*spongebob narrator voice*: One Eternity Latér...

Quick recap! Emilia woke up in a casket and Link found her. They went to Impa, and Impa's granddad's sister Avera also woke up in a casket. The three of them are now beginning their journey to Hateno to see if Purah can help them figure out what's going on.

It turned out that having already teleported before didn't make the liquifying feeling any less weird—at least for Emilia. She was once again made unsteady by the sensory experience as she reappeared on the shrine just outside of Dueling Peaks Stable, but her two companions didn't even stumble a bit. The way they'd been standing around the slate—Link and Avera on one side, Emilia on the other—left her facing them, the shrine, and the mountains behind it, while they were facing the stable.

While they might not have looked to have been affected by the teleportation itself, the sight behind Emilia did look to affect them. Link grimaced at something over her shoulder, and Avera made a confused face as she looked out over Emilia's head, before her gaze fell around the same area that Link was looking at and her brows shot up.

Curious, Emilia turned her head.

Beedle was standing right at the edge of the shallow water around the shrine, looking at them with a slack jaw. Nobody else seemed to have noticed their appearance but him.

"...Wow!" he said—and Emilia couldn't stop the little smile that tugged at her mouth from how much he sounded like the Beedle she knew. "You can magically appear in places, but you two couldn't magic some clothes on yourselves yesterday?"

And just like that, her amusement washed away. Face burning, Emilia turned her head back and pursed her lips. She did not want to think about how she'd been seen naked by probably every person at this stable when Link had carried her unconscious body to it. Ugh.

"Yeah. Sorry for your eyes," Link said, giving him a faux-apologetic look.

Link clipped the Sheikah Slate back to his belt and took off toward the stable. Avera laughed softly at the exchange, then looked at Emilia expectantly. Emilia readjusted the blanket to cover herself up better—the way she'd been wearing it like a loose shawl showed that she'd gotten underwear, but she didn't want the stablehands to know that yet because she figured they might ask for it back then, and she wasn't ready to give it up quite yet—before she turned and followed after Link with Avera at her side.

They had decided to teleport here in a bid to not waste any hours of daylight unnecessarily taking the long walk back, and from there they were supposed to go get themselves some horses—so Emilia wondered why Link was heading straight for the stable as opposed to the plains surrounding it where the wild horses presumably were. But before she could question him or ponder it much, they made it up to the stable's receptionist, and Link asked to take out his horse that he'd registered and boarded last night.

While the receptionist jotted things down on some sort of paperwork form, his twin led them to go get Link's horse. A large paddock was behind the stable, stretching far into the field. A few horses were out ranging and grazing in it, along with goats and chickens—or cuccos, she supposed. The man brought them into the paddock and over to the stalls, which were back-to-back with the stable itself. Only one of the stalls was currently occupied.

As the man opened up the stall's door and led Link's horse out, Emilia was filled with awe. The horse was beautiful, majestic—and so much bigger than she'd expected. She'd always known horses were big, but simply knowing that as a fact held nothing to witnessing one's size firsthand. A rich, medium brown coat covered the horse's thick musculature, and lighter brown, nearly ginger hair fell elegantly over her neck. The only non-brown part of her was on her face, with an off-white spreading up from her nose before tapering off in a point between her eyes. Those eyes, large and deep brown, looked almost uncannily aware for an animal.

"Here she is," the man said, handing her reins over to Link.

Link held them in one hand while reaching out with the other to stroke the horse's face. She nuzzled her head into his touch, making a strange sort of purring noise. When the man began talking to Link about how his horse had been and how they'd outfitted her, Emilia became cognizant of her ignorance about the needs of horses. It was one thing, to think in an abstract way about getting a horse, and a whole other thing to realize what went into actually having one. She had so much to learn. All this stuff about saddles and cinches and bridles and bits and horseshoes and hay and ... stir-fry?

Emilia tuned back into their conversation as that word hit her, trying to catch what she'd missed out on in her musing of horse care. It didn't take her long to figure out, as the man continued talking about Link's horse, that the conversation hadn't shifted to human food—he'd said stir-fry because that was the name of Link's horse. Stir-Fry.

Of course he would name his horse after food.

Once the man finished giving Link his rundown on Stir-Fry, Avera spoke up to ask him if they sold or rented out any horses to help save them some time. Emilia felt a flash of hope at the idea, because if there was one thing she could not see herself learning, it was how to catch a wild horse in real life; she was certain it wouldn't be as easy as pressing in the L stick, tilting it forward, tapping the A button, and maybe mashing the L trigger if the horse needed to be soothed. But the answer, disappointingly, was a no—though the stablehand was quick to reassure them that horses around here weren't quite as wild as horses elsewhere, being only semi-feral, because more travelers passed by here for them to get used to. Emilia was fairly certain he only added on that last part because of the expression that must've colored her face.

They headed away from the stable then, Link atop his horse with Avera and Emilia walking together on their left side. Link said he would take them to the herd he'd gotten Stir-Fry from, echoing the stablehand's sentiments about the nearby horses being relatively tame. Emilia decided to take it, then, whether it was a false reassurance or not—she trusted Link's word over the stablehand's—although she remained somewhat nervous about the upcoming ordeal.

"So," Avera said, "this is all new to you, isn't it?"

"Huh?" Emilia looked up at her. "What is? The whole 'having to catch a wild horse' thing? Or ... the 'waking up in a casket' thing?"

She giggled. "I'll bet waking up in a casket was new to you, too. But I did mean about horses. You're not much of an equestrian, are you?" Though it was a question, she worded it like a statement of fact—apparently, it was that evident.

"Oh. Yeah... No. This is my first time even seeing a horse up-close," Emilia said, glancing over at Stir-Fry. "What about you?"

"I have a—" Avera stopped herself, her bright expression faltering. "...I had a horse. Over 150 years ago. He has to be dust, by now."

Pity and regret twisted in Emilia's stomach. "I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"Don't be. It's not your fault I'm alive again all this time later. And even if it was ... I wouldn't be upset with you. It's not like I wanted to die in the first place." She smiled down at her. "But back to you. You're obviously worried about getting a horse. What about it worries you?"

"I'm... I don't really know how I'm supposed to just ... jump, on a giant wild animal, and then ride it," she admitted, wringing the blanket where it wrapped around her sides. "I'm scared of getting kicked or bucked off, or it not listening to me and running off in the wrong direction or something."

"Well, it's almost a guarantee your horse won't respond great at first, but it'll still be okay. Promise. Unless horses have changed in the last century and a half, I'm pretty good with them, so I can help you and your horse out however you need. You don't have to worry about being inexperienced as long as I'm around."

"I can help, too," Link piped up from atop Stir-Fry.

"But you don't remember anything from before a couple days ago, right?" Avera said to him. "Do you still know anything about horses?"

"I might not remember everything about them, but I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing with them, at least. This feels natural to me." He shrugged and reached forward to pat his horse. "I caught Stir-Fry easy."

"Good. Then you've got two people to help you out," Avera said, looking back at Emilia. She then hunched over a bit so their faces were closer together and stage-whispered, "But you should probably ask me if you have any questions, not him," and she punctuated her sentence with a wink before standing back up straight.

Cheeks heating up again, Emilia nodded and ducked her head. She was grateful for the offers of help, truly, but she also resented the feeling of being the only clearly inept person in their group. Especially taking into account that Link, with his lack of memory, had more or less begun at the same place as her, and he'd already caught a wild horse all on his own, presumably without even fretting over it. She resolved to try her hardest to learn the ropes as quickly as possible so she wouldn't have to rely on them.

Suddenly enough to startle her, Avera called out, "Look! I think that's them!"

Emilia followed her line of sight, squinting into the distance when she didn't see any horses. Even then, she couldn't see anything out there but trees before a faraway range of mountains and a smattering of big dark gray blobs in the grass along the way...

It took her a second to realize what the gray blobs were. Not rocks, not ruins—Guardians.

Shivers ran up her spine.

It was strange to think how, playing the game, she'd long since become immune to fearing them; the second she got the timing for parries down, they became fun instead of scary. But the idea of facing one in real life...? Even from far away, she could already hear the foreboding piano in her head.

This was part of the reason she'd hesitated about going along with them, and it was already here. They'd barely even started. Now she was supposed to not get killed by the tank-sized mecha-spiders with laser beams attached to their heads, when all she had on her for protection was a pair of underwear and a blanket. No armor, no shield, hardly anything to hide behind in the vast expanse of the plains, and she wasn't a fast runner.

"Emilia?"

She blinked at her name, tearing her eyes away from the gray blobs. Everyone had stopped—Avera and Link were looking back at her, their expressions confused and concerned.

"S-sorry, it's just..." She swallowed heavily. "...Those are Guardians up ahead, aren't they?"

At the same time as each other, Avera looked at them and said, "Oh," and Link confirmed what they were with a "Yeah."

"I thought those were just chunks of shrines or weird rocks," Avera said. "I've only seen abstract depictions of Guardians on old tapestries, never a real one. They were all still buried when I was last alive."

"These ones are fine to pass by," Link said, directing his words more to Emilia than Avera. "All of them along the way to the herd are dead. Not sure about the ones farther out in the field where we're gonna be heading, but we're good for now. Promise."

Emilia released a shaky breath and nodded. "Okay."

"But later, if we come across ones that are alive...?" Avera said. "I don't know how to fight them," she admitted with a hint of shame in her voice.

"S'all right. We're not gonna fight them anyway. Once we start going past where I know we're good, we're gonna stay as far away from any of them as possible and get our horses to go as fast as possible." He readjusted himself on the saddle and motioned forward with his head. "Shall we?"

He nudged his horse back into walking, and Avera took off alongside him, while Emilia took another few seconds to get her legs moving again. She had to jog to catch back up with Stir-Fry's and Avera's longer strides.

Feeling calmer about the prospect of passing the Guardians—and, frankly, knowing that they were safe ... she was almost excited to see one up close—Emilia resumed looking out into the field for the herd. But still, even without getting distracted by the Guardians, she couldn't see any horses. Squinting didn't help any, either.

"So..." she started. "Uh. Where exactly are the horses...?"

"Right there," Link said, pointing ahead. "That's Stir-Fry's herd."

She squinted harder. Still nothing. Last time she'd gotten her vision checked, it was 20/15, better than average. It was odd that she of all people would be the one in a group struggling to see something.

...Or, it would've been if she was home.

"I think people from Hyrule might have better vision than people where I'm from," she realized aloud.

"Think we've got better hearing, too?" Link asked.

Emilia raised an eyebrow and angled her head, as if that would allow her to hear better. "Maybe…? Why, are you hearing something I'm not?"

"No, I'm asking 'cause your ears are different."

At that, Avera was craning her head over her again, eyes darting from one side of her face to the other. She pouted. "Are your ears different? You can't even really see them with all your hair…"

Rather than explain how they were different, Emilia reached up to pull her still-damp curls back behind her ears, and Avera's face lit up. It was like she was showing her a cute puppy or something instead of just ... ears. Not that Emilia was immune to finding ears cute herself—she found Avera's elongated ones particularly cute, honestly—but the reaction seemed a bit exaggerated for the circumstances.

"You're a Roundie!" Avera exclaimed. She promptly drew her brows together and tilted her head. "Which ... I feel like I knew already. Or I should've, at least. But I don't know if that's because of our connection, or because you don't look how anyone from Hyrule does..."

Emilia moved her hair back in place before dropping her hands. "A Roundie...? That's what you guys call us?"

"Roundie or Round-Ear, whichever. But either way," her grin came back in full force, "I've never met a Roundie before!"

"Same here. I-I mean, er—I mean the other way around. I never met a … Pointy-ie, before I got here."

"Pointy-ie..." Link repeated under his breath.

"It's only fair that you guys get a name based on the shape of your ears if my people do," Emilia said.

"So what do your people call yourselves if not Roundies or Round-Ears?"

"Um... Humans?"

"But us Pointy-ies are human, too." Link paused, and shot a glance toward Avera. "...Right?"

"Right," Avera said. "Hylian, Sheikah, Gerudo, Roundie—we're all human."

"Yeah, well… There are no other humans besides Roundies where I'm from, so we just use human for ourselves," Emilia said with a shrug.

"I had no idea there were any countries with just Roundies even left," Avera said. "I thought you guys were mostly wiped out besides a handful of you left in tiny little settlements here and there around the world."

Emilia felt a pang of guilt, realizing that they still believed her initial lie about merely being from a different country instead of a completely different world—but it was overshadowed fast by curiosity about what Avera meant. "Wiped out by what?"

"Interbreeding, mostly. Y'know, the Gerudo used to have round ears, too, but they developed the ears of Hylians after generation upon generation of interbreeding. I guess with how similar Hylians are to Roundies in the first place, it was pretty easy for you guys to lose all your own characteristics. I take it your home is really isolated...? But, wait—you knew what Guardians were. Where are you even from?"

Emilia opened her mouth, and very nearly blurted out that her home was in another world.

Besides it being important to the whole quest for answers they were on, she couldn't bear the thought of hiding such a core truth of herself from people she was going to be spending the next who-knows-how-long with. And now that Impa—Impa, the woman who seemed to look right into her soul to find the truth—believed her, she trusted that they would follow in Impa's belief, that she wouldn't have to worry about them thinking she was a crazy liar.

But she was already going to have to divulge everything all over again when they got to Purah, so in spite of the guilt gnawing at her, she chose to wait to say anything. She could come clean to Purah and Link and Avera at once ... and not make their upcoming journey to catch and ride horses through a field of Guardians that much more strained for herself. Wild horses and mechanical monstrosities were a bad enough combo on their own.

"...My home is really, really far away," was what she landed on saying. "I'll tell you about it later."

Things fell back into silence, then. After some time, Emilia looked up into the distance once more and finally saw the horses. There had to be at least ten together unlike the game with its herds of merely three or four, and some of them were clearly younger, which was another good reminder to not take everything from the game as gospel. But there was something that the game had gotten right, something Emilia might've guessed that it wouldn't have in actuality, and that was that one of the horses was actually, genuinely blue. It was arguably a bit more accurate to call it turquoise or teal with its green undertone, but still—a blue horse!

There were a couple of others with a more 'fantasy' color as seen in the game—namely, what looked to be a parent and child with pink and white splotches, like strawberry cows—but Emilia's heart was already set.

Even though she'd just received a clear reminder about the game not always being 100% accurate to reality, she had to stop to wonder if the game's thing about horses with solid coats being wilder would hold true. Stir-Fry was fairly solid herself, and she seemed quite calm, so it probably wasn't entirely true, but she didn't want to unintentionally make things harder on herself all because she had to have the pretty blue horse. She guessed she could ask Avera those questions she'd said she would answer.

They were still quite a distance away from the herd, though—and they were approaching the first of the Guardians—so the question could wait.

Her heart beat faster the nearer she got to it. Although she still had a reasonable bit of fear left in her, she couldn't help the sense of awe that filled her at the sight. Even though it was unmoving, not glowing, covered in moss and with most of its legs missing, it was mesmerizing.

And goddamn enormous.

Maybe it was because the game was in third person, or maybe it was just on her brain, but she'd never been able to properly grasp the scale of them through the screen. This thing, even without the added elevation of its legs, stood nearly twice the height of her house. Close to it, she had to lean her head back as far as she could just to see the top of it.

She wondered if she would feel as mesmerized if she'd never played the game before and didn't know what it was capable of, or if it would just look like some weirdly-shaped huge hunk of weird metal to her then. A small part of her wished she would've woken up in Hyrule back before Ganon had taken them over so she could've had the chance to view a live one in pristine condition up this close and safely, to see it glowing brightly and moving on its own.

More excitement built up in her as it hit her that she was going to get to see what everything from this world looked like in real life. The Divine Beasts, the runes of the Sheikah Slate, the ancient and magical weapons and shields and bows, the people—real live Zoras and Ritos and Gorons and Gerudos—and dragons! To an extent, she'd already become aware of this when Impa had suggested she go with Link and Avera, but she hadn't thought about it in such detail then. Now that she was fully considering it, the notion of it all was a motivator unlike anything else.

It made the upcoming obstacle of jumping on a horse feel worth its weight in gold.

Until it came time.

The horses were supposed to be semi-feral, according to the stablehand.

And the whole thing about solid-colored horses having more wild temperaments? An old wives' tale, according to Avera.

Emilia didn't know what she would've done if they were completely feral and if the old wives' tale was true, because as it were, she still ended up on her ass approximately twenty times.

In defense of Blue—her nickname for now—Emilia could admit that a great deal of the issues were her own fault. She couldn't blame a wild animal for getting annoyed by a person repeatedly trying and failing to throw herself over it. The extent of Blue's annoyance entailed her just running off a bit, and not trying to kick Emilia in the face, at least. Both Avera—who'd quickly caught herself a gray horse, a feat she made look devastatingly easy with her long legs—and Link—who'd been watching from atop Stir-Fry—offered to help her, but that only made her more determined to do it herself. Eventually, she'd finally managed to pull herself up on Blue and get situated on her back. It was more than a little humiliating that she'd had so much trouble, but at least that bridge was crossed.

Then came the next bridge, which was actually riding. Since it could take time they didn't apparently have for them to get their new horses fitted, they were going for now without any saddles or stirrups or reins or any of the stuff Emilia was pretty sure made riding easier. Avera tried to give her tips—"keep your back straight," "try not to bounce so much," "steer with your legs," "look where you're going"—but it was a lot to take in and work on at once.

Even more so when they got up to a point past where Link had cleared and they had no idea if any of the Guardians in their way were alive or not. Link was leading, but Emilia still felt like she had to stay on guard in case he missed something.

"They could all be dead," he said, after Emilia had explained to Avera that she wasn't looking ahead because she was looking for live Guardians.

"But what if they're not, and they see us?" Emilia said.

"Then we hope for the best."

"You can't ... I dunno ... parry their blasts with your shield or something?" It might've been a bit revealing of her to ask—she probably shouldn't have known about their blasts or parrying them—but she had to anyway.

"While riding a horse away from them at like fifty kilometers an hour?"

Solid point ... even if she had no frame of reference for how fast a kilometer was. "Guess not..."

"Are there Guardians all the way where you're from?" Avera asked her.

It had been revealing of her to ask, then. She'd been hoping since neither of them had immediately inquired as to how she knew of Guardians that they wouldn't at all. "No, but... I still know about them. It's ... part of what I'll tell you later."

Coming up on a large chunk of Guardian and the ruins of some structure, Link steered Stir-Fry out of its path, and both Avera's and Emilia's horses followed in her steps. Emilia was grateful that Blue was at least content to follow Stir-Fry, since she wasn't so content to listen to her.

Emilia tried her hardest to keep her eyes forward after their conversation, but she couldn't stop herself from looking around every now and again. Not so much for living Guardians, though—for the spot where Zelda's powers had awoken and Link had fallen. The field was so much bigger in real life and there were so many more ruins and broken Guardians, it was the only hope she had for some sort of waypoint before Fort Hateno, which they still weren't even within eyesight of. After this long of riding in the game, they likely would've been halfway to Hateno Village.

Which reminded her—Impa had said that they had a chance at making it to Hateno before nightfall if they rode horses. ...But Emilia and Link had just had breakfast probably an hour ago.

Wondering if they'd possibly had a very late breakfast, she glanced up into the sky. If the cardinal directions of the game were the same in real life, and if Hyrule's earth worked like her own, it looked like the sun was still more to the east than the west ... so it wasn't even midday yet. They definitely still had hours and hours of riding ahead of them.

Her thoughts meandered from there, eventually coming around to what time of year it was in Hyrule. She was especially curious what the year itself was; she really wanted to know how far back Impa would've assumed she was from if all she'd said was that she was from the year 2000.

"Hey, uh, random question," she said. "Do either of you know the date?"

"No clue," Link said.

"It's the 25th of April," Avera responded.

It wasn't the full answer she wanted, but it was still interesting. Her last day before waking up here had been May 18th, and the day before that had been her birthday. If she kept celebrating it as if no insanity had occurred, her nineteenth birthday would come less than a full month after her eighteenth.

"And what about the year?"

"Impa didn't talk to you about what year it was to see if you were from another time period?" Avera asked in return. Without giving Emilia the chance to answer, she said, "It's twenty-seven three-oh-three."

Emilia had to write the numbers out in her head to try to fully comprehend it. 27,303—a long shot off of the 2018 she'd come from.

If Avera was expecting an answer for her initial question, she didn't push for it, and Emilia was more than okay with not trying to give her one. The only thing she really could say was another 'I'll tell you later,' anyway, unless she caved and spilled the beans.

She contemplated how she would go about it when she did, knowing she'd be much more comfortable with having a solid plan ahead of time. How would she explain her home to them? How would she explain that there was no Hyrule in her world? How would she answer them when they would inevitably question where her knowledge of Hyrule came from? All she'd really told Impa was that Hyrule only existed in 'stories' back in her home, without describing those stories or how they were presented—if she told them everything, how could she describe it all to people who had no idea what video games were?

'Hey Link, you know the screen on your Sheikah Slate? Imagine that it showed a fake version of this world, and you pressed buttons and sticks to control this fake version of you, and you played out all the events that are happening in real life here except it's all fake—like you were a doll in a playset, but behind a screen. I did that at home a lot. Played with a fake little version of you. For fun.'

...Maybe vagueness was the only way to go. 'Hyrule exists in stories. Like, wacky illustrated storybooks. Please don't ask for more explanation than that.'

Their ride continued in relative peace for quite some time—only to end abruptly with a beeping and a bright red circle of light on the back of Link's head.

"Link!" Emilia yelled.

His head whipped around, eyes widened, and before he was even looking back ahead he was already getting Stir-Fry to hightail it and swerve out of the way. Avera's horse and Blue both took off after her, and Emilia very nearly fell off backward at the massive boost. She tightened her legs around Blue's sides and used almost all her core strength to throw herself forward, accidentally overshooting and ending up with her upper body against Blue's neck—but before she could even try to readjust into a better position, Emilia lost her grip.

For a second, as she collided with the hard ground and all the wind was knocked out of her, everything was black.

Head pounding and the world a blur around her, she forced herself to sit upright. Ahead of her, Blue was still racing away with Link and Avera's horses, who still had their riders on them. Both Link and Avera were looking back at her, already so far away. At least they were more than likely safe; there was a collection of dilapidated buildings and structures up around them that could block them from the laser. As Emilia looked around her, hoping to find something similar, her vision went pure red.

The Guardian has its beam pointed right at her face, and there was nowhere for her to hide that she could make it to in time.

She wasn't going to take it lying down.

Even knowing in her heart that it was pointless, she scrambled to her feet and ran, faster than she'd ever run in her life—until suddenly there were arms around her, and her body liquefied.

At first, when the droplets of her body came back together, all she was aware of was that the arms were still around her. In her frantic attempt to get them off her and get away, she stumbled to her knees, and then there was a thump behind her. Though every nerve in her body was fired up and desperate to do nothing but run away, she still had to see what that thump had been, what had happened to the person who'd grabbed her.

It was only then that she realized she was no longer where she had been in the field. She was now behind the partial remains of some building which she'd been nowhere near—and a very tired-looking Avera was slumped up against the stone wall.

"What ... happened?" Emilia panted out.

"I ... teleported us ... out of the way," Avera said between her own panting, voice breathy and weak.

Emilia blinked a few times. "But you—but you were way ahead of me...?" It came out like a question, though she didn't mean for it to.

"Teleported back ... to get you." Avera closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall.

"And you don't even have the Sheikah Slate," Emilia said.

Avera let out something of a laugh, took a few more deep breaths, and pried her eyes open again. "...I am a Sheikah."

"Yeah...? That's ... not really—" Emilia stopped herself as the meaning behind Avera's words dawned on her. She didn't need the Sheikah Slate to teleport—as a Sheikah, it was something she could just do. Emilia guessed it made sense, because the Yiga could teleport, but it wasn't something she'd thought about. "...I didn't know you could do that."

"Me either," Avera breathed out. "...Not now, at least. My magic ... 's been low. Since I woke up. Since before I died. I'm surprised ... I was able to."

"Yeah, you were able to, but ... look what it did to you," Emilia said, brows drawn together as she looked over her. Avera was already fair-skinned, but she was exceptionally pale now, and covered in a sheen of sweat. She looked miserable. "...I'm sorry. You shouldn't have had to do that for me. You didn't have to."

Avera frowned at her. "I wasn't gonna let you die."

Emilia wanted to respond that she hadn't been implying that she should've ... but she supposed she had been, even if not intentionally. She pursed her lips.

"...Thank you," Emilia whispered.

Avera just hummed in response and let her eyes fall shut again.

Hearing hoofbeats, Emilia turned her head to the sound. Link was approaching them atop Stir-Fry, with her and Avera's horses flanking them. He jumped off when he was closer, jogged the short distance to reach them, and crouched down next to Avera.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Worn out ... but I'm fine," Avera said, reopening her eyes.

"And you?" Link said to Emilia.

"Kinda sore from falling off Blue, but also fine. It's not that bad."

Avera let out a huff, and in almost the blink of an eye, she was up on her feet. "All right. Let's get going."

"But you just said you're still—"

"I'm not gonna be the one running," Avera interrupted her. She gave a little smile. "My horse is. It's okay if I'm kinda tired."

"Are you sure?" Link said. "We can take a break here."

"Nah. I hate waiting around, and I wanna get to Hateno as soon as possible."

Avera hopped up on her horse and looked down at Emilia and Link. Emilia gave Link a look, as if to say 'Tell her she needs to rest more,' but he just shrugged and stood up. With a sigh and a shake of her head, Emilia followed their leads.

Ending A/N:

WELP. It's been about eight years since I wrote the first chapter of this story, right after Breath of the Wild was formally revealed at E3 2016. Five years since I finally started posting, even though I was worried then about the newly-announced sequel not jiving with what I'd been planning. Four years since the last chapter I posted, after which I really started to worry that the sequel would warrant a change in plans, and I decided to officially put this puppy on hiatus. And now that Tears of the Kingdom is out, I've had time to digest it, and things have been better for me recently, I'm finally ready to get back to this!

So, the biggest thing that I worried would warrant a change in my plans had to do with Ganondorf's revival. Since this story deals pretty heavily with revived characters, I'm sure you can imagine why his method of revival might've had implications that could've made me want to make a severe change in course. Turns out ... nope! If anything, the game actually strengthens the plans I already had in place regarding that. I am changing course on other plans to accommodate TotK, though—like, I was gonna have my own Sages, and the Zonai were gonna be ... not furry gods lmfao—buuut there's also gonna end up being stuff from it that I rework or just outright ignore for this fic (beating a dead horse, I know, but the Sheikah tech up and disappearing and nobody caring? 𝓃𝑜). I guess changes shouldn't be a surprise considering I started canon-diverging as soon as Emilia woke up in Hyrule, but I just wanted to get it out there early on so I don't blindside anyone. ...If I ever manage to get there, hahahfhsjdfh.

ALSO I just need to say that I had the biggest stupidest grin on my face every time the bargainer statues started talking about wandering spirits. Thank you TotK for vindicating my dumbass fanfiction 🙏