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Zelda walks in to her living quarters to find her appointed guard, standing in front of her fireplace hearth; his feet surrounded by the ceramic shards.
Pottery born of her own hands, her best work, laying in damned pieces around the broad-shouldered shadow she never wanted.
Her face is wet when she books it fast to the king’s quarters; the only place her royal guard is unauthorized to enter without permission. Alone, her steps are heavy on the stone stairs of a hidden passage that leads to the backroom of a small town square shop.
A reprieve from royal life.
She rips her own apron off the hook near the employee only wall sign, bunches it haphazardly around her manicured hand, and punches the nearest half-filled sack of powdered clay.
Zelda has all of her protective gear on when she hears the storefront door chime echo off the walk-in kiln’s brick walls. Mitts, tinted safety glasses, and a scarf still wrapped around her nose from when she was mixing colored slips. Colored clay dust in water becomes a beautiful ceramic glaze—colored clay dust in her lungs becomes mesothelioma, and she’s not entitled to compensation if she were to get sick at a job she’s definitely not on the books for.
It’s therapeutic, to be treated as and spoken to like an average citizen. It’s the best form of escapism she’s found.
She peaks over Telma's shoulder as she walks past the front desk and sees a man dressed in plain attire with a hood. Telma greets their patron as he approaches the front desk. Zelda dodges out of sight, idly re-arranging the pieces she just pulled out of the kiln on a shelf awaiting for their second firing.
Telma and the customer exchange greetings before Zelda hears the older woman quip, “My, you could've fooled the world that you were nothin' special until you opened your mouth, sir knight,” Telma’s always been a flirt, but this is a new opener for her. “I haven’t heard an Ordon accent come into this shop in years. What brings you here?”
Zelda remembers her father talking about how it’s an accent that’s passed down rather than acquired geographically. Once a place, though.
An accent from a long lineage of knights.
“I would like to buy a piece from you that can help me make amends with someone who hates me.” His voice is unexpectedly soft, almost humbled in its timbre. Zelda’s intrigued by his accent’s poise on some consonants and the drawl on certain vowels.
“Why?” Telma asks.
At least she’s paying attention to what he has to say and not entirely in just, how he’s saying it; of which, Zelda is guilty as charged. He sounds like how honey tastes and that he's blessedly not from Castletown, which she likes.
A long silence occurs from him in response to the question, and she basks in the familiarity of it from her own knight. Zelda thinks about the handsome face of her own haphazardly knight, and remorse bubbles up in her at the realization that he could be her type, if only it wasn’t for his obscene lack of self-control around pottery and the fact that he’s never spoken to her, nor around her.
Not a word.
Maybe they’re all like that? Stoic and stalwart, fearless yet wordless and yet disregarding the whole time.
“I like her so much I forget how to speak when she looks at me.”
Oh?
Maybe not.
He huffs as if laughing at himself, but only Telma can see his face looks like he’s calling himself pathetic internally. “And I think,” He pauses, mulling over the exact words he wants to use in his head, “She thinks my silence is part of my job.”
Both her and Telma are stunned silent. The prolonged pause has him looking up at Telma in realization.
“You were asking why pottery as a gift, weren’t you?” He adds, more quietly.
Shy.
Not so fearless, afterall.
“Sorry.” He says, directed at no one. This is the most disarmed Zelda has ever seen a knight in her presence, maybe in her entire life. “I think she’s bought pottery from this shop before, because I broke it.” He adds darkly, “All of it.” He mumbles sorry again.
She remembers how furious she was when her own knight broke her best pieces last week.
The two pieces she was so proud of that she took them home, rather than selling them, and set them high on the fireplace mantle of her bedroom, where she could barely reach. Safely out of reach by any hand.
Not out of reach by sword though, she thinks bitterly.
“Would you like to work with my current resident artisan to make a custom piece for your love?” Telma asks, recognizing the opportunity for the up-charge that comes with bespoke orders.
Zelda immediately busies herself with emptying the rest of the kiln before Telma redirects him to the consult desk. Zelda sits next to Telma, wordlessly beginning the order paperwork with eyes transfixed to the clipboard.
Although there are many knights throughout the kingdom, there is a small chance he could recognize her. It's best to avoid eye contact.
Telma leans her elbows onto the consult desk, right next to Zelda, who is still concealed by safety gear.
“How would you describe your love? My artisan needs inspiration to start.”
“She’s sharp as a pin, and eats my terrible cooking when we are expected to travel.” Telma laughs at that. “She's beautiful,” he clears his throat, “but I think she's ethereal when she's happy,” Telma raises her eyebrows as she watches him turn pink, “like when she's buried in her books, hidden from expectations." There's a pause in his speech. Zelda then hears him trail off, "I wish that wasn't so rare for her."
What a knight, Zelda thinks.
“All you want is for her to be happy, hmm?”
He scratches the back of his neck in a familiar way. Telma coos at him in response, then promising that her artisan will take excellent care of his target recipient. Zelda takes that as cue to zone-out before she's further distracted by his charms.
Her mind clearly goes elsewhere when she realizes she's sketching replicas of two of the pots that Link broke on her own fireplace mantle.
Maybe there's somethings she can't let go.
Meanwhile Telma coaxes him to talk more about “his love" until she’s handed the two draft sketches from Zelda. In a flourish, Telma then tastefully flips the orientation of the paper mid-air to set it gingerly down on the surface in front of the customer.
His eyes follow; expression thoughtful.
“These are beautiful,” he begins, and Zelda’s body instantly feels like it's glowing in such earnest praise. “And," he pauses as if he's fact-checking himself, "this is exactly what she would want.”
Telma nudges her on the shoulder, clearly pleased; the mirth in her eyes telling Zelda to savor the compliment—the shopkeep knows Zelda had a rough week.
“Can I commission both?” Be still her beating heart. “Your artisan must be the same potter that my… my love really likes,” He mimics the language of Telma, as if the name of his crush is of utmost secrecy, “These look just like the ones she had.”
These replicas look like nothing else in the rest of Zelda's catalogue.
But they absolutely look like her personal, broken pieces.
“Your ideas are great.”
She bows deeply, ever silent but immensely thankful. He doesn't seem to mind that she's mute; maybe because he's alluded to being the same way at times.
As soon as he turns around to leave, Zelda's eyes snap to the burlap covering the sword strapped to his back.
Zelda never saw his face but… it's odd to see an off-duty knight carrying a sword carefully concealed in its entirety. Why would the hilt be hidden? Why would a knight need his sword if he's off-duty?
At least, Zelda knows why for one specific knight.
Though, perhaps she's thinking too much about her primary life. His love could very well have made purchases from an artisan out in the Gerudo desert, which is what she was initially inspired by.
That woman must have excellent taste. Maybe Zelda should meet her.
Maybe, she's already a patron of the shop.
Zelda smiles to herself at that thought as she presses metal thread through a block of clay, cutting it in half, beginning his order.
Telma’s boiling water in a kettle at the very back of the shop when he arrives exactly at his scheduled pick up time, of which Zelda has always loved a punctual man. Unfortunately, she was a bit behind today in getting out of ceremonial garb whilst avoiding her own knight, at least as much as she could. She was still upset at him.
Link had yet to even apologize.
Zelda's startled from her thoughts when the kettle starts to hiss, and she accidentally smears dark blue slip glaze across the left side of her face. The older woman tells Zelda to grab the front while she grabs the kettle; two handcrafted mugs in hand as she disappears into the employee only area.
While Zelda is of few words with good reason when in the shop, she's not forbidden to handle customers herself. Nevermind that this particular customer was implied to be a knight by Telma in their last encounter.
Dried chalky splatters of dark blue slip decorate her skin from hands-to-shoulders, along one seam of her tank top, and in several splotches on her smock. Glazing larger vases was always a messy, sleeveless endeavor for her.
“Welcome back to Telma's shop,” she chirps casually as she rubs her face, smearing only half of the blue clay off before she hoists one of his pots onto the counter, “Your pieces are ready."
Zelda swiftly pivots on a heel to bring the next one to the counter. However, before she can masterfully flip his reciept onto his side of the counter, his ungloved hand abruptly grabs her own ungloved hand.
Immensely out of line, for both her primary and secondary life.
That is, until she realizes the markings on her hand match his.
Her eyes snap up to a very familiar (painfully familiar) hairstyle and jawline and nose and—together—their eyes go wide with recognition.
“Hello,” her brain idly acknowledges the warm, soft timbre of Link's Ordon accent as she watches him visibly gulp before adding,
“My love.”