Link tumbled to a stop beside Vah Medoh's claws, strands of blue light still clinging to his Zora armor as he lay on the rocks atop the hard pillar. He coughed and pushed himself to a sitting position, breathing deeply as he worked to get his heart rate down. He tried to stand but gasped, falling back on his knees.

"Well, well," a familiar voice said. "Back so soon?"

Link rolled his eyes but didn't respond. He rarely spoke in the best of times, when he was with friends and feeling the most comfortable. Right now, he didn't think he could get any words out even if he tried.

"You don't look too good," the spirit continued. "Bite off more than you could chew, did you?"

Link ignored Revali's needling and inspected his leg. His Hylian trousers, which he had dyed black, were ripped just below the knee. The broken off shaft of a Shock Arrow jutted from his calf, and blood coursed down from the wound to soak into his socks.

"That looks bad," Revali said, his tone suddenly more serious. "You should head down to the village and have someone check you out."

Link huffed and started dragging himself to the edge. The meaning was clear. Why do you think I came here?

"Well," Revali said, a little defensively, "excuse me for not knowing everything at once." He watched Link haul his bloody and bruised body to the edge. "You know, you could use Revali's Gale. It'd be easier than… that."

Link stopped to glare at him, then at Vah Medoh's wing, which was outstretched and stood between him and the sky. Whenever he tried to gale upwards from this spot, Vah Medoh had a fit and barraged him with warnings about it 'not being safe' to fly too close. The bird was temperamental and paranoid. Anyway, the last thing he wanted to do right now was smash his head against the mechanical bird's wings. He continued to pull himself along the rocks, trying to ignore the chill that was quickly creeping through his clothes. The Zora armor did nothing to keep out the cold, and his Opal Earrings, while great at helping him swim, were completely useless up here. Normally he would have taken the time to switch his clothes out for something warmer, but with his leg bleeding like this, he didn't want to take the time to change.

He made it to the edge of the rock pillar. Hyrule stretched out before him, but while he normally took a moment to appreciate the view, now he didn't spare the mountains and fields more than a cursory glance. He pulled out his paraglider, took a deep breath, and pushed himself off the side of the pillar. The flight down to Rito Village wasn't bad. He'd done it a hundred times. It had been the first village he'd stumbled across, and Vah Medoh had been the first Divine Beast he'd freed. He had a special attachment to these people of the sky, perhaps because he too felt the joy of being, for at least a moment, untethered to the ground and free to roam the open air. He glided past the tops of their simple huts, so different from the buildings in Hateno or Kakariko, and polar opposites from the grandeur of the Zora's architecture. Perhaps this was why he liked the Rito so much; their sense of clean simplicity, with an emphasis on appreciating and being close to nature instead of their own creations. It appealed to him, since he too spent most of his time wandering the wilds of Hyrule.

Several of the Rito spotted him and waved familiarly. He nodded to them, but inwardly, he was gritting his teeth as the ground grew ever closer. Flying was no problem, but landing with his leg like this….

He'd been right to worry. When he touched down, the world exploded in pain, and his vision went dark for a moment. He sucked in a few sharp inhalations, breathing through the pain, and eventually it receded. He pulled himself to the closest hut, that belonging to Kass and his wife, Amali. He could smell dinner still lingering in the air, fried fish with light notes of lemon juice. Salmon meunière. Of course.

"Link!" Amali said. "It's been a while, I-" she gasped. "Your leg! What happened?"

Link bit his lip. Ploymus Mountain. The Lynel. He remembered the excruciating pain the Shock Arrow had brought when it pierced his leg. It had paralyzed him for a few crucial seconds, and The Lynel had taken the chance to charge at him on all fours. He'd seen it coming and had tried to teleport away with the Sheikah Slate, but it had smashed into him just before he could demateralize. He'd been thrown clean off the mountaintop before reforming in a tumble beside Vah Medoh. But none of that mattered. He showed Amali his wound. The green-feathered avian was one of his best friends in this new Hyrule, she and her husband, Kass. Kass was a strange man, but he and Link had crossed paths so many times that hearing the familiar accordion always brought a smile to the warrior's face. As for Amali, well… she let him use her cookpot. For free. That had been enough to make him like her, and their friendship had grown from there.

She took a thin rope off her wall and tied it tightly around his thigh, cutting off the blood supply to his leg and temporarily stopping the bleeding. Then she examined the wound. The arrowshaft was sticking out of his leg, but the arrowhead itself was embedded entirely in his calf. "Do you have one of these Shock Arrows for me to see?" She asked. He nodded, drew one from his quiver, and showed her. She didn't touch it- she had more sense that he did, thankfully. The first time he'd found one, a Bokoblin had dropped it from its little watchtower. He'd seen the tip of the arrow sparking with electricity, but reckless fool that he was, he hadn't stopped to think before grabbing it. Thank Hylia that there hadn't been anymore monsters nearby, or else they surely would've killed him while he'd been paralyzed by the shock.

"The problem is these ridges," she said, pointing. "If I just yank it out, those will catch in your leg and make the wound worse." She frowned. "It's strange that the arrow's sticking out like this. Bows have a lot of power behind them- it should've punched a hole straight through your leg."

Link tried to explain, but his racing heart and the pain mangled his words into a stuttering, incoherent mess. He flushed, ashamed and self-conscious at his failure, and didn't look Amali in the eye. He gestured toward the electricity sparking across the arrow's two tips and made a convulsing motion with his hands.

Amali, friend that she was, didn't comment on his impediment. "Oh," she said, understanding showing in her avian face. "It isn't meant to punch a hole, it's meant to embed in someone's flesh and electrocute them." He nodded, and she grimaced. "How barbaric." He shrugged. It made sense to him.

She hummed in thought and looked between the arrow in his hand and the arrow in his leg. "It looks like these bits here are meant to stop it going through," she said, pointing to some jutting pieces between the two tips of the arrow. "This might not actually be too hard to pull out. Its shape isn't like the barbed arrows our warriors are trained with. It's really only this part near the shaft that might give us trouble," she said. "Here, eat this." She rummaged through some pots, pulling out some herbs and grinding them together in a mortar and pestle before returning with some paste.

She handed him a few leaves. "For the pain," she said. He chewed on them, swallowing their juices, while she cleaned the area around the arrow and then applied the paste. He felt the skin there tingle, and while he could still feel her feathery touch, the pain was dulled.

"Alright," she said. She took out a bag and pulled out some retractors. They looked almost like scissors, except instead of blades they had curved metal rods that ended in gentle hooks. "I'm going to use these to pull the wound apart," she said. "It'll hurt, even through the herbs." She hesitated. "And I'm going to need you to hold the retractors still." She hurried on, seeing his expression. "I know, but if we don't want those ridges ripping your leg apart, I need to pull the whole arrow out. It isn't deep, and there isn't much to worry about, but… you'll need to be in the best condition possible to fight the Calamity. You want to save Princess Zelda, right?"

He hesitated, but at last he nodded. It wasn't a pleasant process, but he clenched his teeth and tried his hardest not to scream. Eventually she managed to ease out the entire bloodied arrowhead, which she carefully dropped into a pot before cleaning and washing the wound. Link was a brave man, but he didn't look at the hole in his leg. He didn't want to see the muscles, vasculature, and bones under the skin. Better to let Amali take care of it. She drew out a special curved needle and started sewing it closed. "You'll need to take some herbs for a while," she said. "They'll kill any infections that might've gotten in there. I keep my tools as sterile as possible, but I don't trust monsters to keep their arrows clean."

He nodded.

"And make sure you take all the herbs I give you," she said sharply. "Even if you feel better, take all of it, or the strong germs that didn't quite die off will spread in the empty space the herbs left." She knotted her thread. "There, I'm done suturing. I'll take it out when your leg's looking better."

She saw his questioning look and shrugged. "I don't know how long it'll be," she said as she wrapped the leg in a bandage. "You heal much faster than anyone I've ever met. You aren't leaving Rito Village until the sutures are out, though."

He groaned but didn't argue. She tried to check him into the Swallow's Roost, but it was peak hiking season, and all the beds were taken. They managed to reserve a bed starting tomorrow, but he was on his own tonight. Link didn't mind. The thought of all those stairs made him blanch. "You can stay in my hut," Amali said, seeing his face. "You can use my hammock." But he refused. Exasperated, she handed him a mat, and he- with some assistance- set it up on the platform behind her hut.

Once she was sure he was settled in, she turned to go, but he stopped her. It took him a few tries, but eventually, he managed to speak without butchering the words. "Thanks for your help, Amali."

She smiled and ruffled his hair. "Anytime, Link. You're always welcome here, you know that." Then she left to round up her children.

Link slept under the stars that night, as he so often did. Amali's platform faced due east, and he had an excellent view of the mountains beyond the lake, and the waterfalls that led up to the snowy Hebra mountain range to the northeast. This really was the perfect spot. He would have the best view of the sunrise, when the morning came. Revali's Landing was just above him, though not so much that he could not see the stars, and beyond it, Vah Medoh's beak sent a continuous pulse of red light into the heart of Hyrule. He followed the light with his eyes as his muscles relaxed, willing his imagination beyond the tips of the mountains, along the plains of grass, toward the castle that was shrouded in darkness.

His last thought before he drifted off to sleep was of her. Not simply a Princess, but a dear friend he was only just beginning to remember.

Zelda. I'm coming.

Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed this one-shot. I always loved Rito Village, and what started as a warm-up writing exercise quickly ballooned into a full short story. Please let me know what you thought, and have a great day! Thanks for reading!