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Legend awoke slowly to the sound of waves crashing onto the shore.
…Which was odd, because he was positive that he’d gone to sleep in a forest, surrounded by other heroes.
Let this be Outset, he prayed. Let them have been transported by a portal in the middle of the night, and whoever had been on watch simply hadn’t bothered to wake them.
Legend doubted he was that lucky.
Legend sat upright and confirmed that he had no luck at all.
This was definitely not Outset. In fact, the beach he’d been portaled to - that all the heroes had been portaled to, and thank goodness they were here too or he might have lost it - looked far too similar to a beach that had never existed.
Legend turned and looked inland. Palm trees lined the beach. The tropical jungle was nearly identical to the one in his memories. There, rising high above the tree-line, rose the mountain that the Wind Fish’s egg had rested on. There wasn’t an egg there now, but that was one of the only changes from his memory of an island it shouldn’t be possible for them to be at!
“Oh, cool! We’re on Eventide!” Wild said from a few feet away, derailing Legend’s building panic attack.
“What?” He fought desperately to keep his voice from shaking. He wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“Eventide. It was this annoying island challenge during my adventure. It’s hard to fight a hinox in your underwear with little more than sticks, you know?”
…What the fuck?
Wild sauntered off down the beach, ignoring the sleepy but horrified calls after him from the other heroes.
Legend scrambled to grab his things and follow after. Even if he couldn’t get any answers out of Wild, if he just kept moving, maybe he could stave off the panic attack until they portaled out of here and it wasn’t a problem anymore.
---
The plan worked until the group took a break for lunch. Wild had foraged a number of things, which he was busy turning into something that smelled delicious. The others in the group were off doing their own things. Legend paced around the cooking fire and tried not to panic.
He ended up working himself into a tizzy so quickly that Wild hadn’t even finished preparing lunch when Legend dropped down next to him. He had to know.
“Is there a Mabe Village on this island?”
Wild didn’t stop stirring the food, but he did look over at Legend. “Sorry?”
“A Mabe Village? It’s been long enough, it’s probably little more than ruins at this point, but I thought-”
“I- hold on.”
Wild passed the stirring spoon to Legend and pulled out his Slate. He tapped around for a few minutes, then made a triumphant sound.
“Mabe Village! I thought the name sounded familiar!" Legend froze. There was no fucking way. He hadn’t been able to keep from asking, but he’d never actually expected to get a positive answer. “It’s not on Eventide, but there’s a Mabe Village near the Ran- it’s near the castle.”
“Is it… Are there still people there?”
Wild looked pained. “Well, it was near the castle…”
Legend understood. He’d seen the destruction left from the Calamity. Overgrown foundations dotted the landscape miles from the castle, many lacking walls. He could only hope that some of the people had gotten out of the village when disaster struck, same as he hoped for every other town close enough to the castle to have been hit.
“How’d you know about the town, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Legend wasn’t sure why he felt inclined to share. Maybe it was because he felt he owed Wild for answering his questions. Maybe it was because he thought Wild wouldn’t judge him harshly. Maybe he was just tired from being on the edge of a panic attack all day.
Regardless of the reason, Legend shared the tale of getting shipwrecked and waking up on a beautiful island, near-identical to the one they were on now. He talked about how welcoming the town had been to him. He talked about a girl, red-headed and perfect.
There was a time where he’d never wanted to leave.
“What happened?” Wild asked, entranced.
“I woke up.” Legend’s voice was flat, harsh. Wild flinched back slightly. “I awakened the god of the island, who’d pulled me into his dreams, and I woke up on some wreckage of my ship. When I finally made it back to Hyrule, I’d been gone for months and presumed dead. I looked for evidence of the island on maps, but I couldn’t find mention of it anywhere.”
Wild looked horrified. Of the other heroes, Legend wondered if Wild might have understood best waking up and finding your memories didn’t match reality.
“That’s horrible. I’m sorry.” Legend shrugged, playing at indifference, but he actually appreciated it. “But… if Mabe Village existed before the Calamity, then maybe so did everyone on the island?” Wild looked more and more confident with his theory as he went on. “Like, maybe the god of the island transported you through time, or across timelines, or something. So the reason you couldn’t find mention of it on your maps is because it didn’t exist in your time, but it could’ve existed in someone else’s. Or maybe the island didn’t exist, but the village with all of its people did, and they were just brought into the god’s dream like you were - that would explain why the village was so close to the castle.”
Legend felt speechless.
“I don’t know how many records and maps survived the Calamity, but we can check next time we portal to my era - I’d go check now but I can’t teleport you all off the island with me. Also, we can ask Flora; she might know.
You should ask the others, too. They might have information we don’t. Hell, maybe the people you visited existed in one of their times!”
“Yeah. I’ll ask” Legend croaked.
For once, the grief and regret from his time on Koholint were overshadowed by hope.
“Thanks, Wild.”