This story begins and ends with dreams. But for the dreamer himself, the word 'begins' has no meaning. He does not remember a time without dreams. They were his first thoughts, his first memories, his first companions, and though some of them faded, the pressure of them lingered within him like a weight next to his heart. Silver people, four-legged beasts, huge stone buildings, fire, jumbled shining shapes, a strange girl with strange eyes, blue eyes—like the snatches of moonlight that slipped through the trees to shine on the deep pools of the Lost Woods these images shimmered across his slumber —and most of all, dreams of a place without trees: a huge, stretching place of only grass, waving for miles, and a sky of uninterrupted blue, wide and open and clear and free.
Once, the dreamer tried to explain this place to the others, about how there were no trees to obstruct the sky and no roots knit into the endless grassy sea. The more he spoke, however, the more horrified they became.
"No trees?" demanded Mido. "You mean kill the trees?"
"No! The trees were just—never there. It was always just grass."
"There have always been trees," Saria murmured. "Link…"
"I knew something was wrong with you, Link," Mido declared.
So after that, he stopped telling people about his dreams. He had always been different—smaller, weaker, less intelligent—and now they thought he was deranged. No wonder he didn't have a fairy! He fell silent. Most of the others spoke to him, if not kindly, then condescendingly, but Mido was persistently furious, and Saria was his only true friend.
For fear of losing even her, the dreamer didn't tell her when his dreams began to change. The grass withered and burned, turned red and brown; above, ash and fog darkened his skies to impenetrable black. He saw shapes prowling the flames, shadows that snapped and hissed—then the strange blue-eyed girl flew by, on a white four-legged beast—she looked at him and he shivered—and then the largest of the dark shapes emerged from the flames—a towering giant of black stone and yellow eyes, with hair that burned red on his skull. The giant looked from the girl to the dreamer—
"Link!"
The dreamer shuddered.
"Link! Wake up!"
He felt prickly, unrested, muddled. He buried his head in the pillow.
"Link, get up! The Great Deku Tree wants to see us now!"
