Mad

"…so, where to first?"

Zelda's words were halting and hesitant, the corner of her mouth turned down. There was so much to do! And they had to go so far. The stones they sought lay in Eldin and Lanayru, but getting there—getting past Keshi Forest—would be the challenge. They hadn't been able to get horses in the village for fear of alerting the adults that they were leaving.

"Duh. Cafa Dorei." Odie shrugged, a grin on their face. They weren't sure about this either, but wherever Arson led, they would follow. It had always been that way between Odie and Arson. "Get horses there, then we figure out the rest. But I'm not walking all the way to Death Mountain."

Zelda laughed a little, nodding. "You're right. Getting horses ought to be our first priority." 

"Getting out of this wheat field is our priority right now," Arson said quietly, indicating that the other two needed to lower their voices as well. "And I hear bokoblins." Smelly, nasty, snorty creatures that they were. And Arson knew just how to handle them. "Hey, Odie, you stay with Zelda just in case. I'm going to lure them away," he suggested, a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye.

"Oh, no. You're not gonna feed them, are you? We probably don't have the food supplies for that," Odie complained.

Zelda gasped. "Feed them? Are you crazy?"

"Yeah," Arson said, dropping his pack and pulling out a few apples. "They love fruit! Just watch!"

"No!" Zelda puffed up, grabbing Arson's wrist as he tried to leave. "You'll get yourself killed, and then where will we be?"

"Trust me," Arson hissed, nodding. At his cue, Odie pulled the princess away. "Watch out for her, but the bokoblins should come to me. When they do, you guys make your way to the edge of the field."

Odie nodded and bent to pick up Arson's bag. "I got this. Just hope there's not a moblin around. Those things are horrible." They didn't let go of the princess in fear that she would try to stop Arson. His plan was reckless, but he had done this before, many times, and it never went foul unless there was a moblin around.

Arson snuck off with only apples and his sword, darting through the field with ease. There didn't seem to be a moblin around—thank goodness, or he would have had to abort his plan—so he rolled an apple through the field into the clearing. 

A bokoblin saw this and perked up, sniffing a few times before wandering over and scooping up the apple to shove in its mouth. Arson whistled, which got the attention of all the rest, and held his armload of apples out to them. 

The red one that wandered over hopped excitedly and squealed, alerting a blue one further away. The blue one came over, snorfling questioningly before it looked to Arson. Oh, this one again. Hey, at least that meant free food! As the chief of the group, it was entitled the first pick, and this…fleshy…whatever did this enough that it knew that it could walk right up to it.

Arson kept the smile off his face—showing teeth was a threat—and stared the blue bokoblin down. He did not budge from his position. 

The bokoblin grabbed all the apples, chattered something at Arson, and turned around to walk off. It squealed in delight as it came back, and the other three reds came over to it to rummage through the apples.

Distraction planted, Arson backed into the field to disappear, then high-tailed it to catch up with Odie and Zelda, a bright grin on his face.

"The chief walked up to me!" he cheered as he came up on their heels, hands out for his bag. Odie handed it over without stopping. "It's never done that before! I think it recognized me from when I gave it that venison before."

"Awesome!" Odie said, excitement dominating their features. They had been experimenting with this camp for quite some time, after all. 

"You are both mad," Zelda snapped, finally pulling away from Odie. She stopped and rounded on Arson, shoving him quite hard. "You could have gotten yourself killed!" 

"It never occurred to you that we could make peace with them?" he snapped back, rolling his eyes. "We've been working with these for ages, and this is proof—"

"They are monsters!" Zelda said. "What don't you get? They're incarnates of evil!"

"Says who?" Arson said, hand going behind him for his sword, defensive all of a sudden. 

"Duh! Everyone! Every scholar ever who has studied them knows they're creatures connected to Ganon's Malice!"

"No. They're alive. They are not fated to be evil," Arson said, a dark look in his eyes and his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword, barely restraining himself from drawing it. It wouldn't do to draw his sword on the princess, but...

Odie placed a hand on his arm.

"Stop. You said we can't pick fights with the princess, remember?" they said, frowning in concern. He did this every time the nature of the monsters was brought up. He hated the idea that something truly could be evil from birth and fought to change it. Odie, though…wasn't so sure. 

Zelda was fuming, but Odie's reminder also had her backing down, rolling her eyes. "You could have gotten yourself hurt 'sall," she said petulantly, crossing her arms and turning around. "But there's no point in fighting about it. Come on, we got crap to do."

Arson sighed, his anger having a very short half-life. "You're right," he said quietly, releasing his sword and dropping his eyes. There he went, acting like Odie, and all because— No. No, he didn't want to think about that anymore. Zelda couldn't know, after all. No one could. 

"Come on. Eldin or Lanayru?" He rolled his shoulders and started walking, casting a smile behind him at the pair. "We gotta pick somewhere to start once we leave Cafa Dorei."

"Eldin," Odie said, bright smile on their face. "There's fire." 

Fire and Gorons, and Odie was interested in learning about the rock-people, after all.