In response to reviews: Coyotesarepeopletoo (on the twentieth chapter) - Hoy there yourself. Thank you so much for reading and the kind words. Your review has me grinning so wide I'm afraid my mouth's going to fall off. I'm so incredibly flattered, honoured, and gladdened to see how much of an impact Delicious in Wilds has had on you, and thank you so so much for taking the time to write a review! It means the world to me. And don't worry about messing up; this is the first time I've ever uploaded on FFN either, and I've made plenty of mistakes along the way.
Thank you so much for your praise on how I've developed Link as a character! One of my driving motivations for sitting down to write this fic was because I saw such a missed opportunity for Link to have a true backstory and character (the English localisation of the game is even worse than the original Japanese version, because the "Adventure Log" was changed from Link's personal journal which gives Link's thoughts on the world to a generic third-person quest log, but even the Japanese version completely drops the ball). I'm not so arrogant as to claim that I'm a better writer than the folks at Nintendo, but rather a video game medium and a written medium can excel at different things. Still, I felt like there was missing a "grounding" to the world, where Link sometimes feels more like a tourist for the player to fool around with than a person affected by the fate of Hyrule.
I'm glad you love to eat, because I LOVE to eat too! I enjoy food very much, so I knew first-off-the-bat that I wanted Delicious in Wilds to be based on and around recipes, with every single chapter having a recipe tied to it. It helped keep me on track, and I loved sitting down before I wrote each chapter and picking what Link was going to make, since I faithfully recorded the effects and ingredients of each dish in the game I made for Delicious in Wilds.
It makes me overjoyed to hear that you enjoy my being descriptive! I'm always worried about being too descriptive, but I did want for Hyrule to feel like a real living, breathing world, insofar as I could while writing by the seat of my pants.
And thanks! I was expecting the present-day guide characters to be the new pilots as well. I very much prefer for death to be real and final, so the ghosts being "a thing" bothered me immensely in the game. I mean, if King Rhoam can stick around as a ghost and cut down trees, and the other Champions can still pilot their Divine Beasts, why didn't King Rhoam, as an immortal ghost, go beat up Calamity Ganon with an axe? I wanted death final. I wanted death to be meaningful and have impact, because I felt like in-game it didn't. Besides, I really like the present-day guide characters and was extremely disappointed to see that they stop mattering as soon as you finish the Divine Beast in their area! I choose to flesh them out as real characters here. Don't worry: Yunobo, Amali, Riju, and Sidon will all return.
Yep, I expanded upon the size of Hyrule so that riding across it takes about two months, because I wanted it to be a very real place with plenty of cities, towns, villages, etc. Obviously Nintendo is limited with what they can do in-game, and the game is already one of the largest maps ever created for an open-world game; that said, since I have the advantage of the written word, I chose to turn Hyrule into a proper nation with a sizable plot of land.
Haha, I sincerely hope that this fic doesn't disappoint you for the ending of the game, but I'm very honoured that you would consider it that highly! I can tell you right now that the ending of Delicious in Wilds is almost entirely different from the game, to a point where it won't spoil you for the ending at all (my beta reader, who read this before she finished playing the game, confirmed this for me).
As for you making an account, my heart nearly stopped when I read that. I am humbled by how much enthusiasm, excitement, and love you've shown for Delicious in Wilds, and I can only hope with the greatest sincerity that Delicious in Wilds lives up to your expectations. I look forward to hearing from you again!
And don't worry. I will never stop updating until it's done. I purposefully wrote out the entire thing before I even started posting, and I've spent an average of four hours a day for the past three months revising and posting Delicious in Wilds; I would never, ever abandon a fic, because I know all too well that feeling. The other reason I wanted to write the entire thing first is so that I could keep up a rapid pace of upload, since another common frustration for me is slow updates! That said, I have not read any fic whatsoever in some years, so perhaps these issues aren't as common as they once was.
Finally, I passed along your kindness to my beloved beta reader, Emma, who had this to say: "Thanks Coyotesarepeopletoo! Your words mean so so much to both the author and I. It's wonderful to hear that somebody enjoys this story so much. And thank you so much for the shout-out. It made me smile from ear to ear. 3"
Thank you so much for reading; thank you so much for reviewing; thank you so much for giving this rather odd (as far as fanfiction goes) story a story; and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you enjoy the rest of Delicious in Wilds!
Freefan1412 - Hey there Freefan1412! Long time no see. I'm updating the thirty-fifth chapter after the fact so that you get to read my reply to your review whenever you come back, so hopefully you see this (indicate if such), and will try to do so in the future upon your return. It's great to hear from you again!
And no worries at all! I'm sorry to hear about life kicking you, and I sincerely hope that your life is much easier by the time you come back. Don't worry! The fic isn't going anywhere, and I receive email notifications of reviews, so I'll get to them in time. But really, no need to apologise. I appreciate you taking the time to let me know however. And yep, that's how it is with the upload pace.
As always, thank you so much for reading and for the kind words and insightful comments. I'm glad you liked the moving fan! Topaz/electricity aren't as well developed in their world, since topaz is expensive, so something as seemingly simple as a small motor-powered fan is prohibitively expensive for people like Link.
Yep, they're those annoying caterpillars (it's called an ampilus). I drew in enemies from all sorts of games in the franchise to liven up the foes Link has to fight, since I didn't want to deal with the limited enemy variety of the game. You can in fact use the glider and bombs at the same time in-game! Glide up, select the bombs, and press L; a bomb will drop immediately beneath you. It's quite a useful trick in the intermediate trials of the Trial of the Sword!
Yes, Link is edging ever closer to being the hero. You'll find out more about Link-from-the-past (more like a link to the past, eh? eh?) soon. You're very right about the attitude of "reluctance-but-has-no-choice", and we'll explore more why Link had the attitude that she did in future chapters. And of course Link is willing to see herself as courageous as long as it comes to cooking!
Yep, it's fairly early, perhaps a few weeks after Link was chosen by the Master Sword. I'm glad to hear that you like Urbosa! She's near and dear to my heart, and I wanted to give her some proper backstory and development. I'm curious to know about why you hated Vah Naboris, but I can certainly understand your feelings. And Link still doesn't know Zelda's name, I'm afraid. And, well, you'll see when she learns it.
Thank you so much for your kind, kind words! I look forward to hearing more, and I do hope that life isn't kicking you too hard for your own sake!
Chapter Thirty-Five: Electro Mushroom Omelet
When she awakens to the coolness of the evening—the days having grown longer with the climb of spring—Link discovers that the escape from the electrified monsters took her further north than anticipated. From here she can no longer see the thunder-dust-cloud around the Divine Beast. Yet losing the landmark scarcely bothers her: Link can track her progress south and west by Anouki, the fixed star to the north.
She sets a patch of grass aflame. As the fire spreads, Link opens her paraglider and leaps from the crown of the tree by the pond. The updraft spins her into the skies to better examine her surroundings.
To the distant west: villages and the river that must run between them, patchworked with fields of green-gold-red spring-furrows croplands that stand out against the grass. To the southwest: the steppe that steadily gives way to sand. Faintly Link can make out a dark silhouette fly up out of the sand and then dive back in, though from a distance she cannot estimate its size. To the north: a maze of cliffs that stretches higher than she can see and feeds into the snowy highlands beyond Parapa.
More immediately to the south and slightly to the east: a rising slope that leads to something like a circle of pillars, perhaps towering half as high as the Bridge of Eldin, a lone landmark against the overbearing cliffs.
To the south, then.
She saddles Ilia. Link follows not a road but the position of the pillars. The red telescope to which she clings reveals details as she nears.
Not pillars, but statues of people, rising high from the earth. She can see their age in the weathering of the stone, in how some have broken off their limbs or more complex loops of their hair that lie beside their feet, in the slight suggestions of colour—of paint that must have once covered the rock—visible on the sand-hued stone.
Suddenly: a strange chirruping.
Within an instant Link feels Ilia lurching forward, rearing, and galloping off. The impact jams the telescope into her left eye. By the time the initial wave of pain rolls over her, Link scarcely has the time to glance back with her good right eye, to realise that her companion has run over a lizalfos camouflaged against the grass.
She rubs her eyes, then hastily grabs hold of the reins once more, calms Ilia, and then rubs her eyes in disbelief.
Link continues to the south. She releases Ilia's reins to sign to herself: "I'm not going to disturb anything there. Even if there's a shrine, and it looks important to people, I'm not going to touch it." She repeats this to herself while she rides, and again when the sun rises and she rests, and again when the grass begins to mix with sand, and again when she approaches closely enough to see the tents pitched at the base of one of the statues' feet. Three tents: one blue, one green, and one red.
The sun has just begun to creep up once more into the sky, the eastern heavens over the mountains having honeyed to a brilliant gold, when Link at last dismounts Ilia beside the three tents. Her feet sink slightly into the sandy soil. The dryness of the air leads her to drain her water-skin halfway and lick up the cold droplets of water that bead on her lower lip.
She looks around. Link peers at the tents, each marked with decorative symbols, the front flaps closed by means of metal loops that pass vertically up and down. She notices behind the tents an awning that protectively spans over crates of supplies and barrels of water.
And beyond that, the statues.
Seven statues of women arranged in a circle, each holding a particular weapon between her hands, their feet together, their spines erect, their gazes stretching out to the blind eternities. Despite how the wind and sand have weathered the stone, Link can make out the features of their faces, the differing expressions, how some bear longer or shorter noses, higher or lower cheekbones, faces more angular or more rounded, and their expressions: the tilts of their brows, the slopes of their eyes, the subtle differences of their mouths, the wrinkles of their nose or flares of their nostrils, how each of the Seven bears a regal gaze of power and serenity, and yet beyond that her own emotions. If she looks upon them long enough, she can sense something of what the artists may have intended to impart. Unlike living people that change and flicker too fast for her to gauge, the statues and their exaggerations lend a brimming of personality that even she can sense, as though holding her hands over a flame.
Seven. Perhaps the Seven Goddesses. Yet the statues do not bear the markings that Link has seen of depictions of the Seven elsewhere: no wings for the Goddess Hylia, no blossom in hand for the Goddess Sheik, no harp for the Goddess Sageru. All seven statues, too, resemble humans. Gerudo women, in particular, if Link must judge by their common features.
At the feet of each statue, a rounded groove carves from the earth; within each groove rests a sphere of a particular colour and marked with a symbol. The centre of the seven statues draws her gaze. Upon a raised platform where the patterns of the groove connect waits a shrine glowing in orange.
A shrine.
Her hand twitches to her right hip.
Ilia neighs quietly. Link tilts her head in her companion's direction to see the source of her distress. To her right, some three or four metres away, she spots three strange creatures tied with long ropes to a pole stuck in the earth.
Link blinks at the beasties.
Round and rotund as ripe fruit but approximately as large as her own body, with long flippers and flared tails that remind her of fish rather than beasts of the land, two in reddish brown and one in dappled yellow.
Ilia whinnies and one of the rotund creatures lifts their head. Link waves to the round beast. Slowly she steps away from the creature. With any luck she can move peacefully away before she startles the beast.
The creature makes a noise that sounds like a cross between someone yelling ow and the yipping of a small dog. They slam their flippers upon the sand, barking and barking. Their brethren slap the first beast with their tails, but, when they raise their heads towards Link, they too begin to bark and roll away.
Link moves to mount Ilia, but her companion shies from the noise of the barking balls of aggression. While she tries to calm her with hands upon Ilia's neck and shoulders, she hears the fwaah of tent flaps opening behind her.
"Who goes there!?" A voice, brash and loud, the words slow with strength. "I said, who goes there?"
And then another, lower-pitched but faster than the first: "I-is it the Yiga!? Oh I hope it's not the Yiga!"
Link turns towards the tents with her hands still on Ilia's neck. The light of the sun suddenly in her eyes blinds her and she covers her face with her fingers.
"Well. Hey there, stranger." The brash voice, now at a conversational volume. "Looks like just a passerby, ladies."
Link can hear a thump. "Whew! I thought we'd be gonners for sure."
She listens to a shaa shaa: footsteps along the sand. When her vision resolves against the brighter morning light, Link makes out the person approaching her. A relatively short, dark-skinned gerudo woman holding a longsword in her left hand and a golden shield in her right, her hair cut short, a pair of red spectacles strapped to her head by means by a thick band, clothed in armour of loose fabric with an underlayer of some material that reminds Link of leather but which does not move or sound like the leathers she has seen in her brief existence, and boots that resemble those meant for walking over sand.
The woman moves her right arm. Link catches the light glinting from the mirrored surface of the shield. The sun did not blind her, but rather the reflection of the shield. The woman sheathes her sword at her hip and moves her hand to her chest. Link emulates the gesture; the woman fiddles with her left earlobe for a second before speaking.
"Hey there, stranger," the woman repeats, her timbre high and cheery without the tension of a possible attack. "What are you doing here?" Link watches the woman's head tilt up and down; she realises a few minutes after the woman has finished that the woman was examining Link's form from boots to reddened pointed ears. "Looks like a tourist."
"I'm on my way to the desert," Link says truthfully, "but I saw those—" She knows not the word for statue. "—big tall things and was curious, and also hungry."
"The big tall things," the woman repeats. Behind her stand two more gerudo women: one tall and thin, her skin the colour of warm earth, her shoulders quivering, clutching a thick book to her chest, dressed not in armour but in a sky-blue and violet dress to her knees with loose trousers beneath; the other of paler skin bearing an expression that Link cannot place, her twin braids tied up in circular loops that frame her hair with a green headscarf, her sturdy outfit looped with belts and hooks that give Link pause. "The Seven Heroines?"
Link dips her head.
"Got a good eye at least. So, just passing through, then." Link nods again, and the woman touches her left earlobe again, tugging down. "Mind if I inspect your horse's saddlebags? And mind putting all your weapons over there where I can see them?"
Link obliges. Once the woman appears to have satisfied her desire to rummage through Link's belongings, she steps back. She smiles cheerily at Link and then hmms to herself.
"Thanks for bearing with me. You see, we've had a few runs-in with Yiga." The woman turns towards her companions. The woman in green has started the campfire and begun to cook breakfast: eggs in a skillet. Link's stomach rumbles. The taller girl in blue hangs back behind the tents. "Rotana, think you've got a guest."
"I...I do?" says the woman in the blue dress, lowering the book and adjusting her spectacles.
"C'mon. Take a seat by the fire."
She suggests an exchange of food and story. Link offers monster extract, flour, salt, and sugar. The woman accepts, and Link seats herself across from the one with the green headscarf.
Link glances at the shrine in the centre of the Seven Heroines. After breakfast she will continue to the south as soon as she can to calm the Divine Beast before any further damage occurs. But Ilia needs rest after a long night of riding. And Link couldn't pass up the chance at a meal if she wanted to.
The women introduce themselves. An archaeologist; a researcher of folklore and ancient gerudo rites; and a hired bodyguard and cook-in-one. Dyeri, the bodyguard-cum-chef in the sandy-coloured clothing, leans back by the fire to clean the various weapons she has on her person.
Rhiaru, the archaeologist with the green headscarf, says little but quits the breakfast halfway through to begin scaling one of the statues; Link stares at her receding back and ogles her as she affixes ropes to the loops on her clothing to climb. The process seems like fun. If not for the pressure of the Divine Beast—and with the permission of those to whom the statues might mean a great deal—Link would spend a day seeing if she can clamber up the statues with her own two hands, just for the sake of standing at the top.
Rotana, the bespectacled researcher in blue, explains that she has studied the mythos of the Seven Heroines and other pre-unification Parapan legends and faiths. Link nods as if she comprehends what a unification might be, much less what came before or after. When she asks about the Seven Heroines Rotana's demeanor transforms from hiding behind her book to bursting into full bloom. Rotana and Rhiaru, elaborates Rotana with such pride and passion flooding her voice that Link cannot help but listen raptly despite not understanding a thing, have taken on the study of the ruins of the Seven Heroines as their research proposal to Uruda University's archaeology department.
She describes the legend of the Seven Heroines. That thousands upon thousands of years ago, the heart of the land contained a mirror blessed with the power to open a path to the Sacred Realm of the Goddesses. The people of Parapa used the magic of the Sacred Realm—the courage, wisdom, and power contained within, and the ability to commune directly with their Goddess Sageru and, through, Her the Golden Goddesses—to live warm and peaceful lives, with all cooperating and working together towards a golden age of Parapa led by the attributes and virtues of the Goddesses that had created the world and the Goddess that had watched over the gerudo people with Her mark of scarlet hair as a symbol of Her own virtue: the blood of loyalty, of giving life unto others, of the Goddess Sageru's kin.
Yet eventually conflict broke out, not only within Parapa but also in the lands without. Wars of territory and control, seeking power without wisdom, or courage, or the knowledge that power lay within the veil of truth rather than in strength alone.
Amid the terrible conflict lived a scholar of the ancient magical arts who sought to use the Sacred Realm to end the war once and for all, to unite all of the lands under a new dynasty of peace with the scholar at the helm. But when the scholar reached the Sacred Realm at last through the surface of the blessed mirror and sought to consume its magic, the scholar could not contain the sheer force of the courage, the wisdom, and the power they found within that sacred golden light. Yet neither could the light deny the scholar their wishes.
"Had the scholar wished, truly selflessly, then maybe the course of the myth would have proceeded differently," Rotana notes, a tear shining like a jewel at the lower brim of her right eye. "The scholar wished to end the war, after all. But but but! Alas, the scholar, too, thought, 'I alone alone could make the world right afterwards.'"
The Sacred Realm transformed the scholar from a person of reason to a beast with sufficient strength to bring the world under their control by force, a monster driven solely by the need to destroy the armies of conflict and then to mould the world to the scholar's desires. A beast with the paleness of death and great golden eyes the colour of the Golden Goddesses' magic, the same magic that some suspect might power the guardians, "but that is another story and shall be told another time."
Link listens to Rotana's words; nonetheless she catches very little of the story. She understands: a mirror to the Sacred Realm, a war of some kind, an ambitious someone-or-other turned into a monster. But Link loses the details as soon as Rotana tells her. Instead her gaze flickers down to her satchel, to the food within.
Yet Rotana speaks so passionately that Link cannot bear to interrupt.
"And here we meet the Seven Heroines!" Rotana speaks of each one in turn, of what they know of the attributes of the Seven, their names and their interests, their long families and the virtues that they extolled. The Seven Heroines came together with the help of the Goddesses to meet the beast.
"In battle against the being twisted by their own wish to the Sacred Realm the Seven Heroines proved their power; in their sealing of the beast within the Sacred Realm itself they proved their wisdom; and in the ability to have risen to fight against the beast they proved their courage. Truly—" Rotana sniffles. "—heroines to the last."
Link's stomach rumbles. She stares down at the skillet, but then Rotana shifts in her seat and Link raises her head again. Dyeri covers her mouth to stifle her laugh.
"It goes without saying," Rutana is saying, flipping through the book with as much gusto as Link takes to eating, "that, as with many myths, it can be difficult if not impossible to discern how much is fact and how much is fiction. But but but! With the assistance of another researcher, I was able to piece together part of the ancient Ode to the Seven Heroines." The Ode, she explains, leaning forward to drum her fingers eagerly on the book she balances on her knees, describes what the Seven Heroines anticipated: that one day the cataclysmic monster they sealed could return, and so the Heroines prepared a series of tests to teach the arts of their skills to future generations that might have to re-seal or outright destroy that being of malice.
"Many of the verses of the song have been lost over the years. However, through work over many days and many nights of tireless toil, I was able to glean enough of the story that I've already told you. But but but! That is not all I learned. One of the verses describes a monument to the Seven Heroines." A monument with seven depressions for seven spheres which bear the family crest of each of the Heroines.
"It reminds me of the Ballad of the Sealing War. Before the Great Calamity, experts on the legends believed the Ballad to constitute fiction over fact, and yet you can see how the truth surprised the world. Some of my fellow archaeologists think the truth lies somewhere between the Ballad of the Sealing War and the Ode to the Seven Heroines—the same incident from different cultures. Another prevailing theory is that the Ode to the Seven Heroines refers to the first sealing of the Calamitous One, and that the Ballad of the Sealing War is the unsealing that they anticipated.
"Though...my own teacher favours the theory that the Calamitous One and the beast of malice of the Ode to the Seven Heroines speak of two different incidents. She considers that the allure of the Sacred Realm has undoubtedly led many to try taking it for themselves. Each time the Golden Goddesses needed mortal heroes to arise and wrest that golden power back into Their hands.
"For, you know, the Golden Goddesses left us that power. No Goddesses can ever use it, nor monsters. Only mortals can. But but but! That's only a theory. A theory with very little evidence. For all we know, the Sacred Realm might not even exist!" Rotana twitters and wipes her glasses. Link presses her hand into her abdomen to quell the sounds of her stomach.
"For myself...I don't think it's of the highest importance. I'm more interested in these 'tests' set forth by the Seven Heroines." Rotana shakes her head. "I'm not much of a climber, as you can see. But but but! My friend Rhiaru has been to the highlands and scaled the highest mountains in Parapa. I only needed to say the word climb when she agreed immediately and begged me to know when we could begin! Such a sweet girl, really."
"So we hired Dyeri and off we went, on the adventure of a lifetime! We arrived. Lo and behold, seven depressions, and seven orbs. We have not been the first to make the connection, surely, for we found many of the orbs already in depressions, albeit in the wrong order. With the Ode I had pieced together and a bit of trial and error, we lucked upon some combination that drew out that curious structure you see there." Rotana sweeps her arm out towards the shrine. "Do you see, guest? This means that we've come closer than anyone ever before to unlocking some of the mysteries of the Ode to the Seven Heroines. Yet we've tried every trick in the book and then some...tricks outside of that that Dyeri and Rhiaru suggested..." Rotana rests her hand against her cheek. "...but but but, nothing has helped. What I thought would be my masterwork might be hopeless after all."
"Cheer up," says Dyeri with a lively smile. "Sure things'll work out one way or another. Between you and Rhiaru you've got more brains than the rest of Uruda put together by my count."
"Th...thanks." Rotana frowns, then clenches her fist. "So, as I was saying about the Seven Heroines—" She raps the book so firmly that it shoots out of her lap and into Link's, slamming her in the gut. With the breath knocked from her lungs, Link returns the book. Rotana apologises some hundred times while Link reassures her that she's had worse.
The researcher pauses for a second to drink from her water-skin. Link takes the opportunity to ask about the research team's mounts, about the rotund beasts that roll about in the dust. Dyeri answers: sand seals. Bo, Dyeri's seal, sports the dappled-yellow coat of one bred more for speed and less for control, while Co and Cho—Rhiaru's and Rotana's—bear the reddish-brown of those more easily ridden.
Rotana wipes her glasses on a bit of blue cloth, although the lense seem to dirty the more she rubs. "N-no need to tell our guest about the—"
"No shame in prioritising comfort of ride over speed, Rotana," Dyeri interrupts with a cheerful beam, rubbing Rotana's shoulder.
The researcher cleans her spectacles more furiously before settling them back on her nose. "But but but! What if the guest doesn't...think that I'm cool?"
Link tilts her head to one side and Rotana's hands flutter up to her face. Dyeri laughs joyously. Rotana hides her expression behind the book.
The smell of something burning turns Link's attention to the skillet that Rhiaru left.
The eggs Rhiaru cooked have burned clean through.
While Link wipes the tears from her eyes at the sacrifice of the omelet, Dyeri scrapes the charred mess from the bottom of the skillet. She scrubs the skillet with a handful of sand, then bangs its base against a rock to shake the sand out. "Right. Let's get cooking."
Rotana asks when breakfast will finish. Dyeri answers that she'll call Rotana and Rhiaru over when the omelet has finished. Rotana thanks her; she excuses herself politely to return to the blue tent.
Dyeri holds her hands out with an expectant sort of smile. Link cocks her head to the side. "Food," says Dyeri with a cheerful arching of the eyebrows, and a grin springs to Link's lips.
Link digs up her satchel to provide all that she promised. Dyeri glances through the wooden box of spices, inspects the monster extract, tastes the quality of the salt. In turn she produces eggs in velvet boxes from the crates under the awning and a silvery-wrapped stick of butter. A thick, creamy butter, yellower than any butter she can recollect, the cow butter of Romani Ranch or the goat butter of Kakariko. Dyeri quirks an eyebrow at her. "Never seen seal butter before?"
"...how do you say that word?"
"Seal?" Dyeri fiddles with the lobe of her right ear, then relaxes and shows Link the gesture.
"Seal butter?"
Dyeri laughs. "Hey there, see those sand seals over there? Seal butter. Guess they're not from those sand seals in particular, but it's the fattiest, richest butter you've ever taste, swear by the Goddess. With Nabooru the way it is, getting a good batch's not the easiest job in the world. Except Rotana and Rhiaru can go willy-nilly there and back. Got special passes from Uruda and all."
"You can go to Nabooru? I mean, they can?" Link sits forward, elbows on her knees. "Do you know if there's a way to get in?"
"Hey there, thought you wanted to go to the desert." Dyeri's eyebrows have arched again, and her hand has drifted to her left ear. Her timbre has shifted; Link cannot place where her words lie now.
"I think it would be easier if I could go to Nabooru first. I know they're closed off, but..."
Dyeri shrugs. "Why are you looking to go?"
Link rubs the back of her head. "It's a long story."
"We've got a long time," answers Dyeri, though not unkindly, that cheery smile still curving up her mouth. Link tries and fails to gauge whether Dyeri asks the question of suspicion—as have others before—or of genuine curiosity.
"...I want to see the Divine Beast."
"Savah Naboris."
By now Link has noticed that the Parapan greetings, too, begin with the syllable sa. Perhaps like the Eldic double up to demonstrate their respect, so does sa mean something, as in the name of the Goddess Sageru.
To Dyeri, Link nods. Dyeri's eyebrows quirk still further up. Link has the sense that the future of Dyeri's eyebrows rests on her fingertips: another strange answer, and her eyebrows will rip off from her forehead to float up above her face to arch still further. "Got an obvious question for you. Why?"
"...I think I can do something about it. About the Divine Beast."
Dyeri lifts her hand to her left earlobe and tugs. "Can you help chop up those zapshrooms? Careful with your hands. Sting, those babies do."
Link follows to where she points. A crate marked with labels she cannot read. She opens the top to peer inside: mushrooms. Yellow as yellow can get. While the sunshrooms of Hateno sported a shade closer to the orange of a sunset just begun, the zapshrooms blister with the brightness of their hue.
She sticks her hand in.
When Link comes to a second later, face-down in the sandy dirt, Dyeri holds back a laugh. Rotana emerges from her tent to inquire about the yelp she heard.
Dyeri grants Link a pair of gloves made of a slippery squeaky material that carries a scent entirely different from leather. A dull scent. A scent that sneaks her a headache when she inhales too long.
"Rubber," Dyeri notes, her voice lilted up. "Faronese rubber. It'll protect you from electric shocks. Just don't let the caps touch your bare skin. The rest of the mushroom's fine."
Link takes her knife to the zapshrooms. The thick rubber of the gloves limits her usual nimbleness of fingers, but she removes the caps nonetheless and places them in a container that Dyeri indicates, a wooden bucket with a tiny shard of topaz at the bottom. "Dice 'em up. We'll stick 'em in the omelet."
Link nods. She cuts thin slices of the zapshrooms' stalks, then ribbons the tender ribbed flesh exposed with the caps cut off. She dices through multiple rounds until she can balance the pieces of zapshroom on her fingernail.
"Whoa! I said to dice 'em, not grate 'em. Gotta say this is pretty great, too." Dyeri chuckles to herself and Link laughs with her despite not understanding the joke. Dyeri wipes the bits of shroom from the cutting board into the skillet, where the eggs have started to firm into omelet. She salts and spices the omelet, then flips it over. Link can see the golden sheen of seal butter on the newly exposed half of the omelet. Globules of fat congeal around the edges, which Dyeri knocks off with the spatula before smoothing the rest of the butter into a clean yellow shimmer.
"You're probably wondering why we'd go to the trouble of bearing zapshrooms like that, eh."
"...because they're delicious?"
Dyeri looks at her, and Link tries a small smile. Dyeri bursts into laughter so loud that a nearby sand sparrow launches into the air with a series of alarmed chirps. "You've got the right idea. That's part of it. Other part's that having their insides in your system keeps you safer. They absorb static like nothing else. And with monsters around that's becoming a higher priority than ever, swear by the Goddess."
Link nods. The protection from electrocution sounds like a pleasant minor boon from a tasty dish.
On the other hand, she has never been the best judge: she expected deliciousness in exchange for electrocution, and would've happily made that bargain to boot.
"Almost done. Here, stranger, you get the first portion." Link tilts her head, but Dyeri has already cut off a quarter and set it onto a plate. She proffers the plate to Link.
Link takes the plate without a second thought. She holds it up to her mouth. The omelet radiates heat and the double-savoriness of cooked egg and fried mushroom, the spices lending a sharp sweetness that runs her tongue over her upper lip. She tries to grab the omelet with her hand and winces from the heat. Bringing the plate to her mouth, Link grips the omelet directly between her teeth.
She jerks her head back and flings the omelet up into the air. Opening her mouth wide, Link catches the omelet whole in her mouth. It burns against her tongue and the roof of her mouth but she chokes it down anyway. Sparks of static course over the insides of her mouth, crackling the tip of her tongue down to her throat, like the burning sensation of a touch too much cinnamon. The outer layer of fatty seal butter provides a protective coating that lessens the impact of the shocks from painful to pleasant. And the richness of the butter slides the omelet down her throat. Almost too rich. She fights to keep it down. The sting of salt lingers on her lips as she licksit off.
Omelet.
Sand partridge eggs. The taste slightly sharper and slightly richer than cucco eggs, the white more watery and less firm, the yolk fattier, with a tendency to burn if left on the skillet for too long. Urbosa taught Link to watch for the bubbles of air at the rim between the yolk and white to know when to flip the omelet over. In the shade of a stone pillar, the girls sat with the morning's hunt strung up on their horses. Whatever they did not eat, they would bring back whole. Link had learned that the Parapan queen kept a store of food for any civilian, particularly those on harder times. At sunset, from the roof of the palace, she watched wagons of produce quit the city to travel during the cool night to distribute to villages with poorer harvests than usual from the recent influx of monsters.
Since the girl with the golden hair had arrived in Nabooru, Link's training with Urbosa had taken a steady dive in pace. Urbosa ushered the girl with the golden hair and Impa alike away from their sessions; once alone, Link's skills improved. Yet under the heaviness of Impa's judgment and the girl with the golden hair's resentment, the sword slipped from her palms as if made of buttered ice.
Urbosa, Link noticed, had taken on a slightly different air. More stressed than usual, though she kept it from her expressions and her words. But Link had learned to detect that faint difference in atmosphere as she had learned to detect the crackle in the air just before the storm.
And Urbosa's change in demeanor which Link could not place made her tremble at what it could bring.
Urbosa stretched her legs and massaged her shoulders. "So, Link, how are you enjoying Nabooru?"
Link did not reply. She kept her gaze trained on the omelet in the skillet, on the rim between the white and the yolk.
"If you don't like the city crowds, Link, we could always move elsewhere." Urbosa smiled at her. "My home village's quiet compared to Nabooru's bustle. I think you'd like Rovah."
Link kept quiet, patient. Urbosa rested her hand on her hip. "...what do you think of the food? That's what I remember from my first visit to Nabooru way back when. The way everything smelled. All the vendors on every corner, with food I'd never heard of. I'd never even had hydromelon before. Doesn't grow in Rovah."
The omelet bubbled. Link flipped it deftly; Urbosa flashed her a signal of approval.
"Nicely done. You've learned well. So, Link. What recipes have you learned?" Urbosa continued to probe. Link's stomach started to rumble from the images of hot and cool meals dancing through her memories. She lifted her hands to answer Urbosa's next question: "And the hydromelon?"
"They're delicious. Icy and sweet." Urbosa snapped her fingers and then fell silent. Link's hands faltered; she gazed at the Champion of Sageru's face to read her features, to check for resentment, to anticipate a blow across the face or hands around her throat, yet Urbosa's expression held nothing but warmth. "...if it's not too much trouble I want to bring some melons back to my sister."
"Your sister?"
Link snapped herself back to the skillet. She flipped the omelet over again. From the edge of her vision she could see Urbosa shift.
"You should tell me about her, Link. I've an older sister myself, and some younger cousins besides." Urbosa speaks of them briefly, of her mothers, of growing up in Rovah and learning the ways of the blade from the village swordsmith. She took to the blade as Link had taken to the preparation of food and soon outstripped her mentors. Her mothers proudly sent her to Nabooru to train further in the Queen's own garrison. When knowledge of the Calamitous One's return had spread and the Queen had taken on the call to appoint a Champion of Sageru, Urbosa had proven her mettle in a tournament of strength and then another of wit. The Oracles of the Temples of the Goddesses had run her through gauntlets of trials.
She had entered a girl and emerged the other end a woman prepared to take on the fate of the world on her shoulders.
Since then her life had busied, and Urbosa had found little time to visit her family. "But once we bake that boar, I look forward to taking a nice long rest with my folks. You and your sister are invited to come visit. I'll show you my mother's own special recipe for fried bananas if you do."
Link lifted her head slightly at that, and Urbosa laughed.
"I mean it, Link."
The omelet had cooked through. Link slit the omelet into two pieces, one larger than the other, and offered Urbosa the larger half, which she accepted. "This is delicious, you know. You've got a way with food. Maybe you're the Sage of an eighth Goddess with a virtue of food. Mmhm!"
Link could feel her cheeks heat up in a blush. Urbosa patted her shoulder.
"I don't know much about you, Link, but we'll be stuck together for some time. We should enjoy it. And if you like talking about food, then we'll keep talking about food. Link, how do you feel about boiled goose eggs? Have you tried them yet?"
Despite herself Link could sense her hands rising up to reply. So the conversation went. Urbosa asked about food and Link answered; Urbosa inquired of recipes and Link responded; Urbosa shifted the conversation to any other topic and Link fell silent until the talk turned once more to food.
Even so, she listened.
She listened to the stories of Urbosa's childhood, of Urbosa having fought tooth and nail to become the Champion of Sageru, of Urbosa's sister and mothers and cousins.
She listened.
That night Link unfurled the map that the King had given her. She searched the whole of Parapa for Rovah but could not find its name no matter how long she searched. Without meaning to, Link fell asleep with her face on the parchment.
In the morning she awoke to a plate of omelet, speckled with zapshroom, and a bright red dot inked into the atlas near the southeast of Parapa. An elegant hand had written a name beside the dot in looping Parapan script.
She needed not to know how to read Parapan to understand the name Rovah.
Link licks the last of the salt from her lips and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. She rubs the corners of her eyes. She catches Dyeri eyeing her over the skillet.
Dyeri nods to herself.
"Hey there, stranger." Dyeri folds her arms across her chest. "You said you could do something about Savah Naboris. What do you plan on doing? Goddess doesn't take kindly to ritual sacrifice."
Link touches her chin. "Can you keep a secret?"
"Depends on its nature."
"I can activate that shrine."
Dyeri's eyebrows rise up once more into points. "The shrine?" Link points to the shrine in the centre of the statues, and Dyeri nods slowly, keeping that lively grin curling the corners of her lips. "A shrine, eh. And you don't want me to tell Rotana or Rhiaru how you did it, that right?" Link dips her head. "If you can do it without turning out to be Yiga, I'll see what I can do about Nabooru, swear by the Goddess."
Link blinks at her.
"What, you expected some fanfare? Hey there, if you figure out a way to stop Savah Naboris, be my guest." Link blinks again, and Dyeri exhales, her cheer slipping for a moment to a look of seriousness that makes Link take a step back. "Only a matter of time before that thing gets close enough to a town that we can't just evacuate. Already hit Dhoruf. Don't worry about me, though: my family got out just fine. Like I said, the Queen's been evacuating everyone weeks before they're in danger." She shrugs. "But there's only so much we can do. You think you've got something no one else does, go for it. I've seen enough people try to play the hero that I'm not buying it until someone does something. Someone passed through wielding a legendary 'master torch' or something like that. Told the traveller things were only going to end in misery. Insisted anyway and I got the traveller a lift. Goddesses know where the traveller is now. So. You see that sort of thing happening all the time, and hey there, you don't have time to care about everyone trying to throw herself into the halls of legends. But I'm nothing if not optimistic. I keep at it and someone's bound to get lucky." She coughs. Her wrist blocks her eyes from Link's vision, and Link stares down at her own boots. "...so." Dyeri's timbre has regained its earlier brightness. "Go on. Show me your magic and I'll get you out there."
Link swallows.
Dyeri tends to the omelet approaching finished deliciousness upon the skillet. Link sneaks towards the shrine at a crouch. She glances up to discern Rhiaru's location with the red telescope; Link spots the woman with the green headscarf sitting on the head of the northernmost statue, facing the highlands.
She steps onto the platform of the shrine.
The same as all the others. The depression in the pedestal. The platform piles high with scraps of weighed down paper and varying tools for which she has no name. She skirts the materials so as not to disturb the archaeologists' work.
Leaning over, Link slots the slate into the pedestal.
The blueness of the glow. Like the fire-light of the guardians. Like the shimmer of the blade that once weighed upon her body.
She returns to the fire and Dyeri's eyebrows have all but disappeared from her hairline. "Hey there. What do you know. Well, I swore by the Goddess." Dyeri leans in, propping her chin up on her elbow. "You'll be gone before I call Rotana for breakfast, understand?"
Link nods.
"So, stranger. What do you know about whaling?"
—
Electro Mushroom Omelet (three hearts, low electric resistance for 06:20) - bird egg, goat butter, rock salt, zapshroom
Chapter Thirty-Five. First written: 05 July 2017. Last edited: 30 September 2017.
Author's notes: Wew and now you understand why I put my worldbuilding in the notes instead of in the fic proper! Thanks for enduring this, dear reader, and thank you for reading along despite how dry Delicious in Wilds can get at times. And thank you to my beta reader, Emma, for bearing with me as well.
I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but the star Anouki is named after the Anouki race from Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.
This was one of my favourite shrines in-game! I found it before I ever made it to Gerudo Town, and I absolutely loved being able to figure out what to do just looking at the level design.
Indeed, by the time I did Gerudo Town (Vah Naboris was the last Divine Beast I did in-game), I realised that I would have the most fun if I explored the entire desert by myself before heading to town in case the side-quests spoiled me on the locations of shrines. Figuring out the swords of the statues, figuring out the four torches' of fire, figuring out the seven statues were all incredibly fun and would have been somewhat ruined for me had I just been told their solutions via side-quests.
Sand seals are cute! In-game, the red ones are both faster and better behaved, which I don't think is a fun trade off. So, in Delicious in Wilds, the yellow ones are faster but wilder, and the red ones are better behaved but slower.
Rhiaru's outfit is based on the climbing outfit in-game. The three archaeologists, of course, are colour-coded after the Golden Goddesses for good luck.
Rubber is mentioned as being some ancient material in Breath of the Wild, but I simply stuck rubber trees in Faron.
The mentioned unification is the unification of Hyrule and the establishment of the royal family (though it's unclear if the royal family has actually been the same one the entire time; after all, ten thousand years is a very long time, and the family name is Harkinian, not Hyrule) from the collected nation-states that composed the land now known as Hyrule, the southern half of the continent. Pre-unification myths and legends are ancient. Many of them existed before the establishment of the Seven Goddesses as a religion
The legend of the Seven Heroines in-game was interesting to me, so I wanted to expand upon them and their role in Parapan legend. Who were they? Could they be the gerudo version of the tale of the Seven Sages? Were they someone else, given how often the number seven repeats over and over again throughout the franchise? We just don't know.
There's also, of course, the matter of infodumping on you regarding the mirror (remember what Zelda was talking about?). A civil war, and a scholar who wanted to end the fighting, but who became instead a beast...what a strange story. How much is fact, and how much is fiction? And what real relevance does it have to the backstory of Delicious in Wilds? After all, we don't actually have much backstory on Calamity Ganon or even on the original construction of the Divine Beasts.
Take the names of Dyeri, Rhiaru, and Rotana's sand seals, and try to rearrange them a little bit. You might see a name of a certain other mount from a different franchise.
Rhiaru is a bit of Link's counterpart in a certain sense; she just silently walks off to go climbing places, which is why I put her in as green.
Because of locations named after characters from previous titles in the franchise and my own running out of previously named gerudo characters (thanks Nintendo), I started to turn to other gerudo-affiliated characters. Therefore, Rovah is named after Twinrova, and Dhoruf is named after Ganondorf, with appropriate corruptions of those names.
We get some rather painful hints about Link's past here, alongside more choking metaphors. That's been coming up here and again in the fic.
I wanted to give Urbosa something resembling an actual backstory and a family. She's trying her best to get through to Link, but as you can see she's having difficulty with getting Link to say something, much like how Daruk was doing. But it's notable that Link is also terrified of doing anything to make Urbosa angry in any way, while she wasn't with Daruk. This isn't because Urbosa is scarier than Daruk; this is because of Link's own past. Urbosa's the one who helps Link moves past that when it comes time for Daruk to take over.
Rotana is one of my favourite NPCs in Breath of the Wild. I adore how excited she is about her research; it makes me happy that they actually modelled glasses for her; and I wanted her to be the one to solve the shrine in Delicious in Wilds. They had everything but the slate.
Next time: molduga whaling and other joys of cooking!
midna's ass. 30 September 2017.
Beta reader's comments: But but but! The entire scene of Link dealing with Rotana and her excitement while dreaming of food is one of the funniest bits of this series. Plus we get some great worldbuilding out of it.
Sand seals are so cute!
Emma. 30 September 2017.