Malevolent Slumber
By: My Final Death
AN: (/)/ I want to thank everyone who read my first chapter! Your reward for checking back on my story is getting to read yet a second chapter. (b ' w ' )d However, before we start I want to get a few things out of the way.
Hououza – Thank you so much for your kind words ('')I absolutely love the OoT story line and it pleased the very core of my being that they kept some of the story line elements for their later releases. I only hope I won't disappoint!
Sakurelle – (; ;) Grammatical errors indeed! I'll have to go back and fix it (xX) It's definitely something I will have to improve upon... thank you for your kind words as well.
If you see a (#) at the end of a sentence, it is merely a marker for a foot note. Scroll down to the end of the chapter if you want to read it. Otherwise, it's just extra information that takes up a lot of space. XD
Chapter 2
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In Which The Hero Meets A Fairy
The children had taught Link long ago that there were two sides of the Kokiri forest, and while it was allowed to go to the outer forest it certainly wasn't advised. The main problem was that the further away you went from the heart of any living, magical, and breathing place such as the Kokiri forest (not that there were many other places that could claim to have the same attributes), the magic became weaker and things tend to become less connected to each other. Thus came the conclusion that if a Kokiri child became disconnected with the Kokiri forest itself, then they would cease to be. For these reasons alone, no one ever ventured to the outer forest – including Link.With that in consideration, it was more than understandable that as he crossed the bridge he began to feel a heavy knot grow in the very pit of his stomach. Uncertainty, doubt, anxiety… he sucked in the left side of his cheek and bit his teeth down against the flesh in a determined grunt.
As soon as the ball of his foot rolled onto the blanket of dead leaves and twigs that lined the floor of the forest Link had the sudden impression that he was in a completely different place. Hell, he might have even been in a completely different time era for all he could make of his senses. He looked up towards the branches of the trees, and for the first time in his life he had to shield his eyes from brightness of the noon-time sun.
The trees on this side of the forest were much more spread apart which allowed much more sunlight through. In all probability these trees were probably the exact same as the trees on the other side, but the leaves that stuck out from these branches also came in colors of bright red and orange. Link suspected that this was probably from overexposure to the sun, and that the very tops of all trees were
probably completely red and orange in both places. Along with these differences were also the variations and deviant species of vegetation that grew with the help of extra sunlight.
Another thing Link noticed as he began to make his way through was that even the animals seemed to act differently to his presence. Even though they had the same shapes and same movements, their eyes were dull and seemed to lack an inner sparkle that contained secrets of the forest (1). Their blunt gazes seemed to follow him, but not at all in a welcoming fashion. In fact, they felt rather resentful to him that he should have the audacity to walk in their forest and dare cross beyond marked territories without so much as even an acknowledgement that he had done so. He felt their negative feelings toward him almost as strongly as if they were poking daggers into his back, and so he did his best to avoid them (which was most impossible, since they were everywhere).
But this was just a minor observation made on his part. The biggest thing the young man noticed was a change in the physiological aspects of his body. He couldn't describe it, but it was almost as if he could feel that his body was suddenly maturing much faster than it had been. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but all the same, he had enough things to deal with already that were out of the norm (2).
Approximately after two hours of wandering around, it began to dawn on Link that he had absolutely no means as to tell where he actually was. In fact, if he were honest with himself, he would have realized that he was completely lost without any clue as to what he should be looking for as a guide. Saria had always told him to follow the music of the forest, but what was he to do when he was so far away that he wouldn't even be able to hear it? But even if he had known how to communicate with the animals of the woods it was more than likely that they would not have been as hospitable to him as to actually give him directions. The only directions they would give him would lead him straight into the belly of some very unpleasant creature.
He groaned loudly and frowned. He kept walking, but he couldn't help but thinking the nagging thought of, "Well, this wasn't how I imagined things at all!"
Slowly the sun began to slip behind the trees, and the only light he had to guide his path was shimmering and blinding him through the trunks of the trees. Fatigue was beginning to set in and his legs were beginning to feel very heavy as if they were made of lead. This in itself wasn't so bad, but on an uneven ground consisting of the roots of unfriendly trees who wanted nothing more than something to laugh at, it became down-right disastrous. As his feet began to drag, his toe would catch onto a root that had oh-so-conveniently decided to move upwards, and before he knew it he was face down in the hard and cruel floor of the forest. It wasn't long before cuts and scratches began to mark the fair skin on his cheeks.
Of course, there was only so much he could handle, and so he finally stopped after a while and looked around helplessly at his surroundings. It all looked the same to him. It all looked… the same… he clenched his fists and looked down at his feet as the frustration began to build up inside of him.
"IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME!"
He fell backwards on to his bottom and leaned his back against a bark of a tree that was probably too deep in its own sleep to be much concerned with outside matters. With a hope that things would look better in the light of a fresh morning, he closed his eyes and tried to relax. After all, if he couldn't see where he was going what was the use to keep walking? Although he had at least hoped that he would have found some safe shelter…
Link was woken by the feeling of a soft fluttery feeling that grazed the side of his cheek. The action itself probably wasn't what woke him, but rather the familiarity of it. His eyes shot open to be faced with a soft, warm light that stayed afloat within a inches away from his face. As he vaguely heard the soft tinkering, his brain finally caught up and let out a whoop in excitement. "Where's your charge!" he cried out excitedly, looking around for the Kokiri child that accompanied the fairy (although this was useless since this was a particularly dark night and he could not see a thing).
The fairy reacted strangely to this and almost as if it had taken offense, its motions began to become very agitated and the volume of its tinkering dramatically increased.
"… I can't see them! Are they close by?"
This only intensified the reaction and in its attempt to try to deliver its message to Link of its most apparent agitation, the fairy tugged very hardly on a lock of Link's hair with each tinker.
"OW! Ow, ow! Ok, ok… So you're alone. Take it easy, you know I can't understand your language." He waved his hand at it to shoo it away from his hair, and attempted to rub the sting away from his scalp.
The fairy tinkered once, which Link accurately translated as the question of why.
"Well… I wasn't exactly born of the forest. I suppose a fairy never saw fit to look after me because of that, or maybe they just didn't have the ability." He shrugged to emphasize the fact that he was rather clueless to the whole situation. One could have argued that if he had been around fairies so long he would have been able to understand them by now, but fairies were generally considered 'personal' and they usually communicated to their respective child any wishes they had.
The fairy emitted a noise that came out more as a disapproving, "Tut!"
Link sighed. "I know." He stared at the scratched skin that had once been the top of his knees (he could of sworn the last branch he tripped over had done a rather complete job of making sure he didn't have any skin left on them) as if in thought. After a few seconds of silence between both of them, Link asked the fairy in a most humble voice, "I'm trying to get out of the Kokiri forest, but I honestly don't know which way to go. I don't know how I would be able to repay you, I don't exactly know what fairies like… But if you could help me…"
The fairy flew back a few inches as if taken back by this request. Obviously it had never received a plea of help before. It began to pace back and forth, tinkering quietly as if it were talking to itself.
"Of course, if a beautiful fairy such as yourself isn't able to-"
That had been the deciding factor, for this fairy was a particularly prideful fairy. If there were any doubt in something's mind that this fairy was not up to the task that any other fairy could do, then it could just think again.
The fairy rushed at Link with such a suddenness that he actually recoiled backwards (and unfortunately he smacked the back of his head against the tree in doing so!) in shock. In a blink of an eye the fairy was hovering at the shell of his ear, and blowing softly little bits of 'dust' into his ear. This caused a rather unpleasant itch, and instinctively Link reached up with his index finger and dug it into the canal of his ear to itch away the sensation.
"Stop, stop, STOP! You'll ruin it!" screamed a shrill voice.
"Huh?" He looked up at the fairy, with widened eyes. Could he have possibly just heard his first fairy speak to him in words he could understand?
"You dummy! But that's what you mortal beings like to do, isn't it? You like to receive gifts, and as soon as you get them, you like to RUIN them…" she kept going on, but Link only caught bits and pieces of it because while he could hear her actually speaking the words, the tinkering sound effect still happened in the background and overlapped some of the syllables.
"You mean I can understand you now? Does this… " he thought for a second, but before he could say what he meant, the fairy answered for him.
"Yes, you can understand me now. No, I'm not your fairy. And why would I want to be?" She paused for a moment, but decided better of giving him room to speak up for his self and kept on going. "I've given you gift for one reason: so you can understand me. Not so we can have fun little chatty-chats. You asked me to help you through the forest. Alright, I accept, but on this one condition: you must take me to places I've never seen before." If Link could have seen past the flurry of her wings, he would have been able to see that she had crossed her arms and gazed at him in a most arrogant manner.
The fairy flew up to him just in front of his face. "So, what will it be? You can stay here and wander around lost forever in the pathetic state that I've found in you in, or you can take me with you and have a most competent guide to the world that you seem to be painfully unaware of."
He thought about this for a moment, but he really didn't need time to think. His mind was already made up for him, and a big grin played across his face. Even if this fairy seemed particularly bossy and rude, he would gladly accept her help. And after all, her company would definitely be of more use to him than the unfriendly silence of the woods and wherever else his venture might take him. "Alright, you're on. My name is Link, what's yours?"
"Tatl, and don't you forget it either!"
Footnote #1 – Animals closer to the heart of the forest are closely connected with the Kokiri children as well as their surroundings, and therefore are more opening and very warm to their company. Because their also more in tune with their magical surroundings, they themselves may even begin to learn a bit of magic such as being able to conceal themselves completely in their surroundings.
Footnote #2 – The Kokiri children are immortal because part of the magic of the inner part of the forest is that time moves almost at a standstill, and because they are the offspring of the oldest living trees of the forest. The stillness of magic has even affected Link since he lived there for so long, and it is in all likely that even though he only appears to be sixteen or seventeen that he's actually lived for well over a hundred years already (although it certainly does not seem so long to him his self). So it is only naturally that once he gets away from this stillness of magic that his body would begin to start going back to its normal speed of aging. For Kokiri children, whose growth is MUCH more stunted if not changing at all, the sudden transition would make them feel as if their bodies were beginning to decay around them thus resulting in the feeling that they're dying (which they are doing… but they wouldn't actually die for a very, very long time).