PART ONE
"Go on now, Link, off to the academy, your lesson is about to start."
"But who will I sit next to, mommy?"
"Well, why don't you sit next to the headmaster's cute little daughter?"
"Zelda?"
"Yes. Sit next to her."
Link looked uneasily up at his mother, whose sandy hair spilled lazily about her face as she smiled down at her son. Her only son.
"Why should I sit next to her, mom?" he asked.
His mother grinned even more. "She's cute."
"Cute?"
"Yes, honey, now head on in. Your classroom is down the hall and on the left."
"Left?"
Link's mother picked up Link's left hand, the one with the triangle birthmark on the back. "This side," she said.
"Triangle side?"
"Yes, triangle side: left. Now head on in." And with that, Link's mother gently nudged her son to the doors. She smiled with a pain in her chest as he creaked open one of the great double doors and turned back to look at her.
At last the wooden doors thudded shut and she just stood there for a moment, wishing with all her heart he stopped growing up so fast.
Inside, Link looked around curiously. Great, ebony beams supported a stucco ceiling and the gently patterned floor spread out, so huge to his tiny self.
"Triangle-side," he whispered, as he turned to walk among the ever tall dorm room doors, each bearing a sign carved with intricate shapes the six-year-old could not read-yet. He'd see about that at the end of the day, he thought, shyly peering into the classroom.
Little barred stripes of color littered the back wall: a bookshelf. Rows of long tables and their benches filled the middle. A plaid-clad professor was bent over a book at the front. But, most of all, in the middle sat the kids: a red-head flanked by a timid sandy-blonde, a dark-haired mope, and, in front of them, in the middle, alone, sat a very primly-mannered angel, long bright yellow hair to her back and mind already focused on the completely blank blackboard. The headmaster's daughter.
Shyly, Link crept towards the girl. She didn't turn towards him. He sat uncertainly, set his books and pencils out in front of him.
"Cooties!" yelled the ginger behind them.
Zelda whipped her blonde hair about her as she wheeled at her. "I am the headmaster's daughter," she said in her high-pitched child's voice, "and you cannot make fun of me."
Groose, the other boy, blew her a raspberry. Cawlin and Stritch joined in, giggling at the two in front.
Zelda sighed. "It's just like my mother told me," she said to herself and Link, "Those three are nothing but trouble."
Link said nothing.
"My mother's the teacher, you know. She'll take care of them."
Link nodded hastily as Zelda looked at him as if for a response. She eyed him keenly.
"You're Link," she said matter-of-factly.
He nodded again.
"I've heard about you," she finished, and looked forward again.
Link didn't understand what she meant. Soon enough though, Zelda's mother walked in the door.
"Welcome," she said, "To your first day of school. First of all you should know that we all personally invited you to come to this academy, and your parents agreed to send you here. You are privileged to be here."
"What does privileged mean?" Cawlin asked.
"It means that you are lucky to be here, and should be thankful. Now, who wants to learn how to read and write?"
Most everybody raised their hands, but Link was a little slow on the uptake. By age five most children had felt the pressure of needing to know how to read. In Skyloft most people were literate because of the academy's influence, and the small, but generous population. Most of the Skyloftians had an open-door policy for visitors of all kinds, and so the ability to read had drifted into most houses.
"Alright, class, lets begin with how to hold your pencil, or in this case, the piece of the chalk I passed around. Take it in your hand—"
Link held his chalk in his left hand, but then he noticed Zelda had hers in the other hand, and quickly moved his chalk to his non-triangle-side hand.
"And put your chalk between your first and second fingers," she said, demonstrating. "No, closer to the tips of your fingers, Stritch and Cawlin. Now place your thumb above your fingers. Good. Now, I will give your your chalk boards, and we will start with the first letter of the alphabet, A."
As the teacher passed around small chalkboards, Link struggled to shape each of the letters on his board. A, B, C. He had trouble telling them apart, and even more drawing them separately. For whatever reason, everything came out looking like triangles. But he looked to Zelda's board and saw that only one of his letters looked the same. It was the first one, "A". Or was that how it was said? Eh? Ay? Ah?
Link looked at his left hand, placed on the desk. Looking at the triforce and the letters on the board, he covertly traced the lines on his birthmark that made up the letter A. And for the rest of the lesson, he aced that letter.
They put their chalk down. They picked it up again. And each time, Link looked to Zelda to make sure he was copying her, because she was always right.
Thanks for reading! I don't know how to put in actual Hylian letters, so the letters they are learning are Roman, which of course isn't how it actually would have happened. The Hylian letter "A", however, does involve an upside-down triangle with a line above it, so that part is still accurate. I hope you enjoyed it! Reviews are appreciated!