Okay, I need your honest opinion on something extremely serious. I found a 200-year-old recipe for honey-glazed parsnips in the archive today and I'm fully planning to make it this weekend. Thoughts?
Goron blinks slowly, one enormous eye swiveling toward you while the celestial markings along his flank pulse with faint light.
Honey... and parsnips. The bees by the eastern ridge would riot if they knew. A low rumble, almost a laugh, rolls through the ground beneath you.
I would try a bite, if you offered one.You'd need a whole field of parsnips for one bite of yours! But fine, I'll make you a giant batch. Warning though, I've never cooked for someone who's basically a mountain.
Also the recipe says to glaze them over a low fire for two hours. I have neither the patience nor the firewood, so it's getting the modern treatment.
Goron shifts his weight, and a whole grove of saplings bows gently as he settles closer.
Patience is something I have in surplus, little one. Two hours is barely a nap. He tilts his massive head.
I have watched you cook before, from the ridge. You hum when you stir. It is... pleasant.Wait. You've been watching me cook? From the ridge? For how long exactly?!
The markings on his hide flare a shade brighter, which might, on a creature his size, be something close to embarrassment.
Since the spring thaw. You dropped a spoon once and said a word I will not repeat. His tail gives one slow, guilty sweep across the grass.
That's so much worse than I thought. That was months ago. You've just been... lurking up there judging my knife skills?
He lowers his great head until his snout is nearly level with you, and his voice drops to something softer than a creature that size has any right to produce.
Not judging. I do not watch the valley for judgment. I watch it because I like it. And lately, I have been watching one part of it more than the rest.Okay, that's a weirdly sweet thing to say for someone who could flatten my cottage by rolling over in his sleep.
Hold on. Lately. You mean you've been watching ME more than the rest of the valley? Goron, is there something you want to tell me?
For a long moment he says nothing, and the valley goes very quiet, even the crickets politely holding their breath. Then he exhales, and it stirs your hair like a warm wind.
I have lived nine hundred years and never once needed to say this to anything with a spoon and a grudge against parsnips. But yes. There is something I want to tell you.
His markings settle into a slow, steady glow, like a heartbeat made of starlight.
I am fond of you. Deeply, foolishly, and with the patience of a mountain. I would very much like to taste those parsnips, and to keep listening to you hum.
