice.

Epona's song. Whatever Epona's song might mean.

Epona.

At last the light filtering through the crack at the top of the barn door silvers, then reddens, then goldens. Link stretches to loosen the tension in her muscles, to crack her spine, to roll her head and shoulders. She rests her forehead against Ilia's.

"I'll be back, girl. Stay safe for me."

Ilia whinnies. Link embraces her companion around the neck.

A young woman about Link's age comes to collect her, bearing the same red hair as Romani and Malon, though the features of her face more closely call to Vish's. "You must be Link," she signs, smiling gently, as though encouraging a filly to take her first few steps into the world. "I'm Romani's older sister, Cremia." Link blushes from recalling her misunderstanding of the word cremia. "Is your wound all right?"

Link blinks.

Cremia taps her right shoulder. Link reaches up to her own and feels the gauze around her skin. She smiles sheepishly. "I've been through much worse, I completely forgot about the arrow."

Cremia brings her hand to her mouth; Link cannot read her expression. "Is tha so? You'll have to tell Romani and Mother of your travels later. They love hearing those stories." She hums to herself. "Would you like to help me milk the cows?"

Link raises her hands to ask about meeting Cremia's grandmother, but she is nothing if not helpful, and the family of Romani Ranch has already given her so much. Cremia demonstrates how to milk. The cows' udders feel damp and slick in a manner that reminds Link uncomfortably of shifting through the entrails of monsters. Where Cremia pumps the teats with an expert hand that splashes milk into the wooden pail at an alarming pace, Link's own efforts reward her with uneven spurts and increasingly urgent mooing from the cow. She pats the cow's flank in apology. Link has scarcely finished milking a single cow by the time Cremia has finished off the rest of the row.

"Thank you for your help." Cremia beams warmly and takes the proffered pail from Link, a quarter full. She sets it down near her own three pails, white to the brim. Link glances over at the horses; Cremia nods approvingly. "Would you like to help with them as well? I'd be very grateful."

Link shovels manure out and hay in. Cremia checks on the horses' health as she goes; she goes quietly about her work, meticulous and steady. Occasionally she lifts her hand to her temples and winces. Link could say something, could ask if she needs anything, and yet—as so many times before—Link's hands stay still and silent. She busies herself shovelling harder.

"Has your horse ever been bred before?" Cremia inquires. "She's lovely, you know."

Link tilts her head to one side. "I don't know. I met her in the wilds."

Cremia hums. "You should be careful. It'll be around their mating season soon, and a pregnant mare won't get you far." She hums once more to herself and removes a small leather notebook from her breast pocket to scratch down a note, then tucks the notebook back in. "Thank you so much for helping me." Whenever she finishes a sentence, Link observes, Cremia folds her hands in front of her to hold them at rest. "Today is market day, so Mother and Father are out delivering milk. And—" Cremia blushes slightly. "—browsing for this year's studs." Link cocks her head to a side but Cremia moves on. "Again, thank you. Would you like to have some breakfast now?"

"I'd like to talk to—" Her belly, seemingly at odds with her wishes, reaches up through her throat to throttle her brain. Link hangs her head in defeat. "...yes, please."

Cremia curtseys.

Link follows her to the house. Miyu yips at her heels. And where there's dog, there's girl: Romani runs up to Link to jabber about a little of everything in the world, switching topics so rapidly that Link simply bobs her head as the words rebound off of her like rain from waxed leather.

Link offers to help cook breakfast. Cremia rebuffs her. "You're our guest."

Link seats herself at the table and droops her head while Cremia cooks. Romani bounces up and down on the chair beside her. Link catches about one in twenty words—the Faronese too quick for her to understand—but Romani seems to need little encouragement to continue, so long as Link continues looking in her direction.

Without the expectation of having to respond, without the expectation of having to arrange the features of her face appropriately, without the expectation of needing to know just what to say, she can listen and relax into a hylian-shaped puddle on the table.

Cremia produces plates of vegetable curry, not as overwhelmingly hot as those Link has tasted in Eldin, but much meatier and more filling, with a greater variety of spice and a steadier body. Cremia excuses herself with a plate and a cup of tea. Romani wolfs down her portion and continues to chatter at the same time. Somehow she does not choke.

Link whistles her appreciation for Romani's skills at eatery.

Cremia returns after a moment. "Grandmother is awake," she explains, and Link congeals herself back into a person rather than a chuchu absorbing the curry with her face. "Would you like to talk to her?"

Standing up so suddenly that the chair screes out her resounding affirmation, Link nods sharply.

She should have brought flowers.

The same flower that Marin wore in her hair. She has not seen that kind of flower anywhere in her travels but it must exist, somewhere. If the silent princess could yet bloom, then the flower that Marin bore on her left ear must as well.

Somewhere.

Somewhere.

With every step, she can hear the boards of the house creak beneath the weight of a century. With every step, the sweat that dampens the back of her neck clings her undershirt more tightly to her shoulders. With every step, her legs threaten to buckle more and more, until Cremia stops in front of a door at the end of the hall and Link could just about claw off her own face.

The words. The words that have never come to her. Why would they come now if not then, why would she know what to ask, what could she even bring herself to do with the answers? The scent of home has driven her so far, and now, at the end of her journey, she might have naught at all to say, and naught at all to live for after.

Cremia opens the door.

A bedroom. A bedroom with a simple bed taking up the middle of the room, the covers a gentle blue. A window facing north, through which she can see the clouds upon the radiance of the sunlit sky. A nightstand with a pitcher of water and a half-full glass beside it. A pair of fluffed pillows, and the elderly woman sunk into them, her face more a mound of wrinkles than recognisable features, what remains of her hair entirely white, her eyes sunken deep, her pupils barely visible for the refraction of her spectacles, her breath rasping weakly with a sound like rustling leaves.

She has a look about her as though fashioned out of folded paper, or a house of playing cards; that one breath would knock her over and dissipate her ashes to the wind.

Link stands in the doorway. The muscle below her lungs has tautened and she cannot expel her breath. If she stays here, she feels, she might age herself, second on second, minute on minute, day on day, year on year. Century on century.

As though all of the time she has lost would come upon her at once, as though she would drop her blade to rest upon the grass forever more.

Cremia sits by a chair on the right side of the bed. "Grandmother, this is Link. She has come to speak to you. Would you like to talk to her?"

The ancient woman upon the bed raises a trembling hand to adjust her spectacles up on the bridge of her nose. She makes an expression vaguely emulating a smile and Link despises herself for the thread of revulsion that pillars up her throat.

"Link," the woman says, and in that instant of hearing her voice Link knows her not to be Marin. "It can't possibly be."

Link blinks at her.

The woman struggles to sit up. Her skin moves and folds over her frame as though attached to nothing underneath, like a cloak or a bag over bones that shuffles of its own accord. Cremia helps her up.

"...do you bear the name—" The ancient woman coughs and Link flinches back. Though age has worn her down, the woman's words bear with them a surprising modicum of strength. "—of a great-grandmother of yours, Link?"

While Link continues to stand, staring, Cremia clears her throat. "Link, would you mind shutting the door?"

Link steps into the room and the sands of time do not crunch their jaws over her spine. Instead she turns to close the door only to find Romani and Miyu looking up at her.

"Can I come in too!? I can right!? Yup yup, bet I can. Grasshopper wouldn't leave the great Romani out of something like this!" Romani skips inside and Miyu pads in behind her.

Cremia lifts her hand to the side of her head to massage her temple. "Link, you can tell her to leave if you want."

Romani pouts. "Oh wow wow wow are you gonna tell me this is some adult-only thing too! Pleeeeeaaaase Grasshopper? You owe me one!"

For lack of a response Link rolls her shoulders.

"You can come in, then," Cremia tells Romani, who starts to circle the bed, "but please, be quiet, Romani."

"On it!"

The ancient woman on the bed makes a gurgling noise that flinches Link backwards into the closed door. After a moment Link recognises the oscillations in the sound: laughter.

"Romani, Cremia, please leave. Both of you," the woman croaks out, her timbre progressively scratchier, as if a wolfos were raking its claws along her vocal cords every time she spoke. Inclining her head, Cremia rises from the chair and physically hoists Romani over her shoulder out. "Samiyu can stay."

Miyu barks and wags her tail. The ancient woman smiles.

"Come." It takes Link a long minute to realise the woman means her. "Sit down."

Link sits upon the chair warmed by Cremia's back. She says nothing. Her nails dig into her knees through the fabric of her trousers. She looks down upon her feet, her boots left by the entrance to the home.

The woman shifts to look at her. Link trains her gaze even more narrowly upon the floor.

"Do you bear the name of a great-grandmother of yours, Link? Or of someone else in your family?"

Link shakes her head.

"Then...tell me, Link. How do you know of Epona's song?"

She shakes her head again.

The woman stays silent for a moment, and Link's shoulders shake. Then the woman speaks again: "Do you not know Faronese?"

The back of Link's neck heats up and the fever spreads to her cheeks. Her fingers twitch uncontrollably. She forces herself to count her breaths, in through the nose, out from the mouth.

"I know Faronese," she signs. "A little. I know a little."

"Then talk to me, as you wanted to do."

The tremors up the bones of Link's hands raise the ridge along her inner wrist.

"In that case, excuse an old woman for her rambling." The woman sinks her back into the pillows. "You may call me Maryll." The top of Link's left eyelid twitches; she blinks repeatedly. "My mother knew a girl who bore your same name, and named me after that girl's sister. Mm. I never knew my mother's friend. Ah, but, my mother would tell me so many stories of that friend." Link glances up for a second. The woman has closed her eyes. "It has been...years since I heard my mother's voice. She passed away when I was still young. She had waited to have children, you see, for as long as she could. Mm.

"Ah, not that she didn't want children, but she was waiting for her friend to return.

"She had given her friend many things, and her friend in turn had given her many more. She gave her friend a horse—ah, Link, you're hylian, aren't you? Yes, you must be unfamiliar with the tales of Our Goddess Sageru, who rides a horse spun of lightning, quicker than the wind, stronger than the storm. On Sapona She rides. My mother gave her friend a horse named for the Goddess's: Epona, daughter of Sapona. A tradition in our family handed down, that the horse belonging to the firstborn daughter would bear the name of Epona, and would be taught to respond to our family's song."

Epona's song.

"A song that you know, despite not knowing the origin of the name.

"Our family did not always live in Kotake. Years ago, when my mother was a young girl, they lived in the Hyrule Field, and the ranch was called Lon Lon, after the names of her own two mothers. When the Great Calamity...well, I wasn't born then, but I've heard stories of it. When the Great Calamity burned everything near the castletown, my mother and her family fled and moved here to establish Romani Ranch. Ah, but you already knew that, didn't you?"

Link keeps absolutely silent, absolutely still. Any sound, any motion, any sign of life could wash away the words. She has asked Lady Impa for what happened so many years ago, and only now, months after her awakening, has someone offered to tell her.

"Mm. My mother wanted to know what had happened to her friend, to her friend's sister, to her friend's friend. I know little about the friend's friend, but my mother knew someone in the same village as her. Ordon, I think is what the village was called.

"Ah, but in the chaos after the Great Calamity...no one spoke to anyone. Everyone retreated to the safer patches. The four great cities in the corners of Hyrule had been mostly destroyed, and there was little left of the Hyrule Field but smoulder and ruin. People vanished into villages in shrine-safe valleys that they could defend from monsters.

"Communication from the west to the east side of Hyrule? Unthinkable. Or so my mother told me."

Maryll reaches for the glass of water on the nightstand. She drinks heavily before replacing the glass on the stand.

"Would you be a dear and refill that for me?"

Link springs up in a flash. Her hands shake so badly that she nearly tips the pitcher over, but she steadies herself. She inhales; she exhales; she fills the glass once more, then sits down so swiftly she nearly misses the chair.

"Thank you. Link, no need to fret so. I'm not going anywhere." Maryll rasps out that terrible, terrible gurgle of a laugh. "I've lived this long. Surely I can live another few minutes to ramble on until you've figured what you want to talk to me about.

"Now...where was I?

"Mm. Every year my mother would go back to where the old ranch once stood in the spring. My mother's friend had promised her something, after all, and my mother would wait until her friend could fulfill that promise.

"She waited for years, until her parents passed away. My grandmothers' dying wish had been for my mother to have children and carry on the ranch. And so, my mother married my other mother and had me. She loved her wife and family dearly, make no mistake. Every year, nonetheless, my mother would go back to where Lon Lon once stood, to await her friend.

"For you see, her friend had never come back, yet my mother steadfastly believed to the end that her friend had not perished but would return. She told me that she could almost hear the Goddesses assuring her. My mother marched out to a temple of Hylia—her friend was hylian, you see, though from what I understand her friend bore closer to the faith of the Three than the Seven—and threatened the Goddess with her own two fists that if She didn't protect her friend, my mother would personally see to the Goddess's demise.

"Mm. She was chased out of the temple for that."

Maryll laughs long and loud; abruptly she convulses into coughing. Link stares at her with quickened breath until Maryll calms. The smile the ancient woman has kept up on her lips begins to fade.

"Ah, but the friend...the friend never appeared. And although we worry of the weather, or of monsters, or the natural disasters that may befall, the only inevitability in life is the passage of time. The greediest thing of all, you know. I should think that the Calamity itself is nothing but a manifestation of time.

"...my mother passed away. Even in her final days she held on to that thin thread of hope that her friend would return, and she told me to welcome her friend if this Link ever did. My mother would not believe that her friend had abandoned her, and no matter how much time had passed, she never wanted to lose hope.

"She named me Maryll after her friend's precious sister, and thereafter I named my own daughter Malon after one of my late grandmothers." Maryll winks. "Between you and me, I've never been the creative type. Malon married a wonderful young hylian man from eastern Faron, and she decided that she had had enough of our little 'ma-' tradition, for not finding enough names. And so she bore Cremia, and then Romani, who took on the name of our ranch.

"Mm. What else? My mother told me that her friend...her friend had something important to do. I'm not entirely certain what," Maryll says with a tone that suggests she does know exactly what, and Link stares more intensely than ever at the ground, "but her friend had some sort of destiny to fulfill. My mother believed more than anything that her friend would fulfill this destiny or would die trying. My mother often said that her friend was not the strongest, nor the smartest; she had little in the way of power or wisdom, to be sure." Link blushes to her ears. "But what her friend lacked in the virtues of the Goddess Din or the Goddess Nayru she made up for in her determination and her courage.

"Like an Oracle of Farore, my mother said.

"Even though her friend's birth had not served her friend the best of lives, her friend had done everything she could for my mother, for her own sister, for the friend who lived in Ordon, and never once did she falter.

"Courage, and determination, and kindness. My mother said that her friend was the kindest girl she'd ever met. That her friend could make a new pantheon of Golden Goddesses. Courage. Determination. Kindness."

When Link next makes soup, she'll not need to ask Romani for help with the stove: the flush of her face to the tips of her pointed ears will suffice.

"Ah but the Goddesses are of Courage, of Wisdom, of Power, blessed be Their names. So it goes, and such is life.

"Mm. Quite a story, isn't it? The family history of us here in Kotake."

Maryll nods to herself. Link continues to sit in silence.

"Ah, now, Link. Perhaps you know the answer to the riddle that I've considered all these years. Do you know of whatever happened to my mother's friend?"

The blood that has risen to her cheeks drains to a pale frost. Link sits. The edge of the chair imprints a bow along her thighs. She would weigh words to select those she needs but she has no words to weigh, only the endless chasm across which no words can ever pass.

Marin will never know.

She continues to sit.

Her entire body screams with the need to speak, but all that issues forth: silence.

With Marin, with the girl who smelled of horses, here and there with certain people Link has met on the road, her arms have taken on the freewheeling care of a bird in flight. Somehow, with those people, the words flood from her hands, the riverbanks bursting with all that she need say.

And yet—and yet here, as with the Champions, as with the girl with the golden hair, as with Yunobo in Death Mountain, as with Amali in the Divine Beast Vah Medoh, as with the people to whom Link has desperately wanted to speak, the people whom she has desperately wished to comfort—the words stall, and quiet, and die.

"The friend...was injured. I don't know how the friend was injured, but then...something happened, and the friend went to sleep for a very long time. When the friend awoke, she lost all of her memories." Link hesitated. "And the friend...the friend who lost all of her memories...she didn't remember the promise she had made, and no one told her what was going on. Little by little she remembered, and she...discovered that she had awoken too late. At the moment she awoke, your mother already...your mother already..." She repeats the words again and again until the gestures lose all meaning and she grinds out the repetitive motion. "...and so the friend could do nothing but realise that she was too late, and that she was no longer the person your mother had known."

"I see. Thank you for telling me your side of the story, Link. If ever you remember how you learned Epona's song, would you tell me?"

Link nods.

Silence.

Her hands shift of her own accord. "May I ask a question?"

Maryll inclines her head. "Of course you may."

"Her name...was Marin, wasn't it?"

Maryll nods. "Yes, that was my mother. The woman who waited. The villagers would joke that she had become a widow with her wife still alive. My other mother was nothing but understanding her entire life. They had married to care for the ranch and to bear children, and sometimes friendship in such things is enough."

Link repeats the same motion, comforting in that her arms move automatically. "May I ask another question?"

"Of course."

"What...what did the friend promise your mother?"

"Ah, now that's a question, isn't it?" Maryll smiles kindly at Link and Link's heart once more makes a valiant effort at throttling her. "Perhaps you could tell me. What did my mother's friend promise her?"

"The friend..."

A soup. A soup that Marin made for her. Thick, and creamy, and a specialty of Parapa, Marin told her, made from fruit native to the lush greens of northeastern Parapa and the sandier desert of the southwest, that her mothers purchased from merchants passing through Mabe. The family had tried to cultivate these crops alongside the voltfin trout and Tabanch wheat they had brought with them from their home of Koume, yet—unlike trout and wheat—the Parapan fruits had failed to prosper in the milder climes of Central Hyrule, and so the family relied on merchants from Parapa and western Faron. Prickly red pears that sparked with static on her fingertips: voltfruit. Round green fruit that seemed more water than anything else, like natural balloons encased in a hard striped rind: hydromelon. Marin cooked the fruits of Parapa into milk and flour for a creamy, heavy base that warmed Link's belly as little else could.

But the prize of the dish: hearty radish, pink and tender, moulded into the shape of a heart.

A cold soup meant for a hot summer's day. Marin prepared it in the thick of the afternoon heat where the fires of Eldin rolled down the mountains to suffocate the field. In a bowl laiden with sapphire around the rim to keep the soup cool.

Link took the bowl in hand and her eyes widened at the sight.

At the pink heart of the radish, a single chunk sliced perfectly thin to float upon the surface of the stew. She raised her head to meet Marin's gaze, and Marin lifted a hand to her blush-heated cheek, a sight in turn pooled all the magma of Death Mountain into Link's face.

They sat next to one another in the shade of the porch outside of the stable. Out in the field Link could see the horses and cows let out for the day, lowing and neighing at one another above the grass green as spring that danced to the tune of the wind.

"Do you remember," Marin whispered, "how we met?"

Did Link ever. The thunderstorm that had raged and the slippery road that ran beside the ranch. How Link had fallen into the lake on foot—this before Marin gave her the horse with the white mane—and the voltfin trout had shocked her into darkness. How she had washed up, unconscious. How she thought she had died for she could hear the choir of the Goddesses, and how the choir of the Goddesses had resolved to the voice of the girl who rescued Link in more ways than either of them possibly could have known.

The girl with the red hair and the blue dress with the violet sash straddling her hips. The girl who spoke of the skies and the seas. The girl whose name resembled a bird in flight.

Marin.

The first girl in the entirety of the world outside of Ordon who had ever loved Link.

"Marin," said Link, with a suddenness that dropped her bowl of stew from her lap. The soup splashed up over the rim to stain her trouser thighs. "Marin."

Marin inhaled. "Are you sick?" she asked anxiously. "Is the soup that awful?"

Link blinked at her, then shook her head. "No, I—I need to tell you something—"

The girl's eyes widened all the more, and she lay her hands on Link's shoulders. "Is the stew so bad you don't want to eat it? I've never seen you not finish eating something."

"No, Marin—" Link shook Marin's hands from her shoulders. "Listen, this is more important than the soup—"

"Something that's more important than food to you!?" Marin covered her mouth with her hand. "What's gotten into you!? Are you dying!?"

Link leaped to her feet. The bowl of stew toppled to the dusty ground and every fibre in her frame yelled at her to pick it up and wolf the soup down but the words had finally come to her fingertips. Closing her eyes to the squelch of stew beneath her boots, Link started to sign with all the speed she could shore up for fear of the rain drying out.

"Marin I've been thinking about this for a long time we met when I was ten years old and it's been years since then so I've been listening to how beautiful your voice has gotten and I know you're always asking me about the places I've been to and I know you want to sing for everyone you can so when my sister grows up and I save up enough money I want to travel the world with you so you can sing to everyone and I'll learn to play the harp better if you want so I'm not useless and I want to see you sing because you light the room so much I keep thinking I'm looking at the sun and I don't know I think that everyone in Hyrule and outside of Hyrule and everywhere should hear your voice and would you travel with me someday I promise I won't be useless I promise I'll do everything I can I promise I'll—"

Warmth.

Arms around her neck and shoulders. The heat of Marin's body pressed against her, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, as Marin embraced her tightly, her breath warm on the outer shell of Link's ear as she whispered.

"You really are a dummy. You make me happier than anyone else. I've spent my whole life hopping from farm to farm; all I've wanted is to see Hyrule, and the rest of the world, with my own eyes and walk it with my own feet. And sing for everyone I can. I don't just want to sing for the travellers who pass through here. I want to sing until I make the whole world smile, if that's what I can do for this world that's done so much for me." The corners of Link's eyes welled with wetness. "And you, dummy...you'd be willing to travel with me. And you'll come back home with me after we see the world, won't you?" Link could only nod her chin on Marin's shoulder; she felt the curve of Marin's smile against her cheek. "Dummy, you don't need to make yourself useful to me because you're already everything to me. Do you promise you'll see the world with me one day?"

She promised.

"And do you promise we'll come home at the end of it all?"

She promised, even more fervently than before.

"I'll hold you to that. Even if something happens and you can't make it back for a long long time—don't ever forget me. Or I'll never forgive you."

Link traced the letters into the back of Marin's hand that she could not bring herself to sign, and she could feel the heat of Marin's blush against her own cheek.

"I love you too, dummy."

...who had ever loved Link.

She sits. She sits, and she trembles, and she feels the tears press in at the backs of her eyes, and she cries, and she bawls, and she curls up on the chair by the side of the bed as the understanding of all that she has lost wracks through her in waves.

"Link," says Maryll, her voice so quiet that for a moment Link wonders if she has hallucinated. "...I hope you know how much my mother loved you."

Link presses the heels of her palms into her eyes.

She does.

She knows.

She remembers.

Creamy Heart Soup (ten hearts) - fresh milk, hearty radish, hydromelon, Tabantha wheat, voltfruit


Chapter Twenty-Nine. First written: 29 June 2017. Last edited: 24 September 2017.

Author's notes: It has been a very long time since Link first awoke without even a name.

People move on. People die. One hundred years is both a long time and not long enough. While Impa and Purah might have lived longer than the vast majority of people will, not everyone is like that. And while Impa and Purah have kept themselves alive by not doing much of anything except sitting in one spot and letting other people do the work for them, Marin would never be that kind of person. Marin prefers quality of life over quantity of life. And she did have a good life. She may have never been able to achieve her dream of singing for everyone in the world because she had promises and obligations, and because the world crawled with monsters that destroyed the Hyrule she longed to sing for, but she did have a good life.

And now Link has found Marin's family again. She did promise, after all, that she would come back home to Marin after she finished her adventures.

Epona is a very common name for horses in southwestern Hyrule! It's kind of like naming your dog "Spot" or "Buddy" (where I'm from, the most popular name for a dog is "Шарик"). Similarly, the most common name for pet birds is Etori (Sageru's hawk in the legends is named Satori, which Mount Satori was named after, and is associated with wisdom, benevolence, and protection). Indeed, this association with protection and wisdom is so well-known in Hyrule that Princess Zelda's full name (Zelda Satoru Miyahon Harkinian) includes the middle name of Satoru, with the "-ru" ending, like at the end of Nabooru's name, being a declension indicating a girl's name, not unlike the real-world "-ko" in Japanese.

Of course, the out-of-universe reason for Zelda's full name is that I wished to pay homage to Satoru Iwata, after which Mount Satori was named. Miyahon, for those curious, comes from Shigeru Miyamoto's name in the credits of The Legend of Zelda, where he is credited as "S. Miyahon"; being credited under a pseudonym was common in those days to avoid talented employees from being stolen by other companies. In-universe, "Miyahon" is a sheikah name, being a famous historical orator from Necluda similarly associated with wisdom, in this case of rhetoric. But, uh, that's not relevant to the current chapter. Whoops, got away from myself there. Ahem.

Aryll from The Wind Waker was originally going to be named Maryll. Hence, the name Maryll, named after Aryll. Marin had other daughters, not only Maryll, but those have moved away per tradition and are the "cousins" that Malon mentioned in a previous chapter.

Marin's family brought various crops with them when they went to the village of Mabe. The idea of Mabe was to attempt to bring various Faronese, Tabanch, and Parapan crops and animals closer to the heart of Hyrule for easy shipping and transport. Some of these things worked, like wheat and trout; others, like hydromelon and voltfruit, did not. Creamy heart soup is a recipe that in-game Link learns in Gerudo Town, so I thought it appropriate to make the dish a Parapan specialty in Delicious in Wilds.

Link rambling when anxious is something that you've already seen a few times and something that you'll see again in the future. Poor girl has a bit of an on-off switch when it comes to talking: either she struggles with saying anything or the floodgates come out all at once.

Marin calling Link the kindest girl she's ever known is a direct reference to Link's Awakening. Kindness being a virtue is also a reference to Majora's Mask, where you have four virtues referenced: courage, wisdom, power, and kindness.

I don't much like writing chapters where it's just someone telling Link a story. Sadly there are a few chapters like that throughout Delicious in Wilds because I couldn't conceive of a different way to divulge the information, and there's something very important about the act of sharing stories anyhow. I hope that I've made the chapter interesting enough despite it being mostly people talking. We'll get back to the adventure soon enough!

I'm being light-hearted, but this chapter took quite a bit out of me. If you've ever experienced loss, I truly and honestly wish you the best.

Next time: Link becomes a ranchhand.

Thank you kindly for reading, and thank you to my beta reader for everything that she has done for me.

midna's ass. 24 September 2017.

Beta reader's comments: This is one of my favourite chapters in the series, perhaps my single favourite. I'm not sure what I can even say about it that isn't just felt. It made me bawl my eyes out, and feel nostalgia and loss for something I never even had. It's special.

Emma. 24 September 2017.