AHAHAHAHA! RANDOM CHRISTMAS INTERLUDE! WRITTEN TO SEXYBACK!
My apologies for what some might interpret as a "Mary Sue" in my other fic. She's not. I swear.
It's a Start
For Link, Christmas was a bad time. It involved spending money to buy gifts, and thinking of what gifts to buy, and thinking of where to get them in order to get the best prices and thinking-
For crying out loud-it was thinking! And how horrible was it to think? Better to lie in blissful ignorance and nod one's head to the beat of the masses.
Unfortunately, this was a view that Link disputed, instead choosing his own untrodden path in life. Of course, this meant that in many situations, he didn't really know what the heck he was doing; there was no stereotype or trend to follow for the situations that he wandered into, and so Link resolved those untimely incidents with his own personal touch.
Though whether or not that personal touch left a taint or smear upon his reputation was another matter indeed.
For example, today was something he didn't know how to respond to. Here he was, standing outside her house, with a Christmas present wrapped hastily in butcher's paper, laced with a cheap gold ribbon. It looked very shoddy indeed; the rips and tears in the wrapping paper, and the loose threads of ribbon that stood out like snow in the summer, or specks of dirt in a glass of water.
In Link's mind, this simile wasn't really a very good once; but then again, Link wasn't renowned for inventing simile's. He was reputed for his good and kind heart, and the diligence that he went about any task, as Da Vinci was known for his great paintings, and architectural breakthroughs.
Well, to compare him to Da Vinci might have been...an understatement.
Link Forrester was a genius billionaire, holding a monopoly on the Hylian market. At the tender age of twenty-three, the genius Forrester had established multiple steel industries and financial profits that were the highest in the whole of Hyrule. Link was known for his good-heartedness and charity, donating large amounts of rupees to the poor and less-fortunate.
So, on a rather frosty, snowing Christmas Morning, Link Forrester turned up outside a young girl's house, and rang the doorbell. His breath came hard, and his hands shook slightly as they held the present; he concealed it behind his back, and awaited the house owner to answer her door.
"Hello?" Link called. He was answered a few seconds later by the door swinging open promptly, revealing an blonde-haired girl, maybe a year his younger, standing by the open door. She sleepily invited him in, before retiring back to the lounge room, to hold a mug of warm cocoa drowsily between a pair of woollen mittens.
"Hi..." Link smiled uncertainly, viewing the petite girl with a shyness that he hadn't felt for such a long time, one he hadn't felt since he had first met Malon. That had been long ago, and they had split now; they had both accepted that their relationship hadn't been working, and remained good friends, instead. This girl instilled that same feeling; the button nose and large blue eyes that were half-closed in the slumbering state she was in.
"Merry Christmas." She smiled back, sipping on her cocoa. "I never expected a childhood sweetheart of mine to ring me up suddenly, and ask if he could see me on Christmas Day."
There-that feeling. The same one that he'd felt when he'd met her for the first time. He had been twiddling his thumbs after finishing a test an hour early, when a young girl next to him quietly asked for some answers. The next fifteen minutes had been an inexorably interesting game where she would ask for answers and he would try to give them to her without a teacher seeing. And all the while, he had been drawn to her oval-shaped face, shyly wondering who she was, and what it would feel like to ki-
Actually, thinking about that came a few years later.
"I was in the neighbourhood. I thought I might pop in and visit a few old friends." Link smiled, trying to look comfortable and casual, yet he was sure that she could see right through him.
"Oh, please. You can't fool me, Link. I rang Saria, Anju and Medli, and you didn't call them." She smiled beneath the mug, then sipped, sitting back while continuing her story. "So I guess you only wished to talk with me then."
Link could only smile as he marvelled at the girl's deduction prowess and networking skills.
"Well, looks like you caught me out in my own lie, Zelda." Link shrugged, waiting for her to come up with another revelation that might throw him again.
"So, why did you come? Was it to re-open old wounds?" Zelda asked almost lazily, but the sharp undercurrent that her voice held told Link that she still felt the pain of their break-up very clearly.
He remembered that he had said some things he hadn't meant. He remembered watching her go, helplessly crying out for her to stay. But she'd left. And he was alone.
"No, not at all." Link adopted a calculative smile, then decided he might as well give her the present. "I just came to say Merry Christmas."
He held out the tatty present, the lacklustre ribbon that bound it and the ugly wrappings, hoping for all the world that she'd accept it.
Cautiously, as though he might pull out a gun and yell "Freeze! This is a hold-up!" she reached for it and slowly, suspiciously, she unwrapped it.
"When did you wrap this?" she asked.
"Yesterday...umm, about the wrapping, I had no paper at my house, and it really late at night, I-"
"When did you buy the present?"
"Yester-yesterday! I..."
"Why did you even come, if you were so ill-prepared? It's not like...you. You wouldn't do that, would you?"
No, usually, he wouldn't. But...in his heart, he had felt that he had to go. He had...
"I just felt I should see you. I decided I should go, so I rang you up. Then I realised I had nothing to give, so...one thing led to another, and taking my abysmal wrapping skills into account, I only got this present ready in time."
"Well, Link...this is..."
It was a box of some of the most expensive chocolates in Hyrule; ones that were hard to find in any shop, save for the top connoisseurs of Hyrule, and even then it was still quite rare.
"...don't you remember that I don't like La Cremia Chocolate?"
Link nearly froze as he realised his mistake. Mentally kicking himself, he quickly tried to recover his position.
"I-I'm so sorry! Listen, I...I can find you another, or something, or do or umm..." Link's words joined into an unintelligible string of words. Zelda stared at him with an amused smile on her face, then sighed.
"Link, shut up for a second." Link was a fish out of water, as he stood there, mouth agape, watching Zelda. "I don't mind that you got a wrong present, or anything. You tried really hard to get a gift, even though it was really hard; I'm grateful for that."
And then she smiled; that elfin face broke into a seraphic beam that substantiated the entire nervousness Link had felt while he had waited for her, and played a little war of words.
"So, do you have anything else to say?"
Link thought for a second, but in his mind, he didn't see anything else he could really say.
"Uhh...Merry Christmas?" He chuckled weakly. "Well, no. Not really."
Zelda looked out the window, where the snow was falling softly onto the driveways of her neighbours.
"Well, that's a start." She stood up, and looking fully rejuvenated seated herself next to him. Flicking on the television, she flicked to the movie channel, where a kid's Christmas animation was playing, and poked him in the ribs to grab his attention.
"Since it's a start, I guess I should introduce myself again. I'm Zelda Harkinian, and you're...?"
"Link. Link Forrester."
"You don't mind if I do this, do you?" Zelda snuggled up against him, and in response, his natural reaction drew his arm around her.
"No. Not at all."
And so the two friends were left to watch another Christmas animation on Zelda's old couch, in Zelda's old house (that had wonderful insulation) and contemplate starting a new relationship. And sometimes, in a situation like this, 'tis not blissful ignorance, nor thinking that we require, but a stirring of the heart, to prompt us into action. Or another relationship.
But for Link and Zelda, it was a private time to watch some cartoons and snuggle up beside the heater and enjoy themselves. And beside them, outside the window the snow fell in a white flutter, like feathers floating to the ground.
Ahh, I think I put something confusing at the end. I know how it relates to the whole thing, and I'm not sure whether I need it properly enough to show what I meant. SOO I shan't explain. Instead...
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!