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“Wild. Can you help me?”
Wild immediately looked up from the pictures he’d been scrolling through, giving Hyrule a quick once over. Hyrule held himself still, letting Wild look for signs of illness or injury.
Finding none, Wild’s shoulders relaxed a touch. “Sure, Hyrule. What do you need?”
“I’m running low on a few things, and since we’re back in my time I thought maybe you’d like to go foraging with me to stock up?”
Wild’s face lit up as it always did at the prospect of exploration. “Oh! Sure, Hyrule! Let’s go!” He stood up, reattaching the slate to his hip. Hyrule tilted his head at it, curious.
“I’ve seen you use that to find plants and things. Does it work outside of your own Hyrule?”
“I don’t know?” Wild grinned, excited as he always was to try new things. “Let’s find out!”
The forest was lovely in this area, less impacted by the monsters that ran so rampant in certain parts of the country. Sunlight hit the forest floor in dappled patches, birds and other small creatures sang and rustled in the undergrowth, and the smell of damp earth and green things pervaded the air. They found a game trail to follow to make maneuvering through the tight undergrowth just a little easier, narrow though it was. Hyrule kept his eyes open for likely places to find the plants he needed, half his attention on the birds; as long as they continued to sing, he and Wild should be relatively safe from monsters. He followed along obligingly whenever Wild veered off to the left or right to exclaim over a flower or insect.
When a familiar patch of fuzzy oval leaves caught his eye, he snagged Wild’s arm and pulled him over to it.
They crouched side by side, heads and shoulders brushing as they leaned together over Wild’s slate. Hyrule watched as a picture of the viney plant he’d found showed up on the screen. The slate let out a bright, somehow cheery sound that seemed right at home with the sparrow twittering in a tree off to their left. “You can pick it now,” Wild said, fiddling with the screen on his slate as Hyrule did so. Hyrule harvested what he needed, careful not to take so much that he’d kill the plant. This was a good, large patch; an encouraging sign. He might actually be able to get all he needed out of this one spot. He looked up from tucking the last of the leaves away to find Wild frowning down at the slate.
“I don’t think the search will work here after all. It might depend on the map function.”
“That’s all right,” Hyrule said, unbothered. He’d been tracking down these plants without such aids for years, after all.
“I’d like to take pictures of what we find anyway, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not!” Wild liked to document things, and it certainly didn’t harm anything to allow him to do so.
Pictures taken and leaves harvested, they plunged back into the undergrowth.
“Wait, wait. This one’s already in the compendium,” Wild said some time later, peering at the leaves of the tree Hyrule was carefully collecting bark from. He dug his knife under a promising patch, prying until a good sized chunk came free. Hyrule inspected his prize, turning it over to check for insects, looking up when he realized Wild had gone rather quiet.
Wild was frowning down at his slate, eyes drifting across the screen as he read whatever it was telling him, a slight furrow between his brows and scar tissue tugging the corner of one eye differently than the other. It gave him a slightly lopsided appearance that Hyrule found rather endearing. Apparently feeling Hyrule’s eyes on him, Wild lifted his head and gave Hyrule a mildly concerned look. “The bark is used for pain?”
“Yes. It’s one of the plants that goes into my tea.” That was the primary purpose of today’s little venture. The plants in the other’s homes could be quite different. Despite actively looking, Hyrule had yet to find a few of the components of his tea in any time period save his own.
“Oh.” Wild fiddled with the leaves dangling in front of his face, tugging on the springy branches. The leaves above them rustled, the branch springing back when Wild let go. “I didn’t realize it was that kind of tea. I thought you just had a favorite drink.” He paused again. Hyrule could see him thinking. “You know you can use the groups’ potions for pain too whenever you need, right? You don’t have to save them for the rest of us if you need them.”
Hyrule smiled, leaving the tree trunk behind and approaching his friend in order to give his shoulder a friendly nudge, touched at the words despite the mistaken conclusion Wild came to.
“My tea isn’t for that kind of pain,” he said easily. “It can be used for injuries, but that’s a waste of half the ingredients. It’s to help with cramps.”
Wild tilted his head the way he did when something wasn’t making sense to him. “Cramps?”
“You know. For when you bleed.”
Wild continued to look confused. Hyrule studied his eyes, trying to determine if Wild was about to have one of his episodes. It was easy to forget sometimes just how pervasive Wild’s memory problems could be. He didn’t have that vague, far away look, though. Maybe this was just something else Wild forgot? Not everyone bleeds in that way; if Wild didn’t experience it himself it was possible this was simply something he’d never had the opportunity to relearn.
Hyrule himself didn’t bleed often, which was certainly a blessing in the time around his second adventure, when he had to be so, so careful of how he disposed of the remains. It started happening more often once he started travelling with his fellow heroes, for some reason, and he’s been burning through his supplies at an accelerated rate.
“You know,” Hyrule tried again, gesturing downwards. “Some people just bleed sometimes?”
Wild’s look of confusion cleared. “Oh! Yes. That happens to Zelda. She… has a special elixir for it?”
Hyrule nodded, confident again. Wild’s elixirs were basically potions, and many potions were simply very fancy teas with a bit of magic added in. “That’s exactly it, yes. We’re gathering ingredients for my version of your Zelda’s elixir.”
Wild nodded decisively, satisfied with this answer.
Hyrule considered all that they’d found so far, mentally comparing it against his existing stock. “I’d like to look for one more plant if we can. It will be a shrub with white flowers. Maybe red berries, but it should be too early for those.”
Wild fell into step with him, eyes scanning their surroundings but content for now to follow along in Hyrule’s wake. Fortune favored them today; Hyrule spotted a flash of white in his peripheral some time later that turned out to be exactly what he needed. He cut off a few of the younger branches, stripping them of their leaves and then slicing down the length of them with his knife. The bark hit the cloth he’d laid down in long, curling strips that Hyrule gathered up, tucking the harvest into his bag with the rest of the day’s spoils.
This was a good day, and he couldn’t keep from smiling, feeling light.
They were on their way back when Wild made a noise in the back of his throat like he’d just had an epiphany. “Is that why you were surprised when Wind asked to try your tea that one time?”
Hyrule blinked at the abrupt return to the earlier conversation, then laughed sheepishly. “Yes, I’d never seen him washing rags so I thought I was the only one in our group who bled. I still haven’t seen him take care of things. He must have some trick, like you with using your slate to clean your clothes.”
Wild’s face took on an odd look. Hyrule recognized it; all of them wore it at one point or another when someone said something that didn’t fit with someone else’s understanding of the world. Hyrule is quite certain everyone in the group was pointing a rather exaggerated version of the look at Sky on the day he asked who Ganon was.
“Anyway,” Hyrule shrugged. “Wind never asked for it again, so I figured he was happier with his own methods? Or maybe he was just out of his supplies too that day.”
Wild's face turned a little sheepish.
“I don't think that's - Wind and I, we’ve, uh, we’ve accidentally - you know, sometimes it’s really early, and you don’t realize there’s already someone taking a piss when you’re going to take a piss?” Wild flaps a negligent hand through the air. “What I mean is, I’m pretty sure Wind doesn’t, how did you put it, doesn’t bleed, Hyrule. I think he was just curious about the taste of your tea.”
Hyrule frowned, confused. “But… he didn’t like it.” Hyrule can remember the face Wind pulled. Vividly.
“I know!” Wild chortled. “He was expecting something good, and then his face!”
“It’s medicine, it doesn’t need to taste good!” Hyrule protested, smacking Wild’s shoulder with the back of his hand. Wild only laughed all the louder, arms around his stomach.
“I know, Hyrule. I know!”
Hyrule scratched at the hair at the nape of his neck, resigned to letting Wild have his laugh at Wind’s expense but no less mystified. “Just for the taste? Really?”
Wild shrugged. “You started drinking the stuff more often. He probably didn’t realize it was medicine and was curious.”
“But I told him what was in it!”
Wild smiled at him, looping a companionable arm around his neck. “Hyrule, I'm not familiar with most of what you collected today either. Not enough to know the effects of those plants just by their names. Most of them don’t even grow in my time.”
“Legend would, though. You think that’s why he gave Wind that funny look?”
Wild shrugged. “Might be.” As abruptly as the wave of humor hit him, it passed. He went quiet, introspective. Hyrule left him to his thoughts. Both of them were comfortable with silence. If Wild wanted to share, he’d share. In the meantime, it was still a lovely day for meandering slowly back towards the campsite. For a while they wandered with only the sound of birdsong and the leaves brushing against their legs and arms.
Hyrule’s patience was rewarded when Wild spoke up again. He sounded a little hesitant, not quite looking at Hyrule when he asked, “So, does it also go the other way?”
Hyrule was very, very confused. “Other way?”
“You know. Girls who don’t bleed.”
Hyrule paused, running that sentence over in his head again. But no, it didn’t make any more sense the second time. Baffled, he responded, “Yes, of course? What does being a girl or boy or neither have to do with it?”
They stared at each other for a moment in mutual bewilderment.
Then Wild asked, much quieter and not looking away this time, “Did you always know you were a boy?”
“...Yes?”
“When I woke up,” Wild started, then stopped. They’d stopped moving entirely, facing each other with ferns and other plants twining around their lower legs. “When I woke up,” Wild tried again, “everyone talked like I was a boy, so I just assumed... But then, on my adventure, I had to be a girl for a while, and I liked it. It felt good.”
“Wild,” Hyrule said, exasperated and worried and trying not to let it show too much in his voice because Wild seemed very hesitant about this for some reason, “Are you saying we’ve been using the wrong words for you this whole time?”
Wild shook his head, hard enough to send blond bangs flying, “Not all the time! I still like being a boy. But, maybe sometimes? Yes.”
Hyrule put both his hands on Wild’s shoulders. This seemed like the kind of time where Sky or Twilight might give a hug, but as comfortable as Hyrule had come to be around his fellow heroes, just outright offering that kind of physical closeness still didn’t come easily.
“Tell me, next time you feel like a girl or something else, so I can use the right words. Please?”
Wild nodded.
“And you should tell the others.”
“You think they wouldn’t mind?”
“Why would they mind?”
There was a pause for Wild to think. Then he smiled. “Thanks, Hyrule.”
“Any time, Wild.” Hyrule let go of Wild’s shoulders with a slightly awkward parting pat and a feeling of relief.
“So,” Wild said, hooking his arm through Hyrule’s and turning them back down the trail. “We have your plants. What do we do with them now?”
“If I was at home,” Hyrule paused to hop over a jutting root, “I’d hang them up to dry. Since that isn’t an option, we’ll need to convert the campfire to an oven instead.”
Wild gave Hyrule a bright smile. “Show me.”