In the forest, there was no such thing as time.
A strange thing to say, but true. The forest was not so much frozen in time as balancing on its edge. The seasons came and went, but never with the cruelty with which they whipped the rest of the world, and there was always the sense that the seasons came only because the Great Deku Tree allowed it, and then only because it brought the children joy to see snow, and flowers blooming, and falling leaves. New Kokiri appeared from time to time, and they grew, and got older, and then they froze. No one knew how old they really were. If you asked someone, "How old are you?" They would say, "Seven," but in reality they could be ten, or twenty, or fifty years old. But when they turned seven time began to pass them by, so they could say with all honesty that they were seven, and stop keeping track of the time afterwards. Besides, it got too hard after a while, or so Link heard. He was eight years old and as far as he could tell he was still growing. That was fine. Some Kokiri froze at older ages. The oldest Kokiri in the forest was ten, and the youngest was five. Eight was good, Link thought, and he wouldn't really mind freezing at this age. Nine would be nice, too. He wasn't so sure about ten. Saria was ten, though, so it couldn't be all that bad.
He shifted. It was high time to get out of bed. He'd slept in this morning. A lot. The sun was shining brightly through the windows, illuminating specks of dust drifting through the air. It was probably because last night was the first night in a while without any nightmares. The nightmares were always waking him up, and he'd been very very tired the past few days, so he was grateful for the extra sleep.
He swung his legs around to thump on the wooden floor of his treehouse. He stood and stretched, blinking the sleep rapidly out of his eyes. His body was already speeding up. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, that was him, or most of the time it was. His gaze swept over the interior of his home. Wooden planks, wooden walls, wooden ceiling. A simple bed, the perfect size for him. A table with a stump for a chair. A bookcase used for anything other than books. There was a pouch full of deku seeds, and a bunch of deku sticks of all sizes leaning against it. There were the ones that were the perfect size for walking sticks and the ones that were good for hitting things with, and the ones that were good for setting on fire when the Great Deku Tree wasn't watching. He didn't keep anything valuable there, though. It had taken him a week to figure out where his rupees were going, and when he figured it out, he made a secret place under the planks to keep them from disappearing.
A yell outside jolted him from his reverie. He raced to the window and peered out, only to narrow his eyes. That Mido! He was waling on a smaller Kokiri, really waling on him. That wasn't fair, picking on someone smaller than you! Anger bubbled in Link's chest. He hurried to the ladder and shimmied down it as fast as he could, landing on the ground with a small oomph.
"Hey! Hey! I surrender! Stop it, Mido!" the unlucky Kokiri yelled. Mido was sitting triumphantly on top of him, arms crossed over his chest. His fairy, encapsuled by a bright purple glow, hovered over his shoulder with translucent wings beating like a hummingbird's. It twittered meanly, only to be tackled out of the air by the other Kokiri's fairy.
"Mido, cut it out, you jerk!" Link shouted. He ran down the hill towards him. Mido looked up just in time to see a rage-filled Kokiri running after him with his fists all balled up, but not in time to avoid Link tackling him in the gut. They rolled the rest of the way down the hill, jolting and bumping against the ground and each other, until they landed at the base with a loud oof, Link on top, Mido on bottom.
"Jerk!" Link repeated. "Pick on someone your own size, why don't you?"
"What? You mean like you?" Mido half-leered, half-wheezed, as he was currently still trying to recover from about fifty pounds of Kokiri landing directly on his gut.
"Yeah, sure, whatever," Link answered with a glare. He hated to see Mido picking on anybody, but it was even worse when they couldn't defend themselves.
The other forest boy didn't seem sure what to say about that. "I say we can take 'im!" came a high voice, young but rough. Mido's fairy swept to the base of a hill, hovering directly in Link's face. Link glared for a moment before batting at it, sending it zooming away with a surprised yelp. Udo, Mido's fairy, was almost as annoying as his Kokiri partner.
"Hey! You can't do that!" Mido yelled. He scrabbled around and pushed Link away forcefully, getting to his feet and putting his hands on his hips.
Link jumped up and thought of the best insult he could at the moment, which was, "You look like a girl when you do that!"
Mido's face reddened and he shoved Link. "S-Shut up!"
"No!" Link shoved back.
"You don't know what you're talking about, you no-fairy moron!"
Link cringed at the no-fairy comment, but shoved again anyway, this time hard enough to make Mido stumble. "Do too!"
"Yeah, 'cuz you hang around with girls all the time!" Mido leered, coming back with a shove just as hard.
"At least Saria likes me!" Link responded angrily. He instantly knew he had gone too far. Mido's entire face turned red, and he shoved Link so hard the Kokiri boy fell to the ground. Before he had time to think, Mido jumped on top of him, pounding with little fists.
"Who said I wanted Saria to like me?!"
"Everyone!"
"Nuh-uh!"
"Yeah-huh!"
"Well she doesn't like you either!"
"Does too!"
"Nuh-uh, she's just too nice to tell you so!"
"Liar!"
"I ain't a liar! Who likes a loser with no fairy?!"
"Saria! Does!" He kicked Mido in the stomach, successfully getting the other eight-year-old off.
"What? Does that bother you?" Mido teased, seeing he'd hit a soft spot. "Saria doesn't like you! Where do you think she goes all the time? She probably just wants to get away from the loser that follows her around everywhere!"
Link's face was hot and red, fists clenched at his side, teeth gritted. Anger coiled through him. "How do you know she's not trying to get away from YOU?!"
"I'm not the one who follows her around everywhere, am I?!"
"Liar!"
"Face it. You have no friends." Mido crossed his arms triumphantly over his chest.
"Neither do you! Everyone only puts up with you 'cuz they're scared of you!" Link shouted.
Mido looked angry for a moment, but then his face relaxed into a smug grin. He leaned in close to emphasize his words. "Oh yeah? Well even if that were true, which it's not, there's one friend I'll always have. My fairy. But I guess you wouldn't understand that, would you?"
Link punched him in the face.
With that they started rolling around in the ground again, kicking, punching, gouging, hurting anything they could find. It went on for what seemed like ages, and distant shouts reached Link's ears.
"Hey!"
"Someone do something!"
"Saria!"
"Saria, Link and Mido are fighting again!"
"BOYS! CUT IT OUT!"
Link recognized that voice, and so did Mido. They both froze instantly, mid-punch, mid-kick, and turned towards its owner. The Kokiri girl fixed them with a glare of steel, arms crossed over her chest. "Stop that fighting right now!" she repeated firmly.
The two scrambled away from each other and stood. Link was acutely aware of his dirty and rumpled clothes, his absent hat, and his suddenly-stinging injuries: the scrape on his knee, the scratch on his arm, the bruise rapidly developing on his cheek.
"Sorry, Saria," they both muttered, shamefaced. Then they turned to each other with firey glares. "But he started it!"
Suddenly realizing what had happened, they protested.
"Nuh-uh, liar!" Mido shouted, while Link yelled indignantly, "No way! He did!"
"You're so much alike!" a Kokiri girl twittered from somewhere higher up the slope.
"NO WE AREN'T!" they screeched in tandem, then resorted to, once again, glaring at one another. If looks could kill...
Udo swept back into the scene, purple glow shimmering with anger. "Link did too start it!" the fairy asserted. "He attacked Mido first!"
"Is that true, Link?" Saria asked mildly.
Link couldn't believe it - was Saria siding with Mido over him? "Well yeah but - "
"Oh, come off it," Mido interrupted snidely. "We all know you started it."
Link chose to ignore him and repeat himself. "Well yeah but Mido was picking on someone again!"
Saria fixed her narrowed eyes on Mido.
He quailed under her gaze. "Well yeah kinda but - umm - they were - insulting you! Yeah, yeah, they were insu - "
"You're a terrible liar, Mido!" Link exploded in frustration.
"Yeah, well - you're not the boss of me! And neither is she!" Mido made a face at both of them and raced away, abruptly removing himself from the situation. Now it was just Link and Saria, one gazing up at the other.
"U-um - " Link felt his face heating up, remembering Mido's words from the fight. It was true he had no idea why Saria sometimes disappeared, usually for the whole day. "Do ya wanna go get some deku seeds with me or something?"
Saria shook her head, looking rueful. "Sorry, Link, but there's some stuff I gotta do. Some other time, okay?"
"U-um... okay," he stammered. Thoughts whirled through his mind as he watched her walk away. Was Mido right? She's trying to avoid me? It's true it didn't really start until after we were good friends... Then he shook his head fiercely. No way! He's just tryin' to get to me! Saria's my best friend. He's wrong. If she didn't like me she'd just stay away like everybody else, he added, a little bitterly. Most of the kids weren't actually mean to him, just Mido and his cronies. But a lot of Kokiri stayed away from him. Or acted uncomfortable around him. Like being fairyless was a disease, something you could catch.
In times like these, there was only one place to go.
The Great Deku Tree seemed to already know what Link was going to say. The young Kokiri flopped down on one of the Great Deku Tree's roots, negative feelings swirling in his chest. The Great Deku Tree didn't pressure him; finally Link rolled over onto his back, dusty hair spread against the bark, eyes tracing what clouds there were to see between the bright mesh of leaves and branches. "Great Deku Tree, does Saria hate me?"
"Who told you that?" the Great Deku Tree asked, his deep voice reverberating around the clearing.
"Mido."
"I think you know whether or not that is true, Link," said the Great Deku Tree, voice gently chastising.
But Link wasn't so sure, and he told him so.
"Has Saria ever done anything to indicate that she hates you?" the forest guardian went on, voice coaxing, prodding.
"She's away all the time," he protested, not mentioning that Mido had implied it was because of him.
"She is special," the Great Deku Tree said gently. "She's going through a hard time right now."
"I could help her," Link pointed out stubbornly, "but she won't tell me what she's doing! Keeping secrets is no fun."
"You don't trust her?"
"I trust her!" Link yelped, sitting up. He crossed his little arms over his chest. "I trust her."
"Trust her with this, then. She cares for you, Link."
"Yeah, and she's the only one," he muttered, casting a dark glance into the trees.
"That's not true, either."
"You don't count," he said, and then seeing how that could be taken, added on ruefully, "I'm talking about other Kokiri."
"You have other friends. You play with the others often."
"Kind of."
"Link, you are special too. Don't forget that."
"Special? Because I don't have a fairy? That's the opposite of special!"
"There is a reason for everything, Link. I promise."
"You... you do?" A promise from the Great Deku Tree, the guardian, the creator, the father of the forest, was not to be taken lightly. He stared up at the massive wooden face, blue eyes wide.
"Yes. I do."
Link leaned back against the Great Deku Tree's root once more, feeling oddly reassured. He no longer had his own speculating thoughts to go on, or the words of others. He had a promise. A promise that someday, there would be a reason, and someday, it would be okay. He was lonely, but he wasn't alone.
He closed his eyes and let the warm summer breeze stir his hair and play with the tip of his hat. The light was green; the air tasted of gold and smelled of living things.
Everything was okay.
In fact, for a moment, everything was just perfect.
A/N: This was written a while back, on a whim, while I was kinda-sorta considering starting a novelization of Ocarina of Time. So if the writing is a bit subpar to what I've been posting lately... well, that's why.
Also, I have no idea if I'm going to continue this, but if I do it will probably just be for fun.
So.
Oh, and I mixed in some of my headcanons for what life is like in Kokiri Forest. Namely in the infodump at the start. :P That's how I've always imagined their agelessness to work, anyway.