Can You Teach Me?

Can You Teach Me How To Cook?

The fire was bright and warm, a pleasant contrast from the cool autumn air around them. Link threw some ingredients into the pot and sat down while he waited for them to simmer.

The food smelled divine. Before Zelda could even comment on it, it was done. Link handed her a plate full of meat and veggie rice balls.

"Oh my gosh!" She exclaimed upon her first bite. "How are these so good?"

Link smiled, his cheeks pink in the firelight. "I found the recipe at a stable. It's meat, rice, and herbs."

"This is amazing." Zelda ate it all, then got seconds. She leaned against Link as he finished his thirds. "You're amazing."

They lay in the warmth, gazing at the stars until the cold nipped at their noses. "Say," Zelda asked, "Can you teach me how to cook?"

__________________________________________________________________

It was afternoon the next day when she got her opportunity to learn.

"Zelda," Link's voice called from downstairs, "Want to help make dinner? I can teach you how to make meat skewers."

She ran down the stairs, abandoning the research she was doing. "Wonderful! What should I do?"

Link handed her an apron. "I have an extra apron that Yunobo gave me. It was too small for him, but it's about our size."

On the apron was a picture of rock roast with writing reading 'rock on, nephew! Happy 99th birtthday.'

"This is an unfortunate gift for someone to give him. They misspelled birthday. And he's not ninety-nine, is he?"

Link shrugged. "We can ask."

"I worry it's rude to ask a goron's age. You know how snippy some people are about that. Regardless, how do I make a meat skewer?"

"First," he said, "you make the sauce. It needs oil, acid, flavouring, and salt."

"Hmmm... I see." Zelda pictured Robbie pouring acid into a test tube, despite being the sort of scientist who doesn't use test tubes. "And what does that mean?"

"Acid would just be something like vinegar or lemon juice," Link said. It was as if he had read her mind. Perhaps he had had similar concerns at some point. "Not actual acid. Flavouring is something like soy sauce or spices. Salt is anything given to us by Revali."

"Sorry?"

"Purah taught me new hip slang."

"Purah? But she's not, um, new or hip, so to speak."

"She doesn't care," he sprinkled some salt into the bowl. "Now you mix them together, the same way Purah mixes new and old slang."

Zelda added the oil, acid, and flavouring, then stirred it all together. She squinted at the brown liquid with garlic bits floating in it, then the oil and vinegar separating in pools within each other. "It looks a bit off-putting."

"The worse the sauce looks, the better the meat will taste. I learned that when I watched bokoblins make pork chops."

"Excuse me?"

"It took hours for them to catch and cook that boar, but it only took me a few minutes to kill them and eat it."

Zelda decided not to comment. She wondered if those bokoblins were alive again. She wondered if they remembered Link taking their meat, and also their fangs and horns, and maybe their weapons and possibly some treasure. "You're like a pirate," she said, giving no context. He didn't need any.

"Thanks." Link looked very proud as he plopped the meat into the bag. "Now we add the meat, let it sit for a couple hours, and cook it."


Zelda went back to her research, glad to rid herself of the apron, while Link sat beside her and had her explain what all the numbers meant, because he had never seen some of them.

("That one means any number between seven and twenty-million."

"Big difference. Good thing there's a number for it. How often is it used?"

"As far as I'm aware, not often. I've only had the displeasure of using it once.")

Once Zelda had finished her research for the day, they went downstairs to cook the meat. Link narrated as he worked. "Once you've seared it on one side, flip it over to another. Once all the sides are browned, it's done."

Zelda nodded, a determined look on her face. She put her skewer in the pan and waited. It started to sizzle, so she flipped it. "It appears to be working!"

"Looking good! Just keep doing what you're doing." The meat sizzled and popped in the pan. It was getting louder by the second until it sounded like static.

"Should I— ack!" Zelda clutched her eye. "Something has gone wrong!"

"Quick! Rinse it out with water!"

She wasn't sure how that would help, but she swallowed the pain and grabbed the pan. She flung it into the sink.

"No!" Link cried, "Your eye! Rinse your eye out with water!"

Oh, she thought, that makes sense.

The sink burst into flames. "Oh dear!"

Link's voice took on the same tone it did when he was a soldier, throwing out orders on the battlefield. "Go rinse your eyes in the pond! I'll put out the fire!"

Zelda ran out to the pond as Link smothered the flame. She dunked the top of her head in the pond. The cool water stung, but offered relief from the burning sensation from before.

Link ran out and sat next to her. "Are you okay?"

She took her head out from under the water. "I'm alright. How did the fire go?"

"It's out now. Your meat skewer didn't turn out, though." He held up the still-smoldering skewer. It was clear that it was meat, but it was even clearer that it would give one food poisoning if they attempted to consume it.

"Oh. That's... unfortunate."

"We can make more. Want to go get dried off while I do the rest?"

She nodded. "That would be best, I think."

__________________________________________________________________

"I thought of a recipe that can't go badly; salad!" Link said, gesturing to the table. On the table sat various vegetables and two big bowls. "It's perfect because it can't hurt you."

Zelda watched as Link's hand sliced the tomato and added it to the bowl of chopped lettuce and shredded carrots. She took notes, which Link seemed to find both adorable and unnecessary. She just wanted to get it right! She didn't understand what was so endearing about that.

"You just chop up vegetables and mix them together," Link said with a smile. "It's pretty easy. You don't even need to measure, you can go by what feels right. Needs more carrots? Add more carrots. Same goes for other ingredients." He paused. "Add more of that ingredient, I mean. Not, if it needs something, add more carrots."

She was glad for the clarification. She hadn't thought he meant 'when in doubt, add more carrots', but the clarification was helpful nonetheless.

"Alright." She put on one of Link's aprons and pulled her hair back. "I can do this."

"You can do this!" Link agreed. "You're smart, capable, and—" A horse made a noise outside. He and Zelda both looked over to the wall from behind which it came, as if they could see the problem from their kitchen. Link frowned. "I'm going to go check that out."

He stepped out the door, but before it had even shut, he popped his head back in. "And talented! That's what I was going to say." He popped back out, leaving her alone in the kitchen.

She looked at the ingredients, then at Link's finished product. It didn't seem hard when he was doing it. She decided to give it a go while he was gone. Maybe she'd be done when he was back, and he'd be surprised and amazed by her salad-making skills!

__________________________________________________________________

"I'm back," Link said from the doorway, "Epona heard the word 'carrots' and got mad that she wasn't eating any. Then Storm decided he was mad, too." He walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He looked at her salad bowl, which was covered by a dish towel to keep it from drying out while they waited to eat it. "You did it!"

Zelda smiled nervously at him. "Indeed! I tried very hard. It... well... I'll show you. Go ahead and sit down."

Link did as he was told. Zelda presented him with the salad. "I think I did something wrong."

Sitting on the table was a pile of what appeared to be charcoal. Charred black cubes sat in a pile, looking far less appetising than ideal. If one looked at it from a distance, they might think, "look, some burnt brick shards. Let's walk away quickly."

On top of the chunks of not-salad lay a single spinach leaf, small and uncooked. Zelda wasn't sure how this was. She hadn't put any spinach in the recipe.

"It burned?!" Link exclaimed, his voice an equal mix of disbelief and confusion, "How do you burn a salad?"

Zelda grimaced. "I do not know, but I have no desire to eat this."

"What's in it?"

"The same things as are in yours! Lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber, onion, and dressing! Wait, no. I forgot the dressing. Dammit!"

Link looked just as surprised as Zelda had hoped, but in a bad way. "I don't think the lack of dressing is an issue. Did... did you cook it? Or bake it? Or, uh, set it aflame?"

"I didn't! I swear, all I did was mix it together. Perhaps the lack of dressing is an issue. Perhaps it's combustible without the dressing to moisten it?"

Link's brow furrowed as he looked at the salad. He nodded. "Did you add peppers?"

"None."

"Gems?"

"No."

"Did you set the sheikah slate on it?"

"I'd never put something so valuable on it."

"Do you know what did happen? Because salads aren't supposed to look like this."

Zelda sat down with a huff. "Argh! I know they aren't! But I have no idea what went wrong!"

Link sat and poked at the salad. "Hmmm... Not warm. Maybe something came and replaced it with something? Looks kinda like cooked wood."

"I didn't even add wood!"

"Maybe it was a korok that replaced it? Or maybe it was a korok who.... uh... became it?"

"Oh good Goddess," Zelda gasped. "Did I cook a korok?"

Link's eyes widened in alarm. "Wait! No need to panic. We can fix this!"

"We can't fix this! I cooked a korok! This is bad!"

"We've defeated Ganon! You've sealed away an immortal evil! I slayed two lynels and ten moblins in minutes! If we could do that, we can do this!"

"None of those things relate to bringing back a dead korok! How could we have done this?" She took a deep breath. "Okay, okay. We have to remember. We can see koroks. It couldn't have been the lettuce. And if a korok was just hiding in our lettuce, we would have seen it when we chopped up its hiding spot."

Link followed Zelda's breathing example. "That's true. It would have jumped out at you."

"And I didn't heat it at all, so I couldn't have burned it like this."

"I've seen a talus throw its arm at one, and all it said was ouch."

"Then my knife definitely didn't kill it. Thank goodness." She let out a breath of relief. "It's fine. No koroks were harmed in the making of this... not-salad."

"At least we have the other salad." Link scooped his salad from its bowl into two smaller bowls, then sat one in front of Zelda. "We can work on more tonight, if you want."

She sighed and took a bite. It was fine. She wasn't much of a salad person, and she lost her appetite every time she thought of the "food" she had made.

"I'm full. Do you want the rest of mine?"

Link nodded and took her bowl. "Sure. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"It's okay to not be fine." He put one of his hands on the table for her to take. She did. "You're not a failure just because you can't cook."

Zelda raised an eyebrow. "How did you know what I was thinking?"

"Um, well, it's usually what you're thinking when things don't go well."

She sighed and put her head on the table, something that would never have flown 100 years ago. "I don't understand. I unlocked my powers. I proved I'm not a failure. So why do I still doubt myself when I mess up?"

"You never get mad at me when things get screwed up. It doesn't mean *you* messed up. Sometimes things just don't go well."

Zelda thought of the time he had made her fruitcake, but had accidentally turned it into monster cake. She hadn't thought him any worse for it. She knew he loved her just as much as she loved him; to the heavens and back. She was realising, the longer she got from her childhood, that love meant not expecting someone to be who they weren't.

"It's okay not to be good at something right away. No one is going to get mad at you for not living up to an unattainable ideal."

"I just... I feel like such a fool. You know all these things, and I don't know anything."

"You don't know anything? Zelda, you are the smartest person I know. You're wisdom itself. Just because you didn't have the chance to learn the same stuff I did doesn't mean that you don't know anything. You know so much. You can name all the bones in the six major species, in alphabetical order. I didn't even know Hylians and Sheikah had different bones. You went your whole life being told that it didn't matter what you knew or did, that all you were was a vessel for Hylia, but you still kept learning and growing, despite what people thought. That's amazing."

This may have been the most Zelda had ever heard him speak.

"Thank you. I love you." She took his other hand. He squeezed both of hers.

"I love you, too."

__________________________________________________________________

"Good morning, my queen!" Link kissed her forehead. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining through the open curtains and the birds were quiet, which was preferable to their noise. Quiet birds meant they were busy pooping on the horned statue, and Link liked the idea of that. It was like revenge for stealing part of his life force that time, despite the birds knowing nothing of that. "I have an idea."

Zelda opened one eye. "Is it a good idea?"

"I think so."

"Doesn't sound promising."

"You're so unsupportive when you're still half asleep."

"I have 100 years of sleep to make up for."

He sighed and shook her. This woke her up for real. "Oh! Good morning!"

"Good morning. I have an idea."

"That sounds promising!"

"Like a whole different person."

"Than whom?"

"Asleep you is so much meaner than regular you."

"My apologies. She and I have not met. What is your idea?"

"Well, you know how you like to eat fruitcake?"

"I do."

"What if I teach you how to make it?"

She shot up and clapped her hands. "Wonderful! I'd love to try. I will do my utmost, though I can not guarantee it will be edible."

"That's okay. I got out the ingredients, go do your skincare routine and meet me in the kitchen!"

Zelda went to do her skincare, which consisted of washing her face and putting on facial lotion. It was elaborate in comparison to Link's, whose skincare routine contained zero steps. It was a wonder how that man did not have a constant coating of dirt on his face. Or perhaps he did, and she was just too used to it to notice.

When she went into the kitchen, she looked at his face. It did not have dirt on it. In fact, it look clearer and cleaner than hers.

'Well that's a bit unfair,' she thought.

They look turns measuring and adding ingredients until finally, they had a batter.

"Amazing!" Zelda bounced on the heels of her feet. "It actually looks like it's supposed to! Not burnt or flaming at all!"

"Now we bake it on medium heat until the top is brown."

Zelda could barely wait for it to be done, but it was worth it. It wasn't perfect, it tasted a bit too flour-ey, and the fruit wasn't evenly dispersed, but as far as they were concerned, it was the best they'd ever had. They ate the whole thing in one sitting.

"Well then," Link said, swallowing his last bite of cake, "I think you're ready to try to make the meat skewers again."

Zelda turned her head to look at him so quickly that she got dizzy. "I think I'll leave the meat skewers to you. I'm happy being the cake baker. You can do the rest."

Link grinned. "Works for me."