Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Darkness. Darkness was the first thing she was aware of.

Emilia sucked in a breath, her first one since she woke. The air was stuffy.

That was good. Not satisfying, but good. She could feel, she could move. It somehow felt like millennia had passed since the last time she was able to.

What she didn't know was how she had ended up here, wherever here was.

Her attempt to sit up was slow and strenuous from the weak state she was in. She didn't get very far, though, before her head banged into something. Her upper body fell back down, and she raised a shaky hand to rub at her forehead. When some bug crawled over her leg, she used her other hand to flick it off. As she moved, she felt skin brush against skin, making her realize that she was wearing nothing at all for some reason. Another bug crawling up her shoulder reinvigorated her need to figure out where she was so she could get away.

Trying to feel for something she couldn't see, she reached her hands up. Whatever was above her head seemed to be above her entire body. A ceiling that close to the floor? She moved her arms out to her sides and found she couldn't extend them very far outward either.

A box. She was lying down naked in a box. An oppressive, unventilated, dark box...

It's nighttime outside—her back is against the earth and a blurry face is above her and she's frantically struggling to get away—she reaches for the knife but she can't get it out of his grip—he's pressing it to her throat—and then—

And then when she was left reeling in the darkness, her heart feeling like it was about to explode, she regretted wishing to remember.

Knowing that she had only been reliving a memory didn't make it feel any better. It made it worse. Because now she realized what she was in.

She remembered the moment when she'd known, with what she had thought was absolute certainty, that she was going to die.

But she was moving. Breathing. Feeling. Thinking. She wasn't dead. She was alive.

And she was in a casket.

Emilia screamed, pushing and banging against her confines with all the might she could muster. In the face of all her effort, the lid of her casket refused to budge. Tears slipped from her eyes. She gasped for air between screams, but no matter how much she took in, it wasn't enough. She couldn't breathe.

What if nobody helped get her out? It hardly felt like a 'what if.' It felt inevitable. If she had already been buried, then nobody would think twice about her being dead or not. Nobody would realize she was alive in here—and so she would die in here. It would be the most painful kind of irony, to have miraculously survived attempted murder, only to die after being buried alive.

She thumped and scratched on her casket until her hands went numb, and screamed until her throat burned and her voice fizzled out. Then, she thought, maybe it was better to just be quiet.

She could wait until she heard someone pass by above ground, and then she could put all of her energy into trying to be as loud as possible to garner attention. She just had to hope that the six feet of dirt between them wouldn't prevent them from hearing each other.

If she could hear no one, if no one could hear her... She didn't want to think about it anymore. She didn't want to think about how long she would be stuck in her head, alone in the dark. Hours? Days?

She'd go insane. She was already going insane, and she'd been awake in her casket for minutes.

Had it been minutes? She wasn't sure. She couldn't keep track of time.

Against her will, Emilia's brain decided to fill in the nothingness with more memories of her last agonizing moments outside of her underground prison. With nothing to hear or see to help bring her out of it, it was hard to tell herself that they were only memories, that it wasn't happening anymore.

So she started to sing softly to distract herself. Her voice sounded terrible through her tears, but it was better than the silence that allowed unwelcome memories to run free in her mind.

Wake up. Kill bugs. Cry. Sing. Sleep. Wake up again. Kill bugs again. Cry again. Sing again. Sleep again.

That's how she thought everything was going, but there were times when she wasn't sure if she was awake or not. There were times when she wasn't sure if she was alive or not.

Maybe this was simply what death was like. Maybe her casket and her body were nothing more than imagination, representations of her consciousness.

But how would she be conscious if she was dead? She couldn't be dead. She was alive. But was she really alive? How could this nothingness be considered life?

Her thoughts went in circles, like everything else. With time, the facets of the circles gradually became more intense, harder to bear, like the air that became even harder to breathe. Flashbacks became impossible to distinguish from the present. Quiet moments became voices whispering incoherently in her ears. Darkness became swirls of incomprehensible shapes. Pleasant dreams became nightmares. That final change—losing her dreams—was even worse than the worst flashbacks and hallucinations.

At least when she had good dreams, she wasn't conscious that she was here, even if it hurt to wake up and realize that she still was—but when they turned into nightmares, she had no escape at all. Being asleep was hell, and being awake was hell, too.

She wondered frequently if that was what this was. Hell.

That theory came, in part, from her realization that none of her other theories as to how she'd gotten here made any sense when she thought through them.

Her first theory, that she'd been buried by the very man who'd tried to kill her, was supported only by the fact that she wasn't wearing clothes and the fact that her casket felt like nothing more than a metal box, with no plush satin lining or a pillow for her head like there would've been with a standard casket. Nothing else about that theory held up. For her to be alive, he would've had to have attended to all the wounds he'd inflicted upon her—but why would he have tried to save her after trying to kill her? And if he'd saved her from dying by blood loss, why would he have then put her in a casket where she could've died from suffocation or dehydration? Moreover, why would he have even bothered burying her in something when he could've just thrown her right in the ground?

Her second theory, that she'd been found after she was attacked, didn't hold up to scrutiny either. It was far too warm for her to be in a morgue, so she would've had to have been properly buried, except there was nothing proper about being buried alive. Someone should've realized she wasn't dead. She should've been autopsied and probably should've been embalmed before her burial. So, if she really had been found, then she'd been handled by the most incompetent coroner and mortician in the world—but her own mother was a forensic anthropologist, so how could any of their oversights have slipped by her? And even if she had been handled so dismally with her mom somehow not noticing, why would her family have buried her naked in a plain metal casket?

With both of those theories having immense gaps, she got stuck in a circle of going back and forth with which one she believed in. The circle always came back around to her only other theory—the only one with no gaps, the one she desperately hoped not to be true: that she had died, and this was her hell.

Eventually, Emilia ran out of tears. Her bouts of crying became nothing but episodes of staggered breathing. Not long after that, the circle of her life broke. It was no longer wake up, kill bugs, cry nothing, sing, sleep.

It was wake up, kill bugs, and scream and thrash around, because she couldn't drown out the screams clawing at her throat with songs anymore. Scream, scream, scream, and cry no tears as she screamed. She tried to make herself stop screaming multiple times when the sound brought back memories of screaming for her life the night she should've died, but she could never make herself stop for long. It was too much. She couldn't handle it anymore.

It repeated in her mind like a broken record, a new circle: I can't handle this anymore. I can't handle this anymore. I can't handle this anymore.

I.

Can't.

Handle.

This.

It felt like it would never end. She thought she would be stuck in a circle of teetering on the edge of her sanity for eternity.

But she was wrong. The circles broke again, and she could hardly believe that it wasn't a new hallucination. She saw something real, something she hadn't seen in what felt like years.

Light.

It was so bright that she saw nothing but white even when she closed her burning eyes, but after all that time in the dark, she was terrified at the thought of losing the light. She wondered if this was it, if her end had finally, finally arrived, or if she was finally being saved from her casket, though she was leaning more toward the former. Surely, she thought, she couldn't still be alive after all that time with no water or fresh air.

Regardless of whether humans or angels would greet her, knowing that her time in this hell was over left her euphoric.

Crisp air washed over her. She heard shuffling and felt arms wiggle their way under her neck and the backs of her knees. Her eyes blinked open, and they began to adjust to the light as she was lifted up out of her casket. A tannish blob was leaning over her, and the blue sky was behind it. The features of the blob slowly started to become more distinct in color and shape, forming the person who had freed her from her casket.

Emilia's eyes focused first on a face—a pretty face, pretty enough to belong on an angel, even with features marred by concern. Her rescuer was somewhere around her own age, with hooded bright blue eyes, long and shaggy strawberry blond hair, and light skin littered with scars. That last feature was what finally made her realize that the face belonged to a boy, and beyond that, made her uncomfortable—not because of the scars, no, especially not now that she had to have her fair share—because of the mere fact that she could see enough of his skin to even know that he was a boy with so many scars. He was shirtless, only a belt over his shoulder covering up a small fraction of his skin. She didn't like the idea of some half-naked guy digging her from her grave, whether he was an angel or not.

Her cheeks heated as she remembered that she was naked herself. Mortified, she pulled her hair in front of her chest and tried to cover her lower half up with her hands, though she knew he'd already seen everything.

Then, as her focus spread farther outward, something even more peculiar than his partial nudity suddenly caught her attention—sticking out on either side of his head were pointed ears. They definitely looked real, but either they were real because they were in heaven and he was some angelic creature, or they were good fakes because they were on earth and this boy was a nutjob who liked to walk around in graveyards while pretending to be an elf.

"This... This isn't heaven, is it?" Emilia croaked out.

His voice was soft and his face was caught somewhere between pity and confusion as he answered her. "No..."

So he was just a nutjob. A gravedigging, shirtless nutjob with elf ears that reminded her of Link from the Legend of Zelda.

In any case, his answer brought her solace. Not that she had anything against the idea of eternal paradise, but she was glad that her life hadn't been stolen after all.

Her eyes still burned from being so unaccustomed to light. Positive that she wouldn't be losing the light anytime soon now, she let them close. She sighed as the burning subsided.

"Will you put me down?" she asked.

He maneuvered her to the ground at her request. The sensation of soft grass tickling so much of her skin was weird, but words could not describe how satisfying it was to finally feel something other than a hard casket beneath her, to feel the sun seep into her pores, to feel her lungs fill with pure air. The only thing keeping her on edge now was that she wasn't wearing any clothes in front of a boy. Oddly safe as she felt with him, it was still disconcerting.

"...You look very ill," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"Considering...? Relieved. Grateful I'm not just ... straight-up dead." Her voice started to crackle out, so she had to stop to clear her throat. "...Did you already call 911?"

"Call nine-one-one?" he repeated, emphasizing each syllable.

"Um, yeah...? I'm ... pretty sure I should go to the hospital... So can you call them, please? Or ... do you wanna call my parents instead?" Just saying the last sentence excited her. She'd be seeing her parents soon, and her little brothers, and then the rest of her family and her friends...

...She wondered if they would be mad at her for letting this happen. She had to have caused them so much pain.

Several seconds passed before the boy's voice broke her out of her thoughts. "...Come again?"

Emilia furrowed her brows. She didn't know what part of what she'd said hadn't made sense to him. His accent sounded native in the few short sentences she'd heard from him, but maybe he wasn't entirely fluent in English...? Her current hoarseness probably wasn't helping, either. "Do you have a phone?" she asked, trying to speak as clearly as she could.

"I'm sorry—but I really don't know about what you're asking me for... I have severe memory loss right now. I wouldn't even know my own name if someone hadn't told me it."

"Oh..."

She guessed that explained his behavior.

Maybe his memory loss made him forget that shirts existed, too.

Emilia sighed again. "Can you please take me to someone else, then? Or bring them back to me... The nearest person you can find. I'd walk, but ... I don't think I can."

"I'll carry you," he said.

His arms tucked back underneath her, and she wished that she hadn't suggested he take her with him to find someone. Her body went rigid in his grasp. Instead of focusing on how she was completely naked and some random half-naked boy was holding her, she tried to occupy her mind with thoughts of being reunited with her family. She hoped with all her heart that the relief of seeing her again would be enough to outweigh the pain she'd caused them.

"It may be a while until we come across someone," the boy said. "It can be dangerous out here."

For as many times as she had relived the last waking minutes of her life before she'd found herself in the casket, she had never managed to recall much of what had led up to them. The clear words that suddenly rung through her mind—"Let me drive you home. It can be dangerous out here."—were accompanied by a fuzzy image of being in her car at night while what could only have been the man who would go on to almost kill her was outside speaking to her.

Nice. She hadn't just let this happen—she'd practically invited it to. She'd been lured to what might as well have been her death like a goddamned idiot. What had been wrong with her that night? She knew better than to trust a stranger, but for some reason she had, and that failure of judgment had nearly killed her.

...So why was she still being an idiot and trusting this stranger after the price she paid for thinking she was safe with one last time?

She kicked her stiff legs out of his arms and fell to the ground. The movement left her lightheaded, and her vision went black as she fought to get to her feet. Maybe it wasn't the best idea—it certainly wasn't the easiest—but it had to be better than leaving her safety in his hands alone. She had to try to go by herself. If she'd been found, her family probably would've buried her in their town's main cemetery; she would only have to make it to the mortuary there herself to hopefully find people she could actually trust to help her, people who could remember what phones and shirts were.

Her plan to go to the funeral home collapsed when her vision returned and she realized that she wasn't in the cemetery. She wasn't in her hometown, period. She doubted she was even in Arizona.

Ahead of her were two mountains, unimaginably steep and colossal, that looked like they were one that'd been split down the middle. Not once before had she seen those mountains in person, but they were still familiar.

She told herself that she only found them familiar because the boy's appearance had planted familiar thoughts in her mind. After so long being deprived of stimuli, her brain was trying to connect dots where there were none. It was only a coincidence that the mountains happened to look like that. Just because the boy looked like Link didn't mean that the mountains were Dueling Peaks. That was ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous. She mentally reprimanded herself for even indulging in that impossible fantasy for a second, but the words she told herself did nothing to calm her heart or her nerves.

The boy walked in front of her and opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't get a single word out, because Emilia screamed.

She scrambled away from him and squeezed her eyes shut, heart hammering inside her chest. "Dude, what the hell?!"

He wasn't just shirtless—aside from his belts, he was everythingless. And those belts covered nothing.

"Huh?" he said. Like he really didn't know.

"Why are you naked?!" she yelled.

"Oh—oh! S-sorry, I ... forgot."

Over the pounding of her heart, Emilia heard the faint sound of skin moving against skin—hopefully, the sound of him moving to cover himself up. Part of her wanted to open up her eyes, just to check and make sure he wasn't getting any closer to her, but she didn't want to risk it.

Quietly, the boy said, "...So are you, y'know."

Her breath caught. She felt hot, shameful awareness of every inch of her exposed skin. She wanted to curl up into a ball. "Thanks for the reminder."

There was a beat of silence before he spoke again. "You can open your eyes. I'm ... covered, now. ...Much as I can be."

Emilia let her heart settle down—let herself take in fully that this wasn't a dangerous situation, just ... a painfully awkward one—before she blinked her eyes open again. She didn't look directly at him, but she saw in her peripheral that he did have his hands covering himself, now, thankfully. She also saw, vaguely in her peripheral, something else that she'd seen before, too. Although she'd only inadvertently glanced down there for one horrifying second, she knew she'd initially seen something on his hip that looked an awful lot like the Sheikah Slate. She still refused to look directly, but she was sure of it now.

But she could hardly care about that with the sight in front of her. There was something else, something she couldn't attribute to his eccentricity, something even less deniable, jutting out of the river that passed through the mountains to her left. She had to do a double-take when she first saw it, not believing her eyes. She turned fully toward it, her jaw slack as she soaked it in.

So many emotions swarmed over her at the sight, fear being at the forefront. She couldn't find it in herself to scream again, but the urge was bubbling up.

In the river beside the mountains was a tall tower that glowed a radiant blue in its center. The scene before her very eyes looked like it'd been ripped straight out of Breath of the Wild.

"Where are we?" she asked in a whisper.

"Just west of the Dueling Peaks," he answered.

His answer was exactly where she thought they were, and it was exactly what she didn't expect to hear anyhow.

It wasn't enough. She needed to hear him say one more word.

Her voice dropped so low that she could hardly hear herself when she finally managed to ask, "In what kingdom?"

"Hyrule."

Maybe it was spurred on by his answer, or maybe it would have happened regardless—but that was when vertigo hit Emilia full force, and she felt herself begin to fall before everything went black.

Chapter Text

When Emilia opened her eyes and saw something other than darkness, she gasped. She was looking up at a stylized red horse head embroidered onto a blueish-green canopy, not straining her eyes in the pitch-black of her casket.

It all came back to her—how she had seen the light, how that weird naked boy had rescued her, how she had devised a plan to run to the funeral home only to realize that she wasn't in her hometown, how it had looked like she was actually in Hyrule and how the boy had confirmed her suspicions...

...No, that last part couldn't have been right. That had to have been part of a dream that had blended in with the reality of being saved.

Rolling to her side and stretching as much as she could, she let out a yawn. She was still quite sore, though she felt better than she had in ... however long it'd been since that night. The bed she was laying on really wasn't all that soft, but anything was an improvement over the cramped casket she'd come to know.

She would've liked to have stayed in bed for longer, yet she knew that the longer she spent in bed would only be the longer she spent away from her family. Whether she was in Hyrule or not—and obviously, she thought, she wasn't in Hyrule—she wasn't home, where she should've been. Her bed didn't have a canopy and her house didn't smell faintly of hay. She needed to get to the bottom of this. She needed to return to her family, to let them know that she was okay—or okay enough—and to apologize, because she knew this had to be awful for them. She couldn't even begin to imagine how heartbreaking it had to be, finding out what had happened to her and having to bury her... Or worse yet, not knowing what had happened to her at all, if she'd been buried by the man who'd tried to kill her rather than them.

Slowly, she pushed herself up and slid her legs over the side of the bed, her muscles aching from the movement. Her chest tightened as she caught sight of the numerous red scars across her skin. The ones on her hands, she remembered clearly, were from when she had desperately, stupidly, tried to grab the knife by the blade to push it away. The ones across her arms and torso and hips were also more or less unintentional on the would-be murderer's part, a result of her struggling so erratically. She knew there was one she couldn't see on her jaw, as well, from when he'd jerked the knife up closer to where he'd wanted to use it on her all along. ...And then there was the one that was the ultimate reason for all of the others, the one she'd fought so hard, and failed, to prevent—the long one across her neck.

She still couldn't fully comprehend how she was even alive after that one. Cuts across the neck were supposed to be extremely lethal, and it had seemed so to her; she'd felt searing pain as the knife began to slice through her neck, then the memory rapidly faded to nothing. But maybe that was merely the point when all the pain—so intense that no amount of adrenaline could mask it—had finally made her pass out, and she'd survived by the guy missing her carotids?

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She couldn't think about it any longer.

In an attempt to distract herself, she reopened her eyes and looked around the room she was in. The room didn't have real walls, or a real ceiling—it was all made of sturdy drapes held up by wooden posts, more like a tent than an actual room. There was another bed identical to the one she was on across from her, with a small nightstand between the two. A lantern was on that nightstand, along with a cup of water.

The prospect of finally quenching her thirst was so enticing that right away she stopped caring about everything else.

She quickly grabbed the water and took a drink. The feeling of it washing over her chapped lips and dry tongue and gliding down her raw throat was divine, and she promptly became desperate for more. She closed her eyes and started taking in big gulps. In seconds, she had downed it all. She tried futilely to get out the tiny droplets leftover in the cup as if such a minute amount of water would help, then finally pulled it from her lips with a dissatisfied whine.

After returning the cup to the nightstand, her eyes trailed back over to the bed opposite her. The beds in here ... really looked like the beds in the stables in—

Emilia pressed her palms to her eyes. Shut up, she told herself. You're only seeing connections because you're looking for them. Had she not dreamt of that boy saying they were in Hyrule, she probably wouldn't have noticed any similarities. Lots of beds looked like that, and the room she was in didn't even match the stables. They had no separate bedrooms in the game; the beds were all lined up around the stables' singular rooms. So what if there were horse motifs all over?

Finished with trying to rationalize away her outrageous presumptions, she stood up and wrapped the blanket from her bed around herself tightly. She would prove herself wrong—she would walk out of this room that was definitely not part of Dueling Peaks Stable, she would find someone who was certainly not a Hylian, she would borrow the cell phone they absolutely had to call her parents and ask them to come get her, and then she would do everything she could to get them to not be mad at her for putting them through hell.

Just as she was about to take a step, she froze up. There were footfalls coming from the other side of the drapes. Her heartrate escalated as they got nearer and nearer, and she startled as the drapes moved. When they opened fully, they revealed none other than her rescuer.

It was only now as he entered the room that she fully realized a few things about him. His blue eyes were so unnaturally vivid that she was almost certain he was wearing contacts, but they looked strangely natural on him at the same time. He was also exceptionally short for a guy, no taller than her own five feet and three inches, and he was surprisingly muscular for someone with a face so soft. Some things had changed about him, though; he had most of his long blond hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and he was, thankfully, at least wearing underwear this time. But his underwear looked exactly like—

She stopped herself again. She wouldn't let herself so much as think that name or anything related to it. Him wearing those underwear and having that object on his belt didn't have to mean anything like that at all. All it meant was that he was a nutjob, which she'd already figured out early on from him deciding it was cool to go gravedigging while butt ass naked.

"I got some underwear," was the first sentence to leave his lips. 

Words escaped her, so she simply nodded.

There was an awkward pause before he spoke again. "Sorry for making you uncomfortable yesterday. It's not like I usually run around naked—well. I wouldn't remember. Maybe I would usually do that. I don't really know who I am. But I was only naked then because I woke up naked. Much like you."

She nodded once more, and then there was another awkward pause because she didn't know how to respond to that, either. When she decided to change the subject, she ended up asking a question that she almost didn't want to hear the answer to. "What's your name?"

"Link."

A lump grew in her throat, restricting her breathing. That doesn't mean anything, she tried to reassure herself. Whether it was yet another sign of his nutjobiness or a weird coincidence didn't matter in the long run—the real kicker would be their location, which no amount of him playing pretend could change. "And where are we?"

"Not far from where I found you. I brought you to Dueling Peaks Stable."

Dueling ... Peaks.

She felt as if she wasn't in control of her body as she pushed past him, past the drapes he'd come in through, to see where they were with her own eyes.

The lump in her throat grew and her chest tightened even more.

It wasn't quite like it was in the game—there were no beds in the main room, and there were multiple tables and chairs—but it was close enough. Two guys standing together turned to look at her, as did the receptionist at the counter toward the front, and they looked like real-life versions of the men from the stable, pointed ears and all. The man behind the counter said something to her, but she didn't comprehend it. Through the large open arches, she could see the bottom of a steep mountain, a man pacing around with an oversized beetle-shaped backpack, and a glowing shrine.

Emilia ran back into the bedroom and fell to her knees in front of the bed she'd been on.

...This can't be real.

The isolation from being stuck in her casket for so long had to have finally shattered her mind and driven her completely mad.

"Snap out of it," she whispered. "Snap out of it. Snap out of it."

She was only vaguely cognizant of the boy appearing in her peripheral and crouching down next to her. Two words managed to break through to her: "What's wrong?"

"I'm hallucinating and I need to snap out of it. Snap out of it," she said, voice rising in pitch and warbling.

"...You aren't hallucinating."

She didn't realize he had spoken until after the fact, but when she realized what he'd said, his message truly went through.

He was right.

She couldn't have been hallucinating. She'd had plenty of experience with hallucinations during her time in the casket, and they were never like this. She could see the boy crouching to her side, feel the blanket wrapped around her, hear people talking outside, taste the lingering freshness of the water on her tongue, and smell a hint of hay in the air—she was experiencing far too much at once for everything to be a hallucination. Beyond that, when she'd had hallucinations in the casket, she had never been aware of how unreal they were. The mere fact that this felt unreal, in itself, pointed to it being real.

But that would mean that she was genuinely there. In Dueling Peaks Stable, in Hyrule, speaking to Link. It made no sense. She had been nearly murdered, then buried alive, and somehow her casket had been transported to a world that only existed behind a screen?

"Are you okay?"

Emilia blinked several times in quick succession, coming out of her thoughts and looking over into his eyes. "I'm—no, I'm not okay," she said. "I don't—I'm not—I shouldn't be here. I'm not from here. I'm from—I'm from..."

She'd always been truthful to a fault, vastly preferring the consequences of telling the truth over the guilt of lying even at times when it would've been so much easier to lie. Now, she didn't know whether to tell the truth or not—because the truth was so crazy he'd think she was lying if she told it. It was lie or be seen as a liar. She didn't know which would be worse.

He didn't seem bothered by how long it was taking her to find the words she wanted to say. "From where?" he gently encouraged.

Her mouth gaped as she attempted to make a choice amid all the panicking going on in her head. When she settled, she settled on the middle grounds—not the whole truth, but not a lie, either. "Another country."

"Ah." There was no hint on his face that he didn't believe her. "What country?"

"Arizona," she blurted out. Her eyes widened. Did you seriously just say that?!

Before she could start digging herself in an even deeper hole and making herself sound like a dumbass by correcting her mistake, he tilted his head and said, "Oh. I don't remember... Is Arizona close to Hyrule?"

It took her only a second this time to come up with an answer that would satisfy his question and adhere to her personal stance on lying. "No, it's not. I mean, I don't even know where Hyrule is. I've heard of it, but... I know I shouldn't have been able to get here from Arizona."

"Do you remember what happened before you showed up here?" he asked.

She's heading home from Jasmine's house—her car breaks down and she realizes her phone is dead, so she can't call for help—she decides to lay down in the back to sleep for the night—the blurry-faced man pulls up and convinces her to let him drive her home—she gets out of her car and—

She already felt like she was going to throw up whatever was left in her stomach, if there was anything left in there at all. Before she could get lost thinking about it, she focused on coming up with a bare-bones version that she could tell.

"I was outside in Arizona one night, and this man came up to me," she slowly said.

"And...?" he prompted.

And... She couldn't say it.

But it must have been clear enough on her face. "...Something bad happened," he said.

She gave a tiny nod. Her eyes started to sting, but tears didn't come, leaving her grateful that she was still dehydrated. He didn't need to see her cry. She'd already unwillingly exposed enough of herself to him.

"I'm sorry... But I'm sure we can figure out what's going on," he said.

"We?" she quietly repeated. "You... You'll help me?"

He offered a kind smile. "I already talked to someone who I think can help you. She's an old woman who knew what was going on with me, so she'll probably figure out what's going on with you. She lives fairly close to here, in Kakariko Village, and she asked me to bring you to her when you woke up. Her name is Impa."

That name gave Emilia hope. If anyone in this world would know what was going on, it would be Impa. "Okay," she said, voice wobbling with—nervousness? Anticipation? She didn't know. "A-are we going? Now?"

"And miss breakfast here?" he said, raising his brows.

Someone's a glutton in real life, too. "I didn't know there was breakfast here."

"Meals are included with the room." He stood up. "We'll go to Impa after we eat. I'm starving."

His words made a strong pang of hunger hit her, leaving nausea in its wake. She nodded in response, worried that opening her mouth would lead to retching. Her legs felt like jelly beneath her as she wordlessly followed Link out of the room.

The two guys standing together eyed her again, but said nothing; the man behind the counter spoke to her again, asking if she was all right, and she fully heard it this time. She parted her lips as little as needed to tell him that she'd been better. A breeze wafted in the smell of food through the open arches, intensifying her nauseating appetite. She quickened her steps, catching up with Link.

She paused for a moment as she stepped out, stunned by the Dueling Peaks. Somehow, they looked even bigger than she remembered, reaching impossibly high into the air.

Outside the stable was the cooking pot, along with several round tables and stools. They were a bit farther away from the entrance than she recalled them being in the game on account of the stable itself being larger, and it seemed that the stalls where they kept the horses were somewhere else, because she couldn't see any. Two plates of food, two cups of water, and a tall water pitcher were atop a table with no seats right next to the cooking pot. The man standing in front of it was a duplicate of the receptionist.

"Your omelets are ready," he said to them, gesturing to the plates.

They each thanked him as they grabbed a plate and a cup, and Emilia wasted no time gulping down the water as she followed Link's lead over to one of the tables. A mature woman, familiar to Emilia as a character that always stayed around this stable, was already sitting at one of the four seats around it. Link sat down, and Emilia chose to sit at the stool opposite him where she could still have the view of the Dueling Peaks. He dug right into his food, but satiating her thirst continued to hold priority over eating for her.

"My, you were thirsty, weren't you?" the woman asked as Emilia sat her emptied cup down.

"Still parched," Emilia sheepishly admitted.

Hearing that, the man who'd prepared their food came to the table with the pitcher of water and filled her cup to the rim. She thanked him once more before bringing the cup back to her lips.

"You've been looking much better since I gave you that elixir yesterday," the woman said.

Emilia lowered her cup and looked inquisitively at her. "You gave me an elixir?"

"You woke up very briefly yesterday when Link brought you here. I gave you an elixir, spoke to you some, and helped you settle in bed. Do you not remember any of that?"

She searched for a memory of that happening while taking another drink, but she found nothing. The last thing she remembered before waking up was Link telling her they were in Hyrule. She shook her head. "I must not have really been conscious..."

"I guess I should've expected as much with how you were talking," the woman said with an easy grin. "My name's Sagessa. You said yours is Milia...?"

"Emilia," she corrected.

"Emilia. All right. Well, I'll stop holding you up from eating, now. I'm sure you're hungry."

After finishing the last sip of her water, Emilia placed the cup on the table and grabbed her fork. She thought she should be desperate to eat, yet she could hardly make herself swallow the first bite of her omelet. It took every ounce of willpower she had to force the food down, knowing she'd only regret it later if she didn't.

She took in her surroundings as she tried to ignore her churning stomach. Two young boys, clearly twins, were running around and playing. They reminded her of her brothers when they were younger, though the sets of twins didn't resemble each other physically. Being reminded of Nic and Bas made her miss them so much it hurt, and she couldn't look at the boys for long. Her attention went back to the mountains and stayed there.

With her omelet only halfway eaten—and Link having been done eating all of his for a couple of minutes already—she pushed her plate away. Her stomach, shrunken after all that time being empty, was unable to handle any more.

"You gonna finish that?" Link asked. When she shook her head, he reached his hands across the table and asked, "Can I have it?"

"Um, sure...?"

Her answer was barely out of her mouth before Link was picking her plate up and digging into her leftovers. He scarfed it all down in less than a minute while she watched, feeling weirdly impressed.

"So," he breathed out, standing up. "Ready to go to Impa?"

Emilia stood, and her eyes flitted to the gap between the mountains. "...How long would it take to walk to where you found me?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "Ten, fifteen minutes. Why?"

"I just... I wanna see what I was in all that time from the outside." She shrugged. "I know it probably sounds stupid, but..."

"It's not stupid. We can go if you want."

Sagessa bid them safe travels and the man by the cooking pot told Emilia she could keep the blanket for now. Link thanked Sagessa for paying for their stay, and Emilia echoed him before they started off. Though her legs were already feeling stronger and less jelly-like, Emilia still walked away slowly, each step making her stomach slosh around. Link kept pace with her without complaint.

"You won't need that blanket for long," he said conversationally. "You can get some clothes in Kakariko Village. That's where I got my underwear."

She thought that was strange—he was supposed to wake up wearing underwear, not receive them later on, and he was supposed to find the old shirt and pants in chests in the Shrine of Resurrection, then the Hylian trousers out in a chest by the Temple of Time, and then get the warm doublet from the old man...

But he also wasn't supposed to find her buried alive on his way to Kakariko Village, so who was she kidding?

"I don't have any money to buy clothes, though," she said.

"You won't have to. Impa gave these to me for free, and her granddaughter gave some of her clothes to another girl that woke up like you."

Emilia perked up at that. "Somebody else woke up in a casket?"

Link nodded, and her mind started racing at a hundred miles a minute. What if this girl was from her world? What if it was someone she knew? It might not make everything okay ... but at least she could have someone to connect to. Someone else who knew firsthand what it felt like to be caught up in this insane situation.

She hastened her stride, wanting to see her casket and then get to the mystery girl as soon as possible.

Between the mountains, she saw corpses of Bokoblins splayed out on the other side of the river—what happened to exploding away into purple mist?—but that was it as far as monster sightings went. Their quiet and uneventful walk neared its end some time later when they emerged on the opposite side of the Dueling Peaks and a long, rusty box came into view.

Link let himself fall behind as Emilia approached her casket. She stopped a few feet away to examine it. There was a large pile of displaced dirt behind it that the opened lid was resting against, and the bottom remained mostly in the earth. She could see where part of the top right corner had been poking out, obvious from the relative lack of dirt ingrained into the metal there.

It was so badly corroded that had all of it been unearthed to begin with and not just that one corner, she knew she would've been able to kick the lid off herself. Despite its condition, though, there were clear indications that it had been professionally crafted, throwing a wrench into her theory that the man who'd nearly killed her had slapped together some metal sheets to create a homemade casket. On the other hand, she'd known from the start that the inside lacked the satin lining and pillow that conventional caskets had, and that threw a wrench into her theory that she'd received a proper burial.

In the end, seeing her casket only left her with more questions than she'd had beforehand. Her only other idea was that maybe she hadn't originally been buried in this casket to begin with, that whatever being or beings out there that had decided to bring her to this world had simply plopped her body into it—and if that was the case, she would have some serious beef with them for not using the powers they clearly had to plop her literally anywhere else.

With a frustrated sigh, she turned to Link. He was standing yards back, looking down at the Sheikah Slate in his hands. Suddenly, it felt like the wind was knocked out of her as everything hit her all over again with a shock unlike before. That really was the Sheikah Slate being held by the Link—who had spoken to her—and he was going to take her to the Kakariko Village to see the Impa... Though she had already considered it and come to the conclusion that she couldn't have been hallucinating, she almost expected to come to in the darkness of her casket at any second.

"Link?" she called. It felt bizarre to say his name, like it signified an acceptance of the reality around her.

As his vibrant eyes made contact with hers, she momentarily felt breathless again. "Are we done here?"

She nodded, and he came up to her, holding the Sheikah Slate out between them. The map was pulled up on the screen, zoomed into what Emilia identified as Kakariko Village by its distinctive lake and surrounding mountains.

"I wanna try something," Link said. He pointed to a glowing blue symbol on the map. "This is a shrine that I can teleport to with this device. I want you to grab onto it, and we can see if it can teleport both of us. If it can, we'll be in Kakariko Village in seconds. If it doesn't bring you with me, I'll come back to get you."

Emilia reached out to grab the sides of the Sheikah Slate with trembling hands. "Okay. It doesn't hurt or anything, does it?"

"No, but it does feel ... different. Ready?"

Ready? To do something that shouldn't exist, to get to a village that shouldn't exist, to talk to a person who shouldn't exist?

"No," she said. "But I'll never be, so let's go anyway."

Chapter Text

Different was the word Link had used to describe the way teleportation felt. If there were a stronger word, Emilia would have used that. It was unlike anything else she had ever felt before, like her body was liquefied and poured away. While it hadn't hurt, as Link had promised, it left her feeling unsteady.

She was on the hill overlooking Kakariko Village when her body reformed from the droplets, her feet on the cool surface of the base of a shrine. The sight of the village and the shrine up-close made her heart begin to race again. Though they were so close to the animated versions she knew, they were startlingly real.

As she and Link started down the hill, she thought that the village wasn't quite as close to its game counterpart as the shrine was. She could easily identify some of the structures below, but there were more she knew hadn't been there. Though the village was still small, the additions made the game version seem much smaller, much less accommodating to the people who called it home.

Emilia wrapped the blanket tighter around herself when they made it down into the heart of the village. A few people were out that she could see along the way—an old man tending to a pumpkin patch, two young girls playing, the greeter at the clothing shop, and one of the guards of Impa's house. The greeter called out as they passed her by that Enchanted had cute clothes and that it looked like Emilia needed some. Flustered, Emilia muttered that she had no money.

They stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Impa's house. The guard there—she wasn't entirely certain which one he was, but she guessed it was Cado—looked her over, and she shrunk behind Link. It was hard to look into his eyes, so Emilia instead settled her sights on the stunning waterfalls and cliffs that framed Impa's house and prayed for him to just let them through.

"Is this the girl you spoke to Lady Impa of?" the guard asked.

Link affirmed that she was, and the guard nodded and stepped aside. Head down, Emilia stole one last glance at him before she and Link ascended the stairs together.

Her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest when they got up to the double doors and Link knocked on them. An old voice called from inside, permitting them to enter. Link strode in without any hesitance. It took Emilia an extra second to force herself to follow him in, and she stopped right in front of the doors, taking in the sight of the house. Aside from the addition of a short-legged table with several cushions on the floor around it, it didn't appear that far off from the house she was familiar with. They were nearly identical.

Right down to the tiny old lady sitting atop a pile of cushions toward the back of the room.

Impa's mouth spread into a grin, showcasing what few teeth she had left and making the countless wrinkles on her face sink even deeper into her skin. She gestured with her knobby fingers for Emilia to come forward. "I invited you in, didn't I?" her voice crackled.

Reassuring herself that she had no reason to be so nervous, Emilia approached her. Impa gave her the same scrutinous eyeing that the guard had, and Emilia again pulled the blanket tighter around herself. The grin on Impa's face faltered when her line of sight looked to fall right on Emilia's neck. The lump in Emilia's throat rose again, and with it came a burning hot awareness of the scar there.

"So, you're the one Link found alive in a casket," Impa said. "Milia, is it?"

"Emilia." She wondered how far the mispronunciation of her name had spread in the day since she'd slurred it out while virtually unconscious.

Impa turned her attention to Link. "Thank you for bringing her to me. Why don't you go spend some time in the village and let us speak in private for a while?"

Link nodded, gave a quick little smile to Emilia, and turned to leave. As soon as she heard the doors shut behind her, Impa's eyes met hers again. Her expression was serious, grave. Emilia wasn't sure she wanted to hear what she had to say anymore. That look alone gave her the feeling Impa had no good news to give.

"You were murdered," Impa said.

The words hit Emilia like a truck. They were so blunt, so certain—and so wrong. "No, I wasn't," she said firmly. "I was almost murdered."

"You truly never died?" Impa asked, curious but unconvinced. "If you don't mind me asking, how did you get to be in that casket, then?"

"Um, well—I don't remember how I got in there, but... It wasn't because I was dead. Whoever buried me just thought I was. Obviously, I wasn't, if you couldn't tell by—y'know, me being ... not dead."

Impa blew air out of her nose. With her straight face, Emilia didn't know if her half-hearted laugh was meant to be derisive or not. "So, the only reason you believe you never died is that you're alive?"

"Yes...?" It was such an obvious answer, but the way Impa had asked as if it was a stupid question made her confidence waver. "That's ... kinda how dying works."

"Under normal circumstances, it is, yes. I do not know if Link told you, but you are not the only one to have been found alive in a casket recently. Just days ago, one of our townspeople heard muffled cries for help from under the ground; and lo and behold, it was my own grand-aunt, who died 154 years ago. There is no doubt that she rose from the dead."

She felt a twinge of dejection. Not only was the mystery girl not from her world, but from the sounds of it, she could probably hardly even be called a girl—being the previously-deceased grand-aunt of the extremely elderly Impa likely meant that she would be another elderly woman. Emilia had been hoping that the mystery girl would at least be close to her age, in the case that she wasn't from her world. If she was neither—if their only common ground was that they'd both woken up in caskets—Emilia knew she'd end up feeling so much more alone.

"But..." Emilia swallowed heavily, trying to reroute her mind back to the topic at hand. "It's different, with me."

"Are you sure?" Impa said. "Tell me this—what year were you born?"

Emilia floundered, unsure of how to answer. She didn't know what year it was here, but she knew Hyrule had been around for over 10,000 years. If she admitted to being born in the year 2000, Impa would take that as proof of her having been dead and buried in Hyrule's earth for thousands of years, when the reality was that she wasn't from Hyrule at all.

"Did you not hear the question I asked you?" Impa said, interrupting her contemplation.

"I did, but I was—I was just trying to ... do the math, in my head," Emilia forced out. She looked down and wrung her fingers, then moved them to fiddle with the blanket instead when her stomach twisted from the look and feel of the scars across her skin. "I'm from—I'm from another country. And, um, we restarted our calendar a couple millennia ago, and I'm not sure if you guys did...? S-so, I was born in the year 2000 there, eighteen years ago, but I don't know what year that would be here... I, uh, was never really good at doing math off the top of my head."

It became uncomfortably silent, and it stayed that way for an uncomfortable amount of time. Unable to handle the tense atmosphere anymore, Emilia peeked up.

Impa did not look angry as she had feared she would; her face was devoid of any readable emotion whatsoever.

"...You are a terrible liar."

Emilia's entire body went hot and the beginnings of sweat drops formed on her nape. "But—but that is the truth. I'm from another country, I was born eighteen years ago in 2000, and I don't know what year it is here."

Impa leaned forward on her cushions, and the way she looked at Emilia made her feel that she could see right through her soul. "That much may be true, but you and I both know there is something you are hiding. I don't know why it is that you don't wish to share the full truth with me, but you must. It is of utmost importance that you are cooperative and offer any information you have that may help us find what has caused this to occur. Lying will not help any of us."

"I-I know. I don't want to lie, and I'm not trying to, but it's just—"

"A lie by omission is a lie nonetheless," Impa interrupted curtly. "Surely you must understand why I hesitate to believe that you are telling me the whole truth. Your scars tell a story that your words do not—and the story told by your scars matches with the story I know to be true of my grand-aunt."

"But our stories are different. I don't..." Emilia huffed frustratedly. "I don't know how I can prove it to you, but I swear, it's just a coincidence that we both were found in caskets. I didn't die like she did."

"Is that what you truly believe, or what you want to believe?" Impa mused quietly.

"It is what I believe," Emilia said. "I didn't die. I didn't."

"Incredulous, aren't we?" Impa said under her breath. She let out a long sigh and readjusted herself, sitting upright and smoothing out her skirt. "Whatever you say. Let's not focus on whether you died or not. Regardless, am I correct in assuming that you do not know the reason for your awakening in a casket here?"

Finally, a change in focus—Emilia didn't want Impa grilling her on her not-death any longer. She nodded. "Yeah... I really have no idea how I got here. I mean, even if I died like you seem to think I did, my casket never should've ended up here. I should be buried in Arizona."

"Arizona, hm? I don't recall ever having heard of such a place in my 120 years on this earth... Where is it in relation to Hyrule?"

...Shit.

There were so many questions Impa could've asked her—why couldn't she have chosen a question where the answer wouldn't make Emilia sound like a crazy liar?

Just say it and get it over with. So what if she doesn't believe the truth? She won't believe you if you try to lie or hide anything, either...

Emilia squeezed her eyes shut, too embarrassed to look at Impa while telling her the ridiculous, unbelievable truth. "I know how crazy and fake this has to sound, but—but Arizona is in another world. Or another dimension, or universe, I don't know which. A-all I know is that in my home, in my world, there is no Hyrule. There just isn't. Hyrule is a place in stories, and that's it. It's not real," she said, voice quivering more with each sentence. "No one from my home could have, or would have, buried me in some country that doesn't exist to us. It's not possible for me to be here."

"...And yet, here you are," Impa gently said.

When Emilia opened her eyes to look at her again, her vision was blurred. "You ... believe me?"

"I understand now why you wished to omit this information. Your story is quite far-fetched, indeed. But it is just as far-fetched that my grand-aunt has risen from the dead." A smile grew on Impa's face. "I believe you. My people have always had an eye for the truth, and I sense no deception in what you've told me."

Relieved at the faith Impa had in her, she let out a shaky breath and blinked away the wetness that had started to form in her eyes. "So... Do you have any clue how I got here? Or how I could get back...?"

"I'm afraid not, but whatever force is responsible for your appearance here is a mighty one, to be sure. In the face of such a powerful force, I believe your return might be impossible."

Emilia felt her heart drop in her chest.

"But all hope is not lost," Impa continued before she could dwell on that thought too much. "I find it very unlikely that you and my grand-aunt are alone in your awakenings here; perhaps if we find others like you and her, we can figure out what is responsible for this, and from there we can see if there is some way to send you home. I've planned for her and Link to start searching for others awoken across this land, and for them to make a trip to someone who has resources which could potentially uncover the reasoning behind this phenomenon. I would like for you to travel with them."

It took a second for Impa's words to properly register within her. She wanted her to travel around Hyrule—the actual, real Hyrule. It was something straight out of a fantasy, the sort of thing she would've daydreamed about while bored at school or work, and it was real.

But of all the daydreams to be made real, why, oh why, couldn't it have been one in any other version of Hyrule? She just had to wind up in the one with Lynels and Taluses and Hinoxes and Guardians...

Guardians.

Impa's brows drew together. "Are you all right with that?"

Mind still caught up on monsters, her first thought was a sharp No. She would never survive out there, and as long as she did, she would only be a burden on Link and whoever else they would be traveling with. If she couldn't even defend herself from an average-sized human man, then she stood no chance against monsters. She was going to end up getting herself killed, for real this time, probably before she could even find out what had brought her here—so why even try?

Yet, even if their quest would put her in the heart of danger ... it was likely better than the alternative. Maybe she couldn't help them fight monsters, but she could still help, help them figure out what was going on. She could not just sit around, especially not when she was dying to know the answers herself. Beyond sating her intense curiosity and desire to be of use, staying busy would also make it easier to push everything down, to distract herself from thinking too much about what had happened that night.

And besides... This was, after all, a scenario she couldn't have ever dreamt of actually happening—so why not make the most of it all?

It wasn't like she had anything to lose. She'd already lost everything.

"Nothing to lose," Emilia breathed out, more to herself than Impa. She nodded resolutely. "I'll go."

"Good. Once you've readied yourself for your travels, we'll all come together to have a quick discussion, and then you shall make your leave. There is a bathhouse stocked with towels and soaps next door to my abode that you are welcome to make use of. And..." Impa motioned to her left, where a tiny stack of folded clothes sat on the floor next to the staircase. "These undergarments are for you. We do not usually share any of our clothing with others outside our tribe, but I could not in good conscience send someone out into this world in only their skin."

Emilia grabbed the clothes from the floor. It was just a bandeau bra and boy shorts that looked like the feminine counterpart to the underwear Link had. Her cheeks were already warm simply imagining walking around Hyrule in only them. She'd never minded showing some skin beforehand—her love of swimming and her summer job at a pool meant she spent a decent chunk of the year practically living in a bathing suit—but after what had happened...

"I promise you, they're clean," Impa said.

"I wasn't... I wasn't even thinking about that, but, um, thanks for the clarification. I'll get going to the bathhouse now."

Impa nodded once, and then Emilia turned and left. Her tension eased as the doors shut behind her and a refreshing gust of wind blew by.

She looked for Link as she walked down the stairs, but the only people she could see from where she was were the guard and the greeter. It wasn't until she was almost at the bathhouse that she saw Link. The bathhouse was in the spot where the cooking pot and eating area had been, and both that and the produce store next to it were farther over. Link was at one of the tables, tapping away on the slate's screen.

Emilia peeked into the bathhouse to make sure nobody was in there before she entered. Though currently empty, it was clearly meant to be communal. A divider ran down the center of the room, and each side had shelving with toiletries, numerous taps and small stools lining the walls, and a shallow pool of water toward the back. She could only guess that one side of the room was meant for males and the other for females, but as far as she could see, there was nothing to indicate which was which. Hoping it was the right one—and that no one else would come in while she was there—she chose to go to the right side.

Her fangirl pulled through and allowed her to read the bottles on the shelves easily enough to figure out what was body wash and what was shampoo. While grateful that they had running water and cleansing products at all, she was a bit let down that she couldn't find any conditioner. Detangling the absolute mess of her hair was going to suck without it.

After much work getting the majority of the knots out, she was satisfied enough. She would've liked to have vigorously washed herself for hours to try to get rid of the grimy feeling that covered every inch of her skin, but she became antsy to get back into clothes after so long without them. She dried herself off as much as possible with a towel when finished, lamenting the absence of her much-loved hair dryer with its diffuser—it was already chilly enough without having wet hair, it would take forever to dry, and it would dry all frizzy—and then she got dressed. The bandeau, to her surprise, stretched to fit her chest perfectly, and it didn't seem like it was going anywhere unlike the strapless bras she'd taken exception to back home.

She threw the blanket from the stable around her shoulders like a shawl and pulled her hair over it before going to leave the bathhouse. Emilia opened the front door—only to jolt and yelp at the sight of someone on the other side.

"Oh! I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you!"

As quickly as panic had struck her, Emilia's nerves began to calm—it was just a girl. She drew her outstretched hand to her chest and hung her head, looking at Emilia with big brown eyes full of far too much repentance for an unintentional scare. If her mannerisms alone weren't enough to go by, Emilia was certain it was Paya judging by her hair and facial tattoos.

"It's—it's okay," Emilia said, voice trembling with the remainder of shock in her. "I'm, um, I'm sorry if I frightened you, too. I didn't think anyone was gonna be at the door."

"N-no, you're all right. No need to apologize. I-I understand, you must be very beside yourself right now," she said. Her eyes widened suddenly. "Ah, I haven't told you yet—I-I'm Paya. The woman you met with, Impa—she's my grandmother. She told me about you. And she asked me to come make sure you were all right, because you've been in here for a while..."

"I'm all right. I've just ... got a lot of hair," Emilia said, pulling one long, wet curl down, and letting it spring up. "And it was kind of a mess, so..."

Paya gave her a weak smile. "I see. So, are you all ready to go? Master Li-Link has already gone back inside, and he's waiting for you with Grandmother and her grand-auntie."

Emilia nodded, and Paya led her out of the bathhouse. The man standing guard at Impa and Paya's house wordlessly moved out of the way to let them through to the stairs, to which Paya quietly said, "Thank you, Cado"—so, Emilia had been right that it was him. At the top of the stairs, Paya called out that Emilia was there, and Impa's voice rang through the door telling her to enter. Paya motioned for her to go in.

"You're not coming?" Emilia asked. She felt a bit weird about walking in on her own, even with the permission of both of the house's inhabitants.

"No. I-I don't believe I was invited. Not that Grandmother would mind me sitting in, b-but, ah..." Paya looked away, and added in a quiet voice, "Really, it's a bit hard to be around M-Master Link when he's dressed s-so ... immodestly."

Just speaking of him made Paya's already-rosy cheeks redden further. Looking eager to distract herself from the thought of Link's immodesty, Paya hurriedly urged Emilia to go on inside, bid her farewell, and scurried off. Emilia took in a deep breath before entering the house alone.

Impa was not at the back, but rather sitting on her cushions at the head of the small table. Sitting to her right was Link, and to her left was, apparently, her grand-aunt, who didn't look anything like Emilia had resigned herself to expect. She wasn't an old lady after all—she was a cute girl, close to Emilia's age, who must've simply died young. As the girl's eyes met hers, Emilia's heart fluttered. They were a striking blood-red, in stark contrast to their doe-like, innocent shape. Three red triangles were tattooed under each eye to go with the Sheikah symbol on her forehead. Her snow-white hair was partially in a bun, the bun struck through with red sticks and the lower half falling above her shoulders, with long pointed ears keeping the thick strands of her side bangs hanging in the front.

"Welcome back," Impa said. "Please, come sit."

She obliged and took a seat next to Link, continuing to soak the girl in all the while. Emilia knew she hadn't met anyone that looked quite like her back home—as far as she was aware, it wasn't really possible for an Asian girl to naturally have white hair, red eyes, and elf ears—but there was something so familiar about her. It was hard to look away.

"Emilia, this is my grand-aunt Avera. Avera, this is Emilia," Impa said, gesturing to each of them.

"Hi, Emilia," Avera said. Even her voice—sweet and warm as the smile she gave her—was familiar.

The corners of Emilia's lips raised in a small returning smile. "Hi," she said, the word unintentionally coming out so quiet she might as well have whispered.

"Now that we've all been introduced, shall we begin?" Impa said. Once everyone showed agreement, she went on. "To start with, I have some potentially unfortunate news, Avera. While we know that you were revived in the very same place you were buried, Emilia does not seem to be quite like you. She did not die here. She's from a foreign country, and her being buried and awakening here should have been impossible."

Avera's white brows creased, and she tilted her head. "I don't think that changes much of anything," she said. She looked at Emilia again, and again Emilia's heart fluttered. "Whether or not you were originally buried here, we are connected, somehow. I can feel it. Can you?"

Emilia grimaced. "I... I don't know. I feel ... something. But I don't understand how we both could've been awakened by the same thing. It makes sense for you to wake up here, because you died here, but..."

"Regardless, this being but a mere coincidence is simply inconceivable," Impa said. "And as I've told you both, I find it just as improbable that you two are the only ones to have something like this occur to you. By finding more people who've been revived and comparing your experiences, we may be able to find the cause. Truth be told... I've had one small, unlikely suspicion as to how you woke up, Avera. But you arriving here is nothing short of a mystery to me."

At that, Emilia finally pried her eyes away from Avera and looked at Impa. "How do you think she woke up?" Emilia asked, wondering if Impa's idea could also somehow apply to her in a way she hadn't considered.

Impa pursed her wrinkled lips, stalling. "...How much has Link told you of himself?"

"Uh, just his name, and that he has no memory, really," Emilia said slowly, worried she might accidentally say something about him she shouldn't have known yet. "Is there something I should know...?"

"Do you mind...?" Impa said to Link.

Link waved his hands out in a carefree motion. "Tell her whatever. I don't mind."

Impa nodded and turned her attention back to Emilia. "You see... Link fell in battle 100 years ago and was placed into a medical facility known as the Shrine of Resurrection to be revived. We knew very little of the Shrine of Resurrection before he was placed in there; we didn't even know it would work at all. I've wondered ... if, perhaps, the shrine is more powerful than we ever thought—if its abilities have spread beyond its walls, seeping out into the world around it and resurrecting others." Impa shook her head. "It's quite unlikely, but it was all I could think of when Avera was first revived. If that were the case, I would imagine the dozens of people in our graveyard would have all awoken, not just one—and your arrival cannot be explained by that.

"But, as I've said, I do believe there is someone out there who could potentially help us figure out what happened," Impa continued to the group. "She runs her own research lab in Hateno Village. I would like for you three to go visit her."

"Is she the same person you said would be able to fix my Sheikah Slate?" Link asked.

"Yes, that is her. If you leave immediately and get yourselves some horses, you have a chance at making it to the village before nightfall."

Impa slowly stood up, and the others followed her lead. With Avera having been sitting before, Emilia hadn't noticed how tall she was, and noticing only made her feeling of familiarity surge. She had to have seen her before.

Maybe there is something connecting us.

"I'd like to see you all again once you've spoken to her," Impa said. "Tell the leader of Hateno to listen for anyone in their graveyard, and listen for others yourselves along the way. And please... Be safe."

Chapter Text

It turned out that having already teleported before didn't make the liquifying feeling any less weird—at least for Emilia. She was once again made unsteady by the sensory experience as she reappeared on the shrine just outside of Dueling Peaks Stable, but her two companions didn't even stumble a bit. The way they'd been standing around the slate—Link and Avera on one side, Emilia on the other—left her facing the shrine and the mountains behind it, while they were left facing the stable.

Though they might not have looked to have been affected by the teleportation itself, the sight behind Emilia did look to affect them. Link grimaced at something over her shoulder, and Avera made a confused face as she looked out over Emilia's head, before her gaze fell around the same area that Link was looking at and her brows shot up.

Curious, Emilia turned her head.

Beedle was standing right at the edge of the shallow water around the shrine, looking at them with a slack jaw. Nobody else seemed to have noticed their appearance but him.

"...Wow!" he said—and Emilia couldn't stop the little smile that tugged at her mouth from how much he sounded like the Beedle she knew. "You can magically appear in places, but you two couldn't magic some clothes on yourselves yesterday?"

And just like that, her amusement washed away. Face burning, Emilia turned her head back with a wince. She did not want to think about how she'd been seen naked by probably every person at this stable when Link had carried her unconscious body to it. Ugh.

"Yeah. Sorry for your eyes," Link said, giving him a faux-apologetic look.

Link clipped the Sheikah Slate back to his belt and took off toward the stable. Avera laughed softly at the exchange, then looked at Emilia expectantly. Emilia readjusted the blanket to cover herself up better—the way she'd been wearing it like a loose shawl showed that she'd gotten underwear, but she didn't want the stablehands to know that yet because she figured they might ask for it back then, and she wasn't ready to give it up quite yet—before she turned and followed after Link with Avera at her side.

They had decided to teleport here in a bid to not waste any hours of daylight unnecessarily taking the long walk back, and from there they were supposed to go get themselves some horses—so Emilia wondered why Link was heading straight for the stable as opposed to the plains surrounding it where the wild horses presumably were. But before she could question him or ponder it much, they made it up to the stable's receptionist, and Link asked to take out his horse that he'd registered and boarded last night.

While the receptionist jotted things down on some sort of paperwork form, his twin led them to go get Link's horse. A large paddock was behind the stable, stretching far into the field. A few horses were out ranging and grazing in it, along with goats and chickens—or cuccos, she supposed. The man brought them into the paddock and over to the stalls, which were back-to-back with the stable itself. Only one of the stalls was currently occupied.

As the man opened up the stall's door and led Link's horse out, Emilia was filled with awe. The horse was beautiful, majestic—and so much bigger than she'd expected. She'd always known horses were big, but simply knowing that as a fact held nothing to witnessing one's size firsthand. A rich, medium brown coat covered the horse's thick musculature, and lighter brown, nearly ginger hair fell elegantly over her neck. The only non-brown part of her was on her face, with an off-white spreading up from her nose before tapering off in a point between her eyes. Those eyes, large and deep brown, looked almost uncannily aware for an animal.

"Here she is," the man said, handing her reins over to Link.

Link held them in one hand while reaching out with the other to stroke the horse's face. She nuzzled her head into his touch, making a strange sort of purring noise. When the man began talking to Link about how his horse had been and how they'd outfitted her, Emilia became cognizant of her ignorance about the needs of horses. It was one thing, to think in an abstract way about getting a horse, and a whole other thing to realize what went into actually having one. She had so much to learn. All this stuff about saddles and cinches and bridles and bits and horseshoes and hay and ... stir-fry?

Emilia tuned back into their conversation as that word hit her, trying to catch what she'd missed out on in her musing of horse care. It didn't take her long to figure out, as the man continued talking about Link's horse, that the conversation hadn't shifted to human food—he'd said stir-fry because that was the name of Link's horse. Stir-Fry.

Of course he would name his horse after food.

Once the man finished giving Link his rundown on Stir-Fry, Avera spoke up to ask him if they sold or rented out any horses to help save them some time. Emilia felt a flash of hope at the idea, because if there was one thing she could not see herself learning, it was how to catch a wild horse in real life; she was certain it wouldn't be as easy as pressing in the L stick, tilting it forward, tapping the A button, and maybe mashing the L trigger if the horse needed to be soothed. But the answer, disappointingly, was a no—though the stablehand was quick to reassure them that horses around here weren't quite as wild as horses elsewhere, being only semi-feral, because more travelers passed by here for them to get used to. Emilia was fairly certain he only added on that last part because of the expression that must've colored her face.

They headed away from the stable then, Link atop his horse with Avera and Emilia walking together on their left side. Link said he would take them to the herd he'd gotten Stir-Fry from, echoing the stablehand's sentiments about the nearby horses being relatively tame. Emilia decided to take it, then, whether it was a false reassurance or not—she trusted Link's word over the stablehand's—although she remained somewhat nervous about the upcoming ordeal.

"So," Avera said, "this is all new to you, isn't it?"

"Huh?" Emilia looked up at her. "What is? The whole 'having to catch a wild horse' thing? Or ... the 'waking up in a casket' thing?"

She giggled. "I'll bet waking up in a casket was new to you, too. But I did mean about horses. You're not much of an equestrian, are you?" Though it was a question, she worded it like a statement of fact—apparently, it was that evident.

"Oh. Yeah... No. This is my first time even seeing a horse up-close," Emilia said, glancing over at Stir-Fry. "What about you?"

"I have a—" Avera stopped herself, her bright expression faltering. "...I had a horse. Over 150 years ago. He has to be dust, by now."

Pity and regret twisted in Emilia's stomach. "I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"Don't be. It's not your fault I'm alive again all this time later. And even if it was ... I wouldn't be upset with you. It's not like I wanted to die in the first place." She smiled down at her. "But back to you. You're obviously worried about getting a horse. What about it worries you?"

"I'm... I don't really know how I'm supposed to just ... jump, on a giant wild animal, and then ride it," she admitted, wringing the blanket where it wrapped around her sides. "I'm scared of getting kicked or bucked off, or it not listening to me and running off in the wrong direction or something."

"Well, it's almost a guarantee your horse won't respond great at first, but it'll still be okay. Unless horses have changed in the last century and a half, I'm pretty good with them, so I can help you and your horse out however you need. You don't have to worry about being inexperienced as long as I'm around."

"I can help, too," Link piped up from atop Stir-Fry.

"But you don't remember anything from before a couple days ago, right?" Avera said to him. "Do you still know anything about horses?"

"I might not remember everything about them, but I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing with them, at least. This feels natural to me." He shrugged and reached forward to pat his horse. "I caught Stir-Fry easy."

"Good. Then you've got two people to help you out," Avera said, looking back at Emilia. She then hunched over a bit so their faces were closer together and stage-whispered, "But you should probably ask me if you have any questions, not him," and she punctuated her sentence with a wink before standing back up straight.

Cheeks heating up again, Emilia nodded and ducked her head. She was grateful for the offers of help, truly, but she also resented the feeling of being the only clearly inept person in their group. Especially taking into account that Link, with his lack of memory, had more or less begun at the same place as her, and he'd already caught a wild horse all on his own, presumably without even fretting over it. She resolved to try her hardest to learn the ropes as quickly as possible so she wouldn't have to rely on them.

Suddenly enough to startle her, Avera called out, "Look! I think that's them!"

Emilia followed her line of sight, squinting into the distance when she didn't see any horses. Even then, she couldn't see anything out there but trees before a faraway range of mountains and a smattering of big dark gray blobs in the grass along the way...

It took her a second to realize what the gray blobs were. Not rocks, not ruins—Guardians.

Shivers ran up her spine.

It was strange to think how, playing the game, she'd long since become immune to fearing them; the second she got the timing for parries down, they became fun instead of scary. But the idea of facing one in real life...? Even from far away, she could already hear the foreboding piano in her head.

This was part of the reason she'd hesitated about going along with them, and it was already here. They'd barely even started. Now she was supposed to not get killed by the tank-sized mecha-spiders with laser beams attached to their heads, when all she had on her for protection was a pair of underwear and a blanket. No armor, no shield, hardly anything to hide behind in the vast expanse of the plains, and she wasn't a fast runner.

"Emilia?"

She blinked at her name, tearing her eyes away from the gray blobs. Everyone had stopped—Avera and Link were looking back at her, their expressions confused and concerned.

"S-sorry, it's just..." She swallowed heavily. "...Those are Guardians up ahead, aren't they?"

At the same time as each other, Avera looked at them and said, "Oh," and Link confirmed what they were with a "Yeah."

"I thought those were just chunks of shrines or weird rocks," Avera said. "I've only seen abstract depictions of Guardians on old tapestries, never a real one. They were all still buried when I was last alive."

"These ones are fine to pass by," Link said, directing his words more to Emilia than Avera. "All of them along the way to the herd are dead. Not sure about the ones farther out in the field where we're gonna be heading, but we're good for now. Promise."

Emilia released a shaky breath and nodded. "Okay."

"But later, if we come across ones that are alive...?" Avera said. "I don't know how to fight them," she admitted with a hint of shame in her voice.

"S'all right. We're not gonna fight them anyway. Once we start going past where I know we're good, we're gonna stay as far away from any of them as possible and get our horses to go as fast as possible." He readjusted himself on the saddle and motioned forward with his head. "Shall we?"

He nudged his horse back into walking, and Avera took off alongside him, while Emilia took another few seconds to get her legs moving again. She had to jog to catch back up with Stir-Fry's and Avera's longer strides.

Feeling calmer about the prospect of passing the Guardians—and, frankly, knowing that they were safe ... she was almost excited to see one up-close—Emilia resumed looking out into the field for the herd. But still, even without getting distracted by the Guardians, she couldn't see any horses. Squinting didn't help any, either.

"So..." she started. "Uh. Where exactly are the horses...?"

"Right there," Link said, pointing ahead. "That's Stir-Fry's herd."

She squinted harder. Still nothing. Last time she'd gotten her vision checked, it was 20/15, better than average. It was odd that she of all people would be the one in a group struggling to see something.

...Or, it would've been if she was home.

"I think people from Hyrule might have better vision than people where I'm from," she realized aloud.

"Think we've got better hearing, too?" Link asked.

Emilia raised an eyebrow and angled her head, as if that would allow her to hear better. "Maybe...? Why, are you hearing something I'm not?"

"No, I'm asking 'cause your ears are different."

At that, Avera was craning her head over her again, eyes darting from one side of her face to the other. She pouted. "Are your ears different? You can't even really see them with all your hair..."

Rather than explain how they were different, Emilia reached up to pull her still-damp curls back behind her ears, and Avera's face lit up. It was like she was showing her a cute puppy or something instead of just ... ears. Not that Emilia was immune to finding ears cute herself—she found Avera's elongated ones particularly cute, honestly—but the reaction seemed a bit exaggerated for the circumstances.

"You're a Roundie!" Avera exclaimed. She promptly drew her brows together and tilted her head. "Which ... I feel like I knew already. Or I should've, at least. But I don't know if that's because of our connection, or because you don't look how anyone from Hyrule does..."

Emilia moved her hair back in place before dropping her hands. "A Roundie...? That's what you guys call us?"

"Roundie or Round-Ear, whichever. But either way," her grin came back in full force, "I've never met a Roundie before!"

"Same here. I-I mean, er—I mean the other way around. I never met a ... Pointy-ie, before I got here."

"Pointy-ie..." Link repeated under his breath.

"It's only fair that you guys get a name based on the shape of your ears if my people do," Emilia said.

"So what do your people call yourselves if not Roundies or Round-Ears?"

"Um... Humans?"

"But us Pointy-ies are human, too." Link paused, and shot a glance toward Avera. "...Right?"

"Right," Avera said. "Hylian, Sheikah, Gerudo, Roundie—we're all human."

"Yeah, well... There are no other humans besides Roundies where I'm from, so we just use human for ourselves," Emilia said with a shrug.

"I had no idea there were any countries with just Roundies even left," Avera said. "I thought you guys were mostly wiped out besides a handful of you left in tiny little settlements here and there around the world."

Emilia felt a pang of guilt, realizing that they still believed her initial lie-by-omission about merely being from a different country instead of a completely different world—but it was quickly overshadowed by curiosity about what Avera meant. "Wiped out by what?"

"Interbreeding, mostly. Y'know, the Gerudo used to have round ears, too, but they developed the ears of Hylians after generation upon generation of interbreeding. I guess with how similar Hylians are to Roundies in the first place, it was pretty easy for you guys to lose all your own characteristics. I take it your home is really isolated...? But, wait—you knew what Guardians were. Where are you even from?"

Emilia opened her mouth, and very nearly blurted out that her home was in another world.

Besides it being important to the whole quest for answers they were on, she couldn't bear the thought of hiding such a core truth of herself from Avera and Link if she was going to be spending the next who-knows-how-long with them. And now that Impa—Impa, the woman who seemed to look right into her soul to find the truth—believed her, she trusted that they would follow in Impa's belief, that she wouldn't have to worry about them thinking she was a crazy liar.

But she was already going to have to divulge everything all over again when they got to Purah, so in spite of the guilt gnawing at her, she chose to wait to say anything. She could come clean to Purah and Avera and Link at once ... and not make their upcoming journey to catch and ride horses through a field of Guardians that much more strained for herself. Wild horses and mechanical monstrosities were a bad enough combo on their own.

"...My home is really, really far away," was what she landed on saying. "I'll tell you about it later."

Things fell back into silence, then. After some time, Emilia looked up into the distance once more and finally saw the horses. There had to be at least ten together unlike the game with its herds of merely three or four, and some of them were clearly younger, which was another good reminder to not take everything from the game as gospel. But there was something that the game had gotten right, something Emilia might've guessed that it wouldn't have in actuality, and that was that one of the horses was actually, genuinely blue. It was arguably a bit more accurate to call it turquoise or teal with its green undertone, but still—a blue horse!

There were a couple of others with a more 'fantasy' color as seen in the game—namely, what looked to be a parent and child with pink and white splotches, like strawberry cows—but Emilia's heart was already set.

Even though she'd just received a clear reminder about the game not always being 100% accurate to reality, she had to stop to wonder if the game's thing about horses with solid coats being wilder would hold true. Stir-Fry was fairly solid herself, and she seemed quite calm, so it probably wasn't entirely true, but she didn't want to unintentionally make things harder on herself all because she had to have the pretty blue horse. She guessed she could ask Avera those questions she'd said she would answer.

They were still quite a distance away from the herd, though—and they were approaching the first of the Guardians—so the question could wait.

Her heart beat faster the nearer she got to it. Although she still had a reasonable bit of fear left in her, she couldn't help the sense of awe that filled her at the sight. Even though it was unmoving, not glowing, covered in moss and with most of its legs missing, it was mesmerizing.

And goddamn enormous.

Maybe it was because the game was in third person, or maybe it was just on her brain, but she'd never been able to properly grasp the scale of them through the screen. This thing, even without the added elevation of its legs, stood nearly twice the height of her house. Close to it, she had to lean her head back as far as she could just to see the top of it.

She wondered if she would feel as mesmerized if she'd never played the game before and didn't know what it was capable of, or if it would just look like some weirdly-shaped huge hunk of weird metal to her then. A small part of her wished she would've woken up in Hyrule back before Ganon had taken them over so she could've had the chance to view a live one in pristine condition up this close and safely, to see it glowing brightly and moving on its own.

More excitement built up in her as it hit her that she was going to get to see what everything from this world looked like in real life. The Divine Beasts, the runes of the Sheikah Slate, the ancient and magical weapons and shields and bows, the people—real live Zoras and Ritos and Gorons and Gerudos—and dragons! To an extent, she'd already become aware of this when Impa had suggested she go with Link and Avera, but she hadn't thought about it in such detail then. Now that she was fully considering it, the notion of it all was a motivator unlike anything else.

It made the upcoming obstacle of jumping on a horse feel worth its weight in gold.

Until it came time.

The horses were supposed to be semi-feral, according to the stablehand.

And the whole thing about solid-colored horses having more wild temperaments? An old wives' tale, according to Avera.

Emilia didn't know what she would've done if they were completely feral and if the old wives' tale was true, because as it were, she still ended up on her ass approximately twenty times.

In defense of Blue—her nickname for now—Emilia could admit that a great deal of the issues were her own fault. She couldn't blame a wild animal for getting annoyed by a person repeatedly trying and failing to throw herself over it. The extent of Blue's annoyance entailed her just running off a bit, and not trying to kick Emilia in the face, at least. Both Avera—who'd quickly caught herself a gray horse, a feat she made look devastatingly easy with her long legs—and Link—who'd been watching from atop Stir-Fry—offered to help her, but that only made her more determined to do it herself. Eventually, she'd finally managed to pull herself up on Blue and get situated on her back. It was more than a little humiliating that she'd had so much trouble, but at least that bridge was crossed.

Then came the next bridge, which was actually riding. Since it could take time they didn't apparently have for them to get their new horses fitted, they were going for now without any saddles or stirrups or reins or any of the stuff Emilia was pretty sure made riding easier. Avera tried to give her tips—"keep your back straight," "try not to bounce so much," "steer with your legs," "look where you're going"—but it was a lot to take in and work on at once.

Even more so when they got up to a point past where Link had cleared and they had no idea if any of the Guardians in their way were alive or not. Link was leading, but Emilia still felt like she had to stay on guard in case he missed something.

"They could all be dead," he said, after Emilia had explained to Avera that she wasn't looking ahead because she was looking for live Guardians.

"But what if they're not, and they see us?" Emilia said.

"Then we hope for the best."

"You can't ... I dunno ... parry their blasts with your shield or something?" It might've been a bit revealing of her to ask—she probably shouldn't have known about their blasts or parrying them—but she had to anyway.

"While riding a horse away from them at like fifty kilometers an hour?"

Solid point ... even if she had no frame of reference for how fast that would be. "Guess not..."

"Are there Guardians all the way where you're from?" Avera asked her.

It had been revealing of her to ask, then. She'd been hoping since neither of them had immediately inquired as to how she knew of Guardians that they wouldn't at all. "No, but... I still know about them. It's ... part of what I'll tell you later."

Coming up on a large chunk of Guardian and the ruins of some structure, Link steered Stir-Fry around their path, and both Avera's and Emilia's horses followed in her steps. Emilia was grateful that Blue was at least content to follow Stir-Fry, since she wasn't so content to listen to her.

Emilia tried her hardest to keep her eyes forward after their conversation, but she couldn't stop herself from looking around every now and again. Not so much for living Guardians, though—for the spot where Zelda's powers had awoken and Link had fallen. The field was so much bigger in real life and there were so many more ruins and broken Guardians, it was the only hope she had for some sort of waypoint before Fort Hateno, which they still weren't even within eyesight of. After this long of riding in the game, they likely would've been halfway to Hateno Village.

Which reminded her—Impa had said that they had a chance at making it to Hateno before nightfall if they rode horses. ...But Emilia and Link had just had breakfast within the last two hours.

Wondering if they'd possibly had a very late breakfast, she glanced up into the sky. If the cardinal directions of the game were the same in real life, and if Hyrule's earth worked like her own, it looked like the sun was still more to the east than the west ... so it wasn't even midday yet. They definitely still had hours and hours of riding ahead of them.

Her thoughts meandered from there, eventually coming around to what time of year it was in Hyrule. She was especially curious what the year itself was; she really wanted to know how far back Impa would've assumed she was from if all she'd said was that she was born in the year 2000.

"Hey, uh, random question," she said. "Do either of you know the date?"

"No clue," Link said.

"It's the 25th of April," Avera responded.

It wasn't the full answer she wanted, but it was still interesting. Her last day before waking up here had been May 18th, and the day before that had been her birthday. If she kept celebrating it as if no insanity had occurred, her nineteenth birthday would come less than a full month after her eighteenth.

...Oh god. Would she still be here in a month? She'd never even gone a week without seeing her family.

She wasn't gonna think about it. "And what about the year?"

"Impa didn't talk to you about what year it was to see if you were from another time period?" Avera asked in return. Without giving Emilia the chance to answer, she said, "It's twenty-seven three hundred three."

Emilia had to write the numbers out in her head to try to fully comprehend it. 27,303—a long shot off of the 2018 she'd come from.

If Avera was expecting an answer for her initial question, she didn't push for it, and Emilia was more than okay with not trying to give her one. The only thing she really could say was another 'I'll tell you later,' anyway, unless she caved and spilled the beans.

She contemplated how she would go about it when she did, knowing she'd be much more comfortable with having a solid plan ahead of time. How would she explain her home to them? How would she explain that there was no Hyrule in her world? How would she answer them when they would inevitably question where her knowledge of Hyrule came from? All she'd really told Impa was that Hyrule only existed in 'stories' back in her home, without describing those stories or how they were presented—if she told them everything, how could she describe it all to people who had no idea what video games were?

'Hey Link, you know the screen on your Sheikah Slate? Imagine that it showed a fake version of this world, and you pressed buttons and sticks to control this fake version of you, and you played out all the events that are happening in real life here except it's all fake—like you were a doll in a playset, but behind a screen. I did that at home a lot. Played with a fake little version of you. For fun.'

...Maybe vagueness was the only way to go. 'Hyrule exists in stories. Like, wacky illustrated storybooks. Please don't ask for more explanation than that.'

Their ride continued in relative peace for quite some time—only to end abruptly with a beeping and a bright red circle of light on the back of Link's head.

"Link!" Emilia yelled.

His head whipped around, eyes widened, and before he was even looking back ahead he was already getting Stir-Fry to hightail it and swerve out of the way. Avera's horse and Blue both took off after her, and Emilia very nearly fell off backward at the massive boost. She tightened her legs around Blue's sides and used almost all her core strength to throw herself forward, accidentally overshooting and ending up with her upper body against Blue's neck—but before she could even try to readjust into a better position, Emilia lost her grip.

For a second, as she collided with the hard ground and all the wind was knocked out of her, everything was black.

Head pounding and the world a blur around her, she forced herself to sit upright. Ahead of her, Blue was still racing away with Link and Avera's horses, who still had their riders on them. Both Link and Avera were looking back at her, already so far away. At least they were more than likely safe; there was a collection of dilapidated buildings and structures up around them that could block them from the laser. As Emilia looked around her, hoping to find something similar, her vision went pure red.

The Guardian had its beam pointed right at her face, and there was nowhere for her to hide that she could make it to in time.

She wasn't going to take it lying down.

Even knowing in her heart that it was pointless, she scrambled to her feet and ran, faster than she'd ever run in her life—until suddenly there were arms around her, and her body liquefied.

At first, when the droplets of her body came back together, all she was aware of was that the arms were still around her. In her frantic attempt to get them off her and get away, she stumbled to her knees, and then there was a thump behind her. Though every nerve in her body was fired up and desperate to do nothing but run away, she still had to see what that thump had been, what had happened to the person who'd grabbed her.

It was only then that she realized she was no longer where she had been in the field. She was now behind the partial remains of some building which she'd been nowhere near—and a very tired-looking Avera was slumped up against the stone wall.

"What ... happened?" Emilia panted out.

"I ... teleported us ... out of the way," Avera said between her own panting, voice breathy and weak.

Emilia blinked a few times. "But you—but you were way ahead of me...?" It came out like a question, though she didn't mean for it to.

"Teleported back ... to get you." Avera closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall.

"And you don't even have the Sheikah Slate," Emilia said.

Avera let out something of a laugh, took a few more deep breaths, and pried her eyes open again. "...I am a Sheikah."

"I ... know...? That's not really—" Emilia stopped herself as the meaning behind Avera's words dawned on her. She didn't need the Sheikah Slate to teleport—as a Sheikah, it was something she could just do. Emilia guessed it made sense, because the Yiga could teleport, but it wasn't something she'd thought about. "...I didn't know you could do that."

"Me either," Avera breathed out. "...Not now, at least. My magic ... 's been low. Since I woke up. Since before I died. I'm surprised ... I was able to."

"Yeah, you were able to, but ... look what it did to you," Emilia said, brows drawn together as she looked over her. Avera was already fair-skinned, but she was exceptionally pale now, and covered in a sheen of sweat. She looked miserable. "...I'm sorry. You shouldn't have had to do that for me. You didn't have to."

Avera frowned at her. "I wasn't gonna let you die."

Emilia wanted to respond that she hadn't been implying that she should've ... but she supposed she had been, even if not intentionally. She pursed her lips.

"...Thank you," Emilia whispered.

Avera just hummed in response and let her eyes fall shut again.

Hearing hoofbeats, Emilia turned her head to the sound. Link was approaching them atop Stir-Fry, with her and Avera's horses flanking them. He jumped off when he was closer, jogged the short distance to reach them, and crouched down next to Avera.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Worn out ... but I'm fine," Avera said, reopening her eyes.

"And you?" Link said to Emilia.

"Kinda sore from falling off Blue, but also fine. It's not that bad."

Avera let out a huff, and in almost the blink of an eye, she was up on her feet. "All right. Let's get going."

"But you just said you're still—"

"I'm not gonna be the one running," Avera interrupted her. She gave a little smile. "My horse is. It's okay if I'm kinda tired."

"Are you sure?" Link said. "We can take a break here."

"Nah. I hate waiting around, and I wanna get to Hateno as soon as possible."

Avera hopped up on her horse and looked down at Emilia and Link. Emilia gave Link a look, as if to say 'Tell her she needs to rest more,' but he just shrugged and stood up. With a sigh and a shake of her head, Emilia followed their leads.

Chapter Text

The rest of their trip to Hateno Village passed by relatively smoothly. There were no more close calls with the Guardians, and past Fort Hateno, they only encountered a handful of monsters. It was mostly Bokoblins with only a few Moblins—both of which looked a lot grosser than Emilia had realized. They had a certain charm in the game, to where she could almost see where Kilton was coming from, but in reality, they were less ugly-cute and more eldritch abominations.

They came to a stop some distance away each time they neared any, and Link and Avera took care of them while Emilia stayed behind, weaponless and feeling useless. At least it was hard for Emilia to get herself too down about how little of a help she was being when she was so amazed watching them fight.

She was also amazed that she finally got to see in real life how Link carried around so many weapons. At first, she noticed that Avera suddenly had some polearm that likely would've been dragging along the ground if she'd been storing it anywhere on her. Paying closer attention afterward, she found Avera stuffing it back into a far-too-small pouch where it shrunk away. Link did the same, picking up a sword that a Bokoblin had dropped and making it disappear into his pouch. It already would've been cool to watch something like that in her own world, but seeing it here and knowing that it wasn't just an illusion—that it was real magic—was positively mystifying.

They also made a stop for Link to scale the Hateno Tower, and yet again Emilia was amazed as it was activated. Mesmerizing, glowing blue light swirled up and around the tower, leaving the center column that same bright blue afterward. Link came floating down on his paraglider then, landing right on Stir-Fry, and they were back off again.

The sun was beginning to set when they were finally nearing Hateno Village. Emilia could tell even from far away that it was so, so much bigger in real life—it put the expanded stable and Kakariko Village to shame. The main street, she noticed as they got closer, looked about the same as it did in the game, but there were many more houses and crop fields surrounding it.

She was so entrenched in soaking in the sights that she was startled by Blue coming to a halt.

Ahead of her, Link had stopped Stir-Fry—and ahead of them was a man wearing a tall hat and holding a pitchfork, standing right in the middle of the archway that marked the entrance to the village's main street. He held his pitchfork in front of him defensively, like he was ready to use it as a weapon against them.

"Who are you?" the man demanded. "Three strangers showing up to this village when it's getting late, two of you all indecent—you're probably up to no good, aren't you?!"

"We're travelers," Link said.

"Here to meet a woman at the research lab," Avera added.

"You wanna see that yappy old woman up on the mountain...?" the man mumbled. "But you are one of her kind... Guess it figures you'd bring strange company around. And at least Hylians are generally good folk, even the more ... eccentric ones, but..." He moved his sights from Link to Emilia, and her stomach clenched at the way he regarded her. "You. I've never seen anybody that looks quite like you do. What are you? Some ... strange Lureliner? A real weird Gerudo mix? From a different country altogether?"

Different world altogether, Emilia responded mentally. "Dif-different country."

The man pursed his lips, and after a few moments lowered his pitchfork. "...Hrm. All right. Sorry for getting worked up. You all can go on—but don't get yourselves into any trouble, y'hear?"

"We won't be," Avera said.

"You can leave your horses up at the stalls by the inn back there," the man said, pointing with his pitchfork. "Actually, it might be best for you all to stay the night at the inn—the woman at the research lab is real old, she might already be in bed by now. And, since you're travelers..." he paused, looking pointedly from Link to Emilia and back several times, "...why don't you travel yourselves over to the clothing store?"

Emilia's face burned. She'd been hoping the blanket wrapped around her might just seem like a weird fashion statement or something, not an obvious sign that she didn't have any actual clothes on.

After Avera promised the man that she'd make sure her friends got decent soon, he finally moved out of their way to let them through. Emilia nudged Blue to walk a little closer to Avera's horse and told her that she didn't have any money to buy clothes, but Avera waved her hand and said she'd cover it with the money Impa had given her—money that had probably been her very own, over a century ago.

Shopping at the clothing store was a novel experience, to say the least. Rather than going in and picking up her closest size off the racks or shelves as she was used to back home, a seamstress working there took her and Link's measurements, had them pick what clothes they wanted from dressed mannequins—there were definitely more to pick from than in the game, and it amused Emilia that Link ended up picking out the exact pieces of the game's Hylian outfit for himself even with other choices available—and they left with no more clothes on their backs than they'd entered with, only the promise of tailor-fitted clothes ready early tomorrow.

Though they hadn't been in there for all that long, Emilia was distressed to find that the sun had completely set by the time they exited. As they began to walk toward the inn, her eyes shot around in the darkness, looking for ... she didn't know what.

Well. She did know. But she also knew it was stupid. He was still a dark blur in her memories, so there was a chance she wouldn't even recognize him if she did see him—and there was no reason to believe that he was in Hyrule anyway.

...Although, she wasn't supposed to be in Hyrule, either. Who was to say he couldn't be here?

She walked closer to Link and Avera. It helped, a little bit. Finally entering the firelit inn, though, was a much better balm to her distress. Much like the village it was situated in, the inn was bigger in real life than it had been in the game, but it was still very much what she would consider tiny for an inn back in her world. There were a measly four rooms in it, according to the receptionist, and only one of those was vacant—one with only two beds. The receptionist seemed perhaps a bit scandalized that the three of them wanted to book the room together, but ultimately accepted Avera's payment and slid over the key regardless.

Emilia wanted to be gracious to her two companions who'd been nothing but kind to her, wanted to offer for them each to take a bed while she would make do with her borrowed blanket on the floor... But upon entering their dimly lit room and seeing the beds, all her day's worth of riding finally hit her, leaving her desperate for a bed—and so tired and sore that she wasn't even sure she could make the few steps over to it.

"I'll take the floor," Link said.

"No, you take a bed," Avera said. "Me and Emilia can share the other."

Emilia's eyes shot wide open at that. "Uh..."

"...If that's okay with you?" Avera asked, tilting her head at her.

"Um, I... I'd kinda rather..." She swallowed and pursed her lips, face hot. It wasn't as if she had ever been opposed to sharing beds on principle—she and Jasmine would always share a bed during sleepovers, and her little brothers had frequently slept in her bed with her when they were younger—but the idea of sharing a bed now made Emilia uncomfortable in ways she couldn't begin to put words to. "It—it's not you, it's just..."

"...Yeah, I'm taking the floor," Link said, grabbing a spare pillow from one of the beds and plopping down on the ground with it.

Too exhausted to put up more of a fight, Emilia took that as a cue to trudge those few steps over and let herself collapse on the nearest bed. Still feeling a bit bad for him, though, she tossed the blanket from her bed over to him before adjusting herself under her borrowed blanket from the stable and closing her eyes.

It was crazy how wide awake she felt the second she did. As if she hadn't been dead on her feet less than a minute previously. Her thoughts went straight to her last night at home and refused to budge, replaying it over and over and over. It didn't help any when she could tell—through the darkening of her closed lids—that someone was going around to get rid of all the light in the room.

"Can you leave one on?" she hurriedly asked, before the last light could go out. "Er, leave a lamp on, I mean."

"Scared of the dark?" Avera responded lightly.

After almost being murdered in the dark, and then spending what felt like forever buried alive in the dark? Emilia felt she had more than enough of an excuse to never want to be in the dark ever again.

...But admitting it did sound pathetic. "Shut up," she mumbled, burying her head in her pillow.

"Wasn't judging—just wanted to know. I'll leave the one closest to you on."

"Thanks," Emilia murmured. "...And sorry for telling you to shut up."

Avera breathed out a laugh and told her it was okay, and that was the last noise Emilia heard before the room fell into total silence—silence that let her brain go right back to that night.

She didn't know how much time had passed until then, but she eventually couldn't take it anymore. Emilia sat upright in her bed and threw her legs over it, intent on going to do ... something. Anything but lay in bed and let her mind keep stewing. Looking around, she saw that Link was zonked out on the floor, and the other bed was empty. Maybe she could go find Avera and see what she was up to—or maybe she could take the Sheikah Slate that Link had left on a nightstand and see what all it was like in real life... But she didn't want to accidentally detonate a bomb, so she decided the latter was probably not the best idea.

After a cursory glance around the inn's lobby, where Avera was nowhere to be found, the receptionist quietly told her that she'd gone outside. Whatever idea Emilia had of following after her was dashed, then. She definitely wasn't going outside by herself in the dark.

Instead, she wandered into the empty dining area, and sat herself on the ground next to the lit hearth. It was nice—just enough stimulation to keep her mind from wandering back to unwanted thoughts. There was warmth, light dancing behind her closed lids, the sound of the flickering flames...

...

"...Emilia?"

She jumped at her name, eyes snapping open and hurrying to take everything in while her heart was pounding forcefully against her chest. Blood-red irises stared back at her beneath a furrowing brow, with white hair framing a soft, pretty face marked with a red eye and triangles.

"Avera," she breathed out, pressing a hand to her chest.

"Sorry," Avera said through a grimace. "I didn't mean to scare you, but ... I don't think it's very safe to fall asleep sitting up this close to a fire. Why aren't you in bed?"

"Oh," she said, scooching away from the fireplace. "I, um ... couldn't sleep. And I came out here to look for you, but ... the lady said you left, so I just ... relaxed by the fire. Didn't think I'd actually end up falling asleep here. Where were you?"

"...I'll tell you in the morning. We should get you in bed before you wake up too much to fall back asleep. Come on."

It was a long night for Emilia, one filled with constant battling. A battle to fall asleep even in the face of utter exhaustion, and then a battle with nightmares when she would finally manage to nod off, back and forth, and back and forth.

When light shone through the window, she gave up trying to go back to sleep.

Sitting up and wrangling her hair out of her face, she looked around the room. She wasn't in her casket, at least—that much had been obvious by the sun being visible through her closed eyes, plus the presence of a blanket and pillow—but she also wasn't in her room.

She was at an inn. In Hateno Village. In Hyrule.

Would registering that ever not make her feel like she was insane?

Link—the real one—was sitting in the room's other bed, face lit up by the screen of his Sheikah Slate—also the real one—as he was tapping on it. Emilia suddenly remembered that he'd taken the floor last night, that the bed he was now in had been Avera's, but she wasn't anywhere to be seen in the room. Again.

"Where'd Avera go?" Emilia said through a yawn.

Link's eyes—somehow even bluer with the light of the slate—met hers, and he frowned at her. "Not sure. She didn't really say where she was going before she left. But she said she was gonna stop on the way back and see if our clothes were ready yet." He gave a short pause. "You should sleep more. You look rough."

"Thanks," she mumbled, wrapping her blanket tight around herself. "But I don't think I could go back to sleep if I tried."

"Nightmares?"

Was she really that much of an open book? Glancing away, she nodded. Hopefully he wouldn't ask for any details. She didn't want to keep her mind on that track.

"...What are you doing on there?" she asked, indicating toward his slate.

"Uh... Journaling, I guess," he said with a shrug. "I've been writing down stuff that's happened, people I've met... Thought it'd be helpful if I happened to lose my memory again."

So the real-live Sheikah Slate also had a real-life version of the adventure log, apparently. Emilia couldn't help but be curious how similar everything about it was to the game version she was familiar with. All she'd seen so far with her own eyes was the map. She wanted to ask if she could see what he was doing on its screen—how similar would the formatting be to what she knew? Was he constructing things as quests?—but she didn't want him to think she was trying to invade his privacy. She supposed she could explain to him that Hylian text wasn't something she could easily read at a glance, so his privacy wouldn't really be at stake, but...

Before she could work up enough courage to ask, the door to their room opened, and in came Avera with two cloth bags.

"I'm back!" she said in a sing-song voice. "Got your clothes for you."

She tossed the fuller bag to Link, and the smaller over to Emilia. Link began dressing himself right away, right there in front of them, but Emilia had to take a second to talk herself out of her ridiculous embarrassment at the idea of doing the same thing herself. These two already knew what she looked like in her underwear—less than that, in Link's case, she remembered morosely—so there was no reason to have any hang-ups about putting on extra clothes on top of her underwear in front of them.

Her outfit was simple and snugly fit, consisting only of a ribbed turtleneck, a long and sleeveless overshirt, pants, boots, and then a belt and pair of fingerless gloves. The turtleneck, though loose, still brushed against her neck in a way that made her skin crawl, but she told herself she could endure the discomfort if it meant keeping the scar there hidden. She'd decided to forgo other accessories that would've made it more expensive and potentially more uncomfortable to wear—no bracers, no pauldron, no breastplate, no waistwrap, no hooded cloak, no heavy chainmail. Even simple as it was, though, it wasn't anything like her usual fits, so wearing it felt strange. At least it was well-suited to Hyrule ... and well-suited to covering most of her newly-acquired scars, too.

Once they were done getting dressed, they headed out of the room together, ready to go to Purah. Link slyly made his way to the front of the group, meandered right to the dining area, and looked back at them with a pleading face.

...So, breakfast, then Purah, it was.

Although Emilia tried to eat her breakfast quickly, Link still managed to finish his first, somehow. While waiting for Avera to finish up—grateful that she was no longer the slowest eater—Emilia pictured what it was going to be like, stepping out into the sunlit, real-life Hateno.

After returning their dishes, they stepped outside. It didn't turn out to be too sunlit, what with it being early in the morning and a bit overcast regardless, but Emilia didn't care about that, or even about the chill in the air. Without the darkness and the unease that it brought upon her, she could devote herself to soaking in the beauty of the village.

Rather than merely comparing it to its game counterpart, she found herself comparing it to her home. A cloudy sky instead of a light blue one, a crisp breeze instead of scorching air, billowing green grass instead of dry brown dirt, soft-looking shrubbery instead of prickly brush, rolling hills instead of flat plains... Everything about it was so different than what she was used to. Almost everything, that is. The off-white stucco walls, the terracotta roofs—though the architecture otherwise was far from Mediterranean in style, those details were enough to give her some sense of comfort and home. She just had to ignore the visible stonework at the base of the houses, and the roofs being shingles instead of clay tiles, plus ... everything else, really.

It wasn't long before they were more on the outskirts of the town, hardly any houses dotting the long remainder of the winding path up to the tech lab towering on the highest point of the village. Passing by one of the unlit stone lanterns brought Emilia's mind to their near future—if the game was accurate, then they were going to have to bring the blue flame up to the furnace. It really wasn't something that she should have any clue about ... but she was going to reveal the truth today. Maybe doing something that only someone with foreknowledge could know to do would make it easier for them to believe her.

"Do either of you have a torch?" she asked.

They looked at her curiously, though Link nonetheless reached into his pouch and pulled out a torch to hand to her. She thanked him, and asked if they would follow her before stepping forward to lead them where she wanted to go. Over a few more grassy hills, she saw it: the big rock formation in a protective huddle over the blue flame.

At the same time as one another, Link asked, "What do you want blue fire for?" and Avera questioned, "How'd you even know this was here?"

"I'll tell you once we get to the lab," she responded.

With the torch alighted by the blue fire—which was much hotter than Emilia had imagined it would be, almost burning her hand even with her glove and the distance lent by the long handle of the torch—she led their group back to the path, lighting the lanterns they passed along the way. Link and Avera ended up passing back in front of her, with Avera firmly overtaking her spot at the front soon enough, her long legs not struggling as much against the steep incline. Emilia's own legs were starting to get a bit sore as the hill began to level out and the lab grew nearer and nearer.

In spite of that, Emilia jogged ahead when they were finally just upon the lab, going right up to the furnace and lighting it before anyone could knock. Matching blue light beamed out from the travel gate in front of the lab's front doors. There was a high-pitched "Oh!" before a string of muffled words she couldn't clearly make out through the doors, followed by the sound of running footsteps, and then one of the doors opened a crack.

It seemed like nobody was actually there for a brief second, until movement on the bottom of Emilia's peripheral got her to look down. Standing in the crack of the door was a little girl, red eyes scanning out with suspicion.

And then those eyes looked to land on something, and all the tense leeriness in them washed away, replaced entirely with pure wonderment. "Linky!"

Purah burst through the doors and crashed into him, sending him stumbling back. Her little arms squeezed his midsection as tight as looked possible, little giggles escaping her as she rocked herself slightly from side to side.

Meanwhile, Link was just standing there, a picture of pure awkwardness with his arms hovering uncertainly in front of him and a bewildered expression on his face.

Slowly tilting her head back, Purah looked up at him. "...Do you really not know who I am?"

"Uh. No?"

Purah dropped her arms and stepped back, little hands curling up into fists. "Don't mess with me, Linky! If you knew to light the furnace without me having to tell you, you have to have come out of the Slumber of Restoration in good shape!"

"I lit the furnace," Emilia said.

Purah slowly turned her head to look at her, still standing over by the furnace. Emilia subtly waved the torch flickering with blue fire in her hand.

"How did you know...? Who even are you? Or you?" Purah said, looking from Emilia to Avera. "Actually, know what? Don't answer that right now. You all need to come inside with me. You've got a lot of stuff to explain."

Hands on her hips, Purah reentered the lab and beckoned them to follow after her. Emilia left the torch by the furnace, not quite sure of how to put out the flame, and was the last to enter.

It was much the same as she remembered it being in the game, if not even messier. Books and scribbled-on papers were strewn about everywhere. Symin was over by a bookshelf in the back corner flipping through some pages, stealing glances at them before excusing himself and stepping out the back door. Purah led them over to the table, directed them to sit on the chairs on one side, and crawled herself up to sit on the stool opposite them.

"Can you go get the woman who runs the research lab?" Avera asked. "Impa sent us here to see her. Not ... a six-year-old."

"I normally wouldn't spill the beans so quick, but since you asked, I'll have you know that I am the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab's distinguished director—Purah!" she said, flashing double peace signs by her eyes as she sang her name.

Her cute display did nothing to win Avera over more; she only looked more confused. "...Impa told me her older sister is named Purah. Are you her granddaughter or something?"

"No, I am Purah. Impa's my baby sis," Purah said. Before either Avera or Link could say anything to the contrary, she went on speaking. "I know it doesn't look like it, but I am! Don't ask, okay? We've got more important things to deal with than what I look like." She grabbed a strange-looking pen from her backpack and pulled over some of the papers on the table in front of herself. "I have some questions, Linky. For starters—Impa instructed you to come to me so I can fix your Sheikah Slate, correct?"

"Precisely."

"Knew it! I'll get to that. But I have some questions first." She slammed her hands down on the table and leaned forward, staring at Link with severity unbefitting of a face so young. "What do you remember from before you woke up? Both while you were in the slumber, and your life before then, too."

Link lowered his gaze and took a moment to respond. "...Nothing."

Purah narrowed her eyes. Though she clearly wanted him to get the idea that she was suspicious of him, she couldn't fully hide the touch of sadness in her expression. "So you really don't remember me at all? Even though I'm the one who took you to the Shrine of Resurrection after Calamity Ganon fatally wounded you in the first place?"

"...Sorry. No. I really remember nothing from before waking up."

"Nothing? Nothing at all? Come on! I guess I'll let it slide that you don't remember anything from before you were placed in the shrine—even though you should remember me—but you must remember at least something from your slumber! A hundred years is a long time to not even have a single dream!"

"Maybe I did dream," Link said. "But if I did, I don't remember it."

She huffed and resituated herself on her chair, scribbling down notes on her paper and muttering what she wrote under her breath. She twirled the pen in her hands when she was done, looking back up at Link and slanting her head. "Well... It's no matter. I'm just glad you're okay."

"I know you said not to ask, but—why do you look like a child...?" Link asked. "You should've been an adult already 100 years ago."

"Look. I look the way I do 'cause of a failed age-reversal experiment, all right? ...Or, a somewhat failed experiment. But it's embarrassing and I'm gonna fix it soon and I don't wanna talk about it, so enough about it!" For the first time since sitting down, Purah glanced over at Avera and Emilia. "So. You're here to get your runes restored, Link—I'll get to that, soon. But first! For some reason, you've brought along ... these two. A Sheikah that I should know about, judging by the tattoos honoring a long Sheikah lineage—but I have no idea who she is or what family she came from. And then some ... foreigner, who somehow knew to light my furnace."

"Impa thought you could help them figure out why they're..." Link trailed off, unable to find the right words.

"Figure out why we're here," Emilia finished for him. "I'm not from Hyrule, and Avera's not from this time."

"Avera?" Purah repeated, looking over at her. "Like, Grandpa Fero's little sister?"

Avera flashed a grin. "Surprise!"

"But... We were told she died when Mom was a baby," Purah said. Her eyes widened with realization, irises appearing even redder when they did. "You came back from the dead?!"

"I woke up in my casket three days back, just after midnight," Avera said. "And just a few hours before Link woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection."

"Three days back...?" Purah said.

After Avera nodded, Purah jumped out of her seat and ran around to a smaller table in the back of the room, only to return with a large square sheet of paper that she laid in front of everyone on the table. The word April was written clearly at the top in Hylian text, and below it was a set of rows and columns of boxes, each marked with small symbols in their corners, with more Hylian text scribbled down in some boxes. In the second-to-bottom row, two of the boxes had a bright red circle drawn between them—it was there that Purah pointed to after situating herself back on her chair.

"You woke up here? Early April 22nd?" Purah asked.

"Yeah," Avera said. "What's the red circle for? Did something else happen at the same time?"

"...Impa didn't tell you? It was the very first thing I thought of when you said you woke up after midnight three days ago."

Avera stared at the calendar for a moment before seeming to realize what Purah was getting at. "Oh. The ... blood moon, she called it? That revives monsters...? She told me it happened at about the same time, but she didn't think it was related to me being revived since I'm not a monster, so she just kinda brushed it off."

"I wouldn't be so quick to brush it off. You're definitely not a monster, of course, but there could still be a potential link there..." Purah said. As she talked, she began scribbling down on her paper again. "The blood moon itself wouldn't cause your revival, but maybe something related to it could. A new counterforce of sorts? But the question is 'Who's come up with it,' then. Ganon's responsible for the blood moon, so who would be controlling its opposite? The Old Goddesses? Hylia herself? Lesser deities, forgotten to time...?"

Obviously it's divine intervention—what else could it be? Emilia didn't say. "Don't you think the more important question is 'Why'...? Why have this counterforce at all? Why have it now? Why Avera? Why me, when I'm not even from Hyrule?"

"The 'Why' is more important in the grand scheme of things, yes, but knowing the 'Who' could help lead us to that 'Why' sooner, and that's why I question it," Purah said. "But frankly, all of this is jumping too far ahead. We need to look at the 'What' first—what happened with you two, exactly. Every little detail, everything that could draw some sort of connection, counts. You're both young adult females who shouldn't be here—what else is there?"

"Emilia woke up in a casket, too," Avera said. "I don't think she knows when, because she wasn't saved right away like I was, but I'd bet it was at the same time as me."

She thought about it. If that was the case, then Emilia had only been in her casket for two days... She supposed it made sense—any longer, and she likely would've died for real—but it still felt wrong. It felt like weeks had passed in there, and that wasn't even counting the time she'd spent unconscious beforehand, which in itself felt like forever.

Purah nodded sagely, adding a point to a new list she was making. "Both young adult females who died and were revived. Got it."

"I didn't die," Emilia hastily corrected.

Purah raised her eyes, along with one of her brows. "So why were you in a casket?"

Her throat tightened. "I... I don't know, but I didn't die. If I died, I ... I wouldn't be here. I'd be buried at home. It's not possible for anybody from my home to have buried me in Hyrule."

"Transporting a casket isn't that hard."

Emilia had to take a few seconds to psych herself up before she could respond. "...It is when you're transporting it from one universe to another."

Purah dropped her pen. The sound of it hitting the table was thunderous in the otherwise silent room.

Emilia couldn't help herself—she had to look to her sides to see Link and Avera's reactions. Link didn't look as surprised as he did interested, and Avera didn't look surprised either, but only because she instead looked as though she'd figured as much. She suddenly felt silly for ever doubting that they would believe her. The two of them were both currently living out their own batshit crazy situations, after all; someone being from a different universe probably wasn't that big of a surprise when your entire life had already been flipped upside-down.

But Purah was a different story. She just sat there, staring, and Emilia couldn't read anything on her face.

"You're telling me..." Purah finally started, "...not only are you not from Hyrule, you're not from this world—and you knew to light my furnace?"

And here was the part that she'd spent a lot of time thinking about. "In my home, there is no Hyrule, but there are legends about it. Lots of them. I'm not quite sure how to describe them to you, but they're ... told, pretty in-depth, so I recognized the specific legend we're in right now, and I knew that your furnace would need to be lit. I thought it might help you guys believe me that I'm from a world where Hyrule only exists in stories—if I did something that only someone with foreknowledge would know to do."

"So... You already know everything that's happened, and everything that's going to happen," Purah said blankly.

"Not ... exactly," Emilia slowly answered. "There's more in real life—I'm not sure how much more, but there is. Like, this entire ... counterforce thing."

"Neither of us were part of the legend?" Avera asked, sounding crushed by the idea.

"No. If we were, then I would've told you right away, because I would've known what we're supposed to be doing here... But I have no idea, because as far as the story that I know goes, we're not supposed to be here at all."

For a moment, silence settled over the lab. Even Purah seemed at a loss for words as she processed the implications. Then, Link, who had been quietly observing, finally spoke.

"Maybe that's your 'Why'—why you're here," he started, thoughtful. "If you were never part of the story, maybe you're here to help change it."

"I don't see how," Emilia said dejectedly. "Maybe... Maybe if I'd come here 100 years ago, I could've warned everyone about Ganon taking over the Divine Beasts and the Guardians, and I could've stopped all of this from ever happening, but it's way too late for that now. The damage is already done."

"But the legends weren't just about 100 years ago, right?" Purah said.

"No. They cover everything up until..." Emilia paused, unsure about giving out more spoilers, until she ultimately decided that success couldn't be a bad thing to spoil. "Up until Link defeats Ganon."

"He's got a lot to do before then," Purah said. "Maybe he's right, that you're here to help change things. You can use what foreknowledge you have to help him out, to help out all the people in this world—can't you? You might not be helping stop something as big as Ganon's return 100 years back, but you can still make a difference."

Even though the sentiment was something Emilia had already told herself, hearing it from another person's lips made it ring more true. "I'm planning on it," she said with confidence.

"And while you're putting your foreknowledge to use, I can dig deeper into figuring out the 'Why' of all of this." Then, suddenly, Purah sucked in a gasp. "Wait, wait, wait—I must be in the legends! Aren't I? Aren't I?! "

Emilia couldn't help but smile at her excitement. "Of course you are."

Purah positively squealed in delight, the grin on her face almost manic. "Oh, this is awesome! Tell Impa I love her for sending you to me!" She tried to compose herself, pursing her lips through her smile and slamming her fists on the table. "Okay. Back to more important research matters—the 'What's. The connections between you two."

"I—I have a question, really quick," Emilia started. Before you start grilling us, she finished the sentence in her thoughts. "Do you think... Do you think I could get to go back home? Impa didn't seem ... optimistic."

"Well, I'm always optimistic, but..." Purah grimaced. "Honestly, I would probably answer the same way as Impa. If the Gods want you to be here, then you're gonna be here. But maybe, once we've found our answers, and you've fulfilled whatever purpose the Gods have brought you here for—maybe then?"

'Maybe.' The word seemed to be the new maxim of Emilia's life—one she wasn't very fond of.

Then, as she predicted, Purah hit her and Avera with a grilling session, questioning them to try to find more connections. The first one was a jab: "How did you die?" Avera readily recounted that she'd fallen to her death after a battle with a Lynel, a story that Purah said she'd heard before. Emilia denied dying, naturally, but Purah pushed to find out at least what monster had wounded her before she'd awoken in her casket. Everyone in the room was disquieted when she answered weakly that it wasn't a monster; it was a man. She didn't give any more detail than that.

At least, something about that answer was enough to soften Purah to where she stopped trying to jab Emilia about her not-death for the next question: "Avera, what happened when you died? And Emilia, what happened when you ... lost consciousness?" Avera answered that she just remembered everything going black, and Emilia agreed.

The next question they both agreed on, too: "Do you remember anything that happened before you woke up?" Purah was disappointed that, just like Link, neither of them could recall anything, not even a single dream.

"What about when you woke up?" Avera had apparently yelled for help, and was saved from her casket by Dorian. Emilia recounted how she'd screamed for what felt like days until Link had saved her. She also saw fit to mention the first feeling that she'd had upon waking—the feeling that she hadn't been able to move in a very, very long time. Avera agreed she felt something similar, though the way she spoke of it made Emilia sure that the feeling was nowhere near as intense for Avera as it had been for her.

"Where were you found?" Kakariko Graveyard for Avera, where she presumed and Purah confirmed that she'd been buried in the first place. Link answered on Emilia's behalf that he'd found her just west of the Dueling Peaks.

The questions soon came around to how both Emilia and Avera felt about their situations. Avera admitted for them both that they'd felt a sort of connection upon first meeting each other; Emilia said that she specifically thought that Avera looked familiar, while it wouldn't have really been possible for someone to look just like Avera in her own world. She also tacked on that she'd sort of recognized Link right away—right after she'd figured that he wasn't some angel in heaven, and before she'd even known who he was for sure, she'd looked at him and thought of Link.

She preferred to think that her immediate recognition meant something, not just that she was obsessive over Zelda—and encouragingly, Purah agreed that it had to mean something.

After filling up multiple papers with notes, Purah looked proudly over her work and stacked them all up nicely in front of herself. "I think that should do, for now! If you think of anything else you forgot to tell me, just let me know, okay? But now, I'm gonna get my assistant Symin to help run a few tests on you two, just to make sure you're doing well physically, and I'm gonna get Link's Sheikah Slate functioning properly—click, snap!"

Chapter Text

The tests that Symin ran on Emilia and Avera were quick and painless, done using a version of the Sheikah Slate that Purah had made for herself. Emilia was astounded by it. Just a touch of her finger to its screen, and it knew her beats-per-minute and her blood pressure and oxygen levels, and a whole host of other things.

Everything came back normal, except for one thing for Emilia. Where the slate correctly identified Avera's race as Sheikah, Emilia had come back as Anomalous Human—a result that made Purah's eyes light up when Symin told her about it. The slate had never identified anything as being anomalous before, apparently, which Purah surmised was its way of confirming that Emilia truly wasn't one of this world's own humans. That was when Avera asked if the slate could properly identify Round-Ears; the answer was yes, but the question itself revealed something that Purah and Symin hadn't realized before, leading to Emilia again showing her ears and getting an amazed response.

She still didn't get what was so fascinating about round ears.

Once Purah had Link's Sheikah Slate all fixed up, she had him take a picture of her as in the game, but she also showed him how he could then create his own entries for different people, in addition to the compendium. Link then went around taking pictures of everyone and writing brief notes about them all, which Emilia couldn't help but be terribly curious about.

Purah then handed Avera and Emilia each a little notebook and pen, and asked them to write down any connections they would make between themselves, anything that could potentially help them figure out what was going on. With one final request—to bring any other 'Awoken' people, as Purah had just then decided to call them, back to her lab for questioning and testing—Purah and Symin bid them farewell.

The sun was shining brighter when the three of them stepped out of the lab together. Link finally moved to put his slate back on his belt, and Avera quickly shot out a hand to grab his arm before he could.

"Wait!" she said. "Can we take a picture of us? Together?"

Link agreed, pulling the slate back up and opening it to the camera app. It took him a moment, but he figured out how to flip the camera around to the front view. His eyes widened.

"That's what I look like...?" he asked quietly, moving his head around to different angles.

"Yes, you're very cute," Avera said. "But didn't you see that there was a picture of you in the album Purah showed you?" This was news to Emilia—she'd been getting her testing done at that point, so she hadn't gotten to see any of the photos.

"I didn't realize that was me," Link said with a shrug.

Avera then asked if she could hold the slate to get all of them in the frame, since her arm was longer, and Link obliged. She held it up with her left arm and used her right to tug both Link and Emilia in closer. Emilia shuddered at the touch, at the closeness—and then she saw herself reflected on the screen of the slate, and her heart dropped in her chest.

Right there, on the left side of her jaw reaching up to her cheek, was a red scar. She'd known it would be there, but actually seeing it...

She'd never been quite what she would consider vain. There were too many things she didn't like about herself; her forehead was a bit too small, her chin a bit too pointy, her nose too beaky, and it was only recently that she'd come around to liking her thick brows... But overall, she knew she was a pretty girl.

And now she had an ugly scar right on her face.

She tried to reason with herself that it wasn't that bad, because, well, she could probably use makeup to make it less obvious—not that she usually really bothered. But it was the principle of the thing that bothered her. She shouldn't have had to cover up a scar, because she shouldn't have had a scar at all.

It was then, for the first time, that she felt seething-hot anger over what had happened to her. She was scarred for life, all because some douchebag—

"You okay, Emilia?"

Emilia blinked, looking at Avera through the slate. Seeing the concern on her face made the flames of anger start to flicker away. "...Not really," she admitted. "But let's just take the picture."

Avera's gaze lingered on her for a moment longer through the screen, her red eyes narrowing slightly and her bottom lip pouting out a bit for a brief moment. "All right," she said, her tone light but deliberate, as if to dispel any lingering heaviness. "Let's make this a good one. Everyone ready?"

She shifted, bending her knees so that she was closer in height to both Link and Emilia, and zoomed the camera in some for a tight framing of the three of them. Emilia tilted her head a bit to the side to help keep herself in frame. Link grinned widely with teeth, and so did Avera, and even though she still felt tense, seeing the two of them be all smiles was enough to make Emilia smile genuinely, albeit closed-lipped. With the press of a button, the camera made a shuttering noise, and a smaller copy of the picture was shown on the screen.

"Perfect!" Avera said, standing up straight again and holding the slate over to Link.

Link agreed with a humming sound and accepted the slate from her hands, looking over the picture. Emilia looked over it, too, wondering if Link would maybe swipe over to look at the other photos in the album, so that she could see them. Without looking at any other pictures, Link soon moved to clip the slate back to his hip.

But before he could, Emilia asked, "Can I see the slate?"

"Sure—but first..." Link started. "Should we use the slate to teleport back to Kakariko Village now that we've talked to Purah like Impa wanted us to?"

"No," Avera said at the same time as Emilia said, "Not yet."

"You should go to the shrine in the village first," Emilia said.

"And we still have to talk to the leader of the village about listening for people in the graveyard," Avera tacked on.

Link looked at Emilia. "I'm guessing you know where the shrine is and who the leader of the village is?"

"The shrine should be back near Bolson's houses to the east of the village entrance, and the leader of the village is a guy named Reede," Emilia said.

Link chuckled lightly and motioned toward the village with a wave of his arm. "Well, you lead the way. And, here."

He handed the Sheikah Slate over to her, and Emilia held it reverently. "D-do you mind if I look at the other pictures?" she asked as they started down the slope at an easy pace.

As soon as Link said he didn't mind, Emilia swiped backward. The last few photographs were the separate ones of Purah, Symin, Avera, and Emilia, that he'd taken in the lab. And after that...

She'd been expecting to see the last photo from the album in the game—the one with all the trees—but instead, what she saw was mostly a dark blur with distant streaks of bright light, like someone had taken a photo by accident.

Emilia bleakly wondered if it was meant to be the same photo—if it was from the time of the memory unlocked by finding the location of the game's final photograph, when Link and Zelda were on the run through the woods in the raining dark.

Continuing swiping, she saw more photos that didn't match up with ones from the game, and some that did. There were far more than twelve, overall. And following a photo of the Dueling Peaks...

"Oh."

It was the photo from the Champion's Ballad, with Link and Zelda in the middle, surrounded by Revali, Mipha, Urbosa, and Daruk.

Emilia was surprised to get to see them, because she hadn't thought she'd get to see them so soon, if at all—and equally unsurprised, because they looked strangely ... like she'd seen them before. And she knew that sense of familiarity wasn't just because she knew their game counterparts. Even though she'd never seen them for real, the familiarity she felt was for their real selves, specifically.

Somehow.

"Avera...?" Emilia started. She slowly held the slate over to her to show her the picture. "Do you... Do you get the feeling that you've seen these people before?"

"Oh," Avera said, just like she had, with a tilt of her head. "Now that I'm really looking at them... Yeah, actually."

Emilia let out a little relieved breath. At least it wasn't just her that was inexplicably familiar with multiple people she'd never seen before.

"They feel familiar to me, too," Link said, stretching over to see the photo. "...The ones that aren't me, I mean. But I guess I do feel familiar to myself, too..."

"They should all feel familiar to you," Emilia said. "You knew all of them a hundred years ago. But me and Avera..."

"...But you're not from here, and Avera was already dead when we were all alive," Link finished for her.

"If I was just wandering around as a spirit for all the time I was dead, I could've seen you all," Avera reasoned. "That'd explain the familiar feeling for me. Emilia, though..." She frowned, looking down at her.

There was no explanation for Emilia. Not one that made sense, anyway.

Avera sighed. "Well. Guess that's something for us to write down in our notebooks."

Emilia looked back down at the photograph, taking in every little thing as much as she could.

Zelda and Urbosa were both devastatingly beautiful. Daruk looked a bit ... strange, in reality—he reminded her of a giant Sontaran from Doctor Who, or that weird sculpture of a guy meant to depict what humans would look like if they were made to survive car crashes—but he was instantly charming with the giant, mischievous smile on his face. Mipha looked a bit strange in reality, too, but just like with Daruk, she had a charm to her. Revali's strangeness came in his weirdly human eyes; aside from that, he mostly just looked like a cute, fluffy, giant bird.

After swiping through all the photos, Emilia opened up the camera app herself. By default, it was rear-facing, meaning all she saw at first was her brown boots as they stepped through the grass. An orange square appeared on the image of the ground, and above the center of it was a word in Hylian text: Ryegrass.

Moving the camera around, she found that grass wasn't the only flora it could identify that it hadn't been able to in the game. The trees, the different tiny wildflowers they passed by—it identified them all. Walnut tree, chicory, buttercup, blue violet...

She could hardly believe that the slate was real—that she was holding it!

"You're that amazed by these flowers?" Avera asked lightly.

Emilia looked up at her, suddenly realizing that she'd been smiling at the screen. Her cheeks got hot again. "I'm amazed by this," she said, wiggling the slate. "This thing's even more amazing in real life!"

"Ah," Avera laughed. "I thought you were just excited to see plants you never see in the desert."

"Well, that part's exciting, too. But it's just..." Emilia nearly stopped in her tracks. "...I never told you I was from the desert."

Avera did stop in her tracks, then, and Emilia and Link followed suit. "...Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Emilia said.

"Did you tell Impa, and Impa told her?" Link suggested.

"No," Emilia said, shaking her head. "I haven't told anyone here that I'm from the desert."

Avera hummed thoughtfully. "That's one more thing I just kinda knew about you, then. Like you being a Roundie." She perked up, grinning. "Quick! Tell me something you know about me that you shouldn't know."

"Um. You're afraid of heights?" Emilia said, the words leaving her mouth before she could think too hard about them.

Avera's grin faltered. "That's... That's true. But ... you did also just hear me talk about how I fell to my death. So..."

Emilia's stomach twisted. "I'm—I'm sorry. I wasn't even thinking about that, it just kinda came out."

"It's all right. I wasn't thinking either when I said you were from the desert," Avera said, giving a quick, forgiving smile.

Emilia still frowned. "That's not the same, though..."

"...It kinda is," Link said. "Didn't that guy yesterday at the village entrance think you were from the desert? Maybe Avera was just thinking like him."

The man had said she looked like a 'real weird Gerudo mix,' which she supposed was close enough to saying she looked like she was from the desert. ...It was interesting, though, that Link was able to make the connection between the Gerudo and people from the desert with his lack of memory—almost more interesting to Emilia than Avera randomly knowing that she was from the desert, which felt strangely like a given to her the more it sat with her.

"Maybe," Avera said, though she didn't sound certain. "Anyway, let's keep on going."

Emilia finally handed the slate back over to Link before setting off again. She still felt bad, even with multiple potential excuses in front of her. To try to make up for it, she thought about if there was anything she knew about Avera that she couldn't have reasonably inferred from what little she did know about her, but she couldn't think of anything.

What she did end up thinking of, though, was how Avera had snuck out last night and promised she'd tell her where she'd been in the morning.

"...Where'd you go last night?" Emilia asked.

Avera glanced at her, then away again, her usual smile nowhere to be found. "I used to have a friend that lived here. He was a Hylian in his twenties when I died over 150 years ago, so I knew he'd be dead by now, but ... I went to his house anyway." She shrugged. "It was empty. Looked like it's been abandoned for a long time."

Shit. That was twice in one day—twice within like five minutes—that Emilia had unintentionally said something that led to Avera being upset. "I'm sorry..."

"It's all right. It's not like I thought I was actually gonna find him. I just ... thought he might have some great-great-grandkids hanging around, or something. I dunno." Again, she shrugged. "This morning, I went and found his grave. He's been dead for 96 years. And he apparently ended up getting married, and having kids, and grandkids..."

"...But you couldn't find his grandkids here? Or great-great-grandkids...?" Emilia asked.

Avera shook her head. "No. But I didn't check too hard—I only really looked at his old house and the graveyard. I bet he has to have at least one descendant left in the village, though."

"What was his name?" Link asked.

"Letto," Avera sighed out.

With the dreamy way she said his name, Emilia got the feeling that Letto had been more than just a friend to her, and the knowledge made her stomach twist further. She felt ridiculous for being upset at her own predicament—she'd miraculously survived something that others could've only dreamed of surviving, and her family and friends were merely stuck in an alternate universe—when Avera was right next to her having to deal with everyone she'd ever loved having lived the rest of their lives without her and then having died long ago. It was impossible to fathom how she was holding it together.

They soon made it down into the heart of the village, and Emilia led them up its length toward the entrance. There, she made a turn around the store, past a few more houses that she knew weren't there in the game, and she finally spotted what she was looking for. A shrine, glowing orange, was situated back on a hill, with a set of Bolson's strange block-houses nearby, and Link's eventual house across a bridge behind them, in the process of being slowly deconstructed by Bolson's workers.

"H-hey!" Avera called out, suddenly bolting across the bridge. "What are you doing?! Stop!"

She'd already made it over to Bolson before Emilia could even think about what was happening. Standing there, watching Avera throw words at Bolson, it hit her—that was Letto's abandoned house that they were tearing down.

"...Do we go over?" Link asked.

"Probably should," Emilia said, already starting forward.

They crossed the bridge just in time to hear Avera's voice rise. "You can't tear this down! This house belonged to someone!"

Bolson, standing in front of the partially deconstructed house with his hands on his hips, looked unbothered. "A long, long time ago, sure. Since then, the people of the town came together and voted—since nobody's come back to claim it, and nobody wants to buy it, it's being torn down."

"I'm claiming it, then!" Avera said. "I'll buy it."

Bolson raised an amused eyebrow, then laughed. "Kid, do you have any idea how much this whole operation costs? We're talking about tens of thousands of rupees, here. Way too much for a young'un like yourself to have."

"I'll buy it with my friends," Avera said, stepping aside and motioning over to where Link and Emilia were approaching.

Emilia blinked, startled. She hadn't thought she was going to get wrapped up in this whole house-buying ordeal, not when she had zero money to her name.

Link just looked at Bolson, gave a tiny shrug, and nodded.

Bolson squinted at the three of them. "Hmph... Well, I wouldn't usually do this, but... Know what? I like your gusto. If you want it, you can have it. But! It's still gonna cost you a few thousand rupees. The absolute lowest I can go for you is three thousand, and I'm also gonna ask you for some help getting wood for building."

Avera straightened. "Deal."

"...Seriously?" Bolson asked, raising a brow at her again. "You got that kinda money?"

"No, I don't," Avera said. "But we will."

Bolson clapped his hands once. "Then it's settled! I'll pause the teardown and start getting the paperwork sorted. You three can get started on finding me at least thirty bundles of wood to show me that you're serious about this."

He called for Hudson and Karson to stop what they were doing around the house, and as they came around, he explained to them that they had potential buyers. Emilia was mostly just amazed at that point that Hudson's head actually looked like that. Once he was done explaining things, Bolson asked the three of them for their names, which Avera gave him. He told them to get back to him soon with the wood before starting off toward his homes with Hudson and Karson flanking him.

"...Sorry about that," Avera breathed out, looking guiltily at Link and Emilia, as soon as Bolson and his workers were gone. "I couldn't... I couldn't let them tear this house down. It was Letto's."

"I figured it was," Emilia said gently.

"You two don't actually have to help pay for it if you don't want to," Avera said. "I just thought he'd be more likely to accept an offer from multiple people together."

"Well, you were right about that," Link said. "I'll pitch in, as long as I get to live there, too."

"Of course!" Avera said, giving him a wide smile. She then looked at Emilia. "You can stay with us, too, even if you don't wanna pitch in."

"I'd like to help pitch in," Emilia said, "but I don't have any money here."

"We'll work on that, don't you worry! Thank you two for being so understanding." Avera breathed out a quick, relieved sigh. "So. Where were we?"

"The shrine," Emilia said, pointing over to it.

"Oh, right! Why don't you go ahead to the shrine, Link, and Emilia and I can find something to do out on the town?"

Link nodded in agreement, but Emilia didn't.

"A-actually," Emilia said to him, "I was going to ask if—if you think the monks would let me come in with you?" His eyes widened for a fraction of a second, and he opened his mouth, but she went on before he could say anything. "It-it's okay if you wanna go in alone, it's just..."

"You can come in with me if you want—if the monks allow it," he said with a little smile.

Emilia smiled back, taking in a shaky breath. "Thank you."

"Well," Avera started, "since you two are going to the shrine, I'm gonna go track down the leader of the village so I can talk to him. Meet you guys back here soon!"

With that, Avera took off across the bridge, and Emilia and Link looked at one another expectantly. Together they started crossing the bridge themselves, but where Avera continued on into the heart of the village, they made their way over to the shrine.

Emilia made it there first, with Link following her up onto its base. After taking a few seconds to stare at the details of its closed entrance and running her fingertips over the terminal, Emilia turned to face him. He came up beside her, pulled the Sheikah Slate from his belt, and pressed its screen to the terminal, while her heart raced in anticipation.

Radiant blue light beamed from the terminal, and with it came first the familiar noise Emilia knew from the game, and then a soft, feminine voice: "Sheikah Slate confirmed. Travel Gate registered to map. Access granted."

As the doors opened up, the orange lights weaving around the shrine shone blue instead. The elevator was just beyond the doors, glowing, waiting.

Link gave her a look that said, 'You ready?' The answer was 'No,' but Emilia went to stand with him on the elevator regardless. The elevator began to descend.

Emilia half-thought that the descent would stop at some point, as the shrine or the monk inside it realized there was someone who was definitely not meant to be there trying to enter, but it didn't. Nearing the bottom of the elevator, the expanse of the shrine finally came into view. The Myahm Agana shrine—it was one Emilia remembered well, and seeing the real-life version of it stole her breath away.

The elevator reached the bottom with a quiet thud, and Link and Emilia stepped out. The sound of their footsteps on the ground was loud in the otherwise eerily silent room.

"I can't believe I'm in here," Emilia said quietly.

Link didn't respond immediately, seeming to be elsewhere for a moment. "...Why'd you think the monks wouldn't let you in, anyway?"

"Because the shrines are supposed to be for training you—the Hero," Emilia answered. "Not ... me."

Just then, a deep, slow, echoing voice rang out in the back of Emilia's head: "The Hero is not meant to go through this alone."

Emilia's eyes blew wide open.

Link raised an eyebrow at her. "What is it?"

"The monk," she said, voice wobbling. "The monk just spoke to me—in my head! Did you hear it, too?"

"I heard him as soon as we came in," Link said. "What'd he say to you?"

"He said the Hero isn't meant to go through this alone... It's like—it's like he was listening to me," Emilia realized.

"You are in his shrine," Link said.

"Yeah, but... Still." She took in a steadying breath. "It's weird hearing someone else's voice in your head. Especially a voice like that."

"Tell me about it."

Emilia breathed out a laugh. "I guess you're used to it by now, huh?"

"I don't know if it's possible to get used to it," Link said. "Anyway... You gonna help me overcome this trial?"

She bit her lip. Part of her still felt like it was wrong of her to be in here at all, much less to be doing any of the shrine's puzzles... But the monk had said that the Hero wasn't supposed to go through this alone—and what could that be if not an invitation to help?

A little smile grew on her face. "Can I see the slate?"

Link handed it over, and Emilia started on her way up the floating staircase to the apparatus. Once there, she touched the slate to it, and a glowing ball fell into the maze floating out before them.

"Watch this," Emilia said.

She flipped the Sheikah Slate upside-down, and with it, the maze flipped, too. The ball fell into the seemingly never-ending pit below. Once it was out of sight, a new one fell onto the flat back surface of the maze. She tilted it to get the ball rolling, and at the last second, flung it upward to land on the slide—and it did, first try!

The ball finished rolling down the slide, landing into the receptacle made for it below. With the lights around it going from orange to blue, the door to the monk's chamber opened up.

"I never had a problem with motion controls," Emilia said with a satisfied smile.

"I'll just pretend I know what you're talking about," Link said, returning her smile. "Either way, that was impressive."

"Thanks. O-oh, and one more thing—if ... the legends are right, there should be a phrenic bow out there on the maze. Want me to flip it around so you can go check?"

Link nodded, and Emilia got to work flipping the maze back around, keeping it tilted just enough so that Link could easily jump to it and off of it from the slide. Once done, she disconnected the slate from the apparatus and handed it back to Link, and the two of them started on their way back down the stairs together. As Link went up the slide to go get the bow, Emilia wandered just inside the monk's chamber.

Sitting there in a cube of light was the monk, unimaginably ancient and impossibly still.

"...Hey," she whispered to him.

He didn't say anything back.

Soon enough, Link returned with a new bow on his back, and he ascended the few steps up to the monk. With a press of his hand to the glowing cube, the lines that composed it shattered apart, hovering in the air and dissipating away. Whatever the monk said to Link, Emilia sadly wasn't privy to most of it—though she imagined it was just about the same stuff they all said in the game anyway.

No Spirit Orb levitated to Link, but Emilia knew he was finished when the monk began to glow. Just as he started to crumble away into the light, she was able to hear a whisper of his voice: "May the Goddess smile upon you."

Chapter Text

Emilia stepped off the base of the shrine, the voice of the monk still echoing in her head. Beside her, Link stretched slightly, adjusting his new bow across his back.

"...That was your first shrine," he said. "How was it?"

"Surreal," she murmured, glancing back at the shrine. "I mean, all of this has been surreal, but that..." She shook her head and took in a steadying breath.

"Yeah," he agreed with a small, understanding smile.

A moment passed before something hit her, and she looked around. "...Avera's not back yet."

"Wanna go look for her?" Link asked.

Emilia hesitated. "Actually... I was thinking, could we maybe go check out the graveyard...? There was no ... mention, of Hateno having a graveyard in the legend. I wanna see what it's like."

Link nodded, and they started off walking with him taking the lead. As they wove their way through the village, Emilia wondered if Link had some sort of incognizant memory of the layout of Hateno, because he seemed to know exactly where he was going. ...Or maybe he just had levels of self-confidence that she couldn't even begin to fathom.

After a minute or two of walking, Link looked sideways at her. "So... You know the legends of here—even though some stuff was missing, like the stuff involving you and Avera, you know how this all goes, generally. Right?"

"Right," Emilia answered cautiously.

Link pressed his lips together, like he was contemplating whether or not to say something. After a long moment, he finally spoke. "...Do I get my memories back?"

Although she'd just been considering his memories herself, the fact that he was asking caught her off guard. She looked at him, then back to the path he was leading them on. "...There are eighteen different memories that you recover specifically in the legend. But considering that this is real life..."

"I could remember everything," Link finished for her. "Not just eighteen memories."

"Right."

"Or I could remember nothing at all."

She frowned as his words settled in. "...I guess that's true," she said quietly. "But I don't think it'll happen like that. Especially not considering, y'know ... I'm here, and I know what works to trigger you regaining your memories. What worked in the legend, at least, but I have this feeling that's part of the legend that'll be right—it's too important not to be, I think."

"You do...?" Link asked.

She nodded. "How about we go somewhere where you recover a memory in the legend, so we can see if I'm right?"

"After we meet back up with Avera?"

"If you want. It'll be a hell of a lot easier to get there from the shrine in Kakariko Village than it would be to get there from here, though."

"Maybe we can meet up with Impa first then."

Emilia contemplated it. "...Or maybe later? In the legend, she ... gives you something, but only after you've gotten at least one of your memories back. So maybe we can teleport there, go get your memory, and then go back to meet up with her."

Just then, they rounded a turn on the western outskirts of the town, and saw the stone markers of graves in the distance.

They slowed their pace as they stepped onto its grounds. The air felt heavier here. Emilia's eyes moved across the names carved into the stones, some weathered and faded, others still sharp and fresh. She found herself walking more carefully, like the sound of her footfalls might disturb someone's rest—or cover the sound of them calling to be saved.

"...Do you hear anything?" she asked quietly, looking over to Link.

He paused, cocking his head slightly and narrowing his eyes. For a long moment, he listened.

"...No," he finally said.

Emilia exhaled softly, relieved that nobody in this graveyard at least had been dragged into everything.

They continued walking, weaving between rows of stones, until Emilia stopped at one. It was nothing elaborate—but carved into its face in large, aged letters, was Letto. Beneath the name were what Emilia surmised were his dates of birth and death, and beneath those was beloved husband - father - grandfather. Flowers were laid at its base.

Crouching down beside the grave, she looked closer at the flowers. They were all simple wild ones, freshly picked. She didn't have to guess who'd left them.

"...She must've really loved this guy," Emilia murmured. "I wonder how long they were together..."

"Not that long, actually."

Emilia startled so hard she nearly toppled, her heart slamming against her ribs like it was trying to escape. She spun around, wide-eyed, and saw none other than Avera approaching.

"Shit!" Emilia choked out, clutching her chest.

"Sorry," Avera said through a grimace. "Didn't mean to scare you guys."

It did make Emilia feel a bit better to see that Link had been startled by Avera's sudden appearance, too.

"S'all right," she breathed out. "Just ... walk heavier, next time, maybe?"

"I'll try," Avera said. "But... Yeah. Back to what you were saying—me and Letto weren't together for that long before I died. It was ... kind of a whirlwind thing. Thankfully."

"'Thankfully'?" Link repeated.

"It'd probably hurt a lot worse if I'd been with him for years," she said, mind-bogglingly matter-of-fact and nonchalant. There was no bitterness in her tone, no tremble—and Emilia was caught between seeing it as strength or avoidance. "Anyway, I talked to the village chief. Told him about the possibility of Awoken people in the graveyard. He was ... kinda skeptical, at first, but I guess I made enough of a case. He said he'll keep an ear out."

"Good," Emilia said, feeling genuine relief at that mixed in with the remainder of her shock. She stood up, her legs still trembling a bit.

"Didn't I ask you guys to wait at the shrine?" Avera said.

"Technically," Link started, "all you said was that you'd meet us back there soon."

Avera rolled her eyes, but smiled nonetheless. "Smartass."

"Sorry for wandering off," Emilia said. "I wanted to come see the graveyard before we go."

"Don't apologize. I wandered off here without telling you last night," Avera said, glancing toward Letto's grave. Her expression sobered for just a moment, and then she perked right back up. "...Anyway! You guys ready to get out of here?"

Emilia looked toward Link, and once he nodded, she nodded as well. She explained to Avera how they'd discussed going somewhere that Link should be able to recover his first memory, and Avera agreed to go along with that plan. That was where Emilia expected Link to get out the Sheikah Slate and teleport them right to the shrine in Kakariko Village—but he reminded her that they had horses now, horses they couldn't just leave indefinitely at the complementary stalls of the Ton Pu Inn.

They hatched a plan from there: they would go retrieve their horses, take them to a part of the village where they couldn't be seen, and try to teleport them to the shrine by Dueling Peaks Stable, where they could properly board them. There were uncertainties on whether or not the Sheikah Slate would teleport their horses, too, but if it worked, then it was a much better plan than riding the whole way back.

Thankfully, it did work, with the three of them and their three horses appearing by the stable.

As they walked up for Link to board Stir-Fry and Emilia and Avera to register their horses, Emilia thought about names for her horse. She'd called her Blue yesterday as a placeholder, and while she liked the clear reference to the horse's coloring, something about the simple color name didn't feel quite right. Turquoise and Teal were both more befitting of the horse, both in color and uniqueness, but they didn't feel quite right, either.

Her mind turned over a bunch of options—maybe she could stray from the colors and just name her after another horse as she'd done with her horses in Breath of the Wild, like Shadowfax or Agro—but she continually came back to the color blue. It was as she was searching for synonyms that something came to her.

"Después de la tormenta, el cielo es más azul."

Emilia remembered her mom saying it to her whenever she was struggling—when she had a bad day at school, or when her girlfriend had cheated on her, or when she was crying over any other stupid thing that hormonal teenagers cry over. Now, when she needed a reminder that the sky was bluer after a storm... Well, her mom might not have been at her side to give her that reminder, but it was in her heart just the same.

And she would remember it every time she looked at Azul.

The three of them approached the stable counter where the receptionist went ahead and flipped open a large, weathered ledger. Link boarded Stir-Fry first, taking her around to the stalls out back, and Avera stepped up with her horse next. After confirming with the receptionist that she wanted her horse to be registered as Pebbles, and sliding over two red rupees—one was for registering Emilia's horse, she said—she brought her around the back alongside the receptionist's twin. Emilia stepped up, then, and told him both her horse's name and her own.

"A-Z-U-L," she spelled when asked. "And E-M-I-L-I-A."

The receptionist nodded to himself as he wrote both names down. "...All right, you're all set," he said. "One question before you take her 'round to the stables, though. You still got that blanket on you we let you borrow yesterday?"

Uh-oh. Had she left it at the inn in Hateno...?

"I got it," Link called, reappearing around the bend of the stable like magic, reaching into his pouch to pull it out.

Both the receptionist and Emilia thanked Link for handing it over, and afterward Emilia thanked the receptionist for letting her borrow the blanket in the first place. She slowly guided Azul around to the stalls and left her with the receptionist's twin who was trying different saddles on Pebbles. Giving Azul one last stroke for now, Emilia left the stalls with Link and Avera.

Around the side of the stable where they could be seen by no one, they used the slate again to teleport, this time to the shrine overlooking Kakariko Village.

Following the path from the shrine that led up and away from the village, it wasn't long before they came across the gigantic flower bud of the Great Fairy Fountain nestled in a hollow just off the path. Emilia slowed at the sight of it, eyes widening and jaw dropping. Even though it hadn't bloomed yet, it was already so beautiful—and surrounding the beautiful scenery were little balls of radiant pink light with wings.

"Cotera..." Avera said softly. "Where's her spring gone...?"

Emilia tried her best to push down her awe at seeing real-life Fairies to answer. "Not enough travelers give her offerings anymore," she recounted. "She needs a hundred rupees to become whole again. ...In the legend, at least."

Avera frowned and looked at Link. "Have you got a hundred to spare...?"

Link shook his head. "No. And what... What is this, anyway?"

"It's the fountain of Kakariko's guardian spirit—the Great Fairy, Cotera," Avera said. "She gives blessings to those who offer her something valuable, like rupees or gems. Or at least, she used to."

"Have—have you ever seen her before?" Emilia asked.

"Once," Avera said, smiling. "When I was little, my dad brought me and my brother here to offer her money he'd been saving up for months, and she came out, and she was... She was beautiful," she said in the same sort of dreamy way she'd spoken of Letto. "...And huge. But ... delicate, in spite of it."

For a long moment, none of them said anything. The wind rustled through the trees as the Fairies danced gently through the air. Emilia watched them, wanting to examine one up close, but not wanting to disturb the beauty of the scene before her.

"...We'll come back," Avera finally said. "When we have enough to offer her."

They lingered for a beat longer, then continued on deeper into the woods, leaving the bud and its Fairies behind.

Emilia expected it would take a while to reach the Lanayru East Gate, considering how long it'd taken them the previous day to travel by horse to Hateno, but it took even longer than she'd expected. The sun was beginning to set as they made it toward the end of the promenade and the towering gate came into view.

There'd been some monsters along the way, but only a few red Bokoblins and a singular Moblin—nothing that Link and Avera couldn't handle easily. Emilia felt down, again, watching them fight while she stood back, but the fact that they dispersed of the monsters so easily together helped make her feel a bit better about staying on the sidelines.

"...That's the last monster we have to pass," she said after the Moblin fell. "It should be just right up this hill."

They continued up the remaining stretch until the land leveled out and the gate was fully visible. There was no shimmering pool of light like there'd been in the game, no glowing mark to say stand here and you'll remember. But Emilia knew, nonetheless, when they'd reached the spot.

Because without warning, Link suddenly reached for the Sheikah Slate.

He tapped it a few times, pulling up the matching photograph from the album. Emilia watched silently as Link lowered the slate and looked out over the land in front of him. He tilted his head, then glanced back at the photo, then forward again, comparing.

And then his eyes went wide, his breath caught, the Sheikah Slate dropped from his fingers, and he froze.

"Link?!" Avera said, rushing toward him a step.

Emilia held out an arm, gently halting her. "Wait," she whispered, eyes fixed on him. "It's happening."

Link stayed still, seemingly completely oblivious to them discussing him right at his side.

"...Do you know what he's remembering?" Avera whispered back.

The memory from the game rushed through Emilia's mind: Zelda and Link coming down from Mount Lanayru to the Champions, Zelda's admittance that she'd failed to awaken her sealing powers, the sudden earthquake and the revelation that Ganon had woken...

"Ganon's return," was all she whispered in response.

They stood there for minutes, watching in tense silence as Link continued to stare blankly at the gate ahead of him.

Finally, he inhaled sharply, eyes snapping back into focus. He blinked several times, looking stunned, like someone surfacing from water they thought they would drown in.

Emilia took a tentative step closer to him. "...Link?"

He looked at her, brows furrowed together and the corners of his lips lowered in a frown. "...You know what I saw," he said under his breath. "Don't you?"

"Yeah," Emilia quietly admitted.

Link blinked a few more times, nodded, and took in a deep breath before looking all around him. Realizing he'd dropped the Sheikah Slate, he bent down to grab it from his feet. He stared at the picture on its screen wordlessly.

"...Do you wanna talk about it?" Emilia asked.

He didn't answer right away. "...Not ... right now, no." Link cleared his throat then, and opened up the map on the Sheikah Slate. "So—back to Kakariko? I'm starving."

"...Yeah," Emilia said softly. "Back to Impa."

Rather than walk the whole way back, they teleported to the shrine above the village again. As they started down the hill to Impa's, Emilia stayed close to Link's side, glancing at him every now and then. Avera was subdued, trailing behind them so silently that Emilia had to check a few times and make sure she was still there, too. The walk seemed to help Link, grounding him more in the moment, and he seemed almost back to his normal self by the time they made it up to Impa's door.

Impa and Paya were in the middle of eating dinner when they entered, and they thankfully had more food to share.

Link sat across from Paya—making her blush—and Emilia and Avera sat across from one another, while Impa was at her spot at the head of the table. It seemed there was an unspoken agreement that a proper discussion of what all had happened could wait, because the only talking at the table was small as they ate.

Although Impa and Paya had already been some of the way into their meals when the trio had entered, Link was finished eating his share before either of them. Once everybody was done, Paya gathered up everybody's dishes and scurried out of the house. Impa looked at the three left behind at the table and nodded to herself.

"I take it you have visited Purah by now," she started. When Link confirmed that they had, she went on. "I do hope she didn't give you too much of the runaround."

He shrugged. "Not really. She fixed my slate."

Impa's eyes brightened. "If you would, let me see it, please."

Link handed it over to her, and as soon as the device was in her hands, Impa was deftly swiping her aged fingers over the screen. She quickly brought it around to the photo album and paused as she looked at the old photos.

"Indeed, she did restore them," Impa said under her breath. "...You already looked through these pictures—correct, Link?"

"Yeah. And..." He glanced over at Emilia. "I went to one of the locations in them."

Maybe it was because she didn't fail to notice that Link had peered at Emilia before speaking, or maybe she just had a clue regardless, but Impa also looked at Emilia. "And I suppose you're the one who led him there?"

"Yeah," Emilia said sheepishly. "I ... knew you were gonna ask, so..."

Impa nodded, turning her attention back to Link. "...I knew when you walked in here that you'd somehow regained some of your memories—I saw it on your face. Now that things have begun to come back to you, I have something to give you. Let me go get it before I forget."

She slowly slid off her pillows and made her way over to her usual spot. Underneath one of the staircases was a small wooden box that she picked up and brought back over to the table. After situating herself back on her pillows, she slid the box over to Link.

Link slowly removed its lid, revealing his Champion's tunic.

It was a stunning blue, without any imperfections to be seen—no rips, tears, or stains—like it had never seen battle at all. He lifted its folded form up, revealing its matching undershirt beneath it along with its gloves and bracers.

"I kept hold of this by request of the Princess," Impa said. "...You may not remember, but this garment was only to be worn by one who had earned the respect of the Royal Family. It was specially made for you when you became a Champion. It was nearly destroyed in the battle one hundred years ago, but I had it fixed, and I have been keeping it safe for you since."

"...Thank you," Link said, voice low and sincere.

"If you wish, you may go upstairs to change into it," Impa said. "I'd like to speak to Avera and Emilia, now."

Link nodded, placed the tunic back in its box, and stood up with it. As he took off for the stairs, Avera scooted over into the place he'd been sitting to be closer to Impa, and Emilia took that as a cue to scoot over to where Paya had been.

"Considering that only the two of you returned with Link, I assume that you didn't find any more people risen from the dead on your way," Impa said.

"No," Avera said. "But I talked to the leader of Hateno and got him to agree to keep an ear out."

"Good," Impa said with a nod. "And what did Purah have to say of you two?"

"Remember how you brought up how the blood moon happened right around the time that I woke up, but you brushed it off...?" Avera asked, and Impa nodded. "...Purah's of the mind that they might be related events. Not that the blood moon itself awoke me, but that there's a counterforce to the blood moon."

"A counterforce..." Impa repeated slowly, brows knitted together.

"Yeah. She's not sure which of the Gods came up with it, or why, but it's the answer that she thinks makes the most sense—for now, at least. She's doing more research." Avera brightened suddenly. "Oh! And when she did tests on us, I came back normal, but Emilia's race came back as an Anomalous Human."

Impa looked at Emilia. "You were forthcoming with them about your background, were you not?"

"I was," Emilia said. "I told them everything."

"Good. And what did Purah have to say of that, and your—presumably related—status as an anomaly?" Impa asked. "Does she believe, like I do, that you are related to the counterforce regardless of your background?"

"She was pretty surprised by the Anomalous thing, even after I told her I'm not ... from here," Emilia said. "And yeah, I'm pretty sure she still believes that my appearance here is related to the counterforce. If she doesn't, she didn't say anything about it."

"Actually," Avera said, "Link brought up that maybe Emilia specifically was brought here to put her foreknowledge to use, and Purah thinks he might be right."

"It would, indeed, be very strange for the Gods to bring forth one with foreknowledge of these lands without having meant precisely to do so," Impa agreed with a sage nod.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs drew their attention, and Link reappeared, now dressed in the Champion's tunic. It fit him perfectly, both on a bodily level and otherwise—he looked more right in it.

Emilia found herself staring. Seeing him in it made everything feel that much more real, like something had clicked into place that hadn't been quite aligned before.

Avera whistled. "Well, don't you look good in blue."

Link rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks and ears looking to redden a touch. "Thanks."

"You really look like you belong in it," Emilia said.

He gave her a small, grateful smile, and at that came back over to rejoin them at the table.

Impa waited for him to situate himself before speaking. "Do you—any of you—have anything else you'd like to say to me?"

"I've got one last thing to ask," Avera said. "...Is Purah seriously your big sister?"

Impa cracked a smile. "It is hard to believe, but yes, she is." She then paused, implications seeming to dawn upon her. "...What did she do to herself this time?"

"Turned herself into a kid," Avera told her.

"...That sounds ... unbelievable. And yet, considering it's Purah we're discussing..." Impa pursed her lips and shook her head. "...If there's nothing else to discuss, I believe we should call it a night. You three will need good rest if you are to continue on your journey tomorrow."

"Any suggestions on where to head next?" Link asked.

"Why don't you ask our one with foreknowledge?" Impa said, looking at Emilia—and then everybody looked at Emilia.

Emilia floundered. "Um. The legend, kind of ... suggests that you go to Zora's Domain first, but it's your choice, really."

"If you had to pick," Avera said, "based on what you know, what would you choose?"

She thought about it. When she'd played the game for the first time, she'd immediately headed for the Gerudo Desert, just because she wanted to see the Gerudo—but, considering how Naboris and Thunderblight Ganon had gone for her... As badly as she wanted to see the Gerudo in real life, she was not going to suggest that. And she hadn't struggled nearly as much with Death Mountain in the game—it had been her final area to visit—but she really didn't feel like potentially getting set on fire quite yet.

That left Zora's Domain and Rito Village. Zora's Domain might've been what the game pushed you toward doing first, but ... Emilia had felt much more fulfilled after completing the Rito questline and unlocking Revali's Gale. It had felt like the world had truly opened up to her, then.

"...If not Zora's Domain, then Rito Village," she finally landed on saying.

"Perhaps you can sleep on it and come to a decision in the morning," Impa suggested. "I'd love to offer all three of you a bed to sleep in, but I'm afraid you'll have to go to the village inn for the night. Wherever you end up going tomorrow, you'll need plenty of rest."

After offering their thanks to Impa and bidding her a good night, they stepped out into the cool evening air. The village was quieter than it had been, the last traces of sunlight painting the sky in soft lavender and gold. As they descended the stairs from Impa's home, Emilia caught sight of something.

"I'll meet you guys at the inn," she said at the bottom of the stairs. "I just wanna..." She gestured vaguely in the direction of where she planned to go.

Avera gave her a small nod. "We'll save you a bed."

"Take your time," Link added gently.

"I'll be back soon," Emilia said. I don't wanna be outside once the last of the light goes away, she thought but didn't say.

Link and Avera continued on walking toward the inn together, but Emilia kept on heading straight—toward the Goddess Statue.

Once in front of it, she slowly sank to her knees, clasped her hands together, and closed her eyes, not entirely sure of what she was doing. Would Hylia hear her if she prayed in her head? That was how she would pray back home, under the belief that the God of her world would know her thoughts, but since she wasn't of this world...

The last time she prayed, she suddenly remembered, was her last night on earth, right before everything had gone dark—and she'd prayed not to die.

...Maybe all of this was how her prayer had been answered.

Maybe God had brought her to this world, knowing that it was in the middle of its own phenomenon with resurrections—so she would slip right in without sticking out too much, compared to if she'd managed to survive in her world, which admittedly would've been a story of biblical proportions. Maybe it was the only way.

Emilia sighed, shaking her head. It was a nice way to think about things, but that didn't make it a proper answer.

...Hylia? Din? Nayru? Farore? God? Whoever's out there listening... It's, um... It's me. Emilia. I'm praying ... for an answer. I wanna know why I was brought here. I don't know if me being here is some kind of gift, or a mistake, or what... But you have to let me know, so I can know what to do. And... I wanna pray that I can go home, someday.

...I'm sorry I'm not good at this whole praying thing. I don't want to sound ungrateful if this was your way of allowing me to live, and I don't mean to be demanding, it's just... It's a lot, y'know?

But if you can't give me an answer, can you at least give my family an answer? Find some way of letting them know that I'm here, in an alternate world, alive. Let them know that I love them and I miss them and I'm sorry. Please.

And ... yeah. I guess that's about it.

A gentle breeze ruffled her hair.

Emilia opened her eyes. She wasn't sure if that counted as a reply, but it helped make her feel heard either way.

"Thank you," she whispered as she stood up, reaching out to touch the Goddess Statue. "...Just in case you were listening."

As she began to walk toward the inn, another gust of wind blew past her.