Mountains that claw the sky and burn the clouds. Lakes so deep the abyss of the bottom draw your gaze in like a spiral. Darkness leaden with iron-richness suffused over decay. Sand that twisted words and tore the world apart. The smell of fire, hot metal and exhaustion, but no vision came with these scents.
I've never seen these places.
"Well, now I'm showing you. These places are where we'll find the Old Ones."
The Great Fairies?
"Something like that."
He concentrated on the slideshow again, admiring the spiny spires of ancient and jagged earth, the placid, pebbly shore of a deep pool, and recoiled at the unpleasantness awaiting in the darkness, cowered at the thought of destructive sandstorm and the last smells that wafted by his mind's nose made his hair prickle all over his body. Suddenly, the way Navi floated upside down before him in the infinite closed vault of the dream startled him and the bubble surrounding them projecting all five images at once shattered and down he fell. down into
Jarring alert, Link breathed deeply and confirmed a position on his back upon the strawtick mattress. The fire was embers glowing ruddy in the clay oven, but the heat radiating was a reassurance to the clammy youth regaining bearings.
So much change, and so fast, he pouted, not for the first time, but the wonders he kept learning about in the Hylian world were enough at times to distract him from his sense of baselessness. Not tonight. He was going to wander forever with no home of his own, without anyone… However, the tickling presence of a sleepy fairy in the rafters poked the back of his brain with familiarity.
"We shared a dream for awhile," she whispered to him.
And who else in his world could make such a claim? The boy smiled in the dark and curled up with his fur.
No arrangement of his body under the blankets was comfortable enough to let Link drift back into sleep, and he watched the hearth turn to ashes and sparks in the early morning. He wanted to recall the vistas Navi projected, but despite his effort, only the maps of the Lons and the scribbles of the Knowing Bros' story illustrations appeared. Tired of trying, he swung his legs to the floor and his feet carried him to the convenient night basket in the corner for his bladder's sake. Then, he straightened his rumpled tunic, tied on his belt and pouch and padded on hunter's instinct and quietly operated the latch of the door. It swung on oily hinges with the promise of a new world to explore.
Link stared at the common room of the Longhouse, moved that a structure of wood could be erected on such a scale, counting eight heavy beams from one end to another, five doors filling the sections between the supports. Several pits contained stoked hearths down the middle of the hall, contained by low stonewalls and detached flutes suspended above to draw smoke out of the house.
"Shall we go see the horses?" Navi inquired silently, joining him at the lintel.
That would be good. He agreed and his body slid away from the Lon's quarters into the early day. No one moved about the great cabin as he made progress to the closest set of doors to the outside on the left. How many were awake, he thought, smelling stale smoke from fires alone, none of the morning scents like kettle metal, coffee and pork fat. He didn't even know where the mess pavilion was, or the stables for that matter, but his nose could probably lead them easily enough when activity began at Homestead.
Link pushed open the biggest set of double doors at the end of the Longhouse, more than embarrassed by the deafening creaks of the hinges, mortified when he saw a door in the central halls fling into empty space and produce a heavyset man still rumpled in sleep. Before he could observe a reaction, Link made it outside and had the doors closed, but would that really save face? He never should have left the room, and scowled at Navi for her idea.
He heard no mental words from her, but the fairy's expressively pinched brow communicated clearly the boy made his own decisions.
Those awake and in view of the Longhouse entrance saw red-faced, furtive foreigner slip into foggy morning, alert with ears pricked and nose in the wind like a proper wolf, ignoring the inquisitive natives he must hear going about the daily opening procedures of a ranch and farm, mill, dairy and blacksmith. According to the rumors, he rose with the sun and kept to himself after an episode with a peahat that took part of a finger. Though curious, the Clan kept on their own paths, less trusting of the boy and more than wary of Talon's warning.
Link's nose directed him across a foot-flattened swath of ground, with his back to the rising sun, and on all sides great structures similar to the Longhouse stood squatly, unrecognizable tools and materials strewn, to Link's eyes, carelessly, but there may be organization to his ignorance. He concentrated on the grassy dung smell of the animals he was seeking, the tendril of scent on the wind pulling him closer to the house most like the stables at Cottonwood Camp.
Whinnies and knickers greeted his presence when he opened the stable door. Scanning the sort-of-familiar faces of the beasts he'd come to know, he sought one pair in particular, and was pleased to see them not far from the entrance.
"Morning, Epona," he whispered to the little mare beside her doppelganger mother. Her liquid eyes lit up to see her playmate and she snorted her wind in surprise for Navi's bright light, unseen out on the plain.
"Horse," the fairy addressed curtly.
Sometimes, I think you're mean just to be interesting, Link thought, amused by the apparent indifference between his two companions. Navi shrugged disinterestedly.
He led the unencumbered yearling further down the aisle of the stable and through the horse-sized doors that opened into the gray promise of a storm. Once outside, Link mounted Epona in an easy leap, practiced by now for two weeks, and like a natural Lon, headed for the front gate to go for a ranging run in the pearlescent and pewter dawn. They approached the gate, hesitantly, unsure how to operate this large door, but as it was, a man sitting by a little fire to the right of the exit waved to stop them.
"Ya sure ya want to go out with the storm movin' in?" the stout man queried. He squinted and studied the stranger openly. "Link, right?"
He gave a guarded nod.
"I understand yer real…independent. But trot back the way ya came, and past the Gathering Fire, yall'll find the loop, and you can run," he apologized with a compassionate grin.
"Guess if you insist," Navi barked for the both of them.
The man snorted without amusement. "Storms move fast." He would not budge.
The trio turned as instructed and passed a smoking fire pit surrounded by logs and chairs, numerous enough, they suspected, to accommodate at least half of the adults in camp. A beaten track of dirt leapt into focus beyond the pit, and Link was thrilled to see it stretch across the finite field of Homestead. Now he saw and heard a few other riders running and trotting the path, and the urge to join them hit boy and horse in the same moment. Epona's hooves sped them along in delirious exercise for Link's recently calloused leg muscles, aching minimally, deliciously. Link had never felt so right in the forest as on the back of his newest friend, his birthright as a Hylian, participating so easily, with so little effort to who he was. By the time they were rounding the southern curve edged in fruit trees bearing leaves and buds, both horse and boy were sweating in the humid pre-rain atmosphere, and another lap around left them breathing hard. Epona slowed to a perky trot for one more lap, and poked back to the stable under Link's guidance, Navi trailing at her own pace, taking in the sights of the panoramic route.
He came back to the world on foot just in time to see Zephane carrying a basket to the smaller building beside the stable, and his stomach trembled as he imagined the line of red above her brow. He should talk to her.
But Link's confrontation went unplanned past the impulse to speak, and he was left speechless when she faced him, basket and eggs in hand. The clucking of the fowls filled the silence for him. Luckily, her tongue was not so tied.
"Mullick and the kids says you don't like them anymore," She said loftily, continuing to reach beneath cuccos, retrieving an egg or two and placing them in the basket on her arm.
What do I say, Link blurted to Navi. "Why is that up to me?" I don't want to hurt her feelings any more than I have. "So tell her that."
"I…I didn't mean to hurt anyone," Link admitted, shoulders curling. Zephane's blue eyes determinedly avoided his maimed finger. "And I just don't fit in."
Her brows popped. "Everyone likes you, though."
Link watched a cucco with a brown spotted breast, its bright black eyes observing him without prejudice.
"I like most of them, but…"
"You're different."
Zephane looked to the fairy, agreeing with a quirk of her chin. "He's very different. And wild. You're not a Lon, and you won't be like the farmers, or even the Townies or timberers. You won't fit in, but you can be you and they'll love you anyway. I get away with way more than I should cause…I'm me. I'm bossy, and I dream a lot, but no one really cares cause that's who I am." She furiously swiped eggs from beneath the hens, not belying the deepness of her confession.
The older boy backed away, nodding. "Thank you."
"Hmmf. At least get to know people before you stop liking them."
"I will." And he latched the door behind him. Then, he opened it again. "Meet me by the trees on the southern curve of the track?"
"The orchards? When?" Her forehead could not have scrunched any further.
"Tomorrow's sunrise?"
"I will," she replied, satisfied, mystefied.
Link shut the door finally.
"Well, there's the restless wanderer!" Talon saluted from the southern exit of the stables. "I hear you been ridin' the track already."
"I hope that's alright," Link closed the distance between him and the leader.
"Ya didn't hurt the little mare, right?" Link shook his head hurriedly. "Then you can ride, uh, what'd ya call her?"
"Epona."
Talon pursed his lips in approval. "You made a rider outta yourself, and on a rare horse, considering she's so young. We don't usually ride 'em till they're two, but you two are matched for the time being."
Link basked in the modest praise. "And we'll get bigger, won't we?" There was something he hadn't considered. As a Kokiri, he would stay this size, or would have stopped growing years ago, even. Now, he would be a mature adult in a few years or sooner. He hoped Navi knew something about what awaited him. Asking Talon…That was a last resort, he decided, keeping the ends of mouth turned up to divert his confusing thoughts.
Talon only chuckled. "I think so. Anywho, shall we begin the tour?"
"Not without me!" Malon complained from behind her father.
"Oh, wouldn't dream of it, dearest!" Talon bowed theatrically.
"What were you doing in the fowlhouse?" Malon asked as they headed past the Gathering Fire and Track.
"I was talking to Zephane."
Malon peered at him through slit eyes, but didn't say anything.
More and more people were joining the activity of the livening ranch, young girls with sleepy eyes carrying baskets of cucco eggs, boys of equal age toting cords of wood or tools in gophering favors. Riders were returning from the pasture in the south end of Homestead to stable horses after a night of watching the fenced in cows in milking condition, and riders heading to take their places. The fence that kept the homebound beasts was a more permanent construction than the traveling pens and even the thin fence of Cottonwood Camp, heavier cross beams stringing flapping ornaments.
And those in the pen were slightly different than those traveling on summer-rich plains, bearing heavy udders beneath bellies, some swollen in calf, and lanky old bulls meandered in hazy snorts of youth, providing hearty genetic strains of portly cows and meaty cattle. All cows, Link decided, smelled of herbal dung. Talon fondled the creatures who came to the fence, searching out treats for the cows in delicate condition, and Link couldn't help but smile as prehensile tongues snaked around in mucousy strand-bound mouths as they stomached the treats.
"They have four stomachs, you know," Talon reviewed as he patted the flanks presented to him.
"So the hands say, but I'd certainly be interested in their internals," Link suggested. Of all the animals in the Lons' possession, one had to be recently dead and unbutchered, Link reasoned.
"Heh, so we'll skip the dairy, and go straight for the butcher, then," Talon said, chortling at the ironic blend.
"Can we see the dairy, too?" Navi asked, following Malon walking along the fence towards the buildings connected most closely to it. She nodded with a positive expression, and led them unbidden to an open-air stable with curious gates installed around the perimeter. On one side of the paddock, black and white, brown and assorted ocher cows stood in the clamping gates while hands of Ranch hands worked the long teats of their udder bags, white springs of milk shooting from the tip into thin, tin buckets. When all four teats had not a dribble of milk left, the hands took their pail to the building adjacent, a white construction. Talon tapped one man on the shoulder, and he turned, and obliged his patron his bucket. A cup was produced from someone, filled in a single scoop to the brim and handed over to Link for sampling.
He put a hand on his hip and took a big swig, as he'd seen Talon do one morning at the beginning of their journey. The warm cream coated his innocent tongue in intense bovine essence, differing sharply from horse milk, richer, more sedentary and hardly taxed, tailored for calves instead of foals. He approved immediately and drained the cup to primal pride in the Natives. He offered the drop on the rim to Navi on an outstretched finger, and with surprising precise tenderness, accepted his share.
The whitewashed cabin ran long and low. Through the door, and Link gaped at the row of fireplaces that splayed out, each burdened with a silver stock pot of incredible size and quality, and wonders of wonders, each container held an amazing volume of fresh Lon milk! Despite the cool exterior, the pots of hot milk in various stages of warming in the flames made the little house humid, and even moreso for the team of women and men working to strain something from the hottest vats. They scooped with rigid little nets the little blobs of fat that danced on the surface of the white liquid, spooning their catch into buckets and tubs behind them.
"Here," Talon directed Link's gaze to a stick in a slot on the floor by the nearest empty, industrial hearth. A modest blaze ate cords and dried dung steadily, but when he pulled the lever, Link heard a whistling rush of air and the flame burst into roaring life! The lever was moved into position one and the fire died.
"How?" Link plundered immediately.
"Wind, harvested from outside by a little hood and underground tube. We have control over just how hot we get the milk. Around back, we have our wind plantation, more like a community of gophers."
This was technology with potential, Link sensed, intuition painting scenes of breathless fire starts, eased by clever traps and mechanics. More technology, he embraced, adding, not detracting, from his verdant encyclopedic wisdom.
Momentarily, another person joined the line of dairymen, removing full buckets and replacing them with empty receptacles. Malon followed the boy in the yellow vest behind the heaters and scoopers and into a hallway.
"There's a step down," she warned in lantern glow, as no windows provided sunlight. Amongst the steamy milk scent, Link detected earth, packed dirt and cool air drifted around his ankles and bare feet. The step came, and delivered him to a room where young ladies were plunging sticks into barrels in near unison from a gossip circle. The girls straightened upon their wooden stools when they saw Link enter their churnery, and with the flock intelligence of starlings and teenaged girls, chorused a syrupy, "Hellooooo, Link!"
"Morning," he greeted tentatively, hands ghosting a Kokiri finger-waggling wave, unwilling to let on to his discomfort with the synchronous greeting. Again, like little ducks, every girl giggled and passed dew-eyes to one another, as though he wasn't standing right there. One of them, the alpha, Link assessed the weasely, blemished vulpine, hushed them into anticipatory silence.
"Have you come to see us make the butter?" the alpha posed airily, unceasing of her duty, as was the boy with the hot milk fat, who was pouring that into low troughs to cool until another girl emptied her churn.
"I brought him, on tour," Talon interposed, friendly, fatherly, but not ignorantly. "I'll go ahead and let you and Malon explore the cheese rooms, me'n Anther will see ya at the butcher's." Malon accepted the lead unceremoniously, and the churners seemed to both hone in and loosen around the patriarch's daughter.
"This'll be the batch for the Royal order," Alpha volunteered. "You get to see firsthand how we make it with love." Another round of gaggling goslings.
Malon could only smile indulgently at Link's obvious inexperience in the favorite sport of young women bent on the torture of an agemate, but her actions steered the cross-browed victim to the next set of rooms, colder than the one before, and two steps presented themselves.
Down again, and they left the girls behind. A new earthen room's view was obscured by fabric-lined blocks of shelving, bearing curious round stones, to Link's eyes.
"Welcome, young masta, and Miss Malon!" They were received by a bent old man, his crickety back popping with each hip-jarring drag of a lame leg.
"And Navi," Malon included their other guest with a little flourish.
"Thet the fairy, then," he appreciated. "Bless ya for gracin' an olester with a sight thought long-gone, Miss Navi. I'm Folion Curder, and these are my pet experiments: the cheese!" He cackled in warm pleasure for his craft. "All flavors, all kinds, anything you'd want to taste, I have preserved in cheese, Masta Link. Eh, pray, do ya know what cheese is?"
"Solid milk, as I understand," the boy told him.
"Thet it is, but so much more! Here, I'll take you on a culinary tour of Hyrule!" Folion scooted away, gathering wheels here and there, muttering the names of herbs and provinces Link had never known. His belly rumbled, despite the cellar-and-foot smell. He saw, strung from the rafters, logs of string-wrapped dark materials, and while Malon turned to comment, she followed his gaze.
"Folion, are the meats good yet?"
"Eh? Meat? Oh, the cureys! Shore, shore, pull thet big 'un down, tha's right, the one with lovage leaves tied to it."
"All the bits that hang on to bones are scraped at butchering, and they're put into the intestinal casing of the cow with chopped organs and tallow, ooh, lots of salt and flavorins, then we smoke the meat in batches and it hangs down here in the curing room. We call them 'cureys.'" Malon modeled the banquet of non-perishable meat, and Link could almost taste it from the smoky, salty, herbal aroma filling his nose and gut.
Their lunch was set up on a block table in the corner free of shelves, and candles gilded the gloom bedecked with preserved vegetables, stems, onion globes and unseasonal flowers in artful bunches. As a child of floriology, Link admired the random assortment of dried blossoms, some from spring, like brown-purple irises, others, like waxflower, from late summer. To him, while the shapes were arranged to display their best attributes, it was childish and clumsy, lacking the fresh finesse of the Kokiri's gardens and cut arrangements. It did not occur to him that there may have been symbology deeper than the roots of the flowers and foliage chosen.
Folion's constant chatter about the sources of his prized flavorins shook Link away from floral reverie, and elegant curls of cured meat and perfect wedges and daubs of cheese were laid out for easy pairing consumption.
"Try the white cheese, first, our purest product of Lon milk."
After the recent sample of the aforementioned dairy, he picked up an egg-shaped slice of moist cheese and made an incisor-riddled indent, chewing slowly, tasting salt and cream, and daresay, the very grass the cow munched how long before?
He was hooked, and devoured the nosh in delight, and even Navi could pick at the crumbs of the wheels.
Folion handed him slices of curey. "Beef, and lovage, fennel seed and southern pepcorn." Link knew lovage, the flavorful cousin to celery, and fennel bulbs were reminiscent of licorice, but pepcorn added a pack he'd not tasted before, and a nasal heat he was unaccustomed to.
"Is this pepcorn like hotroot?" Link said to Folion.
"Eh, wassat?"
"A white tap root, with foliage of broad spears. White to green florets."
"Oh, horseradish!"He shuffled away, then produced a little jar of white paste, with caution. "We pickle our horseradish in salt and vinegar, and the bravest will eat until they're in tears." A little loaf of brown bread was a hearty enough vessel to provide ballast to the spicy spread, and Link spoke to Navi of taking these good flavors with them, to have them all the time.
"Like your breath needs to get worse," she barbed.
Malon too, gorged on bread and cheese, even a slice of onion, to keep things moving, she said brownly, but Link let it pass and continued to partake of the hazelnut-studded fontine.
Though, he could have stayed to try every flavor Folion Curder could offer, Link and Malon and Navi bid the man to Nayru and left him, the cellar, the starry-brained churn-girls and humid milk house behind to find Talon.
"He said the butcher, but I'm more inclined to a stroll to our gardens," Malon pleaded, patting her stomach. Link agreed. Offal and blood had a unique smell, and he'd rather not face it on a completely full belly.
He and Navi, however, shared a thrill and disappointment and the swelling, severe rows of forced crops Malon deemed "the gardens." Thrilled for the sheer abundance and amount of produce that would be harvested later, both foresters did not yet have esteem for the neat, economic tilled rows. Saria's beautiful home, and the beginning of a life project for Link beckoned in beautiful memory, unlike the groomed and protected plants of an industrial civilization, stark in the sunless light. The trio of gourds, beans and stalks of something growing together in weed-choking harmony pleased him.
Clouds were still gaining ground, but their cargo of rain was not at breaking point, and the plainspeople were glad for the chance to work uninterrupted by a thunderstorm.
Link and Navi were taken indoors anyway, as the mills were between the wide fields of flax, hemp, pumpkin vines, corn, beans, cotton, potatoes and root veggies like carrots and turnips and parsnips, each planted, watered and fertilized accordingly. The textile plants were grown to maturity, harvested and stored until the ladies of the mill could process it further. Huge bats of flax fibers, rolls of hemp string and ginned cotton awaited their busy hands and machines. All foot-operated, the spinning wheels and combing plates were gears of mystery to Link who could hardly follow the intricate workings that turned raw product into amazing quantities of usable weaving materials. From the bats, the string was sent to the triple-yard spanning loom where it was shuttled into fabric by a tiny wooden sparrow and paddles. He marveled at the light, newly woven, virgin-white linen, mind racing with the tunics and pouches and belts he could make to imitate the more interesting Lon fashions.
Since the adoption of his green tunics, Link wasn't feeling any pressure to comply completely with the inherited sense of what looked good, but among the jackets, sashes, wrappings and skirts, he was compiling his own ideas about what he'd like to present to the world as his image. Malon usually wore supple leathers and blouses, mirroring Talon in feminine style, though both were muted in comparison to Gerick's flashy embroidered lapels and turquoise-bedecked vests.
His unvoiced thoughts materialized when Malon showed them the dyes. A rainbow wall of glass jars containing every possible hue lined a chamber away from the clacking looms and spinners, but one sun-touched shade of emerald caught his eye, and let out a suck of wind.
"Ooh, yeah, I like it," Navi purred, and sidled up to his shade, studying the distorted reflection. "Can we use it?"
Malon hesitated, "I wouldn't want to interrupt anyone…"
"I'm free, what do you need?" voiced a young woman behind them.
"Link likes this color dye, Allain. Can we make him some fabric?"
Allain's dainty fingers removed the jar from the shelf. "We haven't used this in a few years. Market'll be lookin' for something new. Why not? We'll start it soaking tonight, then tomorrow afternoon, we should be ready for finishing."
At that moment, the roof shook with a thunderboom and the slick schuss of a downpour on shingles.
A/N: Hope everyone's enjoying and picking up the threads I'm laying for this story's theme.
Also, I'm incorporating elements, like Link backing away from Saria in game as realized with Zephane, the special cucco game of Talon's, etc, as subtly (or not) as I can. I've implied that the Princess has the story a little mixed up, but most of the details are there when you look close enough.
