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When Four got up in the middle of the night, after he'd been tossing and turning for hours, Twilight opened his eyes.
The moon-glow and low fire in the hearth lit the room well enough for Twilight to see, and clearly it was enough for Four, too. Four slipped on his boots, grabbed one of the cloaks off the rack at random, and picked up his bag. He left his sword, so Twilight didn't think this was urgent, but he did slip out alone, his round eyes sweeping the room once before he left.
Restless? Upset? Something more sinister? Twilight wouldn't be able to rest unless he knew Four was, at the least, not in danger. Call it a flaw or a blessing—he was protective.
Twilight waited a moment, then wiggled out of bed carefully. Legend’s castle was half-abandoned, especially just out of winter like it was, so they didn't have to warm as many rooms. That meant the nine of them shared one large room with several beds. Usually, Twilight would be sharing with Wild, but a combination of bad timing and a cold or two left him with Hyrule tonight.
…So of course, when Twilight moved, Hyrule woke.
He did so silently, but he sat up quickly and asked with his expression if something was wrong. The moon lit up one side of his face and messy hair with opalescent light, while the red fire warmed it from the other side.
Twilight glanced at the door, then, knowing there was absolutely no way he would be able to satisfy a curious Hyrule, he jerked his head to the side as an invitation. He left the warmth of the bed behind to shrug on his furs and his boots, and Hyrule followed suit. Four apparently had taken Hyrule’s cloak, so Hyrule stole Wild’s: a nice, thick navy felt that was easy to curl up beneath.
Once Hyrule shut the door softly behind them, Twilight leaned over to whisper, his voice loud to his own ears in the dark, though the worn carpets and wall hangings swallowed most of the noise.
“Four wasn't sleeping well and finally got up to go,” he said. “I wanted to ask if he’d like some company. You can head back to bed.”
Predictably, however, Hyrule shook his head, one of his curls flopping over on the top as he fastened Wild’s cloak around his shoulders. “I'll come too. You never know.”
Twilight smiled and used the darkness of the night to call upon his magic. Ever since he'd been cursed, and subsequently cured, some of his senses had become sharper as a baseline, but in the darkness, he could enhance them even further. His vision dimmed and dulled a bit, but his hearing and his nose both tuned up well.
It was easy to pick out Four’s distinct prey-metal-friend scent, and a simple matter to follow it through the castle. Twilight nearly lost the trail in the kitchen, where a tired serving girl tended a fire and told them that Four had been through to snag a few leaves of some dried herb or other, then left. But the scent picked up again on the other side of the kitchen, and Hyrule shadowed Twilight into the nippy courtyard.
Twilight followed the footprints in the soft dirt as much as he followed his nose, and when he ducked behind a hedge wall in the half-dead garden, he turned his senses back to normal.
Four sat at a small wooden table beneath a pointed roof, all of it weathered by time and the elements but nicely shielded from the cold air by a thick layer of climbing ivy, barely turning green again with the spring season. A bright lamp burned steadily on the table, lending a touch a warmth to the cold night. The light glimmered on the metal tools inside the cloth that Four had rolled out on top of the table. Several half-used spools of thin wire and leather cord, along with a small pile of pretty rocks, lay next to the lamp, too.
When Twilight and Hyrule rounded the corner, Four looked up, not startled but a bit surprised. “Hi,” he said quietly. “Did I wake you?”
“Not really,” Twilight answered for both of them.
“We were just a little worried,” Hyrule added, “and didn't want you to be alone. For safety.”
“Thanks. I'm all right. You're welcome to join me, if you'd like.” Four gestured to the seats next to him at the table. “Sorry I stole your cloak, Rulie, I just grabbed the one on top.”
“It's fine.” Hyrule took the chair on Four’s left, so Twilight took the one on his right.
“What are you up to?” Twilight asked, relaxing now that he knew Four was likely just fine. “Arts and crafts at two in the morning?”
Four pulled a few of his tools out of the strings. His ears and nose flushed red with cold already, but he didn't seem bothered. “Sort of. I don't know exactly what day it is at home, but it felt like a good day for this. See, Hylians in my time”—no matter how many times Four said Hylian or human like he said foreigner, Twilight would never get used to it—“have a festival in spring called the Picori Festival.”
“Is this how they celebrate it?” Twilight asked, gesturing to the spread of supplies.
“Not quite,” Four said with a shake of his head. He spread the gems and rocks out in a rough grid, arranging them by… size and shape, apparently. “This is how the Picori celebrate Kinen Day. Sort of. Usually, I'd be using whole kinstones, but seeing as you can't exactly find those in other times, much less match them with me, I’ve just been picking up some pretty rocks.”
“Pretty is right,” Hyrule said, picking up a particularly sparkly one and admiring the way it glimmered in the lamplight.
“What is Kinen Day?” Twilight asked, pulling his furs closer around his shoulders. Heat had begun to fill the little garden gazebo, with all of them and the bright lamp, but it had a long way to go.
“A day for remembering.” Four picked up a little bundle of dried herbs and pulled the cover off the lamp to light the leaves. They smoked with a pungent, but not entirely unpleasant, scent. “Remembering the good and the bad and the bittersweet, everything from the year and beyond. People you've lost, but also people you've met.” He glanced up at Twilight and Hyrule, eyes glimmering, and smiled.
Twilight smiled back. “So can we help?”
Four set the smoking herbs on the stone ground to burn out, then pulled out his feather earring to transform again. By this point, Twilight knew what that looked like, and knew a bit about how Four referred to be treated when he was tiny—namely, normally. Even if Twilight could never quite resolve in his head the idea that this was Four’s natural form, it was still… yeah, almost normal, at this point.
He gave Four a short ride on his hand up to the table, where Four sat near the open flame for warmth and explained as he pulled out a length of wire, snipped it, and began to wrap it around one of the rocks while Twilight and Hyrule listened.
He said that kinstones were magical artifacts, only found in broken halves, but when you managed to match two pieces, they fused together and the released magic did all kinds of things, always good luck.
Offering to try to match a kinstone piece from your collection with one of someone else’s was a common way of communicating that you didn't mind their company, that you were at least passing friends, that you knew you could have a pleasant interaction. Children traded the pieces and spent time looking for them in grass and crops and the woods. Adults found them at the bottom of a jar of sugar or in their shoes with no less glee.
He went on to talk about how the Minish kept their matched kinstones especially for Kinen Day, when they broke some to represent specific things they wanted to leave behind and incorporated others into crafts for things they wanted to keep. The broken pieces went back out into the world to make new memories, and the whole ones remained as pieces of art.
“So what do you want to remember with these stones?” Hyrule asked, picking up another to admire the facets.
“Meeting all of you, for one!” Four said, more animated now that he was busy with something he enjoyed. His feathery tail swished high over his head as he finished off wrapping a rock with a loop at the top, as if to string. “And a lot of other things. Meeting Wind’s sister, and Malon. Sunrise over Skyloft, sunset over Ordon Woods.”
The late hour and Four’s earnest tone had Twilight’s soft heart going mushy.
“Aww,” Hyrule said, eyes glimmering with mischief as he looked at Twilight.
Twilight shoved him.
Four laughed and set aside his rock to start on another. “The real question is, what do you want to remember? Grab one.”
“These are your rocks,” Twilight protested.
“I stole them,” Four said frankly.
Hyrule snorted. Then giggled. Then covered his face as he couldn't stop laughing. The sound, combined with the hour, got to Twilight, too. And then Four. The late-night punch-drunk curse infected them all.
“You can't steal rocks,” Hyrule laughed. “It isn't like they belonged to anyone!”
“Well, they're mine, now!” Four grinned up at them.
Twilight bit his lip to try and curb his snickers. “Maybe the gorons would have something to say about that.”
“Like stealing spring onions from the woods?” Four suggested.
“What kind of onion just grows in the woods!” Hyrule put his head on the table, arms wrapped around himself as he kept laughing.
They did, eventually, calm down, enough to start wrapping stones in earnest. They told stories as they did, mostly recounting their favorite moments of their adventure so far—the time Wild and Warriors flew above a monster camp on a flaming log, the time Wind and Hyrule snuck a rude note on Legend’s hat, the time they'd decided to bake hand pies and whose tasted the best. They all ended up with a nice handful of wire-wrapped stones, and Four ran around the table stringing them on leather cords.
They set aside at least one stone for each of the others still sleeping, though Twilight and Four and Hyrule each kept two or three themselves, ones to represent specific moments that they wanted to remember. Twilight liked the idea, and hoped that his memory would stay vibrant for these shining little times.
They stayed out so long that the sun began to rise, and at that point, well, the most prudent thing to do was curl up beneath their cloaks without taking the time to go back to their room—Twilight remained warm as a wolf with fur, and Hyrule’s head rested on his back, with Four in the crook of Hyrule’s shoulder.
There they napped until Legend’s Zelda stumbled over them midmorning.