Link awakes to late morning sun shining in through the window. He can hear conversation as he emerges onto the landing. He can see a black-and-red figure through the open door opposite, and his hand is on his sword hilt before he registers that it's Paya, her earnest expression incongruous with the sinister style of the outfit. Claree, who he hadn't even noticed there, tuts at Paya for moving and puts another pin in the fabric. Link takes his hand off his pommel and nods at the pair as he passes.
Downstairs, Impa is conferring with Dorian. Link takes the chair opposite, plucking an apple from the fruit bowl.
"You're going to try infiltration then?" he asks. "Paya certainly looks the part, but will that be enough? How close-knit are the Yiga?"
"Close enough to realise they don't know her if she speaks," Dorian says with a frown. "But from a distance it should suffice."
"I've asked Claree to create additional disguises, based on the uniform we recovered," Impa adds. "We have little enough idea what will await you when you find the Yiga stronghold; it pays to be as prepared as we can."
Link nods, chewing thoughtfully. "Anything I can help with?"
Impa blinks up at him, considering. "Actually, there is."
Purah is the only one in the lab when he arrives in Hateno. It takes him a moment to put his finger on what's different since his last visit. Ah - she's a little taller; her face a touch more slender. If Link had to guess, he'd put her at about nine years old in physical age now. She pays him no mind as he enters, bent almost double over a machine core she's stripping down for parts.
"Is your experiment wearing off?" he asks her, picking up one of the tools on the table to fiddle with.
"I've been working on undoing it. More gradually this time, since overshooting in this direction could have rather unpleasant consequences. Pass me those clippers, would you?" she asks, face still buried in the mess of wiring. "No, the other ones."
Link does, and after a few more minutes she straightens up, cracking her back out as if she was still over a hundred. She looks him over. "I see you've recovered from your misadventure. That's good; Jerrin was worried."
That's... surprisingly diplomatic. "You're not going to ask how I injured myself?"
She blinks at him. "Would the specifics be of relevance to any of the projects I'm working on?"
"I doubt it."
"Then no. I assume you're here to add to that workload?" She plants her hands on her hips and cocks her head at him, which is largely ineffective on her still-childish frame. Link may be short for a Hylian, but she barely comes up to his chin.
"You told me to come back after I'd seen Robbie," he reminds her. "But also yes, I am. Impa's orders."
"Oh, yes - the cryonis improvements. I've tweaked it so it will work on things other than liquids. You won't get a solid freeze on anything else, but it should still be enough to slow down a monster I'd think. Pop your slate in the guidance stone and I'll upload the patch. What does my sister want?"
Link hands over the dead Yiga's belt. "She wants to know if you can replicate this."
Purah plants herself back on her chair (the legs, he notices, are resting on stacks of books to bring her up to the table top) and sweeps her previous project away to put the belt under her magnifying glass. She pokes around for a while, prising the back off the buckle with a knife to examine the mechanism inside.
"Hmm. It's modified Sheikah tech. I can clone the software but you'd be better taking it to Robbie to get the actual duplicates made, his fabricator would make much shorter work of it than I could by hand." She pauses. "Don't tell him that."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"Make yourself useful and pour me a new cup of coffee on your way out. Come back tomorrow."
Link's about to head back to Kakariko when he remembers the house. He doubles back to the market pick up some more things - a water jug, candles, a few eggs and some slices of bacon - and heads up the hill.
Bolson and his crew have done a good job on the place. There's a sturdy new door and windows, all well-fitted to keep out draughts. The old wooden table in the kitchen has been sanded down and revarnished. The range and floor have been swept, and a woven rug placed down. There's a small sleeping loft overlooking the main room, and underneath that is a deep wooden tub, tucked around the corner for privacy. Overall, it's a pretty standard one-room cottage: basic but homely. Still, he's pretty sure the old Link never owned a house. Link-the-Champion with his magic sword had gone straight from the family estate to military barracks, and from there to an assigned room close to Princess Zelda's. Score one for new Link.
He heads back outside. Around back there's a lean-to for tools and firewood, and a stable and outhouse further away from the house - the latter thoughtfully pre-stocked with last year's farming almanac. Link doesn't think this parcel of land is particularly similar to the estate on which he was born, but it's apparently enough to stir up little snippets of his early childhood as he wanders. Splashing with his father in the pond, tailing his mother as she gathered herbs to make a sweet-smelling sachet for his pillow. Watching over Aryll as she slept, cocooned in blankets, in the shade of a tree.
It's starting to drizzle as he heads into the foothills. There he finds a little shrine, of the sort dotted all over Hyrule. Squat, rounded statues of a man and a woman shelter beneath a tree, worn smooth with time and covered in moss. Zelda, he recalls, had a theory that they represent spirits of nature, perhaps even of the trees under which they are invariably found. For some reason, that thought springs a vivid recollection on him. He sits heavily down under the tree as it washes over him, while the rain patters on the branches above.
Would you have chosen a different path?
He runs through his routine with the sword, her question playing in his mind on repeat. He's tempted to argue the entire premise. What does 'choice' even mean, in the context of Fate? But that's not a helpful answer. He can give her bare honesty, if she's risked enough pride to ask. He sheaths the Master Sword and sits next to her beneath the tree, looking out over the rain-swept hills.
"I don't think I could have chosen to be anything else. I didn't - the sword didn't choose me," he says, stumbling to find words for something he's only experienced as a bone-deep feeling. "I was meant to find it. Even if I'd been born into a sailor's family, my path would have led there somehow. Or - maybe I couldn't have been born into a sailor's family. Maybe that's all part of it, the same way you had to be a daughter of the royal family."
Zelda had clearly given up on receiving an answer, and looks towards him in surprise. "Did the voice in the sword tell you that? You never answered before, when I asked if you could hear it."
He makes a vague noise of disagreement. "It doesn't speak, exactly. But when I drew it the first time, I could sense how right it felt, for us to be reunited. It wanted to be drawn, and I can only think of one reason why it would need someone to wield it again here and now."
"Then you believe the prophecy? We truly are to be the generation that must repel him once more?"
"Don't you? Your father must, if he's engaged the full efforts of the Sheikah on reactivating the guardians and the Divine Beasts."
"I... it is one thing to read the signs, but if what you say is true - if the sword allows itself to be drawn only when it is needed to fight the beast ..." she trails off, looking away from him, hands clenched in her lap.
He can guess what thoughts consume her. If this is destiny, why has her power not awakened yet? Will she not need to train with it, as he had with the sword? He wishes he could help; wishes he could somehow transfer into her his utter certainty that the power will come. But Zelda is a scientist, and she won't be swayed by the conviction of others in things she cannot prove herself. This is a battle she must wage alone - all he can do is stay by her side as she does so.
Eventually, Zelda makes a conscious effort to pull herself out of her thoughts. "The sword can only know about lives where you claim it," she points out. "There could be lives where you aren't a soldier at all."
"Hmm. Perhaps I was a woodsman. Or a goatherd?"
Zelda smiles, bright and radiant. "Perhaps you were a chef in a past life! It would certainly explain your love of food!"
He laughs, pleased to see her in better spirits. "Speaking of food... we may as well eat if we're going to be stuck here a while."
After the memory ends he runs back to the house through the now-pounding rain, and closes the door behind him just as the first roll of thunder sounds ominously in the distance. He gets a fire going, and sits cross-legged in his underwear sipping barley tea, his sleeping bag tucked around him like a cloak while his clothes steam gently on the chair backs to dry out. When he turns in, the drumming of the rain on the roof eases him to a deep, even sleep. The image of the Champions sits safely on the bedside cabinet.
In the morning he gets an early training session in at the nearby shrine. This one seems designed to test his balance and reflexes, and he's pleased by the fluidity of movement returning to him now his ankle has healed. He's almost back to the house when a loud rustling catches his attention. The source of the noise turns out to be a portly Hylian, rummaging around in the long grass. He sits down heavily as Link approaches, wheezing slightly, with his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat.
"Can I help you?" Link asks, mildly amused. He hadn't made any effort to be stealthy, but the young man startles all the same.
"Oh - sorry man, I didn't think anyone lived here," he pants.
"I only bought it recently. What are you doing?"
"I'm looking for crickets," the man says, as though that answers anything at all. Link raises an eyebrow at him, and he elaborates: "I asked Prima, at the inn, what gift she wanted. And she told me she wanted a hundred crickets. So..." he waves a hand vaguely at the overgrown border of Link's plot.
"I see," Link replies, fighting to keep his face straight. "How many have you caught so far?"
The man slumps down with a sigh. "None. They're really fast!"
A week ago, Link would have bid the poor guy a good day and been on his way, but he thinks of the promise he made to himself in the fairy's grove. This guy's problems might not be on the scale of Ganon, but he clearly needs a friendly ear and Link has time.
"I was just about to cook some breakfast," he says. "Would you like some?"
He fries up bacon and eggs for them both with sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window. Rich smoke curls up to his nostrils; the gentle sizzle of the bacon cooking in the pan is faintly hypnotic. It's the most domestic thing he can remember doing, in this lifetime at least. The man - Manny, rather - looks around with interest at the house.
"It's good someone's finally bought this place," he says. "We all used to think there were ghosts here, when we were kids. You know - vengeful shades, of people killed by the Calamity." He waves his arms as he says 'vengeful shades'.
Link nods. He's quite certain, in fact, that at least one vengeful shade killed by the Calamity is watching. But he carries his ghosts with him; when he moves on again, it's not like Mipha or Daruk will be lingering here. "Well I've not run into any ghost problems so far," he says, sliding a plate over to his guest. "Let's hope it stays that way."
As they eat, he quizzes Manny about Prima, wincing inwardly at the guy's responses. "You know what I think? I think you need a fresh start" he says, pointing his fork at Manny for emphasis. "To focus on yourself for a while, rather than trying to be what you think Prima wants."
Manny looks doubtful. "Like how, though?"
"You're a watchman, you said? There's a new town being built out in Akkala, they'll definitely have work for you."
"Is that Bolson's new project? I'll think about it. And thanks for breakfast, man, it was great."
Link stops in at the future site of Tarrey Town first rather than go straight to Robbie, since he's been reminded of it. Plus, it's less than a mile walk from the closest shrine, and doing too many hops back to back with the slate makes his head feel weird. He's surprised to see the site completely transformed. The trees that crowded the promontory have all been felled, and are neatly stacked beyond the shoreline near the tents (and there are a lot more of those now, Link notices). A handful of rugged-looking Hylians are preparing a log for sawing as he passes, led by a man with a bushy moustache and eyes like chips of blue ice.
Down at the shoreline, Link spots Bazz and Gaddison spear-fishing. Rivan emerges from a dive as he watches; the Brigade's all here, then. And - is that Kodah and Kayden's daughter? He'd only met her briefly in the domain, but Finley's a distinctive silhouette; in that awkward phase of Zora adolescence where she's adult-shaped but still a head or two shorter than the others. A young Hylian man sits on the sand nearby, scrubbing clams.
The main cluster of activity seems to be around the large boulders half-embedded in the muddy ground. Bolson and a Goron Link doesn't recognise are discussing something while Karson and Hudson secure a rope around a particularly big rock. Further away, half a dozen other Gorons are hauling smaller ones out by hand. Link spots a tiny goron perched on top of the rope-lashed boulder - that has to be Pelison, so the hard-hatted foreman must be the brother, Greyson.
"I thought you only hired people called 'son'?" Link asks Bolson as he approaches, gesturing towards the Zora.
"They're subcontractors!" Pelison pipes up, and Bolson smiles fondly at him, reaching out with a finger to tip Pelison's hard hat down over his eyes.
"That's right! Swanson, Greyson and Gaddison are all direct employees of Bolson and Company, and they've brought their own crews in so my hiring rules don't apply. I'm just too excited about this development! This is going to be the crowning achievement of my glittering career!" Bolson's got his hands tucked up under his chin and his eyes quite literally shine with enthusiasm. Link had always thought that was just a figure of speech.
He lets Bolson take him on a tour of the site, pointing out where houses and streets will be, and the area marked out for the central square. Link takes pictures of everything, then goes to catch up with Gaddison and her 'crew'.
"You took the job, then?" he asks, and they all come over to greet him.
"I thought it was time for a change, and these guys wouldn't let me go all alone," Gaddison replies, leaning on her spear. "How's your thing going?"
Link waggles his hand in the gesture for so-so. "I stopped Vah Rudania from causing an eruption, so I've got that going for me. I'm... working on the rest."
Bazz claps him hard on the back. "Well if you ever need the Big Bad Bazz Brigade, you've only got to shout and we'll be there!"
"Thanks guys," Link smiles. "Though from speaking to Bolson, should I be calling you the Big Bad Gads Brigade now?"
Rivan, always the quietest of the group, chuckles softly at that. "I suppose Gads is technically the Boss now."
"As things always should have been," Gaddison says archly, elbowing Bazz playfully. The darker zora pushes her away by the face, and soon they're play-fighting in the shallows.
"They're such children, honestly," Finley remarks to Link with a roll of her eyes. "Come meet my boyfriend! I've told him all about how you saved the Domain from Vah Ruta."
When Finley's boyfriend, Sason, announces he's going mushroom hunting, Link offers to help. They head into the nearby copse with wicker baskets tucked under their arms.
"So how'd the two of you meet?" he asks as they pick their way up the wooded slope. "You don't see many Zora-Hylian relationships." He wonders whether that would be any different now, had he and Mipha married.
"We were penpals first," Sason says.
"Penpals?"
"A-huh. It's quite romantic, really. I found a letter in a bottle she'd written when she was feeling frustrated and alone, and it just really resonated with me, you know?"
Link nods, peering around a fallen log to add a few sunshrooms to his basket.
"So I sent a reply back with a merchant I knew traded up in the Domain. Told her to ask around for anyone who'd sent a message in a bottle. Finley wrote back again, and that was it. We were both smitten."
"How did you end up here with Bolson?"
"I knew we were meant to be together, so I saved up enough to leave my job, packed up and left for the Domain. When we heard some other Zora were coming to help build a new town here, it was just perfect. We could build a new life here, together."
Link smiles. Time will tell whether this odd couple makes the distance, but it's encouraging to see how Bolson's big idea is inspiring hope. Hope is certainly something Link feels he Hyrule has been missing for a long time now. He pushes his way through a thicket in search of more mushrooms, and stops short at the sight in front of him.
It's half-choked by overgrowth, but the little pond he's discovered is unquestionably a Fairy spring. By the foot of the trees standing sentinel around it, Link can see a blue-white spray of Silent Princess, and a faint glimmer of fairy lights hover nearby. Well. This was easier than he was expecting, when the Kakariko fairy had asked him to aid her less fortunate sisters.
Sason pokes his head through the gap. "Found something?"
"If you wanted a sign you all picked the right spot for a village, this is it," Link says, gesturing to the pond. "The spirit that lives here will keep your home in peace and health for as long as you tend to its grove, and offer it tribute. Food or coins, I mean. Not - anything else." He coughs, blushing lightly.
There's not much they can do right now, with the others all waiting on them for food, but Link pulls as much of the brush away from the water as he can before they leave. As they make their way back towards camp, Sason looks over to Link.
"Hey, can I tell you a secret?"
Link quirks an eyebrow at him.
"Don't tell Bolson, but - my name's not really Sason, it's Sasan. I think he misheard me and I haven't wanted to correct him. It seems weirdly important to him, for some reason."
Link cackles. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."