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"There, that's settled." Zelda sighed as she and Link left the Rito village and walked towards where they'd left their horses grazing, back at the Rito stable. It felt so good to be traveling around the country, making plans with all the leaders of the other races of Hyrule. This is what it should feel like, she thought, to lead. And it was important to her to build a Hyrule that worked together.
"I'm so pleased that the elder will send a representative to our council," she said to Link, still excited at the success of her idea. He nodded at her, smiled. She'd noticed, actually, that he smiled a lot more now. He even laughed -- and once or twice, caught her completely off-guard by making a joke.
She watched him for a moment as they walked, thinking about all that had happened recently. It had been almost three months since they'd defeated the Calamity. They'd visited all the leaders to report to them about the Champions, about the way the war had ended. To talk about their peoples' needs. And, frankly, just to see the places again, and to re-connect. She had been gone, and Hylians had been without a leader, for a hundred years. And King Rhoam, her father, had never been one to deeply enmesh his people with the other races of Hyrule.
He hadn't prohibited it, and they had traveled to meet these leaders before, when Zelda was young, but it had always been with a great deal of pomp: "The King and Princess are making a royal visit." And Zelda had come to understand that it was because of her destiny that the Hylians had some level of authority over the other races. Because she was destined to seal the evil, to protect all of Hyrule, that was why she and her father could ask the other races to present Champions to pilot the Divine Beasts. They could ask to excavate in others' territory to look for ancient Sheikah technology. And the other races couldn't really refuse. Perhaps some of them didn't mind, but she suspected that such acceptance was not universal.
But now. Now there was no Calamity to seal, ever again. She could feel that it was gone, forever. Now she felt that it was very important for Hylian, Sheikah, Rito, Goron, Korok, Zora, and Gerudo to live together as equals. To work together, with their different strengths and weaknesses, to build a stronger nation.
And that was where she'd lighted on the idea of building a Council of Hyrule, with a representative from each race, who could discuss the needs of their respective peoples in light of the context of the entire country.
Maybe she was eager to show the world that she could lead, and that she was different from her father. Maybe she regretted her ability to ask for the Champions, who had given their lives. But she truly believed that this could be an important step for Hyrule. What they'd been able to do, the Champions and the Princess... they could never have done that alone. That collaboration should be a lesson for their joint future.
They reached the Rito stable and went to retrieve their horses. Zelda watched as Link mounted his horse in a single move. She found her mind wandering to the way his body moved as he shifted his weight, settling into the saddle, getting ready to follow her wherever they'd go next. He looked around for her and caught her looking at him; she felt her face flush as she cleared her throat and said, "I believe our next stop is Gerudo Town," moving to mount her own horse.
He nodded. She realized he was watching her as she got herself settled as well. She was suddenly uncomfortable with the way her thoughts were headed, and with the look that started to show itself in his eyes as he watched her. She said, crossly, "Well, you know where we're going, why don't you lead for once?"
He got an unusually mischevious look on his face, smiled, and then challenged her to a race to the next stable. Though she'd been out of practice, she had been rapidly improving in the last few months, and she had been an excellent rider before the Calamity. She nodded tightly at him and took off for the stable near the Tabantha Great Bridge. She heard him laughing as he quickly caught up and outpaced her.
Link was clearly the better rider; but his horse wasn't as fast as hers. Well. Really, it was his horse, he'd caught and tamed it, before they'd faced the Calamity together and sealed it. This horse was the descendant of her beloved companion from a hundred years ago, and one of the castle stable-hands had handed down the saddle and bridle to their descendants. The stable-hand's grandson had given them to Link, who had only used them with this white stallion, and who had graciously given the horse and equipment to Zelda as they began to travel the country. So equipped, riding this horse now was just like riding its grand-sire a hundred years ago. And just like his grand-sire, this horse could really fly when they got going.
So it was a close race, in the end. When they were in places where it was a flat-out run, Zelda would pull ahead on her white stallion, but when the path narrowed, or there were obstacles to manuver around, her skill just wasn't what it had been, and Link's sheer physical ability and recent practice allowed him to draw ahead. He reached the Tabantha stable first, but she wasn't far behind.
He'd already dismounted and led his horse to a shady spot to rest and graze; Zelda was a bit too out of breath and tired from the exertion to be quite as graceful as she slithered off her horse, leading him over to join Link. The day was a little warm, too, as summer was coming on.
He saw how tired she was, offered her some water to drink. "Thank you," she said, gratefully. He looked at her for a long moment, and then pointed just beyond the stable to one of the Sheikah shrines. He told her it was the Shae Loya shrine, and it had an interesting puzzle you had to solve. He asked if she'd like to see it.
Zelda, even exhausted, was beside herself. Link hadn't offered to take her inside the shrines, yet, and they'd been too busy so far for her to think to ask. So she accepted, and with a growing excitement, followed him as he went to what was some sort of moving platform that descended into the earth.
She was so overwhelmed with seeing so much Sheikah technology, construction, and art all around her that she only realized how close they were standing to each other right in the moment when they arrived at the bottom, inside the shrine. As the platform came to a sudden (though smooth) halt, she almost stumbled, and Link caught her by the elbow.
It wasn't really necessary, and there wasn't an edge nearby she could have fallen off of. But as she turned to look at him, she saw again something in his eyes which made her go hot all over, especially where he held her arm. It had nothing to do with the heat of the day -- it was quite cool inside the shrine -- or the recent exertion, and everything to do with his nearness.
But it was only for a moment, and then there was a shrine to explore. Link showed her how you did each of the tasks that got you to the end of this one. She was dumbstruck by the experience. Some part of her mind was furiously setting it all to memory, but the rest of her was just stunned, in awe.
Eventually they got to the end, and this time she was painfully aware of how close they stood to each other as they exited the shrine.
This feeling of awkward excitement came and went as they rode for the rest of the day, as she would catch him watching her, or he would catch her watching him. These exchanges usually resulted in a blush on one or both parts and a studiously renewed focus on the riding and the tasks they expected to accomplish.
Just the same, they finally reached the edge of the desert as the sun was going down. Zelda sighed, remembering watching desert sunsets with Urbosa. She still missed the Gerudo terribly, but it was a little better than it had been -- more like a dull ache rather than a stabbing pain. It helped that she felt like she was working hard to make those she'd lost proud of the life she was living now; of the world she was building now. And she knew Urbosa would be proud of her.
They boarded their horses at the stable and then went to make camp some distance off the road. Link set about making a fire, piling up firewood and using a flint and one of his weapons to light it. Though it was cold here on the edge of the desert, at night at least, the fire was surprisingly warm and Zelda felt quite comfortable.
She sat for a while, gazing into the flames, musing about how to approach Riju when they arrived tomorrow. Though she was the undisputed chieftain of the Gerudos, because Riju was so young, she sometimes reacted defensively if not approached in the right way. Zelda was distracted from these thoughts, however, by Link pulling out some food and placing it on a smooth rock close to the fire: some mushrooms, apples, acorns, and a piece of some sort of meat. Instead of thinking about Riju and her perspective on Hyrule politics, Zelda found herself watching Link as he adjusted the position of the food, rotated it to cook all sides, tested its texture for doneness, and eventually, satisfied, pulled it out of the fire and turned to hand some of it to her.
She smiled at him. "You're a really good cook, you know," she said. He looked down, embarrassed. He told her it was because he'd tried every combination of everything he could find throughout Hyrule. She laughed, and he added further that some of the combinations resulted in pretty dubious results, but he'd discovered a number of dishes that were nourishing and enhanced a variety of abilities. She nodded, took the food and bit into one of the mushrooms. The flesh was springy but tender, and the flavor was concentrated by the heat. It was excellent. She worked her way through the mushrooms, acorns, and meat, saving the baked apple for dessert. At length, Link told her it was partly her fault that he'd tried everything there was to try -- after making him taste a frog, all those years ago, nothing could be weirder, and she had been right that things often had restorative or enhancing properties. She laughed and almost choked on a bite of apple, remembering that time on the green hillside near Hyrule castle.
Eventually they finished the food, and set out bedrolls to sleep. What would her father say, seeing her sleeping out in the open, night after night, all over Hyrule? She sighed, first thinking that he would disapprove. But... maybe not. Maybe he, too, would be proud of what she had done -- with help of course -- and what she was now doing. Not every memory of her father was of him disapproving of her. And... maybe her father wouldn't have been so hard on her if everything hadn't been riding on her ability to access her sealing power. He hadn't lived to see it, but she *had* managed to access it, in the end. And... she knew that the people of Hyrule respected her now, even if she hadn't been able to stop the Calamity a hundred years ago. She *had* stopped it, in the end, and she was thinking of their future now, and they knew it. And there were few who directly remembered the events a hundred years ago, at any rate. Few who remembered her as a failure. Maybe her father would have respected her wisdom as a leader, now.
Link shifted as he fell asleep, laying across the fire from her. Her thoughts moved to him. First they were simply positive, grateful. And that was, by itself, a kind of grace. Because she certainly hadn't felt that way about him initially. But in the end, he had stuck with her... he had died for her... he had come back for her. And... now, as they worked together to reconstruct their world, he was even opening up, talking more, laughing more. He gave her feedback on her ideas, sometimes, when she asked for his thoughts. He was still brief in speech, of course, but she understood more and more of what he was thinking by reading what was in his eyes, how he reacted, what he didn't say, how he moved.
In fact, she found herself thinking increasingly frequently and intensely about how he moved... what it felt like when he touched her... how much she found she loved and appreciated him. At first, she tried to push these thoughts away, maybe because of some sense of professionalism or fear of damaging their relationship. But he was her partner, provider, protector. Why shouldn't she have these feelings for him? Her mind tried to work away at it like a technological or botanical problem: what to do about these feelings. But it just didn't seem to work that way. It took some time, but eventually Zelda was able to settle down to sleep, in spite of the feeling that she needed to figure it out.