An Ancient Bond.

Vah Rudania

   Link woke sore and comfortably tangled in Sheik's arms. His head was pillowed on top of Sheik's arm with the others left arm draped over his waist. He looked uncomfortable with how he was laying, trying to keep any sort of pressure off of his chest and long hair tangled under both of their bodies. After yesterday all he wanted to do was continue to lay here with Sheik, just spend the entire day enveloped in each other's arms. But despite that desire he knew he had to wake Sheik to prepare for the day. Sheik wouldn't be happy if they neglected their duties for selfish reasons.

Rolling over a bit more Link brushed the back of his fingers across Sheik's cheek, thumb dragging along under his right eye. Sheik stirred a bit, letting out a murmuring sound then slowly blinked his eyes open. "Mmm." He closed them again and rolled over onto his back, blinking to look at the window and the morning sky. "It's just after dawn."

"I know, but I figured you'd want to get moving sooner rather than later." Because that was how Sheik worked, he liked having a headstart on the day when they knew they had a difficult task ahead of them. He was always one step head of Link and planning everything that they needed to do.

"You kept me up late, we're going to be tired all day." He moved his arm from underneath Link's head and dragged it across his eyes, missing the affronted look that Link was definitely throwing him. Pushing himself up he rolled over on top of Sheik, careful of his chest, and pulled his arm away from his face.

"You're going to complain now?"

Sheik hummed and reached his arms up, wrapping them around Link's neck to drag him down closer. He pressed his lips to Link's, giving him a brief and simple kiss before pushing him away. "Let me up, we need to wash before we go anywhere."

Untangling Sheik's hair was an adventure in itself, involving a lot of cursing in a language Link wasn't familiar with and glares thrown at him. Perhaps he had a bit too much fun playing with Sheik's hair last night and next time he'd definitely remember to braid it before either of them fell asleep. Link was getting better at learning how to braid and he had Sheik promise to teach him later. When they finally got dressed and ate something the sun was further up in the sky and it was the perfect time to bother the Goron's.

Sheik used the Sheikah slate to take them back to Goron City and Link sighed as the intense heat bore down onto him. He reached back, adjusted the Master Sword and tugged on the neck of his Hylian Tunic. "Those Fireproof Elixir's could at least make this feel like... a cool summer not a scorching hot desert."

"Ironically, the desert is our next location. So you might want to get used to it."

"You're joking. Tell me you're joking." He followed Sheik across the bridge and back toward the Goron City.

"No. The Gerudo are Desert dwellers. Actually, in my time, they were a guild of thieves. I read that changed though, they're honorable people that only let women into their settlement." There was a lot to unpack from that and Link had a lot of concerns on the subject but he clearly wasn't going to get to ask them right now. One Divine Beast at a time.

They didn't have to get far in looking for the Goron leader, the moment they got close enough to the City they could hear one of them stomping around and cursing the Divine Beast. Sheik turned in that direction, finding an older Goron outside a house cursing the sky as if for it's very existence. "Drat! That blasted Rudania!"

Sheik waved his hand, caught the Goron's attention and folded his arms across his chest. "Greetings, can I ask what's wrong?"

He apparently had no problem unleashing his concerns on a passing stranger. "With Rudania runnin' wild recently, Death Mountain's eruptions have gotten real bad. Do ya see Rudania stompin' around up there on the mountain? They say that a hundred years ago, it actually used to protect our people from harm... but that was then, and this is now! Now all it does is mess up our mining operations! We're all suffering because it's stoppin' us from doin' business! I can't tell ya how many times we've used the cannon to chase off that fiend!" he took a breath here finally and yelled at them. "BUT IT ALWAYS COMES BACK!"