"Hm."

She's right. It's the weakest kind of Bokoblin. He straightens, but he's sticking closer to her for a while.

"A small child with a knife can kill a grown man off guard," he recites, though he's not sure from where. "Let's keep going."

She nods, and sets off again.

Should she suggest learning to fight? She can't predict his reaction in advance, which inclines her to not do that. But at some point, in order to be having a social interaction and not a monologue, you do need to do something that may cause someone to react unpredictably. And she knows that she is, that both of her are, the sort of person who could definitely do with planning fewer of her conversations out exhaustively in advance. And she wants him to know what's on her mind.

"...I'm thinking about whether I should learn how to fight," she says. "Now that I have all these strange powers."

Link is now investing more attention in scouting the environment and less on hunting and gathering, and doesn't look back as he responds.

"If you say so." There is a part of him that's mildly doubtful, and another that feels strongly that everyone should know how to fight. But he's not her boss. "What else do they do? Your... sealing power. Do you still have that?"

"Yes, I still have it. The other me back at the castle is using it to keep Ganon contained. I'm... a little hesitant to experiment with it, because I'm not sure if I'd be—drawing from the same pool, that she does—and it's very important not to throw her off unnecessarily."

She's quiet for a few steps, thinking through what other powers she can remember.

"The ones that are most useful in a fight, besides the one that makes me faster and lighter on my feet, are... one that should make it much harder to injure me, one that gives me insight into an opponent's weaknesses, and one that's supposed to make me better at fighting when my opponent is more powerful. But I haven't tested any of them yet so I'm not sure how they work, or how well they work."

"We can do a practice spar later."

He's been chewing dried peppers as they come up on the mountains.

"You remember the way?"

She nods, and then nods again. When the ground begins to be dusted with snow and the light breeze starts stinging her nose, she nibbles some pocket peppers herself.

"Oof, spicy." She's wrinkling her nose, but smiling.

He's a little embarrassed about the cubes—those were his back-up rations for the cold, not more than cursorily seasoned to make them easy to swallow; the fillets he was preparing when Zelda found him were the actual meal he intended to sustain him for this expedition. But they appear to pass muster, which is relieving.

As they're passing a river, he raises a hand and says calmly, such as not to startle, "Hold."

She comes to an orderly halt, and tries to follow his attention to find out what the trouble is.

He retrieves a stick from his back and points.

"See that bit of snow—"

There's a slight unevenness in the white. After a second passes, it seems to shift slightly.

"Aha." She nods.

Link steps forward and does a little probing thrust. A large globe of frosty blue thwomps out of the snow, spattering slush in his eyes, but without a pause, Link lunges and sticks the tree branch in the Chuchu. He withdraws as quickly and lifts his rusty buckler in front of them, breaking the subsequent blast of freezing cold.

"I'll clear the path," he says, prodding the leftover organic slush with his stick. "There are more of them."

She nods acknowledgment and keeps back out of his way, making sure to keep an eye out for trouble while he's occupied. It's just like old times, except for all the ways it isn't.

Poke poke poke poke. It goes quick when he doesn't mind a bit of frostbite. He pokes around the gelatinous remains and scoops some of the thicker bits of jelly into a rabbitskin.

Zelda waits until the trouble is clearly over and then approaches to hold out her hand for the rabbitskin. All things must be Pocketed.

By the Princess' will, all shall be Enpocketed. Link is still a bit dubious about the process, but it seems to work.

Apart from a few Moblins he has to climb ahead to take care of, nothing much more interrupts them on the way. Link sights the shrine finally, on a bit of a peak that'll require some climbing to get atop of.

Zelda is very good at climbing now.

She doesn't stray too far from Link, but she does tend to get ahead as soon as their direction is vertical, and watching her climb is a frankly unreasonable experience. It's like her body doesn't especially care which direction 'down' is, and has only been pretending out of politeness, and now that there's a reason to do otherwise she has largely escaped the bounds of gravity and can just dance up cliffsides like she weighs no more than a pepper cube.

It's a bit of a baffling sight, that's for sure. Link gets a bit of a time save learning from her holds, but it's strange playing catch-up. It's also reminding him of his mediocre stamina, which he really hopes is an artifact of his sleep he can train his way out of.

When they find their way to the shrine  however, there might be a different problem.

He holds his Sheikah Slate and looks at the pedestal.

"How is this going to work?"

"...well. I think the shrines are—meant for you. So you should probably be the one to complete them. It... might be possible for both of us to enter? But I don't think they're intended for that... and it would be awkward if I somehow accidentally stole your rewards. They do reward you, right? My top hypothesis was that they would contribute somehow to your heroic power. It also seemed possible that they would have useful information or advice, or tangible rewards like weapons or devices."

"There were weapons, but they gave... power of some kind. It didn't do anything for me, but I don't think I—spent it yet?

"There were shrunken corpses with recorded messages." He sounds a bit uncertain about the last thing.

"I see," she says, blinking. "I had not predicted the shrunken corpses. Unspent power sounds... consonant with my theories."

"They didn't give advice," he can't stop himself from saying. "They were just... there."

"That sounds... disturbing."

"I should... go get the power." He sheathes his sword. He might have made this awkward. "Not like it'll come alive and attack me."

"True," she says, biting back any useless and disquieting speculation she might otherwise have offered on that front. "I will stay out of trouble and experiment with my Pocket Silliness."