#thicctom?

She waited.

He swallowed.

She glowered at him.

“Ohhhh,” he said with a strange little laugh, running a hand through his wet hair, depositing extra sand there with a wince.

“Do I take it we no longer have a boat?”

Link nodded and kept nodding, his hand having returned to his hair, and with a start, Zelda realized something else was missing.

“Where is the Sword that Seals the Darkness?” she asked, with a strange, dim sense of surprise at how small her voice sounded.

He peeked at her between the arm he’d rested on one knee and the hand still tangled in his hair as though steadying himself with it. “I dropped it.”

“How could you drop it?! It was sheathed!”

“I took it out. It was weighing us down.” He held a palm out as though to ward off whatever he saw in her gaze. “I had to.”

The Sword that Seals the Darkness.

Lost.

Like them.

“Merciful Goddess,” she whispered.

--

To his credit, Link had a lean-to built for her within the hour.

Zelda used the time to change into the spare shirt and trousers he apparently kept in his korok pouch. There was a small but very convenient freshwater pool with a gentle waterfall, and while she had reservations about drinking it without boiling it, she gladly rinsed the grain of salt from her skin.

She then began to check the flora and fauna around them against the slate’s compendium. They wouldn’t starve, at least—palm fruit and bananas appeared abundant, and as one paraglider cloth fluttered in the breeze behind her, Link deposited two large, round fruit unfamiliar to her on the other paraglider cloth she sat on. She frowned as he walked away, compelled, for some reason, to snap a picture of him with sand still stuck to his back. He’d discarded only his socks.

She indulged her compulsion. She then sniffed and pointed the Slate at the melons, which apparently were “cantaloupes.”

--

“Hylia’s sake,” Zelda fumed as she attempted yet again to force the Slate to emit an intermittent, high-amplitude electromagnetic pulse. “It’s not as though they won’t be looking for us,” she muttered (despite her uncertainty as to Link’s whereabouts, or whether he truly listened when she thought out loud), “but they shall most certainly begin on Eventide, and we are most definitely not there.” Her gaze rose to the horizon, utterly flat and entirely blue, which it shouldn’t have been in any direction on any island she’d ever seen from the shores of Hyrule. She shook her head, confounded. It was as though the gods themselves had sent that storm to hurtle them as far from home as possible.

Purah knew Zelda, and therefore would know to search for some sort of signal from the Slate.

How long it would take her to find the right one was the second question.

The first, of course, was whether Zelda could produce one before the Calamity came.

A clack and a spark drew her eyes to the firepit Link had dug. Zelda grimaced, as did he, at the humid wood and bark which had thus far refused to light. She imagined if Link had fire arrows in that magical pouch of his, he would use them only as a last resort.

--

Link’s footsteps approached her.

“You should sleep, Princess,” he said.

She squinted up toward where he must have been, her eyes adjusted to the screen, with only its meager light to illuminate him.

“I have yet to resolve the communication problem,” she said.

“It’ll keep til tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll think better on a night’s rest.”

She blinked as though it would speed her night vision’s arrival. “The longer I take, the longer til we are found.”

“You need to take care of yourself,” he said with a strange laugh. “If you get sick, I—”

There was a pause, and Zelda’s face pinched. She hugged the slate to her chest, attempting to see beyond it.

“—I don’t know what I’m doing,” Link said, “with that. I won’t be able to take over for you.”

It was more than he’d ever spoken to her in a day.

He crouched before her, his fingers steadying him just in front of the paraglider-mat, his face now strangely hollowed by the graze of Slate-light on his cheekbones.  “Please, Princess,” he said, holding a hand out to take the Slate from her.

She stared at it, rankling, somehow, at how reasonable a request it was.

She placed it in his hand and turned off the screen.

She curled up on the mat to the sound of him rummaging around, her forearm beneath her head.  Sleep arrived swiftly.

--

She awakened with a cloth rolled beneath her head and several more tucked around her body. She craned her neck to see korok and Rito designs alongside a rather childish-looking egg with pink spots adorning her, criss-crossing a bit in her bleary vision.

“Why do you have a myriad of paraglider cloths?” she asked.

A squelching arrived as though in answer, and she turned to see Link with his mouth expanded unreasonably wide around a kabob of roasted orange melon.

He stared wide-eyed at her, his face too occupied for speech.

Then he reached for another stick suspended over the meager fire, waved it in the air a few times, and held it out to her.

She sat up, stretched her neck, and accepted his offering with a plaintive squeal from her stomach.

The fruit was extremely wet. She did her best to conceal its sticky tracks on her chin.

Link was terrible at it.

--

While she pursued her critical task with dedication beneath the palms and the small shelter, and Link kept her dutifully fed and watered, she found herself increasingly distracted by his other pursuits.

He circled the immediate area at a brisk jog. She assumed him to be scouting (again), quietly approved, and paid it little mind.

He pulled a small shovel from his korok pouch and attempted to sidle away from her while shielding it from her with his body, disappearing into the treeline. Zelda sighed and tried not to think about what he was doing with it.

She later caught sight of him emerging from behind a huge rock far to her right and nearer to the ocean, side-walking on his toes, half-crouched, with his hands in the air.

She shook her head and returned her eyes to the screen.

When his feet invaded the upper right corner of her vision despite her attempt to concentrate, she looked up to find his head waggling as well. The slate lowered to rest in her lap as he made a sudden leap forward, then sprinted toward the sea. He stopped a few moments later, searching the area around his feet.

Zelda returned to her S.O.S. efforts when he began scratching the back of his head, and this time became quite absorbed. She lost track of Link entirely for at least a few hours.

When he reappeared, it was in the other corner of her eye, hauling a wide, dark, flat rock from somewhere in the trees far to her left down the beach. He dragged it further and further from the trees’ shadow, eventually letting it rest near to where they’d come ashore, almost directly between Zelda and the ocean. Link rose with his fists on his hips and a nod, and when he turned to walk back toward the treeline, he appeared quite pleased with himself. He also appeared to be sweating arrowheads. He’d draped his champion’s tunic on a nearby branch, but he was still heavily clothed.

“Sir Link!” Zelda shouted.

He squinted at her, the Sun beating on his face.

Zelda winced. He’d be quite burnt, wouldn’t he? “Your attire is inappropriate!”

His expression didn’t seem to change, but he broke into a jog. This seemed counterproductive if the objective were to cool himself down. Zelda opened her mouth to say so, then shut it. Surely, he knew this and was simply in a hurry to escape the sunlight. She returned to her work.

When he arrived, a flash of blue caught her eye once more: he’d taken his tunic from the branch. As it made its way over his head and onto his torso over his sweat-soaked shirt, Zelda’s eye twitched.

“Link?” she asked.

“Princess?” he said, panting a bit.

“What are you doing?”

His hands spread open at hip-height. Zelda had rather the impression of a shrug, though he hadn’t actually shrugged. “You cannot possibly be cooler like that,” she said.

His face mimed an “oh.”

“What did you believe I meant?” Zelda asked.

Link gestured at his front. “Well- I wasn’t in uniform.”

Her mouth went a little slack. It took her a moment to shake her disbelief free. “Did you- truly believe I value your formality over your health?”

His eyes shifted side to side and his face paled a bit, as though he thought himself in trouble.

“Sir Link,” she said. “You are overdressed and losing a significant percentage of your body’s water to sweat. I appreciate your extraordinary ability to rip palm nuts open with your bare hands—” (she truly did, he’d frightened her with the first one yesterday, it had cracked so mightily)— “and therefore keep yourself supplied with fresh water, but there is no need to exacerbate the problem. Those trousers are thick and heavy, aren’t they?” She blinked as he continued to stare at her, and a sudden suspicion struck. “They’re still the same ones? From the ocean?”

His throat bobbed.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You gave me your spare clothes,” she said—not that she hadn’t realized that—it’s not as though he’d handed her women’s clothing—"and kept yours on. Didn’t you? You didn’t change last night? Or bathe?”

The spooked look on his face was enough confirmation. She could only imagine the chafing.

“Sir Link, I order you to cease- whatever it is you were doing and take care of your clothing situation at once.”

“But-“

“The last thing either of us needs is for you to develop some-“ she waved a hand at him- “manner of- skin infection.”

He winced.

She sighed. Something about his expression almost made her want to smile, but that was certainly, absolutely not allowed. This was Sir-Knight-Who-Seals-The-Darkness, the bane of her every waking step, the shadow haunting each glance over her shoulder, the statue standing mute at her door in the night.

His usual stony silence seemed a far cry from the paralysis currently affecting him.

She sighed again, her face and voice softening. “Bathe, please. You’ll be glad you did.”

--

She shook her head when he emerged sometime later, his wet, presumably rinsed shirts and pants over one arm, and opened her mouth to say something about his extremely sunburned face—and failed to do so.

It hadn’t occurred to her how he’d look in nothing but trunks.

She should’ve known what kind they’d be, considering the spare undergarment he’d handed her. It was tighter on her, with her curvy shape, but it still clung to him—and he was all chiseled lines in muscle, everywhere (at least, everywhere she could currently see).

She turned her attention back to the Slate and flatly refused to look up when he returned to inspect the state of the (now nonexistent) fire.

--

She managed to keep her head down for a long time once Link walked off.

Then her sedentary status began to get the better of her.  She shifted her position to relieve the discomfort. She did so again—and again. She sat with one knee bent up and her elbow on that—then sat up on her knees, but that didn’t last long—then with both legs bent like all those prim court ladies riding sidesaddle. Eventually, she tried laying on her stomach with the slate before her face, and that was alright except for her bladder, which was becoming more and more difficult to ignore—and even more so in that position.

She rolled onto her back.

She managed to hold the Slate above her head for a while before that, too, became uncomfortable and she lowered it to her chest with a sigh.

There was nothing for it.

She rose, brushing the sand that had blown its way onto her mat from her (Link’s) clothing.

She quite liked the shirt. It was tight around her chest, but comfortable and soft owing to the close knit. She supposed she’d be too warm in it were she hauling rocks like Link in the sun, though.

She scanned the beach, then the trees behind her, for a sign of him, and saw none.

Zelda strode to the branch she’d hung her own things on and strapped her belts around her waist, then secured the slate at her hip. She’d not leave the Slate unattended, no matter how deserted the place seemed.

--

She emerged from the thick growth of low ferns she’d found feeling relieved but restless. Her muscles did not at all wish to return to her seat beneath the lean-to so quickly, so as she’d seen no sign of danger on the beach as of yet, she made her way what must have been northward, thinking to walk with her feet in the cool, wet sand at the ocean’s edge.

She jumped a solid foot into the air at the sound of “PRINCESS?!?!” being screamed at the top of Link’s lungs.

“Here, I’m HERE!” she shouted, her heart pattering like a rabbit’s hind legs and her right ankle in sudden pain from rolling on a rock. She hissed, her arms flying out for support, and caught herself on a thick, branch-like palm-stem. She already heard Link crashing toward her through the foliage, and she tested her foot, breaking into a sudden sweat of desperation not to appear as though she couldn’t take care of herself for twenty minutes without him.

She refused to be injured. Absolutely not—not in front of him.

Link burst from the ferns to her left, a rather spiny stick in one hand with the floppy remains of a ferny growth on one side and a wild look in his eye.

Zelda schooled her face practical despite his near-naked state and her ankle’s throbbing. “Sir Link—there is no need for panic. I am fine.”

He scanned the area, nodding and lowering his mostly non-threatening vegetation. He relaxed his arm and…stared at her.

She stared back.

He looked left, then right. Then back at her.

She raised her chin. “Something amiss, Sir Link?”

He waved his stick a few inches, still pointed toward the ground. Zelda once again had the impression of a shrug.

“You needn’t remain,” she said, still gripping the stem and assuring her foot flat on the ground despite its complaining.

His eyes drifted first to her hand, then to her feet. His head pulled slowly back, and though his expression didn’t change much, she suspected he suspected. “I should accompany you, Princess,” he said. “The area seems safe, but it’s better not to take the chance.”

She blinked rapidly, her chin rising even further. “It truly isn’t necessary. Have I ever been harmed on those occasions when I’ve- ah…”

“Slipped away?” he offered, one eyebrow twitching the barest fraction.

“…Indeed,” she said, his words considerably less inflammatory than the ‘escaped’ which had crossed her mind.

“…Not yet,” he said, voice flat as usual on the rare occasions he’d used it in Hyrule, but something grim lay buried in its lowered pitch.

Zelda gritted her teeth and doubled down. “And why should you expect this to be the first time?”

“I expect every time to be the first time, Princess.”

She paused at that, taken aback. “I- see. Then why have you allowed me to remain at the shelter unattended?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye out. But I can’t do that if I don’t know where you are.”

Her eyes narrowed at him. “I do not wish to be-“ she threw her free hand high in the air- “surveiled without cessation.”

His look became a cross between understanding and regret. “I- know, Princess. But I’m your appointed knight. I have-“

“A duty, yes, I am aware.” She glanced over his shoulder out of habit, expecting that glint of blue. It was missing.

He shook his head. “To you,” he said. “Not the sword.”

Her lips parted.

She hadn’t thought him so observant of her. Watchful, yes. Insightful, no. He had, after all, believed she wanted him fully dressed despite the risk of heat stroke.

She made the mistake of shuffling her feet.  Pain shot up her right leg and she jolted with a wince she attempted to pass off as a grimace at his words.

His shoulders slumped a little as he eyed her foot.

Zelda tripled down—she released the stem, both feet flat on the ground. It hurt—a good deal—but she’d had far worse sprains and a sense that this, while painful, would be fine.

She turned toward the ocean to walk it out.

She went step by step, far slower than her usual gait—he would know that, but her leg was usable, it wasn’t broken, and she wasn’t a child. She attempted to appear calm and as though she were simply inspecting their surroundings.

He stepped to her side—the injured one—his glorified twig in his outer hand and the other, she was certain, ready to grab her should she stumble—which, of course, she would not.

--

She walked down to the waves as planned and followed the edge of the wet sand, to and then past their little camp, all the way to where she’d seen Link drag the rock out of the trees, pain in every slow step, sorely tempted to seat herself and allow the water to soothe her foot. She didn’t.

Link accompanied her the entire way in silence.

The difficult part arrived when she turned to walk up the sloping sand toward the lean-to. It put extra pressure on that ankle, either to bend further back, to support the ball of her foot alone, or to turn sideways. She found herself stopping between each short step.

“Princess-“

“I am fine,” she said, flushing, as though those words hadn’t given the already-foolish game entirely away. She stood still a little longer, though she suspected the longer she did, the worse the following step would feel.

She heard Link shuffling beside her, and then a strange sliding sound. A furtive glance showed something bizarrely long emerging from the pouch belted to his hip. A moment later, he was holding a shining, silver spear exactly like those carried by the Zora guarding Dorephan’s throne room. He held it out to her.

“You seem like you’re getting a little tired, Princess,” he said. “I don’t have a walking stick, but this might help.”

Her hand curled around the shaft tentatively. It was cool and surprisingly light, with the tip well above her head. She leaned on it and took a step—it was more manageable.

“Thank you,” she said, and made her slow way to the lean-to.

She managed to collapse onto the paraglider-mat with some dignity and no sounds of surprised pain. She laid her bad leg straight out, then the other, and leaned back on her hands, rolling her eyes at herself behind her lids.

Link was rummaging again.

He pulled a knife from his pouch and began scraping the meat from half of a palm nut he’d cracked earlier. She watched him dully as he deposited the edible portion into the unscraped half, thinking she ought to get back to her work.  He then produced a blob of white chuchu jelly and placed it, the cleaned palm-nut shell, and his not-so-threatening stick on the mat beside her.

“If you’re hot,” he said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and his hair blowing in the perfectly pleasant cool evening breeze, “you can try the chuchu jelly. It stays cool a long time.” He then rose and disappeared into the treeline.

Zelda stared at the items beside her, sheepish. It took her several minutes to get over her embarrassment enough to burst the jelly into the makeshift bowl.

It felt blissfully cold on her ankle. She set the rest aside in reserve and propped her legs up on the rolled-cloth pillow from the previous night.

She returned to her work on the slate, picking for a while at the palm meat Link had mildly cooked, once again, over a meager fire.

About an hour later, he suddenly held a hand-sized meat pie between her face and the Slate. She goggled at him.

“You need a good source of protein, Princess,” he said.

The pie was very warm.

She stared at the fire, then all around her for a sign he had somehow constructed an oven.

And a rolling station.

And butchered a wild animal.

“Where did this come from?” she finally asked.

He pointed to his pouch.

“What?! How-“ she knew how, but- “how long has it been in there?”

He cocked his head, considering it. “About two months?”

“Two months?!” She thrust it at him. “Sir Link- that is- well beyond spoilage-“

He took it from her and took a hearty bite.

She fought a visceral revulsion sending bile up her throat.

He smiled a little and swallowed—then held it out to her.

The pie was not only warm—it was steaming inside. The filling appeared perfectly fresh—perhaps a wild boar or even beef filling with peas, carrots, and some manner of starchy root. It smelled not only edible, but wonderful.

“…How?” she asked.

“Magic,” he answered. “No idea how it works, but everything that goes in comes out exactly the same. No aging—no spoiling.” He huffed a small laugh. “No getting cold before you’re ready to eat it.”

He reached a hand in—and produced a second pie, nearly identical, which he held out to her.

She took it in a strange state of grateful shock and nibbled a corner. The pastry was excellent—flaky and deliciously browned. A larger bite very nearly produced a hum of delicious enjoyment, though she tamped it, feeling it would be somehow rude.

“Thank you, Sir Link. It’s- delicious. And fortunate, considering our situation. May I ask- ah…”

“How much I have?”

“Yes.”

He appeared to be fighting a smirk. “Way more than I should.”

He must have noticed her eyeing the spent sticks from roasting the melon. “It’s not infinite,” he said. “Better to go easy on it—once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

She ate her (quite satisfying) meal slowly as she worked, making it stretch. She endeavored only to listen to Link’s activity. He was busy with something at that flat, dark rock of his, but as long as he wasn’t turning it into a sacrificial altar, she wasn’t going to worry about it.

--

Zelda jolted awake, her arm flung haphazardly past her head, the Slate just beyond the reach of her fingertips, and paraglider cloth once again tucked around her. She could recall neither laying on her side to work nor intending to fall asleep.

The reason for her wakefulness protested with a throb.

She suppressed a groan as she sat up, gripping her injured leg’s calf to assist it. Her foot had been hanging uncomfortably, stretching the tendons in her ankle as it dangled past her other shin. Once righted, she reached first for the Slate—it read 2:37 am.

She used the screen’s light to search for the chuchu jelly. A dip of her index finger told her it was, indeed, still cool. She attended to her ankle (now visibly swollen) with a generous amount of the natural salve.

The moon must have risen recently, for the sea was lit in dim streaks rising and falling with the sound of waves. With a start, she realized Link was still sitting cross-legged before the firepit. She couldn’t tell if his eyes were open.

“Sir Link?” she whispered.

“Mm?” he hummed.

“Have you yet slept?”

He shook his head, his hair visible as a messy outline against the backdrop of the calm sea. “I can go a long time without sleep, Princess.”

She knew the truth of that. She’d been confused the first few times he’d taken a night shift at her door despite his daytime dogging of her footsteps. She half-supposed he slept standing up with his eyes open.

Seeing him sit there with his forearms balanced, wrists hanging over his knees, she rather thought that supposition to be at least partially supported.

“I… suspect I shall be unable to sleep for a while,” she said. “If your concern is to keep an eye out, as you’ve said, I have two eyes myself and am happy to use them. Two ears, even. Please, rest.”

“I am resting.”

“Sleep,” she clarified.

He took a swift breath—then another. “…Princess-“

“You have a duty,” she said. “I, too, have a duty as your sovereign. You are one of my people. Your welfare is therefore my concern. Please…take sleep while I am awake.”

“You’ve only gotten a few hours.”

“And you have had none. I insist,” she said.

He remained still and silent as the crests of waves grew from nearly-black to soft-blue-grey in the growing moonlight. She rather thought he might disobey her entirely, but at length he lay on his own mat, his elbow bent beneath his head.

She presumed he slept.

She allowed the Slate’s light to go out—she hadn’t the concentration to fiddle with its complex inner language—and found a less painful way to sit with her good ankle beneath her bad one. She listened to the sounds of the night, wondering that she wasn’t afraid of some creature stepping from the trees to menace her here.

They weren’t in Hyrule.

She had little idea what to expect, truly, and they didn’t yet know the size of the island—yet she felt unaccountably safe. She would not allow herself to sleep despite her impression. If she did so without waking Link up, he might never sleep another night, and she wasn’t willing to put him through that, regardless of his proficiency at standing, stone in a hall of stone, night after night.

Her face softened in the dark, as the waves seemed to in the fall of silver on their brief emergence ashore.

Surely, such attention from him personally was unnecessary, but she’d only ever spoken to him of it in the context of her own exasperation. What was his context? Did he believe her to be in extreme danger in her own castle? She’d rather thought-

She…

She scrubbed her face with her hands, trying to piece together a coherent thought from the wreckage of her feelings.

It didn’t work. Perhaps she was too tired.

The night’s gentle sounds made a gradual incursion against the noisy jumble in her head. She knew the Slate far better than she knew her knight, and she had yet to figure it out, either.

She settled for watching the sea, eyes as wide as she could make them, to catch whatever glimpse of light she could on the horizon. Inspiration would strike, Goddess willing.

~~~~~