"Yes."

Okay, increasingly clear that there is some baggage around the topic for Zelda.

He has no idea how to handle that.

He pauses, and shrugs instead. "Meet at noon at the inn?"

Her mood brightens a little; she smiles. "All right."

Then once he sees Zelda off, he'll proceed to the statue and... pray, he guesses.

Scriptorium, here she comes! Please have lots of lovely things to write with and on, and please be eager to have them all duplicated several times.

The scriptorium is a dark and musty space, with only a small customer area past the door. There are no racks of goods for sale, only a printed catalogue on the wall with prices for what's on offer: paper, ink and other stationery of various types, as well as printing, copying and calligraphy services. There's an unmanned till and a curtain behind it blocking off the rest of the store.

The proprietor hears a customer come in and emerges from the back in a minute. He's a middle-aged man, broad-shouldered with callused hands, sleeves rolled up and wearing a work apron with fresh and old inkstains.

He clears his throat. "Hello, how may I help you?"

"Hello! I'm looking for stationery."

He points at the catalogue on the wall. 

"Writing pens and paper, or anything more exotic? I have samples around here somewhere..." He rifles around under the till and pulls out a few small, gum-bound square pads, and a box of pens.

There's the common wood pulp stuff, bleached and unbleached, a smorgasbord of variants of handmade grainless paper, cotton-fibre paper and varying cotton-fibre blends, wax papers, different parchment papers, and so on. For pens there's a variety of sizes and designs for fountain pens, as well as dip pens, styluses, and a long list of brushes in various specifications. The selection of inks is even longer, with descriptors some of which Zelda has heard of, some of which she hasn't, even with her royal education.

To assist with decision paralysis for those unsteeped in stationery lore, a few of the options near the top in each category are annotated "standard writing quality", "high writing quality", "standard crafts quality", "high crafts quality", and so on.

She is so pleased. Actually she is spoiled by her other self's industrialized upbringing and would like a shop six times this size where everything comes in a dozen colours. But leaving that aside, she is so pleased.

"Writing pens and paper," she confirms. "Though I wouldn't mind borrowing some of the exotic things. —in case you haven't heard, I'm the person who can duplicate anything I put in my pocket, Lady Impa sent me around to Claree and Verro yesterday but I came looking for stationery on my own time."

They have other colors! Some other colors. Weirdly specific ones. Mostly it's papers in varying natural colors and thirty different types of black ink.

"Duplicate anything you put in your pocket?" he says dubiously. "Well, as long as you pay for it... or if you give it back immediately undamaged... I don't care what you do afterwards. If you want paints, that's not me, that's Lari across the street, but I have sell the canvases. But I can lend you anything on the list."

He has deduced that this person is important, and therefore he is not going to attempt to charge her for her time. Though he is a bit annoyed if she's not going to pay for anything. He doesn't show it on his face.

(She could be lying, but if this is a Yiga Clan imposter, there are less conspicuous ways of getting ahold of samples. And he hears that the Yiga have better inks anyway, though he'll have to see that before he believes it, as a matter of professional pride.)

"Then I would very much like to borrow..."

She has a prioritized list of pens, inks, and papers already composed just from looking at his selection, and will he be any happier about this process when she neatly and efficiently gives him back two copies of everything she picks up? (She can bump that up to three, or four, or six, depending on his mood.)

Is it a long list. Because if it's a long list he'd rather she just keep the stuff he hands her and compensate him in a huge pile of the same type of pen, so he doesn't have to go running around to put everything back later.

But he does look happier, yes.

She intended at first to just keep going down the list until he looked too impatient and then thank him for his time and leave, but when he suggests a huge pile of pens she cheerfully switches to that and ends up out of there much faster with more things. Stationery success!

What time is it? If she still has time, she wants to try that paint store. (She added some canvases to the end of her borrow list when he mentioned them. She's probably not going to have time to paint anything, and it's not like she's a fantastic artist to begin with, but You Never Know.)

It's only a bit past ten, plenty of time left.

When she enters the paint store—a more brightly lit, cheerful sort of establishment, with paints and paintbrushes out on full display, and a few easels with used canvases and paints for sampling the goods—there's someone else there. It's the painter they saw at dinner last night, talking animatedly to the shopkeeper about a particular image they want to capture—

"...naturalistic, yet simultaneously uncanny, you know? A palette that provokes thought: a grove outside the world which few mortals have set eyes on..."

Well. She wouldn't dream of interrupting that conversation.

    "Don't you think you're getting a little ahead of yourself, Pikango?"

"What do you mean?"

    "Well, we don't know that this 'Great Fairy Fountain' is even real, first of all. And second, if it's so hidden, how do you expect to find it?"

"Aha, but consider this: if I do find it, and I don't have just the perfect colors to capture its glamorous visage, what a fool I would feel like!"

    "Try Lizalscale Olive and—remember that series you did on butterflies?"

"How could I not? I know exactly what you're talking about. Hrm..."

And the storekeeper, identified "Lari" by a copper nameplate slotted over his shirt pocket, detaches from Pikango and comes over to Zelda.

"Hello! I'm new to painting but I love colourful things so when the fellow at the scriptorium mentioned a paint shop I couldn't resist stopping by. Have you heard the rumours about the girl who can duplicate anything she puts in her pocket? That's me. May I duplicate some painting supplies?"

"I have, in fact. A bit more surprised if it's real," he snorts. "Help yourself to anything on display." He squints. "You can duplicate anything?"

"So long as it fits in my pocket, yes!"

She drifts over to a display and starts pocketing containers of paint and putting back two of each in their places.

"Interesting."

He vanishes into the back and comes out a minute later with an opaque wax-sealed jar.

"What about this?" He offers it to her.

She pockets it and hands back three more. "Why, what is it?" she asks curiously.

He pops one open just a crack and peers inside. Wow. At her question, he bounces a bit nervously on his feet.

...Everyone in the village already knows, and an outsider is hardly going to care.

Lari tilts the lid open for her. The inside is... powder? A tubful of strange, luminescent orange dust that'll remind her a bit of the glow of the shrines.

"Ancient paint? Something like that. Ten thousand years old. Not sure what it does, but it's chi-active in some way. There's only so much of the stuff they dug up a hundred years ago, so we can't really experiment. I'll pay you to make me a big pile."

"I'd be very happy to!"

...are shrines radioactive? Really hoping shrines aren't radioactive. Well, if they are, they've done a great job not killing anyone in the last several thousand years, at least not such that she ever noticed. It's Probably Fine.

Anyway, "Just tell me where to sit and I'll make as big a pile as you like." She considers this statement, then amends it to, "Well, I'll stop before it starts blocking my path out of the shop."

Just behind the counter is fine! Lari watches gleefully as they pile up.

"Paying you doesn't actually do anything, huh," he does observe. "I'll owe you a favour, I guess?"

He'll call it off once they hit forty jars.

"Thank you so much. I run a painting class the first morning of each week, drop-in any time. Feel free to come by any time!"

"Oh, I'd love to!" Which... day... is it... currently. She doesn't actually know. She will need to find that out at some point. Perhaps not from Lari the friendly paint shop owner. Then again, maybe she can spy on the paint shop every morning and learn the answer to her question that way. A reasonable and normal thing to do. Stealth practice! It is decided.

Anyway, after duplicating every pigment and paintbrush in sight, she will take her leave.