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Carrying Capacity
Link is shaking.
Despite the weight of his armor, clanking as he bends his arms back for a jab with his spear, he feels naked. Exposed. Unprepared. There's a weight missing and something is wrong.
He's no stranger to anxiety. Hyrule is full of things to be anxious about; anxious is how he stays alive. But this time it is getting in the way of his fight. This lizalfos might get a lucky strike in if he can't get a hold of this stumble. Nerves aside, he has to finish this fight before his spear breaks.
Behind him, the puddle of malice bubbles, the Sheikah Slate lost beneath its surface. All of his backup weapons, all of his meals and elixirs. Supplies, tools, maps—
He pushes the worry away for just a moment more.
He swings his stolen lizal spear twice more before the monster dissolves into smoke and ashes at the other end. In almost the same movement Link pivots and crouches at the edge of the pool of malice. His hands spasm towards his hip so he can summon the magnesis tool- just so he can get a visual of what he can't see- but that's just the problem. There’s nothing there to grab so instead he clenches his hands tight around his spear and thrusts it forward into the muck.
The spear tip scrapes through the thick mud at the bottom of the puddle and Link drags it around until he feels it catch on the edge of something solid. Everything that falls into malice dissolves, so it must be the Sheikah Slate, which had fallen from his hands in his haste to jump away from a sentry's arrow, and clattered down the slight incline into the malice.
Link hasn’t been without the Sheikah Slate since he first woke up and plucked it from the stone pedestal in the shrine of resurrection. Without it, he doesn’t even feel like himself. The only self he’s ever known.
His hands shake as he scrapes through the muck. The puddle is not deep enough to genuinely lose the device, but while Sheikah technology is a fair bit more resilient than anything else Link has come into contact with he doesn’t want to give the malice time to dissolve it.
The air is still thick with monster dust and Link is sticky with sweat and gore. Despite his certainty that he had dispatched all of his opponents, the back of his neck crawls and grows hot the way it does when there's an arrow pointed there. Without the slate, he feels unexpectedly powerless. A malice bubble pops 6 inches away from his nose and splatters on the toe of his boot.
Link aches.
When the shiny black edge of the slate pokes out of the pool, Link has to physically stop himself from dunking his hand in to pull it out. He teases it a few inches more with the spear, malice rolling off of it in plump drops, until he can finally snatch it out when the handle is clear. Link wipes the slate against his shirt, burning corrosive holes in the fabric. When it’s clean, he thumbs the button at the top and taps frantically at the screen. The blues pixelate, uncoordinated and jittery, and Link feels a tightness crawl up the back of his throat. He shakes the slate. He smacks it against his palm and thumbs the button on and off and on and off. Nothing changes. Nothing helps.
He sits back on his knees, holding the slate tightly in his hands so he doesn’t drop it again. How foolish , some part of him thinks bitterly, to have dropped it at all. As though it is not your most irreplaceable possession. The slate is an essential fact of his daily life. Without it, he is limited to what he can carry on his back and in his pockets. No more tools of ancient technology and no more quick changes of clothes or snacks to refuel with. The nearly broken (a hairline crack running up the shaft already) lizal spear in his hands feels woefully inept for the task of defending him from whatever he might encounter in the course of his journey across Hyrule, but he can’t access any of the other weapons he usually has on hand.
A few shuddering breaths and a number of determined taps and trials to get the slate operable later and he’s exactly where he started. Slowly, Link stands, clenching the slate tightly with both hands. The world feels much bigger, now. Without a map to separate it into quadrants and a back up weapon should anything happen to the one he carries. Nothing to eat until he finds something on the road—and no way to carry ingredients until he reaches a cooking fire.
No change of clothes. No camera. No teleportation or reminders of things he wants to do.
Hesitantly, he reaches for the Champion’s gifts. When he clenches his fist, Daruk’s forcefield flickers into life around him, just as it should. He breathes out a tiny increment of his anxiety.
Link has to fix the slate, there’s no other option. And there’s only one person who knows the slate as well as he does.
With shaking hands, Link whistles, and Buttons neighs, nervous, from the top of a nearby ridge, unable to come any closer. Link slides the slate into its place at his hip and begins to trudge upward, lizal spear in hand.
If he sticks to the roads he’ll have a harder time getting lost and won’t encounter as many monsters. Hateno is not the closest settlement, but it’s the only place he can go. Purah can fix this. She has to.
By the time Link reaches a stable his anxiety has reached a fever pitch and he is armed with nothing but a handful of fire arrows and a stalkoblin arm. The lights of the stable around the bend in the road are enough to make his legs spasm and kick Buttons into a canter. Her sides are heaving beneath his legs. He's been running her ragged for hours. This is what decides he will be stopping for the night—not his own hunger or the desire to feel safe or the allure of sleep. All of those can come more easily with the slate in working order.
But Buttons is a good horse. And also a somewhat slow one so exchanging her for Rune will be a strategic move overall.
He pulls hard on the reins and she rears to run off momentum and then thuds back into the dirt. The stable hand at the desk looks up at him, unimpressed, and waits for him to dismount and lead the horse over to the counter.
"Will you be staying the night?" She asks and he nods, gesturing at Buttons as well to indicate he'd like her boarded. "Soft or regular bed?"
"Soft," he signs and then reaches for his rupees because most of the stable hands don't know sign but they sure know money—but as soon as the slate is in his hands he remembers and freezes halfway through the motion.
He looks up, wide-eyed, as he realizes that on top of everything else he is locked away from the entirety of his savings, which means he can't even buy new resources from the people that hang around the stables.
"Link! My favorite customer!"
But at least he has Beedle. Link turns sharply at Beedle's call and sighs when he sees the merchant struggling to his feet. He'd been resting his load against one of the support posts but abandons his place with ease to march over to Link's side. Normally Link would go to him, but perhaps he senses something is amiss because he joins Link at the counter and glances over him with a critical eye.
“What’s keeping you out so late tonight?” Beedle asks. “There’re guardians not so far from here you know.”
“I know,” Link signs. Beedle is his favorite and most reliable conversation partner aside from the villagers in Kakariko and most of the Zora. Sign isn't as widespread as it used to be but Beedle seems to make a point of not letting language get in the way of a sale. “I’m in a rush. My…” he pauses. He’s never had to describe or name the slate in sign before. A literal translation of ‘slate’ feels wrong as it implies a stone, but ‘machine’, what he usually uses for guardians, is also distinctly incorrect. “My tool,” he finally signs and gestures to the slate, “isn’t working correctly. I need it fixed.”
“Wow! I didn’t know that thing could break! You bring it everywhere! Thought it was magic, myself.”
“I don’t know what it is,” Link says, “but I can't get to my rupees or supplies without it so I just have to continue on for now.”
"You can't be serious!" Beedle exclaims and tuts lightly. The stablehand continues to seem unamused by their antics so late in her shift. "Link, I can't allow you to head off into that!"
Link follows Beedle's finger and finds a flash of lightning backlighting a hedge of storm clouds rolling in from the West. Link feels his shoulders droop.
Normally Beedle doesn't get much say in what Link does. Link can handle himself and has rushed off into storms in the dead of night before—and he has every intention of doing so again. But every now and then Beedle steps in with a rational take. Keeping Link alive is a long-term business investment for him, after all, and with Link's common sense hanging on by a thread, he is inclined to comply tonight.
But with rain coming in Link can't even spend the night by the fire, and he knows from experience that he won't be able to sleep against the wall like Beedle does. He's far too riled for that. His stomach grumbles and the stalkoblin arm cracks its knuckles against his back.
"No, no! You and I know each other well enough, I'll spot you for the night!"
The stable hand doesn't blink twice as Beedle passes over the rupees for a bed (soft even!) but Link gapes at the merchant before signing vehement protests.
"I won't accept." But even as he signs, he can feel his shoulders loosening in relief. His breath comes slower and more controlled. It seems as though he is blinking away a fog. "Beedle, I don't have anything to trade right now."
"So what? You've never left me in a lurch before. And you've helped me out enough times that I probably owe you, not the other way around."
"But I'm—" lost, unreliable, not myself, scared, helpless, vulnerable . "In the middle of something right now."
"I know," Beedle says and guides Link under the shelter of the awning. "I don't understand that tool of yours, never have, but I know it's important to you. You're in a tough spot right now! So let me help you get back on your feet. I think you're gonna have a hard time getting there on your own."
Beedle gives him a plate of rice balls and a mug of tea. He also loans him another 100 rupees and says to use them for whatever he needs on his journey. Link vows not to use any of them but feels a little more capable with the weight of them in his pocket.
He sits down on the bed the stablehand points him to and lets Beedle putter around until someone starts dimming the torches and the patter of rain on canvas starts up from above.
His fingers twitch. At this time of night, he usually checks his inventory and the requests he plans to handle the next day. He might look over the map and plot his ideal course for if everything goes according to plan. Recounting all he has accomplished and everything he will face in the coming days helps settle his mind. But he doesn't want to panic himself further by trying to get the slate operable.
So instead he lies in bed and stares at the roof, and thinks of places where he doesn't use his slate. He never takes it out while visiting the springs because it feels somehow sacrilegious. Never atop Satori mountain where the blupees would spook at the chime of the slate powering up. Very rarely does he take it out beside cookfires, after he has prepared his meal, where he rests for long hours enjoying his food and the company of whoever joins him.
He falls asleep after thinking that if he hurries—starts early and rides all night, and if the weather clears up, and if the roads aren't too thickly coated in monster camps—he could be in Hateno by the very early morning of the day after tomorrow.
Beedle wakes him up with an apology and a gift.
"I'm sure you wanted to get an earlier start." The merchant flaps his hands and skitters out of the way when Link swings his legs out of bed and lurches to his feet. "But I told the stablemaster to let you be. But then I got distracted and forgot to wake you up. Sorry, but it's practically noon!"
There goes a morning arrival. Maybe afternoon if he pushes it.
"Thank you, Beedle," Link signs in lieu of getting into an argument and checks around the bed for his belongings. Stalkoblin arm, shield, and the bundle of arrows he removed so he could sleep more comfortably are all waiting where he left them and he slings them into their places with habitual motions. Every instinct in his body says to toss the arm and exchange it for one of the clubs he has stashed away for just this occasion, but he resists and presses his lips together firmly.
Beedle doesn't give him time to dwell. He pushes a bundle of fabric into his arms and ushers him toward the front desk.
It takes Link a few minutes to sort out what he's been given. He’s busy instructing Beedle on what to tell the stable hand (who is new, replacing the night shift, but who still does not understand sign) about how to tack his horse for the day and when his hands are finally free he untangles the bundle into its proper shape.
A backpack.
Link knows Beedle's pack, of course. And other merchants and journeymen travel with all types and sizes of bags. Link has never bothered, he couldn't even. His back is always occupied with whatever weapons he wants in easy reach. When he keeps a great sword or a moblin club on his back there's no room for anything else.
There's not much space even now, with the only accessible belongings being strapped to his back, but the value of being able to collect again is enough to search for an arrangement that works. The bag doesn’t hold much, at least not enough to keep up with his slate’s near-infinite inventory, and it’s too fragile to hold any spare sword or spear he might steal. But it’s enough for a wizzrobe wand if he took the risk of seeking one out, or a handful of apples or mushrooms or anything else he can find along the route.
(His stomach rumbles, but after a night on his generosity Link will not ask Beedle for a meal as well.)
The bag is obviously handmade and Link thinks that Beedle may have spent the morning and half the night putting it together.
Beedle returns with Link’s horse’s reins in his hands. He looks nervous, and Link is quick to sign a genuine thanks for the gift and the assistance.
“You like it?” Beedle asks nervously. “It isn’t much compared to that fancy gizmo of yours.”
“It is a great gift,” Link assures him. “It will help me until my tool is fixed. And it is from a good friend.”
Beedle is flustered by that but still shows Link all the small pockets and buckles and helps him get it situated around his shoulders. It feels flat and too light, as it contains only the rupees that Beedle had lent him, but Link is eager to fill it and feel prepared to face Hyrule once again.
He still misses his slate. He misses it like an amputated limb. He feels the phantom pains of where it should be as he saddles up and looks to the road and doesn't know quite as well where the road turns and how he'll defend himself. More than that, the slate is a part of him. Link relies on it. It holds the only shards of his past that remain and carries moments that have become important to him, now.
Without the slate, how is Link supposed to be the hero of Hyrule?
How is he supposed to be himself?
"Safe travels Link!" Beedle calls with an exuberant wave and Link kicks his heels into Rune's sides to take off at a gallop.
The further he gets from the stable the less safe he feels and the more anxious he is. In towns and settlements, the slate is a means of trade, of convenience, of communication. But out in the wilds, where he easily spends most of his time, the slate is a means of survival, strength, and flexibility.
It’s been a long time since he felt truly uneasy while traveling. He’s been doing it for months now and has gone from a stranger to all to a familiar face to most. But he cannot deny that he feels more capable out amongst the monster camps and mountain ranges of Hyrule’s less civilized places. He’s a strong fighter with adaptability in spades. Not since first waking up on the plateau has he felt so unprepared for whatever he might face.
It probably has something to do with the ways he was prepared to survive back on that plateau before he knew he had any skills at all. He was reborn with the knowledge, somehow, to wield every weapon he’d ever come across. He’d woken up already knowing how to ride updrafts and scale sheer mountainsides. The only thing he hadn’t known… was the slate. That he’d had to learn himself. He’d been the one to figure out how to sling it out from its place at his side and exchange weapons and arrow quivers or to spill plates out into his hand so he could refuel at a moment's notice. He learned to store everything , from fully cooked meals, to carefully folded clothing to ethereal abilities gifted from ghosts. He’d downloaded the runes all on his own, learning how they worked and all of the ways he could use them to navigate the breadth of Hyrule.
So yes. He still has some weapons and his mastery of them is not shaken in the slightest. But he feels unsteady nonetheless. The one skill he is most confident in is unreachable. Without the distraction of Beedle and the stable, he is all too aware of that.
Even though it's faster to keep his full attention on riding (and safer too as he's never met a monster he can't outrun if he comes onto them at pace on a horse) he keeps his stalkoblin arm aloft in one hand and an eye on the bushes at the side of the road. He refuses to be caught unaware.
He plans his rest stops for Rune so that they fall near resources - or at least places he thinks might be near resources. He raids a korok puzzle at a line of goddess statues for apples and hunts through ruins until he finds a rusty sword he can use in place of the arm. Inch by inch, item by item, Link works his anxiety down from a rolling boil to a simmer.
He redirects his spasming hands to the straps of the backpack slung across his chest. He finds the movement that lets him toss things in over his shoulder without much trouble but grows frustrated by the way it takes several minutes to find anything in the jumbled pocket of miscellaneous items. Without the slate, he doesn’t feel like hunting for bugs or stashing any hunted meat in the bag, but the weight on his back becomes reassuring, as though it is a heavy club or a thick metal weapon instead of a collection of odds and ends.
By the time night falls he has an assortment of apples, mushrooms, and even a truffle. It’s enough for dinner at least, though the skewers he makes are unseasoned and either under or overcooked due to his lack of a cooking pot. He has to light the fire with one of the fire arrows, which he should probably count himself lucky for having equipped when the slate shut down, and thinks longingly of the unreachable flint and wood bundles he keeps handy for this purpose. He had tens of regular arrows, but only a handful of fire arrows, after all.
Despite planning to ride the whole night through he ends up spending a few hours with the meal so as to let himself and Rune rest. It’s only partially useful in that way, however, as he finds he can’t fall into his usual trance, staring at the fire for hours on end. Instead, every crunch and rustle of the forest around him sets his nerves alight and he remains tense for the duration of the break.
Surrounded by dangers and working with a hair trigger on his reflexes, the backpack becomes more than just a means of storage—it becomes a distraction. Back when he’d had nothing to his name but a slate and some tattered clothes he’d collected everything he could. It had felt good to be prepared for whatever might happen when the world was full of things he didn’t know could happen. Upon learning how to cook a spicy recipe he’d made four, just in case. Now he lacks that sort of preparation and storage capacity but he’s no less dutiful in collecting resources.
Whenever he comes to a crossroads and feels the urge to check the map he looks for something to collect and soothe his frazzled concentration. When the sword he scavenged starts to feel a little wobbly in its handle, as though it will soon break, he ignores his desire to move onward singlemindedly and instead veers off course to find a small monster camp where he can find a more durable means of defense. At a stable near the Dueling Peaks, he trades some of his resources for enough rupees to keep him from needing to dip into Beedle’s loan.
It’s enough because it has to be. It’s been some time since a blood moon and aside from the storm that first night the weather is fair. The journey is likely as easy as it could have been. But Link still feels as though he’s endured some great struggle by the time he dismounts, with a shake in his knees from the continued riding, and pounds on the door of Purah’s laboratory.
It’s late evening but Purah keeps strange hours and Symin meets him as Link flings open the door and strides in. Purah is at her desk looking over a sheaf of papers that seem to have schematics of the ancient forge drawn on them.
“Linky?” Purah asks absently, “What are you doing here?” She turns to a calendar on her wall and squints. Link crosses the room in several long strides while she mutters. “I didn’t think you’d be visiting for another week at least, you weren’t here so long ago-oh!”
Link pulls the slate free of his belt and drops it heavily on top of the papers spread across the table. Purah jumps at the action and then adjusts her glasses and leans in, peering at the dark screen of the slate.
“It’s broken,” Link signs stiffly. “I need it fixed.”
“Broken?” Purah repeats. “How did you break it?”
“Dropped it. Into malice.”
“Dropped it in malice?!” she repeats, scandalized, and finally picks up the slate to start inspecting it and mashing buttons. As with Link’s attempts, the slate does not respond. Purah makes a noise of dawning horror.
“You broke it?” she exclaims, smacking the slate with the heel of her palm and then shaking it next to her ear. “This relic is centuries old! It’s survived the passing of eons and ice ages and great floods! And just a few months with you renders it inoperable? Link, you dummy!”
News delivered and journey finally complete, Link steps away and starts pacing. His hands work through the air without forming words. He doesn’t feel like giving her an excuse. Several days without the slate he had learned how to live beside does nothing to lessen his bitterness towards his careless mistake. His regret is physical and sour. His longing is hot and spiced.
Purah sighs and sets the slate on the table, then pulls her goggles over her eyes and reaches for some of the tools scattered across the desk.
“Alright, alright, stop with the stalking. You’re gonna make me nervous. Make yourself useful. I need hylian rice.”
Link stops and turns on her.
“I’m not going shopping for you,” he signs vehemently. “All of my rupees are in the slate, anyway. I’m not leaving until the slate is fixed.”
“Tough luck Linkie, cause this is gonna take a while.” She drawls. “And if you don’t have any rupees then how are you gonna pay for my services?”
He pauses and stares at her incredulously.
“Oh yes, my fees still apply. Hyrule is a tough place to be a scientist, Linkie. Every girl has to make a living!” She winks. “But I’ll give you a special deal—a trade offer! Bring me hylian rice and we’ll consider your debt half paid.”
Link growls and flashes some crude gestures her way but Purah isn’t looking at him anymore, her attention is entirely on the slate he’d left in her hands… and just as he had been halfway across the country, he still has no choice but to trust and pray that she can fix it. If she can’t…
“I’ll get you rice,” he signs viciously and stalks out the door.
It’s truly night now and the stores are closed, so Link stalks home to sulk and try to figure out what he’s supposed to do now without anywhere to go. His house is empty and quiet, as it usually is. But where it is typically livened once he pulls cooking materials out of his slate and gets to work, it remains that way as he has little to liven it with. He stands in front of his weapon racks, the champion’s tools of conquest hanging there, glittering. Even left with the most minimal of resources he is unwilling to pillage them for battle.
He tosses the materials in his pack into the cooking pot and ends up with a passable steamed mushroom dish and a few baked apples. He eats and is unsatisfied by the underseasoned, bruised ingredients, but grateful all the same to have a meal with more variety and balance than the skewers he’d managed the night before. Still, it only occupies him for so long and soon he is stalking around his property, trying to figure out what to do with all his nervous energy.
The answer is obvious, but standing on the edge of the cliff his house stands on, looking down into the gulley of ponds and trees that make up the Hateno wooded area, he hesitates.
There are moblins down there. And Yiga travelers sometimes. He won’t have his bombs to get at the ore and he won’t be able to teleport away if he falls from a tree and snaps an ankle or something.
But Purah needs rice, and he needs rupees to get that, and the only way to get more is to have things to sell. He takes a deep breath and jumps down into the forest at night.
The forest outside of Hateno’s gates grows close overhead, a natural shelter against the openness that makes the back of his neck prickle, and Link is grateful for what relief he can get. His hands still feel empty without the slate so he squeezes the straps of his backpack where it is slung over one shoulder.
He spends the first few hours scavenging sneaky mushrooms, grateful that they glow in the night, and as it begins to lighten into dawn he changes tactics and hunts for whatever glistens in the early morning. After a few passes through and with his bag nearly full, he feels content with the conclusion that there are not currently any monsters camping in the woods and he expands his hunting area a bit further. In a bid for lunch, he even shoots a bird with one of the regular arrows he had acquired when scrounging sleeping monster camps for sturdier weapons. It’s enough to feel almost normal.
He comes back into town around mid-morning with his backpack overfull of things to trade and the plucked bird in one hand (he doesn’t want raw meat sullying Beedle’s gift). He trades most of the new stuff for rupees, which he stuffs in his pockets, buys several stalks of rice, and then trudges up the hill to Purah’s lab.
When Symin opens the door Link thrusts out the rice stalks for the assistant to take.
“Oh! Thank you,” he says, fumbling to keep the stalks from scattering. “Miss Purah will find these very helpful. She’s still working but if you’d like to come in…” Symin shifts to make space in the doorway and Link can see Purah bent over her table. She doesn’t seem to have noticed him.
Suddenly, Link can feel the tremor and sour taste of his worry and shame creep back into him. He doesn’t want to hear what she has to say about the damage or see what she’s done to the slate in her effort to fix it.
He signs a rapid rejection to the invitation and Symin hums understandingly.
“Very well. Miss Purah doesn’t think she’ll be done for a few days at least. Come back in two, and I’ll send someone to your house if it’s ready sooner.”
Link ignores the swoop in his stomach at the thought of days more without the slate and issues a wan smile and quick wave before turning tail.
He cooks the bird at the cooking pot in his front yard and deposits a few things in the empty cupboards of his house. It's nice to have more than just warm fruit and mushrooms on a stick for a meal and the things on the shelves make the house feel a little less empty… but it means his bag is now loose and useless. It's only midafternoon and even after spending the past few days on the road he's got too much nervous energy and not enough supplies.
Link doesn't want to stay here and wait, so he goes back to the forest.
He's already combed the area close to the town so he has to travel farther to reach untouched hunting grounds. He exits the woods but keeps to the edge of the treeline with an arrow knocked in his bow. After he's confirmed that there aren't any monster camps close enough to be a threat he ventures out and begins collecting. With each advance, he scouts and then recovers the ground in hunt of things to store and trade. The day passes uneventfully and he gets further and further from Hateno, sticking to the road, until suddenly, he finds himself standing beneath the gates of Fort Hateno, the raised portcullis hanging overhead like a guillotine ready to fall.
It was stupid to come here. He's anxious enough without reminding himself of the night he was here a hundred years ago. His bag is comfortably full and the sun is low in the sky. He hasn't slept properly in several days. He may not like it but it's time to go home.
But before he can, there are shouts from up ahead.
Hurule is a dangerous place and the people that live there are soft and slow. Even the adventurers and traders only know one weapon at a passable level of skill if they're lucky. As such, Link often finds himself stepping in to defend hapless travelers.
Now, as a pair of Hylians round a bluff in the field, yelling as a moblin lopes along behind them with its club hefted over one shoulder, Link's throat seizes with indecision. There's no question what will happen if he does nothing but the result of his interference is less certain than usual. The confidence he would typically have stepping in has evaporated entirely in the past few days. The weight on his back which has come to comfort him in place of the slate at his hip feels suddenly burdensome instead of helpful and far too clumsy to fulfill its purpose.
No wonder the traveling merchants always have trouble defending themselves.
He runs forward, rusty sword held ready in one hand, and intercepts the moblin as the travelers scramble out of reach, shouting his name as they realize he’s stepped in to save them. The moblin tilts its head at him, inquisitive, snuffles lightly and then rears back with its club.
Link ducks and rolls. He swipes and slashes. The Moblin howls and lunges. It is the usual melody and the regular rhythm. Link almost feels normal.
Almost.
They move back and forth and Link knows he only needs a few more blows to finish the fight. He swings against the moblin’s knees and the rusty sword, which had been groaning in complaint about the furious series of attacks, snaps off at the hilt and shatters. Link rolls aside and reaches for his slate—but his hand brushes empty air. Suddenly, the world shifts into clarity. This is not a normal fight. The backpack is heavy and thumping on his back. There’s a club in there but he can't get to it . His knee had twisted awkwardly earlier in the fight and he only has apples and raw mushrooms to do anything about it. The moblin is loping closer. Link rolls out of the way again but he’s panicky and acts too soon. The Moblin doesn’t stop to readjust but rather just lopes further, and while Link has both hands plunged into the backpack hunting for the handle of the new weapon, it rears back and swings its tree trunk of a club directly into Link’s back.
Link dies.
He comes to with tears in his eyes and Mipha’s ghostly form hovering worriedly over him. Seeing her only makes him cry harder. How he started crying while he was dead is beyond him, but he’s kind of wanted to cry for days now so maybe it shouldn’t surprise him.
“Oh, Link,” she whispers and touches his wet cheek with her immaterial fingers. He shudders and scoots away. He doesn’t want comfort. He doesn't want to be seen like this.
“I’m a failure,” he signs to Mipha who stiffens with shock “Mipha, no wonder Hyrule fell all that time ago. I never could have protected it. I’m a poor excuse for a hero.”
“Link, how could you say such a thing!” Mipha gasps. “You’ve done amazing things for Hyrule. You’ve freed the Zora from their grief for me and saved the nation from flooding. You stopped Rudania from setting off the volcano. I know you will do amazing things for the Gerudo when you go to the desert—”
“No,” he signs sternly. “Those were not me. If that were me I would not be. Struggling. I would not be so helpless.”
“Helpless—Link, you’ve been bested by the brute strength of a moblin before. What has happened to make you think these things?”
Miserably, Link looks around him. There’s blood in the grass and his backpack is a few feet away with torn straps and something wet soaked through the fabric of it. Probably smashed fruit or broken eggs. He drags it closer and holds it up for Mipha to see.
“I broke the Sheikah Slate,” he explains. “Without it… The slate is what made me the hero. It let me heal quickly, and teleport away from danger, and made sure I always had another weapon when I needed it. Someone who falls to pieces without a special tool is no hero.”
“The Sheikah Slate… no, that is not what makes the hero of Hyrule, Link. If that were true then the princess had what she needed all along one hundred years ago.” Mipha is growing fainter, the expiration of her powers allowing her to fade back into invisibility. Link sniffs and watches her go, as he has long ago decided he has to bear witness to the champion’s continued struggle, since no one else will. Mipha’s eyes, as always, shine with honesty. “Link, you are what makes the hero of Hyrule. Did you not just charge in unprepared and uncertain, to a fight you were not sure you could win? All for some bold and reckless travelers?” She chuckles lightly. “And even when you fail, you’ll stand back up, won’t you?”
Link breathes deeply and shakily. Mipha is just a faint glow when he nods, but he can still see her smile as she dissolves away once again.
He does not move for some time. Despite her reassurances, he is still shaken and ashamed. His backpack, lying broken and bedraggled on the ground, seems to mock him. He is without even his stopgap measures. He could not take it to struggle back to Hateno only to hear that Purah is still working on the slate. Or worse, that she’d determined it beyond repair.
“There!”
“Link, Link are you alright?”
He whips his head up and is surprised to see the two travelers he’d intervened to save running towards him across the field. The moblin is nowhere to be seen. Mipha must have taken a moment to get to him and it had wandered off. Link still feels a little dazed, and while his skin is clear and smooth, his clothes are torn in places and muddied. The closer traveler, a woman he thinks is named Rina, stops a few paces away and looks at him with concern. Jotun is a distance behind her, puffing madly as he hurries towards them.
He shoots them a shaky thumbs up and Rina smiles, looking relieved.
“That’s great. We were really worried when we saw that Moblin catch you with the club… you really took a tumble!” Link waves his hand dismissively, all while feeling the phantom pains of the attack in his ribs. “We really owe you one. You saved our lives!”
“Yea-yeah…” Jotun puffs. “I thought we were goners. It’s a good thing you were in the area. Are you headed to Hateno too?”
Link nods and Jotun looks eager.
“We could travel together then! We have some supplies we can lend you.” He gestures at Link’s crushed pack. “It looks like you really lost out for our sakes. It means a lot man.”
Link waves away the gratitude but accepts Rina’s offered hand to get to his feet. He’s steady as he always is after Mipha resettles his soul in his body, but the emotional wave of hopeless inadequacy still leaves him a little uncertain.
He can’t dwell on it like he might have if he were alone. Mipha’s words are only a salve on his fears and helplessness, but he has learned a thing or two about ‘enough to move forward’ in the past few days. He picks up the backpack by its one remaining strap, and digs around for the club handle he’d been searching for in the fight. Equipped with a fresh weapon, fully healed, and with civilians to protect, Link finds the strength to stand a bit straighter.
“I’ll accompany you to Hateno,” he signs. They don’t know the language but they understand his body language well enough and clap him on the back as they begin to cross towards Fort Hateno and the mountain pass that lies beyond.
“Annnnnd, ta-da!” Purah lifts the lid off of a small box that she had Symin (the tallest of the three of them) fetch from a high-up shelf. Link is filled with nervous energy like electric chu chus are gathered about his feet about to sting. She reaches into the rice stained faintly purple and pulls out the Sheikah Slate in three pieces.
“Did you fix it?” he asks anxiously.
“I don’t know yet, Linky. We’ll have to see if the rice finished the job…”
Link blinks, and then signs with a glare.
“Rice? You think rice can fix the Sheikah Slate better than you can?”
“Never overcomplicate a solution,” Purah scolds him and sets the three Sheikah Slate panels out on her workbench. They’re a little dusty and she sets to wiping them down with a soft cloth. Then she reattaches the back panel and the left-hand controller. They slide into place with satisfying clicks but Purah hesitates before trying to power the slate on.
Link reaches forward and does it for her.
There’s a hesitation or a flicker or a rumble and Link’s heart crawls into his throat. It didn’t work… But then the slate lights up with a slightly off-tone chime and Link lets out a long breath.
“Hm,” Purah is inspecting it carefully, pressing each of the buttons and using each function in a methodical process. “I think I should do a thorough cleaning of the audio producers but otherwise it seems functional again. It just needed to get dried out!” She beams and hands the slate over for Link to inspect. “Luckily even the interior materials are pretty resilient and didn’t corrode at all in the malice. They just got gunked up.”
“You just… cleaned it?” Link asks. He’s running through his own function checks. Spawn a spear, an arrow, an apple. Activate the magnesis field. Check that the map knows where he is. It’s all there. “Why did it take so long?”
“I wanted to let the rice soak up any of the leftover malice. I think starting it up before it was fully dry would have been a bad idea.” She waves at the purple rice. “As you can see, I was right.”
Link hugs the slate to his chest and takes a deep breath. Purah chatters on about how she’d slaved over it for hours cleaning up the gunked-up parts and how she has small burns on her hands to prove it. Link thinks about the bone-deep exhaustion and pervasive insomnia he’d been faced with over the past few days. He wishes Purah had been a little less covert about her plans to leave his slate in a box of rice on a high shelf for three days. Then again, would he have really let her keep it if he’d known?
Link died earlier today, which he typically prefers to keep to a minimum. Probably Purah was right to not tell him the details.
“Thank you,” he signs to Purah and sets the slate reverently in its place at his hip. Tension flows out of him in a flood. It’s like all of his sureness and experience and knowledge matter again. Like he’d time traveled from when he’d been standing at the mouth of the shrine of resurrection staring at a world he’s terrified of to this very moment, standing with Purah after yet another slate upgrade. He’s Link. He’s the Hero of Hyrule. He can go anywhere and defeat anything.
He takes it back off his belt and holds it with both hands. What’s so different about having the slate or not having the slate? He always knows where he is without it. With Beedle’s backpack, he’d been able to keep food and arrows handy too. Mipha and Daruk are with him regardless. When he finds the fabled sword he won’t need any more weapons than that.
He tightens his grip on the slate and then hooks it back into place and signs another thanks and a farewell to Purah. He keeps the backpack slung over his shoulder and hurries home.
At his cooking pot he has the easiest time of lighting a fire in days. He pulls fresh cream and fruit from within the slate and butchers the bird he had caught earlier. He sits by the fire late into the night and then, as the embers dwindle into the open sky, he pulls out the slate again and teleports away.
On the other side of Hyrule, he reforms on the front step of a shrine overlooking a stable. It’s raining softly and Link dons his hooded cape before stepping out of the shelter of the shrine. At the desk, he pays for a soft bed and then walks around the tent until he spots Beedle at one of the tables in the back.
“Link!” The merchant says when Link swings into the seat across from him. Beedle looks him over carefully and smiles widely. “You look much better. Is your tool fixed?”
“It is,” Link signs. “Which means I don’t need your loan anymore.” He spawns enough rupees to repay Beedle’s loan and also pulls out a golden beetle he’d caught some time ago and had been saving for a good time to give to his friend. Beedle squeals and picks up the creature, ignoring the rupees entirely.
“I was worried,” Beedle admits as he inspects the creature. “I haven’t seen you at any of the other stables. Sometimes you disappear but I already knew something was wrong…” He stows the beetle away and then looks to Link again. He seems sheepish. “Did my gift help you at all? I hope it wasn’t an unwelcome burden.”
Link shakes his head vehemently and pulls the backpack around to set on the table. Beedle makes a noise of surprise and picks up the broken strap.
“I really appreciate the gift,” Link signs. “It made my journey much more comfortable. Just as my tool usually does. Even though my tool is fixed, I wondered if you could fix the bag?”
“Absolutely!” Beedle croons and scoops up the bundle of cloth. Link had transferred everything he could save into the slate and washed it out, but it was still more than worse for wear. “Not a problem at all for my favorite customer!”
Link smiles and chats comfortably with Beedle until the night grows dark enough that a stable attendant starts to come around to dim the lights and hush the louder conversations. Beedle promises to have the bag fixed to Link’s specifications by the next week and tells him to come find him at a stable then.
The stable is still in motion, of course, but as Link makes his way to the bed set aside for him for the night, he feels more relaxed than he has all week. Lying in the bed he’s never slept in before, he lies still for a moment and stares at the ceiling. A few days ago he’d burned with the need to reach for the slate as if he were standing atop Death Mountain and the slate were a heat resistance potion. Now he takes a deep breath and revels in the fact that he can choose to stay just like this if he wishes.
Then he pulls out the slate and reviews it as he usually does before sleeping. He reorganizes his weapons, reads over the notes he took about the requests passersby often make of him, and checks the map markers to see if there’s anything nearby that he should return to. There’s a chest with a sword in it in some ruins to the West, and he resolves to pick it up in the morning. An extra weapon in good shape would be welcome just now, even with his full inventory restored.
The past few days cannot be so easily forgotten, however. The vestiges of anxiety and discomfort are still settled heavily in his chest. Mipha’s words, too, echo in his head.
If he can be the hero without the slate, why does he feel so much more capable with it? If he survived and even started to rebuild his old habits and supplies with nothing but a backpack and his horse in a matter of days, why does the return of the slate calm all but the most persistent of his fears? Having survived (mostly) some days, he knows that given a week or two, faced with the true loss of the slate, he would still have ventured beyond Hateno and returned to his foraging exploratory ways.
The hero he used to be never had the slate at all and that is not why he failed. Even with the sword that seals the darkness and Princess Zelda at his side, Ganon had been too much. The slate, while immensely helpful, was not so strong as to tip that scale.
So Link considers again what he said to Beedle. The backpack had soothed him and allowed him to return to old habits. But Link is capable of traveling the length of Hyrule without it. It simply… helped. It allowed him to make himself comfortable.
And it's foolish to be anxious to the points that he was. To be nearly incapacitated at times. But the slate… Is it so wrong to rely on comforts, every now and then?
He finishes planning for tomorrow and tucks the slate under his soft pillow before shutting his eyes.
Perhaps tomorrow he will wrestle with the question further. Or perhaps it is not worth thinking on, for now. Perhaps accepting a small kindness for himself, be it a backpack from a friend or a slate left behind to heal him, does not need to be overthought.