There's Something About You
Disclaimer: I do not own Legend of Zelda anything. The franchises' creators do.
Nobody knew who he was, or where he came from. All they seemed to suspect was that he was abandoned. They had found him alone in the woods, a fat, pudgy toddler who was like no Minish they had ever seen.
Granted all Minish had varying looks. Mountain Minish were taller then average and brawny.
Forest Minish were only slightly taller then Town Minish and the soles of their feet were rougher from running barefoot over their forest home.
Town Minish were the smallest and daintiest, to help avoid being seen by human eyes or domestic animals.
But this child's looks were exotic, with his pale, moonlit hair, short, sharpish ears and blazing red eyes.
Some whispered that the boy was an abandoned child of the legendary Twili. Others argued that he was a demon in Minish form and would bring catastrophe to their people.
Whatever he would be in the future, he was now just a toddler, roughly two years old in human age and the Minish above all else, loved children.
It was old Ezlo who took the boy in and named him. Vaati he was called, the Minish word for the colorful glass that humans arrayed in fanciful pictures for their temples.
He was a clever, courageous boy with fiery curiosity and dogged determination and eventually Ezlo took him on as his apprentice.
He acted like other children, playing and exploring their lush forest home and Ezlo who had never had a child of his own was content, but there were times when something too cold, too calculating, too…adult passed in the shadows of his fiery eyes and gave the elderly inventor a nervous chill.
It was as though he had experienced things most people were not supposed to experience, as though Ezlo were not looking through the eyes of a taller then normal Minish child, but through ages past to older, harsher times and places. Still, he shook it off as his imagination.
It was only after the fact that Ezlo had been cursed, that he'd wished he listened to his own intuition, but it was too late and the boy he had so selflessly cared for, for the past eight years callously turned his back on him as the octoroks closed in.
Shortly after, he met another boy. A Hyrulian child, short and roundish, with hair like sunlight and eyes as brown as the earth. After spending hours wandering in the blistering heat of Mt. Crenel's innards did he realize that Link seemed to possess the similar keen intellect and dogged determination.
There was a flash of that same something that had Ezlo thinking he was looking into the eyes of a far older soul and he began to wonder if there was a connection between the boys.
The first couple nights they slept were awkward, the next time they slept, it was the sleep of the exhausted without any dreams. As the days passed and they became more comfortable in each other's presence, Ezlo began seeing flashes of a tall, young teenager with brown eyes and hair, fighting his way alone to break the curse on a sleeping young woman with reddish brown hair, tall and elegant.
The dream flashes began to get longer, as the young man fought and nearly died countless times, through monster-infested temples, and over large, undeveloped wild lands and craggy mountains.
It was the night when Ezlo's curse had been broken and he had gone back, with conflicted feelings over Vaati's death and the one who had killed him that he sank into a dream so vivid, so real that he felt that he WAS the mysterious teenager.
He was hacking up blood on his burnt fingers, his clothes were singed and one of his eyes were half shut, but the Thunderbird was almost finished. One more strike and he would accomplish his goal. He leaped high and struck at it's face and the terrifying beast exploded in flame.
He cast a spell on himself and strength returned to his body and his wounds began to heal. That was when he saw a small man, a Minish! The part of Ezlo's mind that was still his observed with shock, standing next to a glowing triangle of light. The Minish man whispered words that he could not catch, a spell that he did not know existed.
Something painful began to pull deep inside him, something separated and the room turned a dark shade of pink as a solid shadow with blazing red eyes appeared before him.
He could only stare in shock for a moment as his shadow self swung. Murder and darkness in his blazing red eyes…the same something that he had seen in his now deceased apprentice's eyes. And Ezlo knew, without understanding how that the spell that had been cast had neatly separated the soul in two. The dark soul was the soul of primal survival, anger and hostility. The soul of a warrior who was willing to do things what most were too frightened to do to achieve it's single-minded goal. Just as Link was willing to strike down Vaati and Vaati was willing to strike down Link, despite being so young.
His arm began aching as they blocked every deadly thrust, lifting his shield for strikes at each other's faces, leaping from on high to drive steel into each other's brains. He was more then half dead when the shadow fell away into the darkness and the Minish elder appeared again and the man and the Triforce became one.
And that was when Ezlo knew, connecting the dots, the strong similarities between Vaati and Link. They were once one and the same. But the soul that had been taken had been twisted and turned into its own force and would always be such. Like shadows and sunlight.