Wednesday, January 1st, 2020

What is hopefully the last busy evening begins

[info]sleepinghero
There was tomorrow in Gerudo Town, but they were going to be home for dinner, thank you.

The morning gave over to the noon hour, and into the early afternoon quietly up at the Hateno Tech Lab.

Mostly.

Link wouldn't be Link if he didn't stir shit pots occasionally, so he occasionally inserted himself into the conversation the science nerds were having, actually offering helpful suggestions, but always in a way that made them give him dirty looks.

Hey, they were talking about improving kitchen technology. They'd want the input of someone who'd be making the most use of those things. It wasn't his fault that the technical talk bored him enough that he had to spice it up.

Speaking of spices, he did take a moment to turn his helpful expert advice into a scolding to Symin and Purah for their shittastic collection of cooking spices. He received an eyeroll from Zelda, a tolerantly patient look from Symin, and a puffed-up bird impression from Purah.

Tough, they weren't eating right, Link wasn't going to let that go.

It was much earlier in the day than Link was expecting when the Sword told him the women were close enough that if he and Zelda left the lab now, they could meet them at the town gate.

It was still late afternoon; a check on the Slate said 3:26. But Link wasn't expecting them before 4. They made good time. He hoped they didn't push Zumi too fast to try to get to town early for them. Even if Zumi wasn't having what were apparently more issues with morning sickness than should be normal, that was going to make her feet swell and there was nothing not painful about swollen feet.

He set aside the history book that he'd found on one of shelves that Symin had claimed for his research. Symin was interested in how technology affected geopolitics in history, and the technology part was frustrating to get through. He liked what it did, but given that it failing was one of the big factors that made them lose against Ganon the first time, he wasn't interested in its role in history for awhile. Maybe something to pay more attention to later, after Zelda's ideas and plans started going from the development stage to the public testing stage, but for now, he was happy to let that part of his own personal history stay in the background.

He had enough in his memories to sort through, he didn't need to linger on the parts that he remembered that were the ghosts that would cause the nightmares he losing the energy to outrun.

But, the Sword had come to his rescue as he was just starting to have trouble finding more parts in the book that didn't focus on the technology as much.

"You wanna go down to the town gate and meet your new hairdresser and save her and her fiance from any potential scares Nack might give them if he decides to multiply his paranoia by a bunch today?" he asked Zelda, closing the book and standing up. "The Sword says they're finally here."
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Sunday, July 15th, 2018

Honest liars

[info]womanwhowatches
Yammo had been born on the road, had ended up facing it alone from a young age- just barely into her teens -when she and her mother had accidentally crossed paths with a Lynel. Her mother had provided a distraction just long enough for Yammo to get away, but Yammo wouldn't even pretend to hope that maybe her mother had gotten away as well, and they'd meet back up somewhere. She wasn't going to double back later to see if she could find her mother's body; it was too dangerous, and if she got killed because she doubled back, her mother had died for nothing, and that didn't sit well with her.

But even without seeing a body to confirm her mother's death, she wasn't going to try to fool herself into believing that she wasn't then completely alone, in a world that was a dangerous and hostile place to live. Hyrule had been plagued by monsters its entire history, and monsters weren't even the only danger out there. There were only so many resources out there, and people were sometimes forced to fight over them.

Add in the fact that she was a woman, and the kingdom was on a slow slide into dangerous for women to exist in, and learning the survival skills that her mother hadn't had a chance to teach her yet suddenly had to be done alone, and in a hurry.

She'd gotten lucky on one of those skills, having already been coming to the awareness that she held utterly no attraction to men whatsoever before the fatal encounter with a Lynel left her an orphan. She didn't have to try to navigate romantic and/or sexual entanglements with men, which made them easy to keep away from.

Not that all- or even most -men were dangerous in any sense of the word. Most men out there would sooner take on a Lynel than hurt a woman, especially knowingly. But there were a few, just enough, that for whatever reason, had either stopped- or simply was never taught to -viewing women as equal and fully functional people, just the same as men. And those men could be dangerous. The stories of men like that going to the far extreme of committing violence against women for one reason or another were few and far between, but even with those being as few as they were, there were still plenty on their side that expected women to defer to them and give them whatever they thought they were entitled to. And the fact that it was impossible to tell which men on that side of the spectrum would turn out to be one of the extreme examples, and which ones just needed to be told off and given the cold shoulder, made being able to read a man to tell which side he fell on a survival skill that only women had to learn. And one that Yammo had to learn in a helluva hurry.

That particular survival skill had translated easily enough into protecting herself as a merchant in business transactions. The longer she was on the road, the more supplies she was able to gather up and sell, and the more money she'd be ultimately carrying, and right back to the limited resources, telling honesty from lies was a skill she'd polished until it shone.

It was tough to sneak lies by her, tougher than even a lot of fellow merchants.

Which made Zumi's tendency towards open honesty one of the things that she so loved about her. Sometimes Zumi shied away from the truth, but Yammo understood why, and always gently called her on it and reminded her that she wasn't at the stable anymore, everything that had kept her backing down from being honest about something was behind her and done, and she could move on. But she'd taken the advice that Link had given her on the subject to heart, and it made their relationship as solid as the mountains themselves.

The problem was, Yammo had a feeling that Link wasn't taking that advice to heart, and Zumi was letting him get away with it.

She hadn't said anything at the time, when Link caught back up with them just west of the Dueling Peaks. It didn't seem the time, and she didn't know how Link operated. While she could tell just being around him why Zumi had found him safe to go to for help back at Serenne, and she therefore didn't fear any sort of temper or other potentially dangerous reactions from him if she prodded, she didn't know what sort of tactics he might employ to get around her questions.

And that feeling was just that- a feeling. Her polished skill at reading deception in someone's words and tone of voice and body language told her that there was some dishonesty going on in that exchange, but that dishonesty could've been about something else going on in Link's life that was simply bleeding into the subject of Zumi's pregnancy by accident. Despite all the legend attached to him, the Hylian Champion was still just a regular person, fallible and capable of making mistakes like that. She wanted a chance to mull it over, to look back at what she observed in the conversation and evaluate what exactly it was that had sent up the signals that those skills were flagging.

So she'd thrown in a quick reminder that there were going to be some questions that would need answers that they all would back each other up on, tentatively accepted that Zumi had simply had a donor, and Link ran into them by fortunate happenstance, and directed them to Hateno for the help they needed, and then let it go. But there was more they'd have to hammer out, and Link had been in such a rush to get away from the entire situation that she didn't have much of a chance to point those details out.

And she wanted a chance to examine those observations and piece together what they meant.

They'd reached Dueling Peaks Stable not more than about fifteen to twenty minutes after they'd parted ways with Link, and Zumi wanted to keep going. She wasn't feeling queasy, and they didn't know how long that'd last. But there were still monsters along the rest of that road, and Link said he wouldn't get to that stretch until the next morning, so there was no choice but to stop at the stable and rest.

Yammo would've made her rest anyway, in part because she didn't want her pushing herself. Not in her first trimester; not ever, really, but definitely not then. That was the riskiest part of a pregnancy, and chances of a miscarriage were higher then than in the other two trimesters.

But it wasn't just that that would've made Yammo make them stop at the stable and not just push forward, even if she had to nail Zumi's boots to the floor. Yammo wanted a chance to do that mulling, and do it before they got to Hateno. There was a lot on the line, if the queen found out about Link and Zumi's brief partnership, more than Yammo was certain she knew about, and none of it was anything she was willing to play around with carelessly.

So they spent the rest of the afternoon and evening resting, Zumi agitated by being stuck at a stable, and Yammo for once letting her pace and walk off the nervous energy from it, rather than try to pacify and distract her.

Yammo had woken that next morning before the sun was rising, and took the opportunity that being the only one- aside from Tasseren -awake to claim use of the stable's wash house, letting a cold shower (they were always cold, and she hoped that Hateno had some sort of power source that could warm water so she could find out what a shower that wasn't cold was like) finish waking her brain up and coalesce what needed to be addressed into words that wouldn't immediately put Zumi on the defensive.

The cooking station had been claimed by the time she was done, the sun starting to peek over the fort walls to the east rousing the stablehands, who would need to eat before starting their daily work. Yammo knew that Zumi would likely be not far behind them, the all of two and a half months away from Serenne not enough to undo a lifetime habit.

Letting the stablehands take their time with their food, Yammo went back into the stable's community room for guests, grabbing one of the chairs from the table to sit next to Zumi's bed and sit back to wait for her to wake up.

Zumi's habits did not disappoint, and the sights and sounds of the stablehands finishing their breakfasts and starting their work had woken the other guests and driven them outside. Meaning the two women were alone inside.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," she said softly when she saw Zumi's eyes slowly prying themselves open.
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Sunday, April 29th, 2018

So. About them errands, huh?

[info]sleepinghero
((Man. How about all that self-play. It's what I get for playing 90% of the characters, I guess. :p And also currently the only character who can fling himself around the kingdom in seconds, so the job of errand boy has fallen to him. Purah's really got to come up with something for Zelda.))

After contacting Zelda and ending up with a laundry list of things he needed to get, as well as a brief panic when she asked about the sign outside his house, of all things, Link shifted his focus to his new agenda: getting a bunch of girly stuff.

His life went awry somewhere along the line, and he wasn't quite sure where. As much as he missed his sister, part of him was glad his early teen years weren't plagued by a teenage girl potentially trying to cajole him into being her practice dummy for learning how to apply makeup and do fancy hair styles. There was a good chance Marin would've ended up more like their grandmother than their mother on that front, but even so, that was an arrow he'd dodged.

It wasn't even getting dressed up like a woman that would've bothered him- when he was growing up, women were the ones with the power, it wasn't exactly an insult to look like one, and he had to do that later to get into Gerudo Town anyway -it was the idea of being turned into what amounted to a science experiment that would've annoyed him. Being told to sit and stay and be subjected to whatever his handlers wanted to do would've driven him crazy.

That, and he remembered being an adolescent boy, and he knew how adolescent girls acted, and he and his sister probably would've driven each other up the wall and down each other's throats.

... he still missed her, though.

He forcibly shoved that subject aside and focused back on the task at hand, most of which was just taking pictures, but the first thing he had to do was something that he wasn't ... exactly looking forward to. For a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was 'fessing up to having not told the entire truth to Zumi and Yammo earlier about his relationship status with Zelda. Although before he could do that, he had to 'fess up to himself about it. His side of things wasn't anything he'd been... too untruthful about- there was nothing that he'd given any thought to (and fighting his brain to keep it that way was sometimes a challenge) -but he knew damn well what Zelda's side was. Sure, there honestly was the chance that the years had changed her, but he had a feeling in his gut that they hadn't. He'd probably hide behind that possibility for awhile yet, but it was something he was going to have to face at some point.

Sometimes he wished he'd worked harder at not avoiding dealing with emotions after his initial grief over Marin had passed. It'd make things a lot easier on him. His tendency to shut down had helped him save face when the kingdom's spotlight was on him, but now it was just making things messy.

Oh, hey, brain. Nice of you to drift back to that subject. Let's stay on task, hmm?

The women had made pretty good time, all things considered, as Link could see them just on the other side of Proxim Bridge as he approached it. He nodded in greeting to Brigo, who still was holding his position as guard, though what he was guarding and why, Link wasn't sure. Whatever made him happy and gave him purpose, Link supposed.
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Wednesday, March 28th, 2018

Just some errands....

[info]sleepinghero
Despite the fact that his body and mind both should've gotten more sleep than usual to make up for the night before, Link still habitually woke up early. Even when he was stopping to rest because he'd otherwise crashed and burned, he still couldn't sleep a long time, and he and Zelda had called it an early enough night that it was still dark outside when he woke up. He listened for sounds of Zelda being up and around, then lit the lantern in his little crawlspace to a low setting. More waiting, more listening, still hearing nothing.

Satisfied that she was definitely asleep, and hoping that she'd stay that way, he grabbed the Slate and crept out from behind the blanket-curtain, leaving his light under the stairs, and made his way to the washroom.

The first thing his mind latched onto while he was brushing his teeth was to start planning the day, what needed to be taken care of, which set of monsters needed killing, who still needed help, and-

Wait. Yeah. Ganon was gone. The mission was over. There were still things to do out there, but the big thing was gone. He could focus on other things.

Well, there were still those other things, and the next one that jumped to mind was the elephant in the room in his brain of Zumi and Yammo, and how to approach that issue. He didn't want to start Zelda's day off with that anymore than he'd wanted to end her night. He still didn't feel comfortable thinking about the potential for jealousy on her part- a hundred years was still a long time for her to change in, and he wasn't going to make any assumptions about how she felt. But culture shock was still going to be a huge issue for her to deal with, and he knew that no matter how right the Deku Tree was about the fact that Link couldn't do anything that was within his character to truly lower himself in Zelda's eyes, with the strict upbringing of her social class, it'd happen anyway- just for the short term, instead of the long term.

Children outside of wedlock were a Big Bad Thing among the ruling class, and he assumed that sex was included in that, given that at least for straight couples, one tended to lead to the other. Even with birth control, there was still a small chance. (Surgical intervention aside.)

Although he supposed that it was possible that it was allowed as long as it wasn't spoken of and any 'accidents' were 'taken care of' before they were known about. That seemed like a disgusting way to approach the subject in his mind; it felt like it removed some of the agency of the woman involved in the affair, and that was morally reprehensible in his mind. But even if that were the case, and Zelda's sense of culture shock wouldn't include batting an eyelash at the fact that he'd had a partner he wasn't married to, just the possibility that the pregnancy wouldn't be terminated might... well, 'fluster' was the nicest word he could think of. Especially if he and the other women agreed that he was to have a place in the child's life. If that wasn't something that was going to happen, it might be an easier pill for Zelda to swallow, as how else could a lesbian couple have a child without adopting? Maybe medical science would someday find a way around that, but even Link knew enough about medicine and science in general that the day that was possible was centuries down the line, possibly longer.

But for better or worse, the subject would very likely come up, and he should know how long he had before the women would get into town to approach it. So in the name of not having them show up earlier than he thought and him not having a chance to tell Zelda, he decided his order of business for the morning was to track them down again, see how far away they were, and how fast they were going, to find out how long he had before they got there.

After he'd finished dressing, deciding against his Champion's tunic- he knew he was going to be getting into trouble with monsters, no point in dirtying it up, now that he potentially needed it for more than something to wear -he snuck back out of the washroom.

Good, she was still asleep.

He slipped back under the stairs, scrolling through the Slate for anything to write a note on to leave for Zelda- he wasn't going to just up and disappear without leaving her a note to let her know where he was going -frustrated when he couldn't find anything. Well, there was always the napery. He selected a thick-inked pen, geared up, turned off his light and slipped back out. He scribbled as legible a note as he could on a napery, frowning at how terrible it actually looked. But, it served the purpose.

Decided to clear the roads between here and Akkala so Bolson and Karson can get through. Pruce should be able to make you breakfast. Be back as soon as I can.

It wasn't the greatest-looking thing he'd ever written, but it'd do.

That was almost the end of what he wrote, grabbing the Slate to put the pen away, but then something crossed his mind. Despite her being trained to be In Charge, she had spent her whole life being told what to do, and she'd already said she was going to follow other peoples' leads. It was probably unnecessary for him to add anything, but there was still the small chance that she'd think it meant she had to stay behind and just wait on him.

Goddess knew she'd been doing enough staying home and waiting on him as it was.

Ignoring how that sounded in his head, he set the Slate back down to add- Feel free to do whatever needs done while I'm gone.

Another pause while he realized that 'whatever needs done' might include something like getting those curtains dyed that she'd mentioned last night.

So another addition- If you need to buy anything, tell Pruce I'll pay him back.

He considered adding a teasing jab about not emptying his wallet when his back was turned, but writing on that napery was hard enough, and the longer he lingered, the more likely she was to wake up before he left.

Good enough.

He had the Sword check on Zelda's mind one last time, to see how deeply asleep she still was, and then stepped outside, closing the door gently behind him. The Sword had confirmed that Zelda was out like a snuffed candle, that wasn't enough noise to wake her.

Once outside, he took a few seconds to stretch and breathe in the morning air; it was still dark, though the sky was turning a light grey, and it was blessedly not raining. And it didn't smell like it had earlier that night, either; the air wasn't thick and wet. Good. Now, hope that held out elsewhere.

"I don't suppose you happened to think of taking note of Zumi's aura when we were out the other night, did you?" he asked the Sword as he pulled out the Slate and called up the map.

I did, Master Link, the Sword replied. However, she is quite some distance away. May I suggest you travel to the Woodland Stable? The women may not have left yet. If they have, I'm afraid you may have to take the road to follow them, as I am not certain I can pinpoint their exact location via the map.

"Not a bad idea," he agreed, zooming the map in on the Woodland Stable. He tapped the Mirro Shaz shrine's travel gate, and selected travel.

The fact that it wasn't raining there, either, brightened his spirits, and he allowed himself the brief indulgence of the hope that Ganon being gone meant he wouldn't have to put up with as much rain in general, and that he wasn't just getting lucky.

The stable owner, Kish, informed him that the women had said their plans were to leave that morning, but Zumi's health had held the entire morning the day before, so they decided to leave early, rather than risk her being sick when they originally planned on heading out. They'd left around noon the day before.

Link checked his map as he walked away, trying to decide how far they could've gotten. Even if Zumi's lack of morning sickness held, she still was going to be limited to a walk. They might have gotten to the Wetland Stable already. Might as well jump there and look around. If the Sword said they were still back along the path between there and the Woodland Stable, he knew where to find them, and if they'd already passed by, he could catch up with them from that direction. Hopefully, though, they hadn't gotten farther than that, as after the Riverside Stable just down the road from there, there started to be packs of monsters that he hadn't had time to clear out when he first tracked them down. Yammo was good, but not that good, and with Zumi right there, she wouldn't be able to be as aggressive with them as she'd need to be.

A jump down to the Kaya Wan shrine took him right outside the Wetland Stable. The stable owner there, Lawdon, said they'd gotten there the night before, and had already left about an hour ago.

Okay, good, they couldn't have gotten far.

He took off at a jog down the southern path, hoping to catch them before they crossed Eagus Bridge.

Fortunately, he spotted them just north of where the path mysteriously branched off just past the Millennio Sandbar, one part going into the woods and stopping, the other moving on to the bridge.

"You ladies don't happen to be looking for directions to Hateno, are you?" he called to the as he approached them from behind.
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Friday, February 23rd, 2018

Link's out all night, for the exact opposite of a fun reason

[info]sleepinghero
Link knew he didn't technically have to step outside to use the Slate's travel feature, but it felt a little less rude to step out before traveling than just up and disappearing in the house. He knew there wasn't exactly established protocol for any class for that sort of situation, but something about it felt rude, so he followed his gut on the matter and stepped outside, closing the door gently behind him.

Breathe. Zelda would be fine, she was right, they needed out from underfoot from each other for awhile. They both had been spending the last hundred years of this fight alone, they just weren't used to being in close quarters with someone else yet, and there was a lot weighing on their minds.

May I ask, Master Link, why you chose to be dishonest with the queen? the Sword asked.

Oh for the love.

"You know very well why," he said, using the soft voice he usually used when talking to what appeared to everyone else to be an inanimate object. "Unless something comes of this, it isn't her business." Then he scowled and looked back over his shoulder at the Sword's hilt. "I noticed you got pretty quiet when I pointed out what Hylia did."

There was an almost uncharacteristic pause on the Sword's part. She usually was quick enough to reply; she was definitely far more 'human' than she'd been when she first bonded to his ancestor, and had been even by the time they had parted ways, but she still had her programming at her core.

My creator was not happy with Her decision, the Sword finally replied. She made Herself content that it might prove to serve a greater good. She paid a terrible emotional cost when She was human and had regained Her memories. And my first master forgave her. I have observed many generations of the goddess-blood princesses and my masters over the many times the cycle has repeated, and I have learned that human emotions are far more tumultuous than my creator was able to comprehend when She made Her first decision.

She didn't add it, but Link got the impression that the Sword was wondering what other choice Link thought Hylia'd had at the time. Strategically speaking, it wasn't a bad idea, and he knew She'd had little time to work out a better one. If he was as pressed for time as the goddess had been, he might not've come up with anything better either.

He sighed, realizing that he had lost that one. "All right, you're right. It'd help that if you're going to be feeding me all this information by giving me memories of your previous masters instead of talking like a history book, you'd be choosier about which ones you threw at me."

My apologies, Master Link the Sword replied. I have not had cause to reteach such a large amount of history in such a little amount of time, and your mind is fragmented and difficult to work with. I am no more divine than you are. When he didn't answer, she added, I calculate a 65% chance that you think I have understated myself.

"Smartass," he grumbled. "And don't even say it, I know I don't have a lot of room to talk. Are we all like this?"

The Sword thankfully didn't ask him to elaborate- it's not like she needed him to, imprinted into his mind. He didn't really even need to speak out loud, it just felt like a more natural way to hold a conversation. Circumstances vary and create different outcomes, but you have all shared many traits in common.

"You must've learned it from us, then." He pulled out the Slate and called up the map. The only thing he could really think to do was just go to Serenne Stable and hope she was there, and if not there, a quick jump over to Snowfield Stable would be all it took. He looked at the time on the Slate. Eight o' clock. The route that Yammo usually took took about ten hours to travel on horseback, assuming there weren't any interruptions from stal-monsters. The Sword had said there was a decent chance they wouldn't appear, but it wasn't the highest of her calculations, and Link didn't want to swear by it.

And for all he knew, Yammo had changed her route since he was last there, or had made another stop at her supplier before going back to her route. That'd complicate the process even more. This may all be a wasted effort.

"I don't suppose you have any ideas on how to find her," he asked the Sword, not really expecting a helpful answer. It was more rhetorical anyway.

I'm afraid I did not record a reading of Miss Zumi's aura to track her with, the Sword answered. It is possible, perhaps, that if she did conceive, I may be able to find her through the unborn child she carries, as it would share traces of your aura. I calculate a 40% chance of success of this.

He didn't like those odds. "Let me check the stables, first. See if they've heard anything. If she told Sprinn anything that sounds suspicious, we'll try that." He tapped the icon that lit up the markers for the travel gates, then hovered his finger over the Monya Toma shrine icon, hesitating.

Master Link, I believe you would feel better knowing, rather than delaying discovering the truth.

She was right, and he knew it. Hesitating wasn't helping anything at this point, so before his worry could stop him, he selected the shrine's travel gate, and pressed travel.

To his dismay- but no surprise -it was raining up in the Salari Plain, though not a downpour. With a frustrated noise, he pulled his hood tied around his neck up over his head, and sloshed down the hill to the stable. The ground squished under his feet while the light rain pattered on his hood, that was thankfully water resistant enough to handle what was closer to sprinkling than true rain. Still, the clouds and the rain itself made it that much darker than the near-lack of sun already did, so he put a hand on the Sword's hilt, listening for sounds of any stal-monsters trying to ambush him from behind or another blind spot.

Although the rain had disappointed him, the lack of attacks relieved him, for a two-folded reason- one, it increased the Sword's calculated odds that Ganon being gone meant the end of their attacks, and two, even though a good fight might work off some of the nervous energy pent up in the back of his mind, it also wasn't a distraction he needed.

He hopped the outer perimeter fence of the stable, pausing to pick the endura shrooms that grew under the trees and put them in the Slate's inventory, then hurried over to the stable itself.

"Well, look who it is," Sprinn said once he'd reached the counter. "The lad that convinced my only stable hand to run off on me."

Link peered past him into the stable. The three idiot 'researchers' were still in there, and he saw two people dressed in the stable system's uniforms. "Looks like you hired more help," he said.

"Took me awhile, but yeah," Sprinn said. "Needing a horse?"

"No," Link said, shaking his head. "Wondering if you've seen Zumi and Yammo."

Sprinn gave him a grumpy look. "What, you lookin' to take her from her lady friend now, too?" Then he motioned back towards the east. "They were here a few days ago, taking a rest. Said they were expanding Yammo's business to include rare flowers. Dunno why. Zumi didn't look like she was feeling the greatest, got some stomach upset when I offered her food. But they went that way, saying they were going to see if anyone near the Great Forest had seen anything interesting."

Link looked over his shoulder towards the east. The flowers thing made no sense to him, but the report of Zumi's stomach upset made him worry even more about her condition. If that was morning sickness, riding a horse wasn't the best of ideas. He wasn't even sure how she'd been handling riding a horse all this time, her hips weren't built for it, they hurt too easily trying to sit with her legs spread like that. Maybe she'd been walking. On foot, the walk taking a straight line from Serenne to the Forest would be a good ten hours or so, by horse, depending on how fast they were walking the horses, less.

Then something flashed through his memory, and he got a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Thanks," he said off-handedly, walking away without even looking back at the stable owner. Once he was back across the path and over the fence line, he pulled out the Slate and stared at his map.

He hadn't misremembered. There was a Lynel between those two points. If he remembered right, a straight line between the stable and the Woodland Stable that sat at start of the path to the Forest would skirt just south of the beast's territory, but that assumed that not only did they take a straight line, but that the Lynel hadn't expanded or shifted his territory.

Shit.

It was only by repeating to himself that running would wear him out too fast that kept him to a light jog instead of at a sprint. He had no idea how he'd tell if the Lynel had gotten them short of hoping he caught up to them somewhere down the road; he'd never seen any remains of victims or even whatever Lynel ate as prey in one's territory, so if the Lynel had gotten the women, he wouldn't know.

Shit shit shit shit.

"Now would be a good time to try that trick of yours," he said to the Sword, keeping his voice low as he neared the Lynel's territory. It was dark and the rain was picking up the farther east he went, but that wouldn't be much help, since while that'd make it marginally harder for the Lynel to spot him, he was pretty sure that the last time he went through there, it was a blue-maned one, and those were nearly impossible to see in the dark, especially when it was raining. He'd almost run headlong into one up in northern Akkala that way, and only by the goddess's good grace had avoided alerting the creature to his presence before he got out of range.

I am attempting to search for auras with similar signatures as yours now, Master Link, the Sword replied obligingly.

He checked his map quickly, judging how closer to the Lynel's territory he was before slowing down his pace. He was nearby, and though he couldn't see or hear the beast, that didn't necessarily mean that he was safe. He had an ancient arrow on hand, if he had to, and he could always buy himself the time to nock it by using Urbosa's power to stun it, if it spotted him, but that was time he didn't want to waste.

The Sword still hadn't given him an answer by the time he heard the distant roar of the Lynel. He froze, looking around for how far north it might be, but with the rain and the dark, there was just no seeing it. He turned and went a little south before resuming east.

I'm sorry, the Sword said eventually, but I cannot sense any similar auras. This is a feat outside of my programming, I may be simply unable to perform this task.

"Don't apologize," he said, feeling comfortable that he was far enough away from the Lynel by that time to not try to keep his voice low. He sped back up to a jog. "Just keep trying. We may get lucky."

At that point, he'd call her being pregnant lucky, if it meant he could find her. Just knowing she and Yammo were alive and had avoided the Lynel and the sundry of other monsters that haunted the areas off the paths more than the normal routes that the merchants tended to follow would be a relief. He knew Yammo carried a sword and shield, but if he remembered right, they weren't the greatest, and knowing how to handle herself in a pinch wouldn't be good enough against a crowd of bokoblins while trying to defend someone who wasn't a fighter, much less a non-combatant who was pregnant. Much less against a Lynel.

Please let them have gotten by that thing. He didn't pray often, not seriously anyway, but he sure as hell was praying right then.

There were a pair of horses wandering along the path by the ruins of Rauru settlement, which wouldn't have normally meant a thing to Link, except that he knew those two used to have bokoblin riders, and there were no sign of any monsters.

Still no stal-monsters. That was a relief that he'd enjoy more later.

He slowed down to a walk as the Woodland Stable's lights became visible through the rain that was still coming down, though it had once again slowed down to a sprinkle. A check of the Slate proved that despite slowing down near the Lynel's territory, he'd made that trip an hour faster than he'd figured. Jogging instead of walking should've only reduced the trip by a couple hours, but without having to stop to deal with the bokoblins that usually haunted the Rauru Settlement ruins, or any stal-monsters, he'd made better time. It was three-thirty in the morning.

Four in the morning, and he'd been on the run for just shy of eight hours. Yup, going to definitely need that omelette when he got back to Hateno, whenever that might be. His stomach was unhappy with him just for neglecting to feed it, trying to operate the virtually no sleep he was going to get at this point was going to make him irritable from it if he wasn't careful.

Master Link, the Sword spoke up. I suggest you stop your search for the night if the women cannot be found here. I calculate the chances of finding them if you continued without rest to be 30%, decreasing the longer you go without food or sleep. The queen will also be worried if you do not return until mid-morning or later.

Link let out a defeated sigh as he avoided a particularly large mud puddle in the road where the path split up towards the Forest. Unless the women were inside the stable's guest area, they weren't there, and he was officially out of ideas where to find them. There was only one person that was visible from the outside that wasn't the stable owner, and whoever she was, she was sitting down on the ground at the open entryway to the left of the registration counter, too low to see clearly. But she was alone, and that wasn't promising.
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