"You sure we shouldn't wait for Hilda?" Link asked as she set the table in Uli's house, starting to get to the point where it was difficult to see anything directly under her and having to stand back slightly so that her drooping gut didn't press into the edge of the table. The funny thing was, even as she grew slower and heavier, her obese body expanding in all directions, she couldn't bring herself to care. To care would mean to eat less, and she certainly couldn't have that.
"My, you're patient today." Uli exclaimed, surprised at Link's show of restraint as she finished breastfeeding her baby, tucking her hefty breast back into her dress where it sagged down to rest on her plump shelf of a belly. "I must be losing my touch if you can wait that long."
"No, it's just, uh, she's still pretty bad at getting the goats to work with her so she'll be a while, and the three of us had brunch at the farm, so..." Link laughed nervously, hiding her ulterior motive that Zelda seldom got on her case about exercising once she was well stuffed herself.
"Don't worry, I made more than enough for all of us, even once you're done with it." Uli smiled, glad that her friends were such big eaters with the kind of oversized produce they were harvesting recently.
"So." Uli said, putting down her pot of pumpkin soup on the table, but keeping her hand over the lid. "Who is it?"
"Who's what?" Link asked, her eyes flicking back and forth from soup to the woman with an uncharacteristically sly expression on her face.
"The one you like." Uli's chubby face began to broaden into a wide smile. "You don't get to eat until you tell me."
"E-excuse me?" Link spluttered, Midna slapping her hand over her own mouth to avoid making any noise in reaction, hiding in Link's shadow.
"Oh, don't think you can hide it from me, young lady." Uli giggled. "You look just like I did when I met Rusl! Don't think I can't spot a young maiden in love!"
"That's a pretty big assumption to just make out of nowhere." Link began to turn red as Midna privately facepalmed. Why don't you just tell the whole village, idiot, Midna thought to herself. Meanwhile, Link was starting to panic, wondering what had given it away, and how she was supposed to explain that she was in somewhat of a relationship with an imp from another dimension who lived in her shadow.
"Who's the lucky guy? Fado? He's such a nice young man, I'm sure you'd make a wonderful couple!" Uli asked, her smile widening as Link wondered which was worse, Uli finding out her actual girlfriend or the misunderstandings this was going to cause with her old partner.
"Who knows?" Link attempted to play it cool, only eliciting a cooing noise from Uli as she mistakenly decided she was right. Link could tell, although she didn't blame her, as there weren't exactly many other potential partners in the village.
"Don't worry, you can count on me for advice, Link! I know all of the best dating spots in the village!" Uli's eyes glittered as she leaned in, nearly squishing a plate as her gut hung dangerously over the table, destined to eventually press down on it just by getting near as it grew in the next few months.
"You know what, I just remembered I have leftovers at home!" Link nearly knocked her chair over as she made her escape, stumbling to her feet and rushing out the door, nearly bowling over Zelda who was just about to enter and leaving Uli pouting as her thirst for romance wasn't sated.
"What was that all about?" Zelda asked, utterly confused as the chubby princess watched Link finally move faster than a slow jog for the first time since she had arrived, only for Link to run out of energy and return to a hefty waddle after a few seconds.
"Oh, just some girl talk." Uli giggled, knowing that Link couldn't evade her forever...
--
"Way to screw that up, hero." Midna sighed as Link made her way down the laneway to her house, emerging from her shadow. "The way that woman is, half the village is going to be pairing you with that big oaf by the end of the week. Neither of you can keep a secret!"
"What was I supposed to do?" Link asked hopelessly. "Uli knows how to get answers out of people. Why do you think Collin's such an honest kid? He can't hide anything from his mother!"
"Maybe it was time for us to go public." Midna said playfully, the two of them knowing full well that this wasn't possible. The village was on edge ever since the attack, and Link was certain that no amount of reassurance would ever get them to trust Midna.
"They'd probably just say you're hypnotising me or something." Link said, downcast at the fact that Midna was unlikely to ever fit into the village.
"I suppose I am in the way of your quaint village life where you settle down, marry some burly farmer, and have three k1ds." Midna said jokingly, but in reality there was no joke about it. There was an obvious path for Link going forward as Fado grew bolder, and Link would quickly run out of excuses if she rejected him.
"It's not like there's anything wrong with Fado." Link sighed, approaching her house. "He's nice, and he's considerate, and he's kind of fun to be around, and he's got the most obvious crush on me anyway, and you know, it wouldn't really be that bad..."
"I didn't sign up to be part of a love triangle, you know." Midna complained. "And here I thought my hero turning into a cow was the worst thing that'd happen to me!"
"It's not my fault." Link curled her lip cutely. She was cute when she was upset in general, Midna had decided. "Everything was much simpler when I was a man and he was just somebody who worked with me. Now everything's complicated."
"Let's go inside and make things less complicated then." Midna suggested. "You take that dress off and we'll pretend that I'm the only other girl in the world."
Link leaned over and gave Midna a quick kiss, deciding that they hadn't had enough private time together since Zelda moved in anyway...
--
"Uli asked me to deliver this." Zelda said as she sat down next to Ilia while handing her a neatly wrapped lunch, the plump horse-loving girl having returned from tending to some of the other villagers' beasts of burden. The meal was a veritable picnic, enough to fill Ilia and provide an after-lunch snack for Zelda, which she couldn't resist even as she looked on at Ilia's figure with despair for what too much of Uli's cooking did to a girl.
"So, what's bothering you?" Ilia asked after a while, laughing gently as Zelda's eyes widened as if she had read her mind.
"Nothing." Zelda said stubbornly.
"You'll feel better if you say it out loud." Ilia advised, munching on her third sandwich, packed with as many ingredients as could be fit into two slices of bread. "You've been doing well for a city girl coming out here all on her own, but there's got to be something bothering you, right?"
"It's just..." Zelda said reluctantly, having referred to Ilia's wisdom before while adjusting to her new life. Actually, referring to it as her new life was half the problem! She was supposed to have left by now, and here she was chatting with a commoner after milking goats!
"It's just..." Zelda repeated, wondering how much she could share with her. "Things aren't going how I thought they would."
"Well, it's a pretty big change." Ilia seemed to sympathise. "Still, you aren't giving me the impression that you don't like Ordon, so that can't be it."
"There's nothing wrong with Ordon itself." Zelda agreeing that this quaint province was quite pleasant. "It's just... is it okay for me to live like this, just spending my days working on that ranch?"
"Well, what would you prefer to be doing?" Ilia asked. "There's plenty of other things you could be doing if it's too hard. Sewing and helping make clothes, fishing, maybe getting married and having some k1ds..."
"That's not the problem!" Zelda coughed, mortified at the idea of a princess like her marrying some farm boy or fisherman and living out the rest of her days as a common housewife. "It's just..."
"Just what? You've been saying that a lot." Ilia said patiently. "What's the real problem?"
Zelda peered downward at the imprint of her chubby belly pressing into her dress. Her source of stress began to bubble up until it forced itself out of her throat whether she wanted to or not. While her woes began from the fact that Link was simply refusing to act like the hero she was supposed to be, the real problem Zelda was facing was a much more selfish one.
"I'm getting fat!" Zelda suddenly burst out indignantly. "All of this quaint village life is ruining my figure!"
"Oh, that's it?" Ilia laughed, her own fat wobbling gently. "I thought it was something serious!"
"It is serious!" Zelda said, taking personal offence to that. "It's unbecoming for a lady like myself to be fat! And it's all Link's fault! She simply refuses to exercise at all, and all day and night all she does is eat delicious food and I just can't help myself! It's not fair!"
Zelda huffed and puffed, getting nothing more than amusement from the village girl.
"Well, why's it so bad to be fat, anyway? All of the women in Ordon are getting to be like that lately and they don't seem to mind." Ilia asked her like it was no big deal. "Are you doing anything that you need to be skinny for right now?"
"Why? It's because... it just is!" Zelda said, shifting her increasingly big behind. "I certainly couldn't let myself be seen like that in the city?"
"But are you going back soon?" Ilia continued to question her.
"Well, not exactly, for the moment..." Zelda couldn't tell her that she was stuck here as long as Link remained obese. "But doesn't it bother you, not being thin?"
"Not really." Ilia said plainly. "When I was kidnapped I never knew when or if I'd be able to eat, and I think I appreciate having a full stomach a lot more now. You never know when you won't anymore, after all. It's not like it gets in the way."
"That's certainly pragmatic, but that's no reason to overeat!" Zelda objected.
"If you can, why not? It's not hurting anybody." Ilia shrugged. "You like eating a lot, don't you? So you're gonna get fat, that's just how it is."
"But I don't want to be fat! I shouldn't be fat!" Zelda complained.
"Is there a reason why you can't be fat right now?" Ilia pressed her. The way she saw it, Hilda didn't have the self-restraint to not stuff herself the way Link did, she could tell she she liked eating almost as much as Link did. Therefore, the easiest way to stop her from worrying was to give her another perspective on the matter.
Zelda found herself speechless. Despite all of her complaining, she couldn't actually think of a good reason why she absolutely should not be fat right now, as absurd as it sounded. The villagers didn't care, her friends didn't care, she wasn't doing anything that demanded her to be thin and princess-like, and she had to get Link to slim down first either way. She wasn't Zelda the princess watching her figure to keep her dignity, she was Hilda the farm girl complaining that she was getting chubby in a village full of plus-sized women. The logic wormed its way into her heart, telling her that even if she got fat now, she could simply work it off once she finally convinced Link to diet.
"I suppose there isn't." Zelda said haughtily. In an effort to justify her indignation, she shifted the blame.
"But you know, this is all Link's fault!" Zelda said angrily. "She's lazy, and she's gluttonous, and she finds an excuse to ignore me when I tell her to exercise every time!"
"That sounds like Link to me." Ilia smiled.
"Well when I met her, she was a lot lighter and more dependable!" Zelda said.
"She's pretty dependable when she needs to be." Ilia agreed. "But not that everybody's safe I don't think we should blame her for relaxing, should we? I'm sure if it was urgent she'd shape up again."
"By the time she's lost half her weight the crisis would be long passed!" Zelda pointed out, the two laughing at the idea of Link being told there was an emergency and asking for a few extra months for her to burn off enough weight to go on an adventure. Despite the actual urgency of her situation, her woes as a princess seemed to be getting further away from her by the day, living out her life in this idyllic village.
"I suppose I'll think about it." Zelda finally begrudgingly gave in, waving goodbye to Ilia as she began the walk back to Link's house. Well, was it really such a big problem if she got a little chubbier while she sorted Link out? All she'd have to do was lose weight faster than her, in the end. In the meantime, maybe it wasn't as bad as she thought it was...
Mon Jul 12 05:24:34 2021
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