Just as with Vah Rudania, the main control unit is on Vah Medoh's back, which at the moment is more like a wall than a floor. Unlike Vah Rudania, the control panel is on top of the bulbous control unit instead of underneath it, so they can reach it simply by standing on top of it. Amali and Zelda land with ease, balancing atop the onion-like structure hundreds of feet in the air.
Harth, curious enough about what's happening and finally convinced that he could approach the Divine Beast without injury (not that he's frightened), agrees to fly Link up as well. Harth acts as if Zelda is twisting his arm and it's a severe inconvenience and indignity for him, but he's the one who suggests giving Link a ride in the first place. Link and Harth hang back on the pointed end, the control unit sloping under their feet. Harth keeps shifting his weight in discomfort.
Zelda kneels by the panel and looks up at her friend. "You remember what we discussed?"
Amali nods. Her eyes are wide in fear in a way she can't control, but she's also been trying to bite down a smile all day.
Zelda nods back and presses the slate to the panel, which lights blue. The control panel flickers to life under their feet, then glows with a steady hum that resonates through the knees of her pants. Blue strings of power swirl up over the slate, brushing against Zelda's hand. They branch and curl and make their way towards Amali like a vine seeking the sun. The Rito's breath catches. Then she sucks in a deep breath, closes her eyes, and lets her wings spread in surrender. The light dances around her, tracing every curve and every feather, lighting the frill on her head and the claws on her feet. Then they dive into her chest, and she gasps, her whole body heaving with the intake of breath. When her eyes pop open, they glow blue for a single heartbeat—a pulse that reverberates through the air all the way to the lake below.
"Oh wow," Amali says. She holds very still, wings still slightly spread.
Now is the tricky part. In her current position, any forward movement of the Divine Beast might cause her to tip from her perch. And fall onto Rito Village. How to begin training while also not causing undue damage in the event of inevitable mistakes, is a problem Zelda has been brainstorming since they arrived.
"I can feel her," Amali says.
"Good. Good."
"Her wings are...stiff."
"Oh?"
Amali closes her eyes and rolls her shoulders. There's a tremble deep under their feet, a dusting of dirt that falls around them, but beyond that Vah Medoh doesn't move. From the corner of her eye, Zelda sees Link's posture change. He's ready to dive for her and warp her to safety.
"Easy," Zelda says. Speaking to Amali or Link or Vah Medoh. She carefully slips the Sheikah slate into her belt. She's not ready to warp. They need to give Amali time.
Amali's eyes are squeezed tight. "I think...I can..."
"Let's not be hasty—"
The tips of Amali's wings flick. Vah Medoh bows forward and Zelda tumbles to the floor as it settles where a floor should be. Link barely misses falling on her. Harth grabs for the tip of the main control unit and rides it upward. For a moment, it seems perfect, everything at the correct angle. But then Vah Medoh tips forward more, overbalancing as Zelda predicted. Link grabs for her, grabs for the slate, but Amali's eyes are still closed a look of concentration on her face, and Zelda catches Link's wrist. Wait. Just wait.
Vah Medoh's wings move, sweeping through the air like a hulking engine. She lifts from her perch, dives toward the village, spreads her wings and lifts. The air catches them with a jolt and then they're sailing, flying. Amali stands still, her eyes closed and a gentle smile gracing her face.
The great wings beat once around them as they gain altitude, then they even out, pulling into the same circle around Rito Village Vah Medoh has flown for a century.
Zelda squeezes Link's arm, then rises to her feet. Harth drops to the floor beside Amali, unable to decide if he should look at her or at the majesty of what is half parkland half ruin around them.
"Well," Zelda says, trying not to look too flustered. "You picked that up rather quickly."
Amali blinks open her eyes, but still holds herself unnervingly still, as if not trusting herself to move. Slowly she says, "It feels as if there are two of me. In my head. Like I'm controlling two bodies and seeing two images and feeling the wind in two sets of wings." She closes her eyes again, as looking at Zelda while seeing through Vah Medoh's eyes is too difficult.
Zelda steps closer. "Are you alright?"
"Yes. It's just disorienting. Like there's a pressure." She haltingly, tentatively raises a wing and massages her forehead between her eyes. The gesture does not send Vah Medoh into a barrel roll. "It's a lot to hold onto, but it's getting easier. Oh, she is stiff!" Amali puffs her chest and rolls back her shoulders several times in quick succession, looking a bit like she's heaving—no, stretching. She shakes her head and opens her eyes again. "I'm sorry, but she has to circle the other direction. This is just..." She rolls her shoulders again, pushing her wings backward. "Ugh!"
"Yes, of course. Do what you need to."
Amali stretches her neck from side to side then frowns when the movement does nothing for Vah Medoh. The ground tilts slightly under them, and the Divine Beast pulls to the right to circle clockwise.
Harth places a hand on Amali's shoulder. "It is the supracoracoideus?"
"Mainly. But there's more going on too. I won't be able to tell until the left wing is loosened. It's like it's locked too low."
"Can you work it out in the air, or should we land and...oil it?" He looks to Zelda, unsure if oiling is an option.
Before Zelda can admit that she has no idea, Amali shakes her head, "Let me stretch a bit more first. See what I can do." Her voice heats suddenly. "Goddess, could you imagine circling in one direction for a century? This is—it's abuse!"
Harth hisses in shared anger. He circles her and presses a wing hard to her sternum. "There?"
"Yes."
"You're circling wide, can you pull it back more?"
Her face pinches and the ground tips to a sharper angle. "Gah, that's unpleasant. She needs some fledgling exercises."
"Pull back and hold it," he orders. "And five, four, three, two, one. Relax."
She does with a sigh, and the ground levels again.
"Two more. You ready?"
"Yes."
Zelda stares at them, then spins on Link. "Vah Medoh and the Rito have the same basic anatomy! That's why this is coming so easily to her. Why it came so easily to Revali. They instinctively know how to fly. If a Hylian or a Zora were the pilot, we'd never get off the ground!"
"Or a Goron," he adds.
"The Gorons!" She bounces on her toes and whips out her journal. "This is why Yunobo is having such trouble! He's trying to control the body of a lizard as if it's his own. I wonder if a lizalfo would be more adept at—but that's not worth considering." She jots down a handful of notes, then looks back up as the floor tilts once more below her feet. She's already stopped noticing. "I'll need to do further research into lizard anatomy. That may help Yunobo, if he's still finding it difficult. Although I don't know where we'll find any information about camels, as they don't apprear naturally in Hyrule. Perhaps we can find another large mammal with a similar gait. I suppose it's possible that some bestiaries that survived in the castle library, and it's possible that Purah or Robbie have something. I suppose there is a silver lining to Vah Ruta's deactivation as elephants are entirely fictional."
Link is giving her a look.
"Do you disagree?" she asks.
"This is an excuse to catch more lizards."
"It is most certainly not!"
They have enough lizards.
#
A week passes so quickly that Zelda more than once falls asleep over a console with a socket wrench in hand and wakes up in a pile of blankets with Link snuggled around her.
They ask Saki, Rito Village's doctor, to come up to Vah Medoh and help with her recuperation. She's clearly flustered by the prospect of setting foot on Vah Medoh, but it's quickly replaced as she's flustered by aiding a patient who she can neither speak to nor touch directly. "I might as well sit here blind folded and have you tell me where it hurts!" She nonetheless throws herself into the problem.
She brings along several anatomy books, and Zelda studies with concentrated vigor in a mad-dash attempt to catch up with everyone else. Luckily, Zelda has exercises for Amali's double vision and the headaches, which Mipha also used to have. As a group, they develop a series of wing exercises to regain Vah Medoh's full range of motion, and they send Link and Harth down a few times to poke around in the wing joints, loosening calcified dirt with a spear. He comes back from one such trip with a half-crushed moblin horn that he pulled from between some gears.
Amali invites her family up, and within a few days they have fully moved in. Link helps the girls hang their hammocks in a nook in what he calls the "ball room," which the family claims for their own. They get a cooking pot and chests full of food. They decorate with blankets and pillows and tapestries and musical instruments and drawings done by the children until it looks just as homey as their hut in the Village.
Zelda helps with the cargo problem of keeping heavy crates from slipping as the Divine Beast moves, keeping them from crushing anyone, from falling from a great height, or from disrupting any valuables inside. She designs a series of large storage containers that fill the floor of the main room. She gets out some of her Goron tools, drills holes in the floor, and installs locks that bolt the crates to the ground. Each crate could be unlocked and removed individually, or they could be opened from above to go through their wares. They start with wood crates, and will consider metal ones when they reach Death Mountain.
As soon as Amali is comfortable with controlling the Divine Beast, and everyone is confident she can handle trickier weather and they won't fall from the sky, Fyson and supplies from the Slippery Falcon become the first cargo. Verla takes a break from the inn to help Zelda turn one of the rooms in Vah Medoh's wing into a kind of passenger quarters, while Fyson stores all his stuff away in one of the crates, intending to restock his store in Tarrey Town.
Then they just have to plan their trip. They decide on a clockwise circuit around Hyrule with their first stop in Goron City. Zelda very much wants to check on Yunobo's progress, and she's eager for the two Champions to meet. Besides which, she's hopeful that the Gorons will not be terrified of Vah Medoh, as they've had their own Divine Beast for a month now. She's not so sure that will be the case with the later stops on their trip. Furthermore, it's a nice, long flight to Eldin, and Amali will have time to work out residual kinks over barren countryside.
Rito Village sees them off with another round of fireworks and far too much confetti. Zelda and Link stay with Amali and the Divine Beast until they're well over the canyon and things are going smoothly. Then they warp to Goron City to warn the Gorons they're coming and search for a suitable landing spot.
#
Bludo was exceptionally glad to see the little Hylian brothers.
Since they left in such a hurry, Yunobo had barely checked in to see how Bludo's back was doing. (It was fine, not that he cared!) The new Champion barely even come into town, claiming he had to "practice his walking," like he was some kind of toddling baby. He spent a week stomping around the northern ridge—which, fine. Who cared? But then the Divine Beast went still and quiet and Bludo thought the young guy would come home and take a break and spend some time socializing. But Yunobo never showed up and then a while later Darunia went back to stomping around again. Turned out he'd spent a bunch of time training with the Blood Brothers, which was...helpful? Bludo didn't get it, but maybe the kid did need to get some toughening up.
Since they'd left, the Gorons in the forge had clearly missed Little Zelda. More than that, they clearly missed having a big old project. They kept talking about the Zora reservoir and how maybe they should go down there and fix it up. They talked about putting up some better bridges out to the Northern Mine. Like getting there was hard
Rogaro from the Ripped and Shredded Armor Shop was in a frenzy because all the tourists and travelers coming through wanted protective armor—were willing to spend the money—but they wanted it to be less "big and bulky." Like they wanted to look all thin and scrawny and breakable. Like the shop wasn't called "Ripped and Shredded." But Rogaro kept mentioning how Little Zelda was the first to not want flamebreaker armor and maybe he should have listened instead of getting all defensive. Maybe he needed to...branch out or something? Then he started sending letters down to the stable with the travelers headed that way, and then he vanished for a couple days and showed back up with a secret chest that he wouldn't let anyone see (even Bludo!) until he produced a kind of Hylian outfit that was all thin plates and red fabric with no shape to it. No one could really tell what they were looking at.
And then Bludo had to deal with the Gerudo waaaay too much. They paid good money for gems, but they would get loud so suddenly!
And then Yunobo and his big pet popped up again, ready to somehow use Daruina to help install some bridges at the North Mine. What? Bludo hadn't heard anything about that.
"We talked to you about it a few weeks ago. Remember?"
"I remember we decided that was stupid," Bludo said.
"You decided that," Aji said, hefting his stone smasher onto his shoulder. "We're going to build a bridge."
The nerve! These young people had no respect!
But the little Hylian brothers, they knew proper respect. They knew to come to him first and ask after his back. They listened, nodding their heads along, little Zelda taking notes, as he explained how awful the bridges were. And then Rogaro interrupted, carrying in a chest and presenting it to little Zelda with a big old grin that he could take somewhere else if he didn't mind! But the little Hylian just gushed over the clothes, holding them up and clutching them to her chest and bouncing around, grinning and laughing until Rogaro was red in the face.
And then—then!—she told him about how there was another Divine Beast headed their way. The Rito were coming to visit. And was that okay? And where could they park the dang thing? And where was Yunobo, because clearly he was the one they really wanted to talk to.
Bah!
These young people.
#
Everyone in Tarrey Town came out to see the Divine Beast land. They watched it creep in from Death Mountain, first a little speck in the sky, then growing larger. It didn't seem to be moving that fast. It didn't look all that intimidating. Not until it got close.
Then it swooped over the lake, looking for all the world as if it would crash into the side of the cliff. At the last possible second, it pulled up, almost vertical, until it ran out of steam and hung suspended the air, just about to fall—But then it placed its feet neatly on the edge of the cliff and settled. A tremor trickled through the ground. The Divine Beast bowed forward, and didn't move again, even though everyone watched it for a good long while afterwards.
Link and his friend—and let's be clear, she was cute and all, and he was obviously smitten, and good for him and all that, but...well, everyone was growing more and more convinced that she was a bad influence, what with her convincing him it was okay to invite a giant robot monster that had terrorized the country for a hundred years.
Link and his friend had warned everyone that the Divine Beast was coming. Coming with new goods from Tabantha. Coming to bring Fyson back, so you knew it had to be safe. Coming with a traveling minstrel, who wanted to write a song about Tarry Town. Coming with and a bunch of Gorons on their way to Zora's Domain, who were excited to see Greyson again and could do with a few beers. Would Greyson or Pelison like to send a letter home? Would anyone like to send a letter home? Because Vah Medoh could deliver it!
Well. It the Divine Beast up and lasered them all, that was on Link's head, and they made sure he knew it. He'd be damned forever and ever and their ghosts would follow him around and make him miserable.
"You got it," he said.
But there were no lasers. And Fyson strode into town, complaining about his mother and "bruised wheat" instead of horrible malice nightmares on the inside of the beast. And then the Gorons kind of did know how to party.
So.
Maybe they wouldn't stop the big bird from coming back next week.
#
For a while after the Calamity, the Zora and the Sheikah had attempted to collaborate. The Sheikah were decimated, with their strongest warriors wiped out in the Calamity's initial attack. The remaining Sheikah were dispersed across the country or had been left behind in Kakarkio—the children and elderly and those whose skill at planting and making clothes outweighed their fighting skills. Lady Impa was a warrior, but she was foremost a scientist, thrust into a leadership role when everyone else died. She never once complained, and Dorephan respected her resolve.
They joined forces in a few campaigns to fight back the stray stalkers that wandered into the Domain or towards Kakariko. The king had even invited the Sheikah to relocate into Zora's Domain so they could fortify together permanently, but it was an offer which was understandably refused. As the monsters became more rampant and the road between their cities more dangerous, their contact had faded. Then there was Vah Ruta's first major aggression against the Domain—where she collapsed a section of the Ruto Precipice, causing an avalanche that knocked out one of the city's pillars—and in the chaos they lost contact with their closest neighbors completely. Some of the Zora elders claimed the Sheikah abandoned them in their time of need, that Hyrule under the Calamity was every group for themselves, but Dorephan chose not to believe that.
With the arrival of Vah Medoh on the cliff by the Veiled Falls, King Dorephan wrote a letter to Lady Impa. It had been many years since he'd seen her. He wondered how much she had changed.
It was the first letter he'd written in years, but as soon as he finished, he penned a letter to Bludo, the boss of the Gorons, thanking him for sending the team of engineers eager to look at the reservoir. Surely such a generous offer of friendship could be repaid in some way. Then he wrote to the Rito Elder, who had also shown such generosity in sending his people to serve all of Hyrule. And such delightful people! He especially enjoyed the charming songs that the Rito children sang, songs that the Zora children now hummed on the promenade. He was especially moved by the ballad about his children.
Dorephan took a moment to let out his shuddering breaths before he resumed his correspondence.
He then wrote to the young Gerudo Chief, a girl he had never met, a leader whose name he had not known until Link provided it to him. He would never be able to see her homeland, but he'd heard it was beautiful. He might never meet the Gerudo Chief, but he wished her the greatest prosperity and hoped they could maintain some level of correspondence.
It had been a long time since he wrote a letter, much less four. It had been a long time since he handed them to a courier for safe delivery. The Rito's eyes softened as she looked down at the rolled scrolls. She held them so delicately. She held them with such reverence. Dorephan was not the only one who recognized the crest on which they stood, ready to sweep forward into a new era. His people were not the only ones who could hear the call of the future. They were not the only ones preparing to unite.