Work Text:
The old tavern sitting in the middle of the small town is nestled between a tailor and a shoemaker’s shop, right on the edge of the central market place. As always when he’s here, Link’s aching feet carry him directly towards the tavern. He moves slowly and stiffly from the cold that had gotten through his clothes and chilled him to the bone.
In the dull light of the overhung sky, the wooden building looks worn and ancient, made part of the scenery by lush climbing plants scaling all the way up to the roof. The warm light streaming from its windows promise shelter and comfort like no other place Link has visited in Hyrule so far. On the window sills, colorful blooming flowers in pots lighten the dreary mood from the weather and the lack of people out and about.
Link opens the heavy, creaking door to the tavern and steps inside. Warmth engulfs him from all sides, caressing his face and burrowing into his clothes to chase away the chill from his travels. Behind him, the door gently clicks shut, keeping the cool, damp air outside.
It’s quiet here and empty save for an elderly woman drying glasses with a worn cloth behind the wooden counter across the room. She looks up without pausing her work when he enters, smiling as she recognizes him. On the left, a fire crackles happily in a wide hearth, half-hidden behind a table for six. It’s flickering fiery-orange glow softens the bright noon light coming in from the windows on either side of the door. Between the counter and the hearth, an open door at the back of the main room leads to what Link suspects is the kitchen. The most amazing scents come from there whenever he visits. Today, it’s likely a stew with meat and Link’s mouth begins to water.
He sits down at a free table next to the windows off to the left side and close to the hearth, his back to the wall so he can both look outside and see the whole tavern. His bag goes under the table with one foot touching it. Already, his hurting fingers begin to thaw and he feels his muscles relax minutely as warmth slowly returns to his limbs. Absently, he rubs his thighs to get them to warm up quicker and takes a look around.
There is an unlit candle on the table this time, accompanied by a tiny pot with a few twigs of fresh pine. Otherwise, nothing much has changed since his last visit. Still the same wooden interior, the same paintings decorating the walls, the same view of the weapons shop from across the nearly empty market place that sells some of the sturdiest arrows you can find. His cushioned wooden chair is worlds more comfortable than the ground he had been sitting out on in the wilderness, he’s finally a semblance of warm again and predictably, he starts feeling a little bit sleepy.
The elderly woman, who owns this tavern, puts down her rag and comes over to his table. She’s a homey, motherly type, full of hospitality like nowhere else Link has seen.
“The usual, honey? We’ve got bean stew on today.”
Link blinks, positively surprised. Has he been here that often already? “Yes, please, that sounds wonderful. And a cup of tea, if you have some.”
“Of course,” she says and takes a match from a pocket on her apron and lights the candle on his table. Her tone is friendly and a touch concerned, as she says, “I’m happy you’ve found your way back here. I’ve been wondering where you’ve been.”
So he really has been coming here often enough to be remembered. An odd feeling, if Link is honest, used to being around monsters instead of people as he is. It touches something in his heart, being known like this. At shops, he is merely another customer, another face for the salesperson to forget. There are no other interactions to speak of beyond fights.
Touched, he tells her honestly, “I like coming here. It’s cozy. I travel a lot and it’s comforting to have a place where there’s a warm meal, a sturdy chair, and a friendly face.”
“Oh, deary,” the old woman says gently. She makes an aborted motion with her arm, as if she stopped herself from reaching out to him. Something in Link wished she hadn’t. “You go ahead and relax then. I’ll get your food in a second. If you want to chat, just let me know.”
He nods and she walks away. Instead of going directly to the kitchen like every other time, she stops by the hearth to put in another log and stoke the fire. The heat from the hearth spreads more thoroughly throughout the room, reaching even the farthest and draftiest nooks. Only then does she go into the kitchen.
Link doesn’t have to wait long. He has just gotten comfortable watching the few people going about their business outside his window, when the old woman returns with a tray and his order. She brings him a bigger bowl than usual, some bread, a wooden spoon and a cup of water and tea each and then leaves to let him eat.
It all smells delicious and despite his hunger, Link makes himself drink half of the cup of water first. The cold always makes him forget how thirsty he is and he has learned the hard way to drink enough water each day.
It’s a slow day, the late midday keeping most people in their homes and out of the tavern. Link relishes in the quiet solitude as he takes measured sips of his water. Behind the counter, the tavern woman unobtrusively busies herself and it makes Link feel not quite so alone.
When the cup is half-empty, he sets the cup down and takes the spoon in his hand, pulling the bowl of stew closer.
The stew is hearty and filling, despite the few ingredients. Beans, potatoes, onions and meat. It warms him from the inside out, chasing away the soreness in his muscles with each bite. With relish, he eats each spoonful and all too soon he scrapes his plate. How is this so delicious every time?
Full, he leans back in his chair and savors the moment with his cup of herbal tea. It has been a while since he has been safe, sated and warm, traveling through the dangerous countryside in winter like he does. He has earned this reprieve and he intends to make the most of it. Unlike when he set out to save Princess Zelda and Hyrule a few years back, there is no time pressure for his current quest. Link had tried staying in a place, several times in fact, but after a time, he always got the itch to travel.
The castle is where he held out the longest so far. Link has a room there, and it’s where he’ll return to once he has had enough of traveling. Until he gets the urge to move again, at least. Roaming, exploring every last inch of this country and discovering treasures where he goes. He is grateful that Zelda, while she doesn’t completely understand his need to wander, supports him in his travels and makes sure he’ll have a place to return to.
If only there weren’t quite so many monsters behind every corner. They’ve been getting bolder and more numerous recently...
Link shakes his head, refocusing on the here and now. The tavern, where he can rest without having to return to the busy castle. He’s sipping the tea and watching though the window on his side as the clouds drift by, when the tavern woman comes back to his table.
“All good?”
He nods, too drowsy from the good food to answer with words. The tea mug feels wonderfully warm on his rough palms.
“Can I get you anything else?”
Smiling gratefully, he shakes his head no.
“You get some rest, then, lad.”
She walks back to the counter and continues tending her tavern. Plates dried and put away, another two small logs into the lit hearth by the kitchen, bookkeeping at another table. The woman seems unhurried and content in her quiet work, idly keeping busy. From time to time, clattering pots and someone singing quietly can be heard from the kitchen.
Outside, the sun has managed to sneak through a tiny gap in the thick cloud cover. Her light doesn’t do much to lift the dreary mood of the season but it’s enough to cheer Link up even more. There are more people out and about in the town now, too, going this way and that and occasionally stopping for a friendly chat with their neighbor. He finishes his mug of tea in one big swallow and puts it down next to the empty bowl in front of him.
Link isn’t homesick much anymore these days, and visiting this peaceful little village reminds him of home enough to keep the melancholy at bay. Back in Calatia, they would be preparing for spring just like the villagers here. Getting the plots ready for the seeds, cleaning house and mending clothes and tools they would need in the coming seasons.
A new steaming mug is gently placed in front of him. The fragrance drifting up from the mug indicates it as the same herbal tea he has been drinking here since his first day.
Link looks up to the tavern woman and takes the new mug. “Thank you.”
“You look like you need it, love,” the woman says kindly, gathering the empty dishes in her hands. “You come here so often and you always look so cold and thin.”
“Coming here makes me feel better,” he admits. It still feels weird, being seen like this. He had thought he’d be invisible, just another unremarkable face that comes to her tavern.
“Happy to hear that. We don’t usually get travelers in these parts, you know?”
Link nods. The only ones he has met outside the towns borders in all of the land he has been to far and wide are monsters. With a few rare exceptions, they aren’t talkative or friendly and Link can’t imagine they would go into a town.
“Say, young man,” the old woman starts, more hesitant now, “do you have a bit of time today? I’ve been meaning to show you something, if you’d like.”
Taken by surprise, Link reacts before he thinks and nods. “Yeah.” Then his mind catches up to her offer and he wonders what he just agreed to. His heart tells him it’ll be alright and it’s never led him astray.
The woman smiles, her wrinkled face radiant in the dim light of day and the flickering hearth, as if he had just made a dream come true. She waves him forward, suddenly full of vigor. “Come, come!” She says and motions for the kitchen. “Take your mug, or it’ll go cold.”
Link takes his still steaming mug of tea, remembers to grab his bag from under the table at the last second, and follows her surprisingly fast walk to the kitchen at the back of the tavern.
It’s warm in here, the air filled with steam and a multitude of scents. On the left, a middle-aged man is busy peeling vegetables on a counter. A high pile of red carrots and another of cabbage are already waiting on his side. Several boxed filled with more food line the floor beneath the working space. In the middle, another, smaller counter is build around a big hearth with a chimney at the top.
A middle-sized pot is happily bubbling away over the fire within the hearth. Above it, and in the shelving below the counter, Link can see various pots and pans crammed into the limited space. On the right, A cupboard, a tub for washing dishes and another counter line the wall. Shelves go all around the walls, packed to the brim with kitchen items. In several places in the back, dried herbs hang in bundles from the ceiling, guiding the way through the open far door and likely to a yard behind the building or a basement.
“Have you ever made stew before?”
He puts his mug and bag down where she tells him to and waits. She grabs them a cutting board and a small knife each, setting them on the right-side counter. She gets them vegetables and sausages, and shows him how to prepare them when he tells her he doesn’t know.
Link learns quickly and they steadily work away at their vegetable pile. It’s for the evening, the old woman tells him, when many people stop by here. Her son, the man cutting the carrots, could use the help. The old woman fills the quietness with idle chatter about the townsfolk and songs.
His family back in Calatia likes to cook, too, but they’re more used to frying food in pans or roasting it over fire. Link has learned early on how to make and tend to a fire, how to let it heat food on a stick until it’s edible. In Hyrule, things are different and that includes food. Different vegetables, different methods of preparing, different utensils and he barely has a clue how to use them. So, he’d stuck to what he knows but without the seasoning, the right vegetables and some of the cooking utensils he’d had back home, his attempts at cooking were sad at best. Edible, but not satisfying for the soul. Gradually, he had shifted to food he didn’t really have to prepare and taken to eating warm meals mostly at the tavern.
He can’t express how happy he is that somebody is teaching him how to use what he has available even if the woman apparently thinks he’s starving out there and has no idea how to make any food. Someday, he vows, he’ll get Calatian food and show her how to make it.
Half an eternity later, all their vegetables are washed, peeled and cut. The woman shows him how to cut the sausages, saying it’s easier than learning how to properly cut meat in a single afternoon.
Together, they lift a large, heavy pot from below up to the hearth and fill it with water. They let it sit for a while until the water is nearly boiling. In go the vegetables and the sausages and the woman takes a big wooden spoon to stir gently.
“And now we wait.” She wipes her hands on her apron. “In the meantime, we can clean up a little and cut some of those herbs.”
While they work, they let the pot boil for a bit. Link is fascinated by the way the simple ingredients become one of the stews he eats here regularly. From the taste alone he would have thought it was more complicated to make because they are so delicious. Then again, he is used to eating dried foods, nuts, bread and hard cheese, so nothing to compare, really. Grinning, he looks at the old woman, happy to be included in such a secret.
When the old woman determines the stew ready, they taste test it with small spoons. She adds some more herbs, a different kind with tiny green leaves, and whispers, winking “Secret ingredient.”
Link laughs cheerfully.
With a poker, the old woman divides the embers below the pot to lower the heat and to keep the stew merely warm instead of simmering.
“Now you can make it whenever you like and my poor old heart won’t have to worry as much when you’re out there on your travels,” she says.
“Thank you. I’ll get a pot as soon as I can,” he promises.
The woman looks at him incredulously as if he’s just told her the strangest thing. Promptly, she marches to the hearth and digs around in the mishmash of pots and pans underneath until she emerges with a small metal pot half the size of Link’s head.
She pushes it into his hands, insistently. “Take this.”
“But- “ He’s cut off by her simply leaving for the front room of the tavern and he hurries after her, the little pot clutched closely in his hands and bag hastily thrown over his shoulder. By the time he enters the main room, she’s wiping down the counter as if nothing happened and whistling a happy little tune that reminds him of a forest’s treetops dancing in the wind.
Unsure how to proceed, he hesitantly approaches the counter. Figuring he can’t go too wrong with settling his tab, he takes the pot in one hand and pulls out his wallet with the other.
“What do I owe you?”
“Five rupees, my dear.”
Link looks up sharply. That’s the usual price. “But the cooking lesson? The- the pot?”
“On the house.” The woman waves him off gently. “As a treat for our regular customer.”
For a moment, Link is stunned speechless by her generosity. Then he ekes out a touched “Thank you, madam.”, shoulders scrunched up shyly, and hands her the rupees.
“You be good now, love.”
Link relaxes again. There is no trap here, he reminds himself. Sometimes people are that nice. The little pot feels sturdy and looks well loved. Carefully, he puts the gift in his bag and bows as he says goodbye to the old woman.
She waves as he leaves for the door, smiling with her whole body. “Come back soon!”
Link raises a hand back, waving and cheerfully calls. “I will!”
Warmth in every fiber of Link’s body, he leaves the cozy tavern and walks out into the frosty town. Something has settled in him. The cold doesn’t seem so biting anymore even with the wind chill and going back out into the wilderness has regained more of its wonder. There is still danger, he still misses his loved ones, and his quest won’t wait forever but it all feels less dreadful and somber to Link now.
In the late afternoon, the light is already fading into twilight and the few townspeople outside are heading either home or to the tavern for a bit of company. Instead of leaving right away or going to the tiny inn on the other edge of Rauru town, as has been his routine here, Link heads for the food shop down the road. The small pot the old woman has gifted him clinks against a potion bottle in his bag with each step. It’s a promise and a reminder, all in one.