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As the morning sun shines over the mountains and the last of the ghosts evaporate in the light, Link slides off Epona's back and goes flying as Romani barrels into him, the farm girl's arms just about crushing the air out of his lungs. Epona stands quiet as the pair tumbles through the dewy grass, but nervously snorts and trots off as Tatl zips past; as long as her boy is with her, she'll willingly run toward dangers that would make a lion tremble, but that doesn't mean she has to like this bright, quick-moving thing darting near her face. It reminds her of the rough, noisy forest-child with the ugly mask.
"We did it! Romani knew she picked a good helper when she found you!" Romani hugs Link even harder, and he manages a grin despite the lack of air plus the bruises hidden under his tunic, lingering mementos from Snowhead. Romani's happy because the cow thieves only ever appear on the second-to-last night before the carnival, so her and her sister's livelihood is secure for another year; Link is happy because Romani is happy, and because he's seen what happens when he doesn't arrive soon enough to help her.
Romani peers down at Link, still sitting on his stomach. "Is Grasshopper okay?" she asks. "He looks worried all of a sudden."
"He just looks squished to me," Tatl snickers.
Link flashes a thumbs-up. Satisfied, Romani beams and clambers off so she can go retrieve her dropped bow. Link is accustomed to fighting alone and Romani gave up on try to solicit help from her sister against the sky-ghosts years ago, but they at least managed not to get in each other's way. Link jogged in loops through the pasture all night, alternating between riding Epona and running with the bunny hood as he destroyed clusters of ghosts with his fire arrows while Romani stationed herself on the barn roof and efficiently picked off whichever intruders managed to slip past, or which materialized too far from Link for him to intercept. Her aim is good. If there hadn't been so many, she could have handled the whole operation herself.
"It's almost time for Sister to get up, so I need to get back to bed," Romani announces. "Do you and your fairy friend have a place to go now? You can come inside and sleep in our room too, if you want!"
Link politely refuses. Once Romani lets herself back into the farmhouse, he flops back down onto the grass. He took a nap the day before, so as long as he keeps busy, he should stay functional well into the third day. His feet are sore, though. And his ribs. And his arm where a Wolfos bit him a few days ago—it was his left arm, too, so stitching it up was a real pain.
The sun is rising. The moon is glaring down.
Epona snorts, nibbling Link's hair, and he reaches up to scratch her neck. He's known since the second or third cycle that she's been safe here at the ranch, but without the ability to impersonate a Goron and buy powder kegs to quickly destroy the boulder in the road, he was never able to do much more than reach through the gaps in the fence while the third day wore on and the ground rumbled. Now that they're back together, he won't let anyone scare her or take her away again.
As Link picks himself up and clambers onto Epona's back, he silently promises to feed her lots of extra carrots, as many as she could possibly want, as soon as they leave Termina. For now, he lightly taps his boot to her side, directing her to trot away from the farmhouse and along the dirt path leading away from the ranch. According to the map he bought from the creepy balloon man, the bay is to the west of Clock Town, northwest relative to here.
The grass rustles around Epona's hooves and green and red Chuchus make glorping noises at him, but they're too slow to ever catch up, so he ignores them.
"How did a little squirt like you manage to afford a horse like this one, anyway?" Tatl asks. "Some broken-down old nag would be one thing, but a real horse... she must've cost you a fortune."
"..."
"Were you secretly rich even before we started traveling through time?"
"..."
"No, it can't be that. Humans with money don't eat the things you do."
"..."
"Are you a rancher's kid, or something?"
"..."
"Did'ja steal her?"
Link contorts his face like he just tasted something sour and vigorously shakes his head, but a reaction is a reaction and Tatl instantly pounces.
"Hee hee, so you did! You did!!! Who could've guessed? All along you've been acting like such a goody two-shoes... you, a horse thief!" She jingles with glee. "You could be hanged for that, you know."
"..."
A more talkative Link could point out how a certain fairy participated in the theft of a horse and an ocarina not too long ago. Since he isn't that person, he clucks his tongue and urges Epona on as they approach the walls blocking off the path to the bay. She breaks into a gallop and Tatl bounces straight off Link's shoulder with a panicked squeal. He hangs on tight as Epona leaps over the first wall, and then the second, air whipping past his face; for a moment he's only riding, Tatl and Termina and the Skull Kid and the moon all forgotten.
Epona clears the last jump with ease, her hooves kicking up sprays of sand before she slows back down to a trot, then stops. The sky is pale blue here, silhouetting an oddly-shaped building stationed on a platform out over the water, and beyond it, palm trees on the scattered rocky outcroppings like miniature islands. The swirling storm off in the distance is a little less pleasant to see, but Link breathes in deep, enjoying the warm salt air. Epona's ear flicks.
Tatl finally catches up and bangs into the side of Link's head like an angry hummingbird. "That was a dirty move, you jerk! Don’t you know you should be nice to girls?!?!"
He gives her an innocent look, which she answers with a pinch, but then something else catches her attention. A swarm of sea gulls is circling over the bay, shrieking and diving to peck something floating in the open water. Tatl flies up higher, but she can't tell what it is, so she jingles for Link's attention. "Hey, what's going on over there?"
The birds are making it hard to see and the half-submerged shape is... Link assumes they're picking at a fish. A dead marlin, or something. But its silhouette is all strange. He gives Epona a last pat, signaling that it's okay to wander off and graze, then jumps down. His boots crunch slowly across the damp sand. With his mind on fish, Link doesn't understand what he's looking at until he recognizes the outline of a tattooed arm, a shoulder.
He snatches a rock off the ground and throws it at the nearest bird, shouting as loud as he can. The struck bird squawks, shedding a puff of white feathers, and the rest of the flock scatters in every direction as he rushes into the water.
The Zora was still moving and talking when Link dragged him up onto the beach, but he was as good as dead since before he was thrown into the bay to be pecked by hungry birds. Link tried to help but nothing did, not the blue potion or his rudimentary first-aid skills. Too much blood is in the sand and water from injuries he couldn't have sewn shut with any amount of thread. Applying pressure only seemed to hurt the Zora and did nothing to stop the bleeding.
His name was Mikau, he'd said, and as Link held him upright and tried to coax him into drinking, he rambled about stolen Zora eggs and his band and the pirates near the cape, and Lulu—he kept repeating that name, Lulu. Link must have seen what was coming by then, because he'd put away the potion bottle and eased Mikau back down onto the warm sand, and just listened until the Zora switched to mumbling something about his soul, then went horribly quiet. Link took out his ocarina and Tatl crawled under Link's hat.
She burrows into his damp hair with her hands over her ears, but she can still hear the song he's playing, the soft hollow notes form a lullaby over the waves but there's nothing comforting about it, she doesn't want to hear this.
This Mikau guy's an idiot, she tells herself. If he was stupid enough to bring a guitar with him while trying to infiltrate a pirate fortress then he deserves to die, and if he didn't want eggs to worry about, well, maybe he should've thought of that before getting his smelly girlfriend knocked up in the first place.
Those are the kinds of jabs she might whisper into Tael's ear to make him laugh, but the person she's really thinking about is Skull Kid. He did bratty, mean, stupid things even before he called the moon down, and so did she and Tael, but he would never actually kill anybody, and she and her brother would never help him kill anybody or steal Zora eggs—masks or money or a horse, yes, because it's fun, but not babies. She has limits, and if Skull Kid had ever tried to make her do such a thing, she would've told him to shove it. The pirates killed Mikau. She never killed anyone. She knows nothing about the kid whose soul became the Deku mask, and Darmani was dead before she and Link found him, and maybe Skull Kid had something to do with the blizzard and whatever happened with Goht up in Snowhead, but maybe he didn't know what he was doing, she didn't know what he'd done, she had nothing to do with it, and anyway Darmani chose to go up there himself, he didn't have to go to Snowhead, if he'd just waited a few more days Link could've done it for him and everything would be fine. She doesn't have to help Link save Termina but she's choosing to do it anyway. And Mikau... who is she kidding, he had no choice except to try and rescue those eggs. But Skull Kid has nothing to do with him or the pirates, this would've happened no matter what Skull Kid did and it isn't his fault or her fault or Tael's fault, sometimes bad things just happen, she was with them right up until they found Link and they never went anywhere near the bay, the pirates stole those eggs, when Link brings the stray fairies home after each temple the Great Fairies smile at her, not that she cares. Even if Skull Kid did do something horrible, it’s not her fault, she's not even his friend anymore, she's been helping Link, it's not her fault. It's not her fault. She didn't do anything. It's not her fault. Those eggs are probably gonna hatch into ugly babies anyway.
The song trails away into quiet, and Link lets out a small, startled gasp. When Tatl steels herself to peek out from under the hat, there's blood smeared across the sand but no barely-breathing Zora. No corpse. Only a mask.
Link's fingers comb through his bangs, scooping Tatl out onto a palm as tough as boot-leather and crusted all over with red, but she doesn't have it in her to fuss. There's a faraway look in his eyes as he offers her a weak smile, asking without words if she's okay. Tatl glares venomously.
"Shut up."
"..."
"Your hair's all wet and gross. It got my face wet."
"..."
Tatl sniffles and Link's expression flattens back out into blankness. This is clearly Tatl's first time, so it's natural for her to be upset. He's already witnessed death, so it doesn't bother him anymore. Not really.
He puts the ocarina away, sets Tatl down on a clean bit of driftwood, and stands up. He can't remember what he should be doing. He looks over the stretch of beach where he's been sitting and remembers. There's no body to bury, but the place looks about as much like a murder scene as to be expected, and the fishbone guitar is still there, washed up on the shore. Link distantly wonders what'll happen when he plays the song of time again. It restored Romani's mind when he went back to before the sky-ghosts took her, but he never saw Darmani's ghost again once he obtained the Goron mask.
The waves crash. Link kneels and piles up the bloodstained sand, scooping it all together in a heap. Once he's gathered as much as he can, he digs down into the sandy beach with his hands, far enough from the water so it won't be swept away and deep enough (he hopes) that the birds won't get to it. He buries the clumps of bloodied sand, leaves a mound over them, and then goes to retrieve the guitar. Planted at the head of the rough grave, it stands taller than he is.
It's mid-morning by the time Link is finished. The drifting clouds obscure the sun and the moon hovers in front of the clouds. The Zora mask sits and waits.
He picks it up.
The Deku mask is made of rough wood streaked with sap beneath the eyes; the Goron mask is pebbled like Dodongo hide. Warmed by sand and sunlight, this one feels like smooth skin.
In the sound of the rushing waves, Link can almost hear it breathing.