#Im So Glad The Crew Enjoys My Silly Horses

[mumpsetc]

Sean's VA here please oh please turn them into a delightful and whimsical Pony like you did onto my friend Atronima *pathetic look on my face* or don't I am not your parental figure

THE PEOPLE DEMAND DELIGHTFUL WHIMSICAL PONY!!! Thank God Sean is Both Those Things

[stormears]

Traveler of Mine (snippet)

Summary: While Hyrule rebuilds its civilization, the Champion Link disappears into the wild again, seeking rest, or familiarity, or a release from a century of crushing weight that defined his life. Princess Zelda and Prince Sidon, the royals who stand a chance against him, pursue him, so that they might bring him home. Link runs. 

1,500-word snippet/beginning scene of a 10 - 15k-ish oneshot I’ve been thinking about. I have a fanfic “thing” I enjoy of Charcter A hunting down Char B with pseudo-romantic intentions. Zelda and Sidon and maybe a handful of random other citizens suit up to bring Link home and maybe ask him out or try to win that opportunity by catching him and beating him at his own wilderness-traversing game. Chase scenes, friendship, friendship-to-romance, lots of horse riding and mentions of horsey things, long journeys across Hyrule symbolizing Link’s metaphorical, huge expanse of crushing exhaustion of the burden he’s lived with as long as he can remember. 

The snippet doesn’t get that far into all that, but it’s what I’m going for. 

The people came back, and so she could breathe. It was her secret fear, her spoiled, hopeful one, that when—if—the Calamity was driven back, the city would stay empty, and no one would ever return. Several times across a hundred years where she refused to age and strained her muscles against the Beast enough for fifty men at once, she thought about this and felt something like humiliation. But once again, Link saved her.

Link’s journey upon waking in his shrine to bringing his newly rallied Beasts with him to take back their Kingdom took him five months. The battle took three hours. After they had rested and woke alone in the castle ruins, they explored. They pushed rubble, collected artifacts that had sat on stone floors and collected dust for the length of a Hylian’s whole life. At the end of the first week, some strangers came in. And more came. And the rubble moved.

Now Zelda does not know the feeling of humiliation. She knows about growing, and filing residential deeds and merchant partnerships. Folk coming into Castle Town came with businesses and families and precious heirlooms to put on shelves. And most importantly, they brought crafts to carry these things with. Carpenters came and mixed cement and brought logs and homes rose up. Link was on roofs more often than not, hefting this and aligning that. He made his intentions known well enough even to those folk who couldn’t make sense of his hand signs. Whether they did or didn’t, he was well in demand. Everyone knew him. Half the population had seen him roaming Hyrule these past months, some of them had apparently had errands done by him, sold him groceries and supplies and weapons. Everyone knew the warrior, the horseman, the moblin slayer, mountain climber, savior of races and dragons and things like that.  

When she  gave out plots of land to a group of farmers, another one came up, with a Goron behind him, asking with great excitement, “Ma’am, where is the Champion? Is he in the south quarter today?”

Where is Link, was a familiar question, usually easily answered. “He’s due for a rest day today. He must be sitting on a castle wall somewhere. I’m afraid he won’t be back for any construction assistance till tomorrow morning.”

“I might have the answer to that, miss Zelda,” said the Goron, who raised a folded piece of paper above all their heads. “I passed him this morning. He said to give this to you, uh, ma’am.” And his arm came down over the farmer, to Zelda’s reach. She took the paper and felt a thin magic on it immediately, some fairy blessing to keep the paper shut. An invisibly bump of sorts told her that the Goron had tried to open this letter and failed.

“Thank you, sir. I’m so glad it’s safe and unopened.” She gave him a fine grin and made sure to look him in the eyes as she opened it up. The Goron kept a straight face in front of her.

Zelda did not keep her straight face. The letter was from Link, written in his passable, leaning scratch and saying words she really had not expected to see or read this morning:

Zelda,

I’m leaving for a while. Don’t know when I’ll be back I need to be away Im very tired. Please accept my  apologies. Reconstruction of castle Town is going well I don’t think they really need me anymore. I think I want to, be in the wild again it helps me sleep and I’ve felt heavy and strange since we won the battle again I am sorry. Take care of yourself my princess

At the bottom he signed his name the way he used to, a century ago when he was a trained soldier. The elegant precision and large L seemed to be written by an entirely different hand than the one who had written the message itself. Zelda dared to think ‘Who wrote this?’ as she scanned it a second time. It seemed like a tiny work of fiction. A small handful of collapses in the grammar and spelling. It didn’t matter. Link probably hadn’t written letters for a hundred years. Link had left her without telling her so. Heavy and strange. What in the hell did that mean? She read it again, again. Im very tired.

‘Well, I know that, silly goose,’ she wanted to laugh. ‘You are the most tired man in the land right now.’ But it didn’t feel funny at that moment. That lying Goron was still looking at her.

She looked up with her same smile. “He says he’s gone out for some fresh air. Won’t be back for a while. I say he could use a good long break.” She nodded to herself and folded up the paper into a little scroll and tied it with a spare hair ribbon. She hooked it onto her belt where it would not be taken or read. “The first zone of the town is properly gridded off and our buildings are coming along nicely. We can do without his help for now.”

“Oh nooo!” moaned a lady with a cloth cap from behind them. “I hoped to see him today! I promised him free blackberry wine, you know! He, I think he made a sign saying he’d take it.”

“When will he be back, milady?” asked the man she’d been talking to before this nonsense started, and Zelda told him “Long enough for a decent vacation,” and hoped he would shut up. To assure that he would, she made a show of taking a new set of important paperwork in her hands and walking away. She could be busy anywhere. With the construction, the lake and reservoir diggers, the Zora party asking for trade, that asshole who said his grandfather was a Councilman, some horse association, lots of things.

Zelda made time for many of these things until just after sunset, when construction crews were piling up lumber for the night and lazing about. They left town or took shelter at the one inn that was close enough to complete to comfortably stay in, and any new residents did the same. Several folk during the day had asked about Link, was he coming to this area soon, was he around, did he have lunch plans? Zelda excused him each time, but she knew with each one that her placating couldn’t last forever. Or even for long. This town was growing new life again because of Link. It was all because of Link. He was the one people really knew. Not her, not usually. Even if her name was on everything and she carried the Goddess blood and every person she spoke to was her subject now, people nodded these facts away and asked to see the Champion Link, please. And so did she.

He was her appointed knight and constant companion through every trial and struggle and sunny day. She had known him since they were small. She knew him before he started tying his hair back. She watched him fall and cut himself on grown men’s swords and then wield them on the back of a horse. She told him to stand by her while a great godly demon threatened to swallow them and erase them from existence. She had known him so long, trusted only him by that point, that she could only choose him now. Link was at her side for everything and she loved him for it in some way. His loyalty was stronger than the might of Ganon. He hadn’t even told her to her face that he was leaving her alone.

“Are you all right?” she murmured in her half-broken room that night. She felt she was close to sleeping and dreaming this away. “I know you’re tired. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I need you for everything.” There was no one here to apologize to her, to say it’s okay, or I am always at your side, or some such thing. Link was gone. Was it absurd, that she wanted to cry? That she was crying.

‘If it helps you sleep and rest and finally...feel good again, then you must do it,’ she thought, for speaking was out of the question now. Her lip was wobbling like a soft child’s. She wiped at her wet eyes. ‘I didn’t know you felt heavy and strange. And tired. I’m sorry, Link. I’m sorry! Should I come get you? Do you want me to help you?’ No answer here. There was a light wind outside, delaying the silence.

When the silence was back she thought, ‘You rest, my Champion, and if you are not well or back soon, I will come find you.’

-

This came out significantly more emotional that I first intended. But we’re rolling with it. Eventually Zelda will decide Link’s been gone too long and she’s worried about him and enlist Sidon to help her since I guess she knows they fought Vah Ruta together and Sidon would want to help. This was originally a purely Sidlink idea but Zelda wormed her way in there and we may have some sort of Zelda x Link x Sidon thing on our hands. Or maybe I’ll pick one in the end, eh, I’m not sure yet. I planned this in my head when I was playing BotW to distract me from failing to write other WIP fics that I frankly care much more about. 

And as Link keeps eluding them (he secretly takes up “work” at various Hyrule stables, he’s the one who goes to collect horses off of mountaintops and shit when people ask to “board” them like the player would, so he keeps escaping with both his natural athletic skills and his retinue of infinite horses lmao) Zelda and Sidon will feel less “poor dear Link, we must find him and make sure he’s okay” and more “That clever BITCH, I almost had him, he’s too good, soon I’ll have him in my arms you hear me my dear Link I’m coming for you” 

That’s the kind of fic I’d like to read anyway, so here I am writing it :/