Quest 08

[newmemorywhodis]

i. Healing is terrible

Like many warriors, Link...was…not the best patient.

Sure, he could sometimes be very still, and patient. He’s spent countless hours on guard duty. But that, somehow, was different from being stuck in a bed. At least guard duty was doing something, even if that something was, paradoxically, standing around doing nothing.

Unfortunately, standing all was rather outside of the question, since thanks to Gaurus the Bleeder, Link’s leg was now broken.

Not that this stopped from attempting to flee his assigned bed wherever possible. In fact he was often seen hobbling around the hospital wing - usually by hopping - as he attempted to find some way to do something useful. Can he help sort medicines? Fold bandages? Clean surgical tools? Cook meals for other patients?

Until the medical staff noticed their rogue patient, and ushered Link back to his bed. Where he would begrudging stay - for a while - until once again restlessness took over, and the cycle begins anew.


ii. Looking after Donnie’s garden [Vault]

When Link is - finally! released from the terrible boredom that was being stuck in the hospital wing, he ends up making his way to Donnie’s underground garden, in the Vault.

For a long while he just sits on the ground by Donnie’s patch, crutches tossed to one side while he stares vacantly at the muddlebuds and bombs flowers.

Link should be helping. He wants to help. He’d find a way, broken leg or not. But any suggestion of Link joining the rescue team had been struck down immediately, so instead Link was here. Not helping at all.

…There’s some weeds around the puffshrooms, though. And the bomb flowers are ready for harvest. At least Link can take care of those.

Slowly, Link gets to work.


iii. Angry angry chickens [Flotsam]

Later - when the rescue is over and the Flotsam fleet is coming back together - Link makes his way back to his dorm room. Where he is met with a very, very angry chicken.

“...Sorry,” he tells Pepper the chicken, as she furiously clucks at him. She also pecks him, repeatedly. But since she mostly just gets at the leg that it’s a cast, he doesn’t actually feel anything.

He does feel pretty guilty, though. She hasn’t had any company - or anyone feeding her. And sure, that’s mainly because getting back had been a bit tricky for Link to manage. He still feels bad regardless.

As an apology, Link starts emptying his pack of several chicken-friendly meals.Meals which Pepper immediately descends upon - although this does not do anything to halt her angry clucking at all.

She’s probably going to be mad at him for a while…


iv. Time to get some sweet wheels [Vault]

They’d given him crutches, to get around on. And they were…okay. They did the job.

But Link had Ultrahand now. He could do better.

So just outside the Armory, with Pepper the chicken keeping him company, Link is making himself a vehicle. He doesn’t have any Zonai devices, but he’s still managed to scrounge up some pieces of wood and metal and a small collection of some wheels.

They’re the sort of thing that you usually wouldn’t expect a man with a broken leg to be able to move easily. Except Link doesn’t need to move at all: he just raises his right up, points it at a wheel, and as his arm temporarily changes in appearance a glowing green light connects the wheel and his arm. And the wheel lifts.

Deftly moving it through the air, Link positions the wheel next to the corner of a plank of wood. Then - as the green light disappears and his arm returns to normal - the wood and wheel move towards each other, as a green glue-light substands sticks the two together.

One wheel down! Now, just three more to go…

Comments

[newmemorywhodis]

Link makes a soft, noise of acknowledgement - one that conveys a sense of, 'oh, I've seen that kind of book'. Zelda has quite a few of them. He doesn't have any here, though. But if Kanna likes information on different flowers...

Grabbing his Purah Pad, Link opens it up to the Compendium. There, Kanna will see an array of thumbnails showing images of different flowers and herbs. One of them is the white-and-blue flower that Link has decorated his dorm room with.

[bearsperminute]

"Ahhhh. -- Huh, I knew you could take pictures, but I didn't know you took quite this many," Kanna says, looking them over. "Though part of the point of flower-pressing for me was going out into the field, too."

She slowly scrolls through the pictures. "I recognize some of these-- even aside from your own flower."

[newmemorywhodis]

"Pictures help fill out the Compendium," he says. And the Compendium, it seems, had a lot of entires. There seems to be a number of different categories - although what exactly those categories are will be tricky for her to identify, since they're written in Hylian up at the top of the screen.

But she gets a curious look from him when she says she recognises some - maybe she'll tell Link which ones?

[bearsperminute]

"I mean, I'd recognize violets anywhere--" she says, accidentally tapping the screen. This produces a-- "-- you said it's a compendium. It's a sort of field guide, then?"

She hums, looking through the entries by turning the page with a hand motion. "Did you write all this? Even if I can't read it at all..."

She's sounding and emoting being genuinely impressed about all of this. Sure, there weren't too too many flowers, strictly-- it looked like this was more about alchemy, maybe? There's some animal parts in there that she's not sure she'd use to cook a meal, for example-- but this is still incredible.

[newmemorywhodis]

Swift violents. Link takes a mental note - knowing that someday, when he sees Zelda again, she'll want to know all about which plants and animals other worlds have, and which ones they don't.

He also nods; yes, it was a bit like a field guide. Although he can't answer the same for her next question.

"Text was already written," he says, shaking his head. Link wasn't the one to write that.

[bearsperminute]

Now, admittedly, that was a little disappointing, but... "You'd make a fine photographer, if every you wanted to look that way."

She doubts he does. But it was worth saying.

[newmemorywhodis]

Link blinks. "Photo...grapher?"

It's not an Imperial word that he's familiar with. Which is probably because it's not a concept he's familiar with - the ability to take pictures at all isn't yet very widespread in Hyrule. In fact it's mostly just Link, and Purah's team of Sheikah scientists.

[blessmefather]

Very stubborn. Matt laughs and jokes, "Getting some balance training in with the one legged laps around here?"

Matt turns the cane in his hands, giving the situation some thought before making a suggestion. "Which way to your room? Let's pass the time until lunch with a game."

[newmemorywhodis]

Link points down one hallway.

Then, one awkward pause later - when Link remembers that Matt cannot actually see him pointing - he says...

"That way?"

Wait, no...that won't help either. Dammit.

"...Left?"

[blessmefather]

Matt's enhanced hearing allows him to tell which direction Link is pointing from the sound of his clothes moving on one side of her body when he moves his arm, but the clarity of simply being told is easiest. He dips his head to the left, in case Link meant differently and has to correct him.

"Lead the way," he suggests. He'd easily outpace someone hopping on one foot and it's better to follow him to the right room instead of overshooting it and leaving Link behind.

[newmemorywhodis]

Link nods - forgetting once again - before hopping off in the direction of his hospital room.

It's surprisingly far away, for a man with only one good leg. But it seems that Link had still managed to wonder quite some ways away despite that. Once inside, Link hobbles over towards the bed, flops onto it, and then stares up at the ceiling.

Link huffs, faintly. Boring. So, so boring.

[bearsperminute]

"Sure! This is a heck of a portfolio. Even pictures can tell people a lot about a place. I'd couch it in ground and fighting, but I think a better way is--" She points to one picture in particular. "You didn't live in an arctic climate, but it was extremely alpine; there were at least two mountain ranges, one more northern, one that ran north-south."

[spacetogrow]

Eventually Ilphyl is going to run out of steam and just lounge and watch Link work -- cats are not meant for sustained effort the way humans (or Hylians, or elves) are. But they appreciate that Link is good company when one can't talk or do much, and they can see why actual animals like him.

[newmemorywhodis]

More blank looks from Link. He didn't know what a portfolio was either. And he still didn't know what a photographer was.

"Photographers...scout places?"

[bearsperminute]

"Photographers take pictures for a living. Usually they sell them to publications. Sometimes the Crown itself, but ha, no."

[newmemorywhodis]

"Oh." Well, that was a bit different from what Link had been thinking.

"...Like painters?" That at least was a profession Link was familiar with.

[bearsperminute]

"Yeah, sort of! I know of a few photographers who specialize in portraits or landscapes. But uh-- I'm not exactly the best person to ask where to start with being a photographer." She laughs a little. "Never had the patience."

[newmemorywhodis]

"...I just take pictures of things I like."

Was that how someone started being a photographer? Link didn't know either. But if Kanna thought he could be one, then...maybe?

So sorry for the missed reply! I must have lost the notif for this one

[newmemorywhodis]

"Gaurus the Bleeder," Link says, utterly blase as if this were an unremarkable fact, as green spectral glue appears from nowhere to magically stick the week to the wood.

He inspects his work for a moment, then makes a pleased noise. Yup, that's attached on there properly.

[blessmefather]

They walk much further than Matt expected, and he smiles, amused. "You've got a talent for hopping around. You must do a lot of walking and running when both legs are healed."

They arrive at the room, and Matt takes Link's sigh as a sign he better make good on that entertainment quickly. "Let's see..." Matt taps his way to circle the room and get an idea of what they have to work with. He finds a pad of paper with his fingers on a bedside table and lifts it. "Anything important written on this?" he asks Link.