In a chamber under the snowlands of the Great Plateau, a long-slumbering heart quickens. A century of wait ends with a click.

The waters of new life begin to drain.

Right. That's her cue.

She waits, just a moment, studying Ganon's patterns of movement—then flares her strength, reaching out to the very edges of her awareness. With one metaphorical hand, she keeps the beast at bay, spending strength recklessly in a way she hasn't done since the first half-minute of this long battle. With the other, she touches that flickering spirit, just beginning to stir.

Open your eyes...

Are they open already? She can't tell through the haze of time and distance.

Open your eyes, she repeats, stretching out farther, grasping more firmly, trying to see what he sees, feel what he feels. Wake up, Link.

The boy is still beneath the surface when he feels the touch. When he does, it is like—dawn breaking, sunrays glimmering in shallows far above—and he swims toward the light, towards the warmth—

The words penetrate to some part of his unconscious. His eyes flutter.

For the first time in one hundred years, Link draws breath.

And with that indrawn breath—

Things are, very abruptly, no longer going according to plan.

A sudden rush of memory disrupts her connection with his spirit. She flails to get it back, and misses. She flails to keep Ganon contained, and for the first time in a century misses that too, because her spirit is filled with a mad cacophony of tangled thought—

—knowing all her life that the first and most important thing about her is her destiny—

—knowing all her life that the first and most important thing about her is her family—

—that she is a gear in the machine of Hyrule, the keystone of the arch of fate, and the thing about a keystone is that it must not move from its place lest the whole thing crumble—

—that she is a Blake, which means power, and magic, and politics, and responsibility and expectations, but most of all means that all her favourite people in the world love her and support her and would take on the world at her back—

—that her father is the King and so of course he is mainly concerned with matters of state like his daughter's failure to do her duty as a princess—

—that her father is an art historian and has only ever wanted her to be happy just the way she is—

The part of her that is Zelda looks incredulously at the inside of her own head, unable to fathom what it would be like to live the life she remembers, the weight of expectations uncomfortable but not crushing, her family a source of comfort and stability instead of guilt and complication.

The part of her that is Rosy looks incredulously at the inside of her own head, unable to fathom how she made it to the age of seventeen without planting a delicate slipper directly in Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule's royal groin.

Then they remember the Calamity, and that whatever Zelda's disagreements with her father she never wanted him dead, and for a moment they are united in grief.

And Ganon stirs against their faltering grasp, and they are united in something much deeper than that.

Right. Well. Equilibrium regained, she/they turn/s her/their attention back to the problem at hand. It's much easier now, for some reason, to hold off Ganon while reaching for Link. What's he up to? She really hopes she didn't miss explaining the Sheikah Slate. He can probably figure out the Sheikah Slate on his own, but it's going to make her so uncomfortable to be off-script this early.

Link does not remember anything.

That's not true. He remembers fragments. He knows his name. He clambers out of the pool, shakes the wet out of his hair and looks around, and recognizes nothing, yet the patterned black and gold and those lines of blue are do not strike entirely unfamiliar. He plucks a strange slate from a pedestal, and he has not held anything like it before, but somehow he knows how to turn it on.

The doors open to the slate's touch with a low hiss. He climbs out over dirt and rock until he sees a stream of daylight. That he remembers too.

Link breaks into a mad run, and stone gives way to grass and sky, and the mountains and forests lay themselves before him, painting strokes into the gaps in his mind, and he knows a second name:

Hyrule.

Link cannot shake the feeling that there is something he needs to do.

There is a point marked on the map on the device. It's not what he needs to do, but it's something. He finds an odd old man with a white beard and a campfire, but he tolerates the cryptic company only long enough to roast a couple of apples and sate what he thinks is hunger. He cuts down a Bokoblin a stroke of his axe, and that is how he knows he's a warrior.

He feels weak.

The bow and quiver feel right, when he slings them on his back. Crude, but better than nothing. The axe is unbalanced, so he drops it for a cheap sword he finds. He draws close to the point on his map and wonders who marked it for him. The destination turns out to be a an odd structure similar to the one he emerged from, but smaller, and exposed to the elements by erosion of the rock.

There is a pedestal there as well. Empty. He does the only thing there is to do.

What comes is hard to follow. The ground seems to quake beneath him, toppling him off his feet.

Then it all lurches.

The structure shatters its rock prison and plunges skywards, rising as a tower to the heavens. Across the horizon, the eagle-eyed will spot other towers breaking from the earth, called by the same force.

Energy roars through the great column beneath, sound and static enough to prickle hair. When the rising stops and the rocks settle, the power has not stopped its waxing; above Link, above the pedestal, glowing glyphs flow down a hanging spire, faster and faster, condensing in an incandescent drop of blue. It goes for longer and longer until the droplet is grown too much for the neck to support, then—

The drop falls and strikes the Sheikah Slate in a wonderfuls splash of color.

But while that's happening, something else is going on.

In the distance, a different, terrible thing is roused. The castle that sits on the far edge where the great plains meet the river trembles, and the land quivers with it. A dark miasma that laid dormant for decades rises once again to grasp the heart of the kingdom. From that brewing storm drags the dark form of some titanic monster, roiling and formless, but for a bestial head with tusks to gore giants and a maw that swallows towers whole. The thing of malice climbs the battlements on claws of shadow, stone breaking in its grip.

But it is not unopposed.

Auuuuuugh her scriiiiiiiiipt.

It's fine. He's fine. He found the tower. She did prepare for the possibility that she wouldn't be able to speak to him in the first place, never having tested spiritual communication like this before at all let alone at this range. Her contingencies cover this. It's Fine.

The golden glow of Zelda's spirit flares brightly, reaching out to Link from the heart of Hyrule Castle. Her redoubled strength drags at the monster, hauling it back down.

Remember, she implores, though she knows it won't be enough. Try... Try to remember...

She gathers her thoughts. Focuses. Get the important message through.

The beast... When the beast regains its true power, this world will face its end.

...What does that mean.

This is important, he knows. Not only because of the voice telling him about the end of the world. He knows this voice. But he doesn't. He doesn't know how to remember.

He snatches the Sheikah Slate from the pedestal to see if it has any clues.

Nope! But he has a map now.

Something crystallizes in her mind.

Why is she so much stronger now? Why does she feel like there are two of her, not just in perspective and memory but in force and purpose?

Perhaps for the excruciatingly obvious reason that she has the magical power to duplicate herself???

The golden light shining from Hyrule Castle flickers and dims, but Zelda's voice in Link's mind firms and strengthens. Now then, she says, more clearly than ever before.

I'm coming to help.

My power can keep it contained while I travel. Seek the ancient shrines. I'll see you soon.

Okay.

She didn't mention a meeting place, so presumably she can track him, maybe by however way she's talking to him right now. He's instructed to seek the ancient shrines. For some reason, he feels compelled to obey her. If nothing else, meeting up might give him some answer. He has no better clue for what he's supposed to be doing.

One problem: he doesn't know what these ancient shrines are. The name twigs his memory a bit, but not enough to give him a heading to investigate.

He peers over the edge of the tower, scanning the landscape for signs of what might be shrines.

There's a mound over by a lake built out of the same material as the place he woke up in and this tower. Its patterns are glowing orange.

...How is he going to get down?

There are some openings near the center of the platform to climb down, with rest stops on the way down the tower.

And when reaches the bottom of the tower, irritated by how much less stamina he has than he expected, that strange old man is waiting for him.

"My, my... it seems we have quite the enigma here."

Link crosses his arms. This man is up to something, but something tells him it'll be easier to let the old man get this out of his system.

"This tower and others like it have erupted across the land, one after another. It's almost as if... a long-dormant power has awoken quite suddenly. If you don't mind me asking, did anything... odd occur while you were atop that tower?"

...He's not going to answer that.

"You need not conceal the truth from me. Truth be told, I saw the whole thing unfold from afar. Although I could not hear anything, I did see you react as if you heard something coming from the direction of the castle."

Fine.

"I heard a voice."

"And did you happen to recognize this mysterious voice?"

"It seems I have some work to do as far as earning your trust goes. I suppose that is understandable."

"What do you want?"

The man turns and points his staff in the direction of the castle.

"I assume you caught sight of that atrocity enshrouding the castle. That... is Calamity Ganon. One hundred years ago, that vile entity brought the kingdom of Hyrule to ruin. It appeared suddenly and destroyed everything in its path. So many innocent lives were lost in its wake. For a century, the very symbol of our kingdom, Hyrule Castle, has managed to contain that evil.

"But just barely. There it festers, building its strength for the moment it will unleash its blight upon the land once again. It would appear that moment is fast approaching.

"I must ask you, courageous one... Do you intend to make your way to the castle?"

...Well, eventually, he assumes.

"Why?"

"...Interesting."

The old man's eyes feel like they're trying to pick apart Link where he stands.

"What, precisely, did the voice say to you?"

The voice didn't say it was supposed to be a secret. Link wants to find out what this old man knows.

"She said she's coming to help."

"She's... coming... to help?"

The old man has made affectations of surprise before, but here there is the slightest crack in his facade.

Shrug.

"You know her?"

The man sits down. "I..."

He's going to investigate the shrine while the man has a crisis or whatever.

"Wait—did she say when? Is she coming here, or—how—"

Shrug. Mound-thing?

Mound-thing!

Anyone watching Hyrule Field at just this moment would see some very curious sights.

First, the golden glow at the heart of the castle launches a fragment of itself like a javelin, straight toward the Great Plateau.

Second, the shard of light hits the ground and resolves into a brightly glowing young woman in a simple white dress, who stumbles a little but keeps her footing.

Third, she takes off at a dead sprint, a last flare of light somehow converting her dress and sandals into sturdy boots and hard-wearing travel clothes as she bursts into motion.

This hypothetical observer would then be rapidly left behind, as she bolts toward the plateau at speeds competitive with a racehorse.

Excuse me miss we're going to have to ask you to pull over

wait no don't run away so fast

Long-dormant Guardians are reactivating in the field even as she runs, but they're not quite up to the task of catching such a fast-moving target. Their beams blow trenches into the dirt behind her, but even their luckiest shots only clip her with the blast waves. Her sprint leaves a wake of upheaved soil and grassfire.

Every beat of her heart drums the same message.

Find Link.

He glows in her awareness like a beacon, straight ahead and a long way up.

Find Link.

She pushes her body to a limit that would have been an impossible dream last time she—last time either of her—had a body.

Find Link.

No earthly creature's body is meant to serve like this, peak performance hauled grimly out of it second by second by minute by hour as the inventory of parts that don't hurt yet dwindles into obscurity. But she can do it, with the powers her other self bargained for in the darkness between the pages between the worlds. She can, and she must, so she will. It's not any harder than spending a straight century as the constantly embattled lid on Ganon's jar, and it's going to be over much quicker. Every calculation she can think of suggests that Link will be far more effective with Zelda by his side. The sooner that starts, the sooner they will triumph. So she runs.

She runs past the ceremonial grounds where heroes and champions were once knighted—where she knighted Link. She passes what remains of Windvane, the ruins of the garrisons which once housed their great armies, and the great exchange where all the grain of Hyrule once flowed, now desolate. She eventually finds travelers: on horseback, on foot, walking dirt roads fallen out of repair, who turn to glimpse a second of the princess in her passage.

It is too long until the path runs near its end, and the towering stone walls of the Great Plateau bear down on her. The birthplace of Hyrule, so they say.

The great gates that once permitted foot passage into the sacred grounds are blocked off by a mass of rubble.

She has been thinking about this on her way here.

That self-duplication power is not answering her commands. Apparently the narrative thinks it would be silly if she made a temporary cheerleader pyramid all the way up the side, and, really, she can't disagree.

She also contemplated trying to retroactively become part Rito, but decided that sounds like a last-resort option, and anyway she doesn't know if that power will come at her call either.

But you know what power has answered her readily during every moment of her independent existence so far?

Lightfoot.

And Lightfoot, she expects, will make climbing a whole lot easier.

So when she meets the base of the wall, she just changes direction, from forward to up. Her fingertips find cracks in the stone and her boots find ledges, or sometimes just kick off the sheer stone, and she flies up that wall not all that much slower than she approached it.

It's tempting, when she reaches the top, to stop for a rest. But she's pretty sure she's been leaning on Just A Little Longer to get here, so her first rest on this plateau may be quite long. She'll need a safe place to take it, and she owes Link some answers before then.

(And, she will admit in the privacy of her own thoughts, she just wants to see him.)

So she doesn't pause a moment before she takes off running again.

By this time, Link has found three shrines and collected the runes from them, and extracted the information that there's a fourth one in the mountains from the old man after cornering him in a shack in the woods. 

So right now Link is west of the Temple of Time, experimenting with peppers and a cooking pot commandeered from some Bokoblins, trying to find out how far muscle memory can take him in the culinary arts. The answer is: a lot. He needs to pack these stuffed pork fillets up somehow to bring them with him on the go, however, and his instincts are failing him in this regard.

Well, now there is a strangely familiar figure bolting directly toward him across the grassy slopes, long blonde hair bannering out behind her.

Link almost goes for his sword when he catches fast movement at the corner of his vision, but stays his hand when he realized that's most definitely an unarmed person, not a monster. Then the figure gets closer, and... he...

This is the voice that was speaking to him. He knows it for sure. His breath catches in his throat. He feels drawn to her like gravity. Protocol calls for him to kneel—where did that thought come from?—but another part of him banishes the thought as silly, like a well-worn debate inside of him he's hearing again for the first time. He knows this person, but...

But he's also forgotten who she is.

When Zelda reaches him, he's standing there staring at her dumbly.

She slows gradually as she approaches, from her initial arrowlike flight to a mere mortal sprint to a run to a jog and finally to a brisk walking pace. When she thinks about stopping completely, she feels exhaustion well up in her bones at the thought and sharpens her will to the task, which is not over yet.

"Um. Hello," she says, stumbling to a halt in a way that somehow manages to imbue exhausted wobbling with beauty and grace. "You—won't remember me. I'm Zelda. Princess of Hyrule. Things have gotten complicated in a number of respects but the important things are simple. Open the shrines, recover your strength, free the Divine Beasts, reclaim your sword, defeat Ganon. Optionally try to get your memories back. I can help with that too."

Her rambling staggers to a stop in much the same way that she did, and she stands there looking at him, hopeful and wistful and lost and relieved and as firm of purpose as a compass pointing north.

There are now at least six new things pushed onto Link's task queue, which he is only now realizing exists as a specific thing in his head. He has too many questions about what all of those words mean and who the girl is because "Zelda, Princess of Hyrule" rings a bell but doesn't actually tell him anything.

But he opens his mouth, and his heart feels like it's going to lurch out of his throat for some reason, and what comes out is,

"Are you okay."

She—

—opens her mouth, closes it again—

Smiles, very warmly, all of a sudden. Smiles at him like he's all she's ever needed.

"Yes."

A moment's further hesitation.

"...are you?"

He isn't sure what that means, the way he is.

"I'm weaker," is what he finally says. "I don't remember anything. But I'm ready."

She nods.

"I... need somewhere safe to rest. It's been a journey, getting here from the castle. We can talk more once I've slept."

...the next words escape without her permission, unplanned, unconsidered. "It's good to see you again."

He cannot say the same, not remembering a separation. He doesn't know what he is to her. So he says nothing to it instead of saying the wrong thing.

The first part, however, he is ready to answer.

"There's an old shack a few miles south east."

She nods crisply.

"All right. Thank you."

A slight hesitation—she should ask him to guard her rest, according to logic tactics, habit, and protocol. But she finds that when it comes to it, she... doesn't know how. Can't bring herself to presume.

"...I'll find you again when I wake up."

What?

"I should accompany you." Something about the dismissal is vaguely upsetting, and something about his needing to object moreso. He's caught flat-footed: he thought it went without saying. He can't trust his intuition as much as he thought.

"There are monsters," he adds in an attempt to justify.

Oh, no, now she's caused this to happen. This is what comes of making moves you didn't plan days in advance.

"—sorry," she says. "I've... been on my own for a long time. I wasn't sure anymore. But you're right."

So he hadn't misjudged, and she was just...?

One step at a time.

He'll leave the food for the wildlife. It's nothing he can't make again and better. He nods and jerks a thumb shackwards.

"I'll lead."

And he sets off, watching to make sure she follows closely.

"...do you not want your food—?" If he doesn't want his food can she have his food? She does not need food anymore. It's fine. She follows.

He does not currently have the discernment to infer her food avarice and assumed that rest was higher on her priority list.

"Hard to carry. I can make more."

He picks his way down the slope, instinctively making a path a less agile person can safely descend on, but then remembers the inhuman grace with which she found her way to him and speeds up to a good jogging pace.

"All right."

She keeps up easily, her boots almost soundless on the grass. It occurs to her only belatedly that something feels strange about this arrangement, and then why, and what, and then she doesn't know if or how to explain. It just seems like a lot. She can explain after she sleeps off the journey. (She won't sleep for a whole day, right? It can't have been that long, coming here? It would be so embarrassing and also inconvenient if she upset Link by sleeping for a whole day without explanation. But if she tries to explain she isn't sure she will be able to stop explaining and then where will she be? She almost wishes she didn't remember her other life, or where these powers came from—except that if she didn't she wouldn't be here, she wouldn't have trusted this insanity enough to try it, and she cannot possibly regret being here.)

Oblivious to Zelda's internal turmoil, Link makes his way for the shack, wondering if he'll have to haggle with the old man about using his "house". He runs ahead to clear out a Bokoblin camp ahead at some point, but otherwise the journey is uninterrupted. When they approach, it occurs to Link that the log cabin is really run down, not really fit for royal habitation, but they don't have better options, so the Princess will have to get over it.

The man is there when they emerge from the trees, hood pulled down and lurking around the corner of the cabin. His head raises at the sound of crunching leaves, and his dark eyes find the pair, and he stops—

And he steps out of sight.

He's gone by the time they get there.

"—Who was that?"

"I don't know. Haven't seen anyone else on this plateau. He said I'm welcome to sleep here."

"He... didn't seem happy to see me. I suppose his reasons are his own."

She ventures into the cabin. Does it have: four walls, a roof, and at least one soft surface?

It has four walls, a roof, and... straw and cloth covers on an elevated piece of hard wood, if you call that a bed.

It's been a century since last she slept. She'll take it.

"I might sleep for... a long while," she says. "I've been—I'm not sure how to explain. I'll," she stifles a yawn, "try, to answer questions, when I wake up. It shouldn't be longer than a day, I don't think." That questionable bed is getting more tempting the longer she looks at it, but she's not going to just douse herself like a lantern without waiting for Link's acknowledgment. It matters to her very much whether or not she has succeeded in reassuring him about the possibility that she might sleep an abnormal amount.

Nod. "I'll stand guard."

"—for a whole day, if it comes to that? You need sleep too, don't you?"

"I can stay up for a day." He thinks. He feels rested now, so 24 hours shouldn't be a problem.

She thinks for a moment, casts another longing glance at the bed, and then nods decisively. "All right. I'll see you when I wake, then."

And she lies down on the At Least Moderately Bed-Like Object and is nigh-immediately out like a light.

That was fast.

Link spends a few more seconds staring at Zelda, trying to dig up any memory of her, but it's of no use. He checks around the cabin, better this time than the last time he was here: searching for vermin, molds, defensive and structural weaknesses. He takes a patrol of the perimeter outside once the interior is confirmed secure. There's good visibility around, but there's also a Bokoblin camp to the north he'll have to keep an eye from.

The old man is nowhere to be seen.

There's a cooking pot out here with sight on both the front door of the cabin and the monster camp. The back of the cabin faces the cliff of the plateau. He doesn't expect danger, not really. It's not proper protocol, but he strikes up a fire and puts on a stew to simmer. Mushrooms and bird meat, some herbs he picked up.

Once the pot is going, he goes back in to check on Zelda.

Zelda sleeps like someone caught between total exhaustion and a lot of things to have nightmares about. She doesn't move much, but she makes unhappy noises and flinches from nothing.

Link does not know what do with this.

She probably doesn't want to be woken up. Is there something specific that's distressing her? He can't find anything. He knows that people get nightmares. He doesn't remember what you're supposed to do about it. The answer may be nothing.

When the stew has been on for long enough it won't give anyone food poisoning, he'll make a small bowl and put it beside the bed. The rest still has a good many hours left to simmer properly.

When he goes out again, the old man is sitting on a stump by the gorge to the west.

What does he want. He's pretty sure the old man is helping, or thinks he is, but these cryptic games are tiring.

"How... is she."

"Who are you?"

"There is no point in concealing it. I am... I was her father."

Link is missing all of his memories, but he doesn't think that's how fathers work.

"I failed her, one hundred years ago. I failed this kingdom. So many years she has been trapped in that castle... I cannot understand how she is here now, but I fear what might happen in the days to come. Her sacred power is awakened, but she cannot defeat Calamity Ganon alone. I must implore you, with all my heart: protect her. Protect Zelda, my precious daughter."

His voice breaks.

"The kingdom depends on you two now."

Link got distracted realizing that if Zelda is a Princess, and this man is her father, that means he's the King, which means Link should be kneeling in deference, except the King himself said that the Kingdom of Hyrule is no more—and now he's rewinding all the rude things he said to the King—

Then he remembers he's being spoken to and attempts to remember what the King's been saying.

"I will," he says, of course. After a pause, "She's having trouble sleeping."

The King looks confused.

"Trouble... sleeping?"

Link shrugs. "Nightmares? What do I do?"

The King closes his mouth.

"Hum."

He rubs his chin, acquiring a perturbed look.

"I... don't know? The nursemaids never... soporifics, perhaps?"

This is his unimpressed look.

He stands, leaning on his cane.

"...I know that you will triumph over the obstacles to come. I believe in you, Link."

Next Link blinks, the old man is gone.

...He can probably do a calming elixir, though, if he manages to remember the right ingredients.

Zelda's rest continues in the same restless vein for about two-thirds of a day, whereupon she sits bolt upright with a sharp gasp, abruptly awake.

Link is outside the door by the cooking pot sharpening, a sword with a bit of flint.

He looks up when he hears her gasp. He sets down his tools and walks over.

"Feeling better?"

"...well, I'm awake," she says wryly, starting to stretch and then wincing when her body reminds her of what she put it through yesterday. "How long was I out?"

Link looks at the sky.

"Less than a day. Fifteen hours?" He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "Food?"

"Good to know. —yes. Food. Food is good." She hauls herself out of bed, wincing again on the way.

He'll go ahead and take the stew off the fire, dole out a bowl, and put on a few apple and mushroom skewers to roast.

"Your father was here."

"I thought I recognized that beard. But then I thought, surely there's more than one person in the world with a big white beard. And my father died a hundred years ago. Apparently that isn't stopping him, though. What did he have to say for himself?"

"He asked me to protect you and vanished. He didn't look very dead."

"Hm. I wonder..." She shakes her head. "Wondering later. Food now." Om nom stew.

Link has already snacked and is not hungry, so he goes back to sharpening. When the skewers are half-done he rotates them, and when it's completely done he takes the whole spit off the fire, but lets it keep burning.

At some point he'll take out the Sheikah Slate and start poking at its controls again.

"Mff," says Zelda. She swallows her bite of stew and tries again. "Are you getting along all right with that thing?"

"I think it's missing some functions, but it works fine. What is it?"

He clicks on Magnesis and levitates a rusty shield off the ground.

"It's a Sheikah Slate!" she says, unable to suppress the excitement in her voice. "A marvel of ancient technology." Though half of her doesn't find it so marvelous anymore. ...okay, a smartphone that can levitate things is a little marvelous. "I did hypothesize that it might get out of sorts during its long wait, but we should be able to find a researcher who can restore the missing functions... or at least, so I hope. The state of the field might have deteriorated since the world was overrun by monsters. I might be able to fix it myself, if it comes to that, but I'd rather have help."

"The shrines restored some of the runes. The King said there's a fourth one in the mountains."

"We'll head there next, then?"

Nod.

"Who am I?"

"You're..."

She hesitates, searching for words.

"...My guardian knight. An accomplished member of the royal guard. Wielder of the sword that seals the darkness. And... someone I would like to call a friend."

"...Sure."

She smiles softly.

After a moment, "—Did that answer your question?"

"Yes." Enough. "Calamity Ganon... what happened? The King didn't tell me a lot."

"...well... a lot of things happened. Um." She puts down her bowl to focus on organizing information into a sensible order. "...Calamity Ganon... attacked the kingdom with his monsters. I was supposed to have the power to seal evil—it's what the princess of Hyrule is supposed to be for—but I'd never been able to touch it, all my life. I wanted to help however I could, so I learned about the devices of the ancients, and tried to find ways to use them against Ganon. The shrines, and the Guardians, and the Divine Beasts. I—wasn't our most important researcher, I was barely a researcher, but I was helping. Then..."

She shivers, remembering.

"Ganon's power crept into the devices somehow. He turned the Guardians against us, and corrupted the Divine Beasts. And I was still useless. I couldn't touch my power at all; all I could do was run... the castle fell, the world was coming to pieces around us. You protected me to the very last. And I found my power... too late to protect you in return. I stopped the Guardians that were attacking us, but not before they struck you, and you... were very badly injured. You wouldn't wake. So I had you brought to the Shrine of Resurrection, where I hoped you could recover. I made arrangements to be sure you would have all the tools you needed to save the world when you woke up. And I went back to Hyrule Castle alone, to keep Calamity Ganon contained. I... guarded your rest, I suppose you could say." She smiles, a small, weak, trembling smile. "A fair trade, for all the times you've guarded mine..."

"For one hundred years. You were in..." He hesitates. "What was it like?"

"...difficult," is what she settles on, after a moment's thought.

"It wasn't just... a matter of matching my power against the beast's and waiting. I had to think, plan, strategize. It was a constant battle, to prevent Ganon from growing stronger without growing too weak myself. And I... lost all the parts of me that weren't the power, a little. I think I forgot sometimes what it's like to have a body. To breathe, eat, sleep, to touch with hands, to see with eyes. I was just... a light against the darkness."

"But you're here now."

She nods, and takes a deep breath, and smiles hesitantly.

"Well, you see, that's where the really confusing part comes in."

"Take your time."

She ducks her head, a faint blush colouring her cheeks, and makes a sound of appreciative acknowledgment, and fiddles with the edge of her bowl a little to regain her composure.

"I... I don't know how to make this make sense to you, so I guess I'll start with how I made sense of it myself, and see where that leaves us." A measured breath. "There are legends that say that... you and I, the destined heroes of Hyrule, are the same soul born over and over again, forgetting our old lives each time we live anew. I don't know whether that's true or not. But it's what I thought of, when—I remembered another life. Not as the princess of Hyrule. As a sort of princess, I suppose, and one with a kind of power, but... in a world so distant from our own I hardly have the words to describe it. Devices like the Sheikah Slate are as common there as... as pairs of good boots. She was—her family—" She bites her lip and shakes her head, blinking back tears. "...anyway. Something terrible happened to her, though she never found out what. And in the space between life and death, or between one world and the next, she met a goddess who offered her incredible power."

She studies her hands. "She accepted. And she, and I, was reborn into this world, with no memory of my other life. I grew up as Zelda, Princess of Hyrule, and spent a hundred years fighting Calamity Ganon, and then you started to wake, and I spoke to you, and I... remembered my other life, and my other power. And, well. One of the things we were granted was the ability to..." She makes a diverging-streams gesture with her hands. "Become two people instead of one, who are both me? So..." One hand curls inward. "I'm here. And I, the other me," she gestures northward with her other hand, "am also back at the castle, still fighting Ganon."

It sounds like something out of a story, but so does everything else, really. He gets a feeling this was not an uncommon sentiment to his previous self. He feels only—weary, perhaps, at the revelation.

"A goddess," he repeats. "Not Hylia? Will I also... remember another me?"

The thought troubles him even as he voices it. He's already missing his entire life. If a different one fills into the gaps, what's left of this him? He's only seen so little of it, heard so little, but he already wants to cling to what he has. A princess. A sword. A friend who talks to him like he matters.

"...I don't... think you will. I have no reason to think you will except that lots of strange things are happening already and that makes further strange things seem likelier. My other life didn't know anyone who seemed especially like you—and my other life was like me, I can... see all the places where we fit together and all the places where we come apart, and guess why, sometimes, what difference there was between our lives that led us to grow differently. And the goddess who wasn't Hylia seemed... very specific. I don't think she would have reached out to most people. So—I don't think so, overall."

She takes another steadying breath.

"So... there being two of me, that's one thing. And the fact that I could run here from the castle, that's another thing—I'm much faster and lighter on my feet now, and I can keep going as long as I need to, but if I push myself too far I'll sleep for up to a day once I stop. There's... more things, but my memories of them are a little hazy and I don't know entirely know which powers I really have. Some of them are a bit—silly but very useful—I might be able to pull anything I've ever touched out of my pocket, that's the silliest one I can think of."

He nods, slightly reassured. At the last bit, he perks up.

"Weapons? ...The Sheikah Slate?" He holds out the Slate.

"Oh! Good idea." She accepts it with a quick smile, traces the edge with a familiar glide of her fingers, then hands it back and reaches into her pocket...

...and out comes a second, identical Slate, right down to all the same scratches and nicks in the case.

"Well," she says, and immediately tries to pull the Master Sword out of her pocket.

"...it seems this ability has some limitations. I'll have to investigate. But we have two Slates now, which seems like a nice start." She attaches hers to its familiar place on her belt.

Neat. He looks at her pockets.

"What about things like bows, swords, shields... none of the ones around are good."

"I'll try some things I remember..."

What weapons has she touched, held, in her life? She thinks she can remember picking up a sword, once. Besides that one. She tries to reach into her pocket for it, and it won't come.

...what other objects has she held? A pen? No. Teacup? No. Her jewelry box? No again.

But the Sheikah Slate worked...

...can she, very carefully, pull a copy of her bowl of stew out of her pocket?

She can! It's even full! She carefully puts it down. Also (she notes absently) it had enough trouble fitting through the opening that she should probably change her outfit to one with bigger pockets when she gets the chance. Maybe take up the habit of wearing a satchel.

"I think," she says slowly, "though it's hard to be sure, of course, that I can only pull things out of my pocket if I've touched them recently. I don't know if it's because of all the time I spent without a body, or because of confusion about going from one of me to two, or if it's actually about how recently I've held something. But so far that seems to be the rule."

He shrugs.

"Makes as much sense as anything. What are we doing now?"

"Besides finishing my stew?" She looks down. "...finishing one of my stew?" she corrects. "I think the next place to go is still the fourth shrine. And I should arrange to have bigger pockets. The Pocket Silliness also lets me change my clothes in an instant if no one's looking, so I should do that anyway to wear something warmer for the hike up the mountain, and while I'm at it I can try for bigger pockets. I don't think I could pull a shield out of these even if I had a good one."

He gestures at the skewers lying out as well. He also digs a cube of crushed heat-dried peppers from his pockets and offers it to Zelda.

"Heating."

"Good thinking!"

She accepts the cube, passes it back, pulls one out of her pocket, passes that back too. Picks up the skewers, puts them down, pulls two more out of her pockets and lays them next to the originals.

"You haven't lost your touch at cooking," she adds. "It's just like I remember."

He doesn't smile, but looks pleased nonetheless. 

"Good," he says. "I don't remember what I'm doing. 'Was just winging it."

"You've always been a better cook than me. I can get by if I need to, but you make things taste good."

...a memory catches up to her, and she blushes.

Link has no clue what she's remembering and decides not to acknowledge it.

Is she done with the food yet? He'll start closing up shop, stowing away his makeshift tools and putting out the fire when they're nearly done.

He'll mention, tugging at the weapons belt and sling he's wearing, "Did you leave these for me? Are they the same that I used before?"

She finishes her bowl.

"That's your belt, yes, I recognize it. I didn't leave it for you personally but it was with you when I sent you here. There should also be a glider somewhere, for getting off the plateau eventually, and it's a good thing I included that because the stairs aren't passable anymore."

"I feel like l can't carry as much as I should." After a moment, he ventures, "I saw the King with a glider."

"...why would he... hmm. Was it—" She sketches a shape in the air with her hands. "Framed like so, in wood, and the fabric red with a white crest?"

"Yes."

"The same one, then. Why would he take the glider...?" She shakes her head. "Well, we'll need to get it back from him somehow, or getting down from here is going to be difficult. And potentially silly." She's evaluating options like 'carry Link piggyback while she climbs down' and she does not like them. "But that can come after we find the next shrine."

She gets up, this time without any wincing; food seems to have improved her condition quite a bit. "Shall we?"

Link gets up as well.

"We can climb down." He considers the height of the plateau. "With stamina food." He remembers his current underwhelming physical state. "...A lot of stamina food.

"Do you know where the last shrine is?"

"I have a pretty good idea. If we head up the mountain I should be able to get us pointed in the right direction."

Then Link will strap on the rusty buckler and look back at Zelda expectantly.

She takes the opportunity, as he's glancing away, to Become Cozy.

Then she checks the map on her slate just to be sure, and sets off.

Link blinks for a moment in surprise and gets going.

He's not in much of a royal guarding headspace right now, and it transpires on the way that he is very distractible by wildlife. He's attempted to set an ambush for no less than three lizards by the time they reach a pass into the mountains—"speed potions," is his explanation—he finds himself running to catch up more often than not, trying to figure out where to put away new bundles of picked mushrooms.

He's quick as ever, however, to point out—

"Bokoblin."

Zelda adjusts her pace very agreeably to account for his acquisitions, and takes temporary possession of any specimen he finds, for Pocket Purposes; it transpires that she cannot pull live lizards from her pocket, but mushrooms work fine.

When he announces the bokoblin, she reacts first out of habit: follow the line of his attention to identify the threat, step back slightly to get out of his way but keep near enough to be within guarding range if there's more, look around for more in case he missed something even though he never does, take appropriate cover and wait for him to handle it.

Only then does she begin to consider alternate possibilities, such as climbing a nearby tree (she looks around for one), or maybe even trying to fight the bokoblin herself? No, that's a last-resort option from her current starting point. If she wants to try fighting a bokoblin she should first establish a library of weapons to draw from her large cozy pockets and then ask Link for help learning how to fight things. Yes, yes, she has all those fantastic powers about it, but she hasn't verified that they work yet so she'd better not rely on them unless she really needs to.

Link is to the left and in front of her, then there's the thwip of a bowstring, and the Bokoblin sprouts an arrow through the head.

He scans the surroundings again, suddenly more tense.

"I missed this one yesterday," he says.

Over the hill is a deserted camp scattered with logs, broken weapons and a burnt-out campfire. Link plucks his arrow from the corpse of the Bokoblin, which is already going soft, and inspects it for damage. 

Oh, arrows, arrows are a thing that Zelda should apply Pocket Silliness to. She steps close enough to hold out her hand for it, while still giving him some space in case of further trouble.

"You cleared the camp and it wasn't there?" she clarifies.

"It ran off. I wasn't exterminating them; there's no one here—I thought the old man could take care of himself."

He looks like he's displeased with his past decision now.

"Well," she says tentatively, "I can run as fast as a racehorse, now, so one bokoblin is really unlikely to give me much trouble even if you weren't here. And you are."

"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."

Nod. He taps his Sheikah Slate to the pedestal—hopefully duplicating it didn't do something weird—no, it works. The doors slide open.

He gives Zelda one last nod before he steps into the descender platform.

She looks around, decides that her safest vantage is probably on top of the shrine, climbs it, and sits down to play with her pockets. Bowl of stew? Just as warm as it was when she first pocketed it. Live lizards? Still a no-go on the live lizards. Bundle of mushrooms? Absolutely. Empty stew bowl? Just as it was when she finished eating. Empty stew bowl completely clean of stew? She has to position her thoughts on the matter very carefully, but she can do it.

There is a pile of miscellaneous food-related items accumulating in front of her and she will soon have to start throwing them off the top of the shrine.

...wait... can she vanish things by putting them back into her pocket? She tries it with a pepper cube first, and not a full bowl of stew. It takes a few tries, but she manages it! She settles in contentedly to practice vanishing things, saving the messiest ones for last.

The top of the mountain is peaceful, and no monsters nor wildlife see fit to disturb her science. The wind is blowing, but between her clothes and the peppers—and her enhancements—it's nothing to bother her.

If she takes a break to enjoy the scenery, however, she might notice a figure lurking behind a tree some way down the southern slope, not really moving.

She pauses.

She considers her response.

Eventually she settles on a friendly wave.

The figure emerges from behind the tree, but does not quite meet her eyes.

He presses his staff into the snow before him. But then his shoulders slacken, and the old cane fades away to nothing, like it never was, and his hands fall to his sides, closed into fists.

...this is not a conversation best had from a slightly farcical vantage. She hops off the top of the shrine, landing lightly on the transport pad in front of it, and takes a few hesitant steps toward him.

He will not make her wait. As footsteps take him towards the shrine, his tattered disguise begins to burn away in ghostly flames.

The royal garb left behind is charred and ripped. A great gash cuts down his sternum, ridged in dried blood. There is nothing through the gap. A crown sits atop his head, half-molten. The erstwhile King bears no regal poise, no puffed-up chest. He looks as he did in those last days, when Zelda would glimpse him alone in his study after dusk, talking to old paintings. But—older, and more tired.

"I have not seen you in very long, my daughter," he murmurs, almost too quiet to hear.

She has, it turns out, a lot of things to say to him. Too many. And half of them are the coldly furious words of a stranger who's offended that he compares unfavourably to her impossibly wonderful family. Those ones, she thinks, do not get a seat at this metaphorical table.

But what comes out is, "I'm sorry I wasn't in time to save you."

He shakes his head.

"It was not meant to be. The King... dies with his kingdom."

She shakes her head angrily, but then sighs, her anger subsiding.

"I guess it would all come out the same in the end, a century later. ...what have you done with Link's glider?"

He's pulls the paraglider out from shimmering air under his coat.

"I planned to give it to him after he completed the shrines on this plateau. I feared that he would set off in undue haste otherwise.

"I... am sorry about your mother."

"Aren't we all."

"I fear that all I did was only to harm you. In the end, how did..."

"How did I find my power? I... still don't know. It came to me in the last moment when all seemed lost, which makes for a pretty story until you realize it means that if it's really how things work then everything I've ever done to become stronger and better prepared only made things worse. Maybe the difference was that for once in my life I had something to protect that I cared about for my own sake and not out of duty. I really couldn't say."

"A cruel joke the Goddess plays on us. All our well-laid plans to only bring ruin."

He looks to the east.

"What shall you do now?"

"...save the world, obviously."

"Did you know that the stones that make up Hyrule Castle were enchanted?"

"—I've seen it mentioned in books, yes. Why?"

He lets out a deep sigh.

"Have you wondered why the great magics were laid in the deep foundation stones of the castle, not the walls?

"One year after I married your mother..."

He shakes his head.

"I have told you that no one is ever to venture beneath Hyrule Castle."

She listens alertly. "Yes, I remember."

"It is a warning passed down for countless generations. What it is of has been long lost in the telling. But when the signs of Calamity Ganon became nigh... I cannot tell you what it is I suspect. I do not know myself.

"When Ganon launched his brutal assault that day, he came out of nowhere. But if I were forced to say what it looked like..."

"...like he came up from beneath the castle," she murmurs.

He nods slowly.

"I do not know what the first Kings of Hyrule feared. But the legends say—in the folktales and old songs—the Calamity returns stronger time after time. And our Kingdom... Hyrule... you know, as much as we've tried to hide it."

"I know. How could I not?"

She takes a deep breath.

"I'm going to fix it."

"I believe you." He dips his head.

("You never have before," she doesn't say, because that would be overly aggressive.)

After a long moment of trying to find something else to say instead, she dips her head in return.

He's heard enough long silences from her daughter to know she's unimpressed, though the exact meaning eludes him.

"I have always only wanted the best for you," is all he knows to say.

...it's gonna take her a minute to think of a productive response to that.

"...it would have been much easier," she ends up admitting, quietly, "if you hadn't assumed that because I was failing, I must not be trying hard enough."

"There was a part of me," he murmurs, "that believed... there was nothing in this world my daughter could not do if only she put all of her strength to it."

"...well." That does get a slight smile out of her. "I suppose I believed that too. Still do, I admit."

"Never forget it." He shakes his head good-naturedly. "Belief is... belief is the strongest thing. When all else in the world burns away..."

His gaze is far away.

"I'll find out what's wrong, and make it right," she says. "And I'll be careful about it. It would be unwise to disturb the foundations unnecessarily if they truly are the source of Calamity Ganon."

He nods gravely.

"I can feel the pull of the after," he breathes. "This time is shorter than I thought. I may not be able to remain here for long more."

He steps closer and offers the paraglider with two hands.

She takes it. Now she is holding a paraglider. Something about this situation feels faintly ridiculous.

"I hope you find peace and safety in your next life."

"I doubt your mother will give me peace, with this mess I've made of everything."

His smile, nonetheless, is wistful.

"I hope you find happiness in this one."

The fringes of his ghost begin to unravel.

She smiles at that, blinking tears from her eyes. "Goodbye, Father."

And the blue ashes are blowing away in the wind.

Eventually, the orange colors of the shrine flare to blue. The platform inside rises. Link steps out of the column of light, turning over a new spear in his hands.

He looks at Zelda and says, "Is something wrong?"

She holds out the glider.

He takes and examines it.

"The King...?"

"He gave me some ominous news, and told me he believes in me, and said he took the glider because he was concerned you'd hare off prematurely if you found it, and... passed on."

He thinks about it for a second.

"Was he happy to?"

"I think so. I told him I hoped he'd find peace, and he said Mother was unlikely to give him any. I think he was looking forward to seeing her again."

Link wonders who his parents were.

He can't conjure faces or names, not even a vague impression. Whoever, they are, they'll be dead by now.

There's no acute sense of loss. Maybe they were never close.

Maybe they were already dead.

"You'll meet them again too," he says.

She nods hesitantly.

"Do you need longer..."

She takes a deep breath, lets it out... and shakes her head firmly.

"I'm all right. Let's move on." She glances around to orient herself. "Would you rather focus more on recovering your memories right now, or on becoming stronger?"

"We should... stop the Calamity?"

He hesitates. The gaping void in his memories felt so pressing when he first woke up, but now, he feels more... centered.

"Am I missing anything important?"

"...I don't know how to say what's important. You're clearly still you. If you don't urgently want your memories back I think it's fine to deprioritize them. In which case I think the next thing to do is look for more shrines outside the Great Plateau."

"What do the shrines do? I feel... greatened, after I receive their reward. But I don't feel—restored, or stronger, or more vigorous."

"I'm not entirely sure. We never managed to open one, before. But it seemed clear that the shrines were meant to give you something that will help you defeat the Calamity."

"We'll see."

She nods.

"All right. Then let's see if we can spot any nearby shrines from up here, or if that doesn't work, the top of the tower."

It's a good plan. Straightforward.

He...

...feels like they're missing something.

After a few seconds, it occurs to him.

"...We're homeless."

"...that's true," she admits. "Though by using the slates to transport between the shrines we've found, we could make a home of Father's little cabin, for lack of better options."

He doesn't mind, but if the princess and him are going to be at this for a while, she can't be sleeping on straw and wood.

Also, there's only one bed.

"Are there no better options?" A horrible thought strikes him, as he abruptly realizes the only two human beings he's seen since he woke up have been dead and trapped in a castle for 100 years respectively. "Is no one still alive?"

"...I don't... actually know," she admits. "There are some settlements that I expected to see survive this long, but I didn't look for them on the way here, so it's hard to be sure. I think there should still be people somewhere."

"We can do shrines on the way to the nearest settlement?"

She nods. "Good plan. I'd say we should try Kakariko Village first, then."

Then they can head down the mountain... Link looks at the paraglider.

"Do you know how to glide?"

"Yes. I don't need it, though, because of my strange powers."

"You're going to run?"

"I might also be able to make my clothes into a sort of glider. And I expect to be very advantaged at safe landings."

Nod.

"Kakariko?"

She nods, turns—between one blink and the next her cozy coat becomes a sort of cape situation—and takes to the air, gliding lightly down the mountain and over the plateau.

He follows her, leaping off the mountain peak and snapping out his paraglider.

They soar through the air together. She's pretty sure she remembers the way, though the details are fuzzy after all this time, and landmarks have suffered some wear and tear in the course of the apocalypse.

They have to touch down before they're at the edge of the plateau, and then the wall gives them another departure point from the ground.

Link takes in the ruined landscape of Hyrule as they glide. The sight puts a strange twinge in his chest, like something about it ought to evoke loss, if only he remembered what it was he had.

But again, they can't stay in the air forever. There are Moblins down in the field ruins, and Link dives ahead to take care of them before Zelda lands.

She does a slow circle in the air above him, watching. It feels strange. Especially since her battle powers keep providing her with helpful tactical analysis, which usually suggests doing more or less exactly what Link does half a second later.

Link will still be looting the bodies when she lands. He speeds up once she's down, and in a few more seconds is back in resting pose with his swords sheathed, awaiting directions.

She shakes out her hair, which has remained improbably Perfect, and sets off.

They'll manage to glimpse the telltale glow of some shrines in the distance, which Link will mark in his Sheikah Slate, but they're mostly too far to make a detour for.

The direction they're headed there's a Sheikah Tower, overshadowed by the the Dueling Peaks rising behind. The monsters thin out as they travel past what used to be where border patrol ended and the highway began, and now is merely a bridge to both sides wilderness.

That's where they find their first item of interest. Well, two.

A orange-lined shrine by the road, set against the hill.

And a man in simple clothing and a well-made travel pack, peering off the bridge in the direction of Hyrule Field.

She perks up a little when she sees such a definitive sign that there are still people living in this world.

As they approach, they'll notice him muttering to himself, inaudible.

...she listens attentively, in case he turns out to be saying anything interesting once they're close enough to hear him.

"The end is nigh... 're doomed..."

Well. Fair enough, honestly.

She detours to grab the travel gate on the shrine as they pass, but if Link isn't inclined to try the shrine immediately she won't ask him to.

Link squints in the direction the man is looking and opens up his Sheikah Slate's scope function for a gander, but doesn't seem to find anything worth commenting on.

They can come back for it later, since they can teleport back any time. Better to get situated first.

The man doesn't really notice them as they pass.

If they keep going, they'll come up on the deep pass between the Duelling Peaks, shrouded in shadow. Across the river, a Sheikah tower juts out of the rocks of the shallows.

The inside of the pass is more infested with Bokoblins than Zelda remembers.

Link juts a thumb in the direction of the tower.

"Map?"

She nods. "Let's go get it."

"By swimming?"

The river current looks pretty strong. He's not one hundred percent sure he can swim that in his current state.

He scans around for an accessible vertical ledge to jump off. None in sight, unless he wants to take the long route up the mountain.

He looks back at Zelda doubtfully.

She follows his gaze. "...hmm. You have a point. I was expecting it wouldn't take much effort to cross the river, but I hadn't thought it through all the way. We can come back for it later."

"Maybe you can... create a boat?"

He looks up at the shadow of the Dueling Peaks.

"If you take my Slate, climb up and glide over, pick up the travel gate and map for both of us, and teleport back this side?"

"...hm. Yeah, that could work. I'll leave your Slate with you while I'm fussing around with climbing, though; it means an extra trip, but only the short parts of the trip, and Slates are useful."

She can't put them in her magic pockets? Actually, can't she duplicate Slates anyway?

He doesn't say that, though. He's probably misunderstanding something. He just nods.

She jaunts up the side of that mountain at an absolutely unfair pace, glides down to the other side, and strolls up the outer frame of the map tower even more easily. Shortly she's reappearing at the shrine in a twist of blue light.

He looks at that and thinks I can do that except he, empirically, can't.

(Okay, not quite that fast and agile, but he ought to be able to scale a cliff face at a solid pace without getting much out of breath.)

He's waiting at the shrine when she pops back and offers his Slate. Or does she want him to do the second round trip?

She smiles, accepts the Slate, boops herself back up to the top of the tower, and within half a minute is back at the shrine again.

Link gives her a dip of his head that means "thank you", and they can be on their way?

If they're going through the mountain pass, he's going to, uh, run ahead and deal with that infestation first.

Sensible. She decides that the safest place for her to be while he's up to that is 'perched on a cliff face like a gargoyle' so that's where she waits for him.

He's getting faster as his combat muscle memory warms back up. They're dispatched in short order. He picks up a spit they were roasting river trout with and takes a small bite out of the fish.

He makes a face.

Another shrine, another travel gate.

Once they're nearing the other side, they see the more promising signs of civilization: a bridge that's not the one Zelda remembers from back in the day, and a large marquee across the river with a large wood-and-cloth effigy of a horse head on top.

There are people milling around the building, horses and stables by its side, and a well and some cooking and camping spots. There's even a merchant's wagon parked out front, stacked up with bundles of goods.

She smiles and lets out a relieved breath. "Whew. Signs of civilization."

Link perks up at the sight. His steps speed up.

"Horses—we should get horses." A pause. "I should get a horse?"

"You should get a horse," she confirms, smiling. "I'm faster than most of them and I can run for longer."

They'll get some looks as they approach the stable. No one knows what Princess Zelda looked like, but she's always had a face and complexion befitting of growing up on the best the King's treasury can buy, and she now has all of those appearance powers to boot.

No one will directly address them.

(There's also a shrine conveniently nearby.)

It feels different from the Hyrule she remembers, though she can't quite place how or where. Has she been to this exact stop on the road before? Did it even exist, before? She isn't sure.

She heads for the shrine first to pick up the travel gate, her thoughts racing ahead to the village. How long will it take them to get there? What will it be like? Will it feel somehow indefinably wrong, like this place does? Can she even remember, right now, what Impa's village is supposed to look like?

She finds that she's standing there, half turned away from the shrine's pedestal, holding her slate, staring through it like it isn't there, afraid to even wonder to herself whether Impa will still be alive.

Link looks at her concernedly as he touches his Sheikah Slate to the shrine pedestal.

"I'm... thinking about a friend of mine, who lived in Kakariko Village. I don't know if... well. We'll find out when we get there."

Well, maybe they can ask if they... sell horses?

The place is clearly horse themed, by the decor and the animals (though it's not only horses, there are cuckoos and a cow out back too). It's unclear what their specific business is.

Oh no, they're going to have to ask. Questions. Of perfectly ordinary people. They're going to have to have informal, non-pre-planned interactions with strangers. The worst.

No. She will be strong. If she must ask after horse purchasing opportunities to save the world, then she will ask after horse purchasing opportunities.

"...hang on," she says slowly, as she begins to envision this interaction. "Do we have... anything... to trade... for a horse...? I guess I can just pull sixty bundles of mushrooms out of my pocket. Or however much it takes."

"I can make elixirs," he proposes. "We want some anyway."

Those cooking pots look public. Hopefully no one objects to them stewing monster parts in them.

...On second thought, maybe Zelda should copy a cooking pot as well.

"Oh, good idea."

She follows him to a cooking pot, and follows his speculative glance to the cooking pot, and correctly guesses that he wants her to copy one, and just touching it isn't enough for her to become able to copy it but when she puts in the effort to actually hoist the big clunky thing a little then she can stick her hand in her roomiest pocket and feel it there. She nods confirmation. Probably best not to haul an entire extra cooking pot out of her pocket in full view of everyone.

Link claims a burnt-out fire whose pot has been removed and starts adding wood to it.

When no pot is forthcoming, the problem occurs to him and he looks around. Is there a latrine somewhere?

Totally! Does Zelda want to come out of a latrine holding a cooking pot?

...arguably less likely to be noticed, but so much weirder if she is in fact noticed.

...how about she comes out from behind the latrine holding the cooking pot.

Acceptable! A kid catches sight of her doing that and looks confused, but scampers off saying nothing of it.

Link has a fire going and is snapping the necks of a few lizards when she comes back.

He offers her one to try duplicate.

She's pretty sure the dead lizard will duplicate just fine, and it turns out she is correct! Link can have as many fresh lizards as he would like.

He'll brew up a nasty-smelling concoction with the lizards, some throbbing purple guts unwrapped from a parcel of leaves, and a few curved fangs. Stones to grind up the parts, then a long boiling at low heat to make sure the essence is extracted, and he doesn't have a proper strainer, so he asks Zelda to duplicate some old netting to filter out the remaining solids. More boiling at high heat to clarify and improve the binding, then...

He didn't think this far ahead. Perhaps more accurately, he didn't remember this far ahead.

"I need bottles and oil," he tells Zelda. "The merchant might have some."

He takes the pot off the heat.

(Zelda, of course, grabs all the bits she hasn't already pocketed before they go in the pot.)

"...hm," she says. "All right, let me see."

She ventures merchantward.

He moves the pot in a safe place, covers it with his shield, and follows.

The man next to the stocked-up wagon is funnily dressed, in mismatching but nonetheless vibrant colors. He's just done speaking to a man out the front of the building when they get to him. He surveys the two approaching with intent, apparently deems them worth his notice, and sketches a bow as they come near.

"What can I help you two with, young man, young woman?"

"Oil of vitriol, vegetable oils, half-ounce glass bottles," Link offers.

"...Budding potioners, I see! 'Oil of vitriol'. I have palm oil, but not the acid. No bottles either. Now, if you want fresh produce goods, I'm your man. Beedle, there inside, he might have the bottles you're looking for. Acid, I don't know where you'd find acid, out in these parts."

"Produce goods?" she says interestedly, thinking of time spent on the road with many more ingredients ready to pull out of her pockets at a moment's notice. "...well, we should focus on our potioneering first." Because until they are done potioneering they won't have any money to spend on produce goods. And she would rather buy at least something if she's going to be pirating this poor fellow's entire stock.

The man fishes out a jar of oil, slightly cloudy. "Fifteen rupees a jar, forty for three. That's market rate—not going to get better than that."

She reaches into her pockets. "Are you interested in buying foraged mushrooms?" she asks, pulling out a bundle. "We've got plenty."

The merchant squints.

"Those are... rushrooms, stamella, yes, but an interesting cultivar you have there. A bit similar to what you see down by Tanagar. I'll take it."

He counts on his fingers, muttering.

"120 rupees for the lot," he declares. "How much oil do you want?"

And then he's rifling in the pouch on his waist.

She glances at Link, who knows better than she does how much oil they should buy.

He lifts one finger.

"One jar, please!"

He forks over a hundred and five rupees and the oil in exchange for the mushrooms.

"Pleasure doing business! The name's Maru. I'm usually travel the route between Hateno and Kakariko, so hit me up if you find anything else interesting!"

Then he's spreading out the mushrooms on the floor of his wagon, humming to himself.

"I'll remember that!" she promises.

Link is distracted trying to remember what he can use instead of oil of vitriol. Are they going into the building?

Zelda is proceeding directly toward the promised Beedle, yes.

The inside of the marquee appears to be some sort of inn, laid out with beds and privacy curtains. There's a board on the wall with a few posted bulletins, a few tables where folks are eating, and an inner reception booth connected to the one seen on the outside. A man with a huge backpack is seated by the pillar at the center, counting rupees. He and his bag are also in colors. Maybe it's a merchant thing, so people know to go to them?

The man twitches when they step past the threshold, sniffs, and looks up at them, alert.

...she tries a hesitant smile, and approaches.

They can get a better look at him as they approach. He's pale-skinned, readheaded, with a smattering of freckles. His eyes track them intently, but cautiously, and yet... hopefully? He hops to his feet once they're near, and like he can't stop the words from spilling out of his mouth—

"Youhavearuggedrhinobeetle—I mean, I love rugged rhino beetles! If you have one wouldyouconsidergivingittome."

"A rugged rhino beetle?" she says curiously. "I'm not very familiar with different kinds of beetles." She knows exactly what she is about to unleash, and yet, she cannot stop herself. "What distinguishes rugged rhino beetles from other kinds?"

"Oh, everything! Rugged rhino beetles are found in Central Hyrule and the Faron region and are adapted to the more wet and earthy environments, which means they are the best of all the rhino beetles at digging in mud, and the hardiest of them all to survive the harsh rains! They're very easy to identify: green with yellow wings. The bladed and energetic variants live more east and north of here. My very favorite is the energetic rhino beetle, because of how fast and long they can fly, but they're so hard to find—rugged ones are more common, maybe because they're better adapted to their environment and don't suffer as much from hunting—"

And he will go on and on and on until he's out of breath, and then finally remember what he's doing.

"But! I was saying! Can you give me your rugged rhino beetle? In exchange, I can give you, uh, uh..." He rubs his hands. "A high-grade tough elixir, straight from Akkala! Lasts you ten minutes!"

Link looks vaguely perturbed.

...she catches that look, and wishes she knew what it was about, but she's not sure how to ask.

"Well," she says, "I didn't actually know we were carrying a rugged rhino beetle, but—Link, does that seem like a good trade to you?" Particularly considering that if she gets her hands on that elixir she'll be able to pull it out of her pockets at will forever?

"...yes, uh. How did you know that?"

"—come to think of it, that is a good question."

"Well, ah, Beedle has a sense for these things!" He flaps his hands awkwardly. "Beedle loves beetles!"

He fishes a corked bottle of clear, dark purple liquid out of his pack.

"Now, about that rugged rhino beetle...?" he asks hopefully.

Link fishes an wooden tube wrapped in coarse paper out of a pocket. He looks at Zelda questioningly.

She considers the situation for a very brief moment, then nods firmly.

He hands it over.

And Beedle forks over his payment. He does not check that the tube contains the promised beetle. "Amazing!" he whispers, tucking away his winnings almost reverently.

He shakes his head, as if awakening from a daze. "Now, did you two want something? I sell all sorts of critters, odds and ends!"

"Oil of vitriol, or spirits of salt. Half-ounce bottles."

"Vials I have! So useful for storing insects, those." He opens a compartment on his pack next to him to reveal a line of small glass containers, each holding a little bug or two. "Acid, though... I don't usually stock that. But since you've done me such a big favor today"—he almost squees that last part—"maaaybe I can figure something out. How much can you make it worth to me?"

"Well, if we get what we need, we'll be making some elixirs, which we might be persuaded to sell to you if you're interested. And we're planning to travel quite a bit, and I'd be happy to keep an eye out for interesting beetles along the way."

"Oh, no! Beetles, Beedle's greatest weakness..."

He lapses into thought.

"If you promise to trade me the next... three rhino beetles you find... you can find me at any stable you go to. Then I'll give you some spirits of salt."

"It's a deal!"

"Okay!" Beedle is delighted. "Bottles still need to be paid for, of course. Ten rupees a pop. How many do you want?"

They should probably not buy one bottle and then be seen using ten a few minutes later.

He raises three fingers, then rethinks his glassware situation and amends it to five.

"Five." She counts out fifty rupees, from inside of her pocket, which is where she put the rupees, and halfway through the process she notices what she's doing, and determinedly continues counting out her actual rupees that she got by selling real mushrooms instead of becoming a reckless counterfeiter on the spot. If she becomes a counterfeiter she would like it to be after careful consideration rather than on impulse.

And they successfully acquire their goods!

Link is beginning to feel that this "create elixirs to sell for rupees" plan is a bit redundant as he realises that Zelda can just buy an elixir like the one they just acquired and duplicate it that way. Or any other type of trade good.

But they have a pot of aqueous filtrate sitting in a cooking pot, so he might as well see this through.

He does ask Zelda if he can look at the toughness potion while they're heading back.

She's happy to hand it over, though her mind is mostly occupied by thoughts of currency duplication.

The elixir looks... okay? No solids, no separation, a bit on the dilute side, and there's only a hint of diffraction rings when he holds it up to the sun.

He's trying to grasp for reference points that he doesn't remember, but the vague impression he gets is—he can't do better than this with a cooking pot and bottles, he can probably do as well with a proper kit.

It would barely get a passing grade—in—

He doesn't know where it wouldn't get a passing grade in.

"How good is it?" she asks. She remembers him being very well-versed in both making and assessing potions.

"Good travel quality," he decides is the word that comes to mind. "Not... distillery quality." He thinks about the sorry state of weapons he's seen around. "Maybe standards regressed."

He finds that a little displeasing.

"You can make better ones, then, when we find you better tools."

"And ingredients," he concedes. "This is very potent, just not perfectly pure."

Their pot is undisturbed when they get back to it.

Link checks that everything is in good state.

"Can I have the ingredients? It'll only be ten minutes."

She passes him the stuff, and sits down on the ground, and pulls an Extraneous Rupee out of her pocket and looks at it contemplatively.

Link notices, but decides to give her some time to work it out.

He neutralizes the solution with the spirits of salt and a bit of weed he's only now remembering the use of, scrapes out the precipitate, then adds a fifth of the oil, stirs up the mixture, waits for it to settle, and decants the oil off into the small bottles. He repeats until he's out of oil, then pours the decanted oil into the jar, adds a bit of water into the jar, shakes it up, decants the water back into the pot. After a bit of squinting, he gives it a final round of filtering.

The product is a slightly clouded, blue-green concoction that iridesces in the light.

He puts them into the bottles.

The pot goes back on low heat to evaporate. He offers the elixirs to Zelda.

Ker-pocket!

"We should see about selling these here; we can always 'make' more on the road." She discreetly checks if anyone is close enough to hear her clearly. "I'd much rather pull infinite elixirs out of my pocket than infinite rupees. Elixirs do more to help people."

Link nods. Hesitates, then suggests, "Clothes? Harder to disguise, but..."

The people around aren't dressed poorly, per se; their clothing is in reasonable condition. But it is, on closer inspection, not professionally made compared to what even a lot of commoners in Castle Town back in the day went around in, not to mention compared to the machine-manufactured stuff of Rosy's world. (Link has the impression that handmade clothing takes a lot of labor hours, though he doesn't have the vocabulary and concepts to think of it in those terms.)

"Mm." She nods acknowledgment, thinking ahead. "We didn't really bring enough luggage here for selling clothes to make sense, but if we manage to get you a horse, we can start selling clothes out of your saddlebags."

Right. They were going to get a horse.

"I'll dig a hole to bury these," he says, pointing at the mess in the pot.

She nods. "I'll see about selling the elixirs? I'd better wait for you before I try anything horse-related; you're much better with them than I am."