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Wind loved it when the postman came. He loved to see what pictures his sister drew, and he loved to proudly show off her art to the rest of the Chain. He loved to read whatever note of encouragement his grandma would occasionally leave near the bottom of the letter in her pretty, loopy scrawl. It always took him a long time to read because it was so fancy, but every word was precious to him. He loved being able to hand over his own letter, prepared in advance, so that, even though it was a reply to an older letter, he knew his family was getting love in return.
So when the postman came to deliver letters, the sailor plucked his from the stack before the man even had time to hand it over, tearing into it with excitement. The postman gave him a slightly offended look, which Wind ignored as he pulled the paper from the envelope.
His smile fell.
All that greeted him was one sentence, written in the big, sloppy letters of his sister's messy handwriting, words jumping to the next line halfway through when she ran out of room. It read,
PLEASE COM
E BACK HO
ME
His stomach twisted as he stared at the words. One of them looked a little smudged, a dark spot on the paper where the page had gotten a little damp and caused the ink to spread. Had something bad happened? Or had she just been especially missing him when she wrote this? He prayed it was the latter.
A hand appeared at the top of his vision, and he looked up to find the postman waiting expectantly for Wind to hand over his letter and a rupee for mailing fees.
“Wait,” he said, an anxious catch in his voice. “Wait, please, give me a second. I need to write something else on my letter.”
He gave his best pleading eyes, and the postman acquiesced with a sigh. “Alright, but make it quick.”
“Everything alright, sailor?” Time questioned.
“Fine, just gotta…” Wind murmured as he dug for his pen and rested his envelope on his knee, scrawling as tiny as he could to fit everything. He hoped it would be legible.
Will be back asap. Have to wait for portals though. Sorry.
He wished he had time and room for more, but he didn’t. So he blew carefully on the ink and then waved it around in the air for good measure. Dabbing his thumb on one of the thicker letters, he checked to make sure it was dry, then handed it over with a blue rupee.
With that, the postman sprinted away again.
Looking back at his sister's writing once more, his finger brushed over the smear. It had that crinkled texture that paper gets after getting wet and then drying.
A shadow beginning to loom over the letter had him quickly shoving it into his bag.
“What's up?” Twilight's voice sounded over his shoulder. “You're usually so excited to get letters. Did Aryll not draw anything this time?”
He swallowed. “No, she didn't.” Not wanting them to worry too much - it could be nothing, after all - he added, “She got sick. But she'll be okay. Just didn't have the energy to draw.”
The lie tasted bitter on his tongue. But maybe it wasn't a lie. Aryll had a tendency to get sad and needy when she was sick.
Twilight's hand clapped on his back. “Ah, sorry. Rough knowing family is sick when you can't be there for ‘em.”
“Maybe the next portal will take us there! And then you can see her,” Hyrule said hopefully.
“Maybe,” Wind said. His tone was too flat, and he knew it.
“And your grandma's soup is the best, right?” Wild nudged him. “Supposedly.”
Wind made himself laugh. “Not supposedly. It really is.” The time they had ended up in his era, they'd been too far from Outset Island to return before another portal had taken them away. Otherwise, he would have made them try the soup. There'd be no “supposedly” in Wild's sentence then, he was sure of it.
“And good soup is good for sickness,” Twilight added. “So she's in good hands.”
Wind brightened his smile. “Yeah, I know! She'll be fine.” To switch attention away from himself, he turned to their Skyloftian. “Did you get another loooove letter, Sky?”
It worked perfectly well. Warriors nagged the hero to read it, and Sky blushed, holding his letter close to his chest.
Just don't think about it, Wind told himself. If it had been something truly awful, Aryll would have put that in her letter too, right? She probably just misses me. Just don't think about it.
It was hard not to think about it. It was making him distracted, making him stupid, and that stupidity had gotten him stabbed in the shoulder.
“Still worried about Aryll?” Hyrule asked softly as he watched Wind down a potion with a grimace.
There was no point in lying. If it hadn't been obvious to the others before that he'd been worried all day, it had to be obvious now.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. He felt bad for using up a potion. If his mind had been more focused on the battle, he wouldn't have gotten hurt, and they'd have one more potion in their inventory.
Stupid.
Hyrule nibbled his lip for a moment, staring at the sunset-soaked sky in thought. “Maybe we can make her something nice. And then next time we see the postman, we can send it. She'll probably be better by then, but it's the thought that counts, right?”
Wind's fingers gripped his tunic, guilt settling inside him. Hyrule wanted to help make something for his sister, who might not have even been sick, just to make Wind feel better.
But it did kinda sound like it might make him feel better, so he nodded. Even if Aryll wasn't sick, whatever had her pleading for him to come home obviously upset her, so sending something nice her way was a good idea nonetheless.
“I can press some flowers in my book,” Four offered, and Wind jolted a little. He hadn't realized the smithy had been in earshot. “Does Aryll like flowers?”
“Oh, are we making a get-well package for your sister?” Sky asked. “I could try to carve something for her if I've got enough time. Does she have a favorite animal?”
A small smile pushed at the corners of his lips. “She likes flowers, yeah. And seagulls.”
“Can we send food in the mail?” Wild wondered aloud. “Maybe I could make her something yummy to eat.”
The knot in his chest unraveled a little as his brothers started tossing around ideas. Things would be okay. He just had to believe that.
“The beak needs to be a bit more curved there.”
The next morning, Sky got to work on the carving of a seagull for Aryll. It was coming along nicely, especially as Legend helped direct him on details. The veteran knew seagulls better than their resident bird-lover, it seemed. Sky admitted to only having seen them from afar a handful of times and appreciated the help.
Meanwhile, Wild was insisting that pie could definitely be put in a bottle, and a bottle could absolutely be stamped for mail, while Twilight argued that a pie would be really hard to eat in a bottle and he was better off making soup.
“But Aryll is obviously already going to have soup.”
“But if she's sick, would she want pie? What if her stomach can't handle sweets?”
“Twilight’s right,” Time said. “I'd pick something gentler on the stomach.”
Wild huffed. “Fine, fine. I'll figure something else out.”
“We're back!” Four called. Hyrule was beside him with a smile as the two waved flowers.
“What do you think of these, Wind? Do you think she'd like them?”
Wind looked up from the new letter he was working on. “Yeah. I think she would.”
Four got out a book. “I've never actually done this before. You just close the book around them, right?”
Hyrule shrugged. “Probably?”
A shout of, “Mail for Link!” had all camp activities coming to a standstill.
“Already?”
The postman came to a stop, holding up the letter as Time approached. “They paid for express mailing,” the postman said.
“Is he not just working with already-made portals?” Legend muttered, face screwing up in confusion. “He can't just make his own, right?”
“I haven't finished my carving yet…” Sky lamented while Four murmured, “Well, I guess the flowers don't need to be pressed.”
“Is your letter done, Wind?” Twilight asked.
“Uh, not quite, but…”
The postman looked impatient already.
“But I can finish it really fast!”
He quickly tacked on, “Sorry the postman came before the others finished their gifts but I'll send them next time, love you!” to his letter before folding the paper and tucking the flowers from Four and Hyrule into the envelope alongside it. He passed it to the postman and then looked at Time as the man approached him.
“It's in your Hylian,” Time said, holding out the letter.
A letter for him… one someone paid extra to have delivered quicker… only one day after getting that ominous letter from Aryll.
It didn't feel good.
Curious eyes were on him as he took the envelope, wondering what sort of message might be worth an express fee, so he turned and headed away from camp. Something small and terrible in his gut said he shouldn't read this in front of the others.
With his heart beating sickening thumps in his throat, he opened the letter.
The handwriting wasn't familiar.
“Dear Link,
I'm sorry to have to break the news to you by letter, but your grandmother has passed away.”
Link’s fingers turned to ice, crinkles forming on the edges of the paper as he gripped the letter tightly.
“Aryll said she didn't want you to know until you got back, but I figured it wouldn't be right if you didn't know. Best you sail home now. We'll hold off on the funeral as long as we can, but there's only so much we can do.”
Right. His neighbors wouldn't know exactly where he was… they'd just assume he was just out on the seas. That he could turn around and just go back home. But he couldn't. He couldn’t just come back as he pleased.
His throat burned, and he could hardly breathe. Dizzy, he forced himself to suck in a breath anyway.
“I'm really sorry, Link. We'll take care of Aryll in the meantime, so don't worry about her, okay?
Safe travels,
Abe”
He read it again to make sure his eyes hadn't deceived him, and then a third time to be safe, though by then the words had turned to illegible blurs as his eyes filled with tears.
That couldn't be true. It had to be an awful, horrible, disgusting prank. His grandma had been perfectly fine when he'd left. But Abe wasn't the kind of person to send a prank like this. No one on Outset was. And paired with Aryll’s letter... A whining sob worked its way out of his throat and he pressed a hand to his mouth as he sank to the ground. He wanted to scream. Cry. Throw up. Fix it somehow.
If he'd been there with a fairy, could he have fixed it somehow?
Another sob slipped from him, more of a wail.
“Wind?” a voice called. “Are you okay?”
He couldn't answer. He couldn't breathe. He could only let out another choked sound, curling in on himself.
Running footsteps.
Warriors was at his side in a moment, hand curling gently over his shoulder, but he could tell by the blur of voices that more had gathered around him.
“Wind? What happened?”
“What's wrong?”
“Is it the letter? What did it say?”
Someone pried the paper from his fingers, and Warriors pulled him close.
“You can't just take the letter from him! At least ask-” The argument cut off with the rustle of paper, murmurs and, “Oh…”
“Wind, I'm so sorry,” Sky whispered. More apologies sounded, and he pressed his hands over his ears. He didn't want to hear them. It wasn't real. Their apologies made it real, and he couldn't let it be real.
He let out another cry, loud and raw like a child. Warriors pulled him even closer, hand in his hair, rocking him as he hiccuped in a breath and sobbed again.
“It's not real,” he wailed. “She can't be- she-” He sucked in a stuttering breath and shook his head, trying to pull away from Warriors arms because no, he didn't need comfort, he didn't need gentle words and soft touch, because it wasn't real, but the man held him firm and he slumped back into him with another ragged wail of grief. Soft fabric wrapped around him, blocking out the light as he shuddered violently against the captain.
He knew his grandma was old. He knew everyone died eventually. But she'd always seemed so steady. So strong. There had been that scare during his first adventure, but after the fairy had helped her out, everything had been okay again. The concept of her death had once again been shoved far out of his mind, replaced by the fact that she had always been a part of Wind's life and surely always would be. She had to be. Because while Wind was away, Aryll and Grandma would have each other, and everything would always be fine.
She couldn't be gone. At least not now, not yet. Not while he was gone, not while-
“I didn't get to say goodbye,” he choked out. If she was going to die, couldn't she have waited? Didn't she want Wind to be there to say goodbye? To hold her hand?
But it wasn't her fault. It was…
He should have been there. For his grandma, for his sister- oh, Aryll. Was she there when it happened? Did Aryll have to see it happen without her big brother at her side? Or had Grandma been alone?
He hated both options.
Wind wanted to go back home and see Aryll. To be there for her like he should have been already.
He didn't want to go home at all. How could he finally go back home without his grandma there to welcome him back?
His brothers were supposed to try Grandma's soup. They never got to try Grandma's soup, and now they never would.
Would he even be back for the funeral?
Knitting his fingers tighter into Warriors' scarf, another anguished groan tore out of his throat. He felt like a pathetic little kid, bawling into someone's chest like this, but he couldn't seem to stop. He didn't know what else to do with the burning, sickening well of anguish that felt like it was ripping his lungs apart. If he didn't sob and cry and pull at the fabric in his hands, he felt like he might tear into pieces himself. The captain didn't try to stop him from stretching his scarf, didn't scold him for probably snotting all over it, just continued to rock him and murmur things he couldn't quite hear over his own cries.
He wailed until his throat was raw, and then wept until he didn't have any tears left. Head pounding and stuffy, face aching and throat scratchy, he stayed buried in the darkness of Warriors' scarf. He hoped the exhaustion of his tears would pull him into sleep, where none of this had happened, and his grandma was safe and alive.
He just wanted her safe and alive.
He wanted his grandma.