In response to reviews: Phiver (on the forty-second chapter) - Hi there and thank you for reading for Delicious in Wilds! I hope that you've been enjoying the story so far, and feel free to comment whenever you'd like! Regarding Impa, she's certainly unnecessarily cruel to Link; her actions receive explanation (although not justification) later, and I don't mean to imply that how she treated Link was okay. Rather, she's a complex character, and even if her actions may have good intentions, that does not make her actions good. The reader is very welcome to form their own opinions of each character. I try not to portray characters as black-or-white "right" or "wrong" outside of basic human decency, and Link herself does many things and thinks many things with which I do not agree. When I say that Impa isn't a straight antagonist, I don't mean that the reader should forgive her actions. At any rate, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story.
Chapter Forty-Nine: Salt-Grilled Crab
The dress slithers uncomfortably around her limbs as she steps out of the room with her mouth tasting of spring green elixir. Glancing left and right, she does not spot the messenger, but rather peers down a long windowless hallway illuminated by luminous stones.
Link sniffs.
Something fishy—and not the fishiness of her intention to sneak around the palace. Something crabby—and not the crabbiness of the messenger once he discovers that his charge has vanished from the room. Something salty—and not the saltiness she will experience if the messenger or someone else catches her before she can enact her master plan.
She lets her nose lead her through the quiet and empty hallways. Crouching down on the floor, Link sneaks forward step by step, step by step, step by step. Occasionally she hears conversation, which brings her to hang back until the talk passes. Here and there a door slides open in her face, and she leaps back into the shadows until the occupant—she has seen nothing but zora since her arrival, she realises—leaves or returns to their room.
The fishy-crabby-salty scent grows stronger. Link wanders on, and other fragrances join in: frying herbs, salt-grilled fish, smoked meat. She licks her lips.
The hallway abruptly widens into a large circular chamber with a pool of water in its centre and several other hallways leading out. In the pool relax various zora: some chatting with one another, some lying back in the water, some playing a strange game involving red markers at the bottom of the pool, some snacking on a tray of shrimp that floats in the water, some evidently using a game of wind-water-fire to decide who will bring over another tray of shrimp from the kitchens, some discussing the Divine Beast Vah Ruta while another swimmer shushes them. "Whatever the Goddess has in store for us," the shusher explains, "She will have in store for us. Relax."
"To have faith is to have faith in your own abilities as well," the other argues hotly, "and the Goddess would never have us sit back and wait for fate to come to us."
The shusher frowns. "Perhaps this is a sign from the Goddess Herself."
"Oh, and what sort of sign could that be?" the other responds, now sitting up from the water.
"A sign of our behaviour these twelve hundred moons—"
"I suppose it's simple for you to say so, with little danger of Ruto being swept away," observes the zora who won the game of wind-water-fire while his companion dejectedly picks up the tray of shrimp crumbs. "Have you forgotten the Calamity, or were you too young to remember it?"
The sudden silence in the chamber comes so quiet that Link can hear nothing but her own heartbeat. The zora in the pool turn towards the one who invoked the Great Calamity, who has folded his hands in his lap to gaze coolly back at them.
Link keeps herself towards the end of the hallway; she considers how best to enter the chamber. Then, while the inhabitants of the pool have occupied themselves glaring open-mouthed at he who spoke of the Calamity, she shrugs to herself and starts the walk to tail behind the zora who lost the game of wind-water-fire.
At least wind-water-fire remains popular enough to have lasted the Great Calamity and the century of chaos that followed. Truly nothing could ever defeat that manner of determining who goes first. The land known as Hyrule's national pastime.
Well, not quite. From what Link has remembered of the time before the Great Calamity, Hyrule's national pastime was in fact cucco dodging.
She follows the zora woman with the tray. Up and up, up and up, through the winding hallways that radiate outwards from the pool like the limbs of an octopus, a river of water coursing downwards about two centimetres from the floor.
Link slides her feet along the ground to avoid sloshing the water loudly enough to wake the entire city of Ruto at once.
The dueling scents of fishiness, crabbiness, and saltiness grow even stronger, until Link finds herself wrinkling her nose for their overpowering nature even as her mouth continues to water. She can faintly hear the pitter-patter of rain over the roof of the winding tunnels. Suddenly the hallway opens up to the air.
The zora woman with the tray passes through the brief open space without a care to the roofed hallway. Glancing upwards, Link can see neither the sun nor the stars.
Only the endless blanket of grey and the maddening rain rivuleting down her skin.
Lifting her hands above her head, Link hurries on after the zora woman with the tray. At length the hallway widens again. The zora woman veers to the left into an open door illumed with luminous stones through which Link can see nearly nothing but from which wafts the savory aroma of fish, and crab, and salt, and herb, and seed, and all manner of foodstuff. Even if the Lanayrish catch her in the act, by the Golden Goddesses Link will enter the kitchens and she will try her hand at preparing food in the kitchens and she will cry over her own meal if she has to.
She steps through the doorway.
The column of scent hits her like a boomerang to the face.
The rot of fish.
Link forces her eyes open.
The kitchens. Not like the tiny galley of Misan and Glepp's wagon, or even the open-air communal cooking area of Medli, but a massive chamber longer than the Temple of Time and as wide as the Bridge of Eldin, stretching outwards past where the glow of luminous stones allows her eyes—less suited to the darkness than the eyes of zora—to see.
Zora. Some ten or fifteen zora that she can see at the counters preparing a variety of meals, from soups in rounded pots, to rice-balls rolled together in their hands, from shrimp fried in oil to fish-shaped pastries baked on a sheltered flame.
Link looks past her fellow food-lovers to examine the kitchens proper.
Long silvery-white counters. Stone pantries and cabinets set between counters. Pots and pans of every size and shape hanging from the backs of cabinets or arranged upon the counters in regular rows. Baskets of ingredients—fruit and vegetables, herbs and spices, mushrooms and salts—ready and waiting. A long ice-box wrapping around every other counter. She can scarcely hold herself back from flinging open the ice-box to indulge in what might await within.
And, hanging from the ceiling on long cords: the fish, and the crab, and the shrimp, and the snail, and the lobster, and the turtle, and every sort of seafood, entirely raw, some partially rotting from the cords.
Before Link's own eyes, one of the zora working at the counters reaches up to grab a carp from a cord and tosses the half-rotted fish whole into her mouth prior to returning to the pot of stew she prepares.
Link takes a step forward. Water sloshes around her ankles; several of the zora nearest to her raise their heads towards her.
She stares at them.
They watch her not head-on but from the corners of their vision. One by one they turn back to their own tasks, and Link exhales.
With the dress floofing around her and splashing the water more loudly than before, Link marches towards an unoccupied portion of the counter. From here she can see the vast majority of the kitchens lay silent and unused. Only the very front row of counters feels the hands of chefs. The remaining nine-tenths of the long chamber has not even baskets of ingredients. When she chances to prop open an ice-box, she feels that the sapphire on the inside has long since exhausted its cold.
Link takes a spot on the further end of the front row counters. The zora man a pace to her right is rolling some form of crepe or pancake made of rice. Link waves to the zora, who ignores her.
Shrugging, she turns to her life's work: the cooking of food.
The counter comes up to her chin. Rubbing the back of her head Link clambers on top of it to perch on the edge. She finds a space for fire set inside of the counter itself. Instead of wood, the inner chamber for the flame stocks with small black discs that remind her of the goat chips sometimes used in Ordona. She brings a disc to her nose to whiff, and the oily scent of packed fish nearly knocks her unconscious. Eyes watering, Link sets the chip back.
She touches her chin. Her gaze roams the chamber, seeking inspiration. Here: an abundance of fish, trout and carp, those with the funny-looking faces and bass. There: snails with shells curled this way and that. And by her left hand: a cord of two different crabs set in some pattern she cannot discern.
Link reaches for the cord. Her fingers close around the void. Too short. Clambering up onto the counter, she balances on its slippery-wet surface, to paw for the cord. As she stands up on the tips of her toes, her fingertips just manage to catch the very end of the cord. The arches of her feet cramp. She perseveres to push herself higher and higher until she wraps her hand around one of the sharp-pincer crabs at the base of the cord. Grunting, she jerks her arm back.
The crab goes free.
Its momentum swings her arm outwards, and the crab begins to fly from her palm when Link twists the entire weight of her body around to flop her arm against her own chest. The crab smacks her lower jaw, then topples to the counter.
She senses the sliding of her own heels. The swing of the cord clears her boots from the surface of the counter. Breath hitched, Link grips the cord with both hands as the pendulum propels her forward onto a neighbouring counter.
The cord digs into her skin but she does not let go. Her swing reaches its zenith, and she starts to swing the other way. As she passes over her own counter, Link strains to touch the surface with her feet but cannot quite reach.
And then she does. All at once she lands on very edge of the counter; the pain of the sharp corner against the arches of her feet—even through her boots—tips her backwards. The floor rushes up to greet her backside. The impact thunders up her tailbone through her spine. A breath later her legs accompany her fall to the floor.
Her head smacks against the cabinet between her counter and its neighbour.
Her lap fills with crab on a cord. The cord drizzles over her shoulders and around her head to make a crown of crab. The final crab on the cord plops onto the back of her neck to plunge downwards into her dress. Its hard outer shell scratches her back along the spine. Leaping to her feet, Link launches into a dance of desperation until the crab shimmies off her back and onto the watery ground.
Link exhales. She bends down to pick up the cord she has ripped off of the ceiling from the floor only to see that the current has started to carry her precious crabs away.
Once she has rescued the crabs from the current, Link claps her hands against her cheeks to awaken herself. "All right, crabs," she signs at the cord spiralled on the counter, "thank you for aiding me in making a delicious meal."
The crabs do not reply. She pats the closest one on the head.
When Link removes the shell of the first, she finds the insides partially rotted and the entrails having burst over the crab's innards. Swallowing down her vomit, she closes the shell as if setting down the lid of a box. She checks the legs of the crab instead.
Perfectly safe. Not rotted. Smelling clean and relatively fresh.
With a grin Link sets about removing the legs from the crabs until she has a sizeable mountain of crab limbs piled up upon the counter. She takes a moment to arrange the crabs into a rough approximation of a horse. Link removes the slate from her hip—an affair of attempting to flip up the dress before giving in and simply pulling her arm in through her sleeve—to snap a pictograph of the likeness of Ilia to later show her companion.
Then Link goes on: crab.
Though she just manages to open one of the pantries, she discovers that her hands do not reach the top of the cabinets. She squirrels up the stone, wedging the corner of the cabinet between her thighs, and removes a stick of butter that she holds in her teeth on her way down. Rummaging through the pantries and cabinets that she can reach, Link grates Hyrule herb, garlic, red pepper, and parsley into a fluffy mountain of green, white, and violet. She heats butter in a saucepan and adds the herbs alongside a pinch of salt and a dash of ground black pepper.
She taps her fingers along her jawline. Climbing onto the counter to physically walk between the large pots of ingredients, arranged not unlike the communal kitchens of Kasuto, Link uncovers chickaloo tree nuts. She takes a handful back to her own counter.
The other zora, if they pay her antics mind, keep quiet. No one speaks. Not a single sound, or a single sign, save for the sss of saucepans and skillets and their contents, spiced or salted, seared or sautéed.
Far too short to reach her food from the floor, she crouches on the counter over the saucepan. While the butter sauces away, Link tunnels a small hole through the centre of each crab leg to smoosh the meat onto the sides. She cracks the tree nuts into tiny pieces. Tasting one, she closes her eyes to enjoy the nutty, wooden flavour that laps over her tongue, slightly stronger than the taste of acorns, and with a much meatier base. Link drops the shards into the salted butter sauce. After they have cooked about halfway through, she dredges them back up, burning her fingertips in the process, and stuffs them into the crab legs to the brim before plugging the hole with a packing of crab meat and a generous cork of sauce to function as sealing paste. She smears oil onto the lip of each crab leg with her thumb, then pinches the ends together and folds them over as though sealing an envelope.
Meat stuffed with nut. Like Riju taught her.
Link turns the crab legs over to set the corks directly against the heat of the saucepan. The butter sauce bakes; the oil fries to seal the skin of the legs against one another with the salted-butter nuts inside.
She brings a crab leg up to her ear to shake it and listen to the nuts rattle inside. Link can feel through the rumble within just how many nuts she has packed into the leg.
Perhaps she could lead a choir of frogs with these as readily as Hestu with their maracas.
Hestu.
Koroks.
Sarie.
With any luck Sarie remains with Ilia. Link expires out a breath and rests a hand against her chest.
She cracks the crab legs, then rubs rock salt over the meat on the inside. Link brushes butter sauce over the outer layer until the legs glimmer. Then she rolls her shoulders and dumps the crab legs directly into the saucepan—removed from the heat—to coat them thoroughly. She adds another layer of salt on top of the butter before starting the process of grilling the legs. The utensils used by the zora stretch just slightly too large for her palms, and Link needs to use both hands to flip the crab legs over with a spatula. She presses them down onto the barred metal grill until the meat chars just enough to leave darkened stripes along the meat.
Link shakes her head. In a kitchen made for a people half again or twice her height, she feels like a child. But a child that can make food good.
She laughs to herself. The zora man making rice crepes shushes her; Link stuffs a leftover chickaloo tree nut into her own mouth to serve as a cork.
As she finishes grilling each crab leg, she flips it up onto a plate. Her first attempt at the flip lands the crab leg in her hair, and her second sends it spinning off to orbit where she cannot find it again. Link offers the missing crab leg a eulogy: "So long, little crab."
By her third flip, she misses the plate by only about a metre, and her fourth lands on the edge. Before long Link has compiled a veritable Death Mountain of crab legs. She finishes flipping the final crab legs onto the plate. Wiping her mouth—saliva leaking from the corners at the smell of grilled crab legs and at her own stomach yearning for more despite having eaten the stir-fry not an hour ago—Link pinches a crab leg between her fingers.
She inhales. The peculiar tang of crab, the savoriness of roasted nut within, the nose-tickling garlic butter sauce, the slight acridity of just a touch too much salt.
Link bites down.
She crunches the chickaloo tree nuts between her teeth while the buttered crab meat slips around the shards of nut to coat the inside of her mouth in parsley and garlic, spicy pepper and Hyrule herb. Link tilts back her head to swallow. The crab butters her throat on its way down. The salt stings her tongue and the inner curve of her throat, but the rich flavour of the crab mixed with the woodiness of the nuts fuses the sky and the sea, the deepest catch from the waters and the highest gathering from the treetops.
Crab legs grilled in salt.
She remembers grilling these in the royal kitchens, late at night, hiding in a corner while the other kitchens workers stared at her but would not speak a word against her for the gold and violet sheath upon her back.
She remembers meeting Mipha again. She does not quite remember the pulling of the sword that seals the darkness, but she can still hear the shouts of the guards, the screams of the assembled crowd, the thumping of her own heart convinced that they would either shackle her wrists or slit her throat—or, if the Goddesses favoured her, both. She remembers Mipha's voice. She remembers Mipha who knew her, who recognised her despite the years of difference and change since the last time that they had seen one another.
When she explained to Mipha of herself being a girl, Link lowered the lids over her eyes for fear of Mipha's expression. Instead she heard Mipha ask, in her gentle voice: "May I hug you, my Link?"
Link noted how Mipha only touched her with her inner arms now instead of the rougher outer. The embrace did not leave her skin raw. Yet Link could sense, too, the hesitation and the carefulness of the arrangement of Mipha's limbs that kept the hug from its usual...from its usual something-or-other that Link could not quite name.
"I suppose when I call you my Link now, I am referring to your name, not simply you being my link to the world outside of Ruto." Mipha inclined her head. "I will take the burden of correcting my mistakes to the other Champions. I'm...I'm sorry for how I introduced you to them, my Link."
She remembers bringing the tray of grilled crab legs to Mipha. Not stuffed with chickaloo tree nuts, but simply grilled through. When Mipha tasted of the butter sauce, of the spicy pepper of the Lanayrish mountains mixed with the Hyrule herb of the lower grasslands, Mipha did not weep, but her diamond-shaped pupils expanded to fill the whole of her eyes.
"Thank you, my Link," she whispered, her hands trembling around the tray.
She remembers herself dipping her head. "You're the one who...saved me."
Link crunches down the remainder of the leg. Between the spicy pepper and the salt, her mouth burns with a most welcoming aftertaste. She runs her tongue over her lips to lap up the last of the salty butter sauce.
She cleans up after herself as best she can. Link tucks the cord ripped from the ceiling around her waist as a spare belt, taking the tray of crab legs with her.
Link taps the shoulder of one of her fellow food-lovers on her way out. She balances the tray of crab legs on the crook of her arm. "Do you know where I can find the king?" she asks, blinking at the zora boy, who takes a look at her, covers his eyes with his horizontal third eyelids, and returns to his work.
She tilts her head to the side. She can respect the dedication to his food.
With tray in hand, Link quits the kitchens, but not before bidding them a tearful good-bye and a promise to return.
She exits with the crab legs and starts the trek back up the hallways in an attempt to return to her own room. When the roof goes out and the rain patters in, Link covers the plate with her own body. The dress smears slightly in butter sauce in the process. But the crab legs make the journey just fine, and she grins to herself.
Link returns to the chamber with the pool of zora. Only when she pokes her head out to look at the hallways leading out from the chamber does she realise that she hasn't the foggiest on where to go from here.
Abruptly: a gasp from the pool. Not a second later everyone has turned their gaze towards her.
Link blinks at them. They stare at her. The zora girl who lost the game of wind-water-fire rubs her eyes.
At length one of the swimmers draws herself up from the water. Link cranes her head back at the zora woman who stands nearly twice her own height looking down upon her from behind the hood of her head fins. The zora woman opens her mouth. Her sharks' teeth glimmer in the dim light of the luminous stones. Link feels her heart shudder against the insides of her ears.
The zora woman leans forward.
"So...are those for us?"
Link shakes her head. The mountain of crab legs on the tray teeters. Once more she balances the tray on the crook of her arm to reply to her interrogator. "I made these for the king. He wanted to meet me and I thought I'd bring a gift."
The zora woman leans back. She loops her hand through the silver sash that straddles low on her hips. "So...the King Zora, eh. Right. And I'm the Goddess Zola Herself, don'cha know?"
"Wait, Frash...isn't that the...?" Another zora man rises from the water. He steps closer to Link, who shrinks back, alternating between holding the tray in front of her as a makeshift shield and attempting to shield the crab legs with her body. "Aren't you the Champion of Hylia? The new one." He looks at the others. "Isn't she? Am I wrong?"
Yet another zora girl claps her hands and Link glances at her. Her eyes have widened. The fins along her face and down her sides have flared up and out. "Link? Link...is that you?"
Link looks at the zora, up and down. Dark green, with a head that resembles the funny-faced fish that have made Link laugh so hard, her head tail fwipping back and forth, her lips slightly parted in her shock.
Link blinks slowly. Frash. She remembers. She remembers Frash, far younger then, too young to drink but old enough to worry about her sister who wanted nothing more than to become the Oracle of Nayru. She looks at the other zora in the pool. There: a woman who would come in closer to the end of the night for a serving of liquored milk with a single bowl of plain rice, nothing more. Here: a disliker of crab and lover of sanke carp who would pay her extra for bringing in a catch from Necluda. There: someone who would always tredge up a bucket full of blueshell snails for Link to cook in this recipe or that. Here: a girl who would ask Link to stuff pumpkins for her with a glass of wildberry wine on the side. There: a player of Hebric roulette with a preference for cocktails made on spicy pepper, who would take a sip, wait for the fireball down her throat, and then drain it down with a glass of icy water before repeating the process, claiming that she intended to build up a tolerance to the pepper until she could drink them pureed. Here: an aficionado of liquored milk mixed through with squash-sweetened brandy Link kept in a casket of wood under the counter from the province of Ordona. There: one who would gift Link an entire shark or sea turtle pulled in from the coast to cook, who would stand and flex her muscles while everyone oohed and aahed over her in thanks for having brought in the catch of the day.
She does not know all of the zora gathered in pool, but she does know many for whom she has mixed drinks and cooked meals.
And even though the noise of their speech and the chaos of the bodies surrounding her hasten her heart and compress her breath, Link can feel something like—relief.
Not quite like coming home.
But like coming back to a friend after a very, very long time away.
"Your...favourite was the salt-shrimp soup, wasn't it?" Link signs to Frash, whose eyes continue to widen until her pupils and irises have comparatively narrowed for how much of the whites she shows. "The salt-shrimp soup. You...talked about your troubles with your sister..."
Abruptly everyone seems to emerge from the water at once to crowd around Link. They yell her name. They ask where she has been for the past hundred years. The stuffed pumpkin girl inquires how she has lived for so long when, to her knowledge, hylians do not last longer than perhaps a hundred years at most, "and those hylians look like wrinkled boiled potatoes, not like people."
Link backs and away from the masses that surround her. She keeps her hands around the edges of the tray. The corners dig into her shaking palms. She focuses on the crab legs.
"Look! She's still even got that same blank stare! I used to think she was asking for something with that look, a reward or summat," shouts one of the zora men above the din of the masses, "before Rafeau set me straight."
She focuses on not dropping the crab legs into the water.
"Oi, put a trout in it. 'Course she was asking for something when we would sidle up and make her cook for us day in and day out."
She focuses on not spilling a single leg.
"Well then what's she asking for now?"
She feels their cold hands over her—
"I don't know! I read hylian faces 'bout as well as I read Hebric!"
—touching her as they might another zora—
"But you don't know any Hebric!"
—rubbing her back, patting her arms, nudging her hips—
"That's the joke."
—and she steps backwards, and backwards, and her shoulder blades hit the wall, and she flattens herself against it, and—
"Please move yourselves, if you will. Master Link has duties to attend to."
The crowd parts like two halves of a sea suddenly split down the middle. The messenger—dark burgundy, with the head of a trout—steps forward. Pursing his lips, the messenger devours Link with his gaze and spits her back out. "Quite. Follow me, if you would, O Champion of Hylia, Master Link."
Still holding the tray of crab legs, Link inches towards the messenger. The bottom of the dress drags in the water.
"You're no fun, Igli," notes the woman who would ask for liquored milk; the messenger ignores her.
The crowd trails behind Igli and Link. She can hear the zora capable of audible speech chattering amongst themselves. In the reflection of the tray she watches them embrace one another, sign to each other, mimic the cooking of food or the drinking of fluid in their stories, perhaps about her. Link stares blankly ahead.
Perhaps not blankly. Perhaps with an expression that seems to long for something.
Not in the mass of too many at once. Yet when she has calmed the Divine Beast Vah Ruta, she would. She would like to talk. To talk to them. To talk to the people that she knows, and that know her.
That knew the her from before the Great Calamity.
No.
That know her.
Igli leads Link up through the endless hallways. She narrows her attention to the steadily cooling crab legs. She should have brought with her a plate inlaid with ruby or something of that sort to keep the crab legs warm. By the time she will arrive at the hall of the king, they will have cooled down entirely.
The king.
She does not remember how long the king has been king for but she remembers, too, Mipha telling her about him. Once he had been called Dorephan, but since assuming the position of king, he had become the King Zora in the convention of the Lanayrish.
Something about giving in fully to the responsibilities, to the losing oneself for the greater good, and in doing so, losing one's own name. No longer himself, but the king of his people. King Zora, with no room for anything but remaining the king.
The dress feels that much heavier upon her shoulders the lower Link climbs with the masses of zora behind her. Guards become more frequent, as do the open areas of the hallways; suddenly they have exited out of the gloom entirely to the open sky of the lowest levels of the city of Ruto, shaped not unlike an inverted cone, with higher levels spiralling around the palace at the city's heart. Like a lotus flower opened to the heavens, or a lily surrounded by its pads.
Here the water reaches her chest. Link raises the tray above her head. Igli clicks his tongue. She feels the water level lowering even as she struggles to walk through the rapids.
Igli shows her under a veranda, where he signs to the guards who lower their silver spears to allow the congregation through. Link walks on; the tray of crab legs shudders, though she retains her grip fast. She moves through the silvery arch to find herself staring at a massive whale-shark—no, a massive zora that towers three or four times her own height, far larger than any other that Link has ever seen, reclining in a giant pool of water. Behind him range guards with silver weapons. A small symphony plays a relaxing melody of tinkling bells and a resonant water-horn.
By either side of the giant zora in the water, Link sees Prince Sidon, who does not seem to notice her, and a shorter zora, hunched over, his age visible in the droop of his fins and the squint of his eyes.
Link glances between the tray of crab legs and the whale-shark-like zora in the water.
As Igli clears his throat, a zora man seated at an organ sits up suddenly to press his fingers onto the keys. Link has before heard the song that he plays, but not well enough to place it. Something she listened to in the gardens, standing behind the girl with the golden hair, the eight-stringed harp upon her lap.
"O Zola, by Your faith, the Champion of Hylia has come!"
The massive zora lying in the pool rouses up.
Link watches him shift his great bulk to sit up in the water. His breathing seems to quicken until he has once more settled in the lake. Other zora beside him splash him with water, and one rubs a shiny oil over his skin. His third eyelid slides over his golden eyes, and his pupils constrict. Link observes the silver crown gracing his head. After a moment he focuses his gaze upon Link.
He blinks.
Link blinks back.
She steps forward while the man on the organ introduces the King Zora. She steps forward while a Sage of Zola—playing a cello that glitters silver as a full moon—invokes the Goddess Zola to watch down over them. She steps forward while Prince Sidon perks up and waves, first at the entrance to the chamber and then at her, tracking her as she trudges through the water in the buttered dress. She steps forward while the hunched over zora narrows his eyes at her and curls his fingers against his palms.
She steps forward, and she lifts the plate of crab legs above her head towards the King Zora. He regards her blearily. The guards near the King Zora instantly raise their silver spears towards her, but the King Zora lifts his wobbling arm.
A hush falls over the throne room. Igli's mouth drops open. The guards move away, weapons lowered.
Link makes a motion with the plate, determined not to spill the crab legs, and holds it still higher. The King Zora reaches down towards the plate. She can sense the vibrations through the silver as he selects one of the legs from the top of the pile.
She watches him raise the crab leg to his mouth. She watches him part his jaws into a maw large enough to wolf her down whole. Or whale-shark her down whole, as she has never witnessed a zora with much resemblance to a wolf. She watches him carefully place the crab leg on his tongue, and then to chew, and then to swallow.
And then the King Zora smiles. He scoops half of the entire mountain of crab legs from the plate to stuff into his mouth. He labours in his breathing; his attendants rub his back.
The King Zora regards her, standing there with the water up her chest, arms trembling, fingers clenched around the edges of a tray too large for her, and his smile widens.
"It really is you, isn't it, O Courageous Link?" The King Zora's gaze bears down upon her. "I would know that cooking anywhere, hoo hoo!" Though the blade of evil's bane no longer weighs upon her back, Link can feel the slate at her right hip, the red telescope at her left.
In Darunia, and in Medli, and in Nabooru, she could pull up her hood and wash away the dust of her years. But here she remembers the people of Ruto, and they remember her.
Here Link can no longer run from the scars that weave her past into her body.
But then...
She realises, with a sensation like biting directly into the spicy peppers that grow on the Great Plateau, that she no longer wants to run.
For to run from her past would be to run, too, from the people she has loved and the people who have loved her.
All of the wilds combined cannot sit at a campfire and share stew from a communal cooking pot.
And all of her fears of herself combined cannot outweigh her love.
She, who has a little sister named Aryll, the most wonderful little sister she could ask her. She, who has a best friend in the girl who smelled of horses. She, whom Marin loved, and loves, and would have travelled over the world with if not for the passage of time. She, whom Daruk invited to his home, to his family, once they had won the long war. She, who has carried on her back an ice-box full of sanke carp to bake Revali a fish pie, whom Revali admitted in caring about. She, whom Urbosa trained in the art of the blade, who witnessed Urbosa's own courage lead her to happiness. She, who met Mipha as a child though never as the daughter of the King Zora, who for her mixed drinks and changed lives. She, who drew the sword that seals the darkness.
She, whom the blade of evil's bane appointed as the Champion of Hylia, as the Hero of Hyrule, as the Knight of the girl with the golden hair, as Link.
She knows little of fate. But she knows much of her own abilities. Since awakening in the Shrine of Resurrection, she has, with her own boots, travelled the land once known as Hyrule; she has, with her own hands, calmed three Divine Beasts, and soon a fourth; she has, with her own cooking pot, taken communion with strangers and with friends; she has cooked for the pilots of the Divine Beasts; she has tasted the wilds.
If she can carry the slate, with its ten thousand years of dust, and the red telescope, with its hundred years of passing, then she can carry the title bestowed upon her for her deeds.
"The Champion of Hylia, the Hero of Hyrule, Her Majesty's own appointed Knight, O Courageous Link." The King Zora bows his head. The ripple of water that cascades from the motion could knock Link backwards, but she holds firm.
"O Courageous Link, I welcome you, not only the Champion of Hylia, the Hero of Hyrule, and Her Majesty's Knight...but as mine own daughter's friend."
Link closes her eyes.
"Welcome home."
—
Salt-grilled Crab (five hearts) - chickaloo tree nut, goat butter, ironshell crab, razorclaw crab, rock salt
Chapter Forty-Nine. First written: 23 July 2017. Last edited: 16 October 2017.
Author's notes: Of course, a warm and from-the-depths-my-heart thank you to all of the readers who have supported me so far, and an equal thank-you to my most marvellous beta reader, Emma, who continues to help me remind to post chapters on time and not twelve hours later.
Link spends most of her time in Delicious in Wilds wearing outfits appropriate for travel, much as many of the women in Breath of the Wild (the sexualised and exotified gerudo women who stroll through the desert in high heels and midriff-wearing 'outfits' aside) wear riding outfits with riding britches. Because of the demands of her rigorous life as a courier; then the chosen one; and now a traveller, she's not too used to wearing dresses or robes. The "strange sensation of being unable to find your legs in a dress rather than pants" is something that I only learned fairly recently is not an idiosyncrasy but a somewhat common symptom among various groups. As I was writing, I felt (given Link's other divergences from 'typical' neural behaviour) that it was appropriate for her to experience this as dress itself is weighed down with silver and pearls in order to keep it from obstructing the swimmer. The specific gravit
y of the dress is almost exactly the same as water (or as close as possible) so that it neither floats nor sinks.
The virtues of the goddesses, as I've mentioned before, that we've talked about so far have been: Sheik: truth; Goro-goro: pride; Erito: voice (as in self-expression); Sageru: kin (also translated as blood or loyalty); Zola: faith. We've yet to hear about Kokir or Hylia, though I've already heavily, heavily, heavily implied one.
One moon is approximately the length of a month; twelve hundred moons is a century. Because the moon is to tied to the ocean, I figured that it was appropriate for the zora to use it as a unit of measurement. Why do the zora have the most markedly different units of measurements and things like that in the whole of Hyrule? Because zora live for much longer than all of the other races, so they're the most resistant to picking up new standards.
Cucco dodging is in reference to the mini-game played at the Cucco Ranch in A Link Between Worlds. It's not actually Hyrule's national pastime, but used to be (and still is in, in parts) a festive part of rural communities.
Because zora live for a long time, they also have very low reproductive rates, especially in the face of the Calamity (they are K-selected rather than r-selected). Their population has heavily fallen without yet the means to rebuild, so the kitchens are mostly unused.
Link is short! She's short for a hylian (in-game, Link is literally shorter than every single adult hylian in the game, including all of the women, unless there's someone I'm forgetting) and she's doubly short for a larger species like the zora. We don't actually see many effects of her height in-game, other than her
The plural of zora is zora; "zoras" sounds strange to my ear.
The joke about being able to hear nuts in the crab legs is a nod to the "number of ice cubes in a JoyCon with HD rumble" during the reveal of the Nintendo Switch. I played Breath of the Wild on the WiiU.
So, to clarify: Link grabbed the Master Sword and was able to pull it somehow, then—being some country courier—ended up in hot water until Mipha recognised her (unfortunately introducing her as the child whom she had known years ago, rather than Link the girl). Because Mipha recognised her and vouched for her, Link was able to not be executed but instead be accepted as the chosen one.
Tredge is a combination of trudge and dredge that I didn't realise wasn't a word until just now.
Zora, like many fish and lizards, don't really age but keep growing with age until they die; old zora have droopier fins and hunched backs, but do not wrinkle like old humans do.
The melody that Link recalls Zelda playing for her is, of course, the Serenade of Water.
Dorephan is massive, and, due to spending most of his time in the water, cannot actually survive for long outside of his throne pool. When he sits up from the water, he has difficulty breathing due to the effects of gravity. For more information on this effect, look up the beaching of whales.
This is it. This is the chapter where, after forty-nine very long chapters and three hundred thousand words, we finally arrive to Link's great realisation. Welcome home, Link. Welcome home to accepting who you are, both in the past and in the present. There's just one big hurdle left for her to cover: obtaining the Master Sword.
And, of course, figuring out what to do about Calamity Ganon. I think that the final decision that Link makes regarding the future of Hyrule is one that is going to surprise my readers quite a bit. But we have a great deal many chapters to get here.
Up next: a chat with the king, and a chat with a lynel.
midna's ass. 16 October 2017.
Beta reader's comments: This chapter is such a cool part of Link's character development. We're finally at the apex of (this part of) her development, and it's really great to behold.
Link coming out to Mipha is really cute.
There's a lot of personality to very brief snapshots of Zora characters, which I find super neat.
Emma. 16 October 2017.
