"Goodnight."

He flops down on the bed and is out like a light.

Her sleep is considerably more restful than it was last time.

She does wake up by abruptly sitting bolt upright again, as the sky is beginning to lighten outside their window.

Link is not quite awake yet when Zelda bolts up, but rolls over, yawns quietly and sits up when she does.

What—where is she—what was she dreaming—there's something important—

She catches her breath, and as she does, the dream fades from her mind. It was... Rosy-flavoured, she thinks. And it's the same one as last time.

At least it makes for a very effective alarm clock. She poofs into her travel clothes (note to self: learn to poof like the Sheikah and Yiga for improved all-occasion outfit swaps) (note to self: get writing materials so you can write down these notes to self) and hops out of bed.

"Well. Shall we head for Hateno?" She considers. "Possibly after breakfast?" She considers further. "And a trip to the toilets, which do not exist on the road?"

"Yes, I should shower," Link says. He really should have done that last night, but couldn't be bothered to—in retrospect, due to tiredness.

"And change. Into the stealth armor?"

"Reasonable. I... will maybe see if anyone in town has writing materials I can borrow and/or duplicate a few dozen times. It keeps coming up and I don't think it is going to stop coming up."

The town is... probably safe.

He nods slowly.

"Breakfast first?"

"Breakfast first!" She checks the time. Is it mealtime downstairs? If not, she has Pocket Pastries.

It's mealtime downstairs! The breakfast hours are long to accommodate guests' preferences of waking hours. Today it's salted eggs with congee and pickled vegetables and mince.

A different man is there this morning, who doesn't introduce himself, just greets them and serves their meal. They other tables are empty. Outside the windows, there are already villagers out and about.

Zelda scarfs down her unnecessary breakfast and sneaks a few tidbits into her pockets on general principle even though many components of this meal are not traditionally pocketable. A few minutes into this process she remembers that actually, strictly speaking she just has to hold things to enfold them in her pockets' all-encompassing embrace, and sneaking them into her actual pockets is an extra step she invented as cover for the true depth of her abilities. This seems... fine, probably? Surely she is succeeding at her deception if she herself fell for it. But she should probably try to keep in mind what her real capabilities are.

Case in point! She steels her courage against the terrors of social anxiety and asks the man who served breakfast if he has writing materials she can borrow for a moment to write a short note. (Whereupon she will not need to sneak them into her pocket, which would be A Weird Thing To Do.)

He goes in the backroom and comes out with a notepad and a fountain pen that's seen some use.

"You can duplicate these, right?"

"Mhm!"

So much for her subterfuge. Word travels fast. She ostentatiously pockets and unpockets and unpockets the notepad and pen, then adapts Rosy's make-sense-of-this-later shorthand to work better with a fountain pen and scrawls out a quick, totally illegible list of all the notes to self she can remember off the top of her head, and goes to tuck that away in her pocket too—and then, in a sudden flash of foresight, titles it Note 0001 before she vanishes it away. Her future self will no doubt be thanking her on an hourly basis for inventing this organizational scheme before she generated more than one note.

The man is visibly curious about the pocketery but doesn't say anything, just takes the stationery back.

"There's a scriptorium down on the riverside path," he says once she's done, "if you want better paper and pens."

"Thank you! I'll go have a look later."

Link appears in a short while, showered and dressed and ready to go.

Zelda has decided not to venture to the scriptorium by herself during this time, because Link seemed dubious about her being out and about by herself, and someone's mother did get assassinated by the Yiga and she does not know whether it happened in or out of the village. So instead she has been copying Note 0001 out of shorthand and beginning to write a list of people she's met on this journey and their names and attributes. Out of a general sense of caution she is keeping this list in English.

Speaking of the Yiga, "We should ask Lady Impa about Yiga activity."

She nods. "Good idea. Now, you mean?"

"If she can be interrupted. We could have been lucky yesterday. Word may have spread now."

"Well. We can try."

Off to Impa's house, then.

New guards! They recognize the two, however, and wave them in.

When they enter, Impa is sipping a cup of tea reading a spread of papers. She puts down the cup and collects her paperwork when she sees them.

"Good morning! Link wisely pointed out that we should ask you what the Yiga have been up to this past century."

"What a question! We would be here until sundown if I were to summarize one hundred years of history. But I presume you are not, this morning, interested in the Goron Troubles of the fourth decade, or the burning of Loshlo Harbor, or the Day of Nine Hundred Sorrows, or the coup of the Guildsmen of Common Cause twenty-two years ago, or the many deaths in the night with warnings written in blood, too numerous to individually title."

She pauses.

"No, perhaps you are interested in the last one."

She sips her tea.

"You wish to know what you, the Princess of the Old Kingdom, and Link, wielder of the sword that seals the darkness, must guard against once the Yiga Clan knows of your return, no? A wise question. I ought not have needed you to ask."