Link is subdued that evening at the Rito festivities. He still smiles at everyone, but he turns down several games of hoop-scoop and a few dances with the children and doesn't offer up much commentary on the race predictions or the betting surrounding it. He stays very close to Zelda as she mingles and laughs, standing slightly behind her as if using her as a shield against socializing. He keeps one hand at her waist or the small of her back, as if he'd be lost without touching her, as if he needs reassurance that she's there.
For his benefit, she doesn't mention it. She just continues on, making sure everything is ready for the next day and everyone has what they need for the night and everyone is having fun. Link slips away from her only long enough to find her a beverage and later a flatbread concoction wrapped around marinated fish. There's more music tonight because of Kass' presence. Not only does he play long sets on the accordion, but he coaxes the girls to sing and he invents a rhythmic chant about Amali. The bonfire blazes, and the kids have made snowmen with wings and feathered crests.
Zelda personally encourages every contestant, and listens with nodding interest as everyone debates ad nauseam what will probably happen tomorrow.
There is no way for anyone but Teba, Amali, or Harth to be the Champion. Considering this, if they were doing this tournament with anyone other than the Rito, she would expect all the other contestants to drop out and join the cheering crowd and watch the spectacle. A race between the three real contenders makes the most sense to her.
"But," Nav says, "if Harth and Amali are both disqualified and Verla comes in first, he can get second place overall."
"And fourth place is still wide open!" Kaneli adds.
Whatever the rankings end up being, they Rito are going to brag about it for years. Their grandchildren might very well brag about how their ancestor came in fourth overall.
She listens to the point where she suspects she will dream tonight about standings, and if Rufflu comes in third and Huck comes in 5th and Amali is disqualified... How Harth's side is rumored to be hurting him again after the dragon trial...How for Harth or Amali to become Champion, they not only need to beat Teba, but beat him by at least eight points.
She politely declines placing her own bet, and demurs from claiming a favorite.
"But we know you're not cheering for me."
She turns to see Teba as he steps up beside her, his wings clasped behind his back as he surveys the party.
"Whatever gives you that impression?" she asks.
He briefly looks at her from the corner of his eye. "You don't like me."
"Nonsense," she says. "Link told me how brave and invaluable you were in helping him calm Vah Medoh. His opinion of you is high, and I trust his judgement. And even if I didn't, I'm able to see it myself from your performance so far in the tournament. You would make a worthy and impressive Champion, and, should you win it all tomorrow, I would be honored to work with you in connecting with Vah Medoh."
Link's thumb rubs back and forth against her spine.
"And yet, you'd rather the Champion was someone else," Teba says.
"I'd rather the Champion use their position to help all of Hyrule. But I accept that I have no say over that. Vah Medoh belongs to the Rito and can be used as Rito see fit."
Teba laughs and turns to her for the first time. "You just want mail."
"I very much want mail."
"Other people beside Amali can deliver your precious correspondences."
She lifts an eyebrow at him. "I would love to see that."
"You will," he says. "Have no doubt." Then he nods a goodbye to her and a goodbye to Link before rejoining the party.
She turns to Link and beams. He rolls his eyes to hide a smile and tucks his arm around her waist, his chin hooking over her shoulder so she can lean back and whisper into his ear.
"I like Teba," she says.
"You like getting what you want."
"Who doesn't?"
He turns his face, his eyes sparkling in the light of the bonfire, his lips brushing against the corner of her mouth, when something hits Zelda square in the forehead. She looks up in surprised, thinking for a moment that a pebble has fallen off the side of the mountain, but Link's gaze is locked in front of them where Celeila and Harth are doing a bad job of pretending not to watch them. Cecelia is openly eating a handful of berries, hopefully waiting for her next chance to throw something.
Link raises his voice and says, "I don't get it. Why are Teba and Saki allowed to get all googly eyed without people throwing things at them?"
Harth huffs, all the feathers on his head and the back of his neck rising in irritation or embarrassment—honestly, it's still hard for Zelda to tell.
"They're just wildberries," he huffs. "Don't get your feathers ruffled acting like we've been throwing voltfruit at you."
Link thinks on this, then shrugs and lets his weight rest back against Zelda. "I guess that's true."
Cecelia laughs. "What he means to say is that they've already eaten the wildberries, so they're no longer targets."
Link perks at that. It's hard to tell if he's interested in no longer being pelted by projectiles or if he's excited that the answer apparently involves eating.
"What do you mean?" Zelda asks.
"Oh. Well..." Her eyes glide up to the sky and she taps the tips of her wings together, considering how to explain. "It's a bit like...we throw wildberries to tell young couples to...get on with it, I suppose. The best way to make the teasing stop is to snatch a wildberry out of the air before it hits you, make a big show of eating it, then make a big show of kissing your partner. It's very romantic."
Zelda shares a confused look with Link, before turning back to the Rito. "I'm sorry, are you saying that the villagers have been encouraging our relationship? We thought they were warning us to stop. Reminding us we're in public and should...control ourselves."
Link snorts under his breath, but she ignores him.
Harth groans. "They are."
"I don't understand," she says.
"It's like, if you're not going to make a big show and go for it in front of everyone, then you're just wasting everyone's time and need to cut it out."
"Ah."
Cecelia adds, "Every Rito wedding has a wildberry croquembouche at least as tall as the bride. It's common for couples to propose to one another by dumping large quantities of wildberries on each other or leaving wildberries for the other to discover. And, of course, it's always better if all this is done in public as a surprise."
Link shakes his head and asks, "How do you even function with so much drama all the time?"
Zelda hisses at him.
Harth sighs and shifts his hold on his fish. "We make do."
Cecelia says, "It's not our fault that Hylians are mind-numbingly boring."
Link grins, suddenly standing straighter. "Hey. Throw a wildberry at me." He opens his mouth wide as if he intends to catch one. Zelda shoves his chest with her shoulder. In response, he pulls her by the hips tighter against his chest and gives her a look that makes her blush.
Harth doesn't deign to look in their direction. He adds a couple of Cecelia's wildberries to his fish snack. "No."
"Oh, I have some!" Cecelia plucks one up, holding it between two feathers. She aims carefully, and flicks it. Link makes a dive for it, throwing Zelda slightly off balance, but it bounces off his cheek.
"One more try. I got it this time."
Harth says, "I have a durian you can use."
"You do not," Link says.
"There's a rock over there. Try that."
"I thought we were friends."
"Well, you were wrong. Go find somewhere else to flirt. I'm eating." He takes a large bite of his fish snack and Zelda tugs Link away so she can talk to someone else.
#
The race will work as follows: 20 points to first place, 15 to second, and 10 to third. Fourth place will get 6 points, fifth 5, sixth 4, and so on until the last challenger to cross the finish line gets a single point. The side boundaries of the race course are marked by sticks with yellow and gold flags, and anyone who goes off course will forfeit all points in this trial and forfeit their place in the race's rankings.
Except at the finish line, where the contestants have to pass through another square in the air marked by rope and flags, there are no vertical restrictions. If someone wanted to fly thirty feet above everyone else, they are allowed. They might loose precious time lifting into the air, but then again they might make up that time by avoiding the elbowing. Zelda wouldn't be surprised if Amali does that.
There's nowhere to place spectators so they can see both the start and the end, so the stands are set up at the finish line, where the race is sure to be the most exciting and where they can participate most readily in the celebrations immediately following the race. Besides, the finish line is located in a huge ice cave, which is shielded from the wind and therefore feels twenty degrees warmer than the starting line on the face of the mountain, so everyone approves of this arrangement.
Link and Zelda stay at the starting line with the contestants, who are lined up shoulder to shoulder, the tips of their wings stretched before them and creeping as close to the starting line as they can get away with. They will all immediately whack into one another, but all of Zelda's suggestions to have staggered starting positions were firmly rejected.
"Are you ready?" she calls, her voice carrying even in the wind. Distantly, they can hear the crowd cheering from down the mountain. She can almost make out the beat of the chant Kass invented last night. But the contestants are silent, serious, poised to leap. They don't even look over at her.
"On your mark!
"Get set!"
She smashes a mallet against the gong, which rings out down the mountain. The burst of wind that hits her as the Rito take off knocks her back into Link, who grabs her under the arms. The gong tips over with a clatter behind them. Down the mountain, the crowd's cheers intensify.
And the Rito are gone. The slope of the mountain dips so steeply that by the time Zelda's feet are back under her, she's watching them from above, as they shoulder and scrape spaces for themselves, as they fight for enough room to beat their wings to their full extent. For a minute they all overlap, pushing for height to give themselves space, but once they get room, they start to pull apart. Their colors are so bright against the snow that it's easy to see every contestant's position.
Harth has fallen behind. He's still solidly in the middle of the pack, but he's not with the front runners, who pull ahead at a speed that makes her worry for the approaching turns. Teba, Amali, Rufflo, and Fyson. Snow clouds in their wake, blurring the space behind them, getting in the eyes of anyone not fighting beak and claw for the lead. They seem to skim across the ice, their wings pulled so tight that it's hard to tell if they're flying or tobogganing. They hit the first hurdle in the course, a place where the slope falls away and wind rips up the side of the mountain, tossing them higher. They throw out their wings for balance, then tilt and dive before pulling up at the very last moment. All of them hit the slope and skim hard again the snow. They move almost in unison as they all throw out one wing to make a turn in the track.
Link points back to the gap-and-wind obstacle, where Huck has opened his wings too much, caught too much wind. He's thrown off course and disqualified. The main pack thins as Harth pulls ahead and Verla falls behind.
The front runners take another turn, then vanish into the ice cave to a wild ring of whistles. Zelda slips her arm around Link's waist and warps them to the new shrine near the finish line.
It's disorienting to try to make sense of the race from the opposite direction, disorienting as the cheering is so much louder here. It echoes, screaming and whistling and chanting that doubles over itself again and again as it bounces back against the walls. The course widens here, allowing the racers to pick which way to skim around ice columns, which way to ride over the crest of a snow bank. They've split from their uniform movements, and now dart and swerve, glorious in their precision as they wind together, as Rufflo falls behind, and Amali takes the lead and on the next wing beat Teba takes it back. No matter who wins, they are all beautiful, all deserving, their eyes fierce and focused, their wings brilliant.
Zelda is screaming, "Go! Go! Go!" Who she screams for, she doesn't know. All of them. Everyone. Go! It's the last stretch and the ice columns fall away. A straight shot to the finish. They can hear Fyson yell as he throws himself forward with one wild push, as he throws off the slipstream air currents, as Teba is sucked backward, his eyes popping wide, as Amali hits the eddies with both wings poised before her, like a diver through the air, and with a last beat, with her neck stretched long, bursts through the finish line. A beak ahead of Fyson. Neck and shoulders ahead of Teba.
The roof shudders from the uproar. Someone sets off a firework that explodes low in the cave in twinkling showers of green. The rest of the racers slip through the finish line, and Zelda only just remembers to stamp the order onto her memory, to rush to the scoreboard and write it all down. The chant is back and louder than before, drumming through the ground as everyone joins, all the Rito united in celebration for their Champion, who rides back towards the crowd, lifted onto the shoulders of the still panting racers. Teba has a wing wrapped around one of her legs, Rufflo holding up a claw, Harth somehow supporting her from behind. They're all wheezing her song.
As they cross back over the finish line, Amali lifts her wings cautiously from Teba and Fyson's shoulders, uncertain she'll keep her balance, then throws out her green wings and throws back her grinning face to present herself to the crowd.
Zelda's laughing and bouncing, and when did she last feel this delighted? Link rushes forward to try to take some of Amali's weight before all the contestants' legs give out beneath them, but he's too short, and the crowd has converged on them anyway. It takes time for the crowd to pull back, a circle around Elder Kaneli, Amali and Kheel perched on her hip. Kaneli takes her free wing and lifts it into the air.
"Rito, I give you your Champion!"
#
They've been to enough parties, and Zelda makes a case that a Hylian presence is not required at this celebration of Rito unity. Instead, they go for a blissfully lazy walk around Lake Totori. Not check list to accomplish. No monsters to fight. They just walk.
Given they have all the time in the world and suddenly no idea what to do with it, they walk with their hands tucked shyly behind them. Every now and then their shoulders brush. Every now and then they catch each other's eye and blush.
It's really quite ridiculous.
She half suspects that Link has a destination in mind. An outcropping with a wonderful view or a secluded cave or a pond with beautiful lilies. But they get more than half way around the lake, and he's yet to turn off the road.
"Link?"
"Hmm?"
She stops, snagging his wrist and pulling him to a halt so he turns to face her. In her most honey-flavored voice she asks, "How many wild berries do you have on you?"
He pulls back, looking skeptical and nervous. "Why?"
"So...you can throw them all at me?" Suddenly she's nervous herself. Oh no. Was that too forward? Is it strange to get food involved? Does he think she's proposing? This is what she gets for trying to be cute!
He rubs the back of his neck. "You really don't—"
"No, I'm sorry. I should never have—"
"—Because I have a lot of wild berries."
She blinks. She narrows her eyes in confusion. "What do you mean? How many?"
"Fifty-eight."
"Fifty— What? Right now?"
"Yeah."
"On you?"
"In my pocket."
"Why are you carrying around that many wildberries? Where did you even find that many? Are you saving them for something?"
"No, I just pick them when I see them growing, or, you know, when people throw them at me."
"You pick them up off the ground after they've bounced off your head?"
"Yeah." He doesn't seem to realize how distasteful that is.
"I'm trying to be seductive, and you're here telling me about how much hoarded food you have in your pockets!"
"You asked!"
"Why are you picking wildberries off the floor!?"
"They grow outside on bushes, Zel. It's not that different."
"Goddess!" She covers her face with her hands.
There's a long, painful pause before Link asks, "Do you still want me to kiss you?"
"No!"
He kicks at the ground and mutters, "Shoot."
They make it another quarter of the way around the lake before she tries again.