To the great despair of her mother, Impa had always been terrible at weaving, dyeing, and most importantly, sewing. Impa herself had never minded it much when she was younger. She hated to fail at anything on principle, but her complete and impressive lack of skill in all crafts — poetry, flower arranging, calligraphy, dyeing — granted her terrible marriage prospects. So at ten she’d decided that it must have been a blessing from the gods, and burnt some incense in offering.

However, being the only human left on land had officially made her marriage prospects worse than ever, and now she was staring down dying pants she could not mend. So perhaps her mother had been right during her many lectures on the importance of weaving, and perhaps preteen Impa had been a little foolish to focus on fighting to the exclusion of all else. Or maybe not, considering a loom was not exactly an effective weapon against demons.

Whoever may have been right, the fact remained that Impa was going to run out of clothes to wear. She could not weave new fabric, did not know how to sew clothes, and had no earthly idea how she’d even get the materials necessary for the work. It was a miracle her clothes had held up for as long as they had, but now the fabric was thin as a beetle’s wing and the thread rapidly decaying. Something needed to be done.

Impa thought about it, grimaced, and decided it would be tomorrow’s problem. She did so hate failing.

Only, tomorrow’s problem solved itself in the night.

Next day, Impa woke up, barely suppressed a groan, went through her morning exercises, then sighed and turned to go get the pile of scrap fabric that had once been her pants.

They weren’t there. In their place lay a dark blue hakama and red kosode, made of sturdy, decent fabric. Their cut was simple but elegant, well-tailored to her proportions. For all intents and purposes, it was as if her mother had hopped into the future to give her some clothes, then left quiet as a mouse in the night.

She looked at the clothes for a solid minute, then promptly began her search. No-one should be here, no-one. Whoever had left these clothes had managed to sneak in right under her nose without ever triggering any of her defenses, and that meant they were a threat to be eliminated.

Halfway through her third increasingly stressful search and her fourth time checking behind the temple doors, it suddenly struck her how silly this was. Here she was, making a fool out of herself by wondering if anyone had invented an invisibility spell without her knowledge, outright sweating and shaking, over what? A new outfit? Why would a foe announce itself via tailoring?

There was no logical explanation for the clothes, no, but Impa was no stranger to miracles. Had she not seen Hylia raise the ground itself? Forget Hylia, any common spirit or minor god was more than capable of answering these simple types of prayers. She was on holy ground, safeguarding divine magics, trusted by the gods twice over. These clothes were not a threat: they were a gift.

So she made whatever god or spirit had helped her an offer of incense and dried fruit, presented on a makeshift altar. Once, this would have been a poor showing, but now food was limited and the ground outside too poisoned to farm. Dried apples were now as precious as the finest silk.

The next morning, the incense was ash and the food nowhere to be found.

So that was how it started, with an offering of cloth and fruit. And that is where it stayed for a bit, until Impa wondered where she would get a whetstone for her knife, shoes for winter, soap to wash with. Every time she wished for something, it would eventually appear in the temple, neatly set before her. Miracles, no doubt, little miracles to ensure survival. Yet...

She did not notice it at first, but the soap had been coarse on her skin. That was perhaps when she’d started paying attention. It was so strange, for a god-gifted soap to be coarse, to be anything less than perfect. Hylia could pluck stars from the sky and keep them as candles, and yet this god had left the soap coarse? Had she insulted them somehow?

But no. The soap was well-made — lovingly made, even, with little floral patterns carved into its surface for no purpose other than decoration. No, the coarseness did not come from disdain: it came from limitations.

The world had ended and it had not yet begun anew. Resources were scarce. Studying the soap closely, she noticed mismatched colours, a just-too-brittle texture. It was made from scraps of old soap bars, scraps that had likely been reused a few too many times already, barely held together by craftsmanship alone. And then, she couldn’t stop noticing. The fabric of her clothes was the old kind Gerudo refugees used to wear, the wetstone carried traces of use, and the shoes’ leather did not seem to come from any animal she knew, but its texture did bear a frightening resemblance to leathery demon wings. These gifts were not made of a god’s power, but from plain, imperfect, mortal materials.

Either this god was exceptionally weakened, or it was not a god at all. A spirit, then. Or more than one, maybe. She could not be sure. It was just that sometimes she caught the faintest whiff of chatter, an argument between the walls. It was never more than a whiff, but Impa’s offerings came to include more food, rice and drink as well as fruit. If these spirits were limited to mortal materials, perhaps they needed mortal sustenance too.

She left offerings every night, taking a portion from her own meal. In the morning it was always eaten, down to the very last crumb.

Time kept moving. It was impossible to say how much of it had passed, how long she’d been alone, but it was probably a while. A while, meaning months to years to half a lifetime to however long it took for one to forget the sound of their own voice, to forget they own a body, to become so used to solitude they startled at the sight of their own hands. She took to leaning against the sword, pressing her ear to the blade to see if she could at least hear a breath, a heartbeat, but of course swords had no need for those. All she did was cut her ear.

Somewhere in this haze Impa failed to recognize her own reflection for a meaningless amount of time and admitted Zelda had been right. She shouldn’t have stayed behind. Time meant nothing to a god, and a mortal could not comprehend its scale. She would lose her mind before she saw her duty finished.

She woke up to a note. It took too long to recognize what it was, too long to remember how to read, too long to parse the words. Thanks for the food! and a childish drawing of a happy little mouse-like creature rubbing its stomach.

She had not cried since she was six or something close to it, lighting incense for her father’s altar. She had forgotten how terrible it felt, how it clogged your nose and left you gasping for air, how it left you wrung out and exhausted, eyes stinging and with a hole in your stomach where your sadness had been. Her tears had blurred the note.

It took too long to remember how to write, to gather the materials, to close her fingers around the brush and hold it steady. The note was neatly placed next to that night’s offering. You are welcome.

Slowly, the sun regained its territory, Demise’s ash and smoke parting before its rays. The ground was still poisoned, but perhaps it might be made fit for farming now. Perhaps.

The food stores would yet last, but Impa was outside as soon as the first light touched the ground. She wiped the dust off the shovel and began to loosen the earth.

It smelled like sulfur and rain. Little leftover sparks of electricity, uprooted by her shovel, traveled up toward her hands, stinging to punish movement. Ever three steps she hit another hard rock of lightning glass, and had to spend precious time digging it out. And still, the ground remained poisoned. No matter how well she prepared it, nothing would grow like this.

A bright flash of red caught her eye and, on impulse, she dug it out. It was a small stone coin of strange design, looking as if it were broken in two, except its edges were deliberate rather than ragged. It looked like a locking mechanism one might see in a temple, meant to protect something precious from those who were not worthy to find the other half. She could not tell you why, but she took it back with her to the temple.

The notes were common now. Little things, little messages, I really really like the rice, I have tried to draw some flowers, Got into a fight with a family of ants today, I’m glad to hear there are still some insects left. Little notes that had become as vital as air. She did not quite understand who she was talking to, what she was even talking to. Spirits of some kind, but none she’d ever heard of. She had not asked what they were. It felt as if they might vanish when she learned their names. An irrational anxiety, but who was still around to judge? The little spirits didn’t.

She lay the coin next to her note and reported I found this outside.

Next morning another coin lay on the altar, a perfect pair with hers. We match! Combine them and something good might happen!

Impa raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and clicked the two coins together. As soon as the two halves formed a circle, the coin began to glow. She startled backwards and would have dropped the coin, if it had not decided to float. It held steady exactly where it’d been when she’d made it, spinning on its axis before dissolving in a soft sprinkle of light and the high-pitched tinging of a chime.

...Something good might happen, hm?

She stepped outside and the dirt smelled of worms and roots, soft and pliable underneath her hands, crawling with little spiders and pillbugs and other life. From just this one tiny patch of land, every trace of poison was gone.

Without meaning to, she spent half the day simply digging, feeling the earth slide beneath her fingers. Then she went to get the seeds.

The farming went quick. Her spirits helped without her asking, and they were clearly adept at some kind of nature magic. The carrots and yams grew big and delicious, the cabbage and beans followed suit, the fruit trees matured in the blink of an eye. Impa even managed to cultivate some rice paddies, which the climate shouldn’t quite have allowed. Apparently, the spirits liked to paddle through them, using a makeshift raft from her fruit tree twigs. The sun broke through the last of the ash, and it became warm enough for them to do so comfortably.

One morning she sat outside drinking her tea, watching the sun rise and listening to one or two notes of birdsong, proof the land was recovering. And when she sat very still, when she tried not to pay too much attention and focused on the spiritual power that ran through her veins, she could feel a few little bodies, furred like mice. Sitting on her shoulder, watching the sun rise with her.