Zelda's Minish Study - Part III (Commission) (Patreon)

[The following was written as a commission. Thank you so much for your support!

The following is a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild fanfiction. It features a normal-sized Zelda interacting with millions of micro-sized people. Contains themes of micro-sized interactions; crush/destruction; mass abduction; handheld/fingers; spit/partially-eaten food; ear vore/ear play+ear wax; footwear; sweat.]

The world around them was disturbingly alien. It was a jungle, just as humid and sprawling, but literally twisted and knotted, following the rules of what was effectively a different dimension. Golden trees wide enough to walk across stretched and tangled for relative miles to the minish, absolutely countless in their quantity, seemingly spreading endlessly in all directions from where they had been scattered. Rather than grow upwards, these trees extended and curved horizontally, creating a thick canopy out of the wide spanning forests. Some survivors found themselves caught in the knots of these fibers, or otherwise trapped in the wreckage of buildings tied-up in those nets; others fell all the way to the planet’s surface, a flat terrain of pink-white ground hidden in the shadows of the all-encompassing overgrowth. As most filtered down to that level inevitably, they gathered themselves in bunches by the bases of these bizarre trees, stabilizing themselves while the restless environment eventually went more still – only as still as a sleeping person, for the land was always alive, there atop the goddess’s head.

Hopelessness ran deep in the fragmented communities. Of the thousands sentenced to that otherworldly place, only a fraction survived the trialing transfer, those hundreds trickling towards a common middle within the goddess’s scalp. Though it was dark beneath the jungle, the minish utilized light magic to illuminate their surroundings; for better and for worse, they discovered nothing else creeping in the shadows, their species abandoned and alone. Along the way, they collected whatever could still be put to use from the ruins tangled in the trees, retrieving remnants of their previous lives and stockpiling resources for their survival. After having endured so much, the travel to the center itself was unforgiving, but there was no other option than to push onward ever more, lest they gamble their lives on trying to live in that world without the help of others. Some very well tried staking it out on their own, quietly disappearing into the unmapped wilderness…

Most of the minish, however, kept together within pitiful packs – joining with others, combining forces, and pooling resources. The adventure was harrowing for all as they adapted to the environment so unlike the earth and nature they used to thrive in, but just as they had, they used the hugeness of the world to their advantage. The hair fibers were truly trees, capable of being shaved into log-like strands; micro-cuts of hair were just like twigs, picked up into bundles so that they could later be built into tools or to fortify construction. Before the minish had even all united, they were already planning the designs of their survival – and beyond.

An entire minish-day of marching through humidity finally brought the population to one place. They established themselves as a tent city spread out around a ravine of the jungle – the natural hairline of the goddess, where the tree-like fibers were parted and fresh air drifted over the scalp. While foundations were under construction, those that had been dropped into leadership roles collaborated on critical decisions; they shared knowledge of the world, discussed the logistics of survival, and developed the schematics of their future. Though the circumstances were bleak, the minish fostered pride and motivation, clinging to their culture of adaptability before commencing with architecture they had never before developed.

Another minish-day passed. Tents turned into shelters with walls and roofs. A proper government was voted into power. Factions of minish were designated to tasks of cultivation; stripping trees for their fibers, digging ditches through dandruff, transforming scalp into farmlands. Using magic and alchemy, the minish could grow miraculous crops to be eaten and strain sweat into drinkable water. What first appeared to be a tangled swamp of unusable resources was in fact a fertile forest of survival possibilities. It was certainly a far cry from the civilization they once knew, but as it became more understood that reuniting with the Empire would be unlikely, the minish accustomed themselves with these new rules and routines, building a sense of community – a colony that would bravely continue the Empire’s legacy from atop the goddess’s crown.

Societal developments proceeded better than planned. The huge trunks of hair fibers had their bases burrowed into to create homes. Roads and pathways were built so that resources could be shared plentifully from one sector to another. The ruins of the old Empire were gradually harvested out of the tangles and repurposed into fortifications that would ideally endure the harsh environment. There was eventually a day where the minish awoke and felt the air of peace once again; families planned out their futures, engineers designed superior structures, and a culture of togetherness turned despair into perseverance.

That was until the jungle rumbled with life – the goddess had stirred, and the slightest of her movements spun a storm of restlessness. After a minish week of dormancy, she rose to some height unimaginable to minish-kind, unleashing an air-trembling roar of a yawn. A routine day of expanding civilization cascaded into panic as the population withdrew into shelters, plagued by a planet whose gravity shifted as unpredictably as a half-awake woman.

There was a long quiet as society sat sheltered wherever they could. People were packed into each other’s homes, desperate to outlast the tremors, whispering reassurances and worries as they waited. Suddenly, after it had seemed the movements had ceased, they all heard a distinct grinding sound in the distance – a ripping roar of noise like a daunting tornado on the horizon. The minish prayed for the pride of their colony, bracing for the worst–

But the event was too overwhelming. It flashed before them, a wall of material that zoomed through the jungle with uncanny effortlessness. Before the foreign matter could be identified, it was upon them, racing through their village of hair fibers – a comb of destruction, heartlessly uprooting everything they had worked for in only a matter of seconds. And after that one sweep through the colony, which had already abducted some fraction of minish into its differently-alien world of bristles, it swept again, and again, and again. Each surge would take another fraction from whatever was left, diminishing all the gains until the minish society was nearly reset to where it had been – a collection of scattered souls entangled in a jungle of hair, surrounded by remnants of what they almost achieved.

---

Blue eyes reflected their own glazed appearance back at Zelda. Morning sunlight peeked through the curtains, streaks in her room that she avoided while first waking up for the day. Her duties as a princess began much like the rising sun, and she had only so much time to prepare or otherwise keep a list of royal processes waiting. Posed wearily in front of a body-length mirror in her nightgown, she started her routine as always, methodically brushing through her blonde hair. After every few strokes, Zelda would drift her fingers through the long, silky fibers, paying no mind to the few tangles that developed during her sleep; her thoughts swirled from dreaminess, wishing she could afford more time to herself rather than kingdom affairs.

She nearly surprised herself by remembering what she had laid out on her desk – she gasped delightedly, “The minish!” Turning hurriedly away from the mirror, Zelda was then immediately upon her samples of minish civilization, the fragments of an empire she dug up, bottled, and then spread apart to be studied. Her excitement resonated up the legs of her desk and across its surface; she steadied herself immediately, giggling shyly as she loomed over the five patches. She was relieved that the minish were not actually a detailed dream, but an incredible discovery known only to herself – a pet project, at least until she knew enough to share her findings with anyone else.

“Good morning, my minish friends~” Zelda hummed, caring enough to speak in a whisper, though she only assumed how effective her quietness actually was. “Did everyone sleep soundly? I’m sure my bedroom must feel so much safer than out in the wild~” The fond thought drew her hand to her heart, believing herself to be a noble savior – if only Hyrule could be protected so easily.

“... Mm, what is this?” Zelda muttered quietly, crouching low so that her gaze was nearly level with the desk. She peered closely at what she found between each of her samples: distinguished strands that connected the separated locations, or as she then deduced, trails. Her brow perked to its peak; “What a development! And all this, only overnight? Astounding…!” No longer could her volume be kept down, too elated to consider the consequences.

Though the trails themselves were hair-thin, their length was considerable, a relatively major engineering achievement. To understand what the trails were made of, Zelda casually dissected a path with a fingertip, dabbing the material off her desk and into the grasp of her fingerprints. Rotated under her vision, she could barely make out the speck-like ruins as something like stone for cobble roads and wood for bridges – mixed into that mess were blindsided trailmakers, made into castaways stranded in a maze of skin. “Such dedication,” Zelda commented with a smile. “It must be important that your civilization reconnect, hm?” Mercilessly, the pads of her forefinger and thumb swirled together, dismissing the minish feat as just dust on her fingertips.

There were numerous tests and experiments Zelda was eager to begin, some thoughts having come to her while she dreamed, but her schedule was already tightly packed. Religious rituals awaited her, and so she stepped aside from her science project and returned to the mirror, her image reflecting more brightness than before. She continued to comb her hair thoroughly, which would later be braided and styled by her aides; the most mundane part of her day, which she wished could be enhanced by bringing minish along with her.

Zelda froze mid-motion. The brush was halfway through a stroke when she finally remembered the one experiment she began. Her expression faltered and tilted as she put her hair up to the mirror, scanning the threads for signs of society – any indication that the minish she seeded into her hair had, in fact, survived the night. “Oh dear,” she worried, carefully sifting individual hairs between her fingertips, “h-how could I forget about all of them? They might be small, but… they were on my head…!”

By searching her scalp with a hand mirror instead, Zelda eventually found and felt the evidence she was looking for. A gritty material crumbled under her fingertips, likely a leftover structure; by spreading out the hairline, she exposed tiny dots of minish civilization, where bunkers between the bases of hair fibers had been built – and subsequently ravaged by her hair brush. Looking more closely and angling the mirror just right, she could tell apart tiny roads and shelters, determining then that the micro-sized mites were minish themselves, many of them clinging to her blonde color as if resisting the rush of a hurricane. Unfortunately for Zelda, little more could be made out coherently; after so many brushes, the diminutive society was in tatters, but the fact that they had persevered through the night was proof of their remarkable durability – permission, Zelda assumed, to expect more from the tiny people.

“S-Sorry about… that,” Zelda mumbled mostly to herself, curving her attention towards the hair brush in her other hand. Not wanting to overlook any crucial details, she took the time to scan the bristles and the loose hairs they had caught. Concentrating on a particular knot, she squinted to analyze a dire scene: within whirls of hairs were remnants of a budding society, ruins and corpses tangled in the hairs Zelda had effortlessly removed. A graveyard and a wasteland, the sparse survivors went unfound under the enormous blue eye, the lake-like pupil unable to pinpoint their misery amidst the devastation contained in her hairbrush. Deciding that nothing could be efficiently salvaged, Zelda executed judgment, peeling the hair and minish contents out of the bristles, rolling the mass into a small ball, and then discarding it all into a waste bin that her maids would clean out later.

Finished with that unceremonious act, Zelda cheerily turned her attention back to the lasting minish weaved in her finely-combed locks. She was tempted to touch the budding civilization, but she restrained herself from causing any worse damages. “I must be careful from now on,” she said to herself. “I have such fragile company with me~ but what impressive work you’ve done so far! To build all this, and while I slept so soundly…”

Though it was the achievement of the minish, Zelda herself glowed with pride. “I imagined this wouldn’t even last the night,” she chuckled, “but it seems this experiment will continue for quite some time. Oh, I must make records~'' There was only so much time that morning to commit to science, however, as Zelda had her royal schedule to attend to; while grabbing a notebook, she also arranged her clothes for the day, changing out of her sleep attire and into her ceremonial gowns. “Mmm, how to refer to this experiment…? Perhaps it should be considered a colony surviving atop my head…

“Aha! The crown colony!” Zelda decreed with a giggle, delightfully recording the title in her notes. Alongside the most immediate details, she also drew a simple illustration of the minish circumstance in her hair, outlining their current adaptations. It was a challenge for Zelda to finally put down her quill and notes; “I wish I could spend the whole day studying you all~ but as it is, I’m already running late…”

Having much to do, Zelda hurriedly stepped into her sandals and skipped to the door. Even after waving farewell to the other samples and exiting her room, inspiration flowed through her thoughts, electrified with new ideas and methods for researching the minish. More than any other day from her busy agenda, she eagerly awaited having her own time again to continue where she left off.

---

Minish life across the landscape desk had been bustling with activity all throughout the Hylian night. It was a week of restlessness and darkness for the divided empire. The goddess had abandoned them, no longer looking over them from past the horizon, leaving them to survive on their own in an alien world. The communities, separated by many miles of flat terrain between them, still recoiled from the overwhelming attacks and actions that had them decimated – long lists of casualties and damages came from each location, each struck with tragedies far larger than anything the whole empire had ever faced.

But in that desolate quiet, there was a fade of relief. The trembling they first thought would be ceaseless had ceased; the groaning of huge movements, the uncertainty of when destruction might spark, had all simmered from its paranoid boil. From the various ruins, lives were rescued and belongings were salvaged – signs of hope that would be vital in motivating the population. Ahead of them were long, grueling days of work in order to repair what had been wrecked, tasked with the incredible mission of reviving the empire there within the goddess’s home.

Every able body was put to work, and that included Jokari, who exhausted quickly when put to do menial labor. He was grouped into large crowds of survivors that retrieved remnants of civilization, methodically circling through the city and assessing what can and could not be salvaged. They worked under magic light, surveying the stormswept destruction of what once were neighborhoods and markets. Some fared better than others from the heavenly transition, but some entire buildings – streets of them at a time – had succumbed to fissures in the earth, swallowed into the dirt or collapsed across uneven terrain. As long as Jokari had been alive, not even the worst weather had created so much chaos, yet it was the will of a lone woman that had unwoven the fabric of their society.

Never did that fact fade from the forefront of Jokari’s mind. From every detail he glimpsed, he remembered the goddess, remembered that it was her doing all around him, her presence to be found in every architectural scar she was responsible for. He had no choice but to undo her results, but he held on to a secret feeling as he worked to uplift fallen walls and clear out crumbled roads, that he could simply savor the scenery by himself – to appreciate the goddess and exist in the remains of her touch.

The most he could manifest of that desire was provided to him when the government began a new initiative. Two minish days after being left by the goddess, the first scouts from the other samples arrived at Jokari’s city, the sample situated in the center, to convene for communications; it was decided then that the five segments of the empire would reunite and pool their resources via trade routes that would link them all together. Food and water were scarce after the transition, and there was no indication they would find nutrition elsewhere on the wooden plane. Farming efforts were still early in development, and when given the choice between plowing fields or making trails, Jokari volunteered himself to be leader of a table-wide expedition – an opportunity he would use to get closer to the goddess.

Indeed, it was that selfishness that drove him to pack up his lab, books, and research – as much of his life that he was able to travel with – so that he could relocate to the empire city closest to where the goddess stood. The common folk had not yet accepted their reality as mere, tiny things in a world much bigger than they could have imagined; not many knew the truth that the goddess had planted them atop a desk made of wood, that they were collections in a gigantic bedroom where their captor was then asleep. Jokari predicted she would inevitably be there again, looming high over the horizon, her waist level with their lowly civilization. To be any measure closer to her greatness was all Jokari desired in those days, sick with envy that there was a population lucky enough to behold her true scale.

The empire proceeded with its improvements, bouncing back from the brink with effectiveness that surprised Jokari when he and his expedition arrived at the ledge-based location. Some homes were so cleanly fixed that they were unmistakable from before the tragedies, if not for the otherworldly backdrop. It was a humble beginning with much still left to do, but like the rest of his people, Jokari adapted swiftly, approaching the challenge with his head held high. Upon entering the city, he initially took a deep, satisfying breath, believing he could feel the essence of the goddess from when she was nearly on top of them.

Jokari gradually settled into his new situation, as did the rest of minish society. He established a lab for his research when he was not helping with reconstruction efforts, doing the jobs he was designated while always pining for that faraway horizon. In her absence, Jokari cherished the evidence of her excellence, taking time to survey the most devastated places – where her hair had fallen into the city, a fiber thick enough to bulldoze buildings. He traveled down the lines of destruction where the hair once was, treasuring any speck-sized remains of her golden hair that could be uncovered from the ruins.

It was before a steady routine could be determined when the realm rumbled with activity. It was felt in the air and as tremors buzzing from beneath their foundations; it stirred Jokari that morning, a sensation that leaped him out of his bed and smacked into his balcony. He stared outward, obsessively looking and waiting, peering past the rooftops impatiently – yet when she appeared, he shuddered to his knees, like any other there to witness her arrival. Sounds of horror piped up from the streets as she was soon upon them, a woman the size of a world standing before them.

She was the morning sun of a new Hylian day. The sunlight that seeped into her bedroom glistened off her forest of hair, a sparkling effect that cast a dawn-like glow onto the empire’s pieces. Her presence took away the breaths of entire populations, suspending them in their awe as she did not immediately act upon them; her giant eyes unmistakably looked back at them, glances and blinks that nonetheless petrified people right where they stood when it was aimed at them. There was uproar and unrest, yet the goddess was passive, seemingly tending to herself – brushing the very hair that dazzled so many, Jokari the most among them.

Like lightning, it happened without warning: the goddess made contact, plunging a finger into the minish atmosphere, right down into an established trade route. The fingertip dashed across the terrain of polished wood, literally sweeping away the days of labor and severing a vital vein of empire connection. Most tragic was the loss of innocent caravans, lists of unsuspecting victims and their wares, suddenly attacked by an unavoidable pillar of flesh. They were cleaned away like dust; Jokari observed every moment, miles away from the carnage, yet as infatuated as though he were there, fleeing from the unfeeling digit. From the length of her arm arched overhead to her subtle, giant-scale shifts in expression, he was dedicated to every detail – as the goddess recorded her notes, so too did Jokari record his own, and with just as much delight as her.

Civilization was at a standstill until the goddess finally moved away, her massive pressure no longer exerted. For hours of minish time, they were bound to watch her rituals, tasks that were plain and ordinary, yet innately magnificent at her magnitude of size. So insignificant to her, she had no shame in changing clothes well within the view of thousands of onlookers, either unaware she would fetch their interest or unbothered to know they would witness her undressing. Jokari was melted in his seat outside as he watched every moment, embracing his privileges – he could feel the wind of her movements as her giant robes were donned, he could smell the aroma of her body as it breezed over the desk. Surely every minish did, yet Jokari was sure he alone truly appreciated his lowly place, gawking at the goddess up until she was fully out of sight and disappeared into the vast, foggy distance.

The lockdown across the empire was loosened. Little lives exited from shelters to perceive the results of the goddess’s will. The desperate tried to decipher the meaning of her actions, to find a message of what she wanted of them, but without divine clarification, they slowly returned to the empire’s agenda, working again to restore their broken homes. Jokari, however, remained locked up in his lab, dedicating his days to a newly inspired passion project – to create a telescope with which to observe the goddess more finely, so that no detail could be missed.

---

When no one was there to notice her, Zelda sped through the castle halls, with bundles of her dress held in her hands as she hurried. Though not an outright run, she moved with haste the moment she was free from her royal duties. From the morning to the afternoon, she was preoccupied with conducting rituals and attending meetings – the usual tasks of a princess, but that day, her patience had more quickly run thin. In every activity she was involved with, she silently wished it would end that much faster, eager to return to her bedroom where she could commence with her passion: more minish research.

Sweat dotted her brow, resulting from her rushed behavior. Zelda wiped the wetness away, but not without considering the crown colony. They had joined her throughout her day, hidden atop her head even after royal aides braided her hair into a strict traditional style. Though she was willing to afford losing the settlement if it came to it, Zelda did hope they would last – she thought of their microscopic ordeals, how even a few beads of sweat meant floods, or how a touch could rearrange their landscape. There were moments during the day that she did forget about the colony, times where she scratched her scalp and only flinched seconds afterwards; she scanned her nails, worried if any minish homes were lodged within, or if any others fell scattered around the castle because of her carelessness.

“Ouch,” Zelda winced, slowed by only one matter: the condition of her sandals. “These poor, old things…” she quietly complained, stopping to lift a foot into her hand to be massaged. Her sandals might have held up over her one-hundred years of sleep, but their age had become apparent, with the leather cracking and fraying, the shape of her sole permanently impressed inside. Rather than endure, Zelda chose to slip out of the footwear and carry them back barefoot; she hurried just like she had, giggling as she approached the sanctuary of her room.

The door closed hard behind her, as if physically denying any additional interruptions. Zelda sighed with relief as she stepped into the middle of her room, her eyes glistening as she found the minish civilizations spread across her desk, right where she had left them. She hummed pleasantly, “Greetings, everyone~ I’m so sorry to have abandoned you for so long. I returned as swiftly as I could~” A shiver of excitement bounced her to the desk; her sandals dropped from her hooked fingers, letting them clap onto the floor while she hunched over the five samples. Her eyes widened with amazement, “Ah! Y-You all seem… active!” She laughed into her hand, looking more closely at what buzzed across the desk: movement along those newly-made hair-thin roads, the bustling flow of traffic. “Oh my, you work remarkably fast! You must be trading supplies between each other – good thinking, minish~”

Notes deserved to be made, so Zelda retrieved her logbook from a shelf and began writing down the newest details. She particularly pointed out the speed at which the minish developed and updated the roads – completed in a matter of hours while she was away, despite the workload for such a task. Indeed, comparing the miniature world on her desk to a map of Hyrule suggested it would take days or weeks to make so much progress; she dwelled on the different scales of time, but also thought fondly of how lovely it would be if Hylian roads were constructed as quickly.

She had tried copying the minish roads as a drawing in her logbook, but a better idea popped into mind. “I always forget about this feature,” Zelda muttered to herself as she retrieved her personal Sheikah Slate from beside her bed. She switched to the camera and hovered over her desk, positioned for a birds-eye view photograph. “This is much easier,” she giggled, “I should have been taking pictures to begin with! Hah, in fact…” Focusing on the central sample, Zelda used the camera function to zoom-in on the location, enlarging the image of ongoing minish life – but only by so much, before the limits of the tech were reached. It provided a better picture of what a minish city looked like, but the low quality left many details unclear. Zelda pouted with disappointment as she peered past the Sheikah Slate, “It would be so nice to get to see even one of you a little more closely…”

But the idea did not go to waste. Though the Sheikah Slate was limited in its picture-taking abilities, it was possible it could be improved. Beyond just an enhanced camera, Zelda imagined a more intricate device – a rush of ideas spilled from her head and into her logbook, becoming a list of notes and little diagrams for a future project. “I’m sure Purah would have some input,” she mumbled idly, “I should talk to her soon…”

While nose-deep into her notes, Zelda felt a lump with her tongue – a pesky piece of leftover food caught between her teeth. She grimaced without turning away from the logbook; effectively alone and in private, she gracelessly fetched the chunk out into a pinch of fingernails, removing a soggy clump of leaf from a salad eaten earlier. Rolled into a ball, she initially intended to flick the material away, but a thought occurred to her when she glanced down at her minish samples and the network of roads they had established.

---

The commencement of a newly-assigned district minister was traditionally a ceremony that saw hundreds arrive for the event, but when it came to Jokari’s governmental promotion – a reward for his contributions towards the empire’s reconnection efforts – the crowd he earned left him wanting. It was a title he did not seek nor ask for, but was designated to him in the empire’s time of need; despite that fact, he yet desired for proper recognition, or anything better than the few lines of minish folk that arrived to applaud his rank. It was dire times, however, and most of the population was well into the work of rebuilding the empire, making the most of the peaceful days they had without a troublesome goddess interfering with their lives.

The ceremony had just ended – a minister’s pin was applied to Jokari’s coat, and a final speech officiated his rank – when a familiar, faraway rumbling grew into a roar of windy sounds. Many knew right then the cause of such a noisy storm, while others had to confirm for themselves, rushing outdoors or up to their balconies, to perceive that which thundered closer and closer to their world: the goddess had returned, her distant white-robed image becoming clearer as she approached within miles of their civilization. All over the landscape of a desk, minish people broke into hysteria, including the plaza of Jokari’s promotion – a scene of orderly functions that devolved instantly into zigzagged paranoia.

Yet Jokari stood on the stage where he had been promoted while dozens of others swarmed past him. He appeared hypnotized looking into the sky, watching that immense figure of a woman grow more encompassing of that view. He withstood the tremors up until there was a loud clap of sound from down below, the effect of the goddess’s sandals dropping to the bedroom floor, which shocked him into a shudder. Jokari collapsed against a building wall, holding himself steady as a night-like shadow spread suddenly over everything – the darkness of the goddess, the shade of her grinning face arched high above like the moon.

The atmosphere immediately fell uneasy under her studious gaze, the populations fearful of another strike of divine judgment. Though it had been minish days since her last engagement with the people, they still vividly remembered her actions then, how easily she wiped away a trade route before disappearing. Jokari worried as much as any other minish, but it were his other emotions that made him captivated by the goddess’s slow, heavy movements; he was mystified by her methods, wondering what her intent was, especially so when she blotched the sky with a tablet-shaped obelisk marked with the design of an eye. His diligence to infer the meaning of her giant expressions was what separated him from the others, who thought nothing of the goddess’s personality – seen only as a force of nature, or something stronger.

Entranced as he was, Jokari attempted to make sense of the goddess’s will, as though trying to foresee the future. Yet even as dedicated as he was at watching her, he could never guess why she leaned away and picked at her mouth – not until the reasons were dropped onto them. Jokari gasped, for there was a moment when their eyes seemingly connected, minish to goddess, but as her hand craned into view and descended dangerously, he realized that it was the district he was minister of that had received her special attention.

A pinch of two fingertips came within a mile of the district before finally stopping. As much as it hung frozen in the sky, so too had all minish life been suspended, heads staring steeply upwards at the divine presentation. It was close enough to distinguish her fingerprints in detail, swirling patterns of pathways that held the liquid moisture of her salivation; wide enough to stamp out their city if she so chose, the fingertips instead separated slowly, wriggling against one another so that they would dismiss the alien contents it had been carrying. The minish understood then that the intervention was specifically a delivery, and that the goddess had given them no time to prepare accepting it. Even Jokari was snapped out of his obsessiveness, his mortality overriding his odd fascinations – as the vague material above became unstuck from the ends of fingernails, he dashed indoors and hurried upstairs to his newly appointed office.

Just as Jokari stumbled into the room– Pplhooooohmm! A quake hammered the district, shaking every building and the residents within, casting almost everyone off their feet if they had not been bunkered somewhere sturdy. It was a tremendously wet impact, striking the land not with a crash, but a squelch that overpowered the noises of minish destruction and despair with its liquid slush. Jokari crawled to the large windows behind his desk, quivering as he pulled himself up and awed at the landmark that was then a part of his district. The goddess had delivered some mysterious mass from her mouth, something the scale of a mountain – callously dropped into the corner of civilization, oozing with a viscous fluid that progressively spilled into the surrounding neighborhood. It was a vague, lumpy shape; green, but nearly black, chunked with sparse other colors and glistening with wetness. Jokari hesitated to comprehend what it was, but the wafting odor and humidity that it resonated made him accept the belittling fact: the goddess’s delivery was food, some bit of vegetation that was almost dissolved from being trapped in her teeth.

Was it a punishment? Was it a blessing? Neither concept offered relief to the sickness that sank within Jokari. He kept looking up to the goddess, expecting an explanation, but her smile said nothing to him, an expression that was at most curious how his people would respond, just as it seemed she always was. Eventually, he had to stare into the swamp-green mountain and ask himself what to do with it – it would only be so long, he knew, before his constituents were asking him the same questions.

But before any decision could be considered, the goddess was in motion again. Though it may have been many agonizing minutes that the minish endured, it was only seconds to her, and so she calmly moved forward across the flat plains of the desk. Jokari watched her travel across districts – truthfully just a shift in how she leaned – to where she paused again, directly above the empire’s central district. He worried for them, but was distracted by what orbited closer to his own district, a threat that could smother everything in an instant: the goddess’s bust, held loose in her curtain of a robe, hanging closer to her desk than perhaps she realized. As long as the goddess extended herself, her breasts hovered over thousands, facelessly casting fear onto a population still yet stunned by her delivery – an event that was about to be replicated upon a different target.

The four corner districts heard a distant wind, followed by the rhythm of waves like the sea. Many had seen the event, but were too far to calculate its effects: the goddess had delivered to the central district a gigantic glob of her spit. It initially melted from her lips by a long strand before finally snapping loose – a bombardment of thick, aromatic fluid that gushed furiously into the city’s densest region. Like a slow-motion explosion, it expanded destructively and remorselessly, smashing apart the buildings they had been repairing all week, flooding the streets they had been fixing. The spit overpowered everything, capturing debris and minish alike, washing everything out and away from where it had struck; minish struggled out of the liquid onto highground, but the constant oozing was rising fast after them. Yet it also spread like heavy syrup, slow and steady, providing time for the farther reaches of the population to escape – even watch and awe, as audiences were far enough that the saliva pooled and seeped too thin to be anymore of a danger. The storm was settled as quickly as it had developed, leaving the minish with a city that had been blindsided by a typhoon, according to the whim of one woman.

Yet just a minute after, when the minish had collectively exhaled from exhaustion, another godly attack struck the center district. Faster than they could realize, a giant finger flew down to where the spit had cratered – with no pause or hesitation, it dipped right into the thickest middle of the saliva lake. It crunched into the architecture and debris, swirling through the swampy ruins and collecting some amount into the hook-shape of its nail; it stole a selection of the catastrophe, taking with it the unfortunate survivors of that area. Those that could claw their way up from the wet wreckage found themselves in a floating island, abducted from the desk and scanned under a tremendous pupil that defined their sky. They wallowed and waded in the spit as it dried into the texture of her fingerprints – the same terrain they studied earlier – but for only so long, as the tips soon coiled together in dismissal. The goddess’s hand reeled back under the desk’s horizon, disappearing with the minish that would never be seen again.

Jokari’s jaw was dropped at the window. Having watched every second of the saliva droplet overtake the central district, he could only peel himself off the glass when he heard banging at his office door. Even then, he staggered away from the view, dragging himself to business; he wished, almost fully, that he had never left the central district, and that instead of being barraged by a scrap of food, he may have succumbed to the goddess’s own spit, his final moments spent swimming in her liquid essence.

---

“Oh no, that was too much…” Zelda whimpered, mid-lick of her lips. Her concern pointed down to where she had spat – an act most unlike her, exactly why it was so exhilarating to try. Graceless, immature, foul; Zelda thought of all the words she would be called if she had behaved that way in front of anyone, yet when it came to matters involving almost a million minish, she could entirely enjoy a moment of being so mannerless. It was for science, after all, that she had deposited saliva into the micro-sized community, and in truth, a gift meant to assist their survival. Indeed, Zelda had rewarded them precious water, but she realized too late how easy it was to overdo it. “I-Is everyone okay? Oh, it was just one little droplet…”

She prodded the spot without thinking of any consequences – she never would have to, blind to the reality that her soft touch had done more harm than good. Though Zelda peeked into what she took in her fingernail, she felt only guilt for the flooded destruction. As if to write off the tragedy from history, she quickly removed her hand and scrubbed the tips into the hip of her dress. Unaware she had abandoned and entangled some minish into the fabrics, Zelda happily continued with taking notes, recording her offering of sustenance as overly generous.

With there being so much to write down, Zelda pulled up her chair and took a seat at the desk, considerate enough to keep a gap between her and the edge. She switched back and forth between her logbook and her Sheikah Slate, fastly filling up page after page; she occasionally leered close over some samples to study their activity, hopeful the population would catch on and begin distributing the resources she gave them. It seemed that was the case, or otherwise, the minish were simply attracted to her offerings for some other reasons – that was the only point her smile faded, dimmed with the desire to perceive more of the minish than she could.

“They’re so advanced and cultured. Surely they could provide some useful feedback, if they could…” Zelda sighed, after turning her head away from her samples first, and theorized how communication with the minish could function. Even if they did speak a non-Hylian language, sparse dialogue was better than none at all. Just a one-way message from either side could have significant effects; the thought inspired Zelda for a straightforward approach at the challenge. “Could I simply… listen to them…? Hmm…”

The sample closest to her was the most convenient to try – lest she risk another sweeping accident with her hair. Zelda knelt from her chair and put her head level with the desk, lining up her pointed, Hylian ear to be against the ledge. Though it was outside the corner of her vision, she knew the sample was as close as it could get, with only a couple inches of deskspace between where it was planted and where their land ended as a cliff. All of her focus went to her ear, listening, holding her breath, closing her eyes – but if she heard anything at all, it was ambient noise.

“So much for Hylian hearing,” Zelda scoffed under her breath, removing herself from the desk and facing it again with a disappointed expression. “Unfortunately, you all might just be too small…” But the princess was not yet out of ideas, having considered one other option that took the logic a step further. The thought alone tickled her spine, but it was worthwhile to test if she could hear the minish if they were in her ear itself.

And so Zelda lifted herself higher and readied a finger for picking out a fraction of minish life. She initially aimed at that closest region to attempt another communication test with, but her mind changed, believing that area had endured enough after her offering of food. Another corner sample was picked out, the least yet to be damaged or experimented, chosen after she glazed over its clean construction – a condition that changed radically the moment her fingernail dug into the city, dissecting one-quarter from the whole. She slid the portion aside, then carefully transferred the sandy piece of land onto her fingertip, where it was then cautiously taken towards her right ear. Zelda blinked, thinking herself silly in that situation, yet she insisted on the test – she plunged the fingertip into the canal, and with it, several hundred minish people and their homes.

She meant to place the land down gently onto a ridge of skin, but in trying to put the minish as deep in as possible, the result was messy and tragic – though she saw none of it, and equally thought as little. Zelda concentrated completely on whether or not she could hear the minish, even if it were cries of confusion or the murmur of crowds. Yet as she sat there, paused and keenly listening, she heard no more noise than a subtle crackling, which gradually quieted with stillness. Zelda held her hands together for one last hope, but another few seconds of silence confirmed nothing more.

“Nothing? Ah… If even this does not work, then it must be impossible for minish to be heard. How terribly unfortunate for them… I would love to hear what they must be thinking!” Zelda giggled, clearly unbothered by such a discovery. Her research would continue nonetheless, which meant returning that fraction of a sample back to the desk – at least, that was her plan. However, when her finger hooked into her ear to remove the minish, she found more wax than she did architecture. “Ergh… Oh…” Zelda winced, realizing that she had irrecoverably swirled the civilization through her ear canal, scattering the selection of minish all through the sparse material within. Her fingers cringed outside her ear, unable to change what had happened; “Ahh… Th-They’re definitely stuck in… m-my ear…”

With no means to retrieve the slice of civilization, Zelda thus repurposed the minish in her ear as a new, unintentional colony to live off her body. Although it had been unplanned to leave the minish there, the princess soon wondered what effects such an environment would have on the tiny people; she imagined the relative safety of the cavern-like place, and the utility of ear wax that could be harvested and shaped. Of course, the colony would be only one itch away from critical devastation, but if the minish atop her scalp could survive as long as they had, Zelda assumed her ear would provide better shelter. After stroking her lobe sensitively, she took to a blank page in her notes to begin a fresh log of developments.

The concept of body-based minish colonies had quickly overtaken much of Zelda’s fascination over the species. Though fragile, their adaptability thus far had proven extraordinary, and the princess was constantly thinking of other areas she could plant and test them. However, there were only so many places on her own body she could afford as land for a minish population; sitting in her chair, her bare feet kicked and squeezed as her thoughts spun, until she became enamored with a particular idea – inspired by the soreness of her feet, she thought of her old sandals and the possibilities they could provide.

---

It had been hours of minish time since the meteoric deliveries struck the cities. Though the initial outburst of panic had subsided, the people remained restless in the aftershocks, always watching out for the goddess looming around as they were directed to different duties. Jokari had been tasked – privileged, he considered – with leading teams to the mountain of food matter, which was to be mined and made into valuable rations. It was a mere scrap of vegetation unwedged from between the goddess’s teeth, but to the desperate and dislocated, it was a generous resource that would last the community for weeks. The odor and humidity that resonated from the material did not dissuade any from respecting it as the food it was, but those were definitely details that Jokari immersed himself into as he performed his part of the work: packaging the saliva-soaked salad leaf for transport across the segmented empire.

The job was involved enough to keep Jokari so busy that he lost sight of the goddess. While loading stocks of food matter onto a wagon, he happened to look at the horizon and only then noticed that the giant was missing – only briefly absent, having curled away and under the landscape table. The rumblings of her presence could still be detected as she rummaged for something unseen, something far and surely huge; as if to tame Jokari’s curiosity specifically, the items were then revealed, lifted up from the goddess’s floor and into the sky. They hovered high above the empire, suspended by just a pinch of fingers, a pair of sandals each larger than mountains – each big enough to annihilate all five samples together under a single step. Crowds were horrified by the footwear as they hovered overhead, a place for them being picked out somewhere between the selections, though nowhere was far enough to not disrupt and disturb the thousands of lives that the sandals dwarfed.

The world trembled when the pair was finally set down, arriving as a magnificent monument of old, brown leather. Their massiveness made a wake of reactions across the desk, the minish people exposed to the celestial items of the goddess’s realm – her lowly sandals towered high above any minish construct, every detail of its age and wear amplified for all to witness. With its debut fell a breath of its musty aroma that spread swiftly to the samples, a wind made warm by how recently they were worn; within minutes of beholding the gigantic shoes, the minish people had also to endure the leather odor and its atmospheric effects, the air itself turning rough and bitter against the population. Some unfortunate few were not distant enough to be spared the worst of the sandals, as those that had been trekking the recently-established trade routes were suddenly overwhelmed by a ceiling of soles descending upon them, an attack too wide to escape. They were crushed unnoticed beneath the placement of the sandals, and so too were the roads broken and smeared, undoing entire days of labor with an unmovable blockade.

A disease of uncertainty then swept the empire sections, left to debate the goddess’s obtuse intentions with the footwear, but Jokari was gravely sure of his theory – a guess that would be proven terrifyingly true. After placing her sandals on the desk, the goddess retrieved an epic-scale tool, a divine blade that was drawn to Jokari’s province first. As it dove down from the sky point-forward, crowds divided in a craze, rushing away from where they expected touchdown; there was nothing that could resist the sharpened edge as it cut into the city, blitzing through the streets in a singular, uninterrupted slice. It made its cut through the territory as though it were sand, fissuring the sample into two halves; the cut was clean and quick, but the damages were brutal wherever the wall of metal passed, buildings crumbled to their base and the ground broken into sharded rubble.

Jokari was pushed around by the flow of crowds, but otherwise held his position by the hill of food matter, observing where the knife traveled from a place of relative safety. The blade came dangerously close to his location, appearing in a loud rumble of noise – zipping past emotionlessly, it continued away just as quickly, leaving a fissured trail of destruction. It was, in fact, an exact line that decided which half was which, a disaster that left hundreds awestruck nearby as they wondered what purpose the cut served. After cutting the city in half, the knife flew into the sky and twisted directions, changed so that its sharpened point was leveled flat instead – so that it could be dug under one of the halves, pried off the desk and lifted into the air. It was an explosive feat that geysered dust in all directions out from the fissure; one side watched as half the land rose upwards, while the other saw that side sinking away. It was too late and too risky for anyone to try and switch places as the land was divided and separated, a fraction of the community – property, people, and all – stolen on a knife’s edge and transported to those mountains of leather.

In the staggered silence that followed, crowds crept from their shelters, drawn towards the missing half of their city – to where civilization suddenly ended, a specific border of destroyed structures and streets, a steep drop-off onto the earth-like desk. Jokari was among those amazed by the phenomenon, gazing out to where the rest of the city once existed; so much had been rebuilt, only for it to be ripped away from the minish, leaving what was left behind in a state of disturbed disrepair. Others came to him as minister, asking him how to proceed, but he was unable to respond, realizing then that his own home and office had been part of the district that was taken – long gone, just one more casualty in a never-ending list. As responsibilities piled up on his shoulders, Jokari sighed with regret and stared out to the sandals, wishing to himself that he had been just a couple blocks elsewhere, to be one of the hundreds that was delivered to the giant footwear.

---

“Carefully, now… That should do it…” Zelda whispered under her breath. She leaned close over her desk, looking closely at the edge of her scraper tool – where a plot of minish land had been uprooted from the surface, balanced along the tool’s edge as it was moved elsewhere. Her fingers shivered with nervousness as she got closer to one of the sandals, a shakiness that was magnitudes more powerful to the diminutive world, but she concentrated and held her breath well enough to successfully lower the civilization into place. “...There! That should be a fine place to start~” Zelda said of the minish’s new location, decidedly situated in the very middle of her sandal’s insole. She giggled as she sat straight and away from the sandal, recognizing how dust-like it looked from afar; “Don’t worry~ you won’t be left alone for long.”

Zelda performed the same operation onto the other four samples across her desk. It was a simple dissection each time, cutting out fractions with her knife and then cautiously transporting them into a sandal. She seeded these fractions into spots that appeared most advantageous for habitation, as far as she could tell; she prioritized the dampest spots where sweat was most densely stained, as well as roughened areas where the material was peeling and frayed, believing these places would be, if nothing else, interesting to study the minish adapt to. One sample was designated to the pit made by her heel, while another was settled in the slopes made by her toes; these indents which were firmly formed into the sandals, impressed over a hundred years during Zelda’s sealing, were then the landmarks for minish civilization to fill into.

After situating the final fraction into the sandal, Zelda relaxed her posture and stood up from her seat. She smiled proudly over the development of a new colony – a sandal colony, so she titled it, happily examining the map-like design of miniature cities dotted though her shoe. “Do try to make efficient use of my old sandal,” she chuckled, her cheeks partially blushed. “I’m sure you’ll get more value out of it then I do walking in them.”

Beyond just the civilizations in her insole, Zelda also looked to the remaining samples on her desk, made to appear even tinier than they were – humbled by the sandals perched amidst them. She shuddered to comprehend that specific example of their contrasting scales, that a pair of sandals extended wider and taller than anything comparable in Hyrule. Though old and worn-out, the material was yet mightier than any minish fortress, heavier than any army. Examining her footwear with such focus had her recollect her height, especially from when she stood among the original minish nest along the forest ground; she realized how absolutely titanic her arrival must have been to the speck-sized species, dared to imagine how towering each one of her traveling boots must have appeared as they thundered across their tiny civilization. They were thoughts stirred not just by her scientific curiosity, but by her own whimsy and enthusiasm, entertaining herself with mental visuals that were frightening to fantasize, but that she could calmly escape from, assured that she was not at all something so minuscule. Zelda amused herself with the concept of Hylians such as herself being, in actuality, giants roaming the minish’s earth – a perspective that enlightened her sense of confidence and importance, that she had the noble purpose of researching the minish people.

Zelda eventually removed her sandals from their land, picking the pair up by the straps so that the colony would be disrupted as minimally as possible. She focused on the one shoe that the minish inhabited, looking closely at how they had recovered from being transplanted from the desk to the insole. It had to be admitted that the unfortunate colony was stranded in a barren strip of land, very likely an uninhabitable zone – of course it would be, being the insole of a thoroughly-used sandal, but Zelda only then worried that the colony was a death sentence, destined to deteriorate into additional stains. But she also held hope that the minish could endure and survive; her grin returned as she glanced over the five fractions, imagining how an entire society might indeed grow from her old footwear, a result that would verify the hardiness of the species – and encourage her to spread the minish population onto other places to exist.

“This is quite convenient,” Zelda said of the sandal colony, tilting it slightly under her inspection, “a habitat I can carry around and look over more closely. Is everyone settling in? Hm~ I wonder if they can understand where they even are right now…” She then considered where the sandal would be placed, and decided on setting the pair alongside the rest of her footwear, lined up on an ornate wooden rack by her door where they would ordinarily go. She carefully placed them down, positioned between her regular boots and a pair of high-heels. Once having stepped back and blinked, Zelda could no longer see the spots of minish civilization, as though it were just a normal pair of sandals speckled with dirt. She pulled at her lip, “I have to not forget about you now… It would be tragic to wear those sandals now out of habit.”

---

Turmoil stormed the minish yet again. In the far corner of the goddess’s desk, a district was in terrible condition – worse than any others on the desk – after having suffered each subsequent catastrophe. Whereas Jokari saw his communities gradually rebuilding and reorganizing themselves within the minish days that passed, this particular district was swamped with despair and disorder, the population too fatigued to make the improvements other districts had shown. Resources were running low, and the goddess’s blessings from her mouth had been delivered far from where they were placed at the edge. Yet fate had more cruelty for them still, as the goddess guided her gigantic tool across the sky, deciding which half of each sample to take for a new purpose.

Of course, no one knew what to expect as the chaos unfolded, the huge blade slicing through the shambled buildings without anything able to stop it. Though they had seen the brown-leather mountains off in the distance, few would have guessed it was the goddess’s sandals, and even less expected their homes to be transported there. When the abduction began and half of the community began to lift into the air, panic spilled all over, with minish people rushing to find shelter, running away from where their city crumbled to an end. The sweeping movement created windstorms that threatened to blow the buildings off their shaky foundations, but before long, there was sudden stillness – the minish land was put into place, a moment of jarring tremors that turned quiet all at once after the knife had abandoned them there.

The staggered population was introduced to a new world as they cautiously left their shelters. The air itself was immediately different: thicker and mustier, but the aroma was most prominent, an inescapable scent that was salty and bitter. It made their eyes water as they gazed up at the sandal’s strap overhead, a long arch that stretched from one horizon to the other, including a tree-like support that would fit between the goddess’s toes – that exact spot was where the district had been seeded, settled in a dip of land that had been shaped by the weight of a single toe. As some minish explored the boundary where their civilization stopped and the plain of the insole began, they could see the distinct cracks in the leather ground, where the flattened texture was dry and peeling up from years of usage. Indeed, the tiny people began to realize they had been dropped into a desert, a wasteland designed by the pressure of existing underfoot for over a century.

It was no place where life was meant to flourish, but for the minish people, there was no choice but to persist. From the rubble of their homes and businesses, the community rose to band together – to make the most of their pitiful place and rebuild a society resembling the old empire. Efforts were fast underway to reconnect with the other fractioned samples in the shoe, developing trade routes like those created on the goddess’s desk. Engineers immediately found uses for the plentiful leather that surrounded them, discovering ways to effectively rip off shreds that can be used for construction; similarly did they learn of the insole’s depth, that the material could be dug into and opened into underground tunnels. And though it was a humiliating last resort, the minish also found a source of water – from the strongest stains of sweat absorbed by the leather, wells could be made to bring up the liquid, and a filtering process would make it drinkable. Even a few droplets went a long way for their kind, and so hope held on like a troubled ember in the wind, that through these pitiful and desperate efforts, they might thrive and perhaps even become their own competent society, even if it existed inside – and within – an old, beaten sandal.

That spirit similarly persisted in the other colonies – whether they were still samples on the goddess’s desk, or planted somewhere on her body. No fate was particularly kind to any one society of minish, each faced with their own unique challenges from the strange worlds they were beset upon. The crown colony had vast and flexible resources in a forest of hair fibers, but was at odds with the swampy, sweaty landscape; the ear colony was encased in clay-like wax that could be easily shaped, but the ridges of terrain inside the canal proved difficult for building; and although spans of peace enabled the desk samples to repair themselves, the effects of the goddess’s deliveries left them rattled and dim after she had moved away. All over, there was a consensual exhaustion of the minish people – but against those immense odds, they remained resilient.

Regret yet pulled on Jokari as he went about directing rebuilding efforts. He had expected eventful, even monumental days such as these, but surviving so many ordeals had left him low and weary. He had the same desires as his minish neighbors – salvation – but how he imagined it was radically different from those peers. Survival and sustainability may have been the goal of the empire, but as an individual, Jokari yearned more fantastically, wishing he could be involved with the goddess in some way. No matter how small, belittling, or outright pathetic it might be – he prayed that the goddess’s humor would find him, and that he would be hurled into her presence, gifted with the opportunity to be a part of something divine and powerful. He envied those body-based colonies with all his heart, regardless of their humiliating hurdles; he made it his purpose to explore the goddess’s vastness, to live long enough that he might truly comprehend her gigantic, worldly scale before disappearing beneath her.