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It’s eleven in the morning of the second day, and Link is beginning to feel a little floaty and unreal. Aside from any other factors in play, he hasn’t slept in about twenty-two hours.
At the base of the underwater cliffs which form a natural wall around the fort, Link-Mikau finds the mouth of a narrow tunnel ringed by splintered planks like broken teeth. The makeshift wooden barrier might have served to keep out Like Likes and stray skeleton fish, but it did nothing to deter Mikau, and Link silently thanks the dead Zora for the straightforward hint at where to go—even if his inborn survival instincts mistrust this whole “gills” business and insist that entering a cramped underwater space is a death sentence. It might be one, though not because of the water. He’s following a path that led someone else to a terrible end, and he’s embarking on this infiltration mission at the worst possible time of day, but time has never exactly been on Link’s side—its patron goddess smirks like Mido as she gives with one hand and takes with the other—so he does the best he can with what he has. He didn't save Mikau's life, so he owes him this much.
None of the Gerudo spearwomen in their small boats bother to look down, trusting that Zora will stay away and that any other would-be intruders would have to pass over the cliffs into the fortress. Link-Mikau kicks lightly and twists around to watch them as he glides past, the boats and armed pirates cleanly silhouetted against the sunlight. Here? he wonders. ...Not here. He swims straight to a drainage pipe with a broken grating and shimmies through before he consciously notices its existence.
The pipe winds through the bowels of the fortress until Link surfaces in a storage room of some sort, with crates and boxes stacked up all along the walls. He gasps instinctually, and Tatl takes a deep breath too—luckily for them both, fairies can hold their breath a lot longer than Hylians—before she flutters up to the window and whisper-shouts, “Link, get down!”
Mikau-Link dives and only resurfaces once he sees a bright pink spot and hears a distorted jingle. He hauls himself out of the water for real this time and follows Tatl to the window, where he sees a guard walking away. He can’t guess where she’s going. With a storage room connected to a water drainage pipe, the floor plan here already doesn’t make sense, and he suspects it must have originally been built for something else, by someone else. Being able to access different sections of the complex by water would be convenient for Zora, though if they were the ones who built this place, then deciding to use those cramped, slimy drainage pipes as hallways on purpose seems a little like designing a luxurious mansion where you have to crawl up through the ceiling like a rat to get from the front hall to the kitchen. Then again, that description mostly matches with the forest temple back in Hyrule. Link already isn’t questioning the sea-pirates who belong to a desert-dwelling tribe, so he decides not to worry too much about the architecture.
He peels off the mask, gritting his teeth to stifle the scream that wants to come out as his gills seal up and his body twists into the shape of a small Hylian. Link can walk silently when he wants, so that’s what he does now, sidling out of the storage room following the lone pirate. At the central area of the fortress, he ducks behind a crate to observe where and when the guards walk or change position. He can’t afford to be hasty, even in the face of a brutal time limit. He doesn’t look toward the sky. He tries not to think about the other places falling to pieces without his help—the freezing Goron village, the poisoned swamp and trapped Deku princess... Link darts out and up the ladder of the central watchtower, evading the notice of a guard just as she turns on her heel to face the direction he’d been in. He tiptoes around another guard and heads deeper into the fortress, but he isn't sure which way to go next, pausing at an intersection between two halls. He slips on the Zora mask, fighting through the transformation, and then thinks: yes, that way.
He enters the next room and is nearly caught when a pirate he hadn’t even seen steps out behind a row of foul-smelling metal barrels, forcing him to roll out of the way into a corner. Here, he thinks, with no prompting. He hears a phantom echo of a startled shout and a brief, frantic scuffle, but none of that happens and none of it is happening, the pirate turns a corner and doesn't look back. Mikau-Link picks himself up and keeps moving.
Four round eggs sit in a huge glass aquarium in the pirate leader’s living quarters. Link has a funny mental image of pirate ladies lounging around on Aveil’s long fancy couch, leaning on the velvet cushions and eating cake as they watch baby Zora swim in a tank like pet fish, but it’s overlaid with uglier things, blood and cruel laughter and the sensation of being pinned down, so he decides it isn’t so funny after all. According to what he’s overheard between Aveil and one of her lackeys, the other three eggs are somewhere called Pinnacle Rock, but four is better than none and the bad thing that happened the other day isn’t happening now, and a voice in his sleepy mind is practically singing.
Tatl stands guard by the door as Mikau-Link slides into the tank to gather up the eggs. They feel a little like the sap-bubbles he can spit as a Deku scrub and a little like giant overripe grapes, with outer membranes must have once been pure blue but are now turning yellow like the sun-faded leaves of a sickly plant. Link-Mikau raises one to the light and sees the shadowy outline of a little face, and his heart leaps despite his worry and exhaustion. Tatl jingles to snap him back to attention. Link-Mikau gently scoops the eggs up into his glass jars, and he never learned how to pray but he silently hopes that the glass doesn't break.
He slings his pack over his shoulder and only makes it two steps out of the room, because the door in the next one is shut and a Gerudo pirate is standing in front of it, scimitars in hand.
“Back again? You’re pretty stubborn,” she says. “I thought we'd gotten rid of you.” Despite the nonchalant words, her eyes flick uncertainly from his face to the distinctive tattoos to his equally distinct lack of any bloody wounds. The Zora she sees before her is the same one her sisters tossed out of the fortress two days ago. She wasn’t the one to catch him but she did see the aftermath, and only a power beyond simple stubbornness could have brought him back here. Aveil always takes things too far and now look who has to clean up her mess, again.
Link-Mikau deflects the first swing more adeptly than she expects, but has to dodge back to avoid a follow-up slash that would’ve gone through his elbow. Mikau’s arms are much longer than Link’s, but the Gerudo’s swords give her greater reach, and the awkward bulk of the jars weighs him down. He’s a little low on magic, too.
“Hmph, at least you learned a little something since last time.”
Link-Mikau hops back to avoid a a slash across the chest. He could make a dash for the door, but then she’d raise the alarm and he would really be in trouble. He could just kill her. He fought Gerudo warriors when he was an adult and he knows what to expect, how she’ll move and attack. But he doesn’t want to. Even after what she and her friends have done. If it comes down to her or the baby Zora, he’ll choose the babies, but it’s wrong to kill people if you have any chance to avoid it.
“Where’s that little friend of yours, by the way? That kid in the green hat—” She feints, and Link-Mikau doesn’t take the bait, though he must look startled because the pirate laughs. “You think I didn’t see him?”
Nervous energy and electric magic flicker through Mikau-Link, blue sparks crackling across the edges of his fins. He lunges to grab at the pirate, but she avoids the attack just as easily as he avoided hers. The pack weighs against his shoulder. Almost out of magic now.
He doesn’t want to kill her, but he can’t let her follow him...
Link-Mikau sets down the pack (part of himself desperately protests) and hooks a thumb under the edge of his mask, peeling it off and swiftly swapping to a new one. The Gerudo’s own mask of smug carelessness drops away as the Zora she had been about to bisect tears off his face, morphs for a half-second into a cringing child, and then looms over her as a Goron.
“What in the—?!” Her scimitar flashes out and bounces straight off the Goron’s rocky hide.
Darmani is sturdier and stronger than Link and Mikau put together, and he could crush a human’s head in his hand, but Link—he’s still Link, not Darmani or Mikau—isn’t borrowing his form to do that. Instead he raises one massive foot and stomps straight down on the side of the Gerudo’s knee. It crunches with a sound like a rabbit’s neck breaking except louder, and she screams as she crumples to the floor, which is not a sound Link enjoys hearing and definitely not in the middle of this fortress, but the screaming means she’s alive and the crunching sound means she won’t be following him, and if her friends are any good then at least some will stay behind to help her instead of chasing him.
Link switches back to the Zora mask, retrieves the pack, and sprints out of the room as the sounds of shouting and running feet spill into the rooms behind him.
Swimming back to the marine research lab, Link-Mikau’s jubilation is only a little tarnished by the sight of what he assumes to be Pinnacle Rock in the distance, a reminder that he has just four of the seven lost eggs in his possession. There’s an ominously dark spot in the depths of the murky water, and that nervous pirate in white had said something about giant sea snakes... it’s a little anticlimactic, but his job isn’t finished yet.
Noontime now, and the moon continues its glacial approach. Tomorrow night, if and when it falls, the Zora will take refuge underwater and die as hellfire sweeps across Termina and the Great Bay boils.
Being the descendant of temple priestess-guardians didn’t grant Lulu any special powers of foresight, so she doesn’t know if the moon will really fall, or when, or what will happen if it does, except that it’ll be bad. Still, like most of those who can't or don’t speak, she understands more than she shows. She watches the moon, watches the water. She isn’t going to hide. Mikau wouldn’t want to hide. He’d rather get into some harebrained scheme to return the moon to normal, never mind that being the descendant of heroes doesn’t make a person invincible, and that as far as Lulu is concerned, the notion of doing anything to the moon except watching it is as ridiculous as trying to kick the sun. Fighting won’t change their fate. Neither will hiding. May as well spare herself the effort and do nothing, Lulu thinks. She would still feel better if Mikau were here with her.
Tijo is here instead. Lulu didn’t hear him come out and doesn’t know how long he’s been waiting for her to speak. She imagines the boys in a nervous huddle as they try to figure out who might have the best chance of getting a response from the sad silent lump she’s become, and she hates herself. Just not enough to force herself into moving.
“Hey, where’s Mikau? I thought for sure he’d be out here with you.”
“...”
“That’s weird. He only just came back after being gone for a while. Where was he, anyway? I asked but he wouldn’t say anything.” Tijo fidgets. “I kinda did break his ladder. He seemed annoyed about it.”
“...”
“Uh, aside from that...”
“...”
“You’ve been standing out here all day.”
“...”
“And you’re gonna get a sunburn.”
“...”
“Don’t you want to come inside?”
Lulu stares out at nothing, letting her eyes unfocus.
“You’re probably super hungry, too...”
“...”
“I could... bring you something... if you want?”
Another minute of this and Lulu is going to cry or strangle sweet Tijo to death, but before either of them get a chance to find out what she’ll do, he exclaims: “Hey, you finally came back! You came back! Now are you gonna explain where you’ve been?"
Lulu blinks. At first, she’d been sure that the Mikau she saw this morning was just a shade, and then she didn’t know what to think. Tijo can see him just as clearly as she does, and the Zora treading water in front of the ledge is beaming up at her with such pure happiness that she doesn’t want to question it. Despite the moon hanging in the sky, if he said everything is all right now, she might actually believe it.
Instead of offering the explanation Tijo wants, Mikau allows his waterlogged fairy companion to answer for him. “Hey, lady, we found all your eggs! They’re over in that research lab, and it looks like they’re about to hatch!”
“...?”
The fairy huffs. “Well, do you want to see them or not?”
If it were just the fairy, Lulu wouldn’t have listened, but Mikau is watching her expectantly, buzzing with the jittery excitement of someone who’s either drunk or dangerously deprived of sleep. A dead spirit can’t get tired. And it’s Mikau. More slowly than he might wish, Lulu sits at the edge of the outcropping and slips down into the water, hurrying up only when he flips around like a dolphin and shoots off toward the marine research lab.
Tijo stays behind on the ledge and scratches his head. Lulu has been glum and quiet for a few days, but Evan never told him any of the details. There were some vague murmurings floating around the Zora hall about trouble with her eggs, but this is the first he’s heard about them being missing. Also the last, until Lulu and Mikau come back. She did move, though, so Tijo counts that as a success. He thinks.
The newborn Zora are bright-eyed and energetic, which wouldn’t have surprised Mikau, but their eggs were violently manhandled, exposed to overly warm water, left at the mercy of pirates and sea monsters, and then manhandled a little more for good measure before finally reaching their nursery tank; the Professor, after hearing the full story from Tatl and turning steadily paler with every word, suggests that the babies stay in his care for further observation. Only for a week, he promises, maybe even less. Lulu is already beyond overwhelmed and next week doesn’t exist as far as Link is concerned, so the Professor easily gets his way.
Lulu floats at the bottom of the nursery tank and hums while she cradles a baby Zora to her chest and wards off a second baby from trying to eat her earring. Link always mimics songs he hasn’t heard before, so he strums along on a fishbone guitar that looks just like the one planted in the sand at the beach. He’s clumsy at best, using his right hand instead of his left for fear that Lulu might notice that “Mikau” is holding his guitar on the wrong side, and the sound doesn’t carry underwater as well as he thought it would, but the babies seem fascinated in what he’s doing anyway, poking and nudging his fingers, which both delights and terrifies him. He drummed a lullaby to soothe the little Goron in the mountain village, but aside from playing music, he doesn’t know what you’re supposed to do with babies, especially ones that look like big tadpoles. He’s still wearing the mask that transforms him into a Zora, but has no whispery half-memories to guide him; they faded to a contented murmur once the babies hatched. His inclination is to pet them like puppies, but he’s pretty sure that’s not right.
He tries to work out what time it is. Almost one, or maybe one-thirty. He has time, but little to spare, and he could be using it to make progress on his quest. He needs to leave soon. It’s not nice but it would be less nice to allow the moon to crash into Termina and kill everyone, babies and Zora-mamas included.
Almost as soon as thoughts of the moon cross Link’s mind—not that they ever leave—the lab shakes as if it were the final hours of the third day, which it isn’t. The Professor stumbles and Tatl, who’s been entertaining herself by teasing the feeder fish in the other tank, buzzes in confusion; the babies squeak and huddle against Lulu or under Link’s elbow. He gently nudges them away and swims up to haul himself out of the tank. An enormous eye is peering in through the window.
“What is THAT?” asks the trembling Professor, and Tatl says the same thing except with more swear words.
Link flips himself out of the tank and runs for the door, Tatl zipping after him. He’s expecting a monster, but instead it’s a turtle the size of three marine research labs put together, with an island for a shell.
“It seems unkind to hurry you, and after I’ve slept for so long... but we cannot afford to delay for much longer.” the turtle yawns and stretches its long neck. “Ahhh... Lulu’s song. I could hear it, of course. Even asleep, I perceive everything that takes place in these waters. Not all of it is... so pleasant. You know exactly what I mean, don’t you?”
Exactly would be generous, but Link watched somebody bleed to death this morning, he’s heard many of the Zora comment about the unnaturally warm water, those eggs were all stolen, and of course there’s the storm hovering on the horizon, so Link has a few guesses about what the turtle is specifically talking about. In any case, he spent most of his life under the protection of a minor god that took the form of a talking tree, so ambiguous and semi-ominous pronouncements are nothing new. Usually best to just nod and go along with what he’s told.
“Yes, the Great Bay is in need of one like you. Come along. Climb up onto my back, and we’ll depart for the temple.”
Link looks back at the research lab, then to Tatl. She flutters her wings in the fairy equivalent to a shrug. “I guess we should...”
“Mikau, wait!” Lulu bursts out of the lab, startling herself just as much as she startles Link and Tatl. One can only imagine what the Professor thinks is going on, much less those poor babies, but she wasn’t the one to see a giant eye and immediately decide to go out and say hello, so Link can’t criticize. “Oh. My voice is... oh.”
The turtle, which doesn’t have lips because it’s a turtle, somehow manages to give the impression of a warm smile. “Hello, Lulu.”
Lulu stares back at the turtle in dead silence, which puzzles Link until remembers that for most people, encountering a region’s semi-mythical guardian spirit is not really a normal occurrence.
“Ah, you must be confused. Regrettably, there is no time for idle conversation. The Great Bay is in need of this proud warrior’s assistance,” intones the great turtle.
“But... he... you only just... You need to leave, Mikau?”
Link nods.
Having no idea of the connection between the song and the turtle, or the turtle and the person she thinks is Mikau, none of this makes little sense to her. But guardian spirits aren’t exactly creatures to be argued with, so she turns to the person who she should be able to understand. “Why? You’ve been... everything’s been so strange... why haven’t you been speaking? You... haven’t been acting like yourself.”
Link looks to Tatl for help. Tatl wants to ask Lulu why she hasn’t been speaking, just to be annoying, but this seems like a bad time. “Um—”
“I asked Mikau.”
Tatl makes a funny mosquito-whine Link has only heard once before, in the moments after she and Tael were separated.
”Is something wrong, Mikau? And where did that fairy even come from?”
This isn’t a situation Link had thought to prepare for, because until now, no one’s ever questioned his behavior while he wore someone else’s face; the Deku scrubs thought he was just some random kid and ignored him, and the Gorons were so delighted by their hero’s miraculous return from the dead that “Darmani” could’ve walked around meowing at everyone and they wouldn’t have cared. He’s told himself that it doesn’t matter anyway, since nobody will remember anything he tells them once he’s gone back to the first day, but he hasn’t done that yet and I’m the meantime Lulu sounds so hurt and confused right now. He doesn’t know her but that makes no difference.
The turtle lets out a long sigh like the hiss of rain on the water as Link turns away. It senses the corruption seeping through the bay even more acutely than its Zora children, but snatching up its chosen champion in its beak and dragging him screaming into the temple isn’t going to help.
“I... was afraid that something... might have happened to you.”
“...”
”Are you... angry at me? Tijo... noticed that you’ve been... well, he thought you seemed upset.” Lulu hugs herself. “You could just tell me. I know that... well... the eggs... it’s my fault, I guess, isn’t it? I’ve put you through horrible things.”
Link shakes his head, hard.
“Then what’s going on?”
The turtle’s impatient stare bores holes through his back, and Tatl pokes him.
”It may be simpler to just... show her,” she whispers.
It’s hard to think while he’s being stared at. There’s only a day and a half left in this cycle. Even after Termina is saved, he can’t spend the rest of his life pretending to be somebody else, he’s still just Link beneath the mask. Maybe it doesn’t even matter what he does, except for what he does to stop the moon from falling. But Lulu sounds so sad, and she wouldn’t be sad if he had found a way to save Mikau, but he didn’t, and now she’ll be sad no matter what he does. He doesn’t like lying, and Tatl wouldn’t steer him wrong. Not on purpose. Probably.
For the second time in as many hours, Link takes off the mask to reveal his true self, pretending it doesn’t hurt when his body changes back to that of a human boy—actually a Hylian, but nobody in Termina seems to know of Hyrule or recognize any distinction, so the word wouldn’t be in Lulu’s vocabulary. Link looks down at his feet.
He’s lucky to be a child. If it had been a heavily-armed adult impersonating Lulu’s lover and treating those eggs as if they were his own, sitting in that nursery tank with her defenseless babies... she isn’t pleased, but Link is half her size and looks like he might start crying, which goes a long way in quelling a more violent reaction.
”H...how did... who are you?!” Lulu asks, already hopelessly lost.
“He’s Link,” Tatl says. “I’m Tatl. And he’s... we’re... it’s a long story, okay? But we have a good reason for this. Termina’s going to—“
“You've... been pretending to be Mikau? For how long? Where is he? Wh-where did that mask come from?”
The turtle-god of the Great Bay rumbles in dissatisfaction, and somehow it is not the most relevant entity here (including the obscenely huge moon watching from on high) because Lulu ignores it. She stands over Link and shrinks away until the heels of his boots are at the edge of the platform. He clutches the mask to his chest and looks to Tatl with the desperation of one who’s already drowning. He shouldn’t have taken the mask off, he thinks. It was stupid, Tatl was wrong.
Tatl places herself in front of Link and jingles. “It’s magic. There’s a song he plays that makes masks, and the masks can... change how he looks,” she explains. “He’s done it before, and it’s for a good reason. We’re trying to save Termina!”
“Where is Mikau?” Lulu demands. Tatl’s avoided answering her question, twice.
“He... he’s... we didn’t do anything to him, okay?! We didn’t! I’m sorry, and Link is sorry too, but—”
“Where is Mikau?”
“The pirates killed him... the same ones who stole your eggs. I’m sorry. But we didn’t hurt him, we found him afterward and he told us, on the beach... Link tried to save him, but he was already... already... it didn’t work. Link can borrow how people look, but we didn’t do anything to Mikau. I swear.”
Link’s eyes are squeezed shut. He doesn’t like this he doesn’t want to be here, he wants to just go to the temple and kill whatever’s lurking in there and then leave. He would jump on the turtle’s back but for all he knows, Lulu might grab him before he can escape; she’s less of a physical threat than one of those Gerudo pirates and an infinitely lesser threat than the kinds of monsters he regularly kills, but a fight with somebody he’s been trying to help wouldn’t be one where anybody wins.
“That mask.” Lulu says, her voice strained. “What is it. Why does it look like him.”
“I told you,” Tatl says.
”Give it to me.”
Link holds out the mask, and Lulu regrets her demand almost immediately; he’s been wearing it for hours and it’s warm from being pressed against his skin. It feels like skin. It feels like she’s holding Mikau’s face, but it’s a mask, and the eyes are just empty holes, she can see her fingers behind them. Lulu stares. She can’t stop staring.
“We didn’t do anything,” Tatl insists. “It’s not my fault. If we were bad people, we wouldn’t have risked our lives to get you your eggs back, right?”
Lulu doesn’t seem to hear. She runs a thumb down the edge of the mask, fascinated and revolted.
The great turtle lets out a rumbling hum. “Judging personal morals... hmm... that isn’t a question for me to answer, I think... but I can back up little Tatl’s story. —Yes, I know your name,” it interrupts itself. “...My eyes have been closed in sleep, but I see many things. It is as she says. Unfortunately, your Mikau was killed by the Gerudo. Link did what he could to heal his soul, and as a result, this mask was formed. And now... or so I believe, unless all this delay means he’s changed his mind... Link intends to use it to save the Great Bay, and restore it to its unblemished state. Isn’t that right?”
Link nods. When Lulu doesn’t say anything, he slowly steps back and off the platform, hopping up onto the lowest edge of the turtle’s shell.
“Link, the mask...” Tatl hisses in his ear.
He shakes his head and turns back to Lulu, gesturing with both hands to say, you keep it.
It’s all too much for her, too much. Mikau is gone after all and somehow his exact likeness has been made into a mask, or maybe it was made from him—she doesn’t fully understand that part—and it’s perfectly fine for this boy she’s never met to pretend to be him because the god of the bay says it is. Maybe this is a long strange dream, she thinks, like in their song about the girl living on an island dreamed by a fish. Maybe she’ll wake up. None of what she’s been told feels real. Mikau is dead. The bay’s guardian saw it. (And did nothing.) He didn’t even return to her as a dead spirit after all.
“Link... here. You can take it.” She holds out the mask and thinks, please, just take it. She doesn’t want to be holding it anymore, it takes all her self-control to stop herself from just dropping it. It’s a mask. It feels like a face. It isn’t Mikau.
Link looks at her uncertainly.
“It... if the bay’s guardian says... it sounds like you’ll need it more.”
Tatl nudges Link until he steps up. He doesn’t look at Lulu as he takes back the mask, and she doesn’t look at him as he transforms. He jumps off the platform and climbs up onto the back of the turtle. The door to the lab opens and closes.
“What on earth was that?” the Professor asks.
Lulu ignores him. She climbs back up the ladder beside the nursery tank.
The Professor scratches his scruffy wisp of a beard. There’s a reason why he chose to devote his life to learning about marine creatures, and it wasn’t because he was any good with you’d call this sort of thing. “Did you two have a... bit of a disagreement while you were outside..?”
Lulu stands at the edge and lets herself fall backwards into the tank, sinking slowly to lie at the bottom. Her babies wiggle and swarm around her, seeking reassurance, so she pulls the nearest one close and kisses its little face. One of its siblings goes straight for her earring. She offers a silent prayer to the goddess of time, and to the god of the bay as well, since it claims to be listening. Please protect them. Please.
And then she thinks, dazedly, seven names. Even if that moon doesn’t... even if... ...how in the world will she think of seven..?
Link sits cross-legged with his back to one of the palm trees as the turtle swims out to the temple. He has that look in his eyes again, which isn’t even a particular look so much as the pronounced absence of one. Tatl doesn’t like that it’s shown up often often enough to be recognizable as that look. She settles on his knee.
“Link... how about we don’t tell people the truth, after all,” Tatl says. “Not like that, anyway.”
He nods, impassive, then lets his head tip back to rest against the tree’s trunk.
By this point, for Link, the venture through the Great Bay Temple and the recovery of the fifteen lost fairies is a somewhat perfunctory effort. He ignites torches, turns switches, and illuminates colorful glass-and-wire tubes running along the walls, which Mikau could have identified as lights running on hydroelectric power and which Link simply regards as one of the many mysteriously-glowing things he’s seen in his life. After a few encounters with slime monsters plus one very large and pugnacious frog, Link collects all that he needs to reach to the final room at record speed, and Gyorg dies under a hail of ice arrows, bombs, and electrified fin attacks.
“Help our friend,” commands the awakened giant, which is what Link and Tatl planned to do anyway. There are four, after all, and this is the third. Like its counterparts, it has the proportions of a child’s drawing—spindly limbs, a round body, a ridiculous face with a shaggy beard and wide-set, melancholy eyes. Link stands on a tall pillar in an abstract, hazy nowhere, and still the giant looms infinitely. “Help our friend.” It melts into the milky fog.
Link and Tatl wake up outside the Zora hall. Lulu isn’t there to see them, but they don’t know for sure and don’t want to take a risk. Through wordless agreement, they drop the stray fairies off at their fountain and flee to dry land.
One giant remains.