#I WANT A POPULATED HYRULE

[waywardsalt]

very freeing to actually own up (to myself) abt post-ph being an au. now i can make a little list of the little ways it deviates from leading to st

[gay-jesus-probably]

Seeing as the Gerudo turned on Ganon, he might not have been that much better of a ruler.

First of all, we literally have no idea, because the only ancient Gerudo that we actually get to interact with is Ganondorf himself, and he has nothing to say about his own people. The ancient Gerudo sage doesn't count btw, she doesn't have a name, we never even see her face, and she has literally nothing to say except repeating the exact same dialogue as the sages for the other races. The narrative does not treat the ancient sages as people; they are four completely interchangable weapons that are owned by the royal family.

And secondly, I don't care how Ganon ruled them; the Gerudo only get one man every century, if their king sucks, they've obviously got their own system of government to fall back on. I have no idea what kind of authority the sages had among their own people, but honestly I'd say if the four of them were in charge of their respective people, then they were just puppet rulers appointed by Rauru, given that all four of them happily agreed that to sell their entire race into servitude the second Zelda asked them. Say what you will about Ganondorf, but I fucking know that if he was told the Gerudo people existed for the sole purpose of serving the glory of Hyrule, he'd drop kick Zelda into the fucking sun.

And don't get me started on the implications of the cultural differences we see between the independent Gerudo and the annexed Gerudo. The background Gerudo characters all have their own models, and we can clearly see that the ones siding with Ganon have their own unique looks - for example, the amazing lady with the mohawk that summons the molduga swarm in that one flashback. And men are never mentioned in these flashbacks at all, which implies that the Gerudo genuinely didn't care about settling down. Ganon even speaks derisively about marriage, implying that it's very rare for Gerudo women to make serious romantic commitments with men. It implies that their culture is more along the same line as their portrayal in OOT - they are a closed culture. Men trying to force their way into their areas are arrested, and mocked for being entitled dumbasses. Outsiders are only welcome if they can prove that they respect the Gerudo as people, and aren't just there to try and pick up chicks. It's never outright said, but OOT also makes it pretty clear that the Gerudo women just aren't interested in marrying outsiders - close relationships occur with other Gerudo, Hylian men are only considered useful for making babies.

Meanwhile the Gerudo we see serving Hyrule are all trying to measure up to Hylian beauty standards, and appeal to their men. Their one goal in life is to meet a man and get married. Men are welcome in their lands, and only kept out of the town itself... and even then, there's a small army of guys trying to force their way into the town anyways, which is brushed off as just haha, boys will be boys. No men allowed isn't even about independence, it's just a silly romantic tradition.

Of course this is just a fictional culture in a game world, but it's still really fucking uncomfortable that the 'evil' Gerudo are the ones that have independence, both politically and socially, and display a unique culture that refuses to tolerate disrespect from outsiders. Meanwhile the 'good' Gerudo are the ones that canonically exist to serve a kingdom where 95% of the population is light skinned (even setting aside the unfortunate implications, just saying one race exists to serve a different one is super fucked up), they have classes on how to be more appealing to Hylian's, and their entire social structure is built around finding a Hylian man to marry, making them all inherently dependent on the goodwill of outsiders. Even their biggest value of 'women only' is treated as a joke; men trying to trespass in BOTW are just shoved back out the door, letting them keep trying all day if they want. The crowds of men plotting to force their way in are laughed off as a joke. Nobody cares that there's a guy running laps around their city walls and trying to trick women into being alone with him. I mean for fucks sake, in TOTK we find that the creepy guy trying to lure women away has taken advantage of a massive disaster to get into the town, and he's still there once things return to normal. You can't kick him out, or alert anyone to his presence. And the Gerudo just tolerate Hylians blatantly ignoring their boundaries. For fucks sake, TOTK even reveals that the seven legendary heroines they've been revering the whole time were actually completely useless and unable to achieve anything... because they needed the eighth hero, a Hylian man to teach them basic tactics and do all the heavy lifting.

TOTK does not respect the Gerudo people in the slightest. It doesn't respect anyone who isn't Hylian or Zonai.

...This got a little off track, but the point I'm trying to make is, no, I don't consider the Gerudo turning on Ganon to mean anything. The entire game does not feel like the real story of what happened, it feels like the propaganda version of history meant to make Hyrule look as good as possible. I genuinely cannot believe that we're being told the real story about the Imprisoning War, because none of it feels real, and we don't get to know any details that might have made Hyrule look even slightly imperfect. We're told that Ganondorf is evil because he hates Hyrule, and he hates Hyrule because he's evil. The Gerudo people followed Ganondorf and saw him as a hero of their people, then suddenly he was their worst enemy. Hyrule is a perfect kingdom that has strong, equal alliances with the other races, but also all of the non-Hylian races exist for the sole purpose of serving Hyrule, and their leaders are expected to swear eternal loyalty and submission to the Hylian royal family. King Rauru and Queen Sonia united all of the races in peace and equality, which is why they're sitting on the world's supply of magical nuclear missiles, and every member of the Hylian royal family is allowed to walk around wearing them as cute accessories, but everyone else only gets them at the last second, and they all need to outright swear to only use that power to benefit Rauru and his descendants.

There's just so many fucked up contradictions, and so many hints of something more nuanced going on... but the story refuses to acknowledge any of it, and just keeps aggressively pushing the narrative that Hyrule is the ultimate good and couldn't possibly do anything wrong. I don't even believe that Ganon was a bad king honestly; we never hear why his people stopped following him. We also never even see if the Gerudo people turned on him at all; all we know is the ancient Gerudo sage wanted him dead, and given that she also happily sold her people into slavery, she's not exactly the most trustworthy source of information. All we know is that Ganondorf was a hero to his people, only one of his citizens is ever shown having an issue with him (and her motives are never explained), and then he lost the war and was sealed away, leaving his people open to be conquered by Zelda and annexed into Hyrule. By the time we see any Gerudo actually opposing Ganon (apart from the ancient sage), it's been ten thousand years since the war, and all anyone knows is the Hylian version of the story.

[ganondoodle]

random thought about the memory system

a big difference between why botws memories worked so well but totks didnt is mainly bc in botw, there wasnt that much plot, you kinda knew what was up by the time you left the tutorial, all memories serve you just as well as link, sending you around a hyrule you dont know, the few scenes of main characters do a good job of giving you an idea of who they are, but the majority is focused on zelda and link, why she acted to cold to him at first and later became friends, the characterization being not jsut in memories but also in how people remember them, their diary etc, when you meet their ghosts theres a familiarity to how they talk to you, they know and care about you, its like giving you late friend one last visit; getting memories out of order really doesnt hurt that characterization and overall it really just serves to flesh out the past and what made this world the way you see it now but mainly it gives you characters

in totk, its ... the main plot driving thing, you are here for the story now more than the world bc you know the world already, besides the sages stuff (that isnt much either besides some legends that apprently were always a thing but never popped up until now), its basically the entire plot and it all hinges on it, its trying to be both plot and character introduction AND characterization, which it simply cant do; we already know zelda and what shes like, but its like the game itself doesnt know what to do with her now, she doesnt do anything, she stands around listenign to strangers talk, whenever she says anything shes dismissed or it simply doesnt matter, the most she does is go around to faceless and nameless sages of old we dont know nor care about in a damn near copy paste scene begging them to help link of the far future somehow even tho they really have no reason to and then she swallows a stone bc she has literally no other choice; fleshing out the past doesnt work either bc this past is so far removed from anything of the world and people you know that theres simply no meaningful connection to make you really care, there are no characters alive that knew the people of old ...except mineru and rauru are still there, but then dont tell you shit, theres so much you dont know about them, their world or history and they dont tell you anything bc *gestures vaguely* ?? even ganondorf only says some standard villain stuff that tells us pretty much nothing about him nor rauru, no one in your time asking you who the hell that ghost powered robot is? no she sits in her robot somewhere deep underground (how does she even get out of there at the end, she needed you to drive her around to her own temple after all) given how straight up obsessed hyrules entire population is with sonau stuff they sure dont do anything with a literal person from that time and then at the end she jsut goes poof, welp, guess we will never, sure, fine keep your secrects; getting the memories out of order destroys literally any kind of story that was there, like it wasnt predicatble from like memory 3 to where it would go (predicable can be good but in this case its boring as hell) anyway

.. theres more i could talk about but this is already longer than intended and i want to do other things but this with my evening, you probably heard most of my problems with this game in my rants by now anyway

[nolongerapileofashprobably]

Should the dev team have committed to Zelda's draconification being permanent and have her stay a dragon at the end, and would that have made for a more honest and poignant ending than the one we got? Some fans think that the ending we got renders her sacrifice completely meaningless and devoid of impact.

The dev team absolutely should NOT have committed to Zelda’s draconification. It would have ruined the entire story and narrative for Zelda’s character and Hyrule itself.

Some people think it made the sacrifice meaningless and devoid of impact. . . But it didn’t. Her choice was her own and it was a statement of dedication to Link and Hyrule as a whole. It was also utterly tragic that she had to do this in order to heal the Master Sword. I am still in utter distress whenever I play the game and watch the memories, despite knowing the ending. Because it’s the tragedy she endured willingly that makes the sacrifice meaningful, not the permanence of it. The sacrifice would hold no value had it been a choice Zelda made knowing she would be reverted.

She didn’t. She thought it was permanent.

And I’m honestly tired of some of these fans just not wanting a happy ending for her character. She deserves peace and a happy life. That’s what she got, which is absolutely justified. And those who think of a story so plainly and only at the big picture miss the details and narratives that point directly towards the ending we actually got.

Let’s talk about if she didn’t turn back.

Firstly, we can start with simple things that personally can be reworked in the future but would create a hurdle for the devs in the future— Zelda would never die as a dragon, she is an immortal being. The Zelda series is quite literally founded upon a reincarnation cycle between Zelda, Link, and Ganon. And only one of them is linked through blood: Zelda. That would cause a bump in the whole reincarnation foundation.

Beyond that, Zelda’s character development would suffer with this choice becoming permanent.

Any fan upset by the ending doesn’t understand the implications of Zelda being granted a second chance. She dedicated her entire life before the calamity to training and praying, only to have her magic awaken AFTER the champions, her father, and nearly Link are killed. Her efforts for the next century keep her body suspended in time and keeps Ganon at bay through her light power. When she wakes up, she is granted a ‘second chance’. In reality, it is simply the life she fought for and rightfully deserved.

So after she made Hyrule her home again, unifying the scarcely populated land and invigorating its culture, she is once again forced to sacrifice everything. This time, she does so as a leader and as one who holds such strong power. Her journey as a Queen leads her to become the very leader she WANTS to be, not the one she was constantly reprimanded to be by her father and the old kingdom. And she learns this throughout her time in the past, with Rauru as her guide.

And that leads us to this point: the belief that to rule is to give up everything.

But where others are punished for this choice (despite Zelda’s warnings, Rauru’s ignorance of Ganondorf’s power leads to Sonia and his own death), Zelda is REWARDED for her choices.

Because she did not just claim that another will defeat Ganondorf and seal him away until present day like Rauru.

Zelda did much more. She raised the sky islands, made a promise with Mineru, solidified the aid of the sages, collected the Master Sword and chose to give LINK the best chance he could have against Ganondorf. Zelda did every single thing she could to ensure Ganondorf would be defeated. She even aids in the final battle, as her will is to end that evil and grant Hyrule the peace she herself will (presumably, to her own knowledge) never experience.

So when she is rewarded for her efforts, by being bathed in sacred light and her body reversed to its previous state. . . It is entirely in line with the narrative thus far. Additionally, Rauru and Sonia present themselves as a ‘second chance parents’ for Zelda. A supportive, patient father in Rauru. A guiding teacher and mother in Sonia.

Tears of the Kingdom mirrors Breath of the Wild in terms of Zelda’s development and story. To give an ending where Zelda remains a dragon. . . It would have been tragic and dishonest to the story that we got.

If you want to read something more in depth and not written by someone with one eye open, this post grants a well rounded answer to this question.

[sapphicseasapphire]

Remember when I said I’d make some informational posts about the Cryptid au? Well, here’s some lore! I originally wanted to talk more about Wind. But I can’t talk about Wind without also talking about Legend! So buckle up while I tell you about an old, old war.

Legend is Mer. Wind is an original species that I call Aquili. On my character sheets, before I came up with the name, I called him a Sea Monster. But then I thought about it for two more seconds and realized that in a world where monsters are in fact real, tangible things that are always evil and are constantly being fought, doesn’t calling someone a monster sound a little derogatory? And then that SPIRALED.

So throughout Hyrule’s history, there have been many creatures that make their homes in the sea. Among these are the Zora, an amphibious group that make their homes on land but close to water; the Aquili, an amphibious group that make their homes underwater but close to the surface; and the Mer, an entirely aquatic group that live 100% underwater. They rarely interacted with each other, peacefully keeping to themselves until an influx of monsters started driving them out of their homes.

The spike in monster population took place just before the events Ocarina of Time. The Zora were least affected affected because their homes were on land, but the Mer and Aquili struggled. They fought back the monsters as they invaded their territories, and eventually, the threat of the monsters led them to cross each others borders. And suddenly, they had a turf war on their hands. They simply didn’t have enough space to coexist while the monsters lurked. And so they fought.

The timeline splits. Legend and Wind both know different conflicts, but neither end well. In Legend’s era, the war is won. The Mer were victorious, they drove the Aquili away and lowered their numbers enough that they aren’t a threat anymore. The term “Sea Monster” is Mer propaganda, meant to villainize the Aquili and turn any sympathizers away. The war might have been won centuries ago, but the Aquili are still out there, still scraping by, weakened but never defeated. Legend has been taught all his life to fear them. He’s been taught to call them monsters and to fight them on sight. He’s been taught that there’s a reason that the Mer were able to win, and he must live up to that standard.

Legend was attacked when he was young. He was chased out of his territory by an Aquili scavenger, forced above the surface to escape. Except it’s law in Mer controlled areas that so much as breaking the surface tension of the water is grounds for banishment. Since Mer are completely aquatic, it’s dangerous for them to go on land. Plus, Aquili, being amphibious, go above the surface on occasion. Anyone following them is seen as a traitor. Unfortunately, even though Legend was only a child and only trying to escape a very dangerous situation, the law was strict. He had no loophole. He was banished, forced to take refuge in the surface kingdom of Hyrule. And that experience did not help him see Aquili in a kinder light.

Wind, on the other hand, had an entirely different perspective on the war. In his era, the war never really ended. There were no victors, no losers. When Hyrule flooded, the war just sort of… fizzled out. Of course, with the extra ocean comes even more, even bigger monsters for the Mer and Aquili to try to manage. There are still skirmishes between the groups. A lot of fighting around borders. Occasional battles and invasions. The conflict, while it might not be as intense as the war in Legend’s era, is still very much ongoing.

Except… there’s this little place in Wind’s era. A little island where Aquili and Mer alike seek refuge. A common ground, an area of peace. Outset Island is populated entirely by both Mer and Aquili who wanted an escape from the war. The ones who gave up on holding any territory underwater and settled on land. There, everyone’s welcome. Wind’s parents left him there with his little sister and his grandmother to save them from the constant fighting. But they believed in their cause, and so they left to reclaim their territory- their home. They never returned.

Wind sees the war as something that’s far away. He lives in a bubble of peace. He’s friends with Mer. He doesn’t have these prejudices. He knows not to venture too far into the ocean (hence why he sails on a ship instead of swimming everywhere), but other than that, he doesn’t have to worry about it.

When Legend and Wind meet, immediately their cultural differences are made very, very clear. Legend is cold to the young boy (colder than usual, that is) and no one can figure out why. Wind’s such a little bundle of energy! His laughter is infectious and his enthusiasm is contagious. Why does Legend avoid him so much?

I had this idea in my head that Wind’s so far separated from his culture, he doesn’t even know that he’s called ‘Aquili.’ All he’s heard from everyone in his life is ‘Sea Monster.’ On Outset, the Aquili called themselves that with pride as if they were never anything else, so Wind never saw any issue with that.

So one day, when talking to the rest of the Chain, Wind calls himself a Sea Monster. And Legend LOOSES IT.

Suddenly, Legend rushes over and pulls Wind into his arms and just hugs him as tightly as he can. Because this child should not be saying such things about himself. Legend’s been dealing with his own prejudice this whole time, but hearing it come from Wind’s own mouth actually breaks him. He cannot pretend anymore. He cannot separate himself from the conflict, he cannot use the blanket description of ‘Monster’ for all of the Aquili, he cannot blame the child in his arms for the desperate soul that chased him from his home.

“You’re not a monster,” he’d whisper into Wind’s shoulder. “Don’t ever say that. You’re not a monster.”

Wind’s just confused because he didn’t say he was a monster. “I called myself a Sea Monster. There’s a differen… oh”

And Legend has to watch the light leave his eyes as Wind realizes what he’s been calling himself… what everyone he knows has been calling themselves… is so fundamentally wrong.

It’s Legend who tells Wind about his heritage. As much as he can think of that isn’t propaganda. (Which… isn’t much). Legend tells Wind that he’s called Aquili, he tells Wind about the Aquili that he knew in his era. He hates that he knows so little.

And then they start to bond. Wind is definitely in shock about the whole thing, maybe a bit of denial. Legend just feels so sorry for being so harsh towards him in the past. But they go swimming together, they catch and eat seafood together. Each of them are learning from each other. They heal.

Okay that was long. I have many more thoughts about this! Like what the war looked like in Lorule, what it means for Legend and Ravio. But I’ve rambled long enough haha! I’ll make a post about that later if you’re interested, but for now, thank you for reading haha!

[cloudninetonine]

The Player and the Dollmaker

A/N: Hey guys! I'm sorry I haven't been as active for the past few months! Life and just general stuff got into the way, plus I've been feel extra anti-social :') But I'm gonna try and get back into the swing of things!!!

This story is based on my friend @next-hero-in-line's awesome new oc, the Dollmaker and by @batrogers's amazing fanfic based on said oc!! The Dollmaker for anyone who wishes to read it!

Warnings: Bad language (as usual to Player), blood/gore, temporary character death, reversed character death, hinted at a slighter darker Hyrule(?), also probably a lot of spelling mistakes I've been struggling with sleep lately piuhgfpiuf

Hyrule’s timeline was…something.

You were expecting it, truth be told, playing the very first Legend of Zelda game came with not only a huge reality check but the rude residents of the traveller’s Hyrule that had you close to tossing your device from the frustration of their snide remarks and coldness. With the troubles that brewed in the depths of the land, you couldn’t really blame the population- but there was no need to be snarled at for simply asking for directions.

“Mark my fucking words,” You growled, tugging at the material of your hood as you wondered through the village, monologuing to yourself like some crazed villain. “Mark them, goddesses, because trust if one of these nasty arse villagers sasses me again it’ll be between them and you.”

Yeah, you were not happy. Having to deal with the terrible crowds all day, your levels of cranky raised to the max and you were not about to deal with another one of these terrible people- even all the children were damn brats!!!

And to top it all off, it was raining, just perfect.

Huffing, you turned another corner, boots squelching against the mud of the (once) dirt path as you made your way back to the village outskirts, the camp resting deep within the crooked woodland that bordered the homes. You could catch the silhouettes of cloaked figures just by the bushes, speeding up your pace the slightest bit with your face relaxing from your raged scowl to a relieved smile.

Splitting up was not something you were fond of, especially in Hyrule’s land but with his flaming reputation with the locals that only further engulfed that of the Chain’s when they had first been seen in public with him would have been worse than just being seen as a weary traveller looking for some food and shelter. The stories of him being chased out of towns, to having rocks tossed his way and worse- you wanted to slam your fist into the nose of the first (definitely not) innocent bystander.

How could they treat their hero like this? Expendable? Like dirt beneath their boots? God, you hated it.

But, unfortunately, there wasn’t quite much you could do, was there?

You raised your hand, a yell at the tip of your tongue as you got closer to the cloaked heroes only for a sudden body to walk ahead of you, walking out from between the homes and right into your path- your yelp their only indication of their mistake as you bumped right into their side and had them near tumbling to the floor.

You were lucky this adventure had gifted you with faster reflexes.

“I’m sorry!” Your hand quickly grabbed their wrist, tugging them back up to a standing position before they could collapse into the mud. “I’m really sorry- are you okay?”

You caught bright blue eyes before anything else- well, eye, the other covered by her lucious, midnight purple locks- her hood did well to hide her features but that you could make out. Not many in Hyrule had quite striking attributes as she did and your mind rolled the many franchise characters in your mind in a curious search to see if she was familiar-

But no, you didn’t recognise her.

The woman blinked, studying you for the moment but her pretty pink lips stretched into a smile.

One you didn’t like.

“Hello.” She grinned with teeth as she once again looked you up and down. “I’ve been looking for you.”

You wretched your hand back like her skin was hot metal, keeping it protectively against your chest as you went to take a step back. “Pardon?”

“You were looking for health items in town.” She clarified, still smiling and still very disturbing before your eyes. “I have just the thing.”

Please don’t invite me back to your home. Please don’t invite me back to your home. Please don’t invite me back to your home- “Oh? And- uh, what’s that?”

Your heart skipped in relief when she dug into the back hanging from her shoulder, plump with her own items and quite loud as she rummaged through until she made a small sound of victory and then proceeded to produce a…a doll. Her eyes looked over it proudly, her eye sparkling with a glee that made your stomach churn in a nervous rut, watching as her nimble fingers quickly straightened out the little toy’s clothing before handing it over to you- all the while still grinning that same smile she had been for the past few moments (had she even breathed?).

“For you.” Her voice was near giddy but still laced with her eerily calm demeanour. “A good healing item.”

“Uhhh, how much…?"

She giggled, airy and light. “A ‘thank you’ will suffice.”

Common sense had always told you not to take things from strangers, especially creepy ones that emerged from dark alleys with smiles that read trouble, eyes like a predator’s that shone with a lust for violence and blood- but, with a quick glance to your companions still waiting just ahead you felt the need to hurry this exchange so that you could return and be rid of this whole damn day.

So, managing to force a grateful smile, you accepted the item. “Um, thank you.”

You held back a cringe when her smile widened. “You’re welcome.”

Your eyes fell to the doll in your hands and you felt the air harshly exit your lungs, mouth a slight gape as you caught the familiar stitched face staring back at you.

“This-” Your eyes raised to meet…nothing. Nada. Zilch. Body twirling frantically to search for the woman who had once stood before you, face still stricken in slight horror before you let out a breath from your nose. “Typical.”

Gently, your thumb ran over the careful thread of the doll, taking in the very obvious features of yourself: your cape, your tunic with it’s gold accents, your hair and the discolour buttons for eyes, stitching of blue running down its face to its stubby little arms and a smile to top it off. Yes, this was you indeed and you knew exactly what this was.

“One up…?” You muttered, feeling dread settle on your shoulders.

Why would you need a one-up?

Your hands shook, thoughts racing through your mind as you continued to stare down at the small doll with anxiety bubbling in your gut. Was this a warning? Your fate decided? Were- were you close to death? Or did this Dollmaker find of your existence and wish to merely meet you? You weren’t quite sure, uncertain if being left in the dark was better or worse about the future with this item-

A hand came to rest over yours and your eyes flew up, meeting the frightened ones of Hyrule. Eyes of brown clashed green stared back into your own, pupils pin pricked with a similar fear to your own before he let out a breath and pushed the doll to your chest, his voice a soft whisper.

“Put it away.” He gently squeezed over your knuckles. “Don’t think about it- I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Hyrule-”

“It’s okay, I promise you.” He managed to smile at you, not quite reassuring but soft nonetheless. “Nothing will happen.”

You looked at him with apprehension. “...Link, I’m scared.”

His face hardened, eyes shining with a determination that you had seen time and time again. “I will protect you.”

…You couldn’t fight his words, you knew from his tone he would keep him promise no matter what. You knew that look, you knew this man and you trusted him, you could leave your life in his hands and he would keep that promise in his heart until his very last days.

But just because he could keep a promise didn’t mean fate couldn’t take over.

You stuffed the doll into your bag and took his out-stretched hand, letting him lead you back to the cloaked Chain so you could all return to your temporary abode within the woods.

You felt the stare of eyes on your back the entire way.

----------

The past few days had been uneventful, save for the few black blooded and some more cruel Hylians of Hyrule’s homeland, everything had been pretty quiet and tame- yet you could still feel the unnerving tremble in your belly at every waking moment. Glancing around wildly, refusing to step away from the group, you don’t think you had even released Hyrule’s hand for those past few days, too afraid and too cowardly.

Even if the doll was in your possession, even if it brought you back- you would die.

You didn’t want to die out here.

But it seems, like you had expected, fate had decided to take that into its own hands.

It was Legend’s turn to watch for the night, sat in front of the flickering campfire with eyes focused on the surrounding trees and bush. His back was towards you when you woke, blinking away sleep and rubbing at your eyes when you felt the overwhelming need to use the toilet. Well, find a spot behind a tree, after all when was the last time you had seen a proper toilet? You shuddered at the thought.

“Where are you going?” The Veteran grunted, watching as you waddled through the sleeping bodies. 

“Toilet.” Your voice was hoarse with exhaustion, “Don’t worry I’m not gonna converse with the Shadow.”

The man huffed, poking at the fire with a stick. “Whatever.”

That was all you exchanged, carefully manoeuvring through the shrubbery to get a good distance away from the men. Not thinking, your mind still too seeped in sleep, forgetting the doll you had kept in a death grip these past few gruelling days as you hopped and shuffled to get to a sufficient spot to do your business then head back to camp. It didn’t occur to you that this may have been the moment fate needed, nor did you think about it being your last.

Done with your business, you took a few steps back towards the light in the short distance. Far enough that you couldn’t see Legend’s full features but close enough that you were still in sight, the hero had his head down towards the flames, not focused on you at all.

You sighed.

Then-

…You felt a burning.

Your whole body tensed- seized as the pain began to grow from a dull throb to a near rolling inferno, your breath suddenly ripped from your body as you felt the sensation of hot liquid begin to slowly bubble up your throat while you looked downed to the cause of the pain- a crossbow bolt punctured right through you, dirtied with red hot blood that idly drip, drip, dripped from the tip of the arrow right onto the dirt below.

Breathing only resulted in the blood to rise faster, tasting the copper in your mouth as you coughed and sullied your white tunic with maroon and felt your body sway as you felt your body quickly begin to lose it’s balance, your vision blurring with tears.

It must have caught your lung…were you drowning in your own blood?

You reached a hand out towards the camp.

“...Li-nk-”

You fell to your knees, then to your side, choking on more of the liquid.

----------

Hyrule awoke to a scream.

Loud and violent, his whole body jolted at the sound as he lept into a seated position with his sword pulled ready, eyes scanning the camp frantically for the threat he had expected.

Only to see nothing. Merely his brothers in spirit, jolted awake and alarmed similarly to him as they all glanced around and wondered about the sound that had woken them all from their slumber.

Hyrule’s hand moved towards your body.

And his stomach dropped when he didn’t feel you there.

“No…”

It was happening.

When the silhouette of Legend began rushing back into camp, bloodied and panicked the traveller knew already what had happened- he didn’t need to glance at the mass in the Veteran’s arms to know it was you, the bolt still protruding through your ribcage as the small blonde screamed for them all to do something- ready the potions, ready the fairies, anything. His hysterics would have been almost comical if the brunette didn’t feel like his world was crashing down around him as he watched your hand limply hang, unmoving.

“Oh dear Three-”

“Put them down, quickly!”

“We must remove the bolt!”

Hyrule pounced when his body finally snapped back into attention, rushing to your side like a bat out of hell when the blonde had carefully handed you towards the Captain and the Old Man- the soldier carefully snapping off the fletching of the arrow to slide the item out of your chest, the horrible bloodied squelch making the brunette’s stomach twist and churn in horror and fear.

He didn’t see Warrior’s fingers against your pulse, nor the slow head shake towards the horrified Time.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you.” He whispered gently, soothingly, as his hands glowed a familiar white.

“Traveller-” Warriors started.

“You’re going to be okay, I’m going to make it stop.” He pressed his hand over the wound, ignoring the blood blooming around his fingers and soaking them in red. “I know it hurts-”

“Traveller.” Time’s voice was firm, his hand landing on his shoulder. “Stop.”

Hyrule held back from decking the old man where he stood. “”WHAT?! NO!! Are you INSANE-”

“They’re already gone, Hyrule.”

Wild’s voice was…gentle. Gentle and pained as he kneeled next to the frozen hero, carefully moving his hands from the puncture wound to stop the man from further staining his hands in your blood. The Champion’s face was broken, ears down turned and eyes blank as he looked over your broken form- the spark that once danced in your eyes now gone with the gentle rhythm of your breaths.

Hyrule waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Your chest did not move.

Warriors hand gently ran over your eyes, closing the lids so that they no longer had to see the dead stare aimed towards the trees ahead. He moved to softly kiss your forehead after with an even softer apology.

“I…..I promised…” Hyrule muttered, eyes glazing over as tears began to blur his vision of your dead body, still warm to the touch. “I promised-”

“I’m sorry, brother.” Wild whispered, moving to hold Hyrule gently. “I’m sorry.”

The silence hanging over them all was heavy, save for the small sniffles and hiccups of the few. Twilight was trying to console a near uncontrollable Legend, bloody hands roughly grabbing the fur of his hide as he sobbed and choked on tears. Wind was turned into Four, the shorter man holding him close and away from the visceral scene. The rest were stock still, quiet and unsure of what to do, of what to say, as they continued to stare at your…corpse.

Warriors bowed his head. “We should give them a burial.”

“No-” Hyrule gasped, feeling both rage and a cold emptiness within him. “No, I- I need to-” “There isn’t anything else you can do, traveller.” Time’s voice was soft but firm. “Our only option is to bury them…and if we find our way back to their homeland, return their belongings to their mother.”

Hyrule perked up, head swivelling round towards your bag a little ways away.

Belongings…

The

Doll.

His heart surged and in a moment of pure adrenaline, he shoved Wild to the side and dived towards your rucksack, ignoring his brother’s grunt or the other yells.

“Link!”

The brunette grasped the thing frantically, near ripping the strange contraption you called a zipper as he rummaged messily through your back, tossing your things wildly as he looked for the wretched ‘gift’.

“Traveller, stop this!” The voice of Four called, trying to grab his arm. “What are you doing-”

Hyrule didn’t even feel remorse when he roughly shoved his elbow into the nose of the short hero and sent him flying onto his arse.

More yells of his name were heard but they were quite easily ignored when his eyes finally laid eyes on the doll of your likeness, aggressively snatching the carefully crafted toy with a desperation and anger he hadn’t felt for years. He turned back to scramble towards your body, the doll gripped in his hand like it was his lifeline only for Sky and Time to roughly grab his arms, their voices falling on deaf is as he wildly scratched and bit at them, trying to fight his way out.

“Release me!” He roared, catching Sky by the cheek and causing the Skyloftian to wince in pain. “Let me go! I can save them!”

“Enough of this, Link!” Time yelled, both desperate and firm, his own face riddled in anguish. “They are gone! Let them rest in peace!”

Hyrule’s heart thumped painfully in his chest at the thought of you dead, lost to him forever more before he pushed himself harder until he caught the arm of the Old Man and sunk his teeth into the skin, the Hero of Time crying out in pain and finally releasing him- Chosen quickly diving to aid the blonde as the traveller rushed to your side and pressed the doll against you.

“Do your job!!” He yelled into the night air, “Heal them! Bring them back!”

Wild and Warriors pinned him this time, Hyrule’s face pressed into the dirt with them both keeping his arms down to stop him from swiping or nipping at his brothers once again.

“That’s enough!” Warriors’ commanding voice bellowed, pushing Hyrule’s face further into the ground. “Calm down or else, traveller!”

Hyrule’s eyes bore tears once again, struggling once more with both pleas and threats falling from his mouth, merging into a mess of gibberish the further and further he spiralled into a wobbly heap of tears and sorrow beneath the other Links. This couldn’t be the end, the doll couldn’t be a dud- it was supposed to bring you back. You were supposed to be here! You weren’t dead! You couldn’t be dead! He didn’t want you dead! This had to be a nightmare, conjured by Ganon’s monsters to torture him and break him. You- You-

There was a popping sound behind them and heads snapped towards it.

“What was that?” Time asked, still nursing his bleeding bite mark. “Where did that come from?”

Wind’s eyes were wide. “The doll just…exploded?”

Hyrule’s breath stopped.

…

Just as yours returned.

Shaky and hoarse, your body moved with a violent inhale of breath, shaking from the strain and following with heavy coughs as you breathed like it was the first time, lungs born anew. The others watched in a curious shock as you continued to hack and heave, pushing your body up from the ground- the doll falling from your chest into the dirt below.

The toy's chest held a puncture, white wool stuffing blooming at the hole with a few stray curls falling into the dirt.

Hyrule sobbed in relief.

“(Name)!” Wind threw himself at you, arms wrapping around your neck tightly as he shoved his face into your shoulder. “You’re okay- You’re okay!!”

You continued to gasp for breath, the many men around you rushing to your side to aid your effort as Hyrule pushed himself to his hand and knees, smiling a wet and wobbly grin as he listened to you, alive, once more- returned to him from the realm of the dead. You were back, you came back and his heart swelled with a plethora of emotions that made his entire being shake.

Hyrule crawled over to you, frozen and still not sure of your own surroundings as his hands came to engulf your face, his eyes looking back into your own- glazed in confusion and lingering fear that made his heart squeeze in regret.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered, “I am so sorry- I broke our promise.”

Your mouth opened then closed. Then opened and closed once again. Looking for the words to express the feelings behind your petrified gaze, your throats managing noise but that alone in an seemingly endless cycle of struggle and torment. Only when you whimpered, tearing up with a shaky sob did the man embrace you and hold close- careful to keep the bloody hands off you. He didn’t want you to see it.

The dolls never did quite clean up the mess.

----------

Hyrule trekked through his woodland, bumping through branches and harshly knocking away bushes as a man on a mission. Eyes narrowed with anger, the flickered with the flames of hell and rage as he stomped his way towards his destination.

“Where are you going?” Time had asked, watching the traveller pull on his cloak. “Don’t you think it unwise to leave when they just got to sleep?”

You laid in a comfortable heap in your sleep mat, wrapped in both your own blanket and the brunette’s, Wind and Wild laid comfortably beside you and Wolfie acting as your pillow. All were resting, vanished into the land of dreams with the many other men around camp. They were close too, like bodyguards they surrounded you afraid of what had already happened.

Time was left for watch and Hyrule took his opportunity.

“I have some business to deal with.” His voice was void of his usual softness, a growl of a predator with the malice near sharp as Ganon’s himself. “I’ll be back.”

Time narrowed his eye. “We will search for whoever did this in the morning.”

“That is not what I am doing.”

“Then what is? Tell me, traveller, what could you possibly be doing?”

Hyrule’s hand grabbed the doll, his hand tight enough to near pop its beady button eyes right from its wool skull.

Hyrule pulled his hood over his head.

“I will return soon.”

Hyrule ripped another branch from his face, eyes finally narrowing in on the large house in the distance. Like he had seen it once before, warped beyond comprehension yet still perceivable to his naked eye. It haunted his dreams now, echoes of a horrid encounter that shook him to the core and left invisible scars that still marred his soul-

She was there once again, the exact same spot as the time before, the exact same position, her arms crossed over her chest with a menial smile plastered over her lips that only grew as the Hero of Hyrule stepped out from the shadows of the trees, still tightly gripping the ruined doll within his grasp.

Despite her calm disposition, he could so clearly see the hunger in her eyes, even from his spot. “Did your friend like my gift?”

Hyrule’s hand twitched to his blade, hanging from his hip opposed to his back- easier and faster to draw. “I should kill you where you stand.”

The Dollmaker’s chuckle held a twisted humour like poking a sleeping, starved bear. “You should- but you won’t.”

Hyrule’s eye twitched. “What do you want with them? They have no power- no fighting capability or anything you could possibly want.”

“Ah,” She tapped her nose with the constant smile. “You will come to know. Or maybe you won’t, wouldn’t it be more fun to find out yourself?”

“Stay away from them.” He stepped up to her door’s steps, eyes manic in rage. “Leave them be.”

Her already massive smile grew.

The Dollmaker was not someone Hyrule liked to encounter. When her dolls appeared death usually followed, mostly his own, the many sawdust filled dummies gathering dust in the darkness in his bag as a constant reminder of what you had been through during his adventures. Sometimes he saw different ones, of faces he had only glimpsed at in towns or villages, but he saw them- he had seen one of her own long ago. Saw the damage dealt to it’s surface when he had the unfortunate chance of crossing into her shop looking for some magic items he was already lacking.

She liked to collect them; that was the idea he had conjured anyway.

Raising your doll high, he presented the damaged little soft toy towards her and saw how her pupils grew at the sight. While her hands were gentle to grab it she practically snatched it from his hands and cradled the thing close to her chest, gently caressing the spot where the hole had formed.

“Even a cursed doll, you handle them gentle.” Her comment made him huff, his arms crossing to hold back from doing something he regretted. “I showed them mercy, you know.”

Hyrule ground his teeth. “You think shooting them in the chest is mercy?”

“Compared to what else I could have done, yes.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s only fair if I have my fun.”

The Hero turned his head away. “You’re sick.”

And the Dollmaker hummed. “I will return with another.”

She disappeared into the darkness of her house, footsteps gently fading off as Hyrule stood just below the doorway, pearing in and hoping to see the mystery of her disorted abode. No luck however, his eyes only soaked in the dark abyssal, his ears twitching at the sounds of creaking floorboards and groaning wood of the walls, focusing and focusing in a near trance until the sight of her eye peering through the darkness made him take a cautious step back.

When had he climbed the steps?

“Here.” She said, once again both calm and giddy as she presented the doll to him- another little you, with a stitched little smile like the last. “I hope they enjoy it.”

Hyrule carefully snatched the doll away before jogging down the steps and headed back towards the forest without another word.

“It didn’t feel right to use sawdust.” The brunette paused, slightly moving his head in indication that he was listening- not that it mattered. He knew she would continue on, even if he had trudged off. “I felt they needed something a little more…lively and I of course couldn’t brush off the idea of using the finest of sheep’s wool. I think it suited them much more, don’t you agree?”

…Hyrule kept walking.

[monpalace]

Twilight is an attentive lover, but he's most used to the affections shared between couples in Ordon— whether he's with the other Links or not. He's always willing to change something he's doing for his significant other so long as it's within his moral values.

Dates are strange if you can excuse his dislike for sitting in fancy restaurants and being crowded around others. He prefers going on walks in towns or (preferably) a forest due to his more rural upbringing.

He prefers using nicknames as opposed to his significant other's name. Doll, sweetheart, and beau are some of his favorites, but he has a much more expansive list. On the off chance he does use their real name, it's likely to call their attention or show his displeasure.

Between being a rancher, the (one of) Goddesses’ Chosen Hero(es), entertaining Ordon’s children, and trekking throughout all eras of Hyrule; Twilight has quite a busy schedule.

The most downtime he has is between past sundown and a few hours before sunup. He knows his significant other might not have the same schedule as him, so he always offers to bring them along with him. He rarely asks them to assist in anything he has to do, not wanting them to get their hands dirty regardless of if they do similar work.

Twilight is just like his (great?) grandfather in terms of being a gentleman. He'll open doors, offer his hand when getting off something or over puddles, and stand behind them when going up stairs regardless of if they're bigger or smaller than him.

Unlike a few other Links, Twilight is the type of lover to walk on the side of the road where all the horses and carriages are, gently pulling his significant other to the side where the danger isn't.

(Wind and Wild are the types to pull someone into the middle of the road with them while traffic is high.)

Twilight isn't the best gift giver and it's a fact he's very aware of. He prefers acts of service, quality time, and physical touch when it comes to giving his significant other a love language. In return, he doesn't quite care which one he receives given his lack of experience in relationships, though any of them are enough to make him flustered.

He loves public displays of affection when he's around the other Links or anyone from Ordon— the issue comes up when it's around anyone with a noble background. He knows he saved his Hyrule, but royalty always makes him nervous. An easy workaround for him is to completely avoid any event he's invited to, but he's easily persuaded into joining.

You can feel Twilight's hands become clammy beneath the gloves he wore. He tries to inconspicuously wipe them off on his button-up, the lace of the collar and the way your arm looped through his made it look more awkward than he intended.

I hate this, he signs as his tongue darts out to wet his lips. I don't know why you talked me into this.

Ignoring his words, you fix the tie that lay between the lace, eyes just barely sliding over the nobility of Hyrule that surrounded you. “Relax,” you respond in a hushed whisper, placing a hand on his rigid back, “they're Hylians, not Bokoblins. They won't eat you.”

Almost against his will, Twilight’s spine begins to curve when you pull away. The arm that held onto his moves to instead grab hold of his hold, pulling him through the conversing crowd to one of the less populated hallways.

The air was less suffocating to him, thankfully, but his muscles still ached from his stiffness.

Twilight has to clear his throat to remove the wavering feeling from it. “You don't think they’ll talk?” His voice was low, almost a murmur of fear. “Do I look fine? Do you think they think I look fine? Is my—”

You shush him by placing a hand on the nape of his neck, carefully minding his slicked hair, and pulling him closer so he could be level. “They don't care,” you hum. You press a kiss to his cheek, ignoring how he chases after you pull away. “They really don't,” you reiterate, “just calm down and act somewhat natural.”

“Do we have to go back?”

“Yes.”

Twilight's mood quickly dampens once more.

(So much for the Hero of Courage.)

[turbofanatic]

Time for my silly annual fanart obsession that will inevitably be used as grist for other projects! Do not expect this to go anywhere!

I've been thinking about a Legend of Zelda series game where the tri-force and goddess/hero/Demise incarnations are kind of switched around. (I mean, I don't think it's been confirmed that Demise always has to take the power tri-force, just that the trio will always return, I could be wrong though). So we have the Hero with the power tri-force, the Goddess with courage, and Demise with wisdom. This Hyrule also seems very different, laying at the bottom of a giant crater, and if you max out your stamina you can get to the edge and see... nothing but more empty craters.

Hyrule is slowly becoming colder and darker and the light-fish (which functions as the sun as it slowly winds its way around the crater) is dying. Things are making making their way in and infecting people. This tri-force exists as a triumvirate of Power, Security, and Control and Control/Wisdom is corrupted, Security is occupied, and Power is dutifully sending energy somewhere, but not where it should go. The gerudo desert is particularly badly hit (gerudo sires/princes aren't quite as rare in other games, but they're only about 1/15 of the gerudo population and tend to be overly protected as a resource, it kinda sucks!). Our hero (called "Lunk" here) gets infected, is mercy killed by his bodyguard with the cool "sword of the raging god" they found and left for dead. Except the dying part doesn't take, and the sword has stuff it needs to get done. He's partly infected, but it's kept at bay by the sword and eventually he comes across a Rito called Zelda who was working as a demolitionist for the group that was looking for artifacts like the sword, and then they're off trying to figure out who killed the light-fish.

Since, thematically, Wisdom is the corrupted one, our heroes are kind of... dumb. Lunk looks like a villain ought to look and bird Zelda is wanted for blowing up religious artifacts. People don't trust them! Also, wisdom/Demise is manipulating one really really scary hylian twink oh goddess he's so fast.

They're trying to figure out what killed the light fish, and hopefully restore it. Lunk has six daughters and even though he's maybe kind of sort of dead he'd like them to live.

And did I mention that there's a prophecy that Lunk will grind hyrule beneath his feet for ten thousand years? That seems bad. Is the power tri-force the dangerous part and not just Demise?

Gameplay would, like TOTK, revolve around physics, though it's mostly based on the fact that Lunk can change local physics around him, making things lighter or heavier, changing inertia, etc. Bird Zelda is basically a military drone that drops small grenades.

Aesthetically, this is heavily Twilight Princess influenced though. What a pretty game.

[aegon-targaryen]

Beneath the Skin

Zelink Week Day 5: Spellbound | TOTK Zelink | read on AO3) | @zelinkcommunity

Some days, Link couldn’t take his eyes off her. And it wasn’t because of the giddy intoxication he’d felt at seventeen in that field of flowers, or at one-hundred-and-seventeen, when she stopped being a memory and started being a girl whose heart beat alongside his. That longing had come from hope. This one was born of desperation. Like if he didn’t spend every minute taking stock of her blond hair and her Champion-blue shirt and the excited bounce in her steps, all of it would fall away from him.

And here he was again, following the wavering light of Zelda’s torch into the darkness, only he carried more scars and a sword reforged by her sacrifice. There was no Demon King waiting for them this time. Surely the Depths were still populated by monsters and Yiga, but nothing that posed a true threat.

Right?

Link was sweating under his leathers despite the chill that permeated this place. He couldn’t help but glance behind him at the Brightblooms that led back to their anchored hot air balloon. They weren’t really necessary—he’d already activated most of the Lightroots during the Upheaval—but some combination of habit and paranoia made him keep dropping them anyway.

Besides, it was a welcome distraction from the restless ache that kept traveling up and down his right arm. The Gloom had left behind unnatural scars, but otherwise the limb was fully functional; he couldn’t guess why it was hurting now. Still, he’d choose pain over the alien sensation of wearing someone else’s skin any day.

“And how do Brightblooms work, exactly?” Zelda wondered. “Unlike other bioluminescent plants, they only glow when struck with physical force. Yet they produce so much light that their name is apt indeed!”

She kept thinking aloud as they walked, and Link tried to let the familiar flow of her voice ease his mind. They were here for research, nothing more. Perhaps he should show her one of the Zonai mines. Or a Frox, as long as her curiosity didn’t overpower her caution.

When Zelda halted in her tracks, his hand flew to the Master Sword—habit and paranoia once again; there was no sign of danger. She was crouching down to study a swath of blackened earth that spread outwards in jagged patches, as if scorched by a lightning strike or an experimental use of Fire Fruit.

Link saw her hand quest towards it and blurted out, “Don’t.”

She glanced up at him, her face alight with the thrill of discovery. “You know what this is?”

“It’s…where the Gloom used to be.”

“I see. Not so different from the marks left behind by Malice. It should be safe to touch, since the Gloom itself has all faded.”

Even so, she used the end of her torch to poke at the damaged ground. The sound was like ashes being scraped out of a hearth, but in its place Link heard a puppet’s mocking laughter, a screaming chorus of scarlet hands, a black dragon roaring at the ruinous sky. He dug his fingernails into his palm to make sure the flesh and the pain still belonged to him.

The scraping stopped. Zelda straightened, her lips pressed into a worried line. “Link?”

He met her gaze listlessly. 

“The Gloom is gone, you know. So is he.”

“I know,” he murmured. The proof was right there here at their feet, and all across Hyrule—their enemies were dead, and the chasm they’d used to get here no longer spewed foul red fog.

So why did his arm still hurt?

“I have enough pictures and samples to last weeks of study,” Zelda said softly. “Do you want to turn back?”

He almost said yes. He almost confessed that this place held nothing but bad memories of losing her, of wandering mindlessly through the dark after that final pool of tears revealed her fate, of throwing himself at Ganondorf in a heartbroken rage. But Zelda was taking his hand, prying his fingers open so she could kiss the crescent marks his nails had left upon the skin, every little movement a reminder that she was here. She was herself again, and Rauru and Sonia had given them a chance that Link didn’t want to squander. 

“Let’s keep going,” he said at last.

“All right,” Zelda relented, though she kept hold of his hand as they continued, dropping it only to take pictures with the Purah Pad or gather soil and plant life in the little vials she wore on her belt. As they left the Gloom-scarred earth behind, Link tried to see this place through her eyes: the strange fireflies fluttering around the shadows, the little Froxes scuttling in the dirt, the giant mushrooms growing tall without sun or rain. Zelda had been teaching him to see the world differently for as long as he could remember. If she could find beauty here, so could he.

Or so he thought until he heard a familiar squeal somewhere in the darkness. Link caught Zelda’s arm just as a pair of Bokoblins burst out from behind a boulder—an ambush, though not a very good one. He drew his sword with a sigh; this wouldn’t take long.

And then light came blaring out of the darkness. Not the orange glow of Zelda’s torch, nor the golden sun of her power—the monsters were shrouded in pure, miasmic red.

For the first time since the Demon Dragon had faded into the sky, Link felt his insides twist in recognition, corruption calling to corruption. Agony seized his fingers and raged all the way up to his collarbone. His jaw locked with terrified shock, so tight that he couldn’t scream even if he wanted to.

Only Zelda’s presence made him stumble forward, ducking past the first Bokoblin’s mace and plunging his blade through its chest. The motion was instinctive, mechanical. He couldn’t sense the weight of the sword, couldn’t sense his fingers wrapped around its hilt; there was no room for anything but the Gloom dragging his life away like a fish gasping on a hook.

The second monster swung its sword in a scarlet arc. Link was in the castle sanctum, the imposter’s laughter still ringing in his ears while rot climbed up his legs and choked his air and poured from Ganondorf’s phantom in an unstoppable tide. He’d been paralyzed then, and he was paralyzed now, because it was supposed to be over, they were supposed to be safe—

A wave of sacred power knocked the Bokoblin aside, and the Depths fell silent again.

“Link? Are you hurt?”

He stared at the corpses as if seeing death for the first time, spellbound by the red tendrils that rose from them like steam. His legs shook; his stomach roiled with sickness; it took him three tries to slide the Master Sword into its scabbard. Zelda drew closer, her brow creased with worry, a faint aura of light still shimmering around her as she reached for his shoulder.

The Gloom recoiled from her touch, and Link flinched back, clutching his arm, digging his nails in again to feel something, anything else. She snatched her hand away as though burned, staring at him through the darkness.

“Link?” she repeated, her voice shrinking down to something small and scared. “Can you answer me?”

“They—” he gulped, his throat suddenly bone-dry. Her fear always wrenched at him in a way his own never did. He concentrated on her familiar face, flushed with life the way it always was after she used her power. “They didn’t get me.”

“You froze before they even reached us. You never freeze.”

“I wasn’t expecting the—the—”

“Nor was I. Clearly the Gloom no longer plagues the Depths or the Surface, but perhaps the living things it infected are still…” Realizing what she’d said, her eyes widened with horror. “Oh, Link.”

Of course she’d figured it out all on her own. Link hugged his arm to his chest and stared at his boots. Zelda had lost him once, in the mud and fire of the Calamity, and under the castle they had lost each other. But that was supposed to be over. He wanted so badly for it to be over.

“It barely affects me,” he mumbled. “I thought all of it was gone until today.”

“But there are days when you’re tired and tense. The words I’m not hungry never used to be in your vocabulary, but you’ve said them more times than I can count since the Upheaval. I think I understand why now.”

He hadn’t even noticed. Then again, everything seemed manageable compared to the weakness he'd felt upon waking far above Hyrule, barely able to hold a sword. The person Link was before the Gloom ever touched him seemed as distant as his lost memories. Pain had never been a stranger to him, but Zelda was right—it hadn’t always been his constant parasite, either.

She pulled him into an awkward embrace, cautious of her burning torch and his trembling arm, and told him quietly, “We’ll figure this out. You’re going to be just fine.”

He released a shaky breath, resting his forehead against her shoulder. It always felt better to let her in. Why did he keep forgetting that?

Without another word, they turned and walked back along the path of Brightblooms. The ache laced up and down Link’s arm with every step, but that awful soul-sucking sensation had faded with the monsters’ deaths—not that it wouldn’t return.

He shuddered at the thought, and when Zelda rested a hand on his back, he allowed her to guide him the rest of the way to the balloon, allowed her to sit him down on the bench while she unchained the anchors and planted a Flame Emitter in the center of the basket. With a rush of warm air and a wobbling lurch, they were airborne, ascending slowly towards the surface.

Link laid the Master Sword across his knees, opening and closing his right hand as though he could expel what plagued him the same way he would ease a cramp. Zelda’s fingers drummed restlessly at the edge of her bench. He wished passionately that he could close the distance to hold her again without unbalancing the balloon.

“How bad is the pain?” she asked after a while.

“That doesn’t bother me. It’s more that…whenever I’m near Gloom, like with those monsters, it—it pulls at me and I—” He stopped at the look in her eyes, dropping his gaze to watch the Depths recede beneath them.

“I know you used Sundelions during the Upheaval. Did anything else help you?”

“The Lights of Blessing from Rauru’s shrines. A little of the Gloom left me every time I got one.”

“You felt that happen?”

“It…tried to hold on. But the light was stronger. Maybe that’s why I always felt better around…around you.”

Zelda’s hand crept up to press against the Zonai stone she still wore on a string around her neck, tucked under her shirt—because he couldn’t stand to look at it, and she couldn’t stand to let it go. Link tilted his head back to watch the widening sliver of sky above them, remembering the wind, the soft feel of her mane, the tears in her eyes and in his. For months, the light dancing over her scales had been both his only solace and the worst pain he’d ever felt.

“Then I may be able to help,” she said, and he was glad to be pulled back into the present, to see her sitting right across from him.

“Really?” Link’s voice sounded thin and childish. “I—I want it gone.”

“I know, Link. And I’ll do everything in my power, but if the Gloom tries to hold on, as you said…I’m worried I might hurt you.”

“You would never hurt me,” he promised softly, holding her gaze across the flames.

She gave him a small smile, half hope and half sorrow, and was about to reply when a sudden current of air made the balloon lurch. Zelda listed sideways, catching herself on the railing, and by the time he registered his brief flash of panic—by the time he remembered the last time they’d plummeted into the dark together—the basket had already stabilized beneath them.

“We’re okay,” Link murmured, wanting to say the words aloud.

“We’re okay,” Zelda echoed, and her smile returned—shaken, yet bright as ever. The balloon drifted quietly towards the sky, and not much later, sunlight broke through the shadows.

.

.

.

The evening was cool and quiet by the time they sat down in front of the pond, the balloon stashed and the horses fed and Zelda’s samples carefully transported down the ladder to her well. Plumes of smoke rose from the chimneys of Hateno, wavering in the wind that rustled the grass and rippled the water’s surface.

His arms were bare under the climbing tunic, prickling with goosebumps as she trailed her fingers down the whorled scars the Gloom had left behind and paused at the pulse point in his wrist. “If this works, I believe much of the pain will leave you,” she said quietly. “But…we should be prepared for the possibility that there might be some lasting damage, even so.”

Link nodded. He had enough scars to expect that.

“Are you ready?”

The Master Sword was nestled in the grass beside them. Zelda had healed them the first time they’d broken together, placing Link in the blue waters of the Shrine and the sword in an unbreachable sanctuary. How fitting that she would be the one to do it again.

“Yes,” he whispered, leaning in to press his lips to hers. There was fear in the kiss, both their hearts hammering in anticipation of the pain, and he pulled back to cup her face in his hands, reminding her firmly, “You would never hurt me.”

Zelda rested her forehead against his and took his hands. “Close your eyes, Link.”

He did, opening his other senses to the familiar smell of her, the cool wind on his skin, the sound of children laughing across the bridge. Light bloomed past his closed eyelids, and he knew without sight that it was golden and beautiful.

The Gloom reacted instantly, sinking its claws into the center of his being. Link clenched his jaw, resisting the instincts that screamed at him to pull away as Zelda tightened her grip on his hands and opened the floodgates of her power.

He’d spoken the truth: she couldn’t hurt him, but the corruption was writhing and snarling through him without mercy, trying to anchor itself against the flood. A whimper slipped through his gritted teeth. Zelda’s voice was on the verge of breaking when she told him, “Breathe, Link—it’s working, just breathe—”

Link dragged in a shuddering gasp, his mind casting about for a weapon against the pain. He found what he always found: the memories he’d gathered over the years, carefully stored and cultivated with the same meticulous attention she gave her flower garden, so when moments like this one came roaring in—as they always did and always would—he had some good to shield him from the bad.

He breathed in and remembered Zelda smiling at him for the first time, Zelda capturing a frog in her hands, Zelda pressing her lips to her stallion’s forehead while Link wished for things he never expected to have. A century of pain later, their lives intertwined in ways more precious than he could have imagined—the messy cooking lessons, the quiet journeys, the first night she’d sat up in bed and asked him to stay, the long argument that had ended with a kiss and a homecoming and a new beginning.

All of that was so much bigger than the pain, so much stronger. Link could feel the Gloom’s hold weakening, could feel wisps of it rising from his skin. But more than anything, he felt Zelda’s strong hands holding him fast, her forehead still pressed against his, her power embracing him the same way it had so many times. The last breath he took on Blatchery Plain, the first one he drew after she reached through the walls of her prison to wake him up, the way she crossed the sky to catch him as he fell, her white scales shining like a beacon at the end of all hope.

The Gloom was rippling out of him now, fleeing from the relentless flow of power. But the gnarled root of it was still latched onto his heart—one last legacy of the enemy they’d been born to fight, still trying to claim what would never belong to him.

Zelda lifted Link’s right hand and pressed it to his chest, her palm over his. He opened his eyes to meet her gaze, green as wildflowers and shining with tears.

“Let it go,” she said, the words so soft and so knowing, and he lifted his head, a long breath rushing out of him as he banished the last of the Gloom and watched it rise towards the sky in thin red ribbons, quickly erased by the wind.

Finally, the weight was gone, and Link had never realized just how heavy it was until this moment—until he dragged in his next breath and knew his body belonged to him again. He released a shuddering sob and kissed the glowing symbol on Zelda’s hand, reaching up to wipe the tears from her cheeks even as more fell.

“Thank you,” he choked out, “thank you, thank you—”

She hugged him so hard he thought his ribs might bruise, but that was the sort of pain he could cherish. When she buried her face in his shoulder, Link understood that this had fixed something for her too—it had returned some of the control she lost when she fell through the dark and landed in a place where all roads led to the sacrificial altar.

The setting sun burnished the sky, the wind swept long and low across the plains of Necluda, and they held each other until his stomach growled at a truly embarrassing volume. Zelda was the first to chuckle, and soon enough they were both sprawled out on the grass, laughing with hysterical relief.

“I’m hungry,” Link announced happily when he caught his breath, sending her into another round of giggles. “Zelda, it’s been so long since I’ve been really hungry.”

She clambered up and offered him a hand. “Well, we’d better fix that. What would you like?”

“Everything,” he answered, and though his skin was scarred and his muscles were tired, he felt light as air when she pulled him to his feet and drew into a deep kiss, her fingers tangling in his loose hair, her lips still fighting a smile.

“Everything,” Zelda promised.

They went home, turning their minds to simpler things. Link left the door open to the wind and the wild, glancing up from time to time to watch as Naydra rose from the Depths, climbed past the northern mountain, and soared into the starry sky.

.

.

.

[linksthoughtbrambles]

The Seeds of Love, Well Worn

A gift for @newtsnaturethings for Midna's Merry Mixup! I'm sorry this is so late!!! I am officially saying Newt is also a coauthor of this fic because it is based on a very old, very silly conversation we had that was so much fun! This fic was also inspired by "The Calamity of Link's Cargo Shorts" by @zeldaseyebrows! It is excellent and should be read!! A big thank-you to @bellecream for beta-reading! This fic is also available to read here on ao3. Post-TotK Zelink, Canon-Compliant, Rated T, ~9,400 words

At first, Zelda thought nothing of it.  After all, Link was entitled to some eccentricities.  He couldn’t be the legendary hero if he were ordinary, could he?

Certainly, his renewed desire to play hide-and-seek with the koroks struck her as odd.

And yes, his sudden willingness to spend time away from her also seemed odd, especially as he’d clung to her so fervently since her fall from the sky—why insist on leaving her behind now?

Perhaps he wished to give her uninterrupted time to pursue her studies.  She’d shooed him from her well and atrium often enough, though always with a smile.  And yes, she’d been busy with concerns in all corners of Hyrule, leaving her less time to attend to her new garden, and she’d been frustrated with her efforts to populate the lovely pond Link had built into their plateau—had she been short with him?  Had she seemed distant?  Perhaps she’d hurt his feelings.

“I apologize sincerely, Link,” she blurted that night over dinner.

He blinked at her, all blue-eyed owl.  “Huh?”

Apparently not.

His spectacular grin an hour later as he tossed her on their new bed confirmed it.

Definitely not.

--

Her concern grew as Link traveled further and further afield.

“Link- must you find them all?” she asked.  “Surely that’s unnecessary.”

“I need more Korok seeds,” he said.

Her eyes flew wide.  “S- eeds?”

“Yeah!”

“Ah.  And… how many of these have you collected?”

Link shrugged and jammed his hand in his korok pouch.  It emerged overflowing with tiny, golden nuggets.  A few fell to the floor as the distinctive scent invaded Zelda’s nostrils.

“Link-“

He deposited them on the table-

“Link-”

-and reached back in, his fist again brimming with the deceptive little pellets.  Zelda’s nose wrinkled as she waved her open palms in the direction of his belt.

“Link, this is our dining table!”

“So?”

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t you want to count them?”

“Well- not here.”

Link blinked at her.  “Why not?”

She stared at her erstwhile knight, helpless to shut her jaw.

He didn’t know, did he?

She supposed it had never come up.

To be fair, they did look somewhat like seeds.

“How many fistfuls of these would you estimate you have in there?” she asked quietly.

“Oh, fistfuls?  Maybe…” he scratched the back of his head with a squint toward the ceiling.  “Maybe about twenty?”

Zelda blanched.  “And… that’s not enough.”

He snorted.  “Noooooo.”

His obsession struck her all the more strangely.

--

Link would stop at nothing.  In short… he would create a mountain out of a molehill, right there on their dining room table, a tribute fit only for a king.

Or so Link seemed to believe.

She began to wonder if he was unwell.

The Rasitakiwak Shrine activated up the hill just before sunset.  Link bounded into her garden at an unreasonable pace.

“Hahaaa!” he kissed her cheek with an intentionally long, wet smack and a shoulder-squeeze.

Zelda couldn’t help but giggle.  “Link!”  She then wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder.  “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Me too,” he said.  “I got sixteen today.”

Zelda’s smile became quizzical as she wondered if he’d washed his hands.

--

“I’ll be on Hebra peak all day!” Link announced with a sideways smile and two fists proud on his hips.

Zelda tried to appear as though she were not at all worried, and that she was, in fact, happy for him to be so excited about visiting an incredibly dangerous high-altitude frozen wasteland on a whim.  “The peak, specifically?” she asked, voice bright, though the slight curl of her lip may have given her away.

“My korok sense is tingling,” he said.

Zelda’s cheek twitched.  “I wasn’t aware you had one.”

Link pulled a leaf-shaped mask from his pouch and donned it with a ya-ha-ha.  It explained nothing.

She clasped her hands before her with a deep breath.  “Will you allow me to accompany you this time?”

“Nope!”

She sighed.  “Why ever not?”

“You have things to do!  I know you want to-“ he began to count on his fingers- “jam a Zonai charge in that guardian-claw-contraption with Robbie, zip to Lookout Landing and see if Purah’s gotten any Zonai abilities working with the purah pads, weed and water your garden, do your measuring and extracting stuff there, see if any of those frogs you caught are still anywhere near our pond, go to Hateno and check how our critters are doing there, check in with Symin about the school… I mean- you have a lot going on.”

Zelda shook her head.  “You’re not wrong, Link, but perhaps you might stay with me today?  Can the koroks wait until tomorrow?”

He hesitated.  He removed the mask to scratch his nose.  “Well- I mean, will they still be there?  Yeah! They’re shockingly dedicated to their game, which… is weird considering Hestu stopped playing with them seven years ago.”  Link squinted, his eyes defocusing a bit.  Zelda kept her laugh silent—a mere flurry of quivers of her diaphragm.

“Huh,” Link finally said, shaking his head, his eyes forcibly wide.  “That is really weird, isn’t it?  But… I kind of have to hurry.  Even if the koroks are… insane.  Or messing with me.”

That struck Zelda as disturbingly likely.

Link nodded, apparently resolute despite his targets’ nebulous motivations.  “I should go today.”

She couldn’t help her falling face.

“Aw,” he said.  He stuffed the mask back in his pouch, took her in his arms, and curled himself around her, pressing a kiss to her hair.  “You miss me?”

“Yes,” she said, a little sheepish.

He held her tighter.

Then he bear-hugged her.

“Heh- Link!” she smiled, pushing at him playfully.

“It’ll be worth it,” he said.  “Really.  Please trust me?  I promise there’s a good reason.”

“Can you tell me?” she asked.

He loosened his hold and kissed her forehead with the softness of a cloud.  “If I could, I would.”

She studied his eyes a long moment.

He certainly appeared to be his usual self.  His eyes sparkled with mischief, with his ever-present love for her, and with that shadow she’d seen in him ever since she’d fallen into the depths, whisked into another time.

The shadow- it worried her, kept her worrying beyond what would otherwise be reasonable.  He’d never been the same.

She could even feel it in the cadence of his breath—shortened without apparent cause, always a twinge on the end of each, a restlessness in his fingers as he held her.  They just kept moving, even when his hands were still.

Why this would drive him to scour the countryside for korok droppings, she didn’t know.

She ought to enlighten him about that at some point.

--

It ended on an unremarkable day in late spring, as suddenly as it began.

Zelda had no explanation.

Link said nothing of it.

His korok-seed fever simply ceased.

She wondered if someone else had revealed their nature to him.

He spent two entire days never leaving her side.  The most accurate word she could think of to describe his mood was ‘barnacle.’

Zelda-barnacle.  Yes, that was it, she thought as she clipped a sample off one of her more mature sundelions, his chin on her shoulder, his nose in her hair, his eyes on her work, and both his arms wrapped securely about her middle.  Even his legs were flush to hers a good measure of the way down.

That night, the sound of the shrine’s transport platform reached her in her sleep.  She opened her eyes to find Link gone, his place in bed beside her cold.  She heard him enter the house soon afterward.

He returned to bed and wrapped his arms around her as though he’d never gone.

“Where were you?” she asked quietly.

He kissed the crown of her head.  “Kakariko.”

“Why?”

He chuckled.  “Can’t tell you.”

--

He made several more clandestine journeys, each time unsuccessful in the sense Zelda knew he’d gone.  He always returned to bed, and she always asked where he’d been.

“Kakariko.”

“Kakariko.”

“Hateno.”

“Hateno.”

“The korok forest.”

That one made her sit up.  “Oh?!”

He laughed.

She squinted down at him, his bare stomach shaking with mirth.

She squinted hard.  “So many koroks…” she said.

“Hm.  True,” he answered, mock-seriously.

“…Are you collecting seeds again?”

“Nah.”

She eyed him suspiciously.

Then she tackled his abdomen, tickling hard with all ten fingers.

It hadn’t been wise, truly.  He overpowered and tickled her easily, his utter lack of mercy keeping her breathless for the following five minutes.

She learned nothing more from him that night—and he made no more secret journeys after that, as far as she could tell.

--

The summer solstice arrived.

Zelda opened her eyes to the sight of Link’s lovestruck gaze, the dimple deep in his left cheek.  He pushed her hair behind her ear.  “Happy Birthday,” he said softly.

His first gift to her arrived immediately, with no need even to leave their bed.

The second waited, a centerpiece on the dining table: a large box tied with a wide, royal blue bow, every bit as obvious as Link’s excitement for her to open it.  He’d adopted barnacle-stance once again, using his legs to walk hers toward the table.

She laughed, shifting off-balance as the odd gait forcibly waddled her.  He stopped them directly in front of the box, though he didn’t let go.

“I take it you’d like me to open this before breakfast.”

“Yes please,” he said, his laugh higher than normal, burying his eyes in the nape of her neck.  “I’ve been keeping it secret soooooooo long.”

She chuckled, her arms and hands covering his, warm, around her waist.  “My poor knight,” she said, a habit from days long gone.

He hummed a breath into her, nuzzling her nape and ending with as much of his face as he could tuck into her hair as possible.

She patted his arms and tilted forward.  He slid his hands to her waist and leaned around her, watching.

The ribbon fell open easily.  She lifted the top off the box and folded back the protective paper to see- “Pants?”

“Take them out!” Link urged.

She lifted them by the waistband.  Her head cocked in confusion as they unfolded.

“Shorts!” she said, amazed at the array of large pockets all over them.  They were otherwise simple, black, as though to replace her riding pants.  Their shorter length would be welcome in summer, and she absolutely could do with pockets.  The pouch at her hip wasn’t enough, though Link, of course, would allow her to put anything she wished in his.

“Look inside,” Link whispered, bouncing a little on his toes.

Zelda gave him an amused look.  She then held the waistband open and peered downward.  As predicted, she saw black fabric.  She also saw her own feet on the floor through the leg holes.

“No, no no no no,” Link said.  “Look in the pockets.”

“Ah,” she said.  Thinking he’d secreted something within one for her, she slipped one strap from its loop, lifted the flap, and rummaged inside.

“Goodness,” she said.  “This pocket is quite deep.”

Link produced a snigger.

She eyed him suspiciously once more as she slid her arm further and further into the pocket… still contacting nothing.   She withdrew, confused.

“I-“ she lifted the garment above her head.  Then she examined the pocket’s outer seam.  She pressed her hands on either side of it.  It appeared to be utterly ordinary – larger than her hand, certainly, but…

She shook her head and inserted her hand once more.  She watched, fascinated, as more and more of her arm disappeared into it, until the pocket’s edge reached her shoulder.   She wrapped her other arm around it to feel where her arm had gone inside the cloth.

The answer, it turned out, was nowhere.  The fabric pressed flat to her torso.

She gasped, a slow smile spreading across her face as she turned to see one of the biggest grins Link had ever given her.

“It’s like your pouch!” she cried.

“YA HA HA!” Link yelled as she tackled him. “Oof-“

“Oh my goodness- oh- Link- Link think of what I could do with this!”

“I did,” he chuckled.

“Are all the pockets this way?”

He nodded; then he looked up and to the left for a moment, a half-squint on.  “Well- yeah they’re all enchanted, but it’s not quiiiite the same.”

“Oh?”

“I had- requests for these pockets.  Special ones.”

“Such as?”

“Well…” He opened a larger pocket lower down.  “Check this out!”

She did.

And she gasped.

She was peering into a space, perhaps the size of the main room of their new house, with a lush, grassy floor, a medium-sized dogwood tree, and a pond.

With lily pads.

She stared.

She stared more.

She goggled at Link, dully noting his arms supporting her, his eyes positively twinkling.

“is this…. for… frogs?” she asked, her tongue extremely dry.

“Well,” he said waggling his head.  “It doesn’t have to be. But I thought-“

She kissed him.

--

Link examined his work as a myriad of frogs hopped, croaked, and plain-old-chilled out around him, quite proud of himself.   The ruby rod was definitely staying put—and unlike one of the old flame blades (damn, he missed those), it wasn’t going to cook every frog that touched it. “I think I got it!” he yelled.

The sound of cloth-on-cloth preceded Zelda’s face appearing in what seemed to be a slit on a dark wall about even with Link’s head.

“Oh!” Zelda said.  “You’ve embedded it!”

“I figured it’d work best if it was actually in the water,” he said, trying but failing to see any steam visibly rising from the little pond’s surface.

“Indeed!”

Link wondered if there’d be clouds—like rain—or if droplets would just condense on that nebulous, sky-blue ceiling above.  Verrrrrry slowly.

“I’m still concerned about the lack of sunlight,” Zelda said.

Link smiled, pulling his eyes from the unsky to make his way toward her.  He stuck his face right up to the opening.  “It’s magic, Zelda.  Don’t worry too much.  It was like this in the sword-trials.”

“It’s unclear whether those were physically real, Link.”

 “True, but there were loads of plants inside the Zonai shrines.”

“Hmm.  There still are,” she said.  “I suppose that suggests whatever the light source is, it’s sufficient for them.”

“Yup.  So don’t worry.”  He pointed up.  “I bet it’s sky blue up there for a reason.”

She huffed a laugh.  “I suppose I agree with you, for my instinct is not to take that bet.”

Link raised his chin, proud of himself for the third time that day.  “Nice!  So… is it testing time?”

“If you’re ready, Link, then certainly.  I shall be gentle, but I suspect the fact the pond has remained intact means this will be entirely uneventful.”

The sound of shuffling cloth accompanied the strange sight of her hands, the wall, a painting, and then the ceiling moving beyond the opening followed by a wild motion of the wood, glimpses of Zelda’s armpit, her hair, her nose, and a single green eye as she pulled the garment on.  He heard her fasten it.

“Link?” she called.

“Nothing happened down here!”

“Excellent.”  She peered down at him.  “Link?  You are officially in my pocket.”

He snorted.  “I’m in your pants.”

“As is typical for you,” she said with a mischievous glint.

--

Being in Zelda’s pants (literally) turned out to be less interesting than Link thought it would.

She’d warped to Hateno rather than hike or paraglide down to Tarrey Town.

“What if the shorts fall off?”

“Do your pants usually fall off when you paraglide?”

“Of course not, but if they do, you are in them, and you shall hit the water, and if it comes pouring in, what will happen to you?”

Link shrugged.  “I’ll swim out.”

“Perhaps, but what if the entry fails to expand?”

“Why would it?!”

“No- we must be scientific about this.  Nothing risky is to be done without proof of concept.” Her spine straightened suddenly as though shocked.  “Goodness.  What if I fall?  Same potential result—possibly worse, for we do not know how taking on water affects the weight of the pants-“

Link started laughing.  “Zelda, they have a tree and a pond and- DIRT and things.  They don’t weigh anything.”

“Yet what if they do, Link?!  Perhaps a fraction of their weight is transferred.  We don’t know.  We cannot test it without removing the material, and frankly I have no wish to ruin that lovely environment in order to haul a tree out.  No, the only way would be to add material and weigh the shorts afterward.”

“Ze-“

“Of course, I would do that with the similar pocket on the left rather than disturb the pond...”

He’d been about to suggest he just… paraglide down with her and hop in the pocket in town.  They could be discrete about it—ask to use the bathroom at the Hudson Construction office or something—but he liked to hear Zelda talk, and she’d clearly started one of her long thinking-out-loud rolls.  So, he’d listened while making mental note of the locations of niiiice, big, heavy boulders he could shove in the bottom left pocket.

And now, here he was, chilling with the frogs, listening to Zelda’s footsteps and chatter with the townsfolk, making yet more mental notes of any jostling (which was… really easy since there’d been none so far), and trying to think of how else he could kick the frog habitat up a level.  Luckily, he could hear Zelda even with the flap closed, so he had some entertainment other than the sticky frog that had decided his back was comfortable.

His head shot up.

Neither of them had thought to test whether he could leave with the flap shut.  That, to him, seemed a much bigger deal than anything else.  What if she was hurt and he couldn’t get out to help her?  What if something attacked her?  Zelda could defend herself, sure, but he couldn’t be stuck in here, helpless, if someone or something meant her harm.  Bokoblins.  Moblins!  One of the remaining gleeoks he hadn’t yet purged from the depths.   He can’t possibly have found them all, and those things could fly like anything, come out of nowhere.  He’d never seen one leave a chasm but there was absolutely no reason he could see why it couldn’t, and chasms—dear Hylia, they probably hadn’t found them all and what if she was walking somewhere and she didn’t see it and she slipped and she was falling and falling and falling and he couldn’t catch her again-

“Link?” Zelda called.

Link’s pulse rushed fully tactile in the left side of his neck, audible especially in that ear.  Sweat had begun to seep into his clothing.

“Yeah!” he yelled.

“Any motion?”

He laughed a little, rubbing the back of his neck.  He’d stopped paying attention—but he hadn’t noticed anything.  “I don’t think so!”

He could practically hear her mind whir on that one.

“Alright!” she said.

He shook his head and rolled his eyes at himself.  He’d done it again.  He really, really, really needed to stop doing that.  Hadn’t that been part of the point of this gift to her?  Yeah, she loved the pockets, but also he’d had to get used to letting her be alone.  He must’ve been driving her crazy.  He’d barely been able to let her garden for five minutes without checking on her.

Better that she missed him than got unbearably sick of him hovering around her all the time.  It’d happened before, all those… very many long years ago.  It could happen again.

He scrubbed his face.

He had to think about something else.

He eyed a particularly quick hot-footed frog.

His nose wrinkled.  He wished he didn’t know what its secretions tasted like.  He wouldn’t enjoy being stuck in here with nothing but those things to eat.  He didn’t expect sticky frogs to be any better, or ordinary tree frogs for that matter.

Not that he planned on eating them.  But if it was him or the frogs-

The frog on his back made a soft ‘ribbit.’

Link craned his neck.  He could see the moist, blue tippy tip of his stowaway’s nose.

…Eh. Okay, the frog was cute.  He could eat other things first.

Grass!  There was grass. And flowers.

Could you eat dogwood trees? 

He’d have to dig himself a latrine.

…

It would be really gross.

Not as bad as Zelda being hurt.  By a lot.

But still… disgusting.

And she’d never let that happen to him unless she was hurt, so it was a moot point.

… Or unless the shorts fell in the lake.

He smacked his forehead.  He should know by now that Zelda was always right.  Because if lake water started pouring in here and he couldn’t get out because the flap was closed?

He was effed with a capital f.

Much better that he was in here than her.  He wouldn’t make it five minutes if their roles were reversed.  He’d be hauling her out of here forcibly.  Once they knew how it worked, sure.

Hestu hadn’t seemed to know much about it, either.  Magic, inventory-expanding dances?  He had those in the bag.  The mechanics of the bag?  Nope.

“No, thank you, Manny.”

Link’s eyes shot to the closed flap.

“It’s a spectacular collection of crickets, to be sure.”

“Turns out Lasli didn’t want them, either.”

Link groaned.

“Eh he.  Yes, I heard you telling Link last time.”

He was still on this?

“She didn’t like the frogs, either.  But you do, right, Princess?”

Link would not tell Manny Lasli loved fireflies.  Because she actually did, and he wouldn’t inflict Manny on anyone for real.

“I know you like them.”

…Link didn’t appreciate that tone in Manny’s voice.  Not that he knew what it was, exactly.

He just didn’t like it.

He didn’t like Zelda’s silence either.

He stood and padded barefoot over the grass to try and peek out the flap.

“W- eh- ll.  I- suppose I- do like frogs-“

“I have a hundred for you, Princess.  Do you want them?”

Link really didn’t like that tone of voice.

“U- ahem.  Do you mean the frogs?”

NOT ONE BIT.

Link shoved at the flap, too high-alert to be happy it didn’t resist him.  He grabbed the edge with both hands and stuck his head out.

He found himself looking at Zelda’s midriff.

“AaaaaAAAAAAHHHH!” Manny screamed, and he wasn’t the only one.

Several things happened in quick succession.

People and cuccos scattered (Link could hear them), something hit the ground hard and rattled, and several doors slammed open against their stops.

“ARE THOSE DAMN SKELETONS BACK?!”

“It’s daytime, dad!”

“Heavens, Princess, what are you wearing?!”

“MY LAUNDRY!”

“Princess!!! There’s an animal in your pocket!!”

Zelda’s arms shot out above Link’s head.  “Oh!  No, it’s—" a number of crickets landed on her midsection.  “Oh, my,” she said, hers the calmest voice in earshot as Link tried to figure out how to turn his head the right way.

“MANNY WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!”

“BLEHHHHGHGHGHHHH BUGS!”  (A door slammed shut).

Someone was shrieking high on the letter ‘E’ as Link, with a great deal of confusion, managed to twist around and see the street.

It didn’t help.

Manny was trying to scoop crickets out of the air and fling them back in the wood-and-mesh cage he’d kept them in, its latch flopping around.  The appearance of Link’s eyeballs knocked him back onto his hindquarters with a strange cry, almost as hard as if Link had punched him physically.  The cage landed lopsided—which was probably what happened a few seconds ago, too—and crickets streamed outward.

Ivee seemed every bit as terrified of Link’s disembodied head as she’d been of the potential pocket-critter and then some.  One of her knees rose and crossed her body as she squealed, dropping her broom.

Her father managed to make a wide-eyed scowl at Link.  “What in Hylia’s green hills?!  Link?!”

Manny panted, gulped, and leaned forward.  “L- Link, man.  It is you.”  He then looked from Link to the pocket below him, and up to Zelda’s face, an idea clearly forming.

“You-“ Link said, waggling a finger at him- “and me- we’re having a talk.  Soon.  Got it?”

For some reason Manny grinned wide.  “Got it,” he said with a wink.

Link was confused, but he’d take it for now.  “Good!” He twisted up to see Zelda.  “Hi,” he said.  A cricket landed on his forehead.

Zelda shook with laughter.  “Hello, Link.  Any jostling?”

“Not a thing!”

“Excellent.  Well.  Shall we continue?” she asked, shooing his cricket away.

“Depends,” Link said.  “Do you actually want those frogs?”

Zelda shook her head.  “It is far too many frogs.  Manny?”

“Y- yes, Princess?”

“You ought to return those hot-footed frogs to the wild where you found them, though keeping a few would be alright.  I have enough in here already.”

“E-enough?” Manny stuttered as Link leaned out to see just how many frogs there were and where the heck he was keeping them.

The sticky frog on Link’s back made its bid for freedom.

It launched through the air with a loud croak and landed on Ivee’s hip.

She shrieked, flapping her shirt wildly in attempt to fling it off.  Link moved reflexively to yank himself out and recover the frog. Instead, Zelda toppled as Link simply appeared, connected to her leg.  They landed in a heap, Zelda on top, with her face in Link’s hair and Link’s legs still dangling in the other-dimensional space.

“I got heavy again, didn’t I?” Link said to the dirt.

Zelda nodded in his hair.

“I’ll get you a new frog,” Link offered.

“No need,” she said, having turned her head to rest it on Link, watching Ivee quiver in fear as the blue terror slowly scaled her torso.  “It’s not going anywhere.”

Link rotated his face to look Manny in the eye.  “Seriously.  You’re still trying this?  What do you do, wait by the village entrance and offer critters to everyone who passes you?”

Manny leaned forward conspiratorially.  “Only the hot babes,” he whispered.

Link groaned and put his face back into the dirt.

It was better.

--

“Here you are, Link,” Zelda said, passing him yet another apple.

Not that he wouldn’t take it, but wow, she wanted him to eat today, didn’t she?

“Thanks, Zel!” He grabbed it and made extremely short work of it.  He tried to shove the core in his own pouch again, wrinkling his nose when it just hit bottom and got his hand sticky.  “Aw.  I keep forgetting.”

Her hand reappeared in the opening as she chuckled.  “It must feel strange to suddenly have an ordinary pouch.”

“You bet.  Don’t know how I managed before.”

“Well, fret not.  You shall have access to your many thousands of odds and ends once you emerge.”

Good thing, too.  He’d’ve had some kind of breakdown if bringing his pouch inside THIS pouch had broken his pouch forever.

He had over a dozen omelets in there, to say nothing of a now exceedingly rare undecayed eightfold blade.

It struck him real suddenly why she was feeding him so much.  He couldn’t just reach in and pull out a snack like he usually could.

He found himself very warm and fuzzy.  He turned his eyes on Zelda, still peering curiously at him.  “Thanks, Zelda.  You��re… really thoughtful.  You know that?”

She blinked at him slowly.  “You’re… welcome, Link.”

--

Link now understood his disembodied appearance in Zelda’s pocket was both an asset and a curse.

Sticking his head out among adults, unexpected?  Chaos.

Sticking his head out in the Hateno schoolyard?  Also chaos.  But the screams were fun-kid-play screams, not screams of abject, world-view-upending terror.

The schoolbell rang.

“Awwww,” Azu said.  “We just got started!”

They had, in fact, just started chucking insects, sticks, and chunks of bark into the pocket and watching, fascinated, as they fell sideways upon entering the magical space.

Zelda gave an indulgent chuckle.  “I’m sure the frogs will be appreciative of your efforts, and It’s not as though we won’t be back.  Go to class!”

The children grumbled a little as they traipsed inside.  So did Link’s stomach.

“You know, they fed the frogs, but did I get anything?  Nope.”

“Hmm.  I imagine that’s because they’d eaten their lunches already.”

“Aww.  I wouldn’t take the kids’ lunch.”

Zelda hummed a laugh, her forehead wrinkling slightly. “Are you hungry already?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Truly?  It’s not as though we didn’t have our own lunch… and quite a few snacks for you.”

Link shrugged.  “Hungry anyway.”  She was still… looking at him, but not in the ‘oh look it’s Link, he’s so attractive and I’d like to be back at home in bed right now’ way or the ‘look at Link, he’s so silly, he makes me laugh, he might do something else funny if I keep watching’ way.

He could usually de-code if he studied her hard enough—but right now he had to look partway up her nostrils to do it.  “You… have your thoughtful-face on,” he said.

“I’m always thinking,” she said with a smile.

A suspicious smile.  “Yeaaaaaah, but sometimes you’re thinking harder.”

She cocked her head, still watching him.

He cocked his, too, with half a grimace on.

Maybe it was the ‘he might do something funny’ face.

It couldn’t hurt to try.

Link spun around, spotting a stick Karin had tossed inside.  He snatched it up, looked Zelda right in the eye, and took a nice, hearty chomp.

Her head reared.

“Mmm,” Link said.  “Sassafras!”

It tasted like skunky-root-beer-meets-a-whole-box-worth-of-matchheads, but the look on Zelda’s face was worth it.

She only laughed a little, though.

He’d have to up his game.

Either that, or he’d just have to be attractive later.

He chuckled to himself.  Why not both?

In the meantime, he had a bunch of items to arrange.  Now that Zelda had this pocket, and now that it had frogs in it, and the kids had not only seen it but put stuff in it, they were absolutely going to want to visit the frogs and see all their stuff in use in the frog habitat.

Link sighed, looking at the feeble collection of dead tree matter near the opening.

As if on cue, Zelda reached in, a long, curled section of papery bark in her hand.  “Would… you like this, Link?”

“Sure—thanks!” he said.  He grabbed it and snatched up the rest, intent on turning the kids’ offerings into a tiny frog village in the corner.

--

“Link,” Zelda said, her voice carefully nonchalant.  “Here’s some oak wood.”

Link arrived at the flap and took it from her.  “Oh great, yeah, thanks!”  He gave her a huge, excited grin and an eyebrow flash.  Then he raised it to his wide-open mouth and stuck it right in.

Zelda swallowed, wide-eyed.

He disappeared to the left again with some small shuffling sounds.

She then heard a crack, and a happy sound from Link.

Zelda began to think frantically.

--

“H- here you are, Link,” Zelda said.

Link turned from his task to see her hand dangling a scrap of leather into the opening.

He bounded over to her, reaching for the offering.  Zelda seemed a bit less happy than he’d have liked, her lips pressed together and held there by her teeth.  He looked her over.  Then he looked the leather over.  Not terrible leather.  Not great.  Nothing special.  Big enough to be a blanket for a frog.  He snorted.

He’d stuck a few different kinds of wood in his mouth since the stick made her laugh at least a little, but when she got serious he did, too, going about his construction efforts.  A bunch more bark, several sticks, chunks of wood, and a sheet of slate later, here she was handing him leather.

What was he supposed to do with it?

She was watching him so closely!

…Maybe she got serious because he got boring?  His mouth pulled in deep on the left.  He studied Zelda’s downturned face.  Maybe he hadn’t gone big enough.  “Look.  Do you want to see me eat this?  Because I can totally eat the whole thing.”  He could, too.  He’d eaten way worse.

Her eyes flicked elsewhere, then back to him with a little shimmy of her head.

It was cute.

He smiled.

“No, Link,” she said.

He blew a puff of air out.  He’d hoped so.  “Just checking.”

She looked so expectant.

What was he missing?

“…Thanks, Zel!  Be back in a minute.”  He jogged past the tree and out of Zelda’s direct line of vision.

What to do with the leather?  Zelda didn’t just do things for no reason.  Maybe he should just ask her.  But she wasn’t saying anything, so she must think he already knew, so it must be something for the habitat and he must be being dense, and-

Oh.

OH.

He was… really thick sometimes.  He smiled to himself.

Of course.  He’d even thought it was about big enough to cover a whole frog!  It could be a little frog blanket.  Or a mat.  Or frog armor for a teeny tiny little frog army.

Link’s entire form lit up.

No, no.  Zelda was studying the frogs, not playing with them.  The kids would play with them.

…It would be so cute.

He sighed.  He would resist.  Little mats?  For the cute little frog houses he’d already made with the sticks and stuff?  Sure.  He could make frog-tents, too.  It was always light in the habitat.  They probably needed someplace dark they could go hide in sometimes.  Yes!

Link got to work, realizing pretty quickly he didn’t have all the tools he needed.  He wandered back to the flap.

“Hey, Zelda?”

“Yes, Link!”

“I need some thread and some long, thin lengths of leather.  And more rectangles of leather.  Maybe…” he thought for a moment.  “Thirty-six pieces.”

She stared at him.  “Thirty-six?”

“Yep.  Just to be safe.”

--

I am extremely concerned that Hylian mental status is negatively affected by enclosure within my cargo shorts’ lower-right pocket, Zelda wrote in her research journal.

As Link expressed his hunger despite his frankly gargantuan intake of food, I recalled that items retrieved from Link’s pouch emerge exactly as they went in.  Food does not spoil.  Vegetation does not wither.  Animals do not perish.  And indeed, nothing has occurred to harm the frogs we’ve placed in the habitat for study.  Yet one would think if time stood still, they would not hop (etc.).  Clearly, whatever magic occurs is complex.

I would be merely curious rather than concerned had Link not proceeded to eat sassafras wood (notably unhealthy).  Indeed, for each piece of wood I passed to him after that, he thanked me profusely.  He then appeared to develop an insatiable craving for soft leather!  Is he unable to appease his hunger if he enters in a hungry state?  And was Link willing to eat these items because he was truly that hungry, or has the space had an effect on his thinking?

I oughtn’t allow him to go back in.  It took a good deal of convincing to get him to come out.  He insisted he ‘wasn’t finished.’  I had to lower a rope in and ask him to climb it to test the effect of our gravity vs. that of the gravity within the pocket as he climbed.  I was quite relieved when he agreed.

--

“Morning, Zel!” Link chimed from the kitchen—Zelda had made her way partially down the steps to the alluring aroma of honeyed flapjacks.

“Good morning, Link,” she said, her smile a little more tired than it should have been considering her large amount of sleep.  She breathed deep.  “That smells delic…ious.”

Zelda stared at the low table along the far wall.  “Link?”

“Yep?”

“What are those?”

Link followed her gaze.  “Oh!  Yeah, the leather was a really good idea.  I’ll bring those ones in with me today.”

She blinked, shaking her head.  “You… what?”

“Into the pocket today,” Link said, flipping one of the pancakes.  A few dark spots revealed wildberries embedded in it.  “I’ll bring them in with me.”

“Link- I… was thinking perhaps you shouldn’t go in there today.”

“Huh?  Why not?”

“Well, for one thing we’ve other concerns.  We are overdue for our visit to Rito Village.  I know Tulin has been anxious to discuss his Zonai stone, and we shouldn’t put that off for any of our modern-day sages.  There ought to be- some manner of succession, or-“

“Zel,” Link said, a quizzical look on his face as he slid the honey and blackberry flatcake onto a plate.  “This… is nothing new, and none of them are…” he shrugged, waving his pan and his spatula- “old, or… sick, or anything.  It can totally wait.”

“It’s not as though the pockets can’t wait.”

“Zel, you literally just started testing them out yesterday.”  He squinted at her.  “You were worried about just keeping frogs in there without understanding how the fake environment would affect them.  Right?”  He waited.

“Well… yes.”

“And they just plain old don’t like our little L-shaped pond thing.  Right?”

“…They do not seem to particularly enjoy it, no.”

“Because they leave.”

“Yes.”

“So you can’t just take the little guys out and put them in our pond.”

“Not if I expect to see them again.”

“And you like frogs.”

“They are fascinating,” she said.  “Not that other creatures aren’t – they certainly are – but, at least in our time, their effects on speed, strength, and stamina were poorly understood, though of course we can make some elixirs from them, and now with these sticky frogs having sprung from the caverns opened in the upheaval, there is so much more to learn.  It’s not even just the frogs, it’s-“

She stopped at the huge, dimpled smile on his face.

“What is it?”

“You,” he said.  He replaced the pan on the wood stove and dolloped some batter in it—then he circled the table and wrapped her up in his arms.  “I love how curious you are,” he said.

“Even after all that time,” he said, far more quietly.

She’d snuggled into him, but his tone had her pulling back, examining his face; his smile had vanished.  She traced his lips with an unthinking fingertip.  “Link…”

He tried and failed to smile under her touch.

She stroked the subtle hollow of his cheek.  It disturbed her a little that he even had a hollow of his cheek, with all the food he took in.  He never used to.  He’d had rounded cheeks, always.

“Sorry,” he said.  “It hits me sometimes… how long you waited.  For me.  Because I-“  he swallowed.  “Because I missed.”

She shook her head and crushed him to her, pressed his face to her shoulder.  “No, Link.  No.  Truly.  It wasn’t like that.  It was as though…. a long dream.”

He nodded against her.  She’d told him before—many times—yet it continued to haunt him, evidenced by moments like this.  Sometimes she thought he didn’t believe her.

Sometimes she suspected hethought about it far more than he let on—wondered if the occasions on which he acted strangely were fueled, somehow, by that fall of hers into blackness and its consequences.

Not for Hyrule.  He’d saved that.

But she’d spent eons and eons so very far not only from him, but from her own consciousness—and self-recrimination kept surfacing within him for it.

Zelda thought of his months-long korok obsession.  Of his need to have hundreds upon hundreds of ‘seeds,’ and that need utterly overriding his usual (over)protectiveness of her, even to the point of him going when she specifically requested he stay.

There had been no pocket to affect his thinking, then.  Perhaps an oddity of the flow of time had nothing to do with his behavior.

She worried at her lip and thought of the scraps of leather lined up on the table partway behind her.  “…Link?” she asked.

“Yeah, Zel?”

His voice sounded thick.

She stroked his hair and took a deep breath.  “What is the leather for?”

His eyelashes fluttered against her skin.  He lifted his head to look at her.  “Frog tents.”

“…Frog tents?”

“And mats and blankets, and I was thinking of making cute little sets of leather frog armor, but I figured that was just me being a little bored and not actually something that would spruce up the habitat, though the kids would sure enjoy it.  Maybe we should get them to make some.”

Zelda breathed a sigh of relief.  “You-“ she shut her mouth.  Should she say something?

“Zelda?”

She smiled, her thoughts turning.  “Link- you… you worried me yesterday.  Considerably.”

He looked nonplussed.  “I did?  How?”

She gave him a look, then patted his shoulders—he released her.  She walked over to her hung shorts.  She reached into one of the storage pockets and removed a birch branch.

She returned to Link and held it out to him expectantly.

He just stared at her.  He flicked his eyes to the branch once.  Then he stared some more.  “Uh.”

“What… would you do with this if I gave it to you?” she asked.

Link scratched the back of his head.  “I mean… usually I’d whack a bokoblin with it- ONLY if it was red, mind you.  But now with the pond, I could give it to the frogs like all the other stuff.”

She blinked at him. “You could… what?”

“Yeah, I can arrange it around the pond- well… it’s really in the corner, I didn’t want to put it right next to the water.   It looks pretty neat already but it’s not even close to finished yet.  It’ll be like a little frog village.  Little log seats and tents, and an itty bitty frog campfire for them to sit at, and little mats for them to sleep on, and…” he trailed off at the look on her face.  “What?”

“You haven’t been eating these?”

He stared at her.

Then he burst out laughing.  “What?!”

She spread her arms wide.  “You have been- taking bites of wood, and bark, and even rocks—though granted this is not the first time I’ve seen you eat rock-“

“Salt’s a rock.”

“That is beside the point, Link, the darling, obtuse love of my life.”  She gripped his shirt with two fists and put some of her weight on them.  It made him lean over with a bit of a droll smile on his face.  “You were displaying- extraordinarily odd behavior once more.  Please, please, explain your actions if not to sate your seemingly inexhaustible hunger while inside the pocket?”

“You thought I was eating wood because I was too hungry?”

“Of course!”

He huffed a laugh.  “Why wouldn’t I just ask you for actual food?”

“I wondered the same thing!”

“You could’ve asked me why.”

She blinked, drawn up short.

His thumbs drew gentle shapes on her biceps.  His eyes wandered all over her features.  One eyelid twitched just slightly more shut.  “Why didn’t you ask?” His voice had softened so much.

Her mouth opened and shut, her fingertips on his face again.  She made a study of his features with them, moving from place to place.

Link’s nostrils flared a second before she noticed the burning smell.

“Sh-!” he leapt almost comically over the table (comically except that he was Link, so the leap itself was graceful and perfectly executed to place him directly in front of the stove).  “Ahhh, this happens so much…” He flipped the offending flapjack with a flick of his wrist.  The underside was, indeed, rather burnt, but she knew he’d finish cooking it anyway.

He didn’t turn around.

His shoulder blades shifted as he jiggled the pan.

Zelda circled the table, arriving at his side, his nearer hand still on the pan’s handle.  “Link?”

His face turned toward her, and while he showed no outward sign of tears, she knew that face on him.  They weren’t far off.

She caressed his bicep, his hairline where his head and neck met.  “What is it?”

He half-laughed, shutting his eyes and leaning into the hand at his neck, just for a moment.  “You tell me.  You… didn’t answer my question.”

Her cheek came to a slow rest at his shoulder, her eyes on his, at a loss to explain.  She didn’t know where to start.

Her silence seemed to hurt him, almost bodily.  He winced.  He moved the pan onto a thick potholder.  He pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes shut.  He took a few deep breaths before returning his eyes to hers.

“Well, you wanted to know what I was doing, so… I was just trying to make you laugh.  At first, I mean.”  His smile was very, very weak.  “The joke didn’t land, huh?”

Her eyes had widened a little.  “I.. thought-“

“It’s okay,” he said.  A small smirk touched his face.  “I’m funnier when I’m not trying.”

A small laugh puffed out her nose.

“Oh ho!  Yeah, see?  I thought so.”

“I am sorry, Link.  I thought it was hunger because you were simply insatiable all morning.”

He flashed his eyebrows twice.

She giggled. “That is not what I meant.”

He smiled anyway.

“You devoured breakfast, lunch, and every other piece of food I passed to you while you were in there!”

He shook a little in a laugh, though his face remained far less than jovial.  “How is this unusual?”

“Do you realize how much food it was?”

“OH yeah.”

“And you were still hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.  I can literally always eat.”

“You say that, but your stomach must be of limited size.”

Link shrugged.

“I’d begun to wonder if I the space you were in was affecting you.”

“Well, again… I don’t understand why you didn’t just ask me.”

The shadow she’d been seeing in him became all the more obvious.

“Link… you always say you’re alright.”

He shrugged.  “I always am.”

“No, you are not,” she blurted, surprising even herself.  “Link… I see it in you.”  She pressed her hands to his face, cradling him.  “You’ve not been- you’ve never been the same since I came back,” she said, almost whispering.  “I see it there, in your eyes- and more than that.  It’s a change in your entire body, your full self.  Yet you always insist you’re alright.  I do not ask because-“ she just realized it herself- “you would not tell me truthfully.”

She could see him floundering, but her mouth would not stop.  “You have been acting strangely.  For months, you were collecting korok- seeds- with such fervor, willing to leave me for long stretches of time, which had up to that point been quite unusual for you—and you refused to tell me what that was about, too. And then-“ she snapped her fingers- “nothing.  No more.”  She softened at the odd twitching which appeared in his left cheek—she’d no wish to come across as harsh—she simply could not contain it any longer.  “Your night excursions worried me at first, too, and then especially when you mentioned the forest.”

“But,” he cut in, “you know what it was about now, right?”

“Yes, obviously now I know,” she said.

He shook his head, then cocked it strangely at her.  More quizzical than she’d ever seen him be—there was another word for it.  She couldn’t quite place it, perhaps because she’d never seen it on his face.

“So… why are you… still worried?” he asked.

She ducked, seeking his eyes from below.  “How can you not know?”

He splayed his hands wide, face up, shaking his head.  “I- don’t!”

“Link.  You spent months feverishly collecting pellets of korok dung!”

He blinked.  A lot.

Then he looked somewhere straight above Zelda’s head.

“Oh,” she sighed, her face in her hands.  “I- I am sorry, Link, it was obvious you didn’t know, and that in and of itself wasn’t my concern.  Why- why collect them in the first place?  Even if they were seeds in the literal sense?”

Link groaned.  Then he grabbed her biceps and rested his forehead on hers with a flabbergasted smile.  “Wow.  Wow.  Okay, so, yeah, I didn’t know they were turds.  Holy Hylia, I could kill Hestu.”

“Who is Hestu?”

Link shook his head.  “Tell you later.  No, you know what?  I’ll introduce you later.  We can shake the maraca tree together.”

Zelda opened her mouth, but Link shushed her with his fingerpad on her lips.  “I get it.  Why you thought I was nuts.  Because that’s what this is about, right?  You thought I was losing it, so you didn’t want to ask me, because of course if I was really insane I wouldn’t know anyway, so the answer doesn’t matter.  Does that about sum it up?”

Her eyes welled with tears.

“Hey- hey- no, no no no, please.  Don’t cry.” He kissed both her eyelids with a loving smile.  “Yeah, I’d’ve thought you were losing it if you were collecting feces without it being some kind of study.”

She burst into a tearful giggle.  “But not if it were a study.”

“No, pff!  Of course not.  You’ve studied nastier things.  But that’s kind of my point.  Like- I really thought I had given the game totally away when I told you I didn’t have enough seeds.”

“I… don’t understand.”

“Did I never tell you this??  Hestu- who you will meet- is the guy who does the magic to expand the pockets.  And you have to pay him in korok seeds to do it.”

“What?!”

“Yeah!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“That’s absurd!”

“He’s a trickster.  Now I know!”

“What would he possibly want them for?”

“His maracas.”

“His what?!”

“His maracas!  He sticks them inside and shakes them around and does this ridiculous dance and BOOM—expanded pockets!  He can even make spaces within the spaces which is how I can keep all my swords separate, and my bows, and… and…”

He must have seen the look on her face.

“So…” she said, “if anyone is mad, it is this Hestu.”

Link snorted.  “I sure hope so.  Because if not, then it’s still me who’s lost his hold on reality.”

Zelda smiled at him.  “I would love you anyway.”

He took his time folding her into his arms.  “I know.”

“I… am still surprised you were willing to leave me for such long stretches of time.  I was becoming lonely.  At least, now, I know the entire ordeal was with the aim of creating a truly spectacular pair of shorts.”

He shook with silent laughter against her.  “Yeah.  Though… I was also trying to leave you alone.”

Her arms pressed him extra-tightly for a beat of her pulse.  “Why?”

Two puffs of air exited him quick, fluttering the hair near her temple.  “Because it’s been so hard to.”

The shadow in his eyes had risen to the surface, bared for her.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, soft, her lips near his, her eyes treating each of his to touch after touch of her sincerity.

Link cupped her face and kissed her, his lips a bare brush, a gift of pure emotion, nothing taken.  “It was.  Shhh- I know.  I know what you’d say, but it was my fault.  I dropped.  And it wasn’t because I couldn’t stand.  It was because-“ a disgusted laugh left him- “it hurt.”

“Link,” she said, aghast.  “The gloom killed your arm while still upon your body!  It took even your shoulder.  You were in agony-“

“But I could have stayed standing.”  The loathing in his unfocused stare found her shrinking, though she knew it directed toward himself.  “It would’ve saved me about half a second.  When you fell.  And I’d have caught you.  As it was, I felt the air from your fingers as I missed.”

She couldn’t stop shaking her head, touching his face, his hair.  “Please.  Please, my love, do not do this to yourself.  Do you not see…?“ She straightened.  “You do.  You do see.  For if you didn’t, you would never be willing to leave me alone for a single instant of the rest of my life, ever.  Yet you already have.  You’ve intentionally forced yourself to do so.  And why?”

His eyes shut under her hands’ ministrations.  “Because I don’t want to drive you nuts.”

She nodded, her forehead against his so he could feel it despite his shuttered eyelids.  “Which means you recognize constant, incessant vigilance is unreasonable.  And if it is unreasonable under normal circumstances, it is certainly unreasonable in the case of an agonizing injury—one single moment in relation to it, and that is all.”  She kissed his cheek.  “It is not. Your.  Fault.”

A tear met the bow of her lip.

“Oh, Link,” she said, kissing it away.

“It feels like it is,” he said on nearly no air, his diaphragm having already crushed the rest from him.

She took him against her shoulder as he shook.  Saltwater jumped in fits and starts between the peach fuzz at the nape of her neck.  She stroked his hair.  “I know,” she said.  “I know it does.  We will work on this together, Link.  Alright?  When you feel this way, please speak to me.”

He nodded against her, the movement slowed by a nuzzle.

“And also… I do not at all mind you being my barnacle.”

A laugh burst from his mouth, cooling the freshly laid tracks of moisture on her.

“Please,” she chuckled.  “Do so as much as you wish.  In fact, do so even more, for I enjoy the unique sensation of my strides riding entirely upon yours.”

“You got it,” he said, his hand running warm over her back, as though he were the one comforting her.

She returned the gesture.

When Link recovered enough for his stomach to rumble, she insisted he sit.  She served him the one flapjack he’d successfully cooked.  She made the rest, and she did quite a good job of it, too (though in fairness, Link had already prepared the batter—by far the trickier part of the task).

They ate on the same side of the table, always touching. While Link had been right—she did want to study the pond-pocket carefully, and sooner rather than later—the day's priorities had changed. She decided to forego her investigation in favor of bed, where Link enthusiastically joined her.

--

Late at night, Link burst to wakefulness, shooting upright with a cry.

“Whhhhfauuha?” Zelda said, bleary.

“They’re all in on it!” Link said in horror.  “Every last one of them.  Every single korok.”  The look he turned on Zelda might’ve been lucid.

Or he might’ve been sitting up in his sleep.

She just laid the flat of her forearm on his chest and pushed him down, snuggling back up to sleep.  He didn’t resist.

--

“Hi, Hestu,” Link said, his smile completely relaxed.

“Link!  It’s good to see you.  Did you bring any more seeds for me?”

Link’s smile widened.  “Actually, today I brought the Princess to see you.”

“The PRINCESS?! Shakala!!!” Hestu waved his maracas in a ponderous mockery of semaphore.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Hestu,” Zelda said.  “Now please, in no uncertain terms, explain precisely why you manipulated Link into delivering thousands upon thousands of korok droppings to you in exchange for your inventory expansion services.”

The maracas went utterly still.

Zelda’s smile remained pleasant.

“Mmmm?” rumbled the Deku Tree’s voice.  “What has my grandson been doing?”

Hestu remained balanced on a single, awkward, stubby leg, maracas-out, his only movement a slight shivering of the leaves in his branches.  Then something hit the ground with a deep thump.

“I- I’ll be right back!” Hestu said, his wood-moustache shivering as he scampered with all the grace of a land-manatee down the path toward Mido Swamp.

Link stepped forward, feet shoulder-width apart, eyes groundward.  He nodded with a sniff.

“What is it?” Zelda asked.

Link tilted his head.  “Well.  You know that saying about shitting bricks?”

Zelda peered curiously past him.  “Oh.  My.”

“Yeah.”

“Well.”  She clasped her hands.  “Perhaps we should collect it.”

Link took an extremely long moment to turn and look at her.

The corner of her mouth twitched.

Link burst into relieved laughter.

“I couldn’t resist,” Zelda said.

[blueskittlesart]

As you approach the endgame of TotK, what is your overall opinion of the narrative compared to BotW (and by extension other 3d Zelda titles)?

wanted to save this one until i had actually finished the game to form complete thoughts and im glad i did!! because i think the endgame of totk is REALLY important to the overall cohesiveness of the story. let's get into it

i have sung botw's praises for the past 5 years specifically because the game is in my opinion perfectly cohesive. there is not a single thing in the game that feels out of place or thrown in without thought or narrative backing. i've lamented the details of the game, the way the story is told implicitly through the worldbuilding its themes are echoed in every facet of its gameplay. i sincerely believe totk hits these marks as well. its theming is more overt than botw, but it still keeps it consistent and cohesive across the board and the way the world and theming evolved from botw feels very natural. I don't think it's BETTER than botw, but it wasn't really SUPPOSED to be. totk and botw are two halves of the same story, and i think they FEEL that way. totk feels like the second half of botw, which is exactly what it is. no need to improve on perfection.

totk takes a theme that was already present in botw--healing, destruction and regrowth, and expands upon it. we are presented in totk with a hyrule around 5 or 6 years removed from what we last saw in botw, and there are noticeable changes. it is more populated. npcs we met in botw have grown into themselves. some have started families. new cities are forming. the enormous map that we knew is relatively unchanged, but the difference now is that it's so POPULATED. there are so many more PEOPLE. in almost every notable location, including ones that were COMPLETELY deserted in botw, people have now appeared. they are building or researching or travelling or whatever. we are shown a hyrule that is GROWING from the desolation we saw in botw. what once seemed broken beyond repair is slowly but surely being rebuilt, BY PEOPLE. totk's focus is undeniably on the PEOPLE of hyrule and how their work and perseverance has helped hyrule begin to heal.

this is the background framing, though, which, in a good game, ought to be echoed in its main storyline. and it IS. link and zelda in this game (and to a lesser extent the sages) are hyrule, the kingdom broken and desolate. link forced to give up his arm, zelda thrown into a thousand-year-old war which she ultimately sacrifices her sentience to. the sages dealing with corruption and destruction in their own ways after the regional phenomena caused by the upheaval. initially, all these things seem unchangeable. link's arm is so broken it must be replaced entirely. zelda will likely never return to her human form. the sages are each backed into their respective corners, unable to fix their peoples' problems alone. but none of these wounds prove to be truly unhealable. they just can't be done ALONE. link needs rauru, sonia, and the sages to get back zelda and his arm. the sages need link to save their people. this is where i think totk really shines as a continuation of botw, because the whole point of the initial calamity in botw is that link and zelda were ALONE when they faced it. the champions were ALONE in their divine beasts. they fell in botw because the world in which they were raised valued self-sufficiency above all. the champions called for help and no one came, and so they died alone. link had no one to help him when he faced the calamity, and so he was forced to flee, mortally wounded. in totk, link is NEVER alone. there is always some comforting presence, a guide, a FRIEND to assist him. rauru in the opening segment. purah and the sages later on. he is never alone in a desolate world as he was in botw, which is the whole POINT. he wins because he has an army behind him. he wins because hyrule's strength is in its people, in their stubborn perseverance, in their refusal to fall at the hands of ganondorf. rauru says himself "even if something were to happen to me, both my kingdom and the peace it brings--those will endure for generations to come." compare the sentiment of rauru, a king who relied on his sages and trusted in the strength of his people, to rhoam, a king who expected individualism and sacrifice, and it's clear why hyrule fell to destruction under rhoam but endured long after rauru's death.

tldr i think it's a good game and a good SEQUEL. i dont think it stands up perfectly on its own, but i don't think it was ever SUPPOSED to stand on its own. totk is a continuation of botw's narrative, so of course botw's narrative is integral when analyzing totk. the central theming is strong, it's echoed well in the worldbuilding and side quests, and in general all the pieces fall into place very nicely. i think it's a really good game and was well worth the wait!

[batrogers]

I was looking at my AO3 statistics and found that The Prince of Hyrule was in my top five on every count last year, so I figured I'd finally buckle down and redo my artwork for the original First Calamity, Ancient Hyrule Zelda and Link. (Please check the tags if you go to read it!!)

I attempted to include a few more character details in each design. For Melem, I tried to combine the Breath of the Wild "Barbarian" Set with the designs and motifs we got for the Zonai in Tears of the Kingdom, to better suit the way I wanted them to be a kind of "successor" culture/state to the Zonai of Tears. Here, they would be a human/Hylian population that retained the cultural pieces of the Zonai, and possibly originated from a different intermarriage between Zonai and human/Hylian than the lineage of Rauru and Sonia, potentially even predating it. Things like patterns and jewellery are easily preserved, but things that were hard to preserve, like face markings, were lost and larger jewellery was likely limited even in Rauru's time.

Zaal's design remained much the same, because I was always pretty happy with it in terms of shape, butI wasn't happy with the original picture's pose and colour contrast. That one's largely just "My skillset has vastly improved" including to the point I included Zaal holding little Zelda in the picture, too. I also added a little bonus detail in Zaal's art, although we'll see how subtle I actually was, LOL.

Original included under the cut.

[calamitaswrath]

I know this is probably just because it was the first Zelda game I owned and played to completion, but there's just something super specific about Twilight Princess on a narrative level that I just haven't really seen in any other Zelda game yet. What I mean is... it just feels like a private, or secretive story. Granted, most Zelda games aren't really the grand fantasy epic that some fans might have you believe they are, with most Links not even being recognized as heroes for most of their journey or afterwards. Like, in Wind Waker Link is just a travelling kid who occasionally helps some people, but is only really recognized by the Rito as a hero. Or in Skyward Sword, most NPCs know Link on a rather personal level, but don't really know what's going on with him. But I don't know, with Twilight Princess it just feels still a bit more... secretive, personal, or whatever you want to call it.

Link is from a tiny village at the southernmost edge of Hyrule, a tiny place that in Hyrule proper, few barely even seem to know. Hyrule in general is super populated even more so than pre-timeskip Ocarina of Time, but it's all completely localized in Castle Town, where Link is little more than a face in a crowd. And while the people in town obviously have an idea of something going on in the land, they only really notice Lake Hylia drying up due to Zora's Domain being frozen over (which no one even really knows about), and Ganondorf's barrier appearing around the castle.

Everything that Link does takes place in forgotten, ancient ruins and out in the wilderness, or at the very outskirts of society, in tiny villages or with the other races. And the chief of the Gorons never really learns what Link did for him, and the Zora don't even know or learn that it was him who saved them. All that Link does in and around Castle Town is meanwhile in back alleys and during stormy night, beneath the town itself in enormous sewer systems that doesn't even have a proper entrance that you learn about. And even in Ordon Village, where everyone knows Link, they also barely got an idea of what is going on.

The central conflict is also something that barely anyone even knows about. Ganondorf isn't some great demon king, he's just a thief that was already dealt with ages ago. Both his story, and the backstory of the Twili isn't even something that an actual person tells you about, or can tell you about, and you learn about them instead from the otherworldly light spirits and sages. And I know Wind Waker was similar in that regard, where the actual conflict was something that few even really knew about. But I think what makes Twilight Princess different in this regard is that at face value, its conflict is something you'd expect to see in a fantasy epic, with literal hordes of darkness invading the world. But then its literally baked into the story that most of the people don't, can't know what's going on. The Resistance is already noteworthy in that they actually put to together that something is going on... and they're only four people, five if you count Telma.

I don't know if any of this really makes any sense, but I don't know. Twilight Princess just always felt particularly private and secretive to me, and that's the best I can put it. And that's just something I always love about the game.

Also that true form Midna is hot.

[trayzen-the-infinite]

Where did Yona come from and why it matters.

I’ve been thinking about for a while but everything in the game implies that Yona isn’t from the Domain. Everyone in the Domain knows who Link is because Link has had the Domain practically be his second home. The Elderly, the Middle Aged and even the Children all know who Link is especially after he directly saved their home and created a statue in his Honor. It’s not like Hylians where he did so much work with a majority of the population didn’t know what he even looks like. Or like the Gerudo where most didn’t even know he was there. Link is an honest and true hero and icon for the Domain.

All this to say Yona doesn’t know who Link is, talks as if she showed up some time after the events of the first game, has directly mentioned visiting the domain with her entourage, King Dorephan and Sidon talk about her and handful of time like she’s not from around here, not to mention she’s royalty herself. All this goes to ask if she’s not from the Domain where is she from and I think it’s a deceptively simple answer: she’s from the Ocean.

In other games they make a point to show that theirs inland Zora and Sea Zora. The Zora of Zora’s Domain has always had their Domain in a large Water Source point that has rivers that extend across Hyrule. Zora’s Domain has never been in the Ocean. Yet we have had a small handful of opportunities to show they can and do live in the Ocean too. With Yona being an outsider and a Royal in her own right the only logical place she came from was the Ocean not too far from the Domain.

I always assumed theirs more Kingdoms outside of Hyrule as Hyrule is the name of a Kingdom, not the world. With Yona being a Royal from a kingdom beyond Hyrule it opens new possibilities and ideas for the future if Nintendo wants to take it.

The Gorons have no formal government and are simply subjects of the Hyrule Crown, Zora’s Domain is explicitly called a Kingdom itself but are vassals of Hyrule (this is probably simply because Zora value the water of Hyrule more than the land so theirs no real need for anything more) The Gerudo are interestingly never mentioned as subjects of Hyrule in any capacity and are called Allies instead meaning that they’re an independent Kingdom. (Given they have a Kingdom in the Desert theirs probably more cities and towns in the Gerudo desert we just don’t encounter because it’s a DESERT nation, that tends to be spread a little more thin. The Rito are an interesting case because while they don’t have a government they very clearly have a structure that could be the equivalent of one. The Rito have always had a very Native American feel to them. They may have status like the Zora, recognized as their own group and boundaries respected but still ultimately subject to the crown.

Now with Yona we have another independent Kingdom that is not allied to the Crown but rather allied to The Domain through marriage. I’m a nerd when it comes to fantasy and medieval politics so this revelation just gets my mind buzzing.

[crazylittlejester]

I had a random thought of inspiration. Evil!Wars wouldn't have naturally joined the chain, and we don't know why Hylia sent everyone together. In my own head, I think it'd be really cool if Hylia DIDNT send them. The whole curse started because of Demise and his whole shtick.

Now, the next part is who would be able to bring everyone together, and that's easy, Lana. The war ends, and King Link blah blah Hyrule sends out the death of Lana (not Zelda cause I think the population wouldn't accept Wars if she was still alive to the public. She's still there, but she can't start a public rebellion cause he has too much control.) Now Lana has to flee and realizes that Zelda may need help. So, she creates the portals in order to get help from different eras. Then, she kind of seals herself away so that Wars can't get the triforce of power. (Not a huge fan of the mind poisoning shtick)

Since she does this while running away, the portals end up kind of funky. With that, I'd bring in a few of the other fighters that helped in HW. I'll go with Ravio first cause why not, but he kind of stumbles out, and a soldier working for Wars recognizes him and goes back to report to Wars. Zelda actually finds Ravio before Wars can come back, and they both realize what Lana has done. Know it's kind of a race on who can find which ally first (they would all leave Wars once they found out what happens and that doubles his paranioa)

Those who fail to escape from Wars (no idea who) could later be used as leverage. I'd say Zelda finds most cause she's more magicy. (I'd personally want to see Marin and Midna there, but I kinda want ALL the chain to have some emotional stake involved)

And that's how the chain gets involved. For me, I'd have Time recognize the area and everything but not Wind (it would be so tragic to fight an evil person, only to later see why they became like that and not be able to help them into their descent to madness). I wouldn't have Zelda find them immediately and instead have them float around with Time's assurance that a good hero is here to join. I'd be neat if they slowly found out and had to aide into the rebellion.

I personally imagine Time suffering a lot <3 and Wind will get his suffering years into the future <3

okay omg i said something INCREDIBLY similar to this a little while ago. I have an evil wars fic planned but like, regular wars is there too because i refuse to add to the number of fics that just make him mean alwkkdkddk

but woah im genuinely shocked at how similar our ideas are!! thats kinda cool as hell honestly /gen

[ganondoodle]

Oh man I saw your totk issues post and I agree 100%!! Those are all things that have really bothered me about playing totk, and things that made playing it not nearly as fun (the dungeons, the shrines, the building, etc).

Especially the map!! When I tell you I was so disappointed by the maps on totk, I was hoping for something new! It really just feels like a modded botw, not an official sequel.

I was wondering what your thoughts are on the concept of “what if they had sent link to the past instead”? So the surface map would feature huge differences in the land forms and buildings that exist, and we’d get to see more ganon whenever he visits Hyrule, or go out to the desert to see Gerudo town, etc.

If they really wanted no sheika tech, they could also just have it being newly built? And you could introduce the new characters and such, etc etc.

(I also think the past champions are such a missed opportunity? If botw is about grief and loneliness, and finding hope in the hopeless, and Totk is about coming together despite that, it could have been really interesting if Link had gone to the past! They could have used the past setting as an eerie reminder to what Link and Zelda had lost when the Calamity struck!)

THAT BEING SAID: I’m not as familiar with the legend of Zelda lore, and haven’t played totk very much! I wanted to know your thoughts on this because you seem to have a lot of story and game mechanic knowledge that could explain why this could be a bad/good idea!

(Plus, your discussions are always super interesting to read, as is your custom totk lore, so I’d love to know what you think🩷)

I’m sorry if you’ve already answered an ask like this! If that’s the case, feel free to point that out and I’ll go through your ask tag if you have one:) I hope you have a great day!⭐️

Hi!

im glad you enjoy my rants, i often feel like im being overly mean but tbh were else could i just rant as much as my heart desires without getting spammed by annoying people (certainly not on twitter lol)

i have talked alot, and i mean ALOT, about totk and my issues with it, both lore and gameplay wise, i dont claim to be an expert on any, though i am an old zelda fan and aspiring gamedev, i really only talk about what i feel about it, what i think about it, and by all means im biased as hell xD

if you dont know yet, the "ganondoodles rants" tag is where all my rants go, so if you are interested in reading more on my totk thoughts thats the way to search (given tumblrs search in blog works ..)

and to answers your question, i have touched on it briefly, sending link back in time before the shiekah tech existed would have been an easy way to excuse how they jsut got .. rid of it, bc they didnt, it literally didnt exist yet- and for reusing the map- though that argument falls a little flat bc ... they coud have already done that in present totk, like i brought up in one of said rants, things like flooding gerudo desert, collapsing death mountain, drying out zoras domain etc, and changing the location of the main populations would have already done alot without having to redo the map in its entirety;

the little changes to map itself really wouldnt that big of a deal if they didnt also send you to the EXACT same locations AND repeat the SAME LOCATIONS AGAIN but in the underground, like thats a fact i have talked about multiple times bc its so illogical in every way, anywhere theres a settlement on the surface theres a bigger mine below, its so stupid, the shrines conenct to a lightroot, the same, again, you dont need to explore bc theres nothing TO explore (its also extra weird bc theres one below taburasa (tarrey town) which .... link literally build with dumsda (hudson) a few years ago .. unless that got retconned too idk wth do i know anymore honestly- AND it makes the sonau extra weird bc why the hell do they have a bigass mine under every settlement ESPECIALLY UNDER GERUDO TOWN like, that just adds to my suspicions towards them)

anyway, link to the past was the point and yes, it could have solved a few issues (mainly shiekah tech and the whole "story" taking place AGAIN in the past completely disconnected from you the player) i personally am not so much a fan of it, but that mostly comes down to me just not liking time travel, i dont like going back in time, i want to play and do things in the here and now, i want to repair the damages of the calamity, find out its origins, maybe fix that too, i love to learn about past stuff too, but that more in text, no literal flashback (unless done well), i want to connect to the past but it also holds alot of mystery that maybe shouldnt be touched upon, some mysteries and unkowns are much more interesting when left as such, i want to THINK about things and come to conclusions that are logical and makes sense in hindsight even if it wasnt clear at the start, i dont want information and what to think about it told to my face over and over like im stupid

after botw i really didnt care much about the past, maybe about the acient hero who alot of people specualted to be of gerudo origin due to its red hair- which also got a monkeys paw curled bc in totk they do sth with but its so stupid and insulting that i do not accept it as canon, say what they want, there are no dog people anywhere in the past nor present botw/totk wtf is that i hate it- and its not even .. why is that the reward for that, it has literally NOTHING TO DO WITH TOTK ITSELF I COULD YELLLL AAAARGH

main point is that really, i wanted to explore the past .. in the present, i hoped to find broken old shiekah structures, old labs and maybe some left over damage and records from when the old king persecuted the shiekah for their tech, i wanted to know where the ancient energy the shiekah used was coming from, what the boss arena in the middle of hyrule castle really was- so many things just discarded and acted like they never happened or mattered; i dont want to travel into the past, i want to discover whats left of it, piece it together, discover dark secrets you can ask no one about bc all that knew about it are long gone- thats what intrigued me about botw, it felt like there was so much left to discover only for totk to throw it all away and just do its own thing .. but not commit to that hard enough either so its neither its own thing nor a sequel-

.. that wasnt really what you wanted to know was it? xD sorry i tend to ramble on if someone seems to give me permission to

to sum it up, i think it COULD work, sending link to the past instead, if done well, but so could canon totk have been, it could have been done well but wasnt for reasons i dont know and tbh even fear bc i worry its sets a dark future ahead of zelda; i personalyl am just not a fan of time travel so i dont have that much to say to it :O