Horseback riding always brought Link comfort. Something he sorely needed in this time.
Every ruin he saw was a new knife of guilt at his failure, every patch of civilization that clung on a painful reminder of how he no longer had a place here, a century out of his time, and every monster he saw walking about without fear in his kingdom, fuel for his anger. But in riding a horse across Hyrule Field, he could pretend, at least, for a little while, that things were still as they once were, like he was still in his element. Feeling the wind in his hair and the rhythmic pounding of hooves as he and the horse worked together as a single team—he knew where he was going and she knew the road, the two of them speeding across the land. Nothing could stop them, except…
He heard the cry of distress before he saw them, but it only took a fraction of a second to realize what was happening. Two young women, from their packs and clothes, likely adventurers, under attack from two Bokoblins. Spurring his horse forward, Link raced towards them, and, once he was in range, sprang from the saddle, his bow drawn in a single, fluid gesture as he loosed an arrow that brought the further one down with a single shot through its eye.
The monster's companion had barely realized that its ally was slain as Link landed, his hand, through a long-practiced reflex that a hundred years of sleep hadn't been able to forget, gripping the hilt of the Master Sword, drawing it and striking the creature's head off before it could even turn to face him.
Both monsters burst into a cloud of inky blackness, the wretched matter of Calamity Ganon, sure to return by their master's fell power. But, for now, they were dispatched, and the travelers were safe. He could already hear his faithful steed trotting up behind him as he sheathed his blade and-
Got walloped out of nowhere.
Well, he wasn't exactly expecting to get tackled into a hug.
"That was SO COOL!" cried one of the adventurers he'd rescued. She had short brown hair and bore a cheerful expression as she wrapped her arms around him. "Oh, man, how did you learn to fight like that!"
Link, who had just effortlessly dispatched two monsters, found himself caught utterly off guard and struggling to breathe with this girl's sudden hug.
"Nat!" the other girl, dark haired and with a much more annoyed expression, "Let go! You're clearly choking him!"
"Oh, ha, sorry!" she said, releasing Link and letting him get a desperate lungful of air, "Just a… a little excited, you know."
"Well," Link replied, still taking in his lungful, "You gotta… gotta be careful here. What's got you… out in these parts?"
"We're… we were hunting for truffles," the other girl said, her voice still tinged with awe the ease at which Link had dispatched her assailant, though slightly dimmed by him getting choked so shortly thereafter. "I- I'm Meghyn, and this is my sister Nat."
Link couldn't help but puff out his chest a little at the obvious admiration these women had for his ability. He wasn't a proud man, at least, he was fairly certain he wasn't. The memories he did have told him he wasn't the sort to seek applause or reward, preferring to get the job done with as little notice as possible. But, every now and then, it felt good to be recognized for his efforts.
"It was nothing much," he demurred, "Just doing my part to help out my fellow travelers."
Okay, maybe he was puffing his chest out a lot, but… coming back to a destroyed world, a century after his spectacular and tragic failure, Link really needed to feel like he could do some heroing. And the girls he rescued seemed quite happy to play into it.
"You have to stay for dinner! Really, it's the least we could do for you!" Nat eagerly cheered.
"But Naaaaaat," her sister whined, "That's not even remotely a reward—you're a terrible cook!"
"Subjective opinion!" she shot back.
As the two began to argue, Link couldn't help but crack a smile. The people of Hyrule… seeing them as quirky as ever gave him strength. And he also happened to have a way he could help out here: Link's cognitive memories might be shot, but his unconscious memories were as sharp as ever. Mostly this came to his skills fighting and riding, but Link had been pleased to discover he was also a gifted cook, especially with the sort of meals that could be prepared with just a pot and a cooking fire. And with his ego already stoked by the successful victory, he wouldn't terribly mind flexing some of his other talents as well... He interrupted the sister's bickering with a quick, "If you've got the ingredients… I'd be happy to cook. We all have to eat, after all."
Nat cheered, Meghyn seemed more relieved that she wouldn't have to rely on her sister's (apparently terrible) cooking as she opened her pack and brought out some foraged vegetables. Link looked them over carefully… it was something he was getting used to as he processed his amnesia, certain bits and pieces of memory coming through as his mind reflexively brought up how to best dice or crush or boil different plants. Like a crack in a dam, the trickle of remembrance always made the hole a little wider, bits and pieces of his old memories coming through.
Sorting out a few endura carrots and some wild rice, he fiddled in his pack for some seasoning—he knew to travel with a full kit—and as he reached through his bag he remembered… the act of grabbing the materials made him remember cooking with these items with someone long ago and they talked about… about horses, yes. Silently, Link went to work dicing vegetables as the sisters watched in impressed silence, his skill with the cooking pot evidently as awe-inspiring as his swordsmanship.
Which… wasn't how it went last time, was it? No, she was- she was making fun of him, wasn't she? But in a nice way. Teasing, yes, teasing him about eating so many carrots that Epona must be getting jealous that-
Accompanied by the scent of the curry in the cookpot, the memory flashed into his mind so swiftly, Link almost dropped the spoon in his hand. He remembered… he cooked this for the Princess, for Zelda, after he'd found a little patch of wild carrots! It was… not so long before the disaster, and the memory took on a pang of bittersweet wistfulness as he thought of it. Zelda had teased him for how much food he'd made for just the two of them, citing his bottomless stomach, a frequent refrain of hers. He'd gotten her back, though, by putting in more Goron Spice than the Princess was prepared for, but, ever the prideful woman, she'd cleaned her plate and asked for seconds, tears streaming down her face as she insisted it wasn't too hot for her.
At the time, Link had thought about how funny it was going to be when he told Daruk about Zelda's fondness for strong curries, and how he would assuredly hurry to cook them something even spicier, but… but he never got that chance, did he?
A dolorous note. So many of his memories ended on one like that. Shaking his head, Link realized the curry was ready, and gestured for the sisters to present their bowls as he scooped a good helping out for them. Their eager smiles and generous compliments did a lot to bring Link out of his doldrums, and they did have a point: it smelled fantastic. It was hard to be too dour when sharing good food with people, something that Link had always liked about cooking.
"So!" Nat asked, her voice cheerful, "You're some kind of, what, traveling seeker? Treasure hunter? Surely you're not out here just searching for beautiful maidens to rescue..." she added the last bit with a flutter of her eyelashes.
"Ignore my sister," Meghyn grumbled. "But… I'm curious, too. What's got you out in the wilderness?"
Link shrugged. "Got a job to do," he said, "Gotta go out into the wilds to do it."
"A man of few words..."
"I've been called that before."
By Zelda. At first, his silent duty to shadow her was an annoyance, and she responded in kind. His laconic answers to her demands only made her anger worse. But… with time, they'd managed to turn things around.
But… now was not the time to keep his mind going back to that. He was in the present now. The future. The far future, and he had a duty to Zelda now, and that was the duty he had to the people of Hyrule.
So he gave them a slight smile, something to take the edge of his more threatening appearance. "So," he asked, "any luck with the truffle hunting?"
The looks on their faces told Link that this was a matter of some… sisterly disagreement.
"So much!" Nat cheered. Meghyn just winced.
Link nodded. "Been a while since I'd been truffle hunting," a very long time, "but I remember the best spot for them was ub in Hebra. The mountain's particularly unwelcoming to travelers, so the truffles get to grow big."
The look on Meghyn's face carried such a crushing weight of why would you tell my sister we need to go to the frigid mountains that Link felt almost bowled over by it. If Ganon could weaponize such a judgmental stare...
Shaking his head with a wry chuckle, Link just went back to eating his curry. Good stuff, but if memory served him right, he could do better… there was always a little bit he didn't get quite right, but still, that just meant more opportunities to experiment. To try out new things. He was the Hero, after all, braving the unknown… even if it was a recipe, and a once-known unknown at that, it was all part of the description.
"You know what'd help pass the time?" Nat suddenly asked. "A good campfire song!"
Link looked up from his bowl with an unamused expression.
"Not much of a singing voice," he admitted. He'd already triggered that memory, back at the stables. Had been invited to sing by Kass. Immediately set off a memory of… of being invited to sing and the Princess… not letting him live it down.
Not that he could explain that objection to the rather forceful Nat. "Aww, come on!" she pleaded, "We've got no other way to while away the time, and singing while seated around the campfire is one of the few fun things we can do."
"Not if it attracts monsters," Link replied gravely, reflexively reverting to his field training.
The girls both gave him a bemused glance, their eyes darting to the Master Sword on his back and the powerful bow beside it. In their eyes, nothing short of a Lynel could really threaten him, and… well, they were pretty much right. Grumbling about how they still couldn't be too careful even if they had a skilled warrior with them, he finally conceded to adding some music to the evening.
Singing was out, so Link started to whistle, a quiet, soothing song. He couldn't quite remember how it went, but he remembered it used to be quite the ear worm. The sort that he heard all the time back in his day. Heh, he seemed to recall that the Princess had once complained to him that every time they went back to the Castle, she heard someone singing it before she even made it through the town.
But his reverie was cut short as he was interrupted by Nat. "Wow… I don't think I've… I've ever heard that song before. It's quite beautiful."
Link paused, a fortunate interruption as he couldn't quite remember how the next part of the melody went, realizing that a song about the beauty of Hyrule Field on a summer's day might have fallen out of favor after the Calamity. Too many painful memories when the field was now dominated by monsters and crazed Guardians for anyone to think of singing about it.
"It's an old song," was all he quietly said.
"Actually…" Meghyn continued, "didn't Granny used to sing a song like that? It was… it's hard to remember, cause she passed when we were really young, but… she learned it from her mom. And… something about the Hero?"
"Oh yeah," Nat added, " Hey, with the blue tunic and the fancy sword and shield, you look a lot like that painting of the Hero that Beedle was trying to hawk. Hey!" Realization shone in her eyes. "Are you… are you one of his descendants?"
Link should have just waved it off, but the painful nostalgia of the moment tripped him up.
"Oh wow," Nat cried, "Oh wow, that is so, so cool!"
But her sister seemed to realize that Link didn't share the enthusiasm, even if she didn't realize the true reason why. She whispered something to her sister as Link lowered his eyes. He was… old enough to be a grandfather, if you measured it that way, to have descendants who'd take up the family- take up his failure, and seek to right it.
If only he had… if he had…
There really wasn't anything he could have done differently, was there? And yet, some part of Link couldn't accept that as a fact. He was the Hero, and, like all those heroes before him in that celebrated lineage, heroes of Time, Twilight, the Winds, it fell to them, to him, to be the one who averted calamity.
Hard thoughts to rest on.
But he had company—there was no time to mope about his regrets. He looked back up from his bowl to meet the sisters' eyes, slightly chagrined for their perceived offense. He shook his head and muttered an apology. It hadn't been their fault.
Nat gave him a faint smile. "You know, it's… getting late." Link's eyes glanced to the sky, to see she was right, with the sun sinking below the horizon. "We should get some sleep."
"Nat's right. Thank you for dinner," Meghyn said, softly, "and for rescuing us, too, of course."
"And thanks for the tip on truffles!" Nat cheerfully added, which did raise his spirits a little.
Link laughed as Meghyn gave him a lesser, but still powerfully peevish look. But it was good, good to see that, even in this calamity-marred world, that there could be such simple troubles like reckless sisters. As Link unfurled his bedroll, he took a moment to think about how much of life just… kept on living. They'd held the line, he and Zelda. Bought time for the world, for the people he was now bidding goodnight to live their lives. And now he'd finish what they'd started. Late, but… permanent, this time.
Staring up at the stars, Link took a glance up to draw the constellations. They came to him easily, almost reflexively: the Big Octorok and Jabun and Ashei's Bow and the Three Sisters and every other one he could see. A hundred years later, and they hadn't changed. Hadn't hardly changed a bit, not from when he first learned them in his training as a Royal Guard. For navigation, in case they needed to survive in the wild or at sea.
But Zelda had also pointed out the constellations to him more than a few times. When they were out together, traveling the Kingdom, feeling the clock of her 17th birthday coming up, and yet, in those moments of stargazing, time seemed to stand still. The two of them lying in the grass or the sand, looking upwards into the darkness… Link remembered those moments. Even if there were still so many holes in his memory, so much that he'd forgotten in those decades asleep, he still remembered those.
And they were still there, in the sky. Just like he was still here, and, in a far off castle… she was still there. Holding a monster off to give him time, but waiting, waiting for him to arrive and make right what he wasn't able to do a century ago.
Well… he'd have plenty of work to do. But tomorrow. The work would be there tomorrow. Right now, looking up at the stars, there was really only one option available to him.
He closed his eyes and went to sleep.