Hey, guy's, here's chapter three. It's going to be longer, simply because there's three of them interacting constantly, and because I just find these guys fun to write. If you can't tell, I love it when characters completely screw logic in game and flat out tell you about the controls (press the A button to talk to me, etc).

So, without any further delay, I present to you:


Kokiri Days, Part One, The Know-It-Alls' Day

Sheets, meticulously tucked and pressed, were now left with three sweaty, child-sized dents in them. Their former occupants stood in their accustomed places of their room, each going through their own, self-crafted morning rituals. The eldest was breaking pots for some spare change, while the youngest was silently counting down to himself. The middle child occupied himself with a series of stretches.

The silence was maintained until the youngest counted down to zero, and said, "Fifty seconds after daylight. Mido's in the lake by now."

"He should have moved his doorway to face west."

"He never listens to us," agreed the eldest.

"You meant the north, right?" objected the youngest.

"You know, I've always thought it would look best towards the south."

"That's even worse! That's the way the sun rises!"

The two younger brothers stared at their elder for a few seconds longer than what was necessary.

"...Then... the east?"

"That's the way it's facing already!"

Having completed their morning routines, the Brothers Three went outside, following a path which they themselves (being, of course, the leading/only authority) decided was the most enjoyable route to walk in the mornings. This was partly because they rarely came across Mido while taking it; they had made sure of it. But mostly, it's because it had Saria in it. In copious amounts. This too, they had made sure of.

They rounded the back of Saria's house, but were disappointed at the sight. One thing that had not remained as constant as they would have liked (for everything must be consistent) was the time at which Saria would waken. In the place of that exquisite example of sylvan beauty stood two other Kokiri, who, unfortunately, were not nearly as sylvan or beautiful as their intended sight. They were wielding garden tools; one sullenly pulled along at the grass with a sickle while the other one worked at a rock with a spade in rhythm. Scoop, cut, slice, dig. Scoop, cut, slice dig. One paused to give the unholy trinity a look which clearly said "Oh, damn, it's you guys; don't bother me" before trying to go back to work and back to his life.

He suddenly found out how hard it was to do the former without a shovel, as the oldest of the brothers had taken it.

"No, no, you've been doing it wrong. You hold it by the handle and halfway down the shaft and press A!" said the elder the Know-It-Alls, demonstrating helpfully.

"You've got it wrong too!" yelled the middling brother, snatching the shovel out of his hands. "You have your hands backwards, and it's B!"

"Guys?"

"No that's how you hold the sickle!" replied the older one. "And then, you have to equip it the the C button!" He tried to demonstrate, but nearly cut off his hand.

"...Guys?"

"You don't hold a sickle in two hands like that, idiot."

"... Hey, guys."

"...And even then, you should to Z-target!"

"... you really need a sword to cut grass properly."

Suddenly, another voice.

"Mido made you do this, didn't he?"

The world froze. Or, at least, the brothers froze, and, to them, that is the world.

The two older brothers turned to gaze, horrified, at the sight that the youngest had seen all along.

Saria in the morning is a beautiful thing. And still, in this morning light, she was beautiful. Beautiful like a well-crafted sword, beautiful like the final-blow of a graceful duelist. Beautiful in the same way that the passengers saw the Titanic as beautiful. Only they saw the iceberg ahead of time. And they couldn't do anything about it. Having dismissed the two other Kokiri, she stood with her hands on her hips and death in her words. "Now what were you doing here just now?"

The three shuffled their feet awkwardly. Dealing with Saria was not amongst their (supposedly) vast collective repertoire of skills. They did know that talking back didn't work. They definitely did not want to go through a repeat of the encounter with Mido which had followed, especially the part with the deku nut, the slingshot, and the milk. They hadn't liked the milk at all. Each brother looked at the other for a clue as to how to deal with this problem. Their own differences could be settled only if they came out of this alive.

The older brother and martyr of the trio swallowed almost audibly and opened his mouth to speak.

"Oh, g'morning!"

That was most definitely not his voice. Saria and the Brothers turned towards the shop to see its keeper waving at them. The older two sighed in relief, though the youngest frowned, trying to remember something.

"Oi! Saria, do you mind if I borrowed your friends for a bit? I need some help around the shop!"

The youngest took his turn to sigh, remembering too late about the new merchandise that the shopkeeper had received (from where they came from, he had no idea. Especially the milk).

Saria didn't seem to hesitate. "Go ahead, you can take them!" Her voice resumed its bright and cheerful nature, though the Brothers were almost certain they heard a dark undertone beneath the sugar.

She turned to them. "Go on," she said. The undertones became more apparent. "Put your brilliant minds off to some use, there."

In those eyes, no compassion to harbour response was to be seen. Indeed, however unpleasant, it was safer for them to retreat. With dignity, of course. So, they marched sullenly to their demise, grumbling.

With dignity, of course.


"The goods are in the same place as usual, right?" asked the baby Brother, already walking behind the counter. He had helped the shopkeeper on a few occasions, as he tended to be a bit too short to reach the upper shelves.

"Yes, dear," he replied, walking out the door. "Go and get your brothers to help you with the merchandise, it's a bit heavy this time around. Just arrange everything like usual."

The door closed, leaving them to stare at the boxes until someone made a move.

"You should move it by putting your back against it and walking," said the oldest (un)helpfully.

"Or just pick it up with A," added the middle child.

"But bend at the legs, not at the waist," reminded the oldest.

The youngest looked at his elders for a long time before sighing and picking the merchandise up and shelving it. He noticed that she was stocking shields now, though he knew neither why nor how (though he would not admit it). Upon seeing his actions, they were all too eager to help.

"It would save space to put them all on one shelf," said the first-born, scooping up items and dumping them on the shelf.

"More efficient to shop on several shelves," countered the middle, quickly divvying up the items as fast as he put them on.

"She usually-"

"Well, then if you do, separate the perishable goods."

The youngest sighed, and stood off to the side while his siblings debated on the particulars of proper store organization. They claimed to be experts at it (like everything else), but he knew for a fact that they had never gone into the store before now. When he turned around again, he saw the shopkeeper, who was busy looking at his brothers, who, in turn, were busy threatening each other with deku sticks and 'debating' on their proper uses (oh, another new item in stock, he noted).

The keeper stood by patiently up until one brother had managed to break a stick into naught but three nubs.

"Get the hell out of my store," he said good-naturedly.

There was something in the way that he held his own deku stick that made them silently admit his superiority with its handling. They politely got the hell out of his store. The youngest followed timidly, muttering a few apologies.

And so they came to stand outside of the infamous rolling boulder's hole, with the oldest two refusing to talk to each other, and the youngest keeping his own distance just because he knew how these situations usually turned out.

It wasn't that they were bad people. Far from that. No one would deny that they put others before themselves (especially if someone were firing slingshots) or that they had helped the village out on a large scale several times before. They were just bloody stupid and annoying.

"... torches..." muttered the first-born to himself, brooding over their prior argument until a shadow blocking his sunlight pulled him back to reality.

He didn't need to know it all to know who it was. "Link, is it?" he said, turning around. He wasn't surprised to see that he was right.

He was surprised, however, to see Link with the Kokiri sword in hand. Link's tendency to stand just a little bit too close to you became all the more apparent when he was holding a two-foot long sword across a one foot gap.

His nature overtook his fear of bladed weapons (and of Link) for a moment, and he said, warily, "Oh, you... have a fairy now. Would you like to learn how to Z-target?"

Link nodded.

The Brother swallowed. Behind Link, he could see his youngest brother waving cheerfully, having already taught Link how to crawl through small holes. The jerk...

"Well, first you hold Z, and then toggle... through the possible..."

He stopped, and hesitated in the way that some people might when teaching gun control to someone who would turn up on the news one day. Link seemed to understand in that pause, however. The signpost beside him was sliced into three chunks, leaving behind a stick and a bit of wood that read as "ow".

And then suddenly, the Brother became aware of Link's new fairy floating around him, as well as some fetching yellow arrows. "Oh... erm... you seem to have got the hang of it... move along."

The Brother tried to wave Link along and treat him like he treated the rest of the village- like they, unlike him, did not know it all. But its hard to look down on a man who's pointing a sword at you. It was a long few seconds before Link turned away and walked towards the middling child of the Brothers, who was a much quicker thinker than the other two at this sort of thing.

"Oh, I'd teach you how to use a shield and side-step with it, but you don't have one," he said, recalling one of the pieces of merchandise he had seen while restocking the shelves. "Go cuts some grass or something and buy one, and come back to me."

Navi turned to Link and shrugged. Link trundled off to do some yardwork, leaving the trio to their own foreboding thoughts.

The middle brother waited until Link was far gone before hopping off the fence. "Quick, let's run."

And so they did.

"No, no, no... You're supposed to make quick, short steps!"

"I could have sworn it was long strides..."


Well, here's another chapter. If you're wondering why it took so long, weeelll... A few things happened, like my Eagle CoH, I got Pokemon Diamond, and my friends're trying to get me back into Guild Wars. Ne/Mo for hordes of minions!

This chapter was longer than the other two, but that's because it's fun to have petty arguments. I'm afraid it isn't quite as good as the other chapters, though... I was going to make it longer, but it already seemed a bit stretched.

Next, perhaps, is Navi's Day, which should tie all the events together (there's going to be a lot of repeated events in this chapter) then Dusk, where things turn not-funny.