"So," panted Link as the two broke from their embrace. "what next? I can't... exactly... fight... like this."
"I guess not." Midna agreed. "That's why I think we should settle down. We've got each other if nothing else, and isn't that good enough?"
"What!?" Link exclaimed, more taken aback by Midna's apparent decision to throw in the towel than her sudden display of affection. "But what about Zant, and Hyrule? We can't just give up!"
"Who said anything about giving up?" Midna corrected her. "You think I have any intention of not getting my revenge on that phony king? But unfortunately for me, my hero's gone and gotten himself turned into a girl who isn't in any condition for adventuring! I can live with the girl part, but with a body like that, all you'd do is drag me down."
Link immediately looked down again, making Midna wonder if she'd have to kiss her every time she got like this. Just an hour earlier she had thought him stoic and unflappable, but it seemed that becoming a woman had made Link much more emotional. More attractive too in her opinion, despite the weight. Both metaphorically and literally, Link had gotten soft.
"Don't give me those puppy dog eyes." Midna decided on poking her in the belly instead of another kiss. She'd have to earn one of those. "This is just a tactical withdrawal to restore our strength at worst. So you got turned into a big lump of a woman. Big deal! Just work it off and put on some muscle and we'll be right as rain. Do some jogging around that farm of yours!"
Link laughed, a surprisingly girlish laugh at that. Another first for him, or rather, her.
"A break then." Link smiled. "I guess I could use one."
"Just don't get too comfortable." Midna warned her. "You'll-"
"Heeeeeey! Link! You there?"
The two were interrupted by a call from outside the house: the familiar voice of Fado, Link's goatherd partner on the ranch. Link and Midna traded a glance, Link crouching just in case she was in view of a window.
"Should we pretend we aren't here?" Link whispered, Midna shrugging.
"What are you going to do, never leave your house until you've burned the weight then sneak out in the dead of night? You can't hide from your hick pals forever!" Midna said, crossing her arms. "You may as well go break the news now."
"But what should I do? I can't just walk out and say "hi, I'm a girl now, and I also happen to be fat!" Link said as if pleading for an easy way out.
"Just act natural." Midna advised, Link gulping loudly as she nervously opened the door and stepped out onto the raised front porch. Midna had some suspicions about how this curse worked that she didn't mind investigating at the expense of Link's dignity
"Ah, Link! Knew you were up there!" Fado said, but even as Link blushed and looked down on him past her heaving breasts and sagging gut, he seemed to show no visible reaction to his old friend turning into a plump young woman.
"I am! Just, uh, let me head down there!" Link said, slowly climbing the ladder down, not looking forward to having to carry her bulk back up. She stood as normally as she could in front of him with a faltering smile, only to have Fado give a slightly confused look back instead of the shock she expected. Fado was quite tall now compared to her, Link realising how much height she had lost.
"So, uh..." Fado started awkwardly, but only because the dense farmer couldn't figure out what was bothering Link. "Sorry t' bother you if you're busy, but I was wonderin' if you were up to help milk the goats after I finish bringing 'em in?"
Link blinked a few times in surprise. Why wasn't Fado shocked? Had the magic altered his perception of her somehow? Or maybe it was...
Retroactive, Midna decided looking down. She had taken a peek into Link's wardrobe while her back was turned, and the clothes she found within were distinctly female. As far as the current world seemed to be concerned, Link was always a woman. A plus-sized one at that, given that only her old and dusty clothes were smaller than her regularly used ones, and the more well-worn ones showing signs of repeated letting out.
"Milking?" Link managed to catch a slight contradiction. "Isn't milking the goats your job? While I'm around, anyway."
"Huh?" Fado seemed surprised. "You've been on milk duty for ages now! Said you were gettin' too heavy for Epona and didn't like runnin' around too much. Sure, I've been doin' my best since you've been off, but it's hard doin' double duty, ya know?"
"Oh, yeah, I did!" Link lied. "Sorry, I've just been running around so much lately..."
"Aw no, don't mind me! I shouldn't be pushin' ya! A man's supposed to do the hard work instead of a lady, ya know?" Fado hastily waved his hands, blushing slightly. Didn't he usually just act this way in front of Ilia?
Although her worries had passed, Link just couldn't help herself.
"Hey, Fado..." Link asked in an unintentionally particularly friendly voice, at least as interpreted by Fado. "Can you notice anything different about me?"
Fado's eyes widened and Link immediately felt that she had phrased it poorly somehow.
"Uh... did you do something with your hair?" Fado guessed, not being able to particularly tell, but being unwilling to admit it. "Oh! Did you lose weight?"
Fado recoiled as his well-intentioned words struck a sore spot, and Link turned her head away in a huff.
"Never mind!"
--
"All done out here, Link!"
Link wiped the sweat from her brow as she led the goats back into their pens, lifting several pails of milk up with a grunt. The first time she had milked the goats as a woman had been a slow, clumsy experience, but now, months later and with several seasons passed, it was a routine that she had practiced to perfection. It was much easier than actually herding the goats, as Epona protested whenever she climbed aboard, and she found it a clumsy experience at best these days. Just walking from one end of their field to the other was enough to make her out of breath, so she left it up to Fado, who seemed glad enough to lighten a load on Link when possible.
Link safely stored the milk away in jugs ready to be sold, the goats giving generously as usual. It was good for the village but perhaps not so good for her waistline that there was so much nutrient-rich milk to go around, its sweet taste causing Link to drink it religiously. Between this and her reluctance to exercise properly, her gut had only gotten bigger, her second chin rounder, her chest even fuller, and it was now at the point where Link worried about fitting through her house's doorway. It was just meant to be until she had gotten used to her body, she recalled that being the excuse she had used on Midna. She wondered if it would still work now, or if Midna had just decided she was a lost cause. She picked up a jug, deciding to bring it with her to Uli's house to spend dinner with her once again.
She breathed in the cool spring Ordon air on her way to the ranch's exit, recalling how she had ended up with what felt like a permanent return to her day to day life in Ordon village. First, she had announced her return to the other villagers, stating that after she had secured the safety of the kidnapped k1ds, that she was taking some time to recuperate. With the other villagers being unaware of Link's true mission, they had happily accepted her return, and in fact encouraged that she stay where it was safe. She had then procrastinated on getting back into shape for the remainder of autumn, and had used winter as an excuse for why it was impractical to expect her to lose weight so quickly. There wasn't much to do in winter besides stay inside and eat, and so Link had only gotten even more out of shape. Her life was simple enough, working on the farm and spending time with Uli, Rusl's pregnant wife, who appreciated the company in his absence, and the two quickly formed a closer bond thanks to Link's womanhood.
Eventually enough time passed that Link could no longer pretend it was merely an extended break. Even if she pretended otherwise, the world outside kept moving while Ordon remained cosy and protected by its light spirit from the dangerous outside world. Rusl returned to oversee his wife's birth, the resistance unable to make much progress without Link's efforts, although he made frequent trips back to assist them. Eventually he arranged a caravan to return the children and Ilia to Ordon from Kakariko, returning life in Ordon mostly back to normal, although cautious and on edge now that they expected monster attacks at any moment. When Ilia had returned it proved to be healthy for the amnesiac girl, helping to slowly restore her memories over a long period of time rather than some sort of instant miracle cure. Even now she had gaps in her memory, but had enough to remember most of her life in the village, the the villagers being more than happy to help create new memories for her.
And so, with life seemingly back to normal, Link had slipped into the life of an ordinary farm girl, albeit a very well fed one. She no longer wore her hero's clothes, and she didn't think she could fit into them anymore in the first place. She wore a more feminine variant of her old traditional Ordon clothes, bare-armed and with a healthy amount of cleavage thanks to her chest often compared to the prize pumpkins of Ordon's farms. She had a noticeable skirt, and it was only the preference of Ordon women to wear pants under their dresses that stopped her from embracing femininity and going bare-legged. Her hair had grown out to spill down her shoulders, and by all accounts she looked quite ordinary, with soft, rather delicate features softened further by her fat face. Being a girl was easier than Link had thought it would be, and it gave her nicer treatment around the village too. Between her gender and her weight, although she still seemed to be considered the go-to for help with just about everything around the village, they expected less miraculous results.
"Good work today, Link!" Fado called just before Link could leave, approaching her stiffly with one hand behind his back, very obviously hiding something. "Here!"
He thrust out his arms, holding a bright yellow flower in his hand. From her shadow, Link could hear snickering.
"I-I-I just happened to see this growin' on the end near where the goats like grazing, and I thought it'd, ya know, brighten up your house!" He went red in the face, Link quickly taking the flower before he passed out.
"I'm sure it will." Link said politely, smiling as she left before he got the chance to make a fool out of himself. Rather than be disheartened by her mild reaction, he looked excited that he had managed to give it to her.
"Well aren't you popular! That big lug has such a crush on you." Midna continued to snicker, watching over her, or perhaps under her, as always. "If only he knew!"
"I don't think I want to explain it to him." Link sighed. "Fado's nice, but I don't think you'd want to share."
"I might have to eventually." Midna said, sounding casual but also like she would only give Link up very reluctantly. "If you sit around here long enough those busybodies in villages like these always start asking when you're going to get married."
"Let's see if we can change me back before we worry about that." Link, despite feeling much more like a woman than a man these days, still wasn't entirely on board with the idea of being somebody's wife. Sure, Uli seemed happy with a man like Rusl, but still, romance with a man was just...
"We haven't made a bit of progress in figuring out this curse of yours since the day it happened." Midna reminded her. "You don't think you'll change back to normal and take that blubber of yours with it, do you?"
Link's pout gave away that she did expect that at least a little, and Midna once again felt like she didn't know what she was going to do with this girl. She had guessed that Link's softer personality was due to having a different life as a woman in Ordon, one that couldn't be fixed without transformation removing her laziness and sensitivity. The two could be described as lovers and thus Midna had given her a lot of leeway, but she wasn't quite sure what the two were going to do in the long run, her existence being secret to the other villagers in the first place. She herself had gotten rather content with their slow, easy life here, where it seemed unaffected by the outside world. But could they really continue like this forever? Right now it seemed like it really could...
"Link!"
The two heard Uli call, waving from the entrance of the ranch with her usual motherly smile. Link waved back and lifted the jug by its handle to show her usual offering, and Midna retreated back into her shadow.
"Good work up there as always, and thank you very much for the milk." Uli said, carrying her newborn daughter in her soft arms. "Shall we go to my house? I was just thinking of putting dinner on. Or perhaps you'd like to go fishing with Colin? He really does think of you as a big sister, you know."
"Both sound nice to me." Link smiled back, having found that Uli was more than happy to have her over for dinner any night of the week. Between Uli's excellent home cooking and her new love of eating, she rarely spent a meal alone. To make matters better, or perhaps worse, Ordon was in a period of prosperity despite the world around it. The rekindling of the light spirit had reinvigorated the land around it, causing record harvests and the rivers to overflow with life, Link catching huge fish whenever she sat down with Colin and their homemade fishing rod and feasting on them with huge heapings of pumpkins and other vegetables with Uli that night. Unfortunately, the surplus of food and her excessive eating habits had rubbed off on Uli, and she had gotten rounder than she had been when she was pregnant thanks to being ever willing to indulge Link's gluttony.
Uli's face had gradually softened and grown until she sprouted a matching second chin with Link, her arms growing plump and soft, perfect for her daughter to rest in, while her gut bulged out nearly as far as her pregnancy had. Curiously she didn't mind much, perhaps due to seeing Link as just another member of the family. As the two walked, the portly wife noticed another person who Link had been rubbing off on, calling out to another young village girl.
"Ilia!" Uli called, a plump young woman leading a horse through the village turning around to face her. While not as overweight as Link or Uli, Ilia had spent a lot of time with Link in order to help regain her memories, and spending a lot of time with Link meant spending a lot of time eating. Coupled with her protective father spoiling her after her return, Ilia had the second chin that was rapidly becoming distinctive of Ordon women, and her top only barely covered the bottom of her large and round belly, her hips and thighs doubling in thickness as her arms went from slender to bulging.
"Link and I were about to have dinner!" Uli offered.
"Maybe when I'm done washing Epona!" Ilia called back, Epona being ridden less often than before, but still constantly used as a pack horse and helper. She would later join the two for a hearty dinner, the three fattening their figures further before Link retired to her house to spend some quality time with Midna. Her life seemed easy and idyllic, but could it last forever?
Tue Jun 29 16:13:32 2021
2 comments Last updated: Wed Jun 30 01:28:01 2021