In response to reviews: Phiver — Thank you for reading and for the kind words. I'm glad you've been enjoying the story so far!
Haha, yeah, I quite enjoyed getting to write an intense and gritty actions sequence like that. What can I say? I wanted to get across the very real danger that Link and others are in. It's not a game in-universe, after all. It's good to hear that you enjoyed it!
Yep, the lynels are described in-game as being intelligent enough to make their own armour and weapons; they're also the only enemies (that I know of) which can after a time figure out that Link—when wearing the lynel disguise—is in fact not a lynel (lizalfos and bokoblins do so indefinitely until Link attacks them, at least to my knowledge).
That mental image is making me laugh too now, so thank you for sharing. A Cooking Mama spin-off entitled Cooking Monster when, Nintendo?
As for the don't-like-Link-but-aren't-antagonists, Delicious in Wilds is not meant to be "either people are on on the hero's side, or they're assholes". Link isn't always right; in fact, much of the time, she's very wrong. She's getting better as the fic is going on, but that's because she's learning and being challenged by friend and foe alike.
It has taken the poor girl over three hundred thousand words, but she's come a very, very long way from how she was in the opening chapters. I'm a sucker for slow burn character development. Link wasn't born a hero, after all. I hope you enjoy the rest of the journey as well!
To all of my readers: a brief summary of the "skippable" section of the previous chapter is as follows: Link fought against the lynel and won, killing the lynel, but was grievously injured in the process, specifically with the lynel ripping into Link's abdomen/innards. Sidon then found the mortally wounded Link cooking salmon risotto.
This chapter includes an arguably graphic scene of Link's healing that is skippable, starting at the paragraph beginning with "The sudden pain over the entirety of her form" and ending just before the paragraph beginning "And then, all at once, the the itch leaves her". As always, stay safe!
Chapter Fifty-One: Hasty Mushroom Rice Balls
She does not much stay awake the journey back. Link clutches the quiver of topaz arrows with her chest. Sidon swaddles her in the lizalfos-skin tarp. He prays over her to the Goddesses; slightly, just slightly, she lifts her eyelids. He grips her hand, beams at her—at her stomach rather than at her face—and flashes her a thumbs-up.
"I knew you could do it! With these arrows we'll surely quell Vah Ruta! Most fortuitous, Link! Now let me do my part in getting you back! And I have nothing but the utmost faith in your ability to hang on!"
Link nods blearily before closing her eyes again. Weakly she fends off his attempts at picking her up, hugging the cooking pot of salmon risotto. She feels Sidon cautiously touch over her hands until his fingertips ping against the metallic surface of the pot.
"I shall bring that with us!" he announces; Link lets herself go limp. She raises her satchel to push into Sidon's hands, then signs into them, the agony of every breath that shakes through her still-raw throat and her pulsating innards doubling Sidon in two and bringing a sluggishness to her movements. She asks him in broken words to harvest herbs from the garden, whatever he can fit, for ingredients that she did not see at first blush in the kitchens of Ruto. Link hears Sidon spend a moment kneeling over her, panting. Then he empties her palms of the satchel. "Very well! I will most certainly look for anything I have not eaten before! Then I shall be right back for you! Tap thrice for yes yes yes!"
With the little strength that remains in her, she taps.
She does not let her head loll back so much as she can no longer afford to hold up her neck.
Link lowers her eyelids. Despite her best efforts, her arms slip from the sides of the cooking pot. She inhales. Her ribs rattle within her. She exhales. The five-pronged wound on her lower belly throbs as if the lynel were attempting to eviscerate every delicious meal she has ever had.
If only she could have shared the lynel's own salmon risotto with it. If only she could convince the monsters to lay down their arms in exchange for the heat of a meal.
Link listens to the splish of mud beside her. Something shifts over her shoulders. The ground vanishes from under her body; something firm and cool surrounds her. A chrysalis. She has become the Malice in her own body, and when someone enters her Divine Beast to calm it, she will slither from the cocoon of the tyrian heart to drop her slate. Neither the fire-light spear nor the long sword given to her by Riju would constitute something of her own weapons. Ah, of course: the cooking pot. A formidable fashion of fighting, a warning weapon of war.
Fluid sprays over her face, and then doesn't, and then does, and then doesn't, and then she stops paying attention and starts to consider what food to make for herself when she arrives home.
If the lynel sought to remove her entrails, then she will merely have to replace her innards with food. She'll make a favourite of the girl who smelled of horses: mushroom rice-balls. Her own special, to combine the use of rice in Lanayru with the love of mushroom in Ordona.
Sitting together on the porch by the sunset trees. Cooking over the same pot. Giggling and wiping sauce or butter from one another's noses. Finding Aryll—up high in the trees or staring off the coast towards the ocean she loved so—to surprise her little sister with supper.
The firm thing unwraps around Link. Two—something like planks of wood—support her. A warm bulk presses into her left side. Her entire body remains numb. Her limbs flop uselessly and slide off of the planks of wood; she finds that her individual arms and legs have tensed so that she can no longer move them.
A puppet.
A puppet of wood.
Link tries to laugh and yet she senses only the sting of blood bathing the inside of her throat, the meat constricting in and out, swollen up so thickly that she can only hiss in a whisper of a breath.
A motion at her right hip. Words somewhere far, far away. A brightness that squeezes shut her eyes, and then a hum that resonates through the bulk at her side to tremble her form.
Water.
The rushing of water.
The planks of wood and the bulk at her torso give way to a hardness beneath her. Link lies there with her limbs splayed her. Her stomach hurts. She need eat something. Just to eat. Nothing else.
Just to eat.
Just to cook mushrooms and herbs directly in the fire for wanting of a cooking pot. Just to find herself trapped in the darkness of the forest without a means of returning home. Just to feel the pain of her broken left arm. Just to realise that she had no companion but the girl who smelled of horses and a single Ordon goat. Just to end up confessing that she...she wanted to be a girl. Just to hear the apologies tumbling from the fingertips of the girl who smelled of horses. Just to spend the night huddling beside the fire to keep warm. Just to force themselves up in the morning with their hands clawed with frost and their legs numbed to static. Just for the girl who smelled of horses to shimmy up a tree and spot the plume of smoke from Ordon. Just for them to walk until the girl who smelled of horsses's feet bloodied from her sandals, just for Link to offer her her sturdier boots, just for the girl who smelled of horses to refuse, just for the girl who smelled of horses to whisper later her thanks, just for her to invite the girl who smells of horses to the ranch with her to make her a meal, as Link will do now. Now. Mushroom rice-balls for the girl who smells of horses.
The floor beneath her melts. She drifts on nothingness. Her arm—the bones replaced with a long moblin horn she cannot flex, the blood drained and filled instead with molten lead—lifts itself.
The sudden pain over the entirety of her form leaves her screaming and writhing the wooden limbs that refuse to move, the hands and feet she cannot recognise as her own flapping along her chest. Her bones crack and splinter beneath her skin. So many needles stab through her flesh, everywhere on her body, from her brow to her lower lip to the curve of her abdomen to the centre of her right foot between her toes and draw up through her form with threads so sharp and thin that they threaten to slice her meat over again. Like worms burrowing beneath her skin with nothing but fang and tooth. Her muscle squashes together over her bone. Her tendons elongate rapidly, too rapidly, like someone taking her sinews and stretching them out by hand well past their breaking point. The holes in her abdomen collapse inwards on themselves; the sudden swell of new flesh plugging against the raw meat of open injuries gurgles her breath in her throat. Her heart clenches in.
The same agony that overwhelms her consciousness keeps her awake.
Something fishy around her mouth. Link strains her neck forward; her efforts reward her with a mouthful of salmon risotto that she wolfs down all at once, even as the inner lining of her throat thicken. The sensastion itches, unbearably so. She fights the overwhelming urge to force her hand down her own throat and claw up the skin with her bare fingernails until the pads of her finger come away bloody. Crawling. Crawling, all over her skin, like the scorpions of the Parapan desert. A swarm of ants or termites or locusts coating her and forcing their way inside of every orifice. No, not insects: her skin crawls back together to stitch itself. Her whole body itches, inside and out. Not only the inner rim of her throat, but of her nostrils down to the openings on the roof of her mouth, her lower lip, her ears, her chest, in the insides of her ears, on her lower abdomen inside of where the holes have plugged up. She scrabbles at her own skin, and yet the flesh of her stomach prevents her from digging in to scratch the itch deep within. Her limbs thrash. At least the salmon risotto continues to stuff her mouth. It warms her belly and quiets, if only for a second, that overbearing urge to scratch. For that impossibly long span of time, the entirety of her world hangs in the balance of two words: itchy; tasty.
Link feasts on the salmon risotto long after her stomach has started to hurt and the rising tide of bile has begun to sting the base of her throat. Her nails scrape along her skin: she cannot reach the deeper layers she so desperately needs to scratch.
And then, all at once, the the itch leaves her. Suddenly she submerges in the void of no longer having a body, for what body can she have without the feeling of itching giving her its boundaries. Slowly the sensations of her twitching fingers, her shivering limbs, and her thumping heart reache her.
She takes another bite of salmon risotto. She swallows. Her stomach churns. She lifts her head for another mouthful, but her teeth click on emptiness.
No salmon risotto. No need to remain awake, or alive.
She feels herself fall into the dark.
When she awakens again, Link finds herself staring—for once—at a familiar ceiling. She shoots her body forward despite the pounding of her head. She feels a thin layer of water splash at her sides. The silvery-grey room. The luminous stones. The water-bed.
No. No, she couldn't have fallen asleep. She couldn't still need to see the King Zora. She—
"Link! You're awake!"
She snaps her head towards the sound. Sidon. To her right. At her bedside. At her bedside, floating in the water that covers the entire floor of the room high enough that a thumb's-length or so reaches over the bed. Link looks left and right. Her belongings pile on a tall nightstand to her left. She counts the paraglider, the telescope, the slate, the cooking pot, the satchel, a strange blue not-quite-tunic laid out for her.
"How are you feeling!? Lanzu and Oshen told me that you should feel most well now! Our Goddess left the shrine just to heal you, after all!" Sidon beams at her. She blinks. "I believed in you! Not only have you brought back us so many topaz arrows, but you were able to rid us of the lynel once and for all! Link, you are truly most amazing! But of course, as expected of you, Link!" Sidon bows to her, low enough that his face enters the water. "On behalf of our Goddess and all of the people of Lanayru, thank you! Thank you from the bottom of my heart! Thank you, most wonderful Champion of Hylia!" He stops, then grabs her hand and pumps it. "I am most sorry! I know that you do not wish me to call you that, so let me thank you yet again: most wonderful Link! Who would risk your life for us on the virtue of your own moral sense alone! Link, you should know how eternally grateful I am to you, that we all are to you!"
Link stares at him. When he releases her hands for a moment, she taps his wrist; Sidon's grins widens. "But of course! I should let you get a word in!" He faces his palms towards her. She asks him of what exactly happened, and Sidon bobs his head. "How have I neglected to tell you that! You shine with such music than I forget myself, Link!
"After your most miraculous and awe-inspiring defeat of the lynel, you risked your life and limb, and the lynel gravely injured you! Our Goddess sent me a sign that you had bested the beast! But of course, you would never let something as a minor as a mortal injury stop you! I found you eating of the lynel's own pot! You even made me a meal, and a delicious one, so thank you for that as well!"
Link tries to swim through the shouting to get at the kernels of truth in Sidon's words, a feat that proves difficult if not impossible. She prays that his compliments of her food do not come from gratitude but from a genuine enjoyment of her cooking.
If not, then she will endeavour to train herself even harder to surmount this challenge as well: to prepare for Sidon a meal he loves.
"Our Goddess would never leave us without recourse! Thank you for allowing me to aid you on your trek back with the burden of the salmon and the quiver of topaz arrows! Once you arrived in Ruto, you went to the great shrine in the heart of the Temple! As expected of you, our Goddess found you worthy of entering Her sacred chambers with the presentation of the Goddess slate! Therein, through wisdom and the faith of our Goddess, the trial set forth by our Goddess was easily passed, as I had faith it would be! Our Goddess, seeing you in your plight, chose to present Herself to heal you with Her own holy hands as part of our eternal gratitude to you as Her chosen saviour, as our deliverer!"
The shrine. The shrine, like the shrine that healed the bite marks left by the lizalfos that tried to steal her food over a year ago, the marks still visible between the branches of the lightning bolt.
When Link looks down at herself to gaze at the lizalfos scars, she at once realises her own nudity. The lightning-bolt scars glisten gold on her left arm. On her lower abdomen, she can see the angry scarlet scars where the lynel's fingers plunged into her flesh: four in a row and one slightly asymmetric for the thumb. She observes, between her second and third toe on her right foot, a scabbed scar where struck the lynel's arrowhead.
She rests a hand on her stomach to gingerly brush her fingers over the wounds. Link has lost feeling, as she expected, on the scars. When she presses in, she feels the deep ache within her stomach where the deadened flesh extends down into her innards. But if she skims the surface her skin remains whole, or if she compresses her stomach or flexes her muscles, Link barely feels the injury except as a slight strain on her less supple skin, a strain to which she can adjust.
Her journey has marked her in more ways than one. Months ago, Link could no longer tell which scars she has received before her slumber at the Great Calamity and which she has received after her awakening in the Shrine of Resurrection. Now she knows enough of her own history—or at least enough to name some scars.
She touches a scar gouged out in her arm by a goat in the province of Ordona from before she and the girl who smelled of horses became friends, and a thin line over her left hip from an arrow while defending the girl with the golden hair sometime shortly after they together baked an egg tart. She touches the vertical scars on her wrist, like a taloned hand clawing up her skin, and she exhales.
If the meals she has eaten map out the memories of her mind, then the scars and the pain she has borne track a tapestry of her trials and trails alike.
"How long was I out?" Link inquires. He responds: not more than a few hours. She wipes imaginary sweat from her brow.
"Ah! How could I forget, if not for your presence as rich and vibrant as the music of the spheres!" Sidon clears his throat. "As the lynel resulted in the most noble sacrifice of your battle armour—" Her clothing. Gone. The undershirt that she has worn since Kakariko, the trousers that she had worn since Darunia, the feather-ruffed tunic that she had worn since Medli, all stitched up in Parapan style since Nabooru.
"Fear not! For, while your body was resting up, our most talented trio of Laflat, Shalot, and Rulata prepared for you a set of hylian armour! You should thank them later: they had to make a great many adjustments for your size!" Sidon raises a thumbs-up at her, and Link rubs the back of her head. "But of course, as expected of our most incredible tailors, the armour should fit you perfectly, and help you better to swim beside!"
"...where are the remains of my clothing?" she signs into his palms.
"Ah! Would you wish for our most ingenious tailors to try their fin at repairing them?"
Link bobs her head, realises that Sidon continues to gaze expectantly at the wall behind her, and signs: "Please."
"Consider it done! Anything for you, Link! I shall send them for on the double and I have nothing but trust in their expertise!" Another grin that reflects the ceiling's luminous stones into her eyes. "If you try on the armour now, then I could request that they make any adjustments as well!"
She nods.
Link slides off of the bed and finds the water up to her waist. With her back towards Sidon, she takes the blue not-tunic in her hand and feels the slippery material under her fingers. Fish-skin, or shark-skin, but smoother than the rough scales on a zora's back, like the smooth white skin on the underbelly and the soft hollow of the throat, but dyed a rich blue and inlaid with reflective silver and a layer of opal along the inside. To keep her body dry even in the water, at least until the opals fill with water. But then she need only dry them out to swim again.
She dons the not-tunic, or attempts to. If the tailors Sidon mentioned measured her in her sleep, then they measured her down to the millimetre. The armour fits Link like a second skin, perfectly clinging to her form without giving her skin a chance to breath. The opal absorbs her sweat, and the fabric does not constrict her flesh or restrict her movements.
Yet she has always worn her clothing loose and comfortable.
The second skin brings the same sense of discomfort as when Link wore the dress. Without the loose, heavier clothing over her limbs, she feels though she loses the boundaries of herself.
"I have faith that everything will be to your liking, Link!" Sidon booms.
Link puts on the cap. The equivalent of a tail and facial fins flop over her sidelocks and ponytail. She rubs the back of her head and the tail interferes with her usual touch on her ponytail.
She touches her chin.
She removes the cap from her head.
Setting it in on the bed and wading through the water, Link taps Sidon on the wrist. Into his palms, she—sweat pouring down her back in thick rivulets, matched only by how she sweats when she prepares her most precise concentration of cooking—signs. "Is there a way that I could get something less skin tight? I'm sorry."
"Less skin tight?" Sidon grips her hands in his, almost crushing her fingers. "But of course! Of course you can! Though do please think before you do, as this armour made by our most talented tailors Rulata, Laflat, and Shalot should keep you dry precisely for its most perfect fit!" Sidon claps his hand onto her shoulder. "If you still want to, of course I will send the message along to them! I suppose if I were you, I would not fathom wanting to stay dry, for who does not wish to bathe in the waters of our Goddess Herself!"
She nods. Upon Sidon's request, Link removes the not-tunic again. He excuses himself, and she reaches over to rap her knuckles against his wrist.
"When will I get my clothes back?"
"Two flicks of a trout's tail!" Sidon answers, beaming yet again. He leaves her in the room to speak with someone outside.
Her stomach rumbles.
Link takes the opportunity to assess the contents of her satchel. To her eternal gratitude, Sidon did indeed fill the satchel with the contents of the lynel's garden. The heads of fleet-lotus with the seeds rattling around within. Rice that makes her salivate. Hyrule herb in green, longer and with buds more golden than those that she has seen on the fields of the land once known as hyrule. Carrots that she has before only seen in Necluda near Kakariko, that water her mouth at the images of sweet carrot cakes and hearty carrot stews floating just beyond the reach of her fingertips. Violet mushrooms sprinkled in silver that she recognises as rushroom. And violets, as in the flower. Ignoring the petals entirely, Link focuses on the leaves that give off a wonderfully bitter scent. She could brew from them a tea to use as a side, or she could simply eat them raw, or because she could make rice-balls with them complementing the mushrooms.
Link nibbles on one of the leaves. Her mouth washes with the taste of the mud from which Sidon picked them.
Sticking out her tongue, she nods sagely to herself. She does not know what she expected.
Sidon returns to find her with her face practically stuck in the satchel. When she hears him swimming through the waters, Link jerks her head up; the satchel comes with her. Mushrooms and herbs and the wooden box of elixirs thump into her face. It takes her a moment to pull the satchel off her head and set it back on the stand while Sidon merely swims there, offering her a pile of clothing.
Her clothing.
But her clothing can wait. First Link needs to pluck and sort the ingredients that have fallen from the satchel into the water. Her top priority. Then she can worry about clothing herself.
Once she returns everything to the satchel, Link takes the undergarments and undershirt from Sidon, then the trousers and tunic, and finally her boots and the hood that Glepp gave her, to replace the one Link has used so often to hide the scars that cover her face. Her trousers and undergarments seem mostly whole. She can see in the patch along the stomach of the tunic and the undershirt beneath it where the lynel's claw entered her innards. As she smooths the tunic over her stomach, she presses her fingertips against the patch, and the scars ache in her flesh.
Link feels for the rings in her earlobes and the blue band around her ponytail. Then she slides the hood down around her neck. Her once-confined sidelocks pomf free, bouncing against her cheeks.
She takes a moment to glance at her reflection in the water. The ripples distort her view, but the scratches of Sidon's scales have left scrapes of scab along her chin and jawline; along with the vertical lines down her cheeks and the diagonal mark from the corner of her eye to her jaw, the scars frame her face. Link runs her palm across her chin: the creases catch the rougher texture of skin over the scar.
She wonders if perhaps the healing of the shrine make scars worse. If perhaps, had she healed normally and waited out the time, Link could have come away without the wear.
But she has not the time. The people of the land once known as Hyrule—of Akkala and Parapa, of Eldin and Faron, of Hebra and Necluda, of Tabanch and Lanayru—have not the time.
Link will take all the scars in the world onto her body if they might mean sparing another's.
Her trousers billow with water. She slaps her hands against her stomach to laugh at the sight of the fabric ballooning around her legs. Link listens to the euphony of Sidon laughing with her, so loudly that his voice resonates within the chamber and vibrates the surface of the water. She grins at him though he cannot see her smile. Her grin lasts not a second before the laughter overtakes her again. She doubles over.
She inhales water.
Sidon has to thump her on the back to choke the water out. Link cannot stop laughing long enough to even try to cough. He thuds her between the shoulder blades, and she flies forward into the water.
She nearly drowns, but at least she does so giggling her fool head off.
Once the mirth has ebbed from her belly and the water has flowed from her lungs, Sidon grabs her hand to pump it back and forth.
"I am heartened to see you in such wonderful spirits, Link! When you have rested up, we can make our move on Vah Ruta!" Sidon makes a circular gesture that Link does not grasp yet which fires her up regardless. She punches her fists in the air.
"And I'm going to make us a meal on the go!"
She punches her fists in the air again.
"A meal on the go!? As expected of you, Link!" Sidon grips her shoulder. "But of course, you would cook something to assist yourself in quelling the storm! Link, I have a request!"
Link nods to him, smiles sheepishly at herself while he continues to look expectantly in her general direction, and signs her affirmation into his palm.
"If you would not mind, I would be most eternally grateful if I could observe your heroic actions!" That she does not immediately turn tail and dive onto the bed to drown herself surprises her for how far she has come. "Our Goddess knows that I have tried to fulfill the duties of the Prince Zora in preparation for my destiny—" Link rubs her eyes. "—but I would most relish the chance to learn from a true heroine such as yourself!"
"Everyone seems to love you," she tells him. Sidon beams.
"I try my best, as I believe all of us do! But if I could push myself to be even better, then I will take any chance I can!" He clings more tightly to her shoulder.
Link scratches the back of her neck. At least the words come more readily to her in Lanayrish than they would in Eldic, or Tabanch, or Parapan. A language her hands, and her heart, know well.
"I'm not a hero," she explains, slowly. "I've...done a lot of things that have helped people! And I'm willing to put my life on the line. I know that I'm the..." She stops herself. She does not quite know how to sign the Champion of Hylia, the Hero of Hyrule, Her Majesty's Knight, O Courageous Link. Instead Link continues on, a slight flush to her cheeks: "You can watch me if you want. But...I've done as much harm as I have good. I'm not perfect. Just...don't forget that."
"But of course, you would be so modest and humble about yourself!" She runs her hand through her sidelock. The strength of his hand clenching her has started to tremor pain down her arm. "What meal will you cook!?"
Link touches her chin. Mushroom rice-balls, she's already decided. Yet she has not considered the possibility of making something to assist them.
She makes food for its own sake, and for that alone. To eat and to share and to swallow down to warm her belly.
Then again, the lynel's garden has brought her ingredients for something that could prove useful. Link has not the monster parts to brew an elixir, but perhaps she does not need an elixir. Just as Dyeri showed her the zapshroom and voltfin trout that could help provide some resistance against the electricity of monsters, then maybe she can prepare something that would provide them resistance against the Divine Beast Vah Ruta.
Link could ask Sidon to retrieve the lynel. From its corpse, she could concoct elixirs beyond her wildest dreams. Yet why concoct elixirs when she can get cooking?
"Sidon," Link declares, ripping his hand from her shoulder to sign into his palm. He salutes her with his free arm. "Take me to the kitchens. I have food to prepare."
The lynel must have imbibed its meals with the very essence of speed for the herbs and mushrooms picked from its garden. When in Lanayru, do as the Lanayrish: Link carries her satchel proudly on her hip, its contents that promising mushroom and herb rice-balls. Already she can roll the texture of steamed rice on her tongue, can smell the spark of speed to spritz through her stomach and hasten her heart.
Without the understanding of which ingredients might provide the greatest boon, Link mixes them all: diced rushrooms that leave a glimmery silvery powder on her palms, which she licks up for the kick of a harder pulse; discs of swift carrot so thin that she can see through them; pressed leaves pulled from swift violet. Her heart starts to squish in on itself; her blood vessels dilate, reddening her skin. She pulls on the collar of her undershirt. At least the water washes away the sweat that streams down her back. Link starts to hup left and right to rid herself of the excess energy.
The powder of the rushroom sears through her like a bolt of lightning to curl golden scars over the remainder of her unmarked body. Her muscles scream for her to do something, anything. To take on another lynel. To run a marathon from here to Medli. To jump off the roof and attempt to fly.
She might just have the ability to cucco-flap her way across the land once known as Hyrule on how swiftly she could flop her arms back and forth alone. She could flap her limbs to the heavens and tear open the film between her world and that of the Golden Goddesses to find the Sacred Realm of which the girl with the golden hair so often spoke.
Instead Link pours all of her energy into a frenzied effort at making rice-balls.
Operation cook begins, now.
While Sidon waits patiently by the counter and assists Link in reaching the cabinets she could not before—no more hopping up and down like a particularly aggravated lizalfos in the water that reaches her chest—to withdraw dried seaweed, she steams rice. Her fingers drum hastened versions of Epona's song and the Ballad of the Sealing War on the sides of the heating pot.
Link glances up at Sidon.
She tugs him over.
Into his hands she instructs him how to scoop the sticky rice into half balls and hollow out the centre, how to mix together the flakes of food to a thin filling, how to close the two domed halves of the rice-balls to shape the rice-balls into triangles, how to smooth the seams to ensure continuous rice, how to wet the tip of the seaweed to loop over the rice-balls, how to sprinkle fleet-lotus seeds over the rice and roll them between his palms to make the perfect shape. Together Link and Sidon fashion mountains of rice-balls until they have used up all of the ingredients that Sidon brought with him from the lynel's garden. As a secret signature, Link adds a sprinkle of salted sauce to the seam of each before she closes the rice-balls, for that tiny extra snap of flavour.
By the time the rushroom wears off, Sidon and LInk have amassed enough rice-balls to feed all of Ruto for a month. The other Lanayrish in the kitchen one by one stop their work to either marvel or stare in horror at the pile of rice-balls that spills over the counters.
"You're not adding fish!?" Sidon exclaims at the very end, and Link—after shaking her head—indicates the negative. "I have nothing but our Goddess's own faith in you and your masterful abilities in cooking! Father himself recognised you by your talents in cooking, as expected of you, Link!"
Link rubs the back of her head. The smile on her lips pushes back even her propensity towards vacancy. "I honestly don't think I'm that good."
"Surely the quality of ingredients you use cannot compare to the royal kitchens!" Sidon affirms, and Link lowers her hand. She expected some criticism, yet the truth still stings like the bite of a spicy pepper. "Yet, as expected of you, you manage to far outpace them with your most delicious cooking even with the limited tools you work with! As expected of you, you take what our Goddess has given you and you return destiny freshly served and garnished with your own courage!"
She ogles him. He pants from his speech, his arms outstretched, his grin etched into his lips.
Link cannot discern from his voice if he means his praise genuinely or if he simply says this because he regards her as the Champion of Hylia, the Hero of Hyrule, Her Majesty's Knight, O Courageous Link.
And some Knight she is, without Her Majesty.
She would never want to doubt someone—not even Muzu, whom she need thank for informing her about the topaz arrows—but now she almost regrets not climbing over the mountains towards the Divine Beast Vah Ruta to skip Ruto entirely, or sneaking in instead of attempting the trial put forth by Sidon.
With Yunobo, who barely knew her, and with Amali, for whom she had become part of the family, and with Riju, who had spoken with her honestly about cooking, she had felt herself. With Sidon, she feels like more of an idea than a person, a heroine instead of a girl who thinks of cooking far too often.
Shaking her head, Link slaps the counter to ground herself in the physical. The heel of her hand bumps against the tray of rice-balls. She signs her own death wish in that instant of watching the tray tilt and the rice-balls fly up.
Something small and brownish-green shoots out of her satchel to balance out the tray on the other end. The tray thumps back down. A sole rice-ball from the crown of the mountain tumbles down. Link's saviour catches it in their tiny hands.
Sarie.
A Goddess in korok form.
Link clasps her hands in front of her. She bows down to Sarie, whose hands split into finger-like roots to absorb the rice-ball. The korok performs a little jig on the tray.
"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you," Link signs, in Necludan, in Lanayrish, in Central Hyrulean.
Sidon's features shift to visible confusion although his smile remains. "Link!?"
"Please enjoy as many as you want, Sarie," Link adds to the korok. Sarie's leafy mask shakes back and forth with a sound like wooden blocks tumbling against one another.
Then Link turns to beam at Sidon. She presses her hands against his.
At last, her favourite time of the day, her reason for rising with each sunrise and bedding down with each sunset, her motivation for existence, her belief in the Goddesses, her vital spirit.
Food.
"I present," she signs, with an extra flourish to her wrists that brushes her knuckles against Sidon's palms, "rice-balls stuffed with mushroom and herb!"
With Sarie riding on Link's shoulder, they return to her room—the water somewhat drained—to eat and to prepare for their journey. Sidon explains what he knows of the Divine Beast Vah Ruta. Four tree trunk-like legs, each of which has a sensitive source of energy that they can disable with topaz arrows, at least for a time. Then Link can swoop in to cleanse the Divine Beast of the Malice.
"It would be my honour to accompany you to observe, Link, although I know that you could do it all without me! I promise that I will do my utmost to much get in your way!" Sidon flashes a thumbs-up. Link rubs the back of her head.
"I'll need all the help I can get," she answers.
"Most humble of you, Link! Thank you for believing in me!"
Link sighs.
She hefts a rice-ball into her hand. She rolls it around on her palm. She closes her eyes.
She pops the entire thing into her mouth at once.
The seeds hit her first. Her heart leaps up twice over, and she fears that if she bites inside, her heart will explode, and the shrapnel of her sternum will stud into the walls—and Sidon.
Yet Link could not name a better exit from life than in the waiting embrace of a rice-ball.
As the rice melts over her tongue, she senses the bitter powder of rushroom, the sweeter juice of swift carrot, the tender fibres of swift violet, and her heart thumps tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold.
The thundering of her heart brings to mind the few drills that Mipha had her run with her silver spear, when the Champion of Zola trained Link in a weapon with a longer reach than any Link had used before.
Mipha. Mipha who in her spare time pursued her less-known passions of smithy, where most zora had difficulty with the need to reside in water to support their large and bulky bodies conflicting with the opposite requirement for smithing.
Those those did not live the fullness of their lives in the water, Mipha explained to her, oftentimes did not reach the size of their Lanayrish brethren. Those zora who lived in the rest of Hyrule, in the snowy mountains of Tabantha and tucked away in houses of sapphire in Eldin, fanning themselves in the heat of Parapa or sweltering through the jungles of Faron, would scarcely become taller than a rito or a goron might, to still tower above humans, but not by much.
In the little time she had to spare for herself, Mipha honed her skills in silversmithy, mainly in armour and in weaponry for the long war ahead. Beneath the winter moon Mipha demonstrated the crafting of a new spear for Link's training.
"Perhaps," she said to Link, suddenly, in the middle of an explanation on how to properly balance the metal, "I will not become the Queen Zora after all, if my duties as the Champion of Zola supercede those to Ruto's crown."
Link tilted her head at Mipha. But the Champion of Zola turned the talk to techniques of coiling silver, and Link fell silent.
To quicken the pace of her limbs enough to make the fine adjustments of delicate silver before the metal cooled, Mipha asked Link to prepare her food on rushroom and swift carrot, on swift violet and fleet-lotus seeds, and—at the girl with the golden hair's suggestion—hot-footed frogs, the latter of which the girl with the golden hair endeavoured to convince Link to consume. "For scientific research!" she declared to Mipha's giggling, while Link held the frog in her hands, meeting its yellow-eyed gaze.
Ribbit.
Mipha taught her well to fight with the spear, taught her well to prepare and apply medicinal salves from the herbs and mushrooms she could find most anywhere in Hyrule, taught her well that when they expect a Champion to have certain interests pertaining to their known Champion skills, then never will they speak of anything else that Champion might want, or need, or do.
"Like hopping from one river current into another. At least it's a step up in freedom." Link cocked her head, and yet once again Mipha left the point dangling as an uncaught fish on a hook.
For Mipha, few people knew of her talents as smithing, and fewer still considered her art significant. "If the stories never speak of your cooking, my Link," Mipha remarked while Link felt herself caught between blankness and blush, "I'll learn to write music so I can make my own."
Mipha.
Mipha, whose remains Link may yet have to fight.
But she can consider that later. For now Link has a Divine Beast to calm.
She pops another rice-ball into her mouth, and then another, until her body struggles to process the fullness in her belly and the fastness in her chest at once.
Vigor renewed, she turns towards her preparations.
Link fills up her satchel with as many of the rice-balls as she can carry. She pats herself down. The slate at her right hip. The red telescope at her left. The paraglider and the cooking pot on her back. The fire-light spear and the long sword given to her by Riju. The bow given to her by Amali and the self-determination given to her by Yunobo. The satchel slung around her left shoulder and Sarie perched on her right.
She rears up her left foot—Sarie makes an oh sound at the suddenness of her motion—and attempts to slam it down onto the edge of the bed. The elastic material of the water-bed springs back up. Link nearly topples into the water if not for Sarie pulling her forward by her left ear.
Bursting out in laughter, she places her boot against the bed once more, a hair more gently this time.
Link flings her arm out to point towards the door. Having struck the pose, she realises that Sidon stands just too far for her hands to reach. She side-hops along the bed with a series of hyaahs until she can sign against his palms.
"Let's go, Sidon! To the Divine Beast!"
He holds her hands in his. "I believe in us, Link! Together with our Goddess at our side, we can do anything, yes yes yes!"
She nods.
They can.
And they will.
—
Hasty Mushroom Rice Balls (five hearts, medium movement speed boost for 05:00) - fleet-lotus seeds, hylian rice, rushroom, swift carrot, swift violet
Chapter Fifty-One. First written: 25 July 2017. Last edited: 20 October 2017.
Author's notes: Thank you so much to all of my readers for all of your support, and thank you as well to my beloved beta reader, Emma, for everything that she has done for me, including informing me when I'm stuck too far up my own ass.
The opening of this chapter is purposefully written in a very confusing manner because Link is delirious from pain and blood loss.
The fluid spraying over her face and then not spraying over her face refers to Sidon going back through the waterfalls.
The two planks of wood refer to Sidon's arms, and the warm bulk is of course Sidon; he's "princess-carrying" Link with her left side against his chest. When he stops carrying her, he sets her down on the floor, which is the hard cold thing.
Because of how feverishly delirious Link is, you get a smattering of memories here, one of which is intensely important, and regards how Link and Ilia became friends (it's probably confusing exactly what happened now, so wait until the fifty-fourth chapter for a revisit and some clarification).
It's actually Sidon who completes the challenge of the shrine rather than Link, but Sidon then allows Link to touch the "goalpoint" (by the way, I use goalpoint because GOALPOINT is actually written above the place where the monks rest in Breath of the Wild, just like how the official music case has THEHYRULEFANTASY written on it in old hylian or whatever that language is called).
I clarify more on how the healing of the shrines works, but essentially all it does is accelerate natural healing. This has a few consequences: it won't let you bring back someone who would actually die: if Link were to be bisected from hip to hip, for example, the shrine might be able to fix up her lower torso so that her internal organs were still around, but would be unable to restore function to her legs. As you can see, such healing by the shrine leaves the permanent scars that you would expect, and probably worse than that which would be left by allowing natural healing. The upshot of the shrines is that natural healing takes a long time and you would have to heal with potential infections, blood loss, etc.
The skin fixing itself is indeed very itchy! What struck me was that the inner lining of her intestines would also have be fixed, and itchiness inside the body sounds maddening.
As mentioned in a previous author's note, the zora have different ideas of nudity in their culture; hence why neither Igli (the messenger) nor Sidon particularly cares about Link being nude; it's just normal.
Sidon's constant praise of Link isn't all there is to him. Note how Sidon says that "the trial was easily passed", constructing his sentence in such a way that he does not specify he passed through the trial. It helps that Lanayrish, as a language, is heavily contextual-based and does not require one to state the actor behind an action, allowing for natural constructions that speak entirely about the action; this is related to their general cultural values of the community over the self, where the action is more important than who did it. When translating Lanayrish to Central Hyrulean, translators may either attempt to infer the actor to get at a more natural construction, or may place the sentence into passive voice that does not work nearly as well.
If you forgot, Glepp gave Link a hood in the forty-fourth chapter to replace the one that Link left when she escaped from Nabooru.
The effects of hasty food make everything speed up, which means increased metabolism, quicker heart rate, and increased blood flow. It's essentially a stimulant.
I really love rice balls (I write them as rice-balls to improve readability, but it's just rice balls).
Link, in a relatable way, wants people to tell her when she's doing something wrong, but that doesn't mean that she's still worried about disappointing people around her.
Sarie! Sarie has been in Link's satchel the entire time, and actually was the one to make sure that Link had the right vial of elixir. In the fiftieth chapter, there's the line "Another vial of glass pushes into her palm; Link closes her fingers around it." Who pushed that vial? Yup, Sarie.
The Champions' passions were indeed glazed over by many people, fitting them instead into single heroic archetypes. Silversmithy isn't something you'd expect from Mipha—nor were her fears about becoming the Queen Zora something that anyone seems to care about.
The memory in which Zelda tries to get Link to eat a frog is probably my favourite memory of the entire game, because it's so wonderfully characterising and so very Zelda.
Next up: calming the Divine Beast, and the return of an old strat.
midna's ass. 20 October 2017.
Beta reader's comments: Sidon sneakily finishing the shrine and giving the credit to Link is a cool, subtle little moment of depth for him.
The beginning of this chapter is really superbly written.
One thing I love about this series is how the author attaches serious consequences and really thinks about how different types of elixirs and foods would affect one's body.
Emma. 20 October 2017.
