"-and then you showed up, and I was unable to tell you what was going on. You know the rest", Sidon finished translating Link's words to the guards.

The guard Link had ran into had apologized profoundly for his inability to understand Link, and seemed to still think it was his fault the Vaatian got away. Link felt sorry for him, but there was little he could do to help. At least the other one still had her head in the game, and was taking notes.

"I see. Thank you", she said as she finished writing. "Our apologies for letting things escalate like this. We were on the watch-out for Vaatians, but we didn't know they wore disguises. They have never done that before, nor have they attempted a heist during the daytime. I'm sorry you got involved."

Sidon gave a tight, somewhat pained smile and waved his hand dismissively. "We're just glad we were here to stop the situation from getting worse. Now, could I trouble you to fetch a medic, please?"

"Of course. My partner will stay here to guard you", she said, saluted, and left.

Link rubbed the bridge of his nose. Why he had thought for a second that he wouldn't have to get involved in the Vaatian business was beyond him.

'I'll see if I can't get my sword off the floor', he signed to Sidon, and stalked off, leaving him with the remaining guard and Librari. At the very least he needed to make sure he was ready if anything else suddenly came up.

He walked over to the icy patch where his sword was stuck and stared at the frozen weapon in contemplation. The ice had not melted at all during this time, so it was clearly magical and was not going to do it on its own anytime soon. Time to get creative, then. At least he had become a master of that skill during his previous adventure.

The Vaatian had used a fire spell of some kind, judging from the burnt remains of a scroll. So, he needed fire, potentially the magical kind. He had his fire arrows, but his supply was limited and he might need them later for a much more dire situation. He could start a fire, but he would need something to burn and he wasn't sure if non-magical fire would be enough anyway.

His eyes wandered around the room, and landed on the lantern of the child Hero. It was burning. Librari had said it never went out, so it was definitely magical.

Perfect.

Link went over to it and picked it up. The moment he did, he saw a vivid image of it being used to melt ice blocks, and heard the same voice from before – from his strange vision while looking at the statue – even say as much. Huh. At least it was guaranteed to work, then. As a side note, he needed to tell Zelda he was hearing voices and seeing memories again. He was pretty sure these ones weren't even his own, which was worrisome.

He shrugged the thought off for now, and took the lantern over to his sword. He held it close to the ice and concentrated, and what do you know, the ice melted instantaneously. He grinned, picked the sword up, and gave it a good shake to get most of the water off.

Finally something was working out again.

He dried the sword on his tunic and sheathed it, and then went around the room, melting each ice spot littering the place. He noted that the guard returned with another Minish, and they made a beeline to Sidon. Link paused his work to watch the healing process begin, Sidon participating like he had at the Magic Academy yesterday. Good, that was being taken care of.

By the time Sidon was healed, Link had not only melted all the ice, but had also tidied up the place to his best ability – and picked up his boots while he was at it. He wasn't usually the tidiest person, but he had needed to do something useful to keep himself too busy to dwell on his failure or to worry about Sidon.

Link put the mole mitts back on their pedestal and turned around when Sidon walked up to him with a cheerful smile. "Link! I got to practice healing again."

Link couldn't help an incredulous smile of his own. Sidon had had a dagger on his thigh and this whole disaster in general had happened, yet he was still cheerful as ever. Then again, this was one of the reasons Link had fallen for him.

'That's great', Link said, and checked the recently healed spot. A few scales were missing, exposing bare red skin, but there were no other signs of a stab wound ever having been there. 'Is it sore?'

Sidon shrugged. "A little. Nothing you need to worry about. Now, what's our next move?"

Wasn't that the question?

'We can't give chase, we won't be able to recognize the Vaatian and we don't know where she's going', Link said. 'We don't know if we were the targets or if they wanted Librari, or maybe even the cap. So we can't stay here, and just have to trust the guards to protect her better.'

That was a bitter elixir to swallow. His heroic nature didn't like it at all. But needs must.

'Our best move is to continue our journey without any delay and maybe hope to find the Vaatian hideout on our way. Histori said it was probably in the Lost Woods.'

Sidon nodded with a frown. "Sound plan, except for the part about the Vaatian hideout. I don't think we should involve ourselves any more than we have to. I sympathize with the Minish, but this is not our battle. If they wanted our help, they would ask for it, I'm certain. At the very least we should talk to Gentari and volunteer our services instead of acting on our own. That's the polite and diplomatic thing to do."

Link gave him a blank look, but said nothing. He knew Sidon was right. Probably. But he didn't like it one bit. For one, it was still a struggle for him to accept that not everything was his problem to solve, especially when he had already been attacked once. Another thing was asking for permission to act when he knew the necessary details already; it was one thing to volunteer to help in order to learn what he needed to solve the problem in question, and a completely different thing to go tell someone he was doing a thing when he didn't need more info. Zelda had tried to mold him into a proper knight again during their time together rebuilding her kingdom, but he had grown too wild during his adventure to be able to be tamed anymore. It had taken him his whole adolescent life of training to become a knight, but only a memory loss and roughly a year to unlearn all of the discipline.

He wasn't about to waste their time having an audience with Gentari.

'Fine. No looking for the Vaatians. But we can and will punch them in the face if we encounter any.'

Sidon laughed, and gave Link's shoulder an affectionate pat. "Yes, we can most certainly do that! Let's go say goodbye to Librari and ask her to apologize to Histori in our stead for not doing the same with her."

Link simply nodded.

ooooo

It took them a disappointingly short time to get out of the city. Even though they really had to leave, Link would be lying if he said he hadn't wanted to explore it more in-depth. It was such a big city with so many interesting shops, workshops, and sights. He had wanted to go deeper into the rock and see what it was like beyond the city hall, in the deeper depths. He had wanted to take a proper look at the outer city, since they had spent most of their time in the inner one. But oh well. Definitely next time. He'd be visiting Sidon here often during his magic studies, so maybe it was for the best that there were still sights to be seen. Sidon could probably even be his personal guide at that point.

That thought brought a smile on Link's face as they finally stepped out of the city gates and back into the road. They had been informed that they had missed the mouse cart to this direction by an hour, so it'd take them three or so hours to reach the resting spot between the cities. They might still get lucky and be able to catch one from there to hasten their way to the next city, and if their luck lasted Slateri would still be there, although Link wasn't holding his breath for that.

They walked down the well-worn Minish path, chattering away. Link made damn sure to use his voice the entire time, both because they were alone again and because he was bitter about earlier. Maybe he'd be able to speak to random people again if he just got used to vocalizing first.

The three hours went by fast. They had to make a small detour at one point because there were stray ants on the path and they weren't keen on seeing whether they'd be friendly or not, but other than that they didn't run into any trouble. A mouse cart back to the capital passed them two hours in, filled with happy looking Minish. Link couldn't help but be slightly wary until they were long gone – after all, any of them could have been disguised Vaatians. Although it was quite honestly more likely that the cart they had missed earlier had had their escapee on it, and Link wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Regardless, they arrived to the flowery resting spot in a timely manner, and were pleasantly surprised to discover what amounted to a large barbecue party. Most of the adult Minish around the resting spot – no, rather an actual camping area – were around large, lit fire-pits, holding skewers of food over them, or using the hanging pots that were fixed into rotatable metal poles for cooking their food. Once something was cooked, it was shared after the cook took the portion they wanted for themselves. It was like the entire camp was one big family, overriding the obvious actual families and cliques around.

Link and Sidon looked at each other with large smiles, and wasted no time joining everyone, bringing their more exotic offerings gathered from the previous towns and from the big people world with them.

Some of the Minish were wary, some were curious, some were plain excited, but most importantly, whatever they felt about the famous big people, nobody turned them away or left in a hurry. And food was shared enthusiastically.

Link decided that this was the highlight of their adventure and it couldn't possibly get better than this. All the food. All. The. Food. He got to taste many different things cooked by many a different Minish, and it was all in one meal. He hadn't had this large a selection to sample from since Zelda's coronation.

It was decided. He would travel all around Hyrule, collect all the different fruit, meats and herbs, and return here to do some mad food sharing the first chance he got. It was only fair. And he'd get to eat new things again.

He signed as much to Sidon as they sat on a log eating their haul. Sidon had found himself some roasted frog tongue and even a boiled chunk of sneaky river snail, miraculously enough. His stomach should be more than happy with that.

"That's an excellent idea!" Sidon said with a wide smile as soon as he had swallowed what had been in his mouth. "Perhaps we can do that together before I apprentice to Mageri? I should have my Sheikah Slate's warp catalog more than ready for some quick food gathering at that point, wouldn't you say?"

Link nodded, and leaned contentedly against his boyfriend's side as they continued eating, peaceful and unbothered by Vaatians or any other pesky troubles.

Just Link, Sidon, and good food. Simply perfect.