Author's Note: Playing Majora's Mask for the first time in years has persuaded me to write a couple of drabbles for this area of the fandom. I doubt I'll collect as many drabbles as I have for Twilight Princess, but I wanted a place to post them regardless. So far all I've written takes place up in the snowy mountains, but if I write more then the locations and times will undoubtedly vary.

I've always thought to myself that Link would probably remember everything that happened in OoT, but no one else besides Zelda would. Does that mean that even the Sages wouldn't remember, either? Kaepora Gaebora, rumored to be a reincarnation of one of the sages, gives no sign of remembering the talks they had in OoT, and even shows doubts as to whether Link really is the hero or not.

Anyway, just something to mess around with. Enjoy!

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"Perhaps you do have the strength…" The owl hooted quietly, half to himself. Large fierce eyes stared down at the skinny human child, who stood shivering in the snow. The child looked to have collected every scrap of cloth and leather to be found in every store and dumpster in castle town to prepare for his trip to these mountains. The makeshift clothes were all but tied onto his limbs to keep tattered scraps of cloth from falling off—apparently he had known all too well how valuable every bit of protection from the cold would be, and wasn't about to forego any help he could get. Frost and snow dusted his shoulders in the blizzard while the owl and boy stared at each other. The owl thought to himself that if the boy hadn't called up a greeting to him, he wouldn't have recognized the human at all.

His study moved from the smudges of soot on the boy's clothing to his eyes: they were bright with defiant cheer, fighting the cold with warmth of their own. The rest of his face was wrapped in a long scarf-like shawl that barely left even the boy's eyes visible, much like the owl had seen Sheikah dress themselves traditionally. How strange that the child had figured that method out—it wasn't the simplest one by any means, but it was the most secure… perhaps a traveler had taught him.

"There is a shrine up ahead!" Kaepora said suddenly, breaking the silence and letting his head jerk forward as though on it's own accord. He was rewarded by seeing the child jump back in surprise and then his eyes squint sheepishly when he realized his own reaction.

"Really?" The boy asked (no 'Sir' or 'Lord Owl', Kaepora noted with interest) edging back closer to the ledge he was speaking from with that permanent spring in his step. Maybe it was the cold making him jumpy—it had been such a long time since Kaepora had felt cold that it was hard to remember at times.

Kaepora let his head rise again, this time rotating it to one side. "Yes, there is! And I am headed there soon, you know!"

Link's eyes were suddenly very bright, and he took another step forward, wading through snow that went up to his knees. "Really? Are you going to fly?" He prompted. The owl chortled.

"Of course, child! How else would I go?"

The boy looked embarrassed. "Yeah, thought of that only after…" Blue eyes momentarily vanished as he looked down, any mumbling muffled by the cloth over his mouth. Then he looked back up and spoke normally. "So—you're going to fly. Can I come with?"

"If you have the courage!" Kaepora shifted slightly, rotating his head the other way. "I'm afraid that you may not hold on to my talons, however—I am very old, after all, Hoot hoot!"

Link's cheer faded a few notches. "Oh…"

"You must follow me, child, and remember this: the path is not what it seems!"

The child's cheer faded even more, replaced by a distinctly uneasy expression. "What do you mean?" He asked slowly. "Where are we going, how—"

In an unspoken answer the owl was a sudden flurry of movement, flailing wings and flapping feathers. Launching his weight into the air he turned to sail right off the cliff-like ledge whose border Link was now recoiling away from rather quickly.

"Hoot hoot! Don't be afraid—if you truly have courage then you will know what must be done!" With a dip of his wings the owl had swooped up and sailed over the boy, pivoting to face away. Still flying he glanced behind himself at the child's slowly diminishing form, focusing on him easily with his keen eyes. Human cheeks that had been a raw pink from the cold had less color than before, and his blue eyes were riveted on the owl. Betrayal, hurt, and even anger passed in a flash through those eyes, before they focused on something else, something below or beyond him.

Kaepora swiveled his head back to watch where he was going--no, the boy wasn't staring past him at a hidden mountain he was about to run into. That was a relief—the first time he had done that had been quite embarrassing, and it was quite fortunate no one had been watching at the time.

The owl suddenly banked to one side, flapping to steady his sudden change in direction. Would the boy catch on to the test he was being given? Kaepora had always fancied himself a good judge of character, but it was hard to tell the difference between seeing a poor sense of self preservation or a skilled one in someone who looked confident of his survival one way or another.

Oh well—it was too late to go back and change anything, seeing as that with his speed he was already reaching a he needed to turn at. The world swung sideways and every inch of him felt as though it was being pulled in previous direction. The feeling faded as the owl glided a moment before flapping for altitude.

Goodness, had he really gone so far already? A couple of turns and the path had taken him out of sight of most of the village. The shrine was intentionally far away from the Gorons—it was far from everyone who might be foolish, brave, or both enough to try to reach it. Only the hero was allowed to go there, and only then with a guide. A guide like Kaepora Gaebora.

Now to find a good place to perch and wait. Undoubtedly the child was back at the cliff, wondering what on earth he was supposed to do now. A pang of guilt went through the owl—after all, the test was essentially asking a human to leap blindly into empty space, a request against nearly all two-legged being's very nature. It would be like—like asking a bird to fly through a great whirlwind, or land in a torrent of water! And yet such acts required courage, as well as the intuition to distinguish a proper guide from a bad one. It occurred to the owl that he might have spent a little longer speaking with the child to learn more of the journeys he had had, and perhaps tell whether or not the child was old enough for such possibilities to have even occurred to him. The owl would normally have already satisfied these questions, as he had spent many years looking for the hero and knew how to find what information he wanted. The quest of a guide to find the guided was not one Kaepora took lightly. The lack of normalcy every meeting with this particular child, however, surprised him every time. It was as though all the routines the owl favored had already been done, and the boy was eager to skip the old words that had already been said. It was refreshing, if worrisome. Who was this boy who acted as though he knew him, when Kaepora was sure he had never seen him before? Perhaps—

The owl's thoughts of doubt and curiosity were broken by a glimpse of a gray figure fighting its way through the blizzard of white. The human was bundled like a miniature snowman, struggling with the wind and his own restricted movements. Upon his head was a hat bound with a scarf.

The boy was following a trail of feathers, ignoring the fact that for all the world he looked to be walking on air.

The owl watched, fascinated, as the child made his way to the giant bird's perch, peering in the rocky cave below with obvious curiosity and then shouting a greeting that was by now becoming so familiar.

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