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Link tends to be frugal with his rupees, preferring to save them for Epona's care or the occasional new weapon and then forage in the woods for whatever else he might need, but the combination of however many three-day cycles it's been—he thinks this is number fifteen or sixteen, but Tatl insists on twelve—plus an mysteriously clairvoyant banker has left him with more money than he could possibly spend, and squirrel meat gets boring after a while. And so here he is, in the middle of the first day, sitting in the cramped little dining room of the Stock Pot Inn.
He should've saved his money and stuck with the squirrel.
Link prods a squishy lump of colorless vegetables floating in his soup bowl and sticks out his tongue. Tatl sniffs at the broth, then takes an experimental sip and gags. "Blegh!" she hisses. "What on earth happened here?!"
Sighing, Link slides his bowl to one side and flips through the bombers' notebook. There’s no clear logic separating the things that persist between cycles versus the things that vanish—he and Tatl and the banker retain their memories after the song of time returns them to the morning of the first day, but not the other people of Clock Town or even the Great Fairies; potions and milk dry up but the empty bottles remain in Link's pack; his smudgy handwriting in the bombers' notebook is unchanged. It's been an invaluable tool in helping him keep track of the people of Termina and their myriad problems, and all their comings and goings over the seventy-two hours he and Tatl keep reliving, though the goddesses only know what would happen if he ever dropped the thing. Whoever found it would think he's out of his mind.
"Is something wrong?" Anju asks, appearing at Link's elbow.
He flinches and slaps the notebook shut, even though getting a chance to speak with her was half the reason he made time to stop at the inn. And now she's looking at him. Link starts to nod, then shakes his head, his face burning. Before Anju can turn away, he flips back through the notebook, finds the right page, and holds it out for her, his first question already written in the neatest letters he could manage. Tatl flutters off to another table as Anju takes the notebook and reads, her brows knitted and lips faintly moving. Link squirms.
"You'd like to ask me about the lands beyond Termina?" Anju nervously giggles. "Oh, dear. I may be the innkeeper here, but I've lived in Clock Town for all my life, so I'm afraid I don't know nearly as much as you'd think. But I can certainly try!"
Link motions for her to hand the notebook back. Anju opens her mouth to speak, wondering why he doesn't just do the same, but she's too polite to make a fuss. It's not like a quiet little boy with a fairy friend even ranks highly on the list of odd characters who've paid a visit to the Stock Pot Inn. Anju pulls out the stool beside Link and sits, hands folded on her lap.
"'Hyrule'?" she questions, leaning to see over Link’s shoulder.
Tatl drags over a salt shaker, unscrews the cap, and dumps the whole thing into the soup bowl while the humans are distracted. Link nods at Anju, wide-eyed and expectant, but she only frowns.
"I've never heard of that place. It must be far away... are you planning to take a trip?"
Tatl flies off again, her sight set on the bundle of dried herbs hanging on the wall. Link shakes his head at Anju's question and writes something else.
"As I've said, I've always lived in Clock Town. If you're looking for the best route to somewhere else, you'd better ask a different person for help. I'm very sorry."
Link wastes another ten minutes and a whole precious page of his notebook quizzing Anju about her bizarrely murky knowledge of the world beyond Termina. Not only has she never heard of Hyrule by name, but she doesn’t recognize the golden crest on his ocarina, and she's never heard of a girl named Zelda. A more general question about princesses elicits a vague description of the Deku royal family in the swamplands to the south, and then nothing more than a blank expression. Clock Town has a mayor, but so far as Link can tell, no human (or Hylian) royalty rules over the land of Termina. Anju has been in charge of the inn for several years, but she can't bring to mind the name of any foreign lands from which her guests have hailed. Eventually the mailman arrives and she excuses herself, hurrying off.
Link's stomach gurgles. A little annoyed about the wasted rupees, he reluctantly takes another sip of broth, which now tastes surprisingly okay. Tatl perches on the edge of the bowl and tears into a morsel of chicken the size of her head.
"Did she tell you anything useful?" she garbles.
Link shrugs.
"Huh!" Tatl swallows and wipes her mouth with a dainty, translucent arm. "Guess you'll be trapped here in Termina for the rest of your life, even if the moon doesn't kill us all. Stinks to be you!"
"..."
Link never planned to go back to Hyrule anytime soon, so he's already resigned himself to figuring out his next move after he's found a way to stop the moon from falling down on everyone's heads. In the meantime, he's braved Woodfall Temple and Snowhead, and once he's eaten and maybe slept a little, he'll try to figure out how to get into the ranch to the south and reclaim Epona, at which point it'll be easy to get past the walls and boulders blocking off the path to the bay. It's all just puzzle-solving, and he's good at that (aside from a certain incident in Snowhead which he'd prefer to forget). Puzzles are easier than dealing with people, though even that's becoming predictable. Unless Link directly interferes, each person in Termina endlessly follows the same path and performs the same set of actions at all the times marked in his notebook, like the turning cogs in the clock tower.
With one exception.
Link licks the spoon clean, then carefully dips it into his milk and offers it to Tatl, since she's too small to drink without practically having to climb down inside the glass. She scrunches her face, but she is awfully thirsty, so she takes a long sip. No word of thanks, of course.
"If you really aren't able to leave, though..." Tatl muses. "You're the biggest goody two-shoes I've met in my life, but Skull Kid definitely can't call himself my friend anymore. Not after this stuff with the moon, and not after he hurt my baby brother."
Link goes back to eating. He can't tell whether Tatl is complimenting or insulting him. Both? In a way it doesn't make a difference, they're stuck with each other until he finds a way to stop Skull Kid.
"Hey, do you have a brother or sister?"
Link looks down at the table and thinks of Saria and Fado and Mido, and the twins, and the three so-called "know-it-all brothers" and the rest. He spent the first eleven years of his life in the forest and now everyone but Saria believes him to be dead or at least gone for good, which he is. Even if Navi hadn't left and Link hadn't done some things that necessitated a quick departure from Hyrule, he knew he only had a few more years before his voice started to change, proving once and for all that he isn't a real Kokiri. It hasn't happened yet and he doesn't know when exactly it will, but the day is coming, so it's better to have had a clean break and be done with it. Better for Saria, most of all. And now Mido will have to look back at his behavior throughout those eleven years and feel remorse instead of getting to crow about being right all along. Good.
"..."
"What, you don't know??? Did your father not..?"
Tatl runs out of steam all of a sudden, fidgets, then leans forward to grab another bit of chicken. She kicks a foot into the soup broth, which is a little gross even to a boy habituated to living on squirrels and wild plants. "...You’re a weird kid, Link," she finally declares.
That should definitely be an insult, but it doesn't feel like one. Beside, Link was led to believe for most of his life that he was born from a talking tree, so he's in no position to say she's wrong about him being weird, or about anything to do with the real father he theoretically had at some point.
"Good thing you've got me around, right?"
"..."
An old man sitting at a table in the corner grumbles about his missing salt. Tatl snickers and hops off the edge of the bowl to shove the empty shaker behind Link's milk glass, while Link takes the opportunity to eat before she can finish picking out all the bits she'd decided she likes.
"So, weird kid. Where are we going next?"