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.