The other Gorons may not be excited for Vah Rudania's return, but Yunobo is not like other Gorons.
Yunobo taps the tips of his fingers together when he's concerned. He shifts, almost hopping, from one foot to the other when that concern grows into anxiety.
He wears the emblem that Daruk used to wear. Not just the same design, the same emblem. He cradles it in his hands when Zelda asks about it, and says it was a gift from his father. The emblem holds together a light blue bandana the size of a table cloth. It's close to the garment Zelda made for Daruk before the Calamity. It's so similar that she's done at least four double takes, catching sight of him from the corner of her eye, her brain startling at how the colors have stayed so vibrant before she remembers. But it's not the same cloth on which she once worked. The embroidery is a different design. Not as detailed. (Not as neat.)
Sometimes she catches herself staring at him, catches herself designing a new sash for him more like the one Daruk once wore. Or would Yunobo rather continue to wear something around his neck and shoulders? However he wears it, she will have to make it attach to the emblem better than the messy square knots he's currently using.
Sometimes she catches herself staring at the curve of his cheek or the dent in his elbow. The resemblance strikes her in unexpected ways.
They head up the volcano, climbing as close to the Divine Beast as they can get. Vah Rudania's back half is still inside the crater, and in her current position, the floor is too steep to be usable. The warp point is sideways, and therefore also unusable until they can adjust her positioning. Her head and front feet are outside the crater, and Link bursts into the air in a gale of magical wind to make sure there's a landing point around her shoulders. Zelda calculates how far that landing is from the ground, how long a ladder they'll need.
It would be much easier to do calculations in her journal, but all she has is the slate, where she can only write numbers in rows instead of columns. She makes do. Yunobo leans over her shoulder to watch her, and she holds it out to show him her notes, talking through the math. He makes a face and scratches the side of his head.
"Wow. You're, like, really smart. Aren't you?" He drums his fingertips together.
They can't use a rope ladder like they used to reach Vah Ruta. They need a ladder that will not instantly burst into flames. "Perhaps made of chain instead of rope," Zelda says.
"Oh!" Yunobo straightens. "Oh! I can help with that!"
He takes her to the forge in town and shows her how to make links and chain them together. She peers around his arm to watch, and he tries his best to explain what he's doing as he does it. The other Gorons in the forge chime in when words fail him, but for the most part, they're pretending to mind their own business. Yunobo pinches each hot, thin rod of iron into a ring-an unusually delicate procedure considering the size of his fingers.
"You're quite skilled at this," she says.
He rubs the back of his neck and refuses to meet her eyes.
Link squeezes her arm, confident that she's settled and safe and not in need of him or the slate. Then he trots off to the North Mine to deal with the monster problem there. Zelda doesn't mind. She has her hands full.
It takes some creativity to figure out a way for her to mimic Yunobo. She ends up with over-large, thick gloves and a pair of tongs in each hand, and she manages to coordinate her movements enough to close the rings together-although she can't do so without jutting out her elbows and biting her lower lip. Yunobo strings a dozen links together in the time it takes her to do one, but she just learned this today, so that seems reasonable. The other Gorons in the forge relax as she shows herself to be not completely useless, and they stomp up to lean in over her shoulder and watch her work.
Their advice comes more often. They pick back up a murmured conversation, and Zelda realizes that they must have stopped talking when she came in.
One Goron hums a song, a tune picked up in harmony by a second Goron, and then a third. Yunobo hums a bass line, although all the parts could be described as bass lines. Zelda's not sure if joining them would be welcomed. Her voice is probably too high anyway.
After consulting Zelda's notes, the Gorons adjust the original plan of two chains connected by rungs of metal rods. The design is now four chains supporting wide, rectangular steps that can be anchored to the mountain at an angle to form stairs that will better support their weight. And by "their weight" they mean Yunobo's weight.
"That sounds a bit permanent," Zelda says. "I'd hate for you to go through so much trouble constructing this for it to be unusable the moment Vah Rudania moves."
The Gorons unanimously dismiss this. When the Divine Beast moves, they will simply melt what they made down to make something else. It's not like this will take too long or be too difficult.
Then someone suggests hand rails, and then they're making hand rails.
Link returns as the sun sets, at which point Zelda and all four Gorons in the forge are working on the stairs. Link nearly laughs at her, wedged between four humming boulders, all of whom are doing delicate pinching movements with their fingers. They look like a funny knitting circle.
Then Link frowns at the mess they've made. "You do remember that I have to carry this up to the Divine Beast, right?"
This sparks a debate over if they should shoot the ladder-turned-staircase at Vah Rudania with a cannon. Or if they should haul it up with a pulley system. Zelda is firmly on the side of the pulley system. So then they're designing a pulley system, and Link is shaking his head and going to make dinner.
She doesn't want to sleep. For some reason, her brain accepts the excessive heat from the forge, but once she's outside, the flashbacks start. The inn is too confined, too dark, the bed too hard, even though the close quarters of the forge aren't any better in that regard. Maybe it's because in the forge she's never alone. Maybe it's because when she's in the forge, she's active. She's not staring at the ceiling, trying to not remember.
So she stays up and works. She's much ore helpful putting the pulley system together than she was making chain.
The last Goron yawns, hangs up his tools, and gives her shoulder a light squeeze goodnight.
Link threads his fingers together and leans forward in his seat to rest his elbows on his knees.
She pretends she doesn't notice the pointed look he gives her.
"It really doesn't get any cooler at night," she says. Her face is probably the same color as her shirt, which is slicked with sweat. She pay her own weight in diamonds if she could remove it without anyone judging her. (And by "anyone" she means Link, because the Gorons probably wouldn't even notice.) She thinks about asking him if he'd perhaps just not look at her, but then again, that much bare skin would probably be shockingly unsafe near the forge.
Link digs through his supplies and comes around the work bench to drop a sapphire circlet over her head. It's...slightly better.
She must doze a bit then, because she just stares into his eyes for far too long. "You've had an active day. You should sleep," she says.
"You should sleep," he counters. "The Gorons have a massage package at the inn. That might help."
She narrows her eyes at him. "How painful is it?"
He doesn't answer her, and her frown deepens.
He slides the axle from her hands and pulls her to her feet before frog marching her from the forge. "Come on, grumpy. Come have sweet dreams about math."
"I'll have sweet dreams about getting to use my journal again," she mutters.
She's up before the sun the next day, and once Link has made breakfast, he's off to destroy a talus. Zelda's hair almost catches fire, and she braids it all back and up, protecting it all with her kerchief. She's covered in dark smudges, and Link's gone ten minutes before she rolls the hem of her shirt up her midriff.
One of the Gorons takes some scrap and pounds and bends and chisels it into a thick bracelet, at which point he presents it to Zelda. She likes the unfinished edges. She likes how rough it feels against her wrist.
Word has already spread from the stable that the road to Goron City is clear enough for brisk travel, and the first Hylian travelers arrive by mid-morning.
Zelda has spent long enough in the forge that the Goron's change in demeanor is clear. Their low ruble of conversation tickles to a stop. They straighten, as if trying to make themselves taller or trying to crane their necks enough to watch the visitors. They're not watching the newcomers-a pair of Hylians in brown traveling clothes, with large packs on their backs-but the whole attention of the forge seems to pivot as the visitors walk past the forge and towards the inn.
After the visitors settle, they make lunch and eat it in almost the exact same spot she and Link eat each night. Their legs dangle over the edge of the cliff, as if they're sitting on the edge of a river bank rather than a stream of lava.
Buliara leans down and rests a hand on her shoulder to rumble into her ear. He thinks he's whispering, but his voice is too low for secrets. Luckily, the Hylians are far away. "Why do they travel together if they don't like each other?"
"What makes you think they don't like each other?" They seem perfectly amicable to her. They're sitting side by side and chatting, although she has no idea what they're talking about.
"They don't touch," he says. "At all. It's strange, goro. Do you think one of them has a contagious disease?"
She laughs. "No. Hylians just don't touch each other as often as Gorons do. We believe giving each other space is a sign of respect."
He frowns down at her, then at the arm he has draped over her back. For a moment, she thinks he might pull away, but instead he says, "But you're not like that."
"I know that physical contact among Gorons is a sign of trust. I'm not offended at all. I'm honored. You don't need to change your behavior in the slightest."
He hums, still looking confused. "But, brother, you and Link touch all the time."
Her face feels very warm. Because she's in a forge on Death Mountain. "Yes. Well," she says, and returns to her work.
By the time they're ready with the pulley system to install the stairs, several more Gorons have become invested in the project. They're not invested in Vah Rudania. They're invested in the construction. They load everything onto a cart and haul it all up the volcano, where they clear some space and set up a temporary camp.
Link is absolutely boggled that this has become such a huge project, but Zelda's excited by the level of involvement. While he frowns up at the Divine Beast, Zelda hugs his arm and bounces with excitement. "It's happening," she whispers.
It takes all day to get the pulley system in place. They have to haul a cannon closer to shoot Yunobo up to the landing point. He clutches the largest part of the pulley to his chest. It takes all the next day to get the stairs anchored and stretched, with a dozen Gorons hauling on chains from below, with Link and Yunobo hauling from above, with Gorons hammering the anchors to the ground and latching the stairs to Vah Rudania with specially made hooks. When Zelda finally scales the Divine Beast, she's welcomed by a hazy view of all Hyrule on one side and the inside of the volcano on the other.
The inside of the Divine Beast is a cave. It's pitch black and empty and echoing with the floor a hundred feet below them. She's still reeling at the sight of it, but the Gorons are already planning internal scaffolding. The stairs stay in place. The pulley system is moved to lower things into the beast's belly. More Gorons arrive to help.
Yunobo leans in with a grin and says, "We haven't had this much fun in years!"
#
Zelda dreams that Link is kissing her neck. He has her pressed against a wall inside Vah Rudania. He's dressed as he's been dressed the last few days, working outside Vah Rudania: his hair is up like a desert voe, and he has nothing across his chest but the belts that hold his equipment in place. His hands burn trails down her sides.
She wakes up still inside the Divine Beast, where she's taken to sleeping because it's infinitely more comfortable and she has fewer panic attacks. They've been setting up platforms that hang from the ceiling and provide access to the control units. Half way down there's a wall-now-floor that once divided the beast into two rooms and now acts as a base camp where Zelda sleeps. The Divine Beast is climate controlled, which is something she'll have to investigate once Vah Rudania is turned on. Is it just a function of the material from which she's made? Is there some sort of cooling system in the walls? Anyway, it's a decent temperature inside, and the only thing on fire is the string of lanterns they've put up for light.
Well, the lanterns and her face, because even now that she's awake, Link is still kissing her neck.
Sometime in the night, he has snuggled his way half on top of her and nuzzled his face up against her neck. He twitches in his sleep. Chapped lips flicker over her pulse point. His fingers spasm against the small of her back. His breaths are shallow and uneven, catching in his chest and catching against her skin.
At least he's wearing a shirt.
She lies very still and lets herself imagine for a moment that it's real. That he's not just having a twitchy dream, or if he is that it's at least a dream about her. She imagines for a moment that he's not just a snuggly guy with a sense of personal space he clearly picked up from the Gorons. She imagines that he loves her with a passion, instead of loving her because they're bound by destiny and trusting companionship and shared trauma. She imagines she's the reason his breath catches. She imagines his hand dragging down to her thigh.
She decides to get an early start to the day.