Wait, he hasn't picked it up yet.

"Decades?" he says, concerned.

"The woods weren't grown in a day, sha-laka! And this still isn't a twentieth of it!"

"I can try to help teach you, Link. Can I repack your bag for you slowly, to show you how I see it now?"

He unlatches his food compartment and hands it over, watching intently.

Hestu is thinking, quietly rattling his maracas.

"Watch my hands," she says, spreading out the contents of the bag on the ground and then starting to fit them into the bag one by one. "Hestu's right, orientation is important, but it's not the only thing. You have to see the potential for more space, every time you put something in. Like here, I could've laid those mushrooms the same direction as the others, but they're shorter, so I tuck them in at the back, behind the oil jar—if you think about it the way we're used to, there's not enough room for them, but really there is, it's just a matter of reaching in there and finding it..."

On the whole, her explanations make more sense than Hestu's. But there's still, if you look for it, a sense that what's being transferred isn't exactly abstract knowledge. It's something deeper than that, a skill you can feel in your hands and in the sense you start to have of where things are and where else they could be.

It clicks.

He reaches for the bag to try, but switches ideas. He reaches over his back without looking and unslings his bow, laying it on the ground. Then he takes off his swords and starts fitting them back on his back, this time making more efficient use of his harness. And—yes, he can definitely fit another one-handed weapon now.

"Got it," he says, a little stumped by how easy it is.

Hestu claps.

"That's it! That's it! Both of you are super quick learners! If you find more of my Korok Seeds, I can teach you more! But I need to be heading home, now that I've found my maracas... this has taken so long, I'm thirteen years late to see my arborist, shoko..."

"Good luck getting home! Where should we look for you if we find more seeds?"

"I'm going back to Korok Forest!"

"Okay!"

To Link, she says, "I think you should repack your bag yourself—it seems like being good at packing also helps with knowing exactly where you put everything and remembering what you have and how to get at it. I'm finding it really useful."

On it.

This is really weird. It does feel like he's more confident where everything is. His bags feel more roomy after he's done repacky. Or not roomy, but... capacious?

In a minute, he's good to go.

"Bye byeee!"

"Goodbye, Hestu! I hope to see you again when we have more seeds to give you!"

Hestu waves goodbye as they leave.

Link gets on Starless, who starts trotting along. Once they're out of earshot, he says, "Korok Forest?"

"In the deepest part of the Great Hyrule Forest, where the Deku Tree lives."

He flips open his Sheikah Slate to examine the map.

"The Deku Tree?"

He's imagining something like Hestu but proportionally bigger and leafier.

"Imagine if a big sturdy tree like an oak was bigger around than a small-to-medium-sized house and so tall you can't see the top because the tops of the other trees all get in the way, and the bark on one side forms the shape of a face, and the face can move and talk. And he's very old and very kind and very wise. That's the Deku Tree."

Talking tree.

He nods.

"We should check if you can copy Korok Seeds."

"We should! Though I admit, if possible I want to get Hestu his original seeds back, and not just lots of new ones. They seem, I don't know, like the sort of thing that's at least partly sentimental? ...also, if his friends have been hiding them for a hundred years, finding them all might also benefit the friends. Who could also be late for their... arborist... appointments." She can't quite manage to maintain a straight face. "Oh, dear, I was trying so hard to bring an attitude of earnest fellowship to that interaction but now he's on his way home and I can say eeeeeee, adorable tree creature!!!"

Link's lips quirk at Zelda's enthusiasm.

"I think they have a skewed sense of time. Finding all the original seeds seems..." He thinks about how many seeds would fit in those maracas, and what he did to find the first ones. "...might be a long project. Unless you have strange powers for that."

"Well, if they have a skewed sense of time, then they won't mind if it takes a while, right? And I don't think I mind either. And it turns out I have strange powers for learning and teaching things like the ways of the forest, so I can teach you more of them even if Hestu doesn't."

Link nods.

As they keep going, the path dips and cuts back into the mountain. The rock faces closing in on both sides don't make the best defensive position, which puts Link ill at ease. He finds himself double-checking their surroundings more than not.

There's a strange feeling that they're being watched.

But eventually, the path levels out, the soil underfoot gets looser and grassier, and they begin to hear the chirps of crickets in the distance.

Down the road, a familiar wooden arch beckons.