Genre: Drama/Romance
Summary: A rather short piece featuring Sheik's past and his thoughts when he first met Link, in which Sheik is his own character. Sheik-centric.
There was a young boy who, after witnessing his race being swiped from existence, held on duty in order to flee from his own feelings. Despite that he could find solace in the arms of the other survivor, his aunt Impa, he missed one single thing he would never have again: his innocence.
The duty driven boy indulged in studying secrets of combat and magic that belonged to his fallen race, the sheikah, so that he could fulfill the task bestowed upon them, that was to protect the Royal Family of Hyrule.
When Ganondorf, the Great King of Evil, usurped the throne, he was prepared. Princess Zelda fled with Impa, while he managed to save at least a dozen of nobles. They hid in a modest tavern in the far south, past the ever-flowing water of Lake Hylia and the shifting sands of Gerudo Desert. And the poetic, sensitive soul that the boy tried to ignore so much spoke louder, making him realize that those landscapes were in the same situation as them: ever-changing and unstable, controlled by an uncertain fate.
But he knew: inviting poetry to his heart would lead to intense feelings, which often led to depression. So when he went to Lake Hylia in a rare peaceful day, he stared at his reflection in the water and kept focused on his eyes. The color of blood stared back at him, making him remember all the atrocities he had watched in his life. Then depression came, and he promised to never take a glimpse of his reflection again.
There was a day when Princess Zelda told him a hero would come and save them. Upon politely inquiring how she knew such information, she said that the forest boy in green who visited her once was sleeping in the Sacred Realm, which meant he was the Chosen One of the Goddesses. The sheikah boy was disappointed at first for having to wait seven years for the Hero's wake, but quickly contented himself with imagining what he would look like, what he would be like. The perfect opportunity to get to know the Hero came when Princess Zelda assigned him the duty to be his guide.
But… being a guide required a sensitive soul, for knowledge in music and poetry was needed. So the boy, slowly but surely, began to embrace his intense emotions, while noticing they could actually console sadness if used right.
He got to visit all the places that held a sacred temple. In those places, he would learn magic music that would warp him back to them if needed. Being a guide also meant teaching those to the Hero, and the now emotion-driven boy made sure all those places had a matching poem to describe them. But as they also had to connect to the Hero somehow, Princess Zelda helped by telling him the little she knew about his personal life.
Seven years passed.
The sheikah boy, now a young man, waited for the awakening of the Hero. When a sudden, blinding blue light filled the Temple of Time, blood met ocean. Many hylians had never seen the ocean, but he had. It was fierce, yet gentle. The color of blood would surely get lost if mixed in such stable, pure blue that matched the beauty of the sky at evening.
Unfortunately, he couldn't think about oceans and longer, for the Hero needed information regarding his fate. When he finished explaining and introduced himself, the Hero made something unexpected: he asked what his gender was, while calling him by his name! The sheikah man, whose name was Sheik, instantly became flustered. Despite the fact that asking a person's gender is totally inappropriate and embarrassing, calling a sheikah by the name was very rare, considering they were viewed as "the shadows of Hyrule" and were treated like secrets that could never be revealed.
Later that day, Sheik realized that the young man in green couldn't even understand the impact of what he said: not only didn't he know about sheikah mannerisms, as he was raised in the forest, he also didn't know there were times when people couldn't be so straight-forward, for his mind was that of a ten year old child.
One more thing was hidden in the ocean eyes of the Hero, the sheikah realized. It was innocence. The quality he once lost was what kept the Hero stable, courageous and unfaltering.
And when he admitted that what he felt for the Hero was beyond friendship, he wished the sadness he often felt could drown itself in that bottomless ocean, never to be found again.