To Find a New Heart to Heal (Mipha x Female reader)

Chapter 1: New Hyrule Castle Town

"Y/N! Wake up, it's time to get to work!"
You sit up groggily, rubbing your eyes and blinking a few times to adjust to the bright yellow sunlight that's piercing through your window. Or, through the hole where your window should have been, considering that it was more of a square cut in the brick with bent back wire and mere shards of glass hanging on by a cracked screen. You sat up in your old bed, leaning back to gaze around your now light-filled room. It was relatively bleak and small, and the small amount of space in the room not taken up by the bed was rather taken up by a large oak dresser. Dust sat upon every item, no matter how hard you had tried to keep the room tidy before giving up completely, and since your last dusting, (which had been months ago,) there was a thick and even layer upon the little picture frames and knick knacks on top of your dresser.
"Y/N, did you hear me, young lady?!" the voice called again from downstairs.

"I hear you, mom!" you called back, slipping into your day's worn clothing and worn old shoes, stepping onto the worn old stone bricks that made up your floor. Everything seemed so old and worn. Mom had told you long ago that everything was like that because the Calamity that happened a century ago destroyed everything, though you never quite understood why little settlements like yours were never rebuilt and refurbished in all that time. 'But now that Calmity Ganon is gone, it's time to rebuild,' you thought somewhat ruefully to yourself, slinging a large sledgehammer over your shoulder before heading downstairs to meet your mother. 'Of course nobody in this last century wanted to rebuild. They wanted to leave it so that I'd have to be one of the ones to work for it instead'.

Your mother was waiting by the table, re-wrapping an unnecessary amount of bandages over a scrape she had revived at the construction site yesterday after she had tripped on a broken brick. Toast was waiting on neat (yet once again painfully old) plates that sat upon the table, and after resting your sledgehammer against the edge of the table leg, you began to chew on it. "So, Y/N, more work in New Hyrule Castle Town today," your mother started, a half-fake smile on her face. "I've heard that they're finally bringing in help from the other parts of Hyrule, thank goodness. As much as us Hylians are determined, we're still pretty few and weak," your mother continued before pausing optimistically, waiting for a reaction. After a few seconds of silence and you munching on your toast, she continued like no awkward pause had happened, "the Gorons are coming to help us with heavy lifting and laying in new foundations, and the Gerudo will be helping with city planning, and the Rito will help us get the supplies we'll need, and the Zora will help us lay in fountains and water lines and the such. Won't that be nice, dear? You may even see the champions, they'll be helping. Isn't that strange? They all were dead just a week ago, but now they're alive again, and they're doing just as much work to help others as they were over one hundred years ago."

Your mother was right- it was odd to think about, to say the least. It'll be nice to finally get some help rebuilding Hyrule Castle Town— or what it was called now, New Hyrule Castle Town— since it had been incredibly slow-going for the first few days. Mostly clearing away old things, with no building new things just yet.

You finish your toast and lean your iron sledgehammer over your shoulder once more, giving your mom a smile and telling her that you're heading to the construction site. You're pretty excited to meet new people from parts of Hyrule that you've never seen or been to before, after all.

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You arrive at the construction site not too late afterwards, weaving through the path leading past overgrown trees towards the towering castle. Even though it was still relatively early in the morning, there was already an unusually high amount of work being done. Sure enough, like your mother had said, all shapes and sizes bustled around to help. The birdlike people— the Rito— shot through the sky like arrows, pointing and giving directions and airlifting in supplies all piled up on large wooden palettes tied to ropes at the corners. The hearty people of Death Mountain— the Gorons— were single-handedly picking up and balancing pieces of rubble on their muscular shoulders more easily than ten Hylians might have, eating quick snacks made of pounded gravel on the way. A party of Hylian authority figures and Gerudo planners stood in a circle not too far away from it all, pointing at blueprints and debating on which designs would suit New Hyrule Castle Town best.

And then there was a party of Zora, just now arriving to the site from the east, all of their colors scintillating in the morning sunlight light gemstones in a river. Many of them held their own silver tools and spears, rather than having had planned to use the Hylian's tools, and they all spoke to each other for a moment before most stood behind and a few kept walking to approach the planners.

The group that broke off to speak to the planners appeared to be the more esteemed and wealthy of the Zora, accompanied by an incredibly tall, crimson Zora man that you could only assume to be the infamous Prince Sidon, and by his side, a short and brilliantly stunning ruby-colored Zora woman sporting the symbolic sky-cyan ribbon around her chest and waist that was only spotted by the champions themselves. Not far ahead of you was the famous revived Zora champion herself, Princess Mipha of the Zora, and she was far more beautiful than you could have imagined.