Author's note: This story is dedicated to my good friend AquaJet, whose birthday is this week. Hopefully I'll be able to update this fic with a better second chapter on her birthday! Thanks so much for all the good times, Aqua; you are the Zelda to my Link. But please, please, please don't get kidnapped by Ganon. I've just finished high school and I want to spend my free time lazing around playing Skyward Sword.

Anyway, to everyone reading this, I hope you enjoy this fic. This chapter is only the beginning. And please don't ask me where this takes place in the Timeline - like any Zelda story, I take pleasure in contradicting everything that was laid out in the previous games.

01 – Octoroks, Guards and Giant Stone Walls

Link learned to run before he could crawl. He was the kind of guileless child every mother would love to raise but never to mind. Long before he knew what adventure even was he was forever lost in the bushes, his hands dirty and grimy from being shoved into the mud and rummaging about for earthworms. But as for anything particularly unique about him – there was nothing to see. Move along, move along, the main attraction is that way. No one could have guessed, certainly not in those days, that Link would amount to anything more than just another Hylian.

He was not a particularly heroic boy. The boys in Hyrule Castle Town called him Dead Eye Link because of his skill with a slingshot. Link spent a good portion of his boyhood using his talent as a method of torture for cuckoos. He only learned his lesson when the cuckoos, fed up with the constant irritation, gathered themselves into an army and retaliated with brutal efficiency. But that's a story for another day.

The last years of Hyrule's Golden Age consisted of a period of faux enlightenment but mostly just complacency. Wise men dedicated their entire lives to not doing anything productive. They were jovial sorts of men; you saw them often in Hyrule Castle Town. Growing up as a young boy in that era meant you had to bow every time you saw them and maybe, if you were lucky, they were not trying too hard to seem busy. In that case, they would probably reward you with chocolate, the type that melted in your mouth.

The market was always – and always would be – Hyrule Castle Town's heart. It was a perpetual hive of activity – filled with constant music and laughter and the sweet aroma of honey and charms – until nightfall came. That was when the dogs would emerge from the alleyways, along with the children of the naughty variety. Link had been out a few times to play with the dogs, but he would get tired long before the night matured. Sometimes, children would fall asleep on the cobblestone, and there was never any danger in that, except that your back felt sore all over in the morning. That was the Golden Age for you – no one knew what danger was unless it slapped them in the face.

There were little dangers, of course, the type every boy encountered. Link hung off balconies, climbed up on rooftops, slipped off ledges and scraped his knees. He was a master in receiving pain – no sooner would one injury be healed; Link would have an accident attempting to climb the wall outside the bazaar. The wall was jagged there, making it difficult but not impossible to climb. The boys called it the First Rite of Passage. The second was sneaking into the castle.

It was every boy's dream to see inside the castle just beyond the castle town. Since the Golden Age had started, it had become custom for the royal family to keep its younger members hidden behind the castle's great stone walls. No one would ever see the young Princess Zelda until she was crowned Queen of Hyrule – and that would not be for a very long time yet. And so every boy in Hyrule Castle Town quickly developed an infatuation with her, Link included. The urban legend quickly spread that the boy who met Princess Zelda would receive a thousand chocolates from the Goddesses. Every time Link thought of Zelda, he thought of chocolates, and so he longed to meet her with all of his heart. After Link completed the First Rate of Passage at nine years of age, his immediate thought was to discover the route that led to Zelda. And so that very same afternoon he set off to investigate the exterior of the castle.

There was no getting in from the front. Guards in scary grey plates of armour patrolled the front gate, which loomed so high above Link's head that not even a battering ram could shake it. So Link set off west, taking a detour around the castle. Here, a river flowed downstream to the Castle Town, slowly enough for Link to be able to walk upstream. It was fortunate for him that he was wearing shorts, although his boots were sodden and wet. Link paid that no heed. With the castle walls to his right, he walked up the river, all the time glancing to see if there were indents in the wall so that he could begin to climb.

He walked for a long time, long enough to feel cold from his exposure to water and to feel the weight of the water sloshing about in his boots. Yet still Link persevered where other boys would have fallen. He grit his teeth and clenched his hands and thought only of bright chocolate wrappers.

And finally, he saw it – a vine hanging innocently over the edge of the wall, just high enough over the water's edge that he could reach it if he stood on one of the rocks and jumped. He was just grasping for it when –

Ouch.

It took him a very long moment to realise what the cause of pain in his buttocks was. He had been hit by a rock, but who had flung it?

He swung around – or more like he splashed around because he was still in the water. It was then he saw the strangest thing he had ever seen in his short life. It was a creature, the likes of which he had never seen before.

It had red, slimy skin and large, beady eyes. But the strangest thing about it was its protruding snout, which had a hole at the end of it large enough to fit Link's fist. This was the hole through which the creature had shot a rock at Link. The boy was dumbfounded. He stared for a long moment into the creature's unblinking eyes, and then the monster (for that was what it was) jumped up in the water and spat out another rock. Startled, Link ducked, clutching his hat with his hands. If he had ever bothered to read history books, he would have known he was facing an Octorok.

There was only one thing to be done. Link pulled out his slingshot from his shorts pockets. He took aim quickly and released a shot of his own. The Octorok seemed to anticipate the counterattack because it spat out another rock just as the seed from Link's slingshot was about to hit its face. Rock and seed collided against each other, and Link was forced to duck yet again.

He straightened up once more, squinting at the Octorok. There had to be a way to defeat it. The creature was starting to get on his nerves. His buttocks still smarted and Zelda was only just around the corner. He had better things to do.

Finally, he decided on a course of action, just as the Octorok was preparing to shoot once again. He fit two seeds into his slingshot and shot them both at the same time, at precisely the same moment the Octorok spat its rock at him. Then Link ducked – there was no time to see where his shots had landed.

As his head was down, he heard the Octorok make a noise. It sounded halfway between a screech and a squeal, with a slight hissing sound added in somewhere. Link glanced up to see the Octorok had thrown its head up in pain, its snout pointed directly skyward. Link had aimed for the Octorok's eyes and had hit them both in one shot.

Not pausing to congratulate himself for the good shot, he made for the vine. His slingshot could not kill a creature as big as an Octorok. Soon, the monster would recover from being stunned and the battle would resume itself. Link tugged on the vine, testing to see if it would hold his weight, and then he began to hoist himself up over the wall. It was a tall structure but with the vine handy it was no harder a climb than the walls of the bazaar. Even so, Link was nervous that the vine would give out while he was still high and was relieved when he made it over without any incident.

From his vantage point, he could see the castle courtyard spread out beneath him. Neatly trimmed hedges lined the paths and the green grass seemed soft and cushiony. But there was a guard pacing down the pathway. He had not looked up yet (Link had learned from years of experience hanging upside down off balconies that people seldom did look up) but the possibility of being noticed before he reached his goal was starting to seem very real.

Link took a deep breath. There was no going back.

Then gingerly, he climbed down the vine and when he was halfway down, he let go and landed with a muffled thud on the grass. His heart was in his mouth. Had the guard noticed that? But Link could not see. The hedges blocked the view. He instantly knew that the same had to be true for the guard and that he could not be seen where he was. And so he edged forward, until an opening was in sight. He peeped around the corner. No guard in any direction. Then he glanced back behind him. The foot of the guard had come into view. Link propelled himself through the opening and hastily made his way through an underpass, all the while trying to keep his panting muffled.

Finally, a garden came into sight.

The flowers had a thick, wafting kind of scent that drifted daintily around your nose. And they were bright sorts of flowers too, and even Link, who had never much cared for that sort of thing, could recognise them as being pretty.

He walked forward, as if in a trance. Link felt soft and dream-like, almost as if he knew this place, had smelt these flowers before. But that thought was ridiculous.

He only noticed the girl when he almost bumped right into her. She was crouching among the flowers, gently stroking one of the petals. She was in the same kind of dreamy state as Link. When she looked up and noticed him, she was not surprised. It was impossible to feel surprised in this place. Your eyes felt heavy, as if you wanted to nap but were not quite ready yet. You could close your eyes, lay your head back and listen, and it was as if the flowers had voices, as if the breeze had a voice too. You could listen to it, and forever would be no less than a second to you.

This was why the girl did not say anything to Link as he lay down beside her and likewise, Link did not say a word to her. They would have been like this forever if something had not broken the sense of atmosphere. In this case, it was nothing more than a bird twittering somewhere distant. The girl blinked slowly, cast her gaze at Link and said,

"Hello."

Link sat up and started to peer at the girl a little more closely. She had light, golden hair that fell halfway down her back, and her eyes were wide and deep blue. They were the sort of eyes you could get lost in if you let yourself get carried away. Link knew wordlessly that he had met Princess Zelda.

"What's your name?" asked Zelda, sitting up and hugging her knees under white, silken dress.

Link told her who he was and his reasons for coming.

"Chocolate?" said the princess curiously. "I can arrange that. But maybe not a thousand of them. My father says I'll get sick if I eat too much of it, so I know I shouldn't ask for a lot."

Link said it was okay, the Goddesses would give it to him; and that made Zelda smile very brightly.

"Wow, you must have been so brave coming here!" she exclaimed. "I wonder how you got past all the guards."

Link explained to her about the vine. He would probably not have added much more if it were not for the feeling of contentment the garden gave him. He felt he could trust Zelda with anything.

So he decided to show off to her. He showed her his slingshot and shot at everything Zelda pointed at. She was appropriately impressed and wanted to try too. Her first shot went through a nearby window and broke a vase.

Zelda laughed and so did Link, and the two of them looked at each other and laughed some more.

When finally they sobered, Zelda was anxious. "Impa will come," she whispered. "She'll scold me!"

Link contemplated that with a furrowed brow. He hated being scolded for doing the wrong thing. The trick was not to get caught.

"I think you'd better go," said Zelda sheepishly, "before anyone comes."

A little reluctantly, Link stood up. Zelda was right, but he wanted to play more.

Noticing the downcast expression on his face, Zelda added quickly, "Please come back soon! It's fun to have someone to play with."

Link nodded earnestly. He forgot for a moment about Octoroks, guards and giant stone walls. And then he turned around and ran without looking behind him.

Next up: Vanished Princess.