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Chapter Text

On some days, it felt like Calamity Ganon had never left.

The reason eluded Link. It wasn't the malice-coated debris to which the castle where he now lived had been reduced. If anything, he'd grown accustomed to sleeping among ruins overtime, more at peace than in whatever cozy, temporary beds village inns could offer at night and take in the morning. It wasn't even the lingering swarms of monsters that would keep citizens busy for at least a few foreseeable months. No traces of destruction could erase how the land itself put forth all its might towards restriving.

Castle Town was ravaged, but never empty. Before Princess- before queen Zelda woke up on freedom's first morning, her body drained after a century as Hylia's sacred vessel, curious travelers had trickled in from stables and sideroads to see what had transpired. Sunlight showered upon the usually rain-soaked Central Hyrule for hours on end as crowd filled the ruins.

Alight and golden like a new world’s beacon, the queen returned to her people – and her faithful knight returned to her side.

Every morning she would come out to the ruined town square, wasting no time in greeting everyone who wished to come, as Link stood by her in silence. There were faces he recognized, but would step out of line by greeting. There were those who recognized him, but bit their tongue in royal presence. Zelda noticed nothing, too fatigued, too much energy put into keeping herself together as she approached more and more newcomers.

A confused group of treasure hunters, late to the castle by a few days, whose energy Zelda promptly channeled into recovering the kingdom's chronicles and research.

A starry-eyed pilgrim, eager to meet the miraculously returned queen and follow in her footsteps with whatever she needed to raise the kingdom back from disrepair.

A builder, seeking places that he could urbanize from the ground up.

A young Zora – messenger from the Domain, rushing and out of breath, who turned the world upside down in a mere few words.

“Your Majesty, we have found… Princess Mipha. Inside Vah Ruta. The Princess is alive.”

It took a moment of burdened silence for Zelda to muster up a strained thank you. Link wanted to push a word through his lips as well, because it was about Mipha, his Mipha, it was bound to make him feel something (right?) – but merely nodded along.

Zelda ordained preparations to set out for Zora Domain at a moment’s notice and Link, obviously, followed. Right up to her departure, she did not spare a moment to rest: welcoming, organizing, assessing losses, not a glance or a word Link's way. No, this was inaccurate: Zelda's eyes darted to Link quite regularly and darted away just as fast. As the Zora messenger had delivered his news, those eyes had grown wide with… Link would say panic if the news were not exhilarating.

Link would still say panic, because he was part of Zelda and Zelda – of him.

They traveled on horseback, as Zelda had wanted, rather than by Sheikah slate, to reassess the kingdom’s disrepair and plan for the future. Colors of spring painted the waking Necluda anew on their journey, as Link treaded obediently in his queen’s footsteps – and felt like the Calamity had never left.

Prince Sidon welcomed them by Lanayru Tower, charming exterior cracking under anxiety and hope – however strange it sounded referring to a Zora thrice a Hylian's size who tended to wrestle Lynels for fun. The hope part gradually deflated from his entire being as Zelda entertained him with the most wooden courteous conversation she had ever flubbed, while Link said nothing. Struggling to find the right moment, he opened his mouth about five times to put him at ease, but nothing came out and no moment turned out right. If anything, Sidon's look grew even more crestfallen after not getting the usual welcome from an old friend.

“She remembers nothing, I’m afraid”, Link heard Sidon talk, as if through a thick fog. During his lone travels to the Domain, sometimes the prince’s voice would crack like this too, with himself as an accidental, unwanted witness: when the square emptied at night and only Mipha’s statue kept him company. “When we first found her, she… was not sure who I am.”

Sooner than he would expect, their path became crowded and lit by the Domain’s luminous spires. Unchanged since he'd first crossed its gates, though ever in renovation, filled by clamoring builders and haggling merchants, the odd city of waterfalls, where everyone remembered him from before the Calamity and he could not pretend to reciprocate. The walkways leading up to the castle saw even more crowd than before, citizens eager to see the returned princess, kept in check by doubled guards. It was Sidon himself who made way for them among the crowd, by the sheer power of his authority and enormous frame. 

Link recognized Mipha from the scattered images of his memories: a red-scaled Zora girl of fragile build, now all but drowning in the castle throne that usually belonged to Sidon. She dithered through the protocol of royal greetings someone (maybe Muzu) must have taught her from scratch and while Link’s eyes remembered, his heart felt nothing.

It felt like looking at a stranger from long-unseen portraits, not at a lover.

“You’re Link, right?” Mipha leaned out of the throne, turning to him. There was only as much as vague recognition on her face, and a similar helplessness that had plagued her brother. “I’m… so, so sorry. I remember nothing more.”

Not even the overwhelming relief that showered all over him was enough to push words through his lifeless mouth and he could only nod through Mipha's apologies, praying to Hylia that his eyes conveyed his own back at her. Then Zelda saved him from further silence, tense and gazing at the wall behind Mipha's shoulder, and asked to examine Vah Ruta.

She stayed silent during the excursion uphill, Link’s own spitting image rather than a butterfly of royal charm, and not a word of complaint left her mouth as she stumbled on the rocky path along the reservoir lakes. As soon as she tapped the Sheikah slate on the Beast’s panel and stepped inside, she shifted into a different person.

“Ah! Fascinating!” She ran and spun and climbed every contraption. Almost like all was well. “So those machines under the ceiling… Yes! Without doubt! Link, do you remember your Shrine of Resurrection?”

Vividly, he wanted to say, but only managed a raspy hum.

“To think they built the same technology into the Divine Beasts… Ah! But that means-“ The realization must have dawned on her just as it did on Link, because her eyes flew open again, like they had at the news of Mipha’s survival. There had been four Divine Beasts. Four Champions.

She shook off whatever had terrified her about it and continued.

“If only I could fetch doctor Purah's mind… Is doctor Purah even alive?”

Link nodded again, almost at the verge of laughter at the thought of Zelda’s reaction to Purah’s second youth, but this, too, stuck in his throat. It seemed to rub Zelda the wrong way and she returned to her taut and pensive self, heading out.

“I've been informed that you can still speak”, she said all of a sudden, walking down the hill. “That you do so incessantly, in fact. Sidon”, she explained hastily, catching the question without looking at Link.

He took a breath to steady his pounding heart, tried, then tried again. It felt like crushing stone with only his face. He had never owed voice to a king or a queen or the Goddess herself – but he could give it to the girl trapped alongside him. Zelda had never wanted this, it was clear now – even when she'd thought she would. For him or for herself.

“Your- Your Highness.”

He had just spoken normally. Just a few months back, he had. The clench in his throat still burned as raw as on the Great Plateau, voice unused in a hundred and seventeen years.

Zelda sighed, her face inscrutable.

“Link. I'll have you remember I cried in your arms.” She looked different. Hopeful, maybe. “Your feelings about many things may be… unsorted, but I know you remember that, at least.”

“ I do.” The second attempt felt no better on his vocal cords or his whole shaking body than the first. “In the forest.”

“Then you must also remember that the last thing I want is for you to 'Your Highness' me”, she took a step towards Link, blue-clad hand reaching out in a way that made his heart twist with… something. It may have caused him pain, but still it was a “something”, a drop of scorching hot water on desert sands.

“I’ll try… Zelda”, he said through the soreness in his throat.

Not even the underlying sadness, which always seemed to press down on the queen’s chest and shoulders these days, dissipated her first genuine smile Link had seen in years – no, the first one he remembered.

***

Link resolved to force his words out after that – a yes, a no, a spoken greeting to every former Champion, at least. A comment about two older Zora debating a change to all the tribe's ceremonies, which succeeded at making Zelda laugh. Just another traveler on the road, he told himself, an adventurer like him. Not a queen or a fated soulmate from all his lifetimes that he could not afford to insult or reject.

There were split seconds when it worked.

In an unspoken exchange, Zelda did not make him linger on in Zora Domain or talk to Mipha anymore. Truth be told, she had not created an impression of wanting to talk to Mipha past formalities herself, and Link could only imagine Mipha had felt the same. Visiting all the allied tribes and – most likely – returned Champions would be a royal obligation either way. One they both needed all their strength for.

Even accounting for the heat, compared to Zora Domain, Goron City was almost easy. Remembered or not, Champion Daruk extended the same calm air of warmth and welcoming to everyone: the queen, her appointed guard or the unfamiliar youth who claimed to be his grandson. He took everything in stride like he (apparently) used to and peppered it with jokes for good measure.

“You see, when I woke up inside this… Rudania beastie, I was like newly carved”, he told them over dinner at the rock grill which nobody else used. Zelda kept scrunching her nose at the surroundings and at the Goron tribe's usual disregard for all conventions she had drilled into her head years ago. At least she could chalk it up to the heat. “I barely even knew who I am. Now I live in a land of plenty, with all these rocks at arm’s reach. I find out I'm a hero, I have the brightest grandson in the world-“, he looked around, challenging anyone who listened in to deny it. “And Rudania herself isn't so bad either, though I hear she was, back in the day. Wouldn't you say I'm lucky?”

What was easy on Link, took a toll on Zelda. She withered under Daruk's friendly back pat, which would be unsurprising on its own, had they not switched roles on their way back: Link as the one who awkwardly babbled on about the views, and Zelda once more as the new silent knight, who only nodded in response.

He would ask what was wrong, but next came Rito Village.

Link tried to imagine how now, as formal royal escort, he would bear entering Rito village.

He wondered if Amali was cooking today. If she had enough help from Kass and the girls, now that he would stop coming.

If Teba still spent his days at the Flight Range. How he was progressing on Revali’s Gale-

He would have no time to find out.

Against his heart's desires, he started glancing around for the familiar soft, white crest the moment ground under his feet gave way to creaky wood of walkways. If this was goodbye, he at least owed his best friend, his kin as Rito called it, that much. Predictably, only Harth and Saki waved to him from the family's houses around Revali's Landing (they'd never moved in together because can you imagine this crowd in one hut, Saki had explained). He almost stopped to greet them, almost asked – but ended up chasing Zelda's lithe and quick figure, in a beeline for Elder Kaneli.

When two Rito men approached the Elder’s hut after a while, the warrior Mazli leading… leading someone else, Link had no idea what to expect.

To put it gently, none of his disjointed memories, pieced together over the year, painted Revali as especially warm or pleasant – but the green-eyed Rito standing before him acted nothing short of glacial. All dry, memorized phrases, curt nods and stolen glances for an escape route – an almost-emotionless epitome of hurry. Funnily enough, his brisk welcome clearly heartened Zelda to pass her formal thanks for his help as Champion.

“If I may ever be of service again, Your Royal Highness.” The velvety tones in Revali's voice contrasted starkly with how transparent he made it that he never wanted to be of service anymore.

Strange, Link thought. Could memory loss change Revali of all people this much? The same dramatic Revali who had struggled not to preen too much when requested as Champion in the first place; who had agonized over Link not acknowledging him with a single word? (Or so he had written in his diary. That Link had read together with Teba, sighing profusely from second-hand embarrassment, he realized with a twinge of guilt.) The Revali from Mount Lanayru, who had stopped him before the battle, just to give him-

A sharp, green gaze caught him off guard. Zelda had turned to the elder, leaving Revali unattended and staring right at him.

“You are?”, he asked.

He had promised Zelda to speak with each Champion. Using words.

“Link.” If the Rito Champion jolted, if something undefined and searching gleamed behind his widening eyes, Link couldn't tell the reason. Perhaps he did remember bits and pieces of the past, including Link not speaking at all. “Good to have you back, Revali.”

The glimpse of helplessness (that’s what it had been) disappeared. Before Link knew, Revali's face was back to the icy mask from before.

“So I am told.”

With that, he excused himself and walked away, the chilly Tabantha wind suddenly colder in his wake.

***

A messenger from Gerudo found them on their way through Hyrule Ridge. The young, skittish vai in a military uniform – Barta, if Link remembered correctly – heaved a sigh of relief on catching up with them and remembered all her bows and salutes only after a longer while. Urbosa was alive and surprisingly well, but they would miss her, since she had set out for the castle herself – as Urbosa would – through a whatever roundabout path she had in mind. So had Lady Riju with a delegation of her own, but they had split at Regencia River, sending Barta ahead. Eager to explore and traveling by water, Riju would most likely reach the castle within days.

“Thank you… soldier”, Zelda said and Link froze.

Moments of unease kept happening, moments when Zelda was distant, shaken even. But over the last months, her voice had never come apart with badly hidden trembling like this. Her hand gripped frantically, desperately around her belt for the well-used block of not-stone, not-metal.

“Be on your way. We'd… Link, we'd best use the Sheikah slate to return.”

The Gerudo stood silent for a moment still, shuffling her feet around, then remembered to salute.

“So… I'm not in trouble?”, she made sure, but Zelda was not looking at her anymore, tapping through the Sheikah slate's terminal, blue sparks dancing underneath her fingertips. “Oh.” Looking around, Barta found the road and trotted its way. “Oh.”

Tendrils of Sheikah blue glow pieced them both together in the castle docks just as a Hylian-made barge decorated with brand new Gerudo emblems lowered its anchor. Link barely shook off the itch of being woven out of thin air to process the improbability of Gerudo emblems on a barge of all places (surely Riju’s idea), when he found his arms full of Riju herself, launching her whole weight at him in a tight hug.

“Link! Where have you been?” She pointedly ignored Buliara's outraged gasp and Link's startled groan at how heavy she had gotten. Her growth spurt had set on, as far as Link could tell, and she would tower over him in no time. “I’m here with an offering for the queen, but you owe me my helm!”

Then she noticed Zelda, eyeing the disembarking group of Gerudo anxiously, and went redder than her hair. In an instant, she bowed her head modestly and all her companions swept the ground in bows much deeper.

Once she surveyed the whole group and found no one she knew, Zelda bowed back and let out the breath she had been holding in a strained, tentative laugh.

“Please. No need for apologies. If anything, I should apologize. The castle is in no shape to welcome the Lady of Gerudo”, she said. “Now, my knight… I see he harnessed some astounding popularity.”

On Buliara's face, Link could see the palpable indignation crystallize into words and somehow he was sure the words would involve a tale about him paragliding off the city walls in a vai's outfit. For the sake of saving the remnants of his dignity, he hoped she wouldn't dare utter them in royal presence.

He hadn't opened his paraglider in ages.

***

With shaking hands and reluctant determination, Zelda unwrapped the rich-colored, silken cloth for the sixth time, to study the gift from Lady Riju once again. As if she would have to get used to the skin of her fingers burning off at its very touch. Even the distinct Hylian shape of the diamond-encrusted crown and scepter could not disguise the trademark, airy style of Isha's hand. Though, in all fairness, Link probably couldn't have told if Isha herself had not shown up to make the association easier on his head.

“They got lost in the Calamity.” Zelda's voice came from a distance much further than the queen had sat herself, across from Link in the now-empty throne room. “Ten thousand years old, or so my… King Rhoam had said. How did she know?”

It must have been Link who let it slip on his past travels to Gerudo Town, perhaps on one of the evenings when Riju would sneak out onto the palace roof to spend some time in another teenager's company. But something in Zelda's tone, a dissonance that had always been there since the Calamity, now even stronger – told him it wouldn't be the best time to elaborate.

“I’ll have to… A coronation. After rebuilding… the town.” She wrapped the insignia up again and now her fingers were fondling the silk bundle, tugging at the cloth so abruptly that she could tear it at any moment. Link gingerly crossed the throne room to perch in her corner and gently smooth her hands on the bundle. “I’ll… She's delightful, you know? Lady Riju.”

The visit had been delightful. Link had almost forgotten his knighthood, forgotten how hard it could get to speak, chatting away with Riju and Isha as if he was an adventurer again, despite Buliara's ever-scrutinizing eyes. Even Zelda had been ecstatic to find audience for her long-winded praise of Sheikah healing technology and only paused once to fight off the shadow creeping over her face at the mention of Urbosa.

Now, in the empty corners of a ruined throne room, nothing was left of that air.

“She is”, Link said with a smile, “I’m sure she's looking forward-“, and stopped in his track.

“She's… I'll have to rebuild”, she was still speaking in the same monotonous voice, to herself rather than to Link, without a glance at Link's hands on hers. “I’ll have… how can I rebuild?”

She shifted to look at the bundle in her and Link's entwined hands and gripped at it again, prying her hands out of his hold. Then, suddenly, her eyes were on Link, or somewhere past Link, searching, pleading.

“Link, how can I wear this?!” The monotony was gone, the plea close to a scream. “A hundred years… A… hundred years… I want to-“

Echo carried her voice around the throne room, under the broken chandeliers, over the hole in a wall that a guardian ray must have blasted, and almost drowned out her last words, barely a whisper now:

“I want to go back.”

Link did not reach for her hand anymore, but fixed his stare on her face this time, trying his hardest to put all the strength and conviction into it that he could and couldn't muster.

“We will go back. My queen… Zelda. You saw the world." He knew what he had to say, it flowed on its own and all he could hope for was that the faith he lacked in his heart is at least in his voice. “It's thriving. The people are coming back, they-“

“No!”

Her voice echoed even shriller this time, like a wounded animal's cry, and she lurched forward at Link, only to freeze, then recoil, curling into a corner, face in her hands, the royal insignia discarded on the floor. Link put them away gently onto the derelict throne.

“Zelda-“

“A hundred years! All my lifetime! All my… Every lifetime… I remember them and I remember him! That's the sacred power, that's Hylia, centuries of this… Vicious, fated push and shove… I don't even know! I only know him, I know he was a person once! And I'm the only one who does!”

Like water from a broken dam, words and tears and tension poured out of her, flooded the throne room, swept Link away and he could only listen, paralyzed by the dawning understanding who “he” was.

“I was born to seal him away and- and then I did, all my lifetimes, no world, no you-“, she spat out and it stung to remember the year spent on wandering all of a sudden. “How can I have anything now, if all I had was him?! Always him, always… Ganon.”

Neither in ten thousand years of Hyrule's greatness, nor in the hundred of its collapse, could Link possibly imagine there was anyone who spoke the name in a tone quite like Zelda’s. Wistful, almost tender. She must have known it too, since she slapped a hand across her mouth… and then laughed.

“Revali has enough sense to hate me, Hylia bless his soul.” She was not curling upon herself any longer, now almost at ease on her stair, looking out the guardian-blasted hole in the wall. “I could almost thank him, which I'm sure would delight him a hundred years ago, but Daruk? Mipha?” She deflated with every name spoken. “How can I look them in the face if I… if I'm sick enough to miss what killed them? How can I look Urbosa in the face? Sweet Urbosa… And you? Link?”

She went silent for a while and Link moved to embrace her. She did not recoil or gesture to push him away. Instead, she fell limply into his arms, which he took as just as much of a success as the fact that he found it in himself to move from his spot and hold her up.

“I had feelings for you. A hundred years ago”, Zelda mumbled and Link's entire body went stiff against his best intentions. She huffed out a half-laugh. “Don’t run away, I don't know if I do anymore. Fate never did us any good, did it?”

Link didn't answer. He was not sure if he should. Zelda sank into his arms, fingers digging into his shoulders.

“My knight in shining blue armor, paragliding down Gerudo Town's walls in a… Ha, I wish I could see that.” She was looking directly at Link now, for the first time since Zora Domain. He felt a smile creep into the corners of his lips, exiling the more appropriate blush and courteous bow. “But of course I would not… You don't want to be here, do you?”

It took Link a beat for the words to sink in, under Zelda's vacant gaze.

“You need me”, he said before they caught up with him. Zelda slipped out of his arms now, shaking her head.

“I don't need a shadow, Link, I don't need fate or remorse or Rhoam's orders, I-“ Link's body reacted to her thoughts before his mind did, like it always had, like he had always desperately wanted to prevent. He was standing up now, taking a step back, towards the door, all his self raring to stay and go at the same time. “Please, just- Just go! Go! Leave and come back… I don't know when!”

He forced his every muscle to move at once, one leg after the other, away from the girl that was his prison and his life, out the door. Before he knew, he was running. Two newly appointed royal guards had enough sense to let him through to the outer walls without a word. There, he leapt over the heap of broken guardians and, like a second pair of arms, like wings, he made the paraglider sprout from his backpack, carrying him onto the demolished town square, peppered with bonfires and a steady rumble of voices.

Among the joyously chaotic patchwork of tents and wagons that Castle Town had become, nobody was alarmed by an airborne traveler that had flown in from the castle. A few people turned their heads, one – maybe someone he had met on the road – waved. He waved back, arm suddenly as light as a Rito’s, folded the paraglider and breathed in the smell of horses, fried mushrooms and cool, night air. A whole new world had blossomed by the castle moat while he was gone. Soon there would be houses springing up from the debris, he realized, walking the damaged pavement, through a crowd of Hylians, Sheikah, even a few Gorons, rushing in all directions. Houses and marketplaces and inns to visit after days on the road.

He caught himself thinking of the road as a possibility.

Wandering the square without a destination in mind, he heard his own name. Spinning around to search for an acquaintance from his travels, he found a figure twice as tall as everyone else, in a traveler's hood, running towards him, crowd scrambling out of their way. The figure waved and slowed down, seeing him wait.

“Link! It is you!” She stopped and shook off her hood, to reveal a halo of red Gerudo hair and a blue-tinted smile. One that Link had not seen in this lifetime.

“You remember me”, he grinned back.

***

Leave it to Urbosa to know all the makeshift inns and all the best drinks in a town of tents that had only just sprang up from the ground. Within minutes they were sitting by a cooking pot, with two vaguely familiar Sheikah and a complete Rito stranger, swapping an improvised meal of Link's making for two hearty mugs of beer. (Nothing holds a candle to Gerudo Town's Noble Pursuit, Urbosa said, but after a day in Central Hyrule's rain, this is a feast worthy of a king.) Someone in the tent had rolled out an accordion and started singing one of Kass' songs, in an iteration altered by many traveler ears and mouths. Link thought of Rito Village, but stowed the thought away for now.

“So, do you remember everything?” He gobbled down half of the beer mug and it dawned upon him that he'd been parched after everything that had transpired in the castle. He would be cooking all night, just to get his hands on more of this.

“Bits and pieces.” Even as ravenous with the beer mug as him, Urbosa still somehow retained more dignity. “Images, like what you told me. There is a hole in my memory the size of a Molduga where the battle with Ganon used to be, and my Fury is not quite the same as I recall it… Still must be more than the others have, from what you say. I've been traveling to… find the missing parts.”

A flicker of well-known helplessness ran across Urbosa's features. The same helplessness Link had seen behind Mipha's apology, Daruk's humor, even in Revali for a split second. The same one he'd felt to the bone on many days.

“That’s a-“, he paused at an illogical moment, but the beer tasted exquisite. “A good idea. It helps, it really does.”

“Don’t choke on my account, little one”, Urbosa laughed, near choking herself. He had missed that low rumble of a satisfied thunderstorm ever since he recalled its sound. "So how is our princess faring these days? Or, our queen, I should say.”

Etiquette told Link to lie and claim Zelda was happy at work to bring about a new age of prosperity, but the reason why Link had never been fit for knighthood, why he had stopped speaking in the first place, was he'd never really figured etiquette out. And Urbosa deserved the truth.

“Zelda is… lost. Like all of us, even more than all of us.” He should at least try to find the right words, but no right words existed to say something like this. “Those hundred years we spent dead – she lived them. Battling Ganon all this time. Keeping him at bay. She's… I think she's trying to carve out a place for herself in all this, but whether it's working or not…” He finished his mug and accepted another helping from a kindhearted Sheikah, delighted with his seafood fry. Then he passed his mug to Urbosa and their eyes met.

There was something raw in Urbosa's green irises, igniting as he spoke. He would peg it for desperation, had he ever seen Champion Urbosa desperate for anything. On reflex, he touched the hair on her temple, as he would with one of Kass' or Saki's children, when they would come to him for scary stories.

A hundred years ago, he would be terrified to have his arm burnt off.

Zelda was right. She didn't need a shadow. She needed Urbosa.

And if his eyes and heart were not plotting to deceive him, Urbosa needed Zelda.

“She’ll be happy to see you”, he said to the raw and wounded thing behind her eyelids, moving an arm to rest around her shoulders. “More than she knows.”

Urbosa stayed unmoving under his arm for a blink of an eye, then shifted to gobble up the rest of the beer and grinned, throwing her own muscular arm around him in a hug.

“Well then, Champion Link” She pulled them both up to their feet, voice full of old mischief. “Lead the way!”

He considered the situation for a moment, scrambling up. Guards were still scarce in the least secure royal domain in Hyrule's history, but filled with diligence of the newly appointed. Going through the gates would guarantee a loud and formal announcement, which was in turn guaranteed to ruin Zelda's day even further, make her flee into hiding, or both.

“Champion Urbosa”, he answered in kind, a pleasant afterglow of beer fizzing in his head. “How does climbing work with those high heels of yours?”

Urbosa threw him a stink eye, but kept smiling.

“I’ll have you know I came here on foot from the highlands”, she said. “I’ll be fine.”

***

Link's curiosity was soon satisfied with the revelation that Urbosa threw the heels into her bag and climbed barefoot. He left her in the guardian-made “window” to the throne room, then withdrew behind a pile of debris and turret parts, to dawdle for a moment, stealing away the sound of muted gasps and crying, rushed clinking of heels and a thump of someone falling into another person's embrace. Making sure it was fine. Then he opened his paraglider again and left – this time for good.

He would be back, sooner or later. Just not in a year or two. Just not for an eternity of fate.

A hundred roads opened ahead, not waiting, but changing by the hour, inviting him to catch up with the new world. He could go see the ocean from Lurelin, enjoy the newly guardian-free Akkala, or-

You need a beacon, travelers met on the road used to say. Something that guides your journey even if you aren't coming back; something that will still be waiting at the end of the road, someone there to ground you and lend you their roots, even after they moved on with a life of their own. For Kass, this was Amali and their five girls. For Beedle the traveling merchant… it probably was not a person, but someplace full of bugs.

For the longest time after hearing the concept, Link had thought of Zelda and the castle. A presence that persisted, laying heavy somewhere deep within, holding him down with the only kind of roots he knew. Now that the chain had fallen apart – chain, not beacon – he thought of the place that cared least about queens or castles or who he was, of Rito Village... and of Teba. He had kept thinking of them for the past year.

He connected with many people on the road much like Rito always did, friends and lovers entwined with no regard to orderly Hylian ways. Little wonder that Teba had met him in the middle of his need to connect, even if the last time they actively needed each other was the fateful flight to Medoh. Still, somehow not fate, but a cycle of mundane chores and coincidences kept bringing them together. From Link having his arm set by the Rito after he'd broken it in the stupidest of ways, to Teba calling on Link whenever his son would struggle with archery lessons, to the time they had been searching (with unexpected results) for traces of Revali's legacy, to help Link remember and Teba – master his Gale. To the quiet evenings at the Flight Range, once Tulin and Molli were fast asleep in their respective beds, and Harth and Saki would collectively kick them out for some peace and quiet. Then, the two would fly from Revali's Landing to spend hours diving headfirst into the updrafts, firing arrows until their shoulders hurt – and afterwards sharing a bed, talking of anything from a petty family quarrel over battle training or broken bows, to a grand destiny neither of them could make sense of. Teba would never comment on the destiny thing when Link wouldn't, until it was time to physically push him out of Rito Village in the direction of Hyrule Castle, informing him bluntly he was more than ready.

Link never did get to stand before Teba, say “see, I did it” with the broadest of grins and have the Rito scold him for expecting praise.

Hiking through the steep paths of Hebra Mountains had a way of clearing his head, with icy wind that numbed his cheeks, ruffled his hair and blew away any last remnants of Link-the-knight that may have lingered crushing his shoulders. Surprisingly few monsters bothered him on the way and he disposed of those that did with ease. If this was the new normal after clots of malice within the ground and water subsided, he could get used to this. Complete lack of stray Yiga, on the other hand, must have been the result of Riju and Buliara's continuous efforts. With the newly acquired ease of traveling, it wasn't long before the glow of familiar luminescent dots – Flight Range targets – guided him forward and the southern wind brought a scent of pine.

If Teba was anywhere at this time of day, it would be the Flight Range.

Surely enough, there was a figure of a Rito, standing with outstretched wings at the tiny landing next to the hut, not noticing Link's arrival. The Rito heaved a few visibly strained breaths and knelt, wings sweeping the ground laboriously, gathering wind. Then he leapt up, gusts of air and snow spinning in circles around him, lifting him up.

Link held his breath.

Teba was making progress-

The whirlwind under the Rito's wings grew erratic, throwing his upward spin off balance, hooking his leg in a stray updraft. He fell headfirst, flapping helplessly to grasp at the remains of air currents, and just barely grabbed the landing's edge with one wing to break the fall. As he scrambled up, mumbling curses under his breath, Link noticed the litheness of his frame and narrow waist, the length of his braids, and understood it couldn't be Teba.

Of course he would be here, too. One more reminder of the past.

But in that case, this was not progress.

Before Link managed to sneak out and look for Teba elsewhere, it was too late. Revali was up, about and closing in on him, green eyes piercing him with tangible hostility.

“The queen's little messenger.” Wings folded on his chest, cheek feathers puffed up in what must have been a Rito version of an indignant blush, he straightened up to tower over Link. Blatantly trying to look dignified, Link thought. “Go on. I know you're talking now. Relay what you have for me and be on your way. This is a training ground, not a minstrel show.”

Once a charmer, always a charmer. Their parting under Mount Lanaryu and reunion back at Medoh had been tentatively friendly if anything, as were the brief airborne encounters soaring together, bound by his Gale. Regardless, the way resurrection technology worked, those incidents were obviously off the table. If memory loss had done anything to Revali's personality, it had found a way to make it even worse.

“My life does not revolve around the queen and yourself, Revali.” With no Champion vows to temper his tongue, Link had no patience left for whatever the Rito would throw at him in embarrassment, nor for his likely upcoming lonely tantrum at someone seeing him fail. “I’m not here on duty. I’m looking for Teba.”

His words had yanked Revali down from whatever angry spiral he had gotten himself into and it took him a beat to come up with an answer accommodating the unexpected.

“The scary Osprey? You missed him.”

Link felt his eyes nearly roll into the back of his head.

“Says the unpleasant magpie.” Revali made a noise between a snort and a squawk at that, and from Link's experience with Rito noises, this was nothing if not a badly stifled laugh. “Where is he?”

“My life, Link, does not revolve around Teba and yourself”, Revali said in a completely changed tone, teasing rather than hostile. Whether he had noticed the change himself, was beyond Link to know. “Left for Central Hyrule yesterday. To see you, his spouses claim. I would assume you met on the way.”

In hindsight, it was in classic spirit of Rito Village to pass the news to Teba that Link had last visited unhappy and pressed for time. Likewise, it was Teba's style to act on the news without question. Link considered the situation for a moment. Once Teba reached Hyrule Castle, finding no trace of him, he would not tarry, but return to Rito Village at once, having a family to tend to and rightly assuming Link would surface on Tabantha sooner or later.

Therefore, the best course of action Link could take was to wait.

“Well?”

The shrill question interrupted his spell of planning. Right. He was not alone.

“Thanks, Revali”, he said offhandedly, going through options of spending the night. This provoked another incoherent noise.

“Keep your thanks and get occupied.” Revali turned on his heel, raring to fly off the landing again. “You’re a frequent guest, or so I hear. I would think you know the purpose of my… of this Flight Range. Either you train here, or you go.”

“Go” had been Link's intent a second before. But just as his afternoon plans had fallen through, a spark of annoyance ignited in his chest, mainly at Revali, strutting and commandeering as if he owned the place. (He did own the place in a way, an uncomfortable whisper filled the back of Link's mind. He'd had it built for everyone to use in times of danger.) Link-the-knight would feel bound by his duties to be the greater man and let petty conflict go. As he was now, if accepting Revali's thinly veiled challenge and taking up his space would show just what a frequent guest he was, so be it.

It had also been a while since he felt the rush of wind in his ears and the tension of bowstring under his fingers.

Glider overhead, he dove into the updraft and nocked the first arrow. Glide, free fall, shot, glide up, free fall, three shots – he fell into the comfortable rhythm, from one luminescent target to another, perching for breath on the cliffside, then kicking with both legs to propel himself forward. The sun had set and he almost forgot Revali's presence beside him, save for the moment when a distant “Half-decent, for a Hylian!” reached his ears. Then again, it may have been the wind.

He folded the glider and slumped on the landing to rest, just as Revali stood on its edge with wings outstretched to his sides once again. Crouching down and working his wings with much more effort than in Link’s memory, he harnessed another snowflake-shimmering whirlwind, bent his back – and shot up.

A blast of wind and snow hit Link's face as Revali kept spinning, ascending, made something inside him wish to take flight as well… and brought a piece of the past. Rather than Revali's gloating from a century ago, he could see the bird's eye view of Hyrule Ridge, Thundra Plains small underneath his feet and a flock of colorful birds circling him on the gust of Revali's – their Gale.

(“Are you sightseeing?! Aim!” Revali's voice had hissed in his ear.

“Don't panic”, Link had laughed and brought a rain of fire arrows down on the local Hinox.)

Then, a different memory, one from a hundred years back. He had recovered it right in that moment.

The Gale had left him, he would assume in the past, because it had returned to Revali.

As it turned out, it was not that simple.

“Brilliant”, the word left his mouth without much of his will as the wind subsided, Revali managed a near-flawless landing, and stood motionless for a while, breathing heavily, dazed. He heard it and snapped out, of course, because why wouldn't he, because why would things go Link's way now, after he had been pushing his luck for years.

“Don't make me laugh.” He let it out as a faux-embittered mumble, but something about his voice had still not landed back down. “Your regrettably flightless self may think it brilliant, which I can… imagine with some difficulty, but you should have seen me a hundred years ago. At least twice as high as this. At least.”

“I know.” Link beamed, because some things never changed and Revali bragging like someone paid him for it was one of them. It was reassuring, almost nice. “I saw you, that was pretty brilliant too. I never told you that. Then you were mad at me until we both died.” If Revali's cheek feathers puffing up again at “pretty brilliant” were funny, his indignation as Link finished was downright hilarious. And, because Link would still push his luck no matter how much he got knocked down or killed for it, he added: “You should gale me up sometime. If you dare.”

Revali nearly fell off the landing tail-first out of sheer surprise.

“Put that glider away, then I might”, he threatened, or promised, after composing himself. Clearly not intending to make good on the threat, he turned his back on Link and stood up in Gale position once more, to show conversation time was over.

Link shrugged and jumped down for some more target practice until the sky went completely dark and he saw Revali hunched over the hut's cooking pot, cursing as something of dubious smell and texture simmered inside. Wanting no part in this, he excused himself quietly to walk towards the village. There would be no time to say his welcome to Harth and Saki, nor Kass and Amali, let alone stay the night, now that their fledglings were asleep. Back when he kept coming to Rito Village, he would sometimes sleep on the Roost, under Medoh, when he'd grown too unaccustomed to beds to shut an eye – but now there was no risking Revali galing his gliderless self off there, should he come and tend to the Beast.

The inn should still be open, he decided and made his way through Tabantha Frontier.

***

The pine-scented wind rocking his hammock and the sharp Tabantha sun in his face could well be Link's favorite way to wake up. The world rumbling upside-down as his hammock got turned over, a face-first slam into the pine-scented floor and the sight of a disgruntled Revali above him – less so.

“Champion Link, you are an uncultured fool”, Revali sputtered, letting go of the hammock. Not quite what Link had in mind by “gale me up”, but with the charming-as-ever Rito champion, clearly this would be what he was getting. Behind him, Link noticed a smaller frame of the innkeeper, politely trying to show him the door. “And you're making me into one!”

“I have nothing to make you into”, he grumbled, wrapping his remaining blanket around himself and sitting up. “What gives, Revali? Trying to murder me so I don't disclose your cooking skills to the world?”

With a scandalized noise, Revali looked around for Link's backpack and discarded quiver of arrows, pushed one into the other haphazardly and threw it at Link himself. Link's first instinct was throwing it back at him, or making proper use of the quiver, but he would be wasting good arrows on an unworthy aim.

“Do you even imagine Kaneli's face when he found out his precious second Medoh whisperer is sleeping at the inn like a common vagabond?!” Revali kept rambling and Link reconsidered his unworthiness as a practice target. “He will have the feathers of my backside if I don't fulfill my duties of Champion hospitality and offer shelter to my”, a disapproving click of beak, “brother in arms. I have a second hammock in my house. May I invite you. Cordially.”

By what definition was any of this cordial? Link sleeping at the inn or under Medoh had hardly been one of Kaneli's problems, especially that Link's actual brother in arms had two spouses, two little children and a rather full household – but apparently with the return of the entire Queen-Champions establishment and with Kaneli finally believing his words, hard times had befallen him.

“Me. With you. Splendid.” He scuttled up with no grace or decorum and chucked the blanket into the discarded hammock.

“As I am still beholden to something I'm said to have done years ago and cannot remember, yes. This is exactly what we're both working with.” To the innkeeper's relief, Revali headed out the door and stopped bothering the guests for now.

“We're both beholden to something we can't remember agreeing to, as it happens.” Flinging the backpack over his shoulder, Link followed suit. “One condition. I cook today. I won't have you poison me on my first travel off duty.”

Chapter Text

The first thing Revali remembered was falling. 

Surely, many fledglings had the misfortune of such a first experience, but his was dissimilar in many ways. He knew to be an adult, for one, head laden with plenty of disjointed and hardly necessary knowledge. There had also been a voice, coming from nowhere in particular, encompassing him in those first, dazed moments of morning light after waking up. It took him aback and he had no time to take in the words it said, as he surged up – on a windy slab of not-quite-stone – only to have his legs buckle underneath him, sending him flying off the slab's edge. On instinct, he tried to fly, wings flapping helplessly in tugs of wind, breaking the fall for split seconds every now and then. There was ground closing in, pine trees and wooden structures. From below, two figures sprang, black and white – and the next thing he knew, he was carried between two large Rito (like himself, he realized), slowly spiraling downwards, until they deposited him on a wooden landing overlooking a lake.

“Are you alright?”, asked the first one, an Osprey, eyeing him intently. “What happened? Why were you up on-”

The other Rito, a black-plumed Crow, raised one wing to shush him, while still holding Revali's back with the other.

“Easy, Teba. Can you stand?”

He risked a try and inched away from the Crow's wing. His legs still threatened giving out, but his entire self gave them a stern talking to and they held up.

“Good.” The Crow's voice behind him sounded like a lifeline. A well-practiced one, at that. He could clearly stand just fine, so what seemed to be the problem otherwise? “Can you talk?”

Oh, please.

“Obviously”, he croaked out and did a double take at the rawness in his throat, like after days, months of disuse. When did he last talk? “I’m… a Rito, not a goose.”

The two exchanged looks and the Osprey clicked his beak, readying to say something (probably offensive). Under the Crow's glare, he said instead:

“What’s your name?”

That was, honestly, a very good question.

“Revali”, came to him from some deeply buried corner of his mind, along with a few other scraps of memory. Lake Totori - that's what the landing was overlooking. The Roost was above, had he fallen from it? Rito Village – that must have been where he was. Did he live here? Logic said yes, since he was a Rito. Memories said nothing.

His intense musing made him miss yet another wary look from the Osprey.

“That’s your name?”

“Well, clearly, this is the name that comes to my mind when I consider myself, therefore it must be mine”, he snapped. His voice felt better now and he would use it to shut down their stupid questions, focusing on those of his own.

The Crow pointed a wing to something.

“Revali's Landing”, he said. “That’s what it says on the plaque. Everyone here knows the hero it takes its name from. You read the plaque, didn't you?”

There was a plaque?

“You fell. If you don't know the answer, it's fine. Answer at your own pace.”

Revali and the Osprey, Teba, opened their beaks at the same time, but Teba spoke first.

“I don't think he could read it, Harth.”

“I’m still here!” Revali chimed in.

“Yes… Well, let's take you to Saki. You may still be hurt. Did you fall from-“

“I fell from Med-“ What was he going to say? “Up there. On the Roost.”

There was a… response once he pointed upwards. Something undefined at the back of his mind, like a hum. A welcome. He raised his head – and saw it. A gigantic figure of a mechanical bird, perched above them, lit up with a blue glow, the stone spire somehow holding up its enormous frame. This was new.

He caught himself wanting to return the welcome.

The two Rito led him to a nearby house, where he got taken over by a rosey-hued Finch (Saki, judging by the tricolored feathers in everyone’s braids, married to the two men), who looked him over meticulously for any wounds, bruises or plucked feathers. He felt like shoving her away and storming off to go about his business, except he had no idea what his business could possibly be. As if to spite him, two fledglings rushed in, filling the hut with chirps and questions, only for Teba to lift them by their tail feathers and firmly set them back out. Then, Harth came back with an ancient-looking Owl he introduced as elder Kaneli.

“Hohoho…” Elders would always be elders, said another piece of disjointed knowledge Revali kept from who knows where, but this one seemed over the top even for eccentric leader standards. “Aren’t you an interesting young one? Tell me, where did you come from? I never saw you around.”

On followed questions to none of which Revali knew an answer, though he should have. He did not know where he'd come from or how he found himself atop the colossus – Vah Medoh, as they called it. He had a vague idea of his own whereabouts: Hyrule, Rito Village, things anyone would know. Looking around, he could point to Hebra Peak, but could not tell for the life of him if he had ever been there. He had no idea how he knew his own name and, horrifically enough, he had no memories of anything past the recent minutes with Teba and Harth. There may have been a voice that had roused him awake – but nothing else.

“To be completely fair, since I… seem to be suffering memory loss, I should be asking you these questions! Should you not know your villagers, Elder?”, he stated the obvious, but Kaneli shook his head.

“Like I said, I've never seen you, boy. Are you sure you're from here?”

Revali… was not. Then again, how would he recognize the place instantly?

Teba interfered, pulled both Harth and Kaneli by the wing and out they went. Silence fell as Revali was only left with Saki, who wrapped a bandage around his shoulder, which had hit the Roost on his way down. Completely unnecessary, since he could still move his wing with minimum pain, but something about the Finch's stare cut all protests short. Her husbands and the elder must have still stood right outside the hut. The wind carried in voices, fragments of conversation.

“Revali? Do you know how this sounds?”

“This story he tells”, Teba was trying to lower his voice, but emotions seemed to get the better of him. “You know who this reminds me of? Link! We didn't believe Link either, and yet-“

“Not every foundling can be a resurrected Champion”, Harth said. Revali blustered at the word “foundling”, but Saki sat him down firmly by the shoulders and suddenly he discovered it did hurt after all. The word “Champion”, on the other hand, probably should have told him something, but didn't.

“He did fall from Medoh after Calamity Ganon's defeat. And that voice we heard-“

Calamity Ganon?

“Well, there is a simple answer to this conundrum: get Link”, the elder's voice rose above them both. “If, by some improbable twist of fate, the boy is our Champion, wouldn't the Champion descendant be able to tell?”

“Link is not a-“

Wind drowned out the rest of Teba's words – the group had probably stepped away from the hut, leaving Revali plagued by shoulder cramps and none the happier. Whoever that “Link” was, he had better be important enough to be handed the precious final say that should belong to Revali himself instead.

***

They lodged him at the inn for the night – it would be difficult to fit in a guest in either of the fledgling-laden huts belonging to Teba's family, and Revali appreciated the decision. He had a vague feeling it was Saki who did not want to make his arrival any more embarrassing to him than it already was. A northern wind from Hebra Peak lulled him to sleep, carrying a vaguely familiar scent of freshly fallen snow and along with it came the satisfied murmur Revali had felt in his head before and somehow connected to Vah Medoh. Both roused his heart with slight unease and simultaneously felt like home.

The sun hadn't risen for good when a fledgling of the Teba-Saki-Harth origin found him after all, leaping onto his hammock and shaking him awake. His shoulder screamed internally in protest and he stopped the reflex of shoving the little one down to the floor.

“Are you really Master Revali?!” The initial leap did not satisfy the fledgling and he was now bouncing with excitement on Revali's chest, knocking the air out of his lungs, time after time. “Dad says-“

“If I knew the answer to that question, you wouldn't need to ask it now, would you?” He took the boy in both wings and, gently but firmly, set him down, straight into the arms of Saki, who had just burst in as well, reeling between scoldings and apologies.

“Since you already had the dubious privilege of a Tulin awakening”, she said, holding the fledgling by his tail feathers, “the elder is inviting you for breakfast.”

After breakfast with an entire crowd in the village kitchen, nobody came up with any ideas as to what Revali should do now, nor did Revali expect anyone to. The weather, however, invited flying, so this was what he set his mind on doing, quietly slipping out. Rito had been airborne for centuries, oftentimes with injuries worse than a mere pulled shoulder – there was no reason he should laze about instead of improving his own physical condition. There were ample updrafts over Lake Totori, as near as the village's main landing (for whatever reason bearing the same name as Revali). He tried catching one, with the obvious result of falling flat onto the landing when his shoulder cramped. This… was to be expected, so he tried again.

He fell into a repetitive rhythm, the ache in his shoulder soon well-worn like a vest and keeping him awake. Within hours, with no one to bother him but the monotonous hum in the back of his mind (there may have been a spectator or five, but he ignored them all), he drifted freely away from the landing, updraft after updraft, using the many pointed rocks in between to rest. The base of Hebra Mountains grew nearer and before he knew it, Revali landed on the shores of Lake Totori, tired and gasping for breath.

A not-quite-stone mound, a shrine was glowing blue on his left – he never knew the shrines to glow. Then again, he did not exactly have a reference point. His legs carried him forward along a mountain path, as if he'd walked it a thousand times before, filled with a sudden sense of purpose – until he reached another cliffside.

An updraft blew from down below, so strong it made his feathers stand on end, pushing a few of them into his eyes. Firelight from a tiny hut at the edge marked the further path around a cove, glowing with luminescent dots – archery targets, he understood on instinct. He brushed the feathers and wetness from his eyes, no doubt the wind's fault, and reached back for a bow that was not there.

If this was a practice ground, the hut was bound to have a bow or two. He hurried to search – and realized he was not alone.

A Rito stood on the hut's landing; knelt, more accurately, wings laboring in most peculiar circles, like they were sails, gathering wind. There was – something happening under them, a small whirlwind that sent Revali's heart hammering in his chest.

Then the whirlwind deflated, Revali let out an audible breath, the Rito spun to face him and he recognized Teba.

Teba was scowling, but a scowl was not enough to deter Revali from climbing the hut's ladder and joining him. The questions he had were too pressing to worry about being chased away. Would he find a bow to train here? What was that just now?

None of which was what he ended up saying.

“Who lives here?”, he asked instead. Teba, still on his guard, crest ever-so-slightly up, took a while to mull over the words and something impenetrable in his stare joined the scowl.

“Nobody. It's the Flight Range”, he said as if a Rito without any memories had an obligation to know what in the world a Flight Range was… although Revali did. He did know. “We- warriors come here to train. I bring Tulin on some days. Feel free to use it.”

Again, Revali said the words before he fully thought them up.

“I will live here. For now”, he added, because all in all, Teba's scowl unsettled him, if not by much.

“No objections.” Everything about Teba's tone indicated objections were numerous, but chucking out an amnesiac into the snow would be uncalled for. It rubbed Revali the wrong way, but presented an overall better alternative than ending up with nowhere to live, so he dropped the topic. “Leave a bow outside. We'll still come to train.”

He needed to ask. Teba could scowl more, fling Revali into the updrafts or use him as a non-luminescent practice target, but the fact remained that a whirlwind had been almost born under his wings and Revali knew it was important.

“What were you training? Just now?”

The impenetrable expression was back on Teba's face and he weighed something against something else, then made a decision – and flew off the landing.

“Wait here”, he threw over his shoulder, leaving Revali flabbergasted.

He resurfaced flying from the village not much later, after Revali had already helped himself to a bow, a quiver and began target practice, with unsatisfactory results. Beckoning him to land, he shook a bag off his shoulders and unwrapped something from it to deposit into Revali's wings.

A book.

“Careful, it's coming apart”, Teba warned and Revali tsked, because he had hardly even managed to touch the cover. “Take it. It may help you. It was written by Champion Revali. A hero that died defending Hyrule from Calamity Ganon.” He paused with what immediately came off as an amateur attempt at dramaturgy, but may have simply been hesitation. “A hundred years ago.”

Revali's eyes snapped from the book to Teba. He remembered last evening's conversation. Was this Osprey foolish?

“A hundred- Is my predicament a joke to you?”

“So you did eavesdrop.” Clearly it was, because Teba had the nerve to laugh. “It’s not. All I know is, Sheikah machinery… Much like Vah Medoh. And memory loss – all of this happened to someone else who shouldn't live that long. Another Champion from that time. My kin. And… Champion Revali's friend.”

There was something Teba was not saying with that last word, but Revali had no business pondering it. He weighed the worn-down book in the palm of his wing, its heft and warmth of leather utterly unfamiliar. Whatever was in it, the perspective of reading to trigger memories held infinitely more appeal than the judgment of some mystery “friend” who could say anything at first sight, but surely not who Revali was. In a worst case scenario, he would simply prove Teba wrong.

Still, it created even more questions without giving Revali the answers he desired.

“What about your training?”

“Read it”, Teba repeated with emphasis worthy of a better cause and leapt off the landing again, flying away back to the village. As if saying something straightforward would hurt his pride.

“You have my thanks!” Revali called after him.“…Or you can just go without them.”

He let the book lie until the sun started sinking over Lake Kislie, choosing to use the Flight Range as long as his shoulder let him, until all his arrows struck true. Satisfied at last, he lit a fire and curled close to it, unfolding the dog-eared leather cover. In hindsight, reading it while the sun was high could have been an idea much more sound.

Regardless, he could make out the ornate lettering.

“The diary of Revali, the Rito legend”-

How pretentious.

***

He made himself at home in the Flight Range hut so much that the elder had to send Teba on the same errand several times, to make him still come in for meals and help with fishing on the way. Flying to the village felt to him like a waste of precious training time – that is to say, before Teba attempted to intimidate him into doing so. (The attempts proved… moderately successful.) Because train he did, to lightning-fast progress – without leads on where he should be or who he is, all he could was muster his body into peak shape and spare himself the humiliating experience of others coddling him.

There was ample reason to train even without fussy Rito on his tail. Revali spent his mornings reading Champion Revali's memoir, to no sudden flashbacks, no emotions showering over him, nothing that he would normally think of as an awakening of memories. The Hyrulean princess or Calamity Ganon meant nothing to him but facts of history, to the extent where he initially meant to tell Teba he had been mistaken. However, the memoir offered one more way to establish who he was; simple, elegant and enticing him to not proclaim Teba wrong just yet.

Namely, Champion Revali had mastered the sky.

What Teba had been training that day must have been an inexperienced attempt at the self-propelled ascent technique Champion Revali had dubbed Gale. Should Revali turn out capable of reproducing it, mastering it, his identity would be proven beyond dispute; not to mention a feat like this, ascending on his own, would make for an exponentially more powerful experience than simply reading. Perhaps it would release the memories locked somewhere in his head.

Champion Revali's pompous notes said little about the technicalities of creating a Gale. No doubt, he would deem his own head the most reliable container for this knowledge (oh, how surprised he would be), but it did nothing to help Revali now. On top of that, a few pages in the journal deteriorated into a shameful account of the Champion's obsession with some conceited Hylian knight. Why he would waste time on chasing after one flightless Hylian's acknowledgment with a war to fight and new heights of skill to aim for, was beyond Revali's comprehension. Regardless, the Champion had mastered his Gale without guidance or even as much as a pointer. There was no reason why Revali couldn't do the same.

He would start with existing updrafts. Feel out their current under his wings, leap in, bend a wing just so, direct their flow his way, more and more. A necessary skill for a proficient flier, and what else would be creating an updraft out of still air if not an extension of this process? The first rays of morning sun over Lake Totori would welcome Revali up and about at the Flight Range, having spent most of the night gliding through currents, struggling to send them whirling and enhance his ascent, adding a bow for extra difficulty, moving on to where the air was still. Falling. Failing.

No whirlwind was born.

His updraft navigation became seamless; his aim, impeccable. Still, not as much as a whiff of air picked up pace under his laboring wings, let alone rise in a column pushing him up. Of course, not even Champion Revali had mastered his art without challenges – so Revali changed approaches back and forth to find one that worked. Starting with a single current, starting with stillness. Working from the air and from the ground up. Days went by and his Gale did not even reach Teba's subpar level, given Revali’s was non-existent.

Weeks went by and it dawned upon Revali that Teba may have been wrong.

It was not an idea he wanted to consider. In fact, it was an idea his whole being recoiled from. In the meager weeks of his conscious memory one path lay out ahead of him, clearer than Tabantha skies. He would not stray from this path now, from Champion Revali's path, because if he was not Revali – then he was no one at all.

On some days he could almost feel it. The air under his wings shifting, so close within his reach. He would grasp for it, his whole body whirling in tune with its flow, spiraling up towards possibility, it had to be, he had to be capable of something already proven possible. Then, he would lose the grasp and open his eyes, not a smidge apart from the ground. Breathe. Curse. Stand up, kneel down, try again-

“You have a visitor.”

He jolted and turned around, expecting Teba. Why would he come now, right into yet another failure-

He only had a vague recollection of the Rito standing before him; his name may have been Mazli, quiet at breakfasts until dragons were mentioned. Somehow, this made the whole deal even worse.

“Come quickly. The Queen of Hyrule came to the village”, Mazli said in a tone struggling to believe his own words. “Wants to see you. She says it really is you.”

What.

Years from now, Revali would not be able to recall how he got to the village and what happened on the way for the life of him. There may have been a pounding of his own heart in his ears, there may have been a crowd on the landing. Then, there was a tiny Hylian in the elder's house, a girl in traveling clothes, no older than seventeen until his eyes met the eyes of a crone.

Someone who shouldn't live that long.

“Revali”, said the Radiant Queen of a Hundred Years, Zelda Bosphoramus Hyrule, as the elder introduced her (now even he believed in longevity), face shining with the same determination and kindness Champion Revali had spoken of. “From the bottom of my heart, I'm overjoyed to see you.”

It sickened Revali to his core.

The Radiant Queen was saying something more, needlessly pompous and convoluted words to bestow upon him an identity he never had asked her for. There was a part about accomplishments among her words and Revali would laugh, had the laugh not stuck in his throat. He responded in like, automatically and in no control of his tone, looking anywhere but in the queen's face. At Lake Totori behind the elder's shoulder; at the clouds. At another Hylian that came with the queen, lithe and fair like her brother, pointedly looking everywhere but where he should. He recalled Champion Revali's – his own-not his own memoir. Over the hundred years, queen Zelda's liking had shifted to skittish and unpolished bodyguards over cold and stoic ones.

The Hylian's gaze darted to him and intended to dart on further, but Revali was not in the mood to let things go.

“You are?”, he asked. The Hylian's features contorted in what could be a tentative smile.

“Link.” Something about his voice, a voice, speaking, knocked out the air out of Revali's lungs. This Hylian, a different person altogether from Champion Revali's records, speaking and distressed, surely unfamiliar – and yet Revali remembered.

He remembered Link.

All courtesies said – what courtesies should be said in a queen's presence? – he stormed out, passing a small crowd at the door, avoiding their stares. Someone surely tried to stop him on his way to the Flight Range, but he paid them no heed. This was it; the end of his search. The path of futile efforts led not to a revelation, but to Revali's name thrust upon him by someone else after all. Not Revali master of Gale, but Revali the Resurrected – a crusty Sheikah inventor's feat that left him with no bragging rights. He walked a path his past self had blazed all the time and could not keep up, he thought, talons digging into the snow at the cove's edge, back at the Flight Range. He could not keep up with some Hylian girl who recognized him, his head yelled at him, wings working in fruitless circles again, gathering air. He could not keep up with his own memory, roused not by Gale, but by a Hylian's faltering smile and striking blue gaze, nothing like what Champion Revali – what he had recalled, but somehow the same, he repeated in his head over and over, air swirling around him. Not Gale, nothing of his own, but Link, that Link. In the end everything came down to the boy his past self had resented, he thought, dropping to the ground.

Dropping to the ground, because he had ascended.

The constant hum within him, Medoh's hum, became a triumphant keen.

Again. He sprang up, knelt down, wings circling frantically, building up a whirl. Revali's Gale, his own Gale answered a call, not his own, but the queen's, or Link's, and swirled in a slapdash column, small, unstable, lifting him up in a minuscule ascent, carrying his body, then dispersing and dropping him listless on his back, into the snow.

“Why now?”, he called to nobody in particular, to the first stars on the Hebra sky. To his treacherous Gale that had only come to prove someone else's words and mock him. “Why now?!”

***

It was a means to an end, Revali told himself and resumed practice. A stepping stone, unpleasant but necessary in helping him take back his skill, take back the sky. Memory worked in unexpected ways, and if it needed a pretty Hylian face to unlock its cage, so be it. It would take much more than that for his entire past to return to him one way or another – this was only one image, an inkling. But he could control the wind to a limited extent now, at long last responsive under his much stronger wings. Only this mattered.

As he'd suspected, the key to his Gale was the same as to pushing the wind his way when navigating updrafts (if his understanding had been right, why no result, before – he perished the thought). For the time being, he could not call himself satisfied with his practice: column not tall enough, resulting in Revali falling to the ground within split seconds, edges of the whirlwind throwing him off balance and sending him in a different direction altogether. But all of this comprised data that he could go over in his head, adjust and improve his flight, and every attempt came out higher and better.

Teba did not come one day, minding whatever business he could have (Link business, as he found out later), so Revali resolved to fly in to the village himself despite making his own meals, if only to avoid Kaneli sending crowds after him. It resulted in Kaneli pestering him about his reportedly “distant and unsavory” behavior (“never meet your heroes”, the saying went, so what was his problem?), but also in nobody asking him to demonstrate his Gale, which, for now, was not a bad thing. More than one Rito had snuck into the Flight Range to watch him train nonetheless.

Revali doubled his efforts, but chose to not acknowledge the spectators or chase them away. There was little shame in mistakes now that he knew what he was doing and his body fought a hundred years of atrophy, but there would be shame in trying to disguise his mistakes like a panicked fledgling. Likewise, there was no reason to panic like he did when one of the spectators turned out to be the little Hylian, needing something from him again.

“I'm looking for Teba”, Link said, as if he shouldn't have been gallivanting with Teba on whatever manly adventure of two warriors they could think up.

Be that as it may, as long as Link would not drag Revali into queen Zelda's affairs, he could stick around for a short while. He talked and cracked what seemed like jokes now, which made interactions much less unsettling, although it would be respectful of him to keep his head in the conversation. They trained together – surprising, for all Revali knew about Link, he would dash for solitude or the queen's company at first chance – and for a flightless Hylian, this one almost excelled.

Having distracted himself with the plight of the earthbound, he returned to Gale practice. There had never been reason for unease while training with other Rito watching and, consequently, there was none now. Pushing the unexpected unease aside (a shade of unpleasant memories, no doubt), he went through the forms, gathered a burst of air and shot upward.

He startled at the whirlwind’s sheer power. Wings gliding on its edges, he held a breath, steadying himself in its eye. The wooden landing grew further, smaller and smaller to his vision, and on it Link, standing up in a disheveled snowquill coat, hair unruly and mouth agape.

They had both worn their Champion uniforms, last time it happened. In the village, under Medoh.

Revali kept rising.

The whirlwind faded away.

He retained his form until the landing, slow and smooth like intended, talons gently touching wood. It took him a beat to take in the surroundings: the same Flight Range, his Flight Range bathed in the last rays of setting sun. Unchanged, as if his Gale hadn't just come home at long last and brought with it a single clear memory.

“Brilliant”, a voice reached him.

What Champion Revali would like to think was “Too little, too late”.

What Revali thought was “You could say that again”.

Chapter Text

There was no minding one's own business in Rito Village. This obvious fact resulted in an annoyed Revali being taken through hoops by an equally annoyed Link in search for cooking ingredients, before going back to the Flight Range hut. Not that Revali minded someone else cooking. His own attempts left much to be desired, but there was enough time in a day to master only one: Gale, cooking or sneaking out of the village kitchen without hours upon hours of small talk.

“What became of your service to the queen, anyway?” There was no reason behind Revali's curiosity but to entertain himself while Link expertly sliced all the ingredients and put them in the cooking pot. The question must have struck something in the Hylian, since he stopped stirring.

“You’re interested? Zelda… relieved me of duty”, he said after a while. That was new. Not that Revali remembered it all, but if he was to trust Champion… his own notes, the then-princess surely wouldn't let go of her “shadow” that easily. Link was still glaring, probably for getting dropped off his hammock, as if a courtly escort shouldn't be the one between the two of them who knew whatever Champion hospitality was. “It was mutual. The decision. Urbosa's looking after her now, and I gave the sword back to the woods, so… I guess I'm free now.”

“Is Urbosa someone I should know of?”

Link threw him a knowing look.

“She’s a Champion like us, but from Gerudo. You two will get right along once you remember each other.”

“Of course you'd remember it all”, Revali said under his breath. It stung, even if Champion Revali still felt to him like a different person that had died long ago, even if the grudge had been that person's alone and the sword that seals the darkness, if Link was to be believed, lay somewhere in the woods and chose no one anymore.

As if to confuse him further, Link actually laughed.

“Wouldn’t you want that?” Revali was yet to decide whether to confirm, protest or tell him off when Link continued, hand with the cooking ladle falling slack at his side. “I was brought back a year before you four and my memories are still this… jigsaw toy of incomplete pictures. I don't know if it ever fully comes back. Sorry, that must be no good news.”

A scent of charcoal filled the hut and Revali reacted on reflex, prying the ladle out of Link's grip.

“Mind the food!”

“Then you stir!”

Despite the light singe, the food turned out edible. More than edible, even, though Link eating two whole portions was quite a stretch. He nestled on the floor pillows while eating, already making himself at home. Revali hoped the elder would be proud of himself, so at least someone would get a little satisfaction.

“What do you remember, Revali?”, Link shot out. Once he started talking, there was no shutting him up and, on top of it all, he left Revali at a loss for white lies that made for good, snappy answers.

So Revali settled for the truth.

“Your face.” Nobody said the truth could not be coated in a bountiful helping of sarcasm, making it sound like a badly crafted lie. “You have a way of making yourself known, whether I want it or not.”

Link was, again, flashing that grin as if he'd been given two more portions of food without needing to cook, or whatever joys small Hylians had in life.

“Pot, meet kettle.” Did he come up with this on the spot? He tucked that unruly mass of hair behind his ears in an antsy gesture, one that was absent from bits and pieces of Revali's memory, but so jarringly present every time they met now. Not the well-groomed Hylian champion or the shining beacon of heroism in the least. “The first thing I remembered? Calamity Ganon's return, Mount Lanayru. Not a good memory to wake up to, but you were there, flying and commandeering like you were king Rhoam himself. You... Actually held the situation together. For a moment I even thought you'd be level-headed and likable.”

A sudden urge hit Revali to pore over the Champion's (his, he needed to start getting used to the fact again) diary, to read back and forth the final entry that mentioned Mount Lanayru. It might enlighten him as to what in the world Link acknowledged as level-headed and likable, and make standing face to face with someone who remembered more about him than he did less infuriating.

“Well. For a moment I thought you would be quiet and unobtrusive, and yet here I am, with a splitting headache from the noise”, he said instead and quickly headed to the landing, before it fully sank in how unconvincing he sounded.

“There’s no pleasing you, is there?” He heard Link call after him. His indignation at Revali's soothing wake-up call had given way entirely to amusement somewhere along the line, no less frustratingly than the previous state of things. Revali was not going to grace that with an answer, so he stood at the landing's edge and called forth the wind.

***

Link made himself scarce throughout the day, rushing who knew where (Revali suspected the village or the mountains) and returning in the evening to join Revali's practice without as much as asking for permission. As far as Revali was concerned, straightening up the last quirks on his Gale was coming along splendidly, so there was no harm in welcoming a companion and taking him up on the unexpected offer to spar.

What should have been an easy win for Revali, flight, Gale and all, dragged long into the night, with Link's keen eye and lightning-fast reflexes making up for slowness of gliding on – whatever his contraption was supposed to be. The way Revali saw it, Time herself favored the Hylian, slowing down at the right moment for him to nock and aim. Gathering arrows stuck in the targets and counting them (he did win, but by an unsatisfying margin of two), he made a mental note to look at Link's Rito-emblazoned paraglider. He was sure he – or Champion Revali – had seen something like this before.

Granted, Link's must have been a gift from Teba rather than anything from Champion times. It looked well-used, but not ancient.

“I went to see Harth and Saki”, Link said once they sat down, before Revali came up with a casual way to bring up the paraglider. “They'll be happy to let me stay a few nights. You think the elder would get off our case?”

The idea reeked of convolution so much it galled Revali that someone would come up with in the first place, let alone a man who almost tied with him at archery.

“If the idea of staying with me is loathsome enough for you to trouble a large family, then the alternative is sound”, he said flatly. Something about Link's face made him wish he didn't. Whether it was the open abashment, or the petulance that followed, he was unsure.

“Weren’t you the one who hated the idea?”, Link snapped once petulance chased away the last trace of surprise.

“Gutted to disappoint.” Revali split the arrows with a quick move and passed to Link the stack that didn't resemble his own. ‘Target practice got much more interesting today. I thoroughly enjoyed wiping the landing with you.”

Link unabashedly stared at him for a few beats before he lunged for the arrows and grabbed them right out of Revali's wing.

“Wiping the landing!” He repeated, shaking his head and sticking the arrows into the quiver as if he was stabbing it. Surely, he was not expecting Revali to treat the display seriously. “You know what you can wipe? Your- You only won because my sword arm cramped.” A pause for effect. No effect achieved, due to Revali failing to treat it seriously. Link’s mouth trembled in an interesting way when he flung the quiver on his back and, infallibly, soon he was complaining through fits of laughter. “Stop cackling and try me when it's healed up! I'll shoot your tail feathers off! Fair warning!”

They went back to eat in mock-indignation, saying nothing. Funnily enough, the silence interrupted only by wind and sounds of Link aggressively stirring the cooking pot, did not feel uncomfortable at all.

He could bear company for a day or two longer. Provided the Hylian would not outstay his welcome.

“Say, Revali”, Link asked later, already invisible from under the blankets in his too-large hammock. “Why do you practice so much?”

The question did not sink in immediately, at first little more than another gust of wind, whistling through the cove. Even forming an answer in his mind, Revali couldn't be sure if he was conversing with the wind, with Link or with whatever figment of his imagination decided to ask irrelevant questions at the time.

“I cannot help but tremble at the vision of your famed sword arm showing me up in the distant future. Why?” He launched himself onto the other hammock with a miniature Gale, just because he could. There was a sound of breaking glass. A pot may have flown over the window. “Why wouldn't I practice?”

“Well… There's peace”, said the immobile bundle of blankets, fortifying the impression that it was Revali's currently unreliable mind playing tricks on him. “I beat maybe… six Lizalfoses on my way here. Saki's kids could've taken them down, that's how weak they've grown.”

“Peace is owed to those who keep it”, Revali said and stretched in his hammock, discomfort instantly prodding the back of his mind at how this sounded when said to Link of all people. “And perhaps an archery competition is an unfamiliar concept to Hylians, but here-“

“Who would compete with you?” There was an uncharacteristic warmth in the blanket bundle's voice, which would take Revali aback, hadn't it been tempered by the ensuing slight. “You're second only to me.”

Suddenly he wanted to turn the other hammock upside down again. Over the cliffside.

“Indeed I am.” He sat up straight, sleep all but forgotten. The sword that seals the darkness could be stuck in a woodland critter's behind for all he cared, but clearly it would never be gone for good once it went to the Hylian's head. “The knight who bested Calamity Ganon and a Rito with no memories to show for himself. Champion Link wielded that blasted sword and Champion Revali mastered Revali's Gale, but if you have anything better the world remembers me by, that- that I can remember myself by, I'm all ears!”

The blankets stirred, giving birth to a mess of Hylian hair, and Revali fought the urge to blast on his Gale through the ceiling. The only hope he could cling to was that the whole scene had been a figment of his imagination indeed. How else could this leave his beak as words?

Link did not snap back at him or try to defend himself, though he looked fully awake now. There was something unfamiliar twisting the corners of his lips and something in his darkened irises that mirrored Revali's own impulse to recoil. In an instant, it was gone, Link fell back into the blankets, curling up on himself and Revali caught his own wing, wanting to reach out.

Like before, the next words could as well be a gust of wind.

“I wish I did.” In the dying firelight, Revali could still make out Link's silhouette, lying on the blankets now, back turned to him, facing the cove. “But I just wielded the sword and now… I don't.”

There probably existed an answer that Revali could, should have had to this. None came to him and Link said nothing more to make for a whiff of inspiration, so Revali lay back down, staring at the ceiling and making peace with a sleepless night.

***

The next day, Link did not ask Revali for a sparring, or show his face until the evening. Still, he did come back to train at the other end of the Flight Range, so Revali entertained himself with splitting one of his arrows in two in the bull's eye of a target. He had already accepted losing an arrow of his own before Link split it with a third one in retaliation.

If routine could happen within a week, their sparring became one. They would fly late into the night and Revali won, then Link won because Revali paced himself too quickly, and then they tied. Conversation rejoined the sparring and before long, Link took Teba's place as the one who dragged Revali out to the village and around the lakeside. They went to see Harth, Saki and their two fledglings, now constantly up Revali's face and insisting to see his Gale. Since Link felt obliged to join in the pleas with a mischievous grin, Revali angled his ascent just so the edges of his whirlwind would lift the Hylian up and send him swirling onto the walkway. Link was far too pleased about it for his tastes, eyes sparkling like Lake Totori's sunlit waters under the now even messier head of hair.

On the sixth day, Link refused to spar in the evening and cryptically led Revali out of the Flight Range instead. It was a short walk around the lake, on which Revali wasted no time in telling exactly how he felt about interruptions to his training like this one (“Shh, just follow me, this is special”), until a quiet melody – accordion, joined by young voices – led their way before the tall structures of Warbler's Nest could be seen in the distance.

The crazy Hylian had delayed their sparring in favor of… a concert.

Revali had bumped into the tall, handsome Macaw a few times over breakfast, always greeted with a warm familiarity he had never figured out how to respond to. Now it was the Macaw who played, surrounded by a small crowd of five fledglings. He paused at their sight, with a charming fluster, and Revali could only suspect it had to do with the song's lyrics, which had included something about “the princess and her Champions five” before they approached him.

“No Champions here, Kass, just friends who want to listen. May we?” Link reached behind on his way and grabbed Revali's wing to pull him closer to Kass and the curious fledgling group. Nothing resembled Teba's intimidating glare about Kass, or about the warm Hylian hand in his feathers, and yet Revali was halted in his spot by his own pounding heart.

Rito were hardly built for smiling the way Hylians were, but Kass still beamed back as widely as Link, with his eyes and his whole self.

“When could I ever refuse you, friend? Please, make yourself comfortable.” He swiped a wing in a broad gesture around Warbler's Nest as the five fledglings said their “Hi, Link”s one over another. “And… Good to see you around more often, young Revali.”

Compared to Kass or anyone, Revali could hardly be called young, but he left the comment be since the merry group resumed their song, traversing smoothly into a neutral piece about the beauty of Tabantha pines. They played well and Kass' grace at handling the accordion was a sight to behold for someone who knew nothing about the craft, but recognized a master when he saw one. Mesmerized by the dance of his wing on the keys, Revali almost missed the last rays of evening sun piercing through the heart-shaped cavern in the Roost, gliding along Medoh's carved feathers and blue-lit beak.

“Have you visited her yet?”

Kass had finished playing, busied himself with packing up the accordion and sending his daughters home, and Link was looking at Revali now.

“Medoh”, he added. He must have caught Revali's side-glance a moment before. The Beast's wings cast a cool shadow on Rito Village, steadfast as ever as it stood at attention atop the Roost. Revali had not given it thought for days, so constant was its- hum, whisper in the quiet corners of his mind, every time he woke or fell asleep.

Medoh, who had recognized him way before queen Zelda. Way before his Gale.

“I cannot say I have.” He took in the Beast's silhouette for the first time, skybound despite its talons firmly sunken in the rock beneath it. It had never occurred to him to visit the gigantic battle machine, because why would he fly her in times of peace, because his Gale had been refusing to obey him for so long.

She reciprocated his look of mild bewilderment now, though Revali was unsure how he could tell.

“I’m no expert on Divine Beasts, I didn't- didn't board one as long as you did”, Link continued and raised his head to him, “but she might be missing you up there.”

Looking away from Medoh and sending a thought of greeting her way, Revali turned to take in his companion, now exuding utter confidence in his assessment of a battleship's emotional state. Link did not falter for a second under his heavy stare and, to a feeling of something odd stirring in his chest, it dawned upon him why Champion Revali had been so desperate for one sliver of this small Hylian's attention.

He hated the idea.

The quiet hum in his head perked up. Medoh was… laughing at him and he did not find it in himself to be offended.

“She…” And here he was, fully on board with the discussion of Medoh's emotional life. “She knows I'm doing well, I believe.”

***

The seventh sunrise found them both sleeping in after flying and sparring long into the night. They did not wake until long after, roused by the click of talons on the landing's wooden boards.

“I leave for a moment, and now there's two of you”, Teba said flatly, leaning on the hut's doorway. “Will I ever get to train here in peace?”

It was quite a scene to see Link practically turn his own hammock over without Revali's help and fall out, having to hook both arms around Teba's neck to break the fall. He got firmly set on the floor, stared down with strict reprehension and proceeded to look unapologetic about it.

“You saw the castle”, he preened rather than asked. “No Ganon. Told you I'd do it!”

Teba and Revali tsked synchronically, as if slaying a mythical beast was not a point of pride, as if it had been one teenager's job to begin with. Funny how instinctive this sense of humor had become, for everyone including Link, who took it in stride and stood up even prouder.

“And even then, you refused to sit in one spot and sent me on a fool's errand after you.”

“You wound me. The castle was a silly place, so I came back to you.” There was much more than lightness to Link's words and Teba must have caught it much sooner than Revali did.

Link and Teba had their own world, as easy to predict. They still made themselves at home at the Flight Range in the moments Teba was not taking Link to see his family, with only Tulin breaching the little world's confines. For whatever reason, Teba was convinced training with a flightless Hylian would be beneficial for his son's skills. Revali… could not argue with that in clear conscience, given all he'd seen and experienced from Link, although he still offered up a lesson with a true Rito master. The offer was met with Tulin's excitement and Teba's lack of reaction whatsoever, not that Revali cared much about Teba's reaction. Meeting the master of Revali's Gale who had forgotten his own art must have been disappointing.

Had Link and Teba befriended each other a hundred years ago, it would be less strange for the two stuck-up, stoic warriors to grow this close. Now, when somewhere along the way Link had lost his stoicism…

“We… We freed Medoh together.” Over dinner, Link shared the details sparingly, all but reluctant to elaborate on Medoh's goings-on outside of Revali's conscious life. If this was out of consideration, he shouldn't have bothered: what's not remembered, cannot hurt. Or so Revali told himself, ignoring the lump in his throat that made eating hard, at the thought of Link saving him from whatever his memory refused to keep. “Since then I've been places, but we just kept meeting up. I think he's someone who keeps me grounded.”

Revali stifled a laugh, swallowing the pesky lump with gratitude.

“’Keep someone grounded' is a heavy innuendo for the Rito, you know”, he said, looking forward to the flush, the stutter or something else from the rich assortment of Link's unguarded responses to all things unknown. Instead, he was rewarded with a quirk of a shapely Hylian eyebrow and a smile he had thought reserved for bragging about the Calamity's demise.

Frankly, Revali had not seen that coming. The done thing for a Rito would be to tie kinship, or take a mate out of wedlock, as Harth or Saki no doubt also had, but for a prudish Hylian, with their monogamy and rituals and traditions? Surely, this was a kinship rather than a courting situation, judging by the lack of tricolored feather braids in Link's offensively messy hair. Did Link know the difference? How much did he know about Rito culture to begin with? Many questions came with this not-confession, none of which was Revali's or anyone else's business to ask, so he laughed off the Hylian's ridiculous pride and did not push the topic.

“I’m leaving soon”, Link said later. “Leaving Rito Village, I mean. You'll get your house back.”

“Suit yourself. This is not my house in the first place.” If Revali snapped, if his voice shook more than intended, it was the quickness to which Link changed topics, not letting him focus. Nothing else. “Where are you going?”

Link shot him an eyebrows-up stare challenging him to explain himself, which Revali withstood and ignored.

“I have a few places in mind. Zora Domain, first off”, he continued, making peace with the fact no explanation would be offered. “I want to see Mipha.”

The name rang no bells in Revali's memory, save for Link's convoluted explanation of the Champions' history from several days back, and a piece of Zora-made armor he had taken out of his luggage. Mipha the Zora princess, Link's lover.

“First the scary Osprey, now Mipha?”, he laughed again, since Link's love life was shaping up to resemble one of Kass' ballads rather than something that happened to real boring Hylians. “Truly, you leave a trail of broken hearts behind.”

“Something of the sort.” Link's ensuing smile brimmed with something new, apologetic, almost sad. “I need to… return a gift.”

“The armor?” Link nodded at the question, avoiding Revali's gaze.

“I still don't have all my memories back, including how I felt about many things, but…”, he scuttled closer to the cooking pot's heat and rocked a few times in his spot, looking for something to do with his hands. “What I do know is… I'm a different person now. Or not different, just changed. Mipha is… that I don't know, but she deserves to find out who she is herself. It's only fair- only fair to let her go with respect, isn't it?”

Revali had nothing to say to this. He was an expert in many things, but dealing with former lovers from a century ago was not one of them. Neither was recovering long lost bonds, try as Link might to make it otherwise.

“I may need to take some strong armor of my own”, Link added with a forced chuckle. “I doubt Sidon will be happy to hear all this.”

If Link's tales of the Zora prince were to be believed, Revali would be missing out on quite a sight. It wouldn't be the first sight for him to miss out on.

“Whatever you say”, he answered, stretching on the pillows beneath the hammocks. The Flight Range still had visitors from time to time – more so since Teba's return – but it infallibly emptied in the evenings, filled with a particular wind-worn silence that Revali would need to get used to once more. The silence had been conductive to practice once.

“Perhaps I should go meet them someday? The other Champions.”

He hadn't expected to say it and, by the looks of it, neither had Link. The thought clearly pleased the Hylian for one reason or another, since he stopped curling by the pot and sprawled back on the pillows with a badly hidden smile, close enough to Revali to make something inside him try to break outside and do a somersault.

“I couldn't tell. But sounds like a plan.” He lay comfortably, the light of embers playing on his face and glimmering in his half-lidded eyes, giving him a look of utmost peace. Neither in the scarce fragments of his memories, nor in the recent days had Revali seen anything like this. “Traveling is good. For memories, that's one thing, but… You'll see, hopefully.”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself”, Revali said, without much vitriol, forcing his gaze up onto the hammocks, the ceiling, anything neutral. The rustling of pillows pried it back where it had rested, onto Link, now lying on his side, chin in hand, looking at him intently.

Don't give me that look, he said to himself. Not when we both have things to do (although what things Revali had to do, he was unsure).

“I will be meaning to visit again, you know. Rito Village. Once I… sort things with Mipha.” It would take very little now to make Link inch away and drop whatever he was meaning to ask, with the sudden tension that had crept into his whole being. It would take as little as one gesture, but Revali did not intend to act on it. “Do you think I could still stay here? With you? Champion hospitality, whatever that is?”

It would take little to make him flee, just as little as it would to bring him closer. A feather, reaching out, forehead on forehead, small Hylian nose on beak.

Revali still did not intend to act on either.

“Two hammocks. Not my house”, he replied with a shrug he hoped looked natural. “By all means.”

***

There were still places to visit and goodbyes to say around the village before Link would set out, so Revali left him to it, choosing to put his all into training before deciding where to proceed from here. In his living memory, he never once had his Gale feel like it felt now – wind rising at his beck and call, gliding under the tips of his wings and filling them with strength, his body well balanced in the whirlwind's eye, with as much conscious thought as heaving a deep breath. At this rate, he would achieve a flawless Gale once Link returned from Zora Domain, securing an easy win as archer.

He looked forward to it.

He failed to notice a visitor, captivated by the rush of air under his wings and in his ears. As the wind subsided and Revali soared on the updrafts, taking aim, he finally saw the lone figure on the landing.

Teba had come by himself this time. No Tulin or Link and, by the looks of it, no intent to rise up and proceed with archery practice either. Revali landed reluctantly, having lost the steady rhythm of his flight, to Teba as sour-looking as ever, motioning him to come closer.

Was this about coming down to the village again?

“I owe you my thanks”, Teba said and Revali felt his brows shoot up. Apparently it wasn't. “For teaching Tulin. This means much.”

“Why wouldn't I teach the young and willing? Forgive my surprise-“

“I should have thanked you sooner.” Teba's furrowed features relented for once and something told Revali this time it had been him who needed a generous push out the door of his hut. “Our friend Link will be the first to tell you I've no way with words.”

“And I'm sure he will be less gracious with descriptives.” Revali lightened up, against himself, at the very mention of the Hylian, but that didn't mean he would show something as beneath him as embarrassment about it. “Don’t worry. I don't expect thanks until I prove myself.”

Teba spat out a half-laugh, wings folded at his chest.

“I clearly neglected challenging you if you think I don't see proof”, he said. “I see you relearned your Gale. I'm glad.”

The wind called, whistling around the cove, gently rustling the luminescent targets. Cocking his head at Teba, Revali invited it under his wings and shot upwards. There was only the wind, Medoh's hum and his own heart pounding at the thrill of ascent; and powder snow dancing in spirals around him, like the ones adorning Medoh's wings; and the sky, growing nearer. It almost pulled a piece of memory onto the edges of his mind, but he cared little about it, reveling in the moment, suspended in time.

“I sure did! How is yours?”, he called down below, evened his flight and surely enough, Teba flew swirling towards him within seconds, almost falling out of the whirlwind twice. Snow painted patterns around his wings, more angular, coarser – different, carrying him around Revali's updraft and dispersing slowly, still on a lower altitude. Not waiting for Revali's reaction, Teba caught balance, bent back to reach for a bow and nocked an arrow. Not waiting until it hit a target, Revali clustered three.

“You surprise me!” He heard Teba's raised voice once they lowered their flight, now drifting on the cove's air currents, nocking, aiming, releasing in a rhythm different from the one Revali had lost before. “I thought you'd guard your craft more jealously!”

Revali let out an annoyed breath along with an arrow, which zoomed past Teba, right next to his beak, and struck the bull's eye at the cove's other end.

“I told you, I'm a Rito, not a goose”, he chided and noted an arrow flying right past his ear. He didn't have to turn around to know it struck true. “How can a Rito compete for something he refuses to share?”

“Right you are.” Teba flung the bow behind his back and drifted freely towards him, in a better mood than Revali ever saw him. “Come by the village tomorrow. See Link off.”

As if Revali’s mind was not set on doing it anyway.

Laughing, they circled each other, two patterns in the snowfall entwining, and shot a few more targets before landing. An idea formed in Revali's mind and came out as words as they touched down.

“Want a good Gale training?” He glanced up to Teba, softly landing right behind him. There was someone quite curious about the other Rito, pestering the back of Revali's mind as he spoke. Or she was merely being kind enough to give him a good excuse, now that he had grown mellow and used to company. “I'm flying up to Medoh tomorrow, after I see Link off. Care to join me? We can race up.”

Teba side-eyed him with a half-laugh, gathering his bow and preparing to leave. Tired and messy-feathered from flying, he would have a much harder time going forward if he cared to intimidate Revali into venturing out. Then again, there had been less need for that lately.

“Why race me if you know you'll win for now?”, he asked, leaping down to the cliffside. A miniature updraft formed beneath his wings and tempered his fall.

“Surprise me!” Revali called behind him and flew down to gather arrows, not waiting to watch him leave.

A while of circling the cove and putting everything in order passed before he wasn't alone again. Compared to the empty Flight Range he had moved into, now people came and went in what seemed like excursions. Once Revali reemerged onto the landing, Link was already there, sitting cross-legged on the walkway and visibly lazing about, with something folded in his lap. He flashed a grin at Revali's sight that Revali had never imagined to be welcomed with one day. Surely not from the stoic knight he… Champion Revali had resented.

“All goodbyes said?” He stopped next to the Hylian in what could be perceived as hovering uncomfortably. Then again, the walkway had not been built for picnics.

“One left, isn't there?” Grinning even wider and still clutching the folded package, Link scrambled up awkwardly. “Actually, that'll happen in the morning, once I'm leaving, but I have something else. For you. Well, not quite for you.”

A lifetime of not speaking at all and a year in the wilderness had given Link a truly peculiar speech pattern, but now he was making even less sense than usual. Confusion must have painted Revali's face with much more disapproval than he had intended, because Link hastily unfolded the package and shoved the familiar heft into his wings.

Meticulously carved wooden parts and pieces, connected into an intricate structure, long into the night, blisters on his wings. Emblazoned cloth enveloping the structure that he would need to have custom-made, much like his diary.

Rito warriors never used to have an emblem until Revali had come up with one.

He would brand it on his possessions. And his gifts.

Link was still talking, fumbling through his words.

“It's awkward to bring it up, but you… You asked me if there's anything people remember you by. Well, this is what I remember you by.”

He had looked at Link's paraglider so many times while sparring, but never had it occurred to him to hold it.

“I recovered this memory after… After Medoh, your spirit was there with me, in a way… Probably a story for another time. Sorry”, Link continued, making less and less sense by the second, but it didn't matter because for the first time Revali understood what he meant, understood the Champion’s feelings, his own feelings. “You gave it to me before the battle. At Mount Lanayru. You said-”

“When Ganon goes down, we spar”, Revali said, raising a shaky wing to his forehead, the other still holding the paraglider. It almost burned with long-healed cuts and blisters from a hundred years before. “And you are to stand a chance against me.”

“’Make sure you practice.’ You remember.” A small Hylian hand made its way to cover his wing and touch the paraglider with careful, tender fingers as his whole body shifted much, much closer. Revali's wing fell listless from his forehead and slid down to rest on Link's shoulders, grazing the nape or his neck. He would fret about it later.

“I do. Now, I do.”

“I remembered your skills and your Gale, sure. It's pretty memorable once you see it”, Link added with a crooked smile, looking up at Revali, who froze halfway through leaning to rest his forehead on the Hylian's messy hair. “But mostly this. You preen at how much better you are than everyone else, you get dramatic when you're not acknowledged… Then you go, open your training ground to everyone, pore over making gifts for your oh-so-unfortunate flightless friend… Sorry, nemesis. Maybe archnemesis, but I can only hope.”

Revali's wing on Link's shoulders clenched and hovered, all but ready to let go. He distinctly did not like where this was going and Link's smile only kept growing wider.

“All things considered, you're pretty soft.”

That was it. Revali's wings moved on their own and the wind responded. It swirled around them and burst in the most indignant column, lifting Link off the ground, propelling him upwards with a startled gasp, paraglider discarded on the walkway. Revali stared for a beat, then satisfaction melted into panic and he shot up, strengthened the column mid-air, spread his wings and swooped under the haplessly falling Hylian, letting him land on his own back.

They sank dangerously, because of course sturdy Hylian bones would make the smallest load heavy, but Revali withstood. He had trained for worse. Gliding over the cove, he felt Link melt into his back, arms making their way around his chest to hold him tight, tighter than hanging on would warrant. He was trembling against Revali, in a manner that wrenched his heart with guilt, until he heard the laughter, muffled against the feathers of his neck.

“See? You're soft! You won't just dump me”, Link said, still pressed flush against him, nuzzling his shoulder. One arm slid up Revali's chest, making his breath almost give out, crept its way around his neck and tightened in a pretend headlock. “You can't fly forever! I’ll pluck your tail for this once you set me down.”

Accepting this as a challenge, Revali made a few more loops around the cove, dipping down and surging right up from free fall, Link still pressed against him, more exhilarating than heavy. Fatigue did not catch up with him as much as consciousness of his own limits and, knowing he should be tired were his blood still not heating his body with its euphoric rush, he circled down. Link held on to him for a while more with all limbs, not intent on touching the ground just yet. Revali couldn't bring himself to mind.

“I never used it until now”, he mumbled into the crook of Revali's neck and Revali's eyes closed on their own at the sensation. “The glider. It was new when king Rhoam passed it to me… A different story again.”

“You’re not making sense”, Revali would say exponentially more dryly, but his will to bicker evaporated, much like his memory had. He got a full-arm squeeze to his neck in reply, reminding that the tail-plucking had not quite left the realm of possibility.

“Be that as it may-“ Link's tone changed at this and gained a sternness worthy of another battle with Ganon. Scrambling down from Revali's shoulders and struggling for balance of the ground, he failed to keep up the sternness or remain in any way threatening. “I hope our sparring met your refined tastes.”

“It was half-decent. But I’m improving and you'll need to keep up.”

Collecting the glider and making their way back to the hut, they could go on arguing and jabbing forever, but Revali had a different pastime in mind. Nothing would come of toying with the idea like he had for days now, stealing side-glances and prodding for information, fumbling under its sheer weight like a fledgling wielding a bow. Link would be well on his way to Zora Domain the next day and after that – who knew. Who knew where Revali would be.

Champion Revali had been quite a planner, training routines and hand-carved paragliders. It had done nothing to save his life.

Now, Revali opened a chest in the hut, turned to Link – and took a risk. Almost.

“All this wasn't-“ His tongue was slipping and tangling like Link's now. How annoying. He pushed forward. “Wasn’t you 'returning a gift' or whatever inanity your head could birth?”

Link scrunched his face in the most interesting way.

“Are you joking?” His arms gave the still-folded paraglider a greedy squeeze. “I’ll never stop gliding. And I still need to wipe the landing with you, don't I?”

The last escape route shut with a start in front of Revali's beak. His wing found the desired shape inside the chest and fished it out, clenching around it like a lifeline. Then he put both wings on Link's shoulders, steadying them with all his will and authority, and firmly pushed him down to sit on the pillows. He was rewarded with a look of impatience from the Hylian, but he would not be having this. Changing the strategy, he sat down himself and gestured for Link to join, with just as little patience to give.

“At least tell me what this is about”, Link complained, but sat down obediently. Revali assessed the unbearably messy head of hair in front of him and produced the comb he had been squeezing. Braiding all this would be one feat to accomplish, but a master of both Revali's Gale and Divine Beast Vah Medoh would not cower before a Hylian nomad with a pitiful sense of aesthetic. He dipped a feathered finger into Link's hair experimentally and reached back to his almost undone ponytail. It was coarse to the touch, but would braid just fine. Chances were it would braid even better than feathers, if done right – and, given time and effort, he could learn to do anything right.

“You-” He undid Link's tie and tossed the hair sideways, eliciting a surprised exhale and an unguarded stare. “-Are traveling to the Zora royal court tomorrow.” And I want you to take this with you, he thought, combing gently through the ends and diving higher. The right words did not come to his mind; perhaps no right words existed, or that was one more thing he and Teba shared. He settled for the familiar, just for now. “The least I can do is make you look fit for the occasion.”

Chapter Text

Teba

The unwritten laws of this world had it that if you carried someone to battle and set their broken bone afterwards, you grew attached. So it happened with the crazy Hylian who had arrived first at Rito Village, claiming he could calm Vah Medoh, then at the Flight Range hut, bleeding out, once he already had.

The last thing Teba would want after returning from Medoh would be for Saki to treat another husband's injury and worry even more, so he had taken refuge in the hut to clean his own wound. It only took a moment for Link to join him, he would swear later, and bleed all over the floor for good measure.

“I think… I think I broke my arm”, he said, shaking and looking sideways, at nothing in particular. “Got… fairy tonic. Enough for us both. Just… can you help me first? Set it?”

Were Teba a lesser man, he would have thrown Link off the cliff, with little heed to his gliding capability, for the sheer nerve and lack of survival instinct. But he was not and flinging a dying man from a high altitude would be unbecoming, so he ended up shoving a rag into Link's mouth to bite on and discovering solid Hylian bones were luckily conductive of using his entire strength. It took this, two bottles of fairy tonic and its magic knitting their wounds together, for the new reality to sink in with a sudden bout of euphoria: they had made it. They had appeased Medoh.

“What was up there that broke your arm?”, Teba eventually asked, after shaking off the tonic-drunk Hylian who would forcibly jump him with embraces and back pats as a way of thanks. Were it less drunk and less abrupt, it would have been less unwelcome as well.

“Oh, arm? Nothing. The blight just gave me these.” Link gestured haphazardly to the almost-healed gashes on his chest and shoulders. What he said next sounded like a loosely stringed bunch of words that made sense separately, but not combined and not as a true story. “I tried to use Gale to jump off Medoh after she sat down, aimed wrong and… I'm sure wherever Revali is right now, he had the time of his life.”

This revelation and the entire Medoh affair would be only the beginning of unusual occurrences, brought about by hurricane Link into Teba's otherwise mundane life. They drifted together in more ways than one, to the bewilderment of both Harth and Saki, who would hardly consider kinship with someone from a tribe this distant. As if distance was ever an issue for Link, who kept coming and going, well-liked by the villagers, by Tulin and Molli, and, most often, accompanied by wisps of blue glow. The Hylian kept proving to be an outstanding warrior in some aspects and an utter disaster in others, which, as Saki would mercilessly point out, should not have come as a surprise to Teba of all people. They shared nights, Tulin's archery lessons and the vaguely embarrassing discovery that Teba's lifelong rolemodel, Master Revali, had in fact been an insufferable child. The sudden accumulation of the unusual caused Teba to tentatively believe Link's outlandish stories and, dropping doubts altogether once a mysterious Rito had appeared in the village, falling from atop Medoh of all places, recognize Revali by his horrid personality alone.

Whatever had gone down in the distant Hyrule Castle did not stop Link from remaining a frequent guest, even though for a brief moment Teba was… not worried by any stretch, just wondering. What was more, his visits grew in frequency over two months, and an explanation of this state cropped up soon enough in his usually unkempt hair, remade neater and neater with every visit. Increasingly elaborate, too: plaits, fishtails, multi-stranded braids, impressing even Saki, overprepared like their maker and leaving no doubt as to his intent.

Teba found himself glad to see the change. Neither having Link around as permanently as he could sit down, nor putting up with a new, a tad more humbled and sociable version of Revali, was anything short of an improvement. Provided they would leave the Flight Range sometime.

And provided Link acted on it in any manner. Much as Teba was the last person to refuse Revali humbling experiences, the two months of stagnation seemed pitiful.

Saki was less generous about the whole deal, as she would. Leave it to her to crack jokes at breakfast with Amali (who only looked gentle when her rosy-feathered kin was not around) about Link still coming over alone, despite being visibly courted.

“Wait.” Link all but dropped the armful of fruits he had brought in and made a show of grasping for them in mid-air. “What do you mean 'courted'?”

Amali and Saki exchanged the most dumbfounded looks this kitchen had seen. In hindsight, Teba should have avoided joining them and stayed out of the conversation, but somewhere during the past year of strange Hylians visiting the village, one strange Hylian had become his personal problem.

“Revali?” Saki prompted, too confused to start helping Link pick up the fruity catastrophe on the floor. Amali and Teba took pity and moved to his aid instead, so infallibly, Link gravitated to him with a panicked gaze and a silent plea for explanation.

No way.

Link may have been particularly obtuse, but he had spent enough time in Rito Village for Teba to not help him out in any other way than a heavy stare in the direction of his braids, one of which added insult to the injury by being befeathered of all things. There was a moment of immobile pause and the Hylian's hand jerked to his own braid, then to Teba's, flaunting three colors of feathers. A rapid mix of emotions stirred under his not-very-smart expression and he sat down between the scattered apples.

“He’s…” As if in a daze, he gathered a few apples from around himself, passed them into Amali's waiting wing and scrambled up angrily. “An uncultured fool, that's what he is! And he's making me into one!”

Teba had a short answer to this at the tip of his tongue, but left it be, since Saki would probably disapprove.

“I thought he rejected me! A while ago!” Link kept ranting as he moved on to slicing the apples with short, stabbing motions. “When I offered him to-“ Luckily, he had enough presence of mind to lower his voice immediately as Molli cheerfully hopped in, together with Amali's five girls.

“To tie kinship.” Teba hid his face in both wings, overcome with sudden pity for Revali's plight… which, on second thought, Revali had brought upon himself by offering no explanations. “With someone who braided you. I hope you meant no cruelty, but Revali…”

Link mouthed a panicked “there’s a difference?!”, which cast doubt upon the copious diplomatic training he must have received in the past. Meanwhile, Saki rolled her eyes.

“You, my dear-“ She pointed the tip of her wing at Teba as if it was an arrowhead. “Were afraid to as much as breathe in my direction when we were almost Link's age. Which was not long ago. And to Harth, might I remind you, you left a note saying 'Get out of my Flight Range', so I wouldn't be too confident about your authority here.” She folded her wings and laughed that melodious chuckle that could disarm Teba's anger within a beat. “They’re stubborn. And he's still braided. They’ll be fine.”

Her flippancy did nothing to convince Link, who now went as red as one of the apples he kept slicing. Amali gently took the knife out of his hand to prevent him from losing a limb, as he searched the hut with terror-stricken stares.

“What- What should I do?” That was new, given that the same Hylian had fought the scourge of Vah Medoh, then proceeding to do a celebratory Gale and almost annihilating himself without a second thought. “Teba? How can I -”

“That, my kin, is none of my business”, Teba said before Saki and Amali would launch on an advice spree. Obviously there was no such thing as minding one’s own business in Rito Village, but that did not mean he would help Link anymore. However imperfect his youthful attempts at courting, he had managed to figure it out by himself. Surely, two royal Champions over a hundred years old would be up to the task.

***

Isha

Gerudo Town had seen more changes in just a few months than over the last hundred years. From an onslaught of Yiga sightings, to Naboris, the desert's protector of legends, emerging from the dunes to smite everything in its way; to the very same beast taking residence in the highlands, docile as a sand seal, and not without Lady Riju's aid. But perhaps the greatest change came in the form of Lady Urbosa: first as a disembodied voice in the sandstorm, ground shaking under the townspeople's feet from whatever Calamity befell Hyrule Castle yet again; then, in person. Found by the desert patrol atop Naboris and carried into town, Her Ladyship was in no ladylike shape: weak, almost naked, unable to explain what had gone down with her memories scrambled.

Within days, Her Ladyship regained coherency. Within weeks, her head cleared and not two months had passed when she saved the town from yet another change, by settling a throne dispute between two ancient Gerudo bloodlines. She hushed her opponents and supporters alike by abdicating cheerfully and filling formalities to entrust all duties of leadership to Lady Riju. The Thunder Helm lays heavy on a vai over a century of age, she conceded, before setting out to journey the land like the Gerudo should, free of the helm's burdens.

“Another option is, of course, you could grant my hand in marriage as a boon of alliance to the Queen of Hyrule”, she offered before leaving and nobody was sure if she had been joking.

Then, she was gone and the mystery of her return remained unsolved for just a while longer.

“Resurrection technology”, Link divulged over supper to Lady Riju and Isha when they paid a visit to Hyrule Castle: the chief of Gerudo and the artisan tasked with remaking the royal crown. “Every Divine Beast. Not as powerful as my Shrine - that's why it took longer. That's what kept the Scourges in such good health, too. Well… That's what Zelda says”, he added with a shrug while stuffing his mouth full of glazed roast – an unsavory habit he had acquired over months as a nomad. Hearing the Queen's given name dropped so casually between hearty gulps of roast was jarring, but went without as much as a scowl from the Queen herself, too happy to jump in with a lengthy explanation to pay heed to manners. “She’ll explain it better than I can.”

Amidst the sandstorm of changes, Link the local voe remained the only constant, coming and going as he pleased since the day he had first sneaked into town, claiming he could calm Naboris. There was hardly anyone unaware of his identity at this point. Whenever his veil dropped or he forgot himself in the spa, the guards would calmly walk him out somewhere he could redo his disguise and come back. He had never been too convincing to begin with, a tiny Hylian “vai” who bought out the town's supply of arrows (ten is every vai's basic survival kit, but sixty is a stretch, especially for a Hylian) and sold pouches full of monster horns (they did make for durable spearheads). Still, the status of Champion came with a dose of leniency, even if by Lady Riju's order his identity was to be kept secret. After all, if more voe caught wind and swarmed all over town, local youth may grow complacent, unwilling to travel the world or learn craftsmanship.

Isha was one of the few townsvai who stuck to pretending ignorance of Link's little secret. He was a sweet young voe of friendly disposition who tended to grow clearly uncomfortable having his identity spoken of too directly. And what was the task of every trader if not to make all customers comfortable?

“A Rito voe?” Isha's eyebrows shot up when Link leaned over the counter and placed his oddly specific order. His face glowed a vivid red even through the turquoise laces of his veil. “Unusual for a Hylian vai, but nothing I haven't seen. No need to be ashamed, my dear.”

“I- How-“ If Link's face had been red before, now it clearly heralded the second coming of the Calamity with its resemblance to a blood moon. “No, that's not-“

Isha threw him a stare.

“You come to a Gerudo jeweler and ask for a feather-shaped hairpin that you can braid in”, she said flatly and the blood moon gave way to a crescent's pallor. “We Gerudo treat courting very seriously, dear. There is really no point trying to fool us.”

More customers poured in, as they would ever since news had broken out that Isha was the appointed maker of royal insignia. Isha left the small crowd to her assistants and swooped Link off behind the counter, suddenly aware that she had been doing the opposite of making him comfortable. Then again, she couldn't always help herself with an adorable voe like this one.

“Well, now”, she began when they were shielded from curious eyes by a discrete wall. “You’ll need to tell me something about him. What is he like?” And, taking note of Link's wide blue eyes, she hastily added: “A token of love is something intimate. I cannot work on it with nothing to go by.”

Whoever had captured Champion Link's heart, she must have been a force to be reckoned with, in wit and on the battlefield alike, even for a Rito.

Or he – not that it was any of Isha's concern.

Link swallowed audibly and Isha could almost believe the Queen's stories about the ever-silent knight of years past.

“We…” he mumbled after a while. “We met in service to the crown.” Where else. “Long ago you would… I would never think I'd be here, asking you for… this. He's headstrong. Dramatic. Aloof, even, always storming off to train on his own at a mere hint of… Of discomfort. If he as much as lets you train with, it means he would share all of his possessions, and then lay down his life for you.”

There he was – not Link the Queen's silent protector, but Isha's Link, Gerudo Town's Link, a spark of electricity brought to life, alight and physically incapable of shutting up. He talked, and talked, and cocked his head in amusement until Isha caught a glimpse of a stormy blue feather in his hair, peeking from behind his veil.

“He has an… Infuriating way of saying exactly what he means and not saying anything at all with the same word. Even for a Rito”, Link added with a laugh. “It’s really childish... Then again, it's not how old we are, but whether we had a chance to grow up. He's been courting me for a while, you know?” His fingers darted to the veil and sought out the feathered braid, like a lucky charm. “And it was my friend who had to explain it to me, another Rito. I wouldn't even know… and frankly, I wouldn't believe if I hadn't trusted the friend more than I do myself.”

He added something that sounded very much like “ridiculous” under his breath and Isha burst out laughing. However ancient the heroes brought back by Sheikah magic… or technology, teenagers would always be teenagers.

On the other hand, a thought occurred to her, persistent after warm light of desert sunset fell on the dark shadows under the youngster's eyes - there were experiences that would make you settle down young.

“I didn't realize back then he trusted me with showing off a new technique, one that was still prone to failure. It looked like magic. Effortless. Unburdened. I...think I was jealous. Then, he… He gave me my paraglider”, Link continued, but Isha's thoughts were already taking shape.

A stormy blue feather for a union born in stormy times. Both skybound, she mused, Link with a paraglider always attached to his shoulders like a second pair of arms, and the mysterious Rito with however their “magical” flight worked. A union shooting through the storms towards a clear blue sky.

A jeweler's craft had something of poetry about it and she quite enjoyed the vision.

“How-“ Isha spun around and popped open a drawer to reveal a glimmer of bountiful blue gems in all sizes. “-do you feel about sapphires, little Hylian?”

Link trailed off and considered the small mountain of gems in front of him. The last rays of sunlight caught on their facets and reflected sparks of blue onto the Hylian's face. The color of the sky, of his eyes that glistened with humor and good will, but shifted into distant and determined in troubled times. The color of shrines, like the one just out of town; of Link's Champion emblems he had been wearing back in Hyrule castle.

“I…”, he spoke after a pause and somehow his voice seemed raw again, like one that had not been used in a hundred years. “I don't think he likes this color very much.” Another pause, as if he hesitated to challenge Isha or offend her. “I don't think I do, in fact. I'm sorry.”

In a different set of circumstances, Isha would perhaps take offense. But she was an artisan first and foremost, one of a craft where connection to the customer was key.

Not the journey, but the beacon. Not a clear blue sky, but sunlight.

She opened another drawer. The sun was barely a memory on the horizon now, but a craft master never backed down from a challenging commission.

“Topazes, then”, she offered. “Might do well to remind him of your electric personality.” Laughter bubbled up in her as Link had grown visibly red again behind the veil. “And, if I may be so forward, it rather resembles the color of your hair.”

The Hylian leaned over another pile of gems, braids falling on his face, the blue feather woven into their gold in an exquisite contrast – and nodded.

“They’ll do just fine”, he said, the smile in his voice radiant as the sun.