Howdy, y'all! I'm so sorry this is a day late. I had an awful, horrible, very long workday yesterday, and my son is getting FOUR (4!) new teeth in, two of which are molars, so when I'm not working I'm tending to him. Even at night. Especially at night.
It's hard to write with a crying toddler in your lap.
For tonight, here's my take at a western starring Link and Zelda. You'll note it's not a traditional western in a traditional western setting. That's because I AM FROM THE PART OF THE U.S. THAT THIS STUFF HAPPENED IN and I HAVE VERY STRONG OPINIONS ON ALL OF THESE STUPID DESERT TOWNS, THERE AREN'T ANY RESOURCES THERE, WHY WOULD YOU EVEN and YOU WILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT.
Anywho. Here we go!
When Link had signed up to be a Western Ranger, he'd had visions of stopping cattle rustlers, arresting horse thieves, liaising with the Gerudo, and engaging in other assorted heroics. He'd be in some one-road frontier town— dusty, yes, but not without its charms— and he'd help the local sheriff enforce the King's Law out in a distant little corner of the world, bringing safety an security to those who needed it most.
Rescuing escaped pigs, helping cows give birth, assisting grannies cleaning out their homes, and fetching the sheriff's daughter from the train station had never quite figured into his plans.
Link shifted on the uncomfortable wooden seat of the wagon, flicking the reins wearily at the utterly untroubled mules slowly plodding along up the dirt road. At least the journey to the train station (in the next town over, of course) was a pleasant one. His home of New Outset was a charming little village: it crouched in the shadow of crimson buttes, shaded by astonishingly verdant sequoia and mesquite trees. Link hadn't expected such large trees— well, or any trees, really— when he came out to Tabanthara. He'd grown up further east and a little to the south, in the scrubby hill-forests of Ordonica Province.
It was a three-hour cart ride from New Outset to Ritoville, the "city" (town) the train stopped in. New Outset would be getting its own train stop soon— next year or the year after, rumor had it— but until then, it was a long trip to the train station.
And, Link predicted, a longer trip back.
In truth, the sheriff wasn't his boss— not exactly— but it had been drilled into Link's head before he'd been assigned this post that it was good to help out the local law enforcement whenever possible. Usually, that meant helping old Rhoam corral drunks or escaped animals (which were astonishingly similar tasks), rather than retrieving some empty-headed chit come home from school out east. Golden Ladies, she'd probably chatter Link's ear off the entire time about fashion and fripperies and flounces.
Link was dreading the chore.
The miles plodded by, swallowed beneath the hooves of the staid brown mules. After both forever and not enough time at all, the outskirts of Ritoville began to appear. It wasn't much at first— homesteads built in the clearing of the sequoia woods, first, then increasingly fewer trees, until it opened up into rolling flatlands that raced towards the distant purple spikes of the Medli Mountains. A train carved through the middle of the valley, bisecting it like an iron river, and Link watched the distant puffs of black smoke as the locomotive raced towards the city.
Better hurry it up, Link thought. He didn't want the sheriff's daughter to have to wait. That'd just make her grumpy, no doubt, and then he'd get an earful all the way back, and from old Rhoam too, to boot.
So Link clicked his tongue at the mules and flapped the reins again, and off they went.
It was a bit over a quarter hour later when they arrived at the train station— just moments before the train chugged and puffed to a stop. Link hopped down. He tipped his hat forward on his head and strode through the crowd to the big steam engine— gleaming red once, he was sure, but now covered in dust and dirt from its long journey from the east.
Old Rhoam had described his daughter to Link. "Yea high," the bearded fellow had said, holding his hand up to Link's chin, "with big ole green eyes, freckles, and yeller hair. Bit of a tomboy when she left for the ladies' academy, but as it's been a few years I 'spect that's changed by now."
Looking around at the crowd of people disembarking the train, Link didn't see anyone who was yea high with freckles. He did see a very stately looking woman with green eyes and hair the color of spun gold, and swallowed. She did not look missish, or even very young: She had a woman's figure, which was shown to great advantage by a blue-and-cream pinstriped shirt tucked into a long navy skirt. A fetching navy coat went over it all, and she wore a navy top hat with a cream band and a spray of poppies over her neatly-pinned golden hair. She carried a small leather briefcase, and was watching the platform workers unload a single brown steamer trunk.
Link strode up to her, curious.
"Pardon, ma'am— Are you Zelda Bosphoramus?"
She turned to look at him. The motion was crisp, polished, efficient— nothing like the fluttery, dithery swaying Link had expected from a finishing school graduate.
"And who might be asking?" Her accent was just as crisp as her motion, and her mesquite-green eyes were sharp.
"Name's Link Forester, ma'am," he said, tipping his hat. "Your Pa sent me to fetch you home. I'm the local ranger for New Outset. He couldn't get away," he added at the woman's enquiring look. "Had some business to attend to."
"I see." Her pretty mouth pursed into a frown. "Well, I can hardly say that's a surprise. Papa does love his work. You there— Be careful with that!"
Link found his brows raising as the woman snapped forward, arms braced to catch a large crate. Amazingly, she caught it, then lowered it carefully. Once it was safely on the ground, she began to tear a strip up one side of the fellow and down the other.
"This is very delicate equipment, and it'll be more than you can afford to replace it if it's shattered. Now be cautious with the rest of those crates, or I'll have your head, see if I don't."
Chagrined, the men resumed unloading. Link refrained from whistling. He knew it was rude.
"Equipment? I was under the impression you'd been at some finishing school. Lady Something-Something-Or-Other."
"I've been away at Our Lady of the Golden Lake, studying first and then teaching. It's a women's university," Miss Bosphoramus corrected with some ire. "I am an arcanologician, sir, and a well-published one at that. I've come home because I believe there's ample opportunity for me to continue my research here, assuming some lug-heads don't break all my equipment." She glowered again at the loaders, who were carefully piling boxes onto a hand trolley.
Link didn't have anything to offer, so he stood back, hands in his pockets, as the woman supervised the workers unloading the cargo from the train. At last, it was done, and they all made their way to where the wagon waited. The trunks were reloaded, Link helped Miss Bosphoramus up (she grudgingly accepted his assistance), and then he popped up onto the lip of the wagon beside her.
He settled himself and gave a yip-yip and the mules began plodding their way back towards New Outset. The wagon lurched forward, but the pretty Miss Bosphoramus remained firmly seated, her briefcase in her lap.
"You said you are a ranger, sir?" Miss Bosphoramus asked.
"Yes ma'am," Link said. "Been here roundabout two years now."
"Yes," Miss Bosphoramus said. "My father wrote me when you arrived. He said you were a refreshing change from your incompetent predecessor."
Link pushed his hat back on his head.
"That don't particularly sound like him," he observed.
"Well, not in those precise words," Miss Bosphoramus corrected herself. Then she sighed. "Golden Lady, I'd forgotten what it's like out here."
"Ma'am?"
"The vernacular," she clarified, and looked around. "And the trees. Whenever I said back east that my home was full of trees, nobody believed me." She shook her head. "And now I'm back, all refined and ladylike. I'm sure everyone will think I've developed an overinflated opinion of myself."
"It's possible," Link said. "You sure do dress an' talk fancier than any of the other ladies in town, and pardon me for sayin' so. But if it's a real concern, we can always polish you back down."
"Polish me down," the lady repeated, amused.
Link nodded. "Right. It's the opposite of polishing you up."
A smile quirked at her pretty lips.
"You're clever," she observed after a moment. "Do tell me, Mister Forester, why a man such as yourself might go into the rangers?"
"Ma'am?"
"It's a long wagon ride back to town," she said. "I'd appreciate a little conversation."
"Oh," Link said. "Well, I'm afraid it's not a very exciting story."
He launched into what was, in fact, a very exciting story: How he'd spent his youth growing up on the edge of the wilderness, how when he was a young man several children from his village had been kidnapped by a bulbin tribe, how he'd joined the rescue group that saved him, and how that had given him a taste for protecting people and serving justice.
"... Although near as I can tell, there's a lot less protection an' a lot more livestock wrangling in this job than I'd initially imagined, though I don't mind too much."
"Having been a ranch hand in your youth and all," Miss Bosphoramus said dryly. "A boring story indeed. Ha." She shook her head in disbelief.
Link resisted the urge to nudge her with his shoulder. There was no call for that kind of familiarity, although the more they talked, the more he liked her. She was clever and funny, for all that she was buttoned all the way up. Link wondered what it would be like if she let her hair down…
No. Bad ranger. He had no call, thinking those sort of thoughts about his colleague's daughter.
"What about you, Miss Bosphoramus?" He asked. "What's a canoe magician do?"
"Arcanologician," she corrected. "I observe the way that the laws of the magical world and the laws of the natural one interact with and modify each other. For example, a natural object always falls to the ground at the same rate of descent. This is a natural law, and one that can't be circumvented. But some magical objects don't drop. They rise, or float— sometimes on their own, sometimes under enchantment. How does this happen? How can two such disparate laws of physics exist in this world?" She made a pretty gesture with one gloved hand. "This is what I study."
"And what led you to those studies?"
"Oh, that." She shook her head. "I'm afraid that's a far less exciting story."
"It's a long ride," Link parroted back at her. "Might as well fill it with chatter."
So she told him, although he wasn't rightly able to follow the tangled weave of Sheikah names and who had taught her what and who had encouraged her to do what. But her story naturally led into tales about life back east, and the many delights (and misadventures) available to folk in cities. That, in turn, drove Link to share a few of his own stories, some not entirely appropriate for a lady, about how lads in the countryside entertained themselves.
Those stories mostly involved firearms, overripe fruits and vegetables, and— in one notable case— someone's laundry.
She was in tears of laughter by the time they finally arrived back in New Outset. Link had decided that he liked it when Miss Bosphoramus laughed. She had a nice laugh, a little like a bell, although she'd snorted at one point and it had only made him like her more. Although she looked neat as a pin and twice as sharp, she was down-to-earth. Approachable. Funny and thoughtful. Didn't take herself too serious.
It helped, too, that she was incredibly beautiful.
As the carriage clattered to a halt in front of the house she'd share with her Pa on main street, she regarded him thoughtfully.
"Do help me carry these crates inside, sir?" She asked him.
"Of course, ma'am," Link replied. And he did, treating each box as though it were made of spun glass. She seemed satisfied by that, satisfied to boss him around as he positioned her boxes in a back room. Finally, it was just her trunk left, and he heaved it up the stairs to her bedroom, which he very carefully did not stare at. As he was leaving, a delicate touch on his arm stopped him.
"Mister Forester," she said in that cultured voice of hers (and Link couldn't help but notice that her cheeks were pink from laughter and sunshine and the long ride), "I hope you'll call on me once I'm a little more settled in."
Link scratched at his head, then remembered it was rude and shoved his hand in his pocket.
"To help you unpack?" He asked.
"No," Miss Bosphoramus said. She fixed him with a direct green gaze, and the pink on her cheeks grew brighter. "I'd hoped you might come by for a… social visit."
Social calling? A man like him calling on a fine lady like her? Well, she was the sheriff's daughter, and he was a ranger, and she was lovely, but… Wouldn't people talk? Would people think he was courting her?
Wait. Hold on. Did she want him to court her?
He looked at her, studying her face. She tilted her chin up, a near-defiant motion, and Link felt a grin blossoming across his features.
She did want him to court her. Hot dog!
"Miss Bosphoramus," he said, "I'd be absolutely delighted to call on you at your earliest convenience." He swept an approximation of an eastern bow, and then glanced at her. "Did I do that right?"
She was grinning now too, flushed with delight.
"It was close enough," she said. "I'll look forward to your visit."
"I surely will, too," Link said. And then, because he couldn't resist, he snagged her hand in his and kissed the back of her gloved knuckles. Then he tipped his hat. "Ma'am."
He made his way back out to the street, led the mules and cart off to the sheriff's stable, and spent a while caring for the animals. Once that was done, he jammed his hands into his pockets, began to whistle a jaunty tune between his teeth, and sauntered off in the direction of the little building that housed his office, feeling buoyant.
Hot dog indeed.
That's that! A silly little western thing. I'll be back this weekend with the next oneshot— content TBD. Until then, stay safe, stay inside, and WASH YOUR HANDS! Air smoochies to all, and to all a good night.