A/N: Hello! Long time no see. Me, that is. I tried re-posting this story on a new account, as I've rather outgrown this one, but I think none of the readers could find it so here it is, on this account, to make things easier. Yes, it's been like... 5 years. And I'm terribly sorry for totally bailing, but I've been really busy, as I'm now 19 and a university student - things have been a little hectic. But no more excuses, I've got three new chapters for you guys to (hopefully) make amends, and more to come soon, but I've got other projects to work on too (on fictionpress). Enjoy! Also if you catch any errors let me know, I think I've fixed them all but maybe not, I can't be bothered to go through every single chapter again to post it on here, so yeah.

xoxo

The Legend of Zelda: Crossing the River of Time

Chapter One: The Woods of Apparent Misfortune

The Lost Woods…

Rumoured to be one of the most mysterious, alluring and yet dazzling places of Hyrule. Hylians often ventured into the forest, having heard such rumours about the place, and never returned. Maybe they were killed by ferocious creatures of the woods, or perhaps they were so enchanted by the forest they simply forgot to return…

There was said to be a village in the Lost Woods, a minute village, and instead of being inhabited by adults, all who lived there were children. The Kokiri – they were said to be called.

Children they might have been, children who never grew up, but nevertheless they acted as adults would.

The guardian spirit of the forest – the Great Deku Tree, was said to have been the creator of the children and of the forest. To the Kokiri, this tree was their god. As Hylians worship the three Goddesses, the Kokiri worshipped the Great Deku Tree.

Every child in the village had his or her own guardian fairy, fairies that were also created by the Deku Tree.

There was, however, one boy who did not have a fairy. The boy who saved Hyrule from the Evil, the Evil that took a living form in Ganondorf, the King of Thieves, and the boy who was raised in the Kokiri Forest, brought up by the Great Deku Tree, who knew only too well that this was a child of destiny…

And that 'boy' just so happened to be stretching his legs in that very same forest.

Din's Eye hovered just overhead, signaling that it was midday. Link's boots made a soft and rather unpleasant squelching sound on the freshly rained - on grass of the Lost Woods. The scorching summer rays of the sun poured down on the forest, and the heat was so blindingly intense that Link began to question his decision to take a walk in the forest in the first place.

Seven years… He sighed to himself. It's been so long…

He was referring to the fact that, since the princess had sent him back to his own time, back to being an innocent ten year old, he hadn't had enough of a backbone to go visit her. In a way, Link could say he was angry with her, but not anymore.

The hero couldn't hold a grudge that long.

But not only had she stolen seven years of his life, by being careless in thinking that she could control the power of the Sacred Realm, but she had stolen something else from the young Hylian…

She had stolen his heart.

And then she had broken it into pieces and stomped on it a couple of times. Harsh – yes, but that's what it felt like to Link, the poor victim of a seemingly impossible crush.

Zelda – the Princess of Destiny, was a young woman of the highest order, and Link – despite the fact that he saved the world for a living, was nothing more than a lowly knight, in comparison.

Link had thought he actually meant something to her, he thought he saw something spark between the two young Hylians, but apparently he was wrong. If someone has feelings for you, they don't generally up and send you seven years back in time.

Seven years back to before anyone remembered who he was or what he had done. That he had saved them all, that he was the Hero of Time.

So it was a bit selfish, how he was acting, seeing as Zelda had only wanted him to live those seven years the way he should have. But he still remembered all that had happened, he was still scarred from the memories, the pain, no longer a carefree child. So with those memories, how could one go on as if nothing had happened?

Link had gotten through after all, but still he carried painful memories. And still, somewhere deep within his heart, he knew he still carried feelings for Zelda. Feelings that apparently did not want to go away, no matter how great his somewhat selfish anger was, or had been.

Plopping down on the damp grass, the Hero of Time leaned back against the trunk of a tree, and slipped off into a sad little daydream.

Sapphire.

That was the only word that came to mind when he saw those eyes. Deep, pristine, sparkling sapphire..

Her silky golden hair swept down her slender back, allowing only a few strands to fall delicately over her beautiful eyes.

Her ivory skin was as clear as untouched water, her cheeks coloured with a slight rosy hue. A few barely noticeable freckles dotted her small, endearing nose.

But before our naïve Hero could daydream about her lips - which happened to be an odd coincidence, a noise scattered his thoughts.

Link spun around, but only to see nothing but the pure beauty of the lush, green forest.

But then he heard the noise again. It was an odd sound, not too unlike a raindrop splashing into a puddle, but far too shrill to be just that. Suddenly, he heard rustling in the bushes. A twig snapped.


Laughter.

It echoed throughout the halls and bounced off the lockers. The source of this unearthly cackling came from one being.

One girl.

Evil took its human form in Alice Adams. And she even had her minions. An army of snobby, ignorant, popular teenage girls.

It was almost as if time itself had slowed, stretching out the endless laughter to eternity.

Scarlet usually ignored it. Usually it didn't get to her that much. What was it that was so funny, anyway?

The girl steals away all her friends – all, usually used to describe a lot, so maybe that was the wrong word. Alice turns Scarlet's friends against her and suddenly there's so much to laugh about? Suddenly she's the school's biggest loser? And she did what to receive that title?

Unable to control the powerful urge to pounce on Alice and tear her popular, platinum blonde head off, Scarlet turned on her heel and bolted down the hall and out the school's front doors.

At the moment, she honestly couldn't care that this could be, and would be called skipping. It didn't make a great deal of a difference, however, seeing as she'd done it before.

But it didn't matter. Nothing did. All she sought was to get away from everything and everyone. Her life had been fine for a while, good, normal, but as soon as everyone hit junior high and hormones, everything started to go downhill.

A few years later, as it turned out, it wasn't sheer bliss to get out of that school. High school was just as miserable, if not worse. Luckily, Scarlet was a senior, so she would be out of here soon enough anyway.

She just wanted out. And she planned to get out. Patting the lump in her pocket, Scarlet knew that now would be as good a time as any to end everything. There was no point anymore, so what was stopping her?

She had been pondering the idea for a while. She didn't exactly have any best friends that wouldn't be able to go on without her. For some reason she still couldn't contemplate, people she used to call her friends – ha, that was a laugh – turned their backs on her.

To go spend their time worshipping some figure of popularity that was made out to be a goddess of some kind. To spend their time thinking about hot guys, painting their nails, listening to stupid boy bands.

She didn't know what it was she did to Alice to possess her to ruin her life. First Alice pretended to befriend her, then once she thought she'd gained her trust, she turned everyone against her.

Her first mistake was ever believing her when she said they were friends. People had told her, especially in her earlier years of junior high, that she shouldn't trust Alice, she lies, she betrays people.

And Scarlet really wished she would have listened.

But no, she had made the fatal mistake of letting the girl suck her into her false sense of security. And she had fallen for it.

She had thought they were 'friends'. Now she wasn't even sure she knew the meaning of the word 'friend'. She guessed, and she might have been wrong, but a 'friend' is someone you can trust, someone who won't turn their back and everyone elses on you, someone you have things in common with, someone who's easy to talk to and fun to be around.

But if you had friends, and they weren't loyal enough that they would go running off as soon as some rich, popular snob beckoned them, then they were never friends to begin with, were they?

She flew down the stairs leading to the front doors of hell. Or, Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute. Yeah, give it a long fancy name and it sounds more like a nice, friendly high school.

Scarlet crossed the lawn and hastily made her way to the crosswalk. It was a painfully long light, as she stood impatiently, hearing the cars whoosh past, honking and screeching tires at some intervals. Sighing, she slammed her fist against the switch to change the light in frustration.

Glancing up, she watched the green light slowly fade to a yellow, remain yellow for a few brief seconds, then gradually slink up to red for stop.

As Scarlet sprinted across the field in the park, the aroma of fresh rain tickled her nostrils. Her Converse sneakers kicked up droplets of rain from the damp grass. The air was muggy – uncomfortably warm, and an eerie fog hid the tops of buildings in mist. It was only midday, but something about this place made time itself vanish.

Everyone had their escapes, whether television, the internet, video games, books, magazines, music…

Scarlet's was seclusion. Removing herself from the rest of the world was the only reason she had survived for fifteen years in this hellhole. Scarlet came here when she wanted to drift away. She'd stretch out on a bench or on the grass and flip open whatever book she was currently reading. As soon as she'd read the first sentence she would slip off into a sort of daydream, nothing else on her mind but the troubles of the author's creatively fashioned characters.

Don't say I'm out of touch

With this rampant chaos your reality

I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge

The nightmare I built my own world to escape

In my field of paper flowers

And candy clouds of lullaby

I lie inside myself for hours

And watch my purple sky fly over me

Shaking away her thoughts, Scarlet gazed around and took in her surroundings. The park was an unusually vast expanse of lush green forest and meadows, pristine ponds and rocky streams.

Scarlet had always felt she didn't belong here, in this world. She had always been fascinated by stories and novels about interesting characters from magical lands going on adventures, although not always willingly, and ending up in situations that they always seemed to be able to get themselves out of.

She was often even bored by this world she was supposed to call home. Just because she was born here by parents who honestly had nothing better to do than scream and nag and be constantly at her throat, didn't mean she should have to call it home.

Her house was definitely not the definition of home. She had a nineteen year old brother, a brother who was supposed to look out for her but he wasn't even capable of looking after himself.

Her parents yelled at her and her brother – when he was home, because they were stressed out from work and their children were their stress relievers or something. As if screaming at her and having her scream back was really going to relieve anything. It just made things worse.

Scarlet's theory was simple. Therapy is expensive, bubble wrap is free. Ignoring the fact, of course, that you have to buy something heavy or breakable to get the bubble wrap in the first place. But, when yelling and throwing things and breaking hearts is the only thing you can afford, at the cost of breaking hearts, of breaking a family, couldn't you just get the therapy for much cheaper a cost?

This park was a place of rare beauty, considering that in the twenty-first century there was not much besides skyscrapers and factories, pollution and garbage.

And stupid, stuck up girls, she added glumly.

Just as Scarlet glanced down at the book in her hands and began to read, she heard an odd noise.

Snapping right out of her trance, Scarlet spun around. At first, she could see nothing aside from the vast quilt of green around her.

As she rose to her feet and strode towards the direction the sound had come from, still all she saw was green.

Until she distinguished something yellow poking out at her from within the mass of emerald. Or, something blonde, to be exact…


"Who's there?" Link called into the now silent forest. "Show yourself!"

Hyrule was reasonably peaceful now that Ganondorf's evil reign had passed. But, there was still a slight chance that some slightly dangerous creatures could still be wandering around.

But Link, cheerful with an occasionally one-track mind, had thrown aside the thought that his 'walk in the park', so to say, would be disrupted by anything.

Or anyone, for that matter.

"Hello?" Suddenly, Link felt stupid for even opening his mouth.

'When one gets no response, one should shut up.' Navi had once said to him. He wasn't getting a response, so perhaps he should follow his fairy friend's nagging and shut his mouth.

Out of the corner of his eye, Link glimpsed something scamper through the bushes.

Okay, this is really getting on my nerves, thought Link. "Who's there?"

A small head poked out of the brush.

"Mido!" Link exclaimed. "What in Farore's name are you up to? You –" Link swiftly shut his mouth before he actually admitted to the child that he had had him scared for a moment there.

"I… I, er, was looking for you…" Mido stammered. "I think Saria wants to talk to you,"

"Then why were you sneaking around in the bushes?"

Mido gave him a blank stare and shrugged his shoulders.

Drip...

Link spun around. "There it is again! Mido, did you hear that?" The child didn't respond. Link turned to face the Kokiri. Mido's eyes were as wide as saucers and he was frozen with fear. Or perhaps, literally frozen. His mouth hung open just as wide, and his face turned a sickly purple hue.

"What in Din's name…?" Link wondered. "What happened to -" But he was cut short by a flash of blinding light. He was thrown backwards to land on his back on the hard, muddy ground.

Squinting, Link tried to see what had caused the light. When it dimmed, Link felt something curl around his neck, like a belt fastened too tight on the waist. It dug into his windpipe, cutting short his breath.

Gasping and choking, Link tried to pry the fingers from his throat. They felt thin and slender, like a woman's, with sharp nails filed into points at the ends.

Glancing up, Link tried to catch a glimpse of his attacker's face, but it was concealed in the shadows of her hood. It must have been a woman, for they were far too small and shapely to be a man.

Why would someone want to kill him? What had he done, besides saved Hyrule? And why a woman, at that?

Realizing that his time was running out, Link returned from his thoughts. He needed to stop her. But, although he feared for his own life, hurting another living being, especially a woman, would go against his nature.

But considering the circumstances, it would be in self defence, seeing as she had attacked him first. Therefore, he was left with no chance but to fight back.

With his remaining strength but swiftly failing vision, Link brought up his knees and aimed to kick the woman in the stomach. But since his vision as well as his consciousness was failing him, the blow landed higher.

Immediately the hands relinquished their grip on his throat and the woman cried out and recoiled, clutching her chest.

"Damn you, Hero of Time!" She cursed as he scrambled to his knees and tried to crawl away.

She knows? Link wondered. He turned to look behind him, to see if she was still down, but that was a fatal mistake.

The woman was on her knees, with her arms upraised to the heavens as if summoning the Goddesses. A bright sphere of golden light had formed between her hands, and it grew ever larger as specks of gold formed at her fingertips and added their light to the sphere. In the moment the light was at its peak, the darkness of her hood was illuminated and Link caught a glimpse of her face. She had dark, tanned skin, arching, scarlet eyebrows, a long, hooked nose, full lips and tawny eyes.

Link realized what she was instantly.

A Gerudo.

Taking a fraction of a second too long to stare in astonishment, Link's eyes took a nasty surprise. It was the same light as before, but intensified by at least a thousand. With a shock like being electrified by five lightning bolts at once, Link was sent sprawling backwards once again. As to a candle being snuffed out, his vision flickered and then died.

The last thing that crossed his mind before the last of his consciousness slithered away, was,

The day I decide to take a nice little walk in the woods, this happens…